Homeport (30 page)

“Killing Giovanni to implicate me.” It was too cold, too hideous to be contemplated. And too logical to ignore.

“An added benefit. If he was straight, he'd have begun to wonder himself after the tests. He'd take another look at your notes, your results.”

“That's why the lab was trashed,” she murmured. “We'll never find my documentation now.”

“Taken or destroyed,” Ryan agreed. “Your friend was in the way. And Miranda, so are you.”

“Yes, I see.” Somehow it was better that way, easier. “It's more important than ever to find the original. Whoever replaced it killed Giovanni.”

“You know what they say about killing? The first one's tough. After that, it's just business.”

She ignored the chill that danced over her skin. “If that means you want to end our deal here and now, I won't blame you.”

“Wouldn't you?” He leaned back again, drawing idly on the cigar. He wondered how much the fact that she would think him a coward played into it. And how much the need to protect her weighed on the decision he'd already made. “I finish what I start.”

Relief spread like a river, but she picked up her wineglass, raised it in a half-salute. “So do I.”

eighteen

I
t was still
shy of midnight when Carlo left the trattoria and began to walk home. He'd promised his wife he wouldn't be out late. The boundaries of their marriage included one evening a week for him to sit and drink and tell lies with his friends. Sofia had her evening as well, a gossipfest at her sister's, which he supposed amounted to the same thing.

Habitually he stayed till twelve, or a bit after, drawing the male oasis out, but just lately he'd been cutting it short. He'd been the butt of jokes since the papers had announced his
Dark Lady
was a hoax.

He didn't believe it, not for a minute. He'd held the statue in his hands, he'd felt the whisper of breath on his cheeks. An artist recognized art. But whenever he said so, his friends laughed.

The authorities had grilled him like a criminal.
Dio mio,
he'd done nothing but what was right. Perhaps he'd made a small error of judgment by taking the statue out of the villa.

But he had found her, after all. He had held her in his hands, looked at her face, felt her beauty and her power
like wine in his blood. She had transfixed him, he thought now. Bewitched him. And still, in the end he'd done the right thing and given her up.

Now they tried to say she was nothing. A clever scheme to dupe the art world. He knew, in his heart, in his bones, that was a lie.

Sofia said she believed him, but he knew she didn't. She said it because she was loyal and loving, and because it caused less arguing in front of the children. The reporters he'd talked to had taken down all his statements, and had made him sound like a fool.

He'd tried to talk to the American woman, the one who ran the big laboratory where his lady had been taken. But she wouldn't listen. He'd lost his temper with her, demanded to speak to the Dr. Miranda Jones who had proven his lady was real.

The
direttrice
had called security and had him tossed out. It had been humiliating.

He should never have listened to Sofia, he thought now as he made his way down the quiet road outside the city toward home, stumbling a bit as the wine brooded in his head. He should have kept the lady for himself as he'd wanted to. He had found her, he had taken her out of the damp, dark cellar and brought her into the light. She belonged to him.

Now, even though they claimed she was worthless, they wouldn't give her back to him.

He wanted her back.

He'd called the lab in Rome and demanded the return of his property. He had shouted and raved and called them all liars and cheats. He'd even called America and left a desperate and rambling message on Miranda's office machine. He believed she was his link to his lady. She would help him, somehow.

He couldn't rest until he saw the lady again, held her in his hands.

He would hire a lawyer, he decided, inspired by wine and the humiliation of sly laughter. He would call the American woman again, the one in the place called Maine,
and convince her it was all a plot, a conspiracy to steal the lady from him.

He remembered her picture from the papers. A strong face, an honest one. Yes, she would help.

Miranda Jones. She would listen to him.

He didn't glance behind him when he heard the oncoming car. The road was clear, and he was well onto the shoulder. He was concentrating on the face from the papers, on what he would say to this woman scientist.

It was Miranda and
The Dark Lady
who occupied his mind when the car struck him at full speed.

 

Standing on the terrace in the strong morning light, Miranda gazed out at the city. Perhaps for the first time she fully appreciated the beauty of it. The end of Giovanni's life had irrevocably changed hers. Somewhere inside her a dark place would remain, formed of guilt and sorrow. And yet, she sensed more light than she had ever known before. There was an urgency to grab hold, to take time, to savor details.

The quiet kiss of the breeze that fluttered over her cheeks, the flash of sun that shimmered over city and hill, the warm stone under her bare feet.

She wanted to go down, she realized. To get dressed and go out and walk the streets without destination, without some purpose driving every step. Just to look in store windows, to wander along the river. To feel alive.

“Miranda.”

She drew in a breath, glanced over her shoulder and saw Ryan standing in the terrace doorway. “It's a beautiful morning. Spring, rebirth. I don't think I really appreciated that before.”

He crossed the terrace, laid a hand over hers on the parapet. She might have smiled if she hadn't seen the look in his eye. “Oh God. What now? What happened?”

“The plumber. Carlo Rinaldi. He's dead. Hit-and-run, last night. I just heard it on the news.” Her hand turned in his, gripped. “He was walking home near midnight. There weren't many more details.” A cold fury worked through
him. “He had three children, and another on the way.”

“It could have been an accident.” She wanted to cling to that, thought she might have been able to if she hadn't looked into Ryan's eyes. “But it wasn't. Why would anyone kill him? He isn't connected to the lab. He can't know anything.”

“He's been making a lot of noise. For all we know, he might have been in on the whole thing from the beginning. Either way, he found it, he had it for several days. He would have studied it. He was a loose end, Miranda, and loose ends get snipped.”

“Like Giovanni.” She moved away from him. She could live with it, she told herself. She had to. “Was there anything in the news about Giovanni?”

“No, but there will be. Get dressed. We're going out.”

Out, she thought, but not to wander the streets, to stroll along the river, to just be. “All right.”

“No arguments?” He raised an eyebrow. “No where, what, why?”

“Not this time.” She stepped into the bedroom and closed the doors.

Thirty minutes later, they were at a phone booth and Ryan was doing something he'd avoided all of his life. He was calling the cops.

He pitched his voice toward the upper scale, used a nervous whisper and colloquial Italian to report a body in the second-floor lab at Standjo. He hung up on the rapid questions. “That should do it. Let's get moving in case the Italian police have caller-ID.”

“Are we going back to the hotel?”

“No.” He swung onto the bike. “We're going to your mother's. You navigate.”

“My mother's?” Her vow not to question was swallowed up in shock. “Why? Are you crazy? I can't take you to my mother's.”

“I figure there won't be a nice linguine and red sauce for lunch, but we'll catch a pizza on the way. That should give it enough time.”

“For what?”

“For the cops to find the body, for her to hear about it. What do you figure she'll do when she does?”

“She'll go straight to the lab.”

“That's what I'm counting on. That should give us a nice window to search her place.”

“We're going to break into my mother's home?”

“Unless she leaves a spare key under the mat. Put this on.” He pulled a ball cap out of the saddlebags. “The neighbors will spot that hair of yours a mile away.”

 

“I don't see the point in this,” Miranda said an hour later, sitting on the bike behind him half a block down from her mother's home. “I can't justify breaking into my mother's home, rummaging through her things.”

“Any paperwork dealing with your tests that was kept at the lab is a loss. There's a chance she might have copies here.”

“Why would she?”

“Because you're her daughter.”

“It wouldn't matter to her.”

But it matters to you, Ryan thought. “Maybe, maybe not. Is that her?”

Miranda looked back at the house, caught herself ducking behind Ryan like a schoolgirl playing hooky. “Yes, I guess you called this part of it.”

“Attractive woman. You don't look much like her.”

“Thank you so much.”

He only chuckled and watched Elizabeth, ruthlessly groomed in a dark suit, unlock her car. “Keeps her cool,” he noted. “You wouldn't know to look at her that she's just been told her business has been broken into, and one of her employees is dead.”

“My mother isn't given to outward displays of emotion.”

“Like I said, you're not much like her. Okay, we'll walk down from here. She won't be back for a couple of hours, but we'll do this in one to keep it simple.”

“There's nothing simple here.” She watched him sling his bag over his shoulder. Oh yes, she decided, her life
would never be the same. She was a criminal now.

He walked right up to the front door and rang the bell. “She have a staff? A dog? A lover?”

“She has a housekeeper, I believe, but not a live-in. She doesn't care for pets.” She tugged the ball cap more securely over her hair. “I don't know anything about her sex life.”

He rang the bell again. There wasn't much more embarrassing to his mind than stepping into what you believed was an empty home to do your job, and discovering the owner was home sick with the flu.

He slipped out his picks and defeated the locks in little more time than if he'd used a key. “Alarm system?”

“I don't know. Probably.”

“Okay, we'll deal with it.” He stepped in, saw the panel on the wall, and the light indicating the system required a code. He had a minute, he concluded, and pulling out a screwdriver, removed the facing, snipped a couple of wires, and put it to rest.

Because the scientist in her couldn't help but admire his quick, economic efficiency, she made her voice bland. “You make me wonder why anyone bothers with this sort of thing. Why not just leave the doors and windows open?”

“My sentiments exactly.” He winked at her, then scanned the foyer. “Nice place. Very appealing art—a bit on the static side but attractive. Where's her office?”

She only stared at him a moment, wondering why she found his casual critique of her mother's taste amusing. She should have been appalled. “Second floor, to the left I think. I haven't spent a great deal of time here.”

“Let's try it.” He climbed up a graceful set of stairs. Place could have done with a bit more color, he thought, a few surprises. Everything was as perfect as a model home and had the same unoccupied feel. It was certainly classy, but he much preferred his own apartment in New York or Miranda's elegantly shabby house in Maine.

He found the office feminine but not fussy, polished but efficient, cool but not quite brittle. He wondered if it reflected the occupant, and thought it likely.

“Safe?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“So, look around,” he suggested, and began to do so by tipping forward the backs of paintings. “Here it is, behind this very nice Renoir print. I'll deal with this, you go through the desk.”

She hesitated. Even as a child she'd known better than to enter any room of her mother's without permission. She would never have strolled in and borrowed earrings or copped a spritz of perfume. And she certainly would never have touched the contents of her mother's desk.

It appeared she was about to make up for lost time.

She shoved aside the conditioning of a lifetime and dived in, with a great deal more enthusiasm than she'd ever admit.

“There are a lot of files here,” she told Ryan while she flipped through. “Most seem to be personal. Insurance, receipts, correspondence.”

“Keep looking.”

She sat in the desk chair—another first—and pawed through another drawer. Excitement was bubbling in her belly now, guilty, shameful excitement.

“Copies of contracts,” she murmured, “and reports. I guess she does some work here. Oh.” Her fingers froze. “The Fiesole Bronze. She has a file.”

“Take it. We'll look through it later.” He listened to the last tumbler click into place. “Now I have you, my little beauty. Very nice, very nice,” he whispered, opening a velvet case and examining a double rope of pearls. “Heirlooms—they'd suit you.”

“Put those back.”

“I'm not stealing them. I don't do jewelry.” But he opened another box and hmmed at the glitter of diamonds. “Very classy earrings, about three carats each, square-cut, looks like Russian whites, probably first water.”

“I thought you didn't do jewelry.”

“Doesn't mean I don't have an interest. These would be killers with your ring.”

“It's not my ring,” she said primly, but her gaze shifted
to the diamond winking on her finger. “It's window dressing.”

“Right. Look at this.” He pulled out a thin plastic holder. “Look familiar?”

“The X rays.” She was away from the desk and grabbing for them in two thumping heartbeats. “The computer printouts. Look, look at them. It's there. You can see it. The corrosion level. Just look. It's there. It's real.”