A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (5 page)

Alix laughed. He was so nice when he eased up. “No, thank you, the Greek islands will do. But what am I supposed to be doing? Who am I supposed to be?”

“You’re you, Alix London. This isn’t undercover work. And all you have to do is keep your eyes open and give a few lectures about art.”

“Lectures? I’ve never given a lecture in my life.”

“Not
lecture
lectures, just, you know, schmooze with the guests, talk about art, talk about painters. That, I know you can do. Oh, and be charming, which certainly won’t be a problem for you either.”

A compliment? And not about her abilities but about
her?
She waited with interest for him to continue.

Nope, he was back to business on the next sentence. “Alix, have you ever heard of a man named Panos Papadakis?”

“I think so. I know he’s rich, anyway. And Greek, obviously.”

“And a crook, though not so obviously. We think he gets most of his income from a sort of Ponzi scheme he runs, where he invests his clients’ money and supposedly shares these huge profits with them.”

“The operative word being
supposedly
?”

“Exactly. We’ve been on his trail for months, but this opening on his cruise is the first chance we’ve gotten to insert someone right into his operation. And you’re the perfect candidate.”

There was something about the sound of being “inserted” into an “operation” that she didn’t like. For the first time she had a few qualms about what she was getting herself into. “I see,” she said, “but what am I supposed to be
doing
?”

“Well, I told you. Give an occasional presentation—”

“No, I mean what am I supposed to be doing for the FBI? What does ‘keep my eyes open’ mean? Open for what?”

“Anything, anything at all that relates to his business or that makes you wonder if something not quite kosher is going on.”

“But about what?” She was getting more confused, not less. “What
is
his business?”

“Mainly, he’s an international financier—”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Oh, a lot of things in his case—money manager, lender, venture capital bundler, investment adviser, and so on—but the main thing is he sells these fractional interests in paintings, and that’s where the art squad’s interest comes in.”

“Mm…”

“Then when the paintings sell later for more money, everybody who holds a share gets a proportionate share of the profit. That’s the idea, but we think our friend Panos is scamming the hell out of them. And
that’s
what we’d like you to be especially alert for—anything that might relate to the fractional investments.”

“Oh.”

Pause. “Alix, you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Not really.”
Fractional shares of paintings? What did that even mean? How could you own a quarter or a twelfth of a painting?

“Well, look, don’t worry about it; Jamie will fill you in on the grisly details when you stop by DC on the way. In the meantime, I’m having her send you a list of the works that will be in the auction so you can bone up on them and look super-smart. You should get it tomorrow morning.”

“Wait a minute now, Ted, you’ve totally lost me. What auction?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention that? See, this is something that’s not really related to the Ponzi thing. He wants to auction off some of his own private collection, and the way he’s doing it is to hold it on a glitzy cruise aboard this sensational yacht he owns. During the cruise, he’ll have the paintings
on display for the passengers to get a feel for how it would be to live with them. This will be super-exclusive, an invitation-only group of his own highest-rolling clients, probably only half-a-dozen people. Then they’ll hold the auction on the final night.”

“I don’t understand. Why would he want to limit it to six people? Wouldn’t he be likely to get more for them if it was a regular wide-open auction?”

“Well, it will be. Catalogs will go out, the auction itself will be streamed online to a larger group, and people will be able to call in bids via iPhone, or iPad, or anything else that connects. But only the cruise passengers will have the privilege of being there on the scene.”

“Oh, I see. And you think this auction is part of the scam? He’s auctioning off shares of—”

“No, as far as we know, the auction itself is on the level. They’re his paintings, and he’s got the right to sell them. Of course, with our boy Panos, you never know, but it’s being run by a New York art dealer, someone that—as far as we know—we have no reason to distrust, Edward Reed. No, you’re there to just generally observe, to—”

“Keep my eyes open. And ears too, presumably?”

“That would be good.”

“Ted, what do you suggest I tell people about this? Where I’m going to be that week? What I’m doing?”

“Tell ’em the truth: You’re lecturing on a private Mediterranean cruise. Papadakis is paying your airfare back and forth, by the way, and you’ll have the same privileges as any other guest while you’re on the yacht. That’s the deal from his side. And the Bureau will pay the regular fee you’ve agreed on with them, and cover any expenses Papadakis doesn’t. That sound all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Fine.” There was a moment’s pause. “Alix, we need to get something straight here. If any useful information comes out of this, great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too; don’t worry about it, all right? There’s no need
to do anything beyond being your usual observant self. We’re not asking you to
investigate
. Since all the invitees are in this investment club of his, I expect there’ll be some talk about it, and all we’re asking you to do is to be alert to the possibility. No horning in on other people’s conversations, no subtle interrogations of fellow guests—or of Papadakis—no hiding behind potted palms to listen in on—”

“I don’t think yachts have potted palms.”

“This one does. I’m serious, so listen to me. Whatever comes your way that might relate to Papadakis’s dealings, yes, we want to know about it, but we don’t want you asking questions, probing, taking risks, understand? You’re not trained for it, and if anything happened to you, Alix…”

Yes?

“… well, just think of the paperwork.”

Sigh
. “I’m touched by your concern, Special Agent Ellesworth. I gather, then, that I’ll be reporting to you?”

“Technically, yes. I’m the lead investigator on this, but I’m expecting to be on another assignment most of that week. So it’s Jamie you’ll be contacting, if there’s anything you need to contact us about during the cruise itself.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Do you have a smartphone?”

“I do, yes, very high-tech.” Not the kind of thing she would have bought on her own, it had been a thank-you gift from a Samsung executive for helping her “weed” an extensive but mixed-bag art collection she’d inherited from her mother.

“Good enough. You know how to lock it so no one else can get in?”

“Well, of course I do. God, Ted, what do you take me for?”
Note to self: how to lock phone.

“Well, good. Keep it locked. You can just call her on that, but unless it’s an emergency, don’t call her from the ship, only when you’re ashore. We don’t know what kind of bugs or surveillance system Papadakis might have, but from what we do know, he’s a little on the paranoid side—he once had
some art pieces, Greek vases or something, stolen from the yacht, so there might be hidden mikes and cameras. Or you can e-mail her if you have any questions, or anything to report.
Do
you have any questions?”

“I guess not, for now.”

“Good. If any come up, give her a call. She really knows more about it all than I do. And Alix?”

“Ted?”

“Glad to have you aboard.” The phone clicked and went silent.

Glad to have you aboard… that was it? Not even a renewal of the aborted dinner offer when she’d gone to Washington the last time. Alix made a face at the telephone. This was starting to get old. She’d given more time than she should have to considering this guy as a potential romantic possibility. It was obviously headed nowhere as far as he was concerned. Maybe it was time to just cross him off the list. Not that there were any other possibilities in sight at the moment. She’d dipped her toe into the singles scene since coming to Seattle; not the usual bar scene, which repelled her, but the receptions put on by the symphony, or the Friday evening cocktail hours at the art museum that targeted twenty-and thirty-somethings. These had resulted in a few “dates.” Her conclusion after a couple of months of trying: There sure were a lot of jerks in Seattle.

She had fallen into a bad mood as she re-started the engine. The cold and wet had seeped into the car and gotten through her sweater. And now
she
was the one who wasn’t going to be on time to pick up her father. After all the times she’d chewed him out for being late, she knew she was going to get an earful about it.

Damn. For a woman who’d just accepted an invitation to go sailing in luxury on the sunny Mediterranean in a couple of months (and get paid for it), she was sure feeling grumpy.

S
he was wrong about her father, as she so often was. When she pulled into the parking lot of his seedy, drafty old warehouse-cum-living quarters—a dingy, brown-brick building with traffic-grimed windows, much like its industrial-district neighbors—he was pacing in slow circles, head down, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the rain and the chill, his head encased in the ridiculous Russian fur hat (complete with earflaps) that he affected in the winter. In the sulfurous glare of a sodium street lamp, she could see that his face was folded into a frown. But the moment he looked up and recognized her car the frown vanished, to be replaced by a smile so filled with pleasure at seeing her that it could have lit up the parking lot on its own. One leather-gloved hand came from his pocket to throw her a kiss and a wave. When she drove up to him he pulled open the passenger door and squeezed in.

“So pleased to see you, my dear,” he said in that plummy, jolly English accent that always made her smile, especially if she hadn’t heard it for a few days. “Thank you for coming all the way down here to collect your poor old father.” His hat and the black woolen overcoat he wore despite the wet weather were soaked. Water streamed down his cheeks from the hat. But not a word about her being twenty minutes late while he’d waited on the cracked and weedy asphalt of a desolate parking lot, in the murky, sodden misery of a “spring” night in Seattle.

“Sorry, Geoff, I had to take a call,” she said, getting the Volvo rolling again.

He gave her a dismissive wave. “No matter at all.” There were squishing noises as he shifted on the seat. “Oh, dear, I’m certainly giving your
nice new car a soaking, aren’t I?” It was amazing how his voice brought back the cheery, laughing Geoff of her childhood, the doting father who’d taken her on so many visits to art museums and galleries; she’d loved them from the first. He didn’t look the same, though. Back then, with his roly-poly body and twinkly eyes and his neatly trimmed graying beard and his all-around cuddliness, he’d been in demand as a Santa Claus at Christmas parties. Now, at seventy, his beard was more white than gray and no less neat, but no one would mistake him for Santa. “Cuddly” was a lifetime time ago. He was shrunken now, thin and worn. But then, eight years in prison could do that to you, she supposed.

Her heart took a dip. What a long way this horrible place he lived and worked in was from their old environs, the places where she’d grown up. “Home” had been an Upper East Side condo in a beautiful old brownstone just east of Central Park. From there, it was a two-block walk to his place of employment, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he would take her on fabulous private tours, off-limits even to visiting VIPs, through the treasures of the basement workrooms. She’d thrilled at being able to handle two-thousand-year-old Roman sculptures or silver tankards from Paul Revere’s own hand, or Degas bronzes.

And then there was their summer home in Rhode Island, the rambling, comfortable old clapboard house in the exclusive enclave of Watch Hill, where they’d spent their Augusts among the New England elite (of which her mother’s family, the van Hoogerens, were bona fide members). The young Alix loved the privileged life that had been handed to her, but, like all privileged kids, she took what came to her as natural.

Not anymore. Everything had changed. Her mother had died—blessedly, shortly before Geoff had brought their lovely world crashing down around them. The brownstone and the rambling, weathered summer home were long gone. Now he lived right here, in that ratty old two-story warehouse in one of the few areas of Seattle that could qualify as truly unattractive. The ground floor of the building was devoted to the surprisingly thriving business that he had started up less than a year ago, not long
after having been released from prison. “The Venezia Trading Company,” it was called, listing itself on its website as “purveyor of authentic, high-quality reproductions of fine objets d’art, in quantity and at reasonable prices.”