Flirting With Danger (3 page)

Stoney gazed at her. “Murder?”

“But why? And why so messy?”

“Ya know, Sam,” the burly black mountain in terry cloth rumbled, “if I was you, I’d be more concerned about being blamed for killing that guard than with being Mrs. Murder, She Wrote.”

“Jessica Fletcher,” she corrected absently, watching as the television, muted now, played some taped footage of Addison at yet another charity function with that model Julia Poole on his arm.

“And if I had a memory like yours, I’d be going on game shows, not stealing shit.”

She couldn’t blame the news for going overboard in their coverage of Addison; with that face and his money he had to be good for ratings. Of course a political scandal or a corporate bankruptcy would have been nice, but no, she’d had to break into his house on a slow news day. She watched him answer a question about some bit of nonsense or other.
Bored
, she thought, and a little amused at the swirl of sycophantry around him.

“I’ve never stolen
shit
, thank you very much, and I prefer to think of it as the involuntary relocation of objects, anyway.” Taking a last swallow of soda, she dumped the can into Stoney’s recycling box and grabbed up her torn and singed shirt and pants. She’d toss them in a dumpster on her way home. The vest was heavier, but at least it was salvageable, and she slung it over her good shoulder. “I’m going out for a while. I’ll call you this evening.”

“Where, Sam?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him and forced a smile. “Like I’d tell you.”

“Just be careful, baby,” he cautioned, following her to the door.

“You, too. Your buyer knew you had somebody going after the tablet last night. You might get some pressure.”

He smiled, lips pulling back to reveal white teeth. “I like pressure.”

So did she, usually, but not in this amount. Hard as the police might look for a missing ring or a painting or a vase, they looked harder when someone died over it. And they would look even harder when someone died in the house of a man featured last year on the cover of
Time
magazine.

She had some thinking to do. Like why someone would string explosives across a hallway in the middle of a multimillion-dollar art and antique gallery. And she wanted to know whether a particular stone tablet would be listed among the destroyed items—or if she’d be blamed for taking it, on top of everything else.

Tuesday, 6:15 a.m.

Tom Donner flipped his cell phone closed. “Myerson-Schmidt confirms they didn’t send anyone to test security. But they are very anxious to continue their relationship with you.”

Beside him in the back seat of the Mercedes, Richard blew out his breath. Damn. He’d been hoping the elusive Miss Smith had been telling the truth. “And Prentiss? Any family?”

“Parents and an older sister, all in Dade County. Myerson-Schmidt has a counselor there with them.”

“I won’t intrude,” he decided. “I’ll have my office send them my condolences and see if there’s anything else they need.”

“Sir, press and police barricades,” the driver said over his shoulder, slowing the stretched black SL500.

“Go through them, Ben. They’re not keeping me out of my own bloody house.”

“I thought you British guys were all stoic in the face of disaster.”

Richard slid his gaze from the attorney as cameras and reporters rushed the car. “This
is
me being stoic. I want them gone, Tom.”

“The reporters, or the cops?”

“Both.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll work on the press. But considering that somebody tried to kill you this morning, I’m gonna suggest you let the police do their jobs.”

“Not from my front drive. I’m not going to change the way I live my life. In my line of work, if I look weak, then I
am
weak. I won’t have the police barricading my house, like I’m some freakish recluse afraid to step outside. Aside from everything else, I refuse to live in an armed encampment.”

“Okay. I’ll do what I can. But face it, Rick—you’re a valuable commodity.”

They drove through the gates, which were manned by a pair of officers. Richard set aside his annoyance at having to get clearance to enter his own property, and instead kept his eyes on the house as they crossed the lush green palm grove and reached the curving drive at the front. Ruined furniture and curtains and carpets lay strewn at the edge of the cobblestones, heaped alongside more carefully placed statuettes and paintings. Already the insurance people were there, counting and examining objets d’art and wrapping the more delicate ones in felt blankets and lined crates for storage and protection—all under the watchful eyes of more police.

“A couple of broken-out windows,” Donner commented, leaning across Rick to take a look, “and black roof tiles. Other than that, it doesn’t look too bad from the outside.”

Yet another uniformed officer pulled open the car door as they came to a stop. Richard’s joints had stiffened on the drive from the hospital, and he winced as he straightened. “You should see the inside,” he muttered, starting up the wide front steps. The granite blocks were still covered with tarps and equipment and groups of emergency personnel drinking coffee from his china cups.

“Sir? Mister Addison?” The officer behind them caught up at a brisk trot. “Sir, the building hasn’t been cleared yet.”

“It looks fairly empty to me,” Richard replied, eyeing the piles of his belongings strewn across the lawn. They must have gutted the entire third-floor gallery.

“Cleared by the bomb squad, I mean. They’ve done the basement and the first two floors, but not the third floor or the attic.”

“Then have them notify me if it looks like something’s going to blow up.”

“Rick,” Donner cautioned, “they’re on our side.”

Richard frowned. He’d set up the damned estate for privacy, a place where he could escape from the cameras and reporters who always seemed to hound him. And he had to admit that without the police presence, half the tabloids would probably be jumping the walls right now. He turned around, eyeing the officer still dogging their heels. “What’s your name?”

“Kennedy. James.”

“You may accompany us, James Kennedy. As long as you stay out of the way.”

“Sir? I’m supposed to—”

“In or out, Kennedy.” Between the pain in his head and the soreness of his ribs, he wasn’t in the mood to be diplomatic.

“What Mr. Addison meant to say,” Tom amended, “is that he intends to cooperate fully with the police department. But he still has multiple business concerns that require his immediate attention. Your presence will ensure that we don’t go anywhere or touch anything that might compromise the investigation.”

“Homicide won’t like it,” Kennedy returned.

“We’ll be careful.”

“Um, well, okay then. I guess.”

Danté Partino, Richard’s estate acquisitions manager, fell in as they climbed the crowded stairs to the third floor. “It’s a mess, Rick,” he said, in Italian-accented English. “Who
would do such a thing? Both of the 1190 full armor pieces, the Roman helmet, half the sixteenth-century—

“I can see for myself,” Richard interrupted, stopping at the top of the stairs. “Mess” didn’t begin to describe the gallery hall. “Armageddon” seemed a more apt characterization. Blackened and twisted suits of armor lay where they’d fallen, lost warriors of some obscene marble-tile-and-carpet-covered battlefield. A French Renaissance tapestry, one of the first items he’d ever collected, hung in burned tatters from the wall. What little remained was hardly recognizable. Anger curled through him. No one did this to him and got away with it.

“Jesus,” Tom whispered. “Where were you standing?”

Richard took four slow steps forward, well beyond the outer edge of the chaos. “About here.”

Danté cleared his throat, breaking the ensuing silence. “Rick, I want to inspect all the damaged items myself, but the insurance people act as if they own everything. They have no idea how delicate—”

“Danté, it’s all right,” he countered, more for his manager’s sake than his own. Furious as he was, the loss of his things was only a sidebar. He wanted to know who had destroyed them. “Tom’ll make certain you’re consulted on everything.”

“But—”

“That’s how it is, Danté.”

Partino nodded, fingers clenching the clipboard he carried. “Very well. But the water from the sprinklers and the hoses, it also damaged some of the paintings on the second floor. Maybe we can salv—”

“What about the tablet?” Richard interrupted. He admired Partino’s passion, but it had been a damned long night.

“It’s not here,” Castillo said, topping the stairs behind them. “We figure that was what she was after. And you shouldn’t be up here, Mr. Addison. This is a murder investi—”

“Have you photographed and fingerprinted and whatever it is you do?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what kind of explosive was it?” Ignoring the hiss of Officer Kennedy, Richard stepped forward, sinking into a stiff squat close to a fire-blackened hole in the gallery wall.

Castillo sighed. “Looks like a trip wire strung across the hallway, rigged like a grenade with shape charges. You pull out the wire, and pop. Quick setup, but professional—and very effective. Perfect for covering your tracks if you’re caught before you’re out.”

“What if she’d gotten out unseen?” Richard asked.

“Well, it’d be a hell of a way to confuse a robbery investigation.”

“And a hell of a risk,” Richard continued more quietly. “A couple of years for theft versus the death penalty for murder in the first degree, yes?”

“Only if she gets caught. I might risk that for the stuff you’ve got in here.”

“I wouldn’t.” Richard straightened, dusting soot from his hands. “Castillo, I’ll leave you to work, but please keep me apprised of the investigation. I have a few phone calls to make.”

While Danté hovered over the carnage like an anxious mother hen, Tom and Richard shut themselves in the second-floor office. The huge windows overlooked the front lawn and pond, generally a tranquil enough sight, but now covered with uniforms and garbage. With a groan he couldn’t stifle, Richard sank into the chair behind his severe black-and-chrome desk. It was one of the few nonantique pieces of furniture in the house, and only because the seventeenth century hadn’t made allowances for computers or phones or electronics.

“What’s bothering you?” Donner asked, pulling a bottle of water from the small cabinet refrigerator and sitting in one of the plush conference chairs at the far end of the room. “Other than nearly getting blown into itsy bitsy pieces.”

“I told you I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Because of the fax calls.”

“Precisely. So I was wandering about, waiting for a decent
hour to call the New York office. The gallery would’ve been my next stop, intruder or not.”

Tom stayed silent for a beat, taking that in. “You’re firing Myerson-Schmidt.”

“That’s not the point. She yelled at Prentiss to stop, then hit me like a bulldozer.”

“Castillo figured she was trying to save her own skin.”

“No.”

“Then what, Rick? Really?”

“Let’s say she sneaks in, gets through all the security and grabs the tablet—even though I have a multitude of things worth more money—pauses on her way out for five minutes to rig an explosive, gets caught at it, then tries to keep anyone from getting blown up.”

“Tries to keep
herself
from getting blown up.”

Maybe
. “But if she hadn’t stopped to set up the bomb, she would have been out before anyone noticed.”

Tom crossed his long legs at the ankles. “Okay, possibility number one: Robbery wasn’t the objective. Like you said, she did walk right past a hell of a lot of nice stuff.”

“That makes murder the objective.” Richard could still see her eyes, the expression on her face as she hit him. “Then why drag me downstairs, out of range of the fire?”

The attorney shrugged. “Cold feet? Or maybe you weren’t the target.”

“So who was? Prentiss? I don’t think so.” He leaned forward, tapping his fingers on the hard black desk. “Possibility number two: She didn’t plant the bomb.”

“All right, then we have two intruders breaking into this fortress on the same night, one through the patio window and one by…some other method. One wants the tablet, and the other wants to blow something up. To blow you up.”

“Except that I wasn’t supposed to be here.”

Donner blinked. “That’s right. You were supposed to be in Stuttgart until this evening.”

“The bomb would’ve gone off during the next regular patrol of the gallery, and I wouldn’t have been here at all.”

“Unless someone knows you left Germany early.”

Richard scowled. “That narrows it down to just a few people, most of whom I trust implicitly. And Harry Meridien, who wanted me to stay even after I told him that I was not going to pay more than we agreed on for shares in his bloody bank.”

“People talk.”

“Not my people.” Pushing to his feet, Richard paced the long room. “I want to talk to Miss Smith.”

“So does the Palm Beach PD. And the FBI, now. You know how they hate it when influential foreign businessmen from allied countries almost get blown up.”

Richard dismissed that with a wave of his hand. The maneuverings of the FBI, little as he liked them, didn’t interest him at the moment. “I don’t care about anyone’s agenda but mine. Someone broke into
my
home, killed someone who works for me, and stole something that belongs to me. And ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ doesn’t begin to answer the questions I want to ask.”

Donner sighed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see if I can find out how close they are to nabbing her.” He shook his head. “But when we get arrested for interfering in a police investigation, I’m not representing you.”

“If we get arrested, then I’m firing you for doing a sloppy job.” Smiling, Rick reached for the phone. “Now leave. I have work to do.”

Two flipping days
. Samantha sank into the cushions of her couch and chose another channel with the TV remote. She hated sitting around under the best of circumstances, and this was far from the best of anything. Still, the media wouldn’t give up the story. And while they had hold of it, she couldn’t turn her attention elsewhere.

By now they’d run out of new information, and so for the last day she’d been hearing the same story with a handful of twists—the life of Richard Michael Addison, the loves of Richard Michael Addison, the philanthropy of, the busi
nesses of, yadda yadda yadda. And then there were the facts they
did
have, and kept repeating on every news broadcast: There’d been an explosion, a guard, now identified as Don Prentiss, had been killed, and several valuable items had been destroyed. And the police were looking for a white female, height five-foot-four to five-foot-seven, weight 120 to 150 pounds, in conjunction with the investigation.

“One hundred and fifty pounds, my ass,” she muttered, changing channels again. Wrong weight or not, she knew what it meant; one suspect being sought, one person they were blaming. Her.

Every instinct told her to run, so she could look at what had happened from a safer distance. The problem was, if they thought she’d tried to kill Addison, there was no safe distance. And no safe way to get there. Airports, bus stations—they’d be watching everything. Well, they could just keep watching, though it didn’t make her feel any better to hear on the morning news that the police were “expecting to make an arrest at any moment.” She didn’t believe it, but neither was she willing to ignore the threat.

And so she sat on the couch, sipping a soda and eating microwave kettle corn, watching the tail end of the midmorning news—and tried to figure out what had happened. As a thief, she was exceptionally gifted. Her father had said so, as had Stoney, and a few of the discreet clients she’d worked for.

She enjoyed the independence that her skills provided her. She enjoyed the challenge of her chosen profession, enjoyed the feeling that temporarily possessing some of the world’s rarest objects gave her. And she enjoyed the money she received as payment, careful as she had to be about spending it. Retirement, her father had repeated endlessly while he taught her the skills of the trade. Work toward twenty years from now, not for tomorrow.

That goal was why she lived in a small, neat house outside of Pompano Beach, and it was why she worked for a pittance as a freelance art consultant for some museum or other. And
that, quite simply, was why she didn’t kill. People who killed in the quest for inanimate objects didn’t get to retire peacefully somewhere in the Mediterranean and employ handsome houseboys.