A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) (25 page)

And for the second time in two minutes he caught his heel on the very same basalt boulder, was once again upended, and again wound up wedged into the corner, limbs thrashing, like a beetle on its back.

“Stay still, damn you!” Alix commanded.

Moody kept thrashing and managed to get himself turned over but didn’t quite dare to stand up.

“I’m warning you,” Alix said, “don’t…get…up.”

But Moody, never taking his eyes off her, warily gathered his legs under him into a crouch.

“Don’t push me,” she said, tight-lipped. “I mean it. Get down.” When he didn’t move, she slowly, purposefully leveled the pistol at his forehead the way her instructor had taught: arms extended but elbows not locked, left hand cradling the heel of the right He didn’t sit back down, but he didn’t get up either, and for long seconds they just stared at each other. He was working up his nerve, she could see that. Her own adrenaline rush had peaked. It was starting to drain out of her now, and her bravado with it.
What now?
she thought. Was he really going to get up? And then what? Could she really shoot another human being—even a murderer—if it came down to it?
Yes
, she told herself for the second time. She’d try not to kill him—she wanted him around for interrogation by the police and the FBI; there was a lot to be explained—but she’d sure as hell put a bullet in his thigh, or arm, or whatever it took. Yes, but what if one bullet didn’t put him down? What if…? No. No
what ifs
. She would do it, all right; whatever she had to do.

Moody thought otherwise. Tentatively, but steadily, he started to straighten up.

“Sit…down,” Alix said with quiet force. Her arms had lowered a little from fatigue, and now she lifted them again, carefully aiming at his right shoulder and holding her hands rock-steady. She took one step closer. Her finger began curl around the trigger.

And to her immense relief Moody caved in, throwing up his hands and dropping to the ground. “All right, I’m sitting down! See, I’m down!” He was staring up at her with undisguised dread.

No, not exactly
at
her…

She spun on her heel, and there, to her astonishment, was Ted, ten feet away, slowly, calmly advancing, with his own gun unholstered and in his hand, but pointing at the ground. “That’s good, that’s fine,” he said soothingly to Moody. “Alix, you stay right where you are too. Lower the gun, though.”

She did, with a surge of relief. “Am I glad to see you,” she breathed when he got to her side. It took willpower to resist the urge to lean gratefully into him for support—her knees had suddenly turned to Jell-O. “I can really use a little help here.”

Ted took the gun from her—her fingers had locked on it; he had to pry them up—and looked from the cowering Moody to Alix and back again to Moody.

“I tell you, buddy,” he said with the ghost of a smile, “looks to me like you’re the one who could use the help.”

By noon the next day, the rest of the pieces had dropped into place despite Moody’s refusal, on the advice of his lawyers, to answer any questions. Some pieces fit more securely than others, but the overall picture was now clear. The forgery scam had had only two major players, Liz and Moody. Liz found the foreign buyers and did the selling, and Moody saw to it that the faked paintings found their way into the museum’s exhibition catalogs, where potential buyers could see for themselves their “authenticity” and “provenance.” Brandon Teal—the late Brandon Teal—had forged the paintings, all right, and then one or two other people—hired help, essentially—had been involved in the technical work of faking the catalog pages. Of course, only the catalogs of defunct galleries like the Xanadu were used—real galleries, but long out of business and thus impossible for the potential buyer to contact.

This had all been pretty definitively established when Mendoza got a warrant and sent two of his people to the museum archives, with Ted in attendance. In the catalog of one long-vanished old gallery or another, they had found every single one of the forgeries that Ted had been investigating. In addition, a close examination of Ted’s digital copies of the forgeries revealed that Teal’s “just-in-case alibi,” the little human figure, was there every time, sometimes hard to spot, but definitely there.

Other questions had been answered with the help of a bit of surmise on Ted’s and Mendoza’s parts and a little less certainty. Why had Teal been trying to steal his own painting? Because (they believed) the arrangement all along was that the fakes would all be sold far away—outside the country—and when Teal learned that C
liffs at Ghost Ranch
was going to someone from Seattle, someone who’d hired an art consultant to boot, he got cold feet. He went to Liz’s office to pull out, found her dead, and took advantage of it to grab the picture. And would have succeeded, too, if Chris and Liz hadn’t come along.

As to why Teal had then been murdered, the likely answer had emerged from a check of his telephone records. After four months with not a single call placed to Clyde Moody, Teal had telephoned him Saturday morning, twelve hours after Alix and Chris had collided with him outside Liz’s office. So much was solidly established. More surmise filled in the rest. Mendoza’s and Ted’s hypothesis was that, given his rather memorable appearance—six-four, red-headed, red-bearded—Teal would have known it was only a question of time until the police zeroed in on him as the would-be thief of the painting. Terrified at the idea that he would surely be the prime suspect in Liz’s murder (Teal was a famously overwrought man; he turned out to have a medical history of somatization disorder—what used to be called “hysteria”), he had called Moody in a panic: What should he do? Where could he go? Moody would have realized that Teal was a loose cannon who had to be dealt with, and soon. A few hours later, he was dead, the victim of a bathroom “fall.”

Clyde Moody, it seemed, was quite sensitive to loose cannons, and the theory was that Liz’s being one had been what had gotten her killed as well. This, in fact, had been Alix’s contribution, quickly seized upon by Mendoza. During her interviews with him after Moody’s arrest, she had told Mendoza about his very evident discomfort at the Blue Coyote when Liz, well into her cups, had been going on and on about “Cul-lyde” and making coyly suggestive allusions to the “amazing things” he could come up with from his “musty old archives.”

“And a few hours later,
she
was dead,” Mendoza had responded, nodding.

“And obviously, I was a loose cannon too,” Alix had said, “but how did he know that? Sure, I went to the archives to look at those Xanadu catalogs, but that’s exactly what they were there for—to look at. What made him think I was trouble?”

It wasn’t until the next day, when Ted was driving her to the airport for her commuter flight to Albuquerque, from which she would fly home, that she got the answer to that. The Santa Fe police had been reviewing the museum archives’ recent visitors’ log and had been contacting the people who had spent time with Moody over the last few days. One of them was a woman named Clara Simons from the College of Santa Fe, a questioned-documents expert, and when Moody had asked what her interest in the Xanadu catalogs was, she had no reason not to tell him the truth: that she was following up Alix’s visit because Alix had questions about their authenticity. And once again, Moody had wasted no time. The very next day there had been the unsuccessful road chase, and the day after that his frantic, desperate attempt at murder in Kit Carson Memorial Park.

Alix expressed concern that, other than the testimony that she herself could provide about Moody’s trying to kill her in the cemetery, everything else that pointed specifically to him was based on inference and extrapolation. Would that hold up in front of a jury in a murder trial? But Ted had set her mind at ease on that as well. Eddie Sierra, the driver of the “Bimbi” pickup, had beat the odds and come out of his coma the previous night. The district attorney had already made him an offer that he couldn’t refuse, and Sierra had identified Clyde Moody as the man he knew as “Harry,” and Harry as the man who paid him to run Chris and Alix off the road…and to do the same thing (successfully) to Henry Merriam a few months back. So that would be two more counts against Moody: one of attempted premeditated murder, and a second of murder-one. And then, of course, Mendoza had just gotten started on his investigation. There was little doubt that, by the time it was completed, Moody would go away for a long, long time.

When they got to the airport parking lot, Ted switched off the ignition and turned to face her. “Well, it’s certainly been…interesting knowing you, Alix. Not too many dull moments.”

“Same here,” she said. “Quite stimulating. It’s the very first time I’ve been shot, you know.” On its own, her hand crept to her thigh, where, under a gauze pad, the bullet graze throbbed away. She’d had it dressed at the Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, where they’d told her it wasn’t much to worry about; it was more singe than flesh wound, and it was probably going to sting for a few days. And they’d certainly been right about that.

“And the last, I hope,” Ted said. “Let me ask you something. Did you enjoy it? Not getting shot, of course, but working on the case, the, the—”

“The thrill of the chase? Yes, I suppose I did.” It was something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “Enjoy” wasn’t quite the right word, not with people getting killed all over the place, but close enough.

“Good, I was hoping you’d say that.”

She looked quizzically at him. “Why?”

“Well, you know, the art squad occasionally needs to bring on a consultant, someone from the outside, and so we maintain a small pool of qualified experts we turn to when necessary.” He smiled at her. “I was wondering whether you’d be interested in being part of that pool.”

“Consult for the FBI?” she said, as astonished as she’d ever been in her life.

“Yes. Generally, it involves just a few days’ work at a time. Oh, and you’d be paid for your work this time around—” his eyes twinkled, “—whether you want our stupid money or not.”

“Well, I…I…sure, why not? I’d love to!” She couldn’t help laughing at the sheer unexpectedness of it. “So what do I do now? Do I have to fill out some kind of form?”

“Of course you have to fill out some kind of form. This is the United States government you’re dealing with. They’ll also want to talk to you. Face to face. Can you come out to DC for a day or so in the next couple of weeks?”

She nodded distractedly, trying to get her mind around this extraordinary development.
Wait till Geoff hears about this!

“Good. Here’s my card. Give me a call when you’re ready, and I’ll set it up.”

“Thanks. And thanks for the ride.” She got out of the car, still dazed.
Who could possibly have predicted…

“Oh, Alix?” Ted said just before she closed the door. “Maybe we could do dinner when you come?”

She hesitated. “Well…”

He smiled. “I’m not married, by the way. Not that you were wondering, of course, but I just thought I’d mention it. So what do you say? Could we? Do dinner?”

“Maybe we could,” she said and watched him drive away.

All in all, a highly satisfying lift to the airport.

A
Seattle Weekly
reviewer had described Sangiovese, Chris’s wine bar, as
moltissimo rustico
, and so it turned out to be. Sitting in it was like being in a Tuscan farmhouse: rough-plastered, mustard-colored walls; flat, beamed ceilings; floors of unglazed dull pink tiles; and simple, sturdy chairs, stools, and tables of dark wood. The lighting came from upward-directed wall sconces that brought out the texture of the plaster. Sangiovese was between art shows, so the only decorations on the walls were a few hand-painted plates.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning, so except for an employee fussing about behind the bar, arranging bottles and glassware, Chris and Alix, at a table in a rear corner, had the place to themselves. Alix, having arrived back in Seattle the previous evening, had just finished bringing Chris up to date.

“Amazing,” Chris said wonderingly, “just amazing. But one thing I still don’t understand. If part of their scheme was to sell only to foreign buyers, why was she selling the picture to me? Why the exception?”

“I’ve been thinking about that too, Chris. Look, Liz had screwed up big-time. She’d blown all that money from Sytex and was in serious financial trouble, right? On the other hand, you got out at the same time, but you made some good choices, conservative investments, and you’re doing fine now—better than fine. Would I be wrong in thinking she was the kind of person who’d find that hard to stomach, who’d want to get back at you, take you down a peg, even in her own mind?”

“Oh, I can’t believe—”

“Especially considering her…well, her pretty befuddled state these days, what with the drinking and all.”

Chris shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes, maybe so,” she admitted. “And then, of course, I’d just rejected her current boyfriend’s pictures, Willy Moe Whatever.”

“Cody Mack.”

“Right, Cody Mack Whatever. Who knows, maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” A sigh. “Amazing,” she said again. “Well, that’s all water under the bridge. Now I have a very important question to ask you.” She pulled her chair closer and peered anxiously into Alix’s eyes, their faces on a level and only a foot apart. “So how do I look? Tell me the truth.”

“Chris, the accident was only three days ago. You can’t expect—”

Chris emitted a theatrical groan. “Oh God, you don’t have to say it. I look awful, don’t I! What do I do? Craig is coming in tomorrow. Maybe I should put him off, come up with some kind of excuse? You know, gangrene or something?”

“Don’t be silly. He saw you a few hours after it happened, and it didn’t scare him off then, did it? You look much better now. Way better.”

Chris was doubtful. “Do I really?”

“Of course you do. Your nose isn’t as swollen, and your hair looks great—”

“But I still look like a raccoon.”

“Chris, you do
not
look like a raccoon! Trust me, I wouldn’t lie.”

A tiny flicker of hope. “I don’t?”

“No, nothing at all like a raccoon.” And then she couldn’t stop herself. “Raccoons have black rings around their eyes. Yours have turned green.”

Chris scowled at her for a second, and then they both dissolved in laughter.

“They’re much more attractive now,” Alix managed to get out, and they laughed some more.

“Oh, go away,” Chris said, wiping her eyes, still laughing. “I have work to do.”

Alix stood up. “See you later then. Six o’clock at the Salmon Cooker?”

“Right. And we can celebrate my new acquisition. You are looking at the proud new owner of
Cliffs at Ghost Ranch
.”

Alix flopped back down, astonished. “You
bought
it after all?”

Chris smiled her satisfaction. “Today was the last day to pull out. I called Liz’s executor, told him that’s just what I was doing, that it wasn’t genuine, and that I wouldn’t touch it, certainly not for three million bucks. We talked about it for a while, and he finally said, ‘Well, what
would
you touch it for?’ And I said, ‘How about three thousand?’ And he said, ‘Done!’” She chuckled. “Well, how could anyone resist a 99.99 percent price reduction, especially for something they liked? So now it’s all mine once the police release it. A great souvenir.”

“Of your near-death experience in the wilds of New Mexico?”

“Of an amazing adventure,” she said, her smile widening, “and the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Instead of going back to her condo, Alix walked down to First Avenue and got the Number 24 bus to East Marginal Way South, in the heart of Seattle’s gritty industrial district, a few miles south of downtown. From there, consulting a Google map she’d printed up, she walked two blocks east, past corrugated metal sheds and old brick warehouses, until she found 51 South Hinds Street, a dingy, brown-brick building much like its neighbors. There was a single street entrance, a pockmarked, painted steel door that might once have been yellow, with “Venezia Trading Company” barely visible in fading letters that might once have been blue.

The door opened onto a short corridor with unpainted concrete walls and floor. Other than a grubby gray runner underfoot, two naked lightbulbs in the ceiling, and a few curling, fly-specked certificates from the building inspection department Scotch-taped to a wall, it was without adornment. The raw concrete emitted a chill, depressing smell that sent a shiver down her back and made her reconsider: after all, it wasn’t too late to change her mind and walk away. She stood there undecided for a few seconds, then stiffened her back and pressed on.

At the end of the corridor were two wooden doors with frosted-glass panels that had fresh press-on signs: one said
Showroom,
the other
Offices
. She chose the latter and walked into a bullpen-type area with half a dozen small, glass-partitioned cubicles, and another more spacious one at the back for the boss. The smaller ones were all empty—no surprise, given that it was lunchtime—but lunchtime or no, the boss was in, working with great absorption at his littered wooden desk.

Her heart gave a lurch. He was so
old
! He was seventy now, she’d known that, of course, but his telephone voice, so much like that of the jolly, vigorous Geoff of her childhood, had misled her. The years in prison, she saw now, and the humiliation that went with them, had taken their toll. The plump, pillowy shoulders against which she’d once slept so comfortably on those long rides were bowed, his whole body shrunken and somehow collapsed in on itself. No one would call him “cuddly” now. Nor “ruddy” either. He was pale and haggard; a trim white beard (a
white
beard—on Geoff!) did little to hide the hollows and deep creases in his cheeks. As a middle-aged man in his curatorial years, he’d often been called on to hook a fake white beard over his ears and play Santa Claus at office Christmas parties. Now he had a real white beard, but no one would be likely to ask him to play Santa.

She got within a few feet of the doorless cubicle without attracting his attention.

“Hello, Geoff,” she said softly.

He started. She thought she heard a faint intake of breath. He didn’t look up, though, not for three or four long seconds, during which she wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

At last he put down his fountain pen (he had never approved of ballpoints; at least that hadn’t changed) and raised his head.

“Why, hello, my dear,” he said, and the familiar, cheery voice did a lot to reassure her. The Geoff she remembered was still in there, alive and kicking. He might not look like Santa Claus anymore, but he still sounded like him—a British version, at any rate.

She came closer and stood in the doorway. “I, uh, happened to be in the neighborhood—”

At that unlikely declaration, an amused sparkle lit his eyes and suddenly there was a sort of shift in her vision; it was if she were looking at the Geoff of old.

“—and I thought maybe we could get some lunch somewhere.”

He looked steadily at her. His only sign of emotion was the briefest of quivers in his upper lip, quickly brought under control.

“I believe,” he said, “that I might manage to find the time.”

The End