A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (29 page)

The question surprised her. “Gaby? Zilch. I doubt if she’s even aware of the financial troubles he’s in. Besides, I can’t see Panos letting her in on it. This is a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. She’d be rotten at being cagey and evasive and all. And I think, down deep, well, I just think she’s a good person. Certainly not a crook. And
definitely
not a killer.”

“Okay,” Ted said noncommittally. He ate a little more, started to say something, thought again about how to say it, and finally got it out. “Alix, things have changed. People are getting killed now. So you need to understand that amateur time is over. As of now, you’d better consider yourself off the case.”

“Is that an order, boss?” she shot back. “Don’t I at least get a notice of separation?” That “amateur time” had stung. A few seconds ago, he was still interested in her opinions.

“Think of it as a favor,” he said no less sharply and then softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t put it very well. You’ve done a terrific job already, more than we could have expected. You’ve been a huge help.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I couldn’t be more serious. I mean it. But this has morphed into something completely different from what we started with. Forget the fractional investment thing. This has turned into a major international operation now, and to your credit, it all stems directly from your identification of the fake Manet.”

“One fake makes a major international operation?”

“No, it’s more than that—”

“You mean the Monet forgery too? What, is there some kind of… of international forgery ring? Are there really such things, and not just in the movies?”

He smiled and looked inscrutable. “You said all that, not me. I’ve said all I’m going to say about it, which is more than I should have, so please forget it. Let’s just say it’s bigger than you thought—or I did, for that matter—and at this point, the investment scheme is on the back burner. For the moment, I’m working on something else, and you’re not working on anything. Just do what you’re supposed to be doing for Panos and go along for the ride. Just—”

“Keep a low profile.”

“Right.”

“Tread carefully.”

“Exactly.”

“Ted, something else just occurred to me. Too bad I’m off the case, because it’s something you really might want to put in the hopper.”

“Well, since you thought of it during a meal the FBI is paying for, I guess, technically, you’re still on. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s this: Since Panos immediately jumped to the assumption that Edward was talking about the Manet when he told him there was a forgery, then can’t we conclude, by implication, that he
hadn’t
been aware that the Monet was a fake too? That it came as a surprise to him? In other words, that he’s not the only one making forgeries of his collection?”

“That is a very good point,” he said, chewing thoughtfully on a gob of salami, green pepper, prosciutto, and cheese.

“And, if you’ll allow it, I believe I can solve another mystery for you.”

He waited.

“Cheese,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

She waved a pizza slice. “It’s feta, not mozzarella or provolone or anything like that. That’s why it tastes different. And smells different.”

“Ah,” he said, “you’re right. You did it again.” He lifted the Coke can in toast. “The connoisseur’s nose.”

T
he rest of the day, her third aboard the
Artemis
, was blessedly uneventful. Edward was waiting at the start of her informal chat session with an offer to assist, and she happily delegated to him all questions about value potential, financial trends, and the like. They were now only two days from the auction, which was scheduled for the following night, on the way from Corfu to Rhodes, so interest in the paintings had increased. All of the guests showed up wanting to hear what she could tell them about one painting or painter or another, and most stayed the full two hours, following her around as she answered others’ questions. Fortunately for her, most of the questions about the contemporary works fell into Edward’s province, so she happily spent her time in the music room, talking about things she knew.

People continued to hang around and engage her well into the cocktail hour, and it was only afterward, when she was dressing for dinner, that she realized what a welcome interlude it had been, a kind of minivacation from thoughts and theories and suspicions of murder and forgery.

On her way back to her stateroom to dress for dinner, she saw Ted and Yiorgos leaning on a railing, head to head. Now, what was that about—the undercover FBI agent powwowing with the Hellenic Police lieutenant colonel? Did that qualify as a “major international operation”? She jerked her head, refusing to waste her time thinking about it. Not her affair. She was off the case.

At dinner, the first sit-down meal she’d attended, held in the small-scale owner’s dining room, it was harder to keep the morbid thoughts at bay, what with Panos ostentatiously presiding as jovially as if he had
nothing on his conscience, or, more likely, no conscience at all. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Vulgar, petty, cunning… but a killer? Easy enough to see him as a crook, a con man, an all-around scoundrel; he would have been perfect in an old Errol Flynn swashbuckler as a fat, villainous
alcalde
or a rouged, scheming courtier, but central casting would have laughed him out of the studio at the idea of his playing a murderer. He just didn’t look the type.

On the other hand, who did?

The bartender must have done a good business at the cocktail party because everybody was visibly loosened up, and there was plenty of laughter and chatter as they took their assigned seats. Alix’s place card—like the others, in a holder the base of which was a silver model of the yacht (“Please accept this miniature
Artemis
as a memento of your voyage”)—put her at a corner, between Gaby at the end of the table and Edward on her right. Panos was at the head, not easily in her line of sight, which was fine with her.

Dinner aboard the yacht was every bit as glamorous as she’d heard; every one of the men in black tie (God, Ted was truly gorgeous!), the two women in floor-length dinner gowns: Gaby’s a tasteful, rose-pink, schoolgirlish confection with an Empire waist and a gauzy, pleated skirt; Izzy’s a voluminous, eye-popping, leopard-patterned, jewel-belted caftan worn over silken harem pants and silvery slingbacks with four-inch stiletto heels. They both looked beautiful.

So did Alix. She’d taken her friend Chris’s advice, gone back to Le Frock Vintage Clothing and emerged with a black, spaghetti-strap, knee-length cocktail dress for forty-five dollars, ultrasimple but classic. Blanche had even thrown in a pair of smoky glass pendant earrings to go with it. The outfit looked great on her and she knew it, but she took little pleasure in the evening. The conversation at the table seemed silly and shallow. The food was predictably wonderful—oysters, lobster bisque, Caprese salad—seven courses in all, each one perfectly prepared and elegantly served, and each with its own wine—but she had no heart for it. That “amateur time”
crack had stuck with her. Until the moment he’d said, “You’re off the case,” she’d had a purpose, and she was doing something useful and engaging. Now it all seemed simply sordid, and she was a fifth wheel on the wagon, more of a hindrance than a help to Ted, just one more thing for him to worry about. Pointless. She should never have come in the first place.

She slogged through the meal, eating little, drinking more wine than she meant to, and hardly speaking to her table companions, and she left when the espressos were poured, which was as early as she could without calling attention to herself. Forty minutes later she was in bed with the TV turned to an old
Magnum, P.I.

Three days to go. It seemed like a lifetime.

Tomorrow morning, Corfu.

W
hat a long, strange road it had been. Or maybe not so strange. Maybe it was the family genes reasserting themselves. She’d killed two people now, one by proxy, you might say (thank you, Uncle Frankie), the other by her own hand. People said it got easier after the first time, and maybe they were right. Donny had been the second, and even though he was the one she’d done herself, it was true; it
had
been easier for her. Of course, when it came to eminently killable people, Donny was in a class by himself, so maybe that was the reason.

But that was behind her now, as were the miseries and humiliations of the last decade. Out the stateroom’s window she could see the freighter-like ferry already loading cars for its nine a.m. trip to Albania. Less than an hour from now, she would be aboard, on her way, and she would never look back. A new life. A new, rich life.

There was one more person she wouldn’t mind killing—who badly needed killing—before she left, but it was too late for that now. She had only a little time left and she needed to concentrate on the task at hand. She had already unscrewed the credenza from the wall and pulled it far enough away to give herself some elbow room. Now she was using a screwdriver to pry off the waist-level wainscoting on the maple paneling behind it, but it was harder than she’d expected. She was nervous, and she was making a mess of it, poking holes in the wall and chipping and scarring the paneling, not that it mattered. But she couldn’t get the blade of the screwdriver deeply enough between wainscoting and wall to give her the leverage she needed to get it off. And the heel of her hand hurt from trying to use it to drive the thing in. Why hadn’t she thought to get a hammer? A pry bar? She turned back to the credenza, looking for anything that might be serviceable, grabbed a heavy, silver-backed man’s hairbrush and whacked away, putting dents in the hundred-year-old silver, but beginning to make progress with the wainscoting.

At one point she thought she heard someone approaching the door, and it was as if a lump of freezing mud filled her throat. Her breath stopped; her heart jumped. But whoever it was, if there really was anybody, kept moving down the corridor. She breathed again, a little dizzy now and trembling, angry with herself for being so panicky. Surprised too; she wouldn’t have expected that in herself. One more slow, calming breath and back to the job, working more quietly and deliberately, although her fingers, so steady a minute ago, were shaking now. She had to get the screwdriver inserted in two places a couple of feet apart to successfully break the section of wainscoting free, but she finally managed it, and there it was: the opening, the “safe” she’d known was there but had never actually seen before. The all-knowing Donny had told her about it, a secret oblong recess, three feet wide and a couple of feet deep, built into the wall behind the wainscoting but not shown on any plan.

It was narrower and deeper than she’d expected, not so much a box as a slot, and she had to get down on her knees to see inside.

There
was
something there all right, rolled up in butcher paper deep inside. She reached eagerly for it. From the first day of the cruise, she’d known he had something cooking—she could read the son of a bitch like a book—something that he didn’t want her or anybody else to know about. And with Panos, that had to mean money, in one form or another. At first she’d assumed it was just the paperwork for one of his fishy deals, but then, from a stranger-than-usual shiftiness in his manner, she’d begun to think it was something more tangible than that, and where would he have it if not in his (supposedly) secret safe? It had been sweet, innocent Alix London who had unknowingly told her what it was before they’d even left Mykonos, but it had taken until last night for what she’d said to hit home, and this was her first—and last—chance to see if she was right.

She tore at the paper wrapping, increasingly sure of what she would find. When it lay in shreds on the carpet, she peeled back a corner of the rolled painting that had been inside. She saw a grassy hummock on which a picnic had been spread on a white cloth. There was a wicker basket with a bottle of red wine sticking out of it, half a loaf of bread, some unidentifiable meats, the lower part of a seated woman, her full, robin’s-egg-blue skirt spread over her legs and feet, and beside her, on the grass, a matching, folded parasol…