Lost and Found (3 page)

Lately even her parents, usually serenely absorbed in their academic careers, had started to become concerned. After the divorce they had developed an irritating habit of making polite but increasingly pointed inquiries into Cady’s social life.

She unfolded herself from the last exercise and sat cross-legged, gazing out into the night. The strains of a concerto spilled over her and through her, veiling the shadowy spaces that she knew from long experience were better off left unexplored.

Genetic inheritances were tough, but nature wasn’t everything, she reminded herself. Self-determination played a role, too. She was not a Vesta Briggs clone. If
she worked hard, she could avoid developing Vesta’s less appealing characteristics. She would not become a self-absorbed loner who surrounded herself with the visible evidence of the past.

Damn, she was still brooding, in spite of the Mozart and yoga. Maybe a frozen pizza and a glass of wine would do the trick.

What she really needed tonight was a distraction, she thought. Preferably another one of the fascinating, out-of-the-ordinary consulting assignments she had started accepting from Fantasy Man. There had been three jobs in the past two months, each one more interesting and more intriguing than the last.

Mack Easton had tracked her down via the internet. The only thing she knew for certain about him was that he operated a very low-profile on-line business he called Lost and Found. Driven by curiosity, she had tried to research him and his business on-line but the usual search engines had come up empty-handed. You didn’t find Mack Easton, apparently. He found you.

Easton brokered information related to lost, strayed and stolen art. As far as she could discern, his clients included a wide variety of private collectors, museums and galleries. They all had two things in common: They wanted help tracing and recovering art, antiques or antiquities; and, for various reasons, they did not want to take their problems to the police.

Easton worked by referral only. In his initial phone call, he had explained that he frequently required consulting assistance from experts who had specialized knowledge. That was where Cady came in. She knew the world of the so-called decorative arts, the realm where exquisite design and functionality intersected. She loved the objects and artifacts of the past that had been crafted with an eye toward both beauty and practicality: Glorious Baroque
salt cellars, gleaming seventeenth-century inkwells created by master silversmiths, glowing French tapestries, brilliantly illustrated wall panels and handmade furniture—those were the things that called to her across the centuries. Purists could have their fine art, their paintings and sculpture and the like. She was drawn to art that had been shaped to a useful purpose, art that satisfied the needs of daily life as well as the senses.

She closed her eyes and summoned up the mental image she had constructed to go with Easton’s voice. As always, the picture refused to gel. Probably because no man could live up to that fantastic voice, she thought.

“It’s all well and good for a client to find you useful. But don’t let yourself be used.”

If she hadn’t known better, Cady thought, she would have suspected that her aunt was speaking from personal experience. But that was impossible. No one used Aunt Vesta.

The phone rang, jarring her out of her reverie. She hesitated briefly and then uncoiled to her feet and crossed the crimson carpet. She paused, her hand hovering over the instrument, and listened to the second and third ring.

Her parents were in England at the moment, doing research for their next papers in art history. But the fact that they were several thousand miles away did not mean that they weren’t calling to ask about her boring love life.

She really did not need that conversation tonight. Not after Vesta’s call.

The phone rang a fourth time. She could let it go into voice mail.

But what if it was Fantasy Man?

The odds were staggeringly not in favor of that possibility, but the slim chance that it was Easton calling with another consulting assignment was sufficient incentive to make her scoop up the phone.

“Hello?”

“What do you know about sixteenth-century armor?” Fantasy Man asked.

Oh, boy
. The voice cued every nerve ending in her body.
Get a grip, woman. He’s probably married. Voices like this one do not stay single for long
.

Or maybe he’s twenty or thirty years older than you are.

So what? Maturity was a good quality in a man.

“Funny you should ask…,” she said, striving for a businesslike tone. Mentally she crossed her fingers behind her back.

Okay, so arms and armor weren’t her favorite examples of the decorative arts. Nevertheless, she knew the basics. More importantly, she knew whom to call to bring her up to speed in a hurry. She had connections at some of the best museums and galleries in the country.

“I think we should meet to talk about the assignment,” Fantasy Man said. “There are some complications involved.”

This was the first time he had ever suggested that they should get together face-to-face.
Don’t get too excited, here. It’s just a job
.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“At the clients’ place of business.”

She seized a pen. “Where is it?”

“Las Vegas,” Fantasy Man said. “Place called Military World. A small museum that features reproductions of arms and armor from the medieval period to the present. Does a big gift shop business.”

“Reproductions?” she repeated carefully. Her initial enthusiasm evaporated instantly. Reality returned with a dull thud. Military World sounded like a tacky, low-rent souvenir operation. She had professional standards. She did not work for people who collected and sold reproductions.

On the other hand, this was Fantasy Man. In spite of
Vesta’s warning, she was determined to encourage future assignments with Lost and Found.

Sometimes you had to lower your standards a notch. Business was business.

“When do you want me in Vegas?” she asked, pen poised above the pad.

“As soon as possible. How about tomorrow morning?”

Yes
.

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” she said smoothly. “But I seem to recall that I’m free tomorrow.”

And if she wasn’t free, she would cancel whatever appointments stood in the way of meeting Fantasy Man in person.

T
he ranks of medieval warriors, forever frozen in their steel carapaces, loomed behind him in the shadows. Mack Easton’s face was as unreadable as that of any of the helmeted figures standing guard on the other side of the office window. There was something about Easton that made him appear locked in time too, Cady thought. A quality of stillness perhaps. You had to look twice to see him there in the shadows. If it hadn’t been for the glow of the computer screen reflecting off the strong, fierce planes of his face and glinting on the lenses of his glasses, he would have been invisible.

Not a youthful face, she thought. Definitely mature. But not
too
mature. Thirty-nine or possibly forty, a good age. An interesting age. At least it looked interesting on Mack Easton.

The weird thing was that, even though she had never been able to imagine an exact image of him with only the telephone connection to go on, now that she was actually face-to-face with him she could see that he fit the voice perfectly. Take the serious, dark-rimmed glasses, for example. Never in a million years would she have thought
to add that touch if she had been asked to draw a picture of him based on their long-distance conversations. But when he had removed them from his pocket a few minutes ago and put them on, she had decided they looked absolutely right on him.

“We have a photograph,” he said. “It was found in the museum’s archives.”

“Museum” was not the word she would have used to dignify Military World, she thought. What was she doing here? She must have been temporarily out of her mind last night when she took Easton’s call. She was at home in hushed galleries, art research libraries and the cluttered back rooms of prestigious auction salons. She mingled with connoisseurs and educated collectors.

Military World, with its low-budget reproductions of arms and armor from various wars, was very much as she had envisioned it: tacky. Then again, maybe that was just her personal bias showing. She had never been overly fond of armor. To her it symbolized all that was brutish and primitive in human nature. The fact that the artisans of the past had devoted enormous talent and craftsmanship to its design and decoration struck her as bizarre.

The office in which they sat belonged to the two owners of Military World, a pair that went by the names of Notch and Dewey. They hovered anxiously in the shadows, having surrendered the single desk to Easton and his laptop computer.

Mack occupied the space behind the desk as if he owned it. She got the impression that was the way it was with any place he happened to inhabit at any particular moment. Something that just sort of happened to him; something he took for granted.

She wished that she could get a better look at his eyes, but the reflection on his glasses concealed them as effectively as the steel helmets hid the features of the armored figures beyond the windows.

He pushed the photograph toward her across the battered desk and reached out to switch on the small desk lamp. She watched, unwillingly fascinated, as the beam fell on one large powerful-looking hand. No wedding ring, she noticed. Not that you could be sure a man was unmarried just because he didn’t happen to wear a ring.

With an effort, she tore her gaze away from his hand and focused on the photo. It featured a horse and rider garbed in flamboyantly styled armor that looked as if it had been designed for a video game or dreamed up by an artist for the cover of a science fiction fantasy novel. She recognized it as a fairly accurate reproduction of the elaborately embellished armor crafted during the Renaissance. Such impractical styles had never been intended for the battlefield. They had been created for the sole purpose of making the wearer look good in ceremonies, festivals and parades.

The photo itself was an amateurish shot. Poorly lit. The kind of picture that a tourist might have snapped with a throw-away camera.

She looked up and peered into the shadows where Easton’s face was supposed to be. All she could see was the hard angle of a grim jaw and the hollows beneath high, ascetic cheekbones. There was nothing soft or open about him. She had the feeling that Easton had learned long ago not to expect too much from the world other than what he could seize for himself.

“Fifteenth century, judging from the helmet and breastplate,” she said. “Italian in style.” “In style” was a polite way of saying “reproduction.”

“I’m aware of that, Miss Briggs,” Easton said with icy patience. “But if you look closely, you can see a portion of another display behind the horse’s, uh, rear.”

She took a closer look. Sure enough, if she looked past the tail of the fake horse, she could just make out the
dimly lit image of a standing figure garbed in heavily decorated steel.

“Half-armor,” she murmured. It was always good policy to impress the client, even if you weren’t particularly interested in the job. Word of mouth was important. “In the style of the northern Italian armorers of the sixteenth century. Looks like part of a garniture meant for jousting at the barriers. Suits of armor from this era often consisted of dozens of supplementary and interchangeable pieces that allowed the set to be modified for specific uses. Sort of like a modern all-in-one tool kit.”

“It’s the helmet that we’re interested in here,” Mack said.

She peered at it. The bad lighting made it difficult to see much detail. “What about it?”

“It’s the only piece that was stolen.”

She looked up. “Is there a better photo around?”

One of the two men who hovered near the far end of the desk, the individual who went by the name Dewey, edged closer with a crablike movement.

“Lucky to have that one,” he said, sounding apologetic.

She could only guess at Dewey’s age. His face was a worn and weathered map that could have belonged to a man of fifty or seventy. He was dressed in military surplus complete with camouflage fatigues, battered boots and a wide leather belt. His graying hair was caught in a scruffy ponytail secured with a rubber band. She would not have been surprised to learn that he commuted to and from work on a very large motorcycle.

It was hard to imagine that he was representative of Lost and Found’s typical clientele. How in the world had he and his partner managed to find the very-hard-to-find Mack Easton? More to the point, why had Mack agreed to help them? Surely he was too expensive for this pair. If he wasn’t, she certainly was.

“I was going for a shot of the fifteenth-century display,”
Dewey explained. “We had just finished setting it up, you see. This was maybe two years back, right, Notch?”

The other man nodded vigorously. “Right.”

Notch wore a fringed leather vest over a faded denim shirt. At some point in the shirt’s obviously colorful history, the sleeves had been ripped off high on the shoulders, no doubt to better show off the tattoos that decorated both beefy arms. A heavy steel key chain dangled from his belt. It looked as if it could double as a handy weapon in a bar fight. A red bandanna wrapped around his head secured Notch’s thinning locks.

There was an indefinable air of connection between the two men that told Cady that Notch and Dewey were more than business associates. They were partners for life.

Dewey returned his attention to Cady. “I wanted to get a picture for our album. Lucked out and accidentally got a bit of the other exhibit in the shot.”

“Never would have guessed that the helmet on the sixteenth-century suit was the real thing.” Notch spread his hands. “Like, who knew, man?”

Cady cleared her throat. “How did it come into the, uh, museum’s collection?”

“I found it right after we bought Military World from old man Belford. He had it stashed away in the back room. I polished it up and added it to the rest of the outfit. Seemed to match, y’know?”