A Touch of Minx (7 page)

"I won't." Probably not, anyway.

Sunday, 8:22 a.m.

When Richard awoke in the morning Sa-mantha was asleep beside him. For several minutes he lay there with his head resting on his crooked arm and watched her sleep, her auburn hair half obscuring her face and one hand curled into her pillow. Had he ever sat and just gazed at Patricia like that? He couldn't recall doing so; more likely he'd been too focused on the day's schedule to think of lazing about anywhere.

If not for Samantha, he would probably be doing the same thing today. She'd brought his world to a grinding halt and then had sent it off in an entirely new direction!

The ride scared the bloody hell out of him, but he was definitely enjoying it. Last night she'd gone out hunting for clues to help a ten-year-old, and with the same zeal that she pursued four million dollars' worth of missing Japanese antiquities. Remarkable.

Silently he climbed out of bed and dressed, then went into his office to check, his e-mail and faxes and to call Hans downstairs and make certain breakfast would be served out by the pool at nine o'clock. If Samantha backed out of their garden discussion, it wasn't going to be because he'd forgotten and made other arrangements.

When he headed down to the pool Reinaldo was setting one of the tables for breakfast, so he took a stroll around the perimeter of the rough slate patio area, taking in the well-manicured native-Florida plants interspersed with boulders in the substantial grounds, all of it set up to leave the pool private from the other areas of the estate.

He'd bought Solano Dorado, nearly ninety years old and one of the Palm Beach estates designed by the famous Addison Mizner, seven years earlier. Since then he'd done some major renovations, changes that Architectural Digest seemed to universally approve, but while he'd had the pool itself resurfaced, he hadn't touched the surrounding landscaping.

Once Samantha had arrived and confessed that she'd never had a garden, he'd given it to her. And nine months later, it still hadn't been touched. She'd brought clothes into the house, her Godzilla movies, and various toiletry items. Other than that, she hadn't seemed to own much of a personal nature. Before their meeting she'd been pretending to be the niece of a deceased homeowner in Pom pano Beach and had been basically squatting on the property until she'd been forced to flee.

She'd moved in with him, though she could probably pack up all of her belongings in ten minutes. She even kept a folded set of clothes under the night stand in case of emergency, and in the closet a backpack with spare cash, skeleton keys, and various other items cat burglars probably found useful when they had to make a run for it.

Richard wanted to see her work on the garden, put her bloody clothes in a drawer, and unpack that backpack. Then he would know that she meant to stick around, and then maybe he could stop worrying that she would be able to vanish into the night where he would never find her.

"Good morning, stud muffin," she drawled from halfway down one of the two flights of stairs that descended into the pool area. Her arms were crammed with books and pads of paper, which he automatically went forward to take from her.

"Good morning," he said, kissing her. "You remembered our date."

"Like I'd want to hear about it if I forgot."

"Diet Coke, Miss Sam?" Reinaldo asked. "And coffee, Mr. Rick?"

"Yes, thank you," he returned, as Samantha gave the housekeeper a thumbs-up. "How was the school?" he asked after Reinaldo left.

"Locked up tight. Easy to get into for most jobbers, even hacks, but a hack wouldn't take Anatomy Man and leave the computers and cables and shit. It had to be a kid."

"How will you figure out which kid?"

"I have a couple of ideas. Don't worry; I'll keep you posted." Samantha took a deep breath. "It's nice this morning," she noted, taking a seat at the table. "Just think, if we were in England we'd be wearing woollies or jumpers or whatever you call them, and instead we get short sleeves and flip-flops."

He put the stack of magazines and papers on the table between them. "Yes, but in a few months we could have a white Christmas in Devon. You won't see that here unless a cargo plane dumps a shipment of cocaine."

Samantha snorted. "You are so cynical. Which is why I' m. giving you one last chance to take back your garden here before I mess it up and offend Jorge and Ignacio and Joe."

Richard hadn't even known those were his gardeners' names. "I'll risk it," he said. "I want to see what you come up with."

"Okay, you asked for it." As Reinaldo reappeared with a rolling tray holding their drinks and two plates of pancakes, she pulled one of the magazines out of the stack and opened it. "I was thinking of something like this, only with big pieces of Mediterranean-style pottery and fake Greek ruins scattered around instead of the fallen tree thing. Then it would coordinate with the style of the house."

For something she'd put off for nine months, she seemed completely at ease with finally discussing it. It could be an act, but at least she'd truly been thinking about it. With a smile he couldn't help, Rick leaned forward to look at the photos. "I like it."

"You're not just saying that?"

"I wouldn't do that."

She gazed at him critically for a moment. "Okay. I suppose not. Look at these sketches I made, then. I'm thinking a lot of green foliage, and mostly reds and yellows for the flowers, with a sprinkling of white to tie in with the Greek pillars."

"Amazing." Finally. Now only half a hundred steps to go, and he'd give himself a fifty-fifty chance of not sending her screaming for the hills when he produced a ring for her finger.

"No, Toombs," Samantha said, exaggerating her pronunciation as she swiveled in the newest of her succession of office chairs. "This would be much easier if you'd let me take a look at the files myself."

"Not for me, it wouldn't be," Stoney returned, the sound of rattling papers in the background. "I'll take another look."

"It was in March of '03," she said, clenching her office phone in her hand. "I can't believe you don't remember."

"What was the combination of Captain Kirk's safe?"

She grimaced. "There wasn't one. That's an urban legend. His safe had buttons that weren't numbered."

"That proves you're a freak, and that you shouldn't be allowed to question any normal person's memory. I'll call you."

"Why are you stalling me?" she asked, frowning.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Jeez, Sam, I can't think why I have concerns about giving you my client information just because people you go up against tend to get arrested or dead."

Samantha frowned at the phone. "You're picking the money guys over me? We're family."

"Yeah, well, maybe family shouldn't screw shit up like you are."

"Sto—"

The phone clicked off. With a sigh Samantha hung the phone up again. Man, he was testy. And mean. The Kirk answer wasn't all that impressive; he should have asked her about the combination to the gold safe in the remake of The Italian Job. She loved that movie.

Her phone buzzed, and she jumped about a foot. "Holy heart attack, Batman." Hitting the intercom button, she leaned forward over the telephone. "What is it, Aubrey?"

"You don't have to be so close to the phone, Miss Samantha," his soft drawl returned. "It makes that pretty voice of yours all fuzzy. And you have a call on line two."

Okay, so she didn't know speakerphone etiquette. "Who is it?" she asked, sitting back again and hoping it wasn't Olivia Donner. She needed to look into a few more things before she relayed any information on that subject.

"That's better. It's Dr. Joseph Viscanti."

Great. "Thanks." Picking up the receiver, she hit the blinking red button. "Joseph. What can I do for you?"

"You received the package I sent you?" the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked in his mild librarian voice.

"Yes, it came Saturday afternoon."

"Good, good." His voice trailed into silence.

"What's up?" she ventured after ten or so seconds.

"Ah. Any leads yet?"

"A couple of ideas, but it's too soon for leads." Especially any she would share. She was way too close to being a black hat herself to start throwing around names of potentially guilty people. As it was, she was going to have to be really sure before she repeated anything to anybody.

"Very good. You'll keep me posted, yes?"

Samantha frowned. "Sure. Is something wrong?"

"Wrong? No, no. It's just that, well, if we can't produce the stolen items by the end of business the Wednesday after next, the exhibition will accept the proposal from the Smithsonian. New York will be bypassed entirely."

"So you're giving me ten days? After ten years?"

"Technically you've already had two days."

"That was the weekend. You might have let me know how close time was to expiring when you first called me."

"I was afraid you'd turn me down if I did." He cleared his throat. "And the museum board—my board—suddenly remembered after ten years that we should have been pushing all along to find the armor and swords, and now it's my fault that we haven't, even though I was working for the Guggenheim back when this happened."

"So it's not just winning the exhibit that you're worried about," she said. It would have been nice if he'd mentioned his job would be on the line before he'd sent her the information, not to mention the damn deadline. Christ. She'd spent most of Saturday looking for Anatomy Man, and yesterday making lists of plants. Okay, she'd eliminated a few potential suspects, but still.

"None of that is your problem, Sam," Viscanti returned. "I just wanted to know if you'd—"

"You just made it my problem, Joseph. That's why you called. Next time, I'd appreciate having all the information up front."

"Sam, are you—"

"I'll keep in touch." She hung up the phone. "Dammit." Pushing to her feet, she headed for the back of the reception area. Rick was trying to widen the number of suspects rather than narrowing it, Stoney couldn't or wouldn't come up with the files she wanted, and now she had a deadline. "Aubrey, you're a man about town," she said, leaning on a credenza.

He spun in his chair to face her. "Indeed I am, honeybee."

"Do you know Gabriel Toombs?"

"Wild Bill?Yes, I do."

Wild Bill? Obviously this was going to take a few minutes. She hopped up to sit on the oak credenza. Last week's furniture had been black Masonite. "Okay, 'Wild Bill'?"

"Toombs. Tombstone. Wild Bill Hickok."

"Is that like the six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon thing? Does he really call himself Wild Bill?"

"He started it, and insisted that the rest of us go along." He took off his telephone earpiece. "Might one ask why you're suddenly making inquiries about Wild Bill Toombs?"

Samantha regarded him for a minute. She generally figured people out pretty fast, and she liked and trusted Aubrey as much as she did anyone. He'd known the upper-crust residents of Palm Beach a lot longer than she had, though, and a lot longer than he'd known her. Still, he seemed almost as cynical about them as she was—maybe because they'd both been in the position of working for them and walking among them as equals.

"Have you ever seen his collection of Japanese artifacts?" she asked.

"He loves to show them off. Rumor has it that he had a custom set of samurai armor and swords made for himself."

Hm. Made, or stolen? "Does he wear it?" she asked aloud.

"At the annual masked ball for the past two years. In private, I don't really know."

Which would put its debut right about when the statute of limitations on the Morimoto armor expired. Would a collector really wear nine-hundred-year-old armor, though? Maybe one who made everyone call him Wild Bill Toombs would. "If I showed you a photo of some armor, could you tell me if it's a match?"

"Are we embarking on a caper?" Aubrey asked with a grin, sitting forward.

"We might be."

He clapped his hands together. "I do love your capers, Miss Samantha."

She loved them, too, which she supposed was part of what made Rick nervous—except that in a way he got off on the danger stuff just as much as she did. At least he'd let her case the school unaccompanied. "I'll get the photos."

When she returned from her office to reception, Aubrey had cleared all of the messages and mail off the reception desk, and he'd produced a magnifying glass from a drawer. "I'm ready," he said.

"Boy, you don't do anything halfway," Samantha noted, grinning as she flicked a finger at the rounded glass. "Where did you get that, from the Sherlock Holmes Investigation Kit?"

"I'll have you know that on occasion some of the gifts I receive from my lady friends are best viewed through a magnifying lens. Though I have recently acquired a pair of night vision binoculars and a black ski mask, just in case. A gentleman does try to be prepared."

Next he'd want to come along on a B and E. "Here you go," she said, spreading out the half-dozen photos Viscanti had provided for her. "Does it look familiar?"

He looked at each photo, then swung the glass over and examined them again. Samantha resisted the urge to tap her foot; at least he was taking it seriously.