White Heat (9 page)

At the moment pretty much all she could think about was some flesh-eating bacteria dining on her liver. “I was always on your father’s case about giving up smoking:’ she told Max as she carried her coffee across the room to where Daniel had all his canvases stacked, ten to fifteen deep, against the wall.

It would hurt, wouldn’t it? Having something eating—
Stop it! Really. Stop.

Thinking about what scary thing could be happening inside her own body wasn’t productive, and could make her insane. Better to look for the—whatever they were looking for. If nothing else she could bring a little order to the studio while she searched.

She lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the floor. “If not because of his health, then because of the gross smell,
and
getting nicotine all over his work.”
And I’m talking to mys4fjust to break the silence. Max doesn’t give a flying crap about anything I have to say about his father.

“Of course, Daniel being Daniel:’
and you being so like him it’s scary,
“he stubbornly refused even to consider quitting.” She suddenly remembered a long-ago conversation she and Daniel had had one bright spring day. “He told me once he was sure he’d die young.” Emily shot a glance at the back of Max’s head. “Are you even listening to me?”

“I presumed your monologue was rhetorical.”

She angled a small canvas to the light, looking at it instead of finding a heavy object to beat Max about the head with. Taking a deep breath, she focused on the painting instead of violent thoughts.
Really. The man was an ass.

An ass with big strong hands. And lean powerful hips …

For God’s sake, Emily Rose Greene, get a bloody grip, why don’t you? Wherever
her mind wandered was dangerous territory.

The break-in.

Max.

A mysterious bacteria …

She stared unseeingly at the painting in her hands. Max couldn’t be any more disinterested if he tried. If she couldn’t listen to her own admonishments to keep the hell away from him, then
his
clear indifference should make her job easy.

Concentrate on Daniel’s work.
The painting was of a simple, clear glass bowl filled with ripe peaches against a velvet drape of gentian blue. Her mouth watered just looking at the dewy, downy fruit. Emily could almost taste the sweetness, feel the cool hardness of the glass, and touch the voluptuous warmth of the fabric.

The painting was dated seven years before. She knew he’d come up here every day with his cigarettes and his unending cups of coffee, no longer able to paint. Her heart had broken imagining Daniel
trying
to hold a brush.
Trying
to paint. Knowing he never would again. His frustration level must have been as vast as his ego. She couldn’t imagine not being able to do what she loved to do. For Daniel it must’ve been a hundred times worse. That’s why when she heard he’d committed suicide she hadn’t doubted it.

“God. What a loss his death was to the art world.”
And to me.
“Daniel was absolutely brilliant.”

Max’s silence said,
“Whatever.”

She was tempted to give him the finger, but took the high road instead. She went back to the stacks of canvases. In addition to his work as a restorer, Daniel had been a brilliant artist in his own right. A lifetime of work he’d deemed “not good enough” was stacked up along the walls. Not only had he been a perfectionist, he’d refused to reuse canvases. His “mistakes,” as he’d called them, would be any art collector’s treasures.

A lump formed in her throat, and she got up to take some of the trash downstairs so she could pull herself together. More than half her life had been spent here. Daniel still had a bunch of Emily’s canvases mixed in with his.

She made a dozen trips up and down the stairs carrying Daniel’s forgotten, dirty dishes to the kitchen, then running the dishwasher. Bags of trash sat just outside the door to be taken out later. Max read or looked at every piece of paper before disposing of it.

She’d squeezed in a call to Franco on one of her many trips downstairs. She’d called him knowing that she should probably tell him that she couldn’t . . . she shouldn’t take him with her to the States. Or continue their relationship. And shouldn’t, she admitted feeling small, use him to get over Max. But she’d pretended that other than a flesh-eating bacteria, everything was fine.
It was bad enough lying to a good man. It was almost worse lying to herself. But the reality was she needed Franco as a buffer against her feelings for Max. It was shitty to use him that way, but she’d make it up to him.

She hadn’t told him
everything.
She hadn’t mentioned Max, nor did she tell Franco that she could possibly be contaminated by something. She’d merely told him she’d had a break in, and that the police had requested she not leave the country until they’d had time to question the man they’d apprehended. She was staying at Daniel’s villa tonight because he had excellent security.

Franco had wanted to rush to her side, which was very sweet. But she didn’t want to risk giving him whatever it was she might be carrying. At least that’s what she’d told herself. So he’d changed their flight to the next evening.

With the trip reset, with a man she didn’t love, Emily returned upstairs feeling guilty and defensive.

“We changed our flight until tomorrow,” she told Max, as she went back to a box of papers she’d half sorted through. “We should be out of here by then, right?”

“I’m presuming the
we
you’re referring to is you and Frank?”

She didn’t bother correcting him.

Hours later, Max was still searching for God only knew what. Daniel, being Daniel, had shoved bills, receipts, and half-finished sketches into every drawer and pigeonhole of his desk. Max pulled everything out, attempting to create order out of chaos. She inspected a pinprick-sized red bump on her arm. Had it been there yesterday? Almost hyperventilating, she tried to remember. Yes. Oh, thank God, yes. She’d noticed it in the shower yesterday morning.
Before
the break-in. A spider bite?

As it got later and later, the weather reflected her mood. Still, the studio was brilliant with what appeared to be natural light. Like herself, Daniel liked to work at night, and no expense had been spared on special custom lighting for their studios.

She and Max had only started searching at mid-morning. This was where Daniel had spent the majority of his time, the most logical place, Max insisted, to find clues. Clues of what? Emily wasn’t sure. It would take her a month to go through the canvases alone. “Your father was a pack rat.
Look
at all this stuff. He never threw a thing out. This is going to take forever, and frankly Max, I don’t want to
be
here forever!”

“Fine,” he said, not looking up. “Go bake a cake or something.”

“That’s incredibly insulting. Even for you.”

“I can’t help you, Emily. I didn’t make the rules. If you don’t want to help me solve his murder, then find something else to do.”

She wished she had her frying pan. “That is
so
freaking unfair! I’ve been working as diligently as you have, so don’t give me that ‘go amuse yourself, honey’ crap.”

A faintly amused smile flickered across his face. “I never called you honey.”

No. He’d called her darling. And sweetheart. And love. The rat fink bastard. “Shut up.”

She and Max worked silently for several hours. Dusk and rain pushed at the windows, and a tree branch kept giving eerie taps on the glass, ratcheting up her tension. Every now and then Max would ask her a question about something he came across. Emily answered. There wasn’t any companionable chitchat.

They weren’t companions. And giving the back of his head a hot look, she doubted if the man unbent enough to speak, let alone chit or chat. He was about as much company as a vacuum cleaner.

“What was he working on before he died?” Max asked without turning around.

He speaks.
She wondered how many more conversations Max could manage without ever referring to his father as either Dad, father, or Daniel. Daniel was just
he
or
him.
“As far as I know, your
father,”
she stressed the word just to see if it would get a reaction out of him—it didn’t—”finished painting a reproduction of Titian’s
Penitent Mary Magdalene
for Mr. Tillman about a week before he died. If he started something else after that, there’s no evidence of it here.”

She’d
done the commission in Daniel’s name, but that wasn’t any of Max’s business, nor was it relevant.

“He forged it.”

The derision in Max’s tone made her hackles rise. No. Not just rise. Rise
more.
His damned attitude—about his father, the work he and
she
did, and his clear desire to be anywhere but
here—was
really getting on her last nerve. He was as annoying as fingernails screeching on a blackboard.

“No,” he told him firmly, “he
copied
it. Unless the copy is done with the intent to defraud, it’s just that. A copy. Richard Tillman is an American multi-gazillionaire in his eighties, and has an
amazing
art collection. Both Daniel and I have done work for him over the years. Mr. Tillman wants the copies to enjoy in his home gallery, while he donates his entire collection of originals.”

Max shook his head. “Basically he’s screwing his heirs out of zillions of dollars of priceless works of art.”

“This isn’t out of the norm. It’s fairly common for collectors to request good copies to keep in their homes. It’s his money. He can do whatever he likes with it. I think it’s an amazingly generous undertaking.”

“I know who Tillman is.” Max tossed a handful of papers into the trash bag beside him. “Hard to believe he’d give away a half- eaten tuna sandwich, let alone billions of dollars’ worth of artwork. He’s never been known as a philanthropist.”

“Well apparently he’s changed. Now he
is
one. According to what I’ve heard he’s become a bit of a religious fanatic. Donating his art to the world is part of his newly acquired morality. I suppose doing good works—like sharing his art with the masses—is in keeping with his new philosophy on life. Lately he’s been in a hurry At his age, I guess he doesn’t think he has much time to make amends for a lifetime of selfish hoarding.”

Max turned around, one dark brow arched, his elbow on the back of the chair. “This from the horse’s mouth? You’ve met Tillman?”

“No. I’ve never seen him. But I’ve been dealing with his assistant Norcroft for years. He lets things slip once in a while. According to him, Mr. Tillman is desperate to do his penance before his time on earth is, well . . . up.”

“Giving away billions in artwork is a last—ditch effort at erasing his dictatorial, self—serving business dealings?” Max’s tone conveyed exactly how he viewed
that.
“His fortune was built on the shoulders of sweatshop laborers and golden parachute recipients.” He shook his head. “Interesting that he thinks giving away some paintings is all it takes for redemption.”

“Redemption or not, I’m just happy he’s taking things out of his private museum and giving the rest of the world a chance to see these priceless masterpieces.”

“Yeah. Truly commendable.” He held up a sheet of paper. “This is good.”

Emily blinked at the non sequitur. “What’s good?”

“This sketch of you.”

“He did a sketch of me?” As far as Emily knew. Daniel had never drawn her. Intrigued she got to her feet and walked over to look. She held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Max handed it over almost reluctantly. “He got your expression mid-laugh. A pretty remarkable snapshot really.”

He
had
gotten her mid-laugh, her head thrown back, her eyes filled with humor. Her hair hung around her shoulders, making her look wild and wanton. She didn’t remember Daniel doing this, but it was about six years old. She remembered that blouse. It had been one of her favorites.
She swallowed a lump in her throat, then frowned as she inspected the sketch. Not looking at her own face, but at the medium and pen strokes. “This is so odd. He didn’t use one of the dozens of sketch pads lying all over the place. Look at this. It’s plain bond paper. Probably from that printer over there.”

“So? He grabbed the closest thing.”

“Not Daniel. Besides, the closest thing
would
have been a sketch pad. He was never without one. And another thing—this is done in
ink.
He always sketched in pencil. Always.”
“I’m more interested in the writing down there at the bottom. See that? ‘A nine departmental gym.’ Any idea what that means?”

“Haven’t a clue. Maybe he was trying to write a poem. There’s a bunch of gibberish on the back as we—”

Max’s cell phone rang. “Aries.” Emily was still standing beside his chair, and Max took her wrist to hold her beside him before she started to wander off. Her pulse throbbed beneath his fingertips.

“Nothing?” he demanded incredulously into the phone. There’d been no toxins of any kind in the vial. “Illogical. Either the container contained something you people haven’t tested for—” he paused to listen. “Exactly. Or the intruder was there to
take
something, not bring it.” But
what?

Max listened to the lab guy speculate. Fuck speculation. He wanted answers. Now. “No,” he interrupted. “He went directly to her bedroom, not her studio.”

Beside him Emily’s pulse leapt from a hard beat to manic. He soothed his thumb across the thin skin of her pale inner wrist. “Yeah. My thought exactly.” The son of a bitch had wanted a sample from
Emily.

Max scrubbed a hand across his jaw “Hair? Skin? Testing for DNA? Jesus.
What
?”

So far T—FLAC’s European lab had no idea if there was an unknown substance in the vial, or if the guy had wanted a sample of Emily’s DNA. But with the vial, and the man in custody, they’d eventually have an answer.