Or the New Jersey.
“Because I don’t want a degree in business,” he said helplessly.
“You need to get a degree in something that pays the rent,” she said, pulling hard on her cigarette. He really hated that she smoked, but like so much about his mother, it was something he’d been powerless against. “I’m moving to Florida, Carl. It’s not like you can stay here.”
“But I don’t stay here,” he argued. “I live in off-campus student housing!”
“I don’t give a shit, Carl. You need to do something I can tell your Aunt Bessie about, because this ‘My son’s gonna die a student’ bullshit is not gonna cut it. Do you want me to commit murder in Florida, Carl? Do you want me to? Because I’ll kill that bitch, not to watch her bleed, but to please you because you wouldn’t get a goddamned job to make your mother happy!”
“You’re not gonna kill Aunt Bessie!” he told her.
“Well, you’re gonna kill me,” his mother retorted. They were sitting in the kitchen of the house he’d grown up in, and the yellow tile on the floors may have been cracked and the laminate on the table may have been peeling, but his mother, it seemed, was still as relentless as she’d been when he was a little kid. (“You got into a fight? Are you trying to kill me? Is this any way to repay me for cooking your dinner and buying your clothes?” Oh, he remembered it well.)
“I’m not gonna kill you, Ma,” he said, trying to calm her down.
“If you don’t get a real job for me, could you do it for your sainted father who’s dead, God rest his soul? He wanted you to have a life, Carl. He wanted you to live!”
Augh! There was no arguing with that, because who knew what his father had wanted him to have? His father had been a quiet guy who managed a shoe store until it went out of business and then managed a Walmart until he retired and then spent most of Carl’s recollection reading his newspaper in the middle of the living room, looking up very rarely to grace Carl with an absent smile. But for a guy who had been so very, very absent as Carl had grown up, he was very, very there when it came to throwing his weight in with whatever his mother wanted Carl to do.
In this case, it was apparently drop out of law school and find a real job.
“Fine, Ma. I’ll look for a job in my field,” he said, thinking that no, the only job he could get with a BA in art history was as a master’s candidate so he could get a master’s degree and then go on to get a PhD and teach. Or he could get that law degree and be an art dealer.
So hadn’t he been surprised a few days later to see an ad posted at the student union for insurance investigators. All he needed was a background in art history and a willingness to take the required course in investigation and law enforcement. So easy! Seemed like a no-brainer. And wouldyalookatthat? Most of those courses doubled with his law school prerequisites.
For one of the first times in his life, he realized that his mother had been right. Getting a job was a good idea.
Three years, one short marriage, and one law degree later, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven…
“CARL, YOU’RE leaving for Europe again?”
Mandy Jessup, the secretary in charge of investigator assignments, smiled prettily at him over her desk. Carl had been flirting with her in a desultory fashion over the past few months, and she’d returned the attention. He’d needed the ego boost.
As it turned out, Serpentus Inc. had been more than happy to put Carl through the rest of law school as long as he worked for them for at least five years after he graduated. Once trained in some criminal justice classes with an emphasis on international relations, he’d been their perfect weapon: the polyglottal investigator with a background in international law and a degree in art history. He hadn’t known it when he’d been going through school, but he had the credentials to be James frickin’ Bond!
Sort of.
The fact was, the more he did this job, the more he wasn’t sure he hadn’t sold his soul to the devil at a bargain price.
A good example of that was the case he’d solved the month before.
Yes, it was true the client had stolen their own painting, but they’d done it to pay the insurance company premiums so their other paintings would be insured and they could keep getting a modest income supplement from in-home display. And they’d known they were in trouble. Hell, they’d offered to sell off the painting to pay the premiums, only to be told that there was a hidden clause prohibiting breaking up any part of the collection, and to do so would be to forfeit the entire thing to the bank. They’d offered to cancel their premiums and then sell the collection, only to be told that the collection was protected by their government as a historical find. They’d offered to abdicate the historical albatross that threatened to bankrupt their family, only to be threatened with prosecution and imprisonment.
In truth, a bit of discreet thievery hadn’t been a bad option.
But Carl hadn’t realized that when he’d seen that the security system was such that it could only be breached from the inside. And the look on the family patriarch’s face when he’d asked, kindly, if perhaps one of the grandsons might have done it had… well, it had ripped Carl’s heart out.
Unfortunately, by the time he learned the entire story, the damage had been done. The claims department had been alerted by Interpol, who had been there to assist in the investigation, and the company had impounded the tiny museum, the family livelihood, and three centuries of tradition to hide in their warehouse and hoard like the unscrupulous dragon they were.
As he’d boarded the plane back to America, his Interpol liaison, a very young policeman by the name of Liam Craig, had told him that the patriarch, Signore Marco Bianchi, had suffered a heart attack and been rushed to the hospital, but the prognosis wasn’t good.
Carl had boarded the plane feeling like the angel of death.
When he’d gotten to his small DC apartment, he’d found the divorce papers from his fleeting marriage to a girl he’d met in law school waiting to be signed. She’d been so excited—two lawyers in the family! Mr. and Mrs. Esquire. She hadn’t realized that he’d signed his soul away to Serpentus and he’d be expected to be on a plane three weeks out of every month as he put his knowledge to work.
So given the depression that had begun to set in, flirting with Mandy had proven to be good medicine. She was cute, didn’t know any of his flaws, and knew he traveled. Win/win, right?
Besides, since she knew the score, maybe it would only be flirting on the table—flirting was free and fun, and it didn’t lead to signing a ream of paper and then hearing your mother tell you that your Aunt Bessie always knew you’d take the one good thing in your life and fuck it up.
“So where are you going to this time?” Mandy asked, giving him that adorable side-eye. She had dark curly hair, big brown eyes, and apple cheeks. Everything about her was adorable.
“France, I think,” Carl said through a yawn. His usual nightly scotch had turned into two or three the night before. Part of him was a little worried because that had been happening a lot, but the other part of him was thinking that at least he’d be able to sleep on the plane. “But it’s a weird one. Apparently the museum suddenly had a priceless statue they’d never had before. Set up on display, no less. And since the statue had been insured by us and then had disappeared, they’re wondering what to do with it.”