A Touch of Minx (14 page)

"They had a break-in at their Manhattan townhouse about three years ago. Apparently most of their Japanese items are here, and only some cash and jewelry went missing." Blue eyes gazed at her, one eyebrow lifting in question. "What? It wasn't me, if that's what you're implying."

She hadn't broken in to any of the Picaults' houses until yesterday. And she hadn't taken anything, then.

"Just mild curiosity." He took a drink of the beer he'd brought out for himself. "Care to share whether you've come up with anything?"

"Not really." She took a breath. "From what I've been able to find and figure out, it's Toombs. Or the Picaults. Palm Beach must be a vortex of evil, since they're all in town right now so I can't just stroll in and take a look around. But what do I know? I can't even find Stoney."

Rick sat forward. "Beg pardon?"

"His cell phone's turned off, and there's no sign of him at his house. His girlfriend doesn't know where he is, either."

"This isn't typical, I assume?"

She shook her head. "Even when we had to lie low, we still could get hold of each other. If he doesn't call me in the next day or two I'll place an ad in the New York Times to clue him in that I'm looking for him."

"Why would he disappear?"

Even though she knew Rick didn't like Stoney, she could hear the genuine concern in his voice—for her, if not for the missing fence. "Could be anything. Somebody we've riled in the past showed up, or he got a job offer, or—"

"He's retired."

She shrugged. "I thought so, but who knows? And he did warn me to be careful."

He took her fingers again, this time squeezing and not letting go. "He'll show up."

"Right now I'm more annoyed than worried. If he hasn't at least called me by the end of the week, that'll switch around."

"What about Walter's files?"

"I have no idea where he keeps them."

Rick blinked. "You have no idea. You."

"It's a fence thing. He had other guys who'd contract with him or bring him stuff to fence. Just like every once in a while I'd go through another broker. Everybody protects their own sources. Even cops do that."

"It appears that even after a year I'm still learning things about the dark side."

She shot him a smile. "That's me, Darth Sam."

"But you're not worried. Really."

"Not yet. Really." Okay, maybe she was a little worried, but in the big, bad world that she and Stoney inhabited— used to inhabi—vanishing for two or three days was nothing. She'd give him more time before she started turning things over—but then he'd better show up.

Reinaldo appeared at the side of the patio. "Dinner is ready," he announced.

"Thank you." Rick stood and walked around the table to hold her chair for her as she stood, still being Sir Galahad even when they were fighting. "Your primary suspect for the samurai thefts is definitely Toombs, yes?" he murmured, taking her hand as they followed Reinaldo into the house.

"He fits. And he's kind of weird."

"Don't go to his house tomorrow, then."

She took a breath. "I'm going to his house, Rick. If he's guilty I need to know, and soon. If not, I need to know that, too. And if he is innocent I don't want to hear the rumors that you didn't let me go see his collection. We travel in the same circles now, remember?"

His grip tightened. "Aubrey is going with you, yes?"

She nodded. "Aubrey is coming with me." She needed somebody to distract Toombs while she snooped, after all.

"If it's not Gabriel Toombs, what do you do?" Rick pur-sued. He always wanted to know the answer to everything, which made him a good and shrewd businessman, but could really annoy somebody who lived by her wits and instincts like she did.

"I'll look at the Picaults more closely and re-review the Met security disk to see if there's anything I missed the first three times I went over it, even though after ten years it's not good for much more than a laugh at the hair styles. I've got five days, or this case gets closed for the second time." Rick looked at her for a minute. Neither of them said it, but they both knew that this was the second job Viscanti had sent her way. If she couldn't find the armor and swords this time, she probably wouldn't be getting any more work from the Met. Or from any other museum, if they had any sense. And then it would be back to straight security setups. Rick might prefer that for her, but she didn't. Not at all.

Thursday, 10:12 a.m.

"What the devil happened to client-lawyer confidentiality, Tom?" Richard asked, setting his folder on the conference room table.

"Uh oh. You didn't say anything to her, did you?" Tom Donner reached into the small refrigerator under the credenza for a chilled bottle of water.

"Me? I'm not the problem. For God's sake, she remembers everything. So what do you do? You go and tell her that I have a present for her?"

"That was not exactly what I said. And besides, she didn't know what I meant."

Clearly she hadn't, Richard agreed, since when he'd told her that he meant to propose she'd made it into a joke. Not a good sign in itself, but probably better than her screaming and locking herself in a closet or stabbing him or something. "Very well. Don't mention it to her again."

"Okay, okay. Just keep me out of it."

"I am fucking attempting to."

"Fine."

"Fine." He knew what he intended to do, and his only hesitation was that he didn't know what her answer would be. As a businessman he saw that as a problem—one he badly wanted to resolve.

Tom cleared his throat. "What about a prenup?"

"Dammit, Donner, shut—"

"I know you said she doesn't care about your money," the attorney pushed, "but you've got a shitload of it. Two or three shitloads. And U.S. laws are—"

"I haven't even asked her yet. A prenup is not my concern at the moment." He drew a breath. The last thing he needed right now was this kind of distraction with a four-continent meeting about to begin. "Where's Beeling?" he asked. "The conference starts in fifteen minutes. It would be nice if we knew for certain we could log in."

Tom checked his watch. "He'll be here in two minutes. Or I can do it—I had Mike go over it step by step with me last night."

Richard eyed his friend. "Your fifteen-year-old."

"Yeah. Scary, huh? And at the risk of getting yelled at again, Jellicoe seems pretty happy. Why push things at all?"

He'd thought about that, about just letting things stay as they were until before they'd realized it, he and Samantha had grown old together. But there were parts of their cur-rent arrangement that he didn't like—the way he had that fear in the back of his mind that one day she would just leave, that something would either catch up to her or she would decide she'd rind more excitement elsewhere and vanish.

He'd also considered this life from her point of view, or as closely as he could", a marriage to him could offer her a lifetime of safety and security, could let her relax as she'd begun to do over the past months. She'd have a place that was hers.

And then there was the third reason. He wanted children. Because of the old British inheritance laws, and because of the fact that deep down he was in fact a rather traditional fellow, he wanted to be married to their mother. And he wanted their mother to be Samantha.

His desk phone buzzed, making him jump. He hit the speaker. "Addison."

"Mr. Rick, Jim Beeling is here," Reinaldo said.

"Send him up to the conference room, please. And we could use some coffee."

"Right away."

Resolutely he put his dilemma about Samantha out of his head. This conference, if it went well, would set him up in partnerships with three burgeoning not-for-profit organizations working toward providing tools, materials, and education over four continents. It would cost him millions, but in the long run could work toward improving world economy—which could make him millions more. And it felt good, which was a nice change from some of his other, more profitable, ventures.

As he took a seat at the conference table, he checked his own watch. Samantha was at the Jellicoe Security office, where she'd be for the next hour or so. After that, she and Aubrey would be visiting Gabriel Toombs, and he would still be in this seat.

"Rick?"

"What?"

Tom frowned at him. "I asked whether you want me to see if Katie'll do the lunch thing with Jellicoe again."

"That might be a good idea." He fiddled with the pad of paper in front of him. "Am I mistaken, or are you offering to help me resolve something regarding Samantha?"

The attorney shifted. "You made it pretty clear that I could put up or shut up where you and she are concerned."

"So I did." Even with that in mind, Tom's offer seemed out of character. "You're 'putting up,' then."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Did Katie say anything to you about how Tuesday went? Or did she say whether she had anything she'd be willing to tell me about?"

Tom's face actually reddened. "All she said is that she likes Sam, and that she had the impression that Sam likes you. A lot. I don't know whether she'd tell you more than that or not. Those two are kind of cagey."

Their liking each other wasn't the problem. There were other issues that were a great deal more complicated and troubling that needed resolution. The bitch of all this was that if he took a step to change the dynamic of his and Samantha's relationship, he was forcing her to take a step as well, and he didn't know whether it would be toward him or away. And that worried him more than setting up a twenty-million-dollar charity program. It worried him more than anything else he could imagine.

"I just want to be sure you know what you could be getting into." Samantha hopped onto the reception desk beside the office phone.

"I've been to Wild Bill's estate before," Aubrey drawled from his usual chair at the desk. "Never for a private tour, but for one or two seasonal parties."

'Tor charity?"

"Nearly all of them are, but I don't recall specifically. Is that a clue?"

She smiled at his enthusiastic tone, even though it worried her a little. This wasn't like having an amateur park down the street and call her if a car drove up, or her following a bunch of teenagers to a burger stand; this would mean bringing a novice into the house of somebody she knew had acquired at least one antique illegally, and who likely had more. And they were going specifically to look for things Toombs might not want them to see. "I'm more curious about his character," she returned. "Everything means something."

"This is so exciting. I brought gloves."

"Leave them here. That would be just a little suspicious, don't you think?"

"What about fingerprints?"

"He's inviting us in. We're supposed to leave fingerprints."

Aubrey blew out his breath. "I obviously have a great deal to learn about this clandestine stolen-item recovery business."

Samantha folded her legs Indian style. "You have another business, Aubrey. And the unattended ladies of Palm Beach won't ask for your escort if they don't trust you. So are you sure you want to get involved with this? At the least, somebody's gonna get mad. At the worst, we're talking handcuffs and bad booking photos and press coverage." There were even worse things than that, but she was trying to be realistic, not scare him to death.

He touched her knee with one finger, then backed off again. "I've been a walker for twelve years now. Between January and March I doubt I eat a single meal alone. Some of the ladies I escort are very nice, very kind, and very smart. But I could sit down at this moment and write out every conversation I'm likely to have over the entirety of next season. There are never any surprises, and every event might as well be scripted. I wouldn't have started working for you if I didn't want something different. And this is definitely different."

"Different is one thing. Dangerous is another. Just because you want one doesn't mean you have to accept the other. I'm giving you a chance to back out, Aubrey, with no blame on anybody." Yes, she'd promised Rick she'd take Aubrey with her, but if the walker decided he didn't want to put his safety on the line, she'd work solo. It would be far from the first time for that.

"I am a Southern gentleman, Miss Samantha. As such, I would never abandon a lady about to step into danger. Even potential, hypothetical danger." He flashed his perfect teeth in a grin. "And as we've discussed previously, though some of my clients are very pleasant, others—and their friends—never let me forget that I provide a service, like a caterer, and that that is the only reason I'm allowed to attend events."

She looked at him for a minute. Really looked at him. Age-wise she would put him in his late fifties, tanned with blond hair just going to silver, and in great physical condi-tion. From their frequent conversations she knew he had a better formal education than she did, and that he was fairly well-traveled and had a wide range of sophisticated interests. What he'd done previous to twelve years ago, she had no clue.

He played up being gay, though he'd never come right out and said what his sexual preference might be. Rick claimed he was faking his orientation to avoid tension with the husbands of some of the wives he escorted. She wasn't so sure, though at the moment all of his usual affectations were missing.

"Wow," she said finally. "So you really don't have a problem with taking some of these guys down a few notches."

"No, I really don't."

"You've socialized with Toombs."

Gray eyes met hers steadily. "I really don't have a problem with this," he repeated.

She checked the time on the reception phone. "Okay, then. Let's go."

Aubrey switched the phones to the away feature, locked up the office, and followed her down to the parking garage to collect the Bentley. Reluctantly she let him drive again; chances were that Toombs would watch them pull into the drive, and her respectful, semi-submissive female schtick had gotten her this far.

She'd put on tan slacks with a short-sleeved pink knit top, a pale green shirt open over it to modestly cover her arms, and flat tan sandals. It had all been chosen as carefully as Rick chose his suits and ties, though her outfit had to serve two purposes. She had to look fresh and demure, and she had to be able to move quickly and silently with a second's notice. In her pants pockets she carried two paper clips and a rubber band, with a strip of duct tape wound around the inside bottom of her left pant leg. The dark side of MacGyver, as Stoney said.

Unlike Rick's Solano Dorado, which lay right on Lake Worth in the very most exclusive part of Palm Beach, Gabriel Toombs's house didn't have a name or an ocean view, though it was right on the edge of a golf course. It was still nice by just about anybody's standards, but Samantha approached it as she did any job, looking for faults, blind spots, windows obscured by vegetation—anything that could be used to her advantage. Maybe it was a cynical way to look at things, but so far it had kept her alive.

As Aubrey put the car in park at the top of the half-circular drive, Samantha took a breath. Adrenaline flowed into her muscles, heightening her awareness of her surroundings and goosing her heartbeat. Be cool, Sam, she reminded herself. This was a visit to see some artifacts in which she had an interest, and she had to be as nonaggressive as possible. After all, she'd once stolen something for this guy, and even though he very probably didn't have the slightest idea that it was her, there was no way in hell she wanted to come across as a cat burglar—type personality.

She'd discovered that people who stole things, or who commissioned for items to be stolen, rarely did so only once. Addiction or a loosening of a certain morality or whatever it was, if they got away with it that first time, they did it again. Toombs had acquired one item that didn't belong to him. To her that made it logical that he would have more. And he did love his antique Japanese shit.

"Ready, my dear?" Aubrey asked, offering his arm as he came around to the passenger side of the Bentley. "Yep. Just play it cool, and follow my lead."

"Ten-four."

Samantha stifled a quick grin as they climbed the trio of shallow steps up to the front door. At least Aubrey wasn't complaining about being roped into something he didn't want to do.

The door opened as they reached it. "Good afternoon," Gabriel Toombs said, bowing from the hips.

"Good afternoon," she returned. "And thank you again for inviting me. I hope you don't mind that I brought Aubrey with me; he knew the way and offered to drive."

"I thought he might join you," Toombs returned, stepping back so they could follow him inside. "Aubrey, as he likes to say, is a gentleman. And a gentleman wouldn't send a lady unescorted into a man's home."

Certainly not in the nineteenth century, anyway, but Samantha refrained from commenting about that. Instead she smiled, inclining her head in as close to a bow as she could manage without looking like she was mocking him. "You are a very gracious host."

"I try to be, but I would be more flattered if you called me gracious at the end of your visit."

She'd be more interested in calling him guilty, but that would have to wait for proof. "I'm anxious to see your collection," she said aloud.

"Then please come with me. Aubrey?"

"Don't mind me, Wild Bill," her receptionist said. "I'm just an interested bystander."

Toombs led them through the foyer toward the large sitting area at the back of the house. "I've tried to keep the entire house thematically pure," he said, stopping before a half-size sculpture of a samurai on horseback, "so that my treasures are noticeable without standing out."