“I’ll start packing today. And I also need to clean the flat and ride Chaucer.” And get Alaric’s testosterone away from me so I could think straight. “So…”
“In that case, I’ll, er, leave you to it.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
He turned to look over his shoulder as he exited my bedroom. Did he catch me staring at his backside? I sincerely hoped not.
“Any time, Beth. Any time.”
CHAPTER 31 - ALARIC
“WHERE ARE YOU?” Alaric asked, his phone pressed to his ear. Albany House was such a maze of rooms that it was easier to call Emmy than hunt for her.
“Second floor—well, third if you’re being American today—in what was once the DVD library.”
Alaric took the stairs two at a time, trying to remember whether he had to turn left or right when he got to the top. He needed a map. After one mistake which landed him in an empty bedroom, he heard voices from the other side of a door.
“You need to relax.”
“Then stop using me as a fucking pincushion.”
Dare he look? He pushed open the door and found Emmy face down on a massage table with a tiny towel covering her ass and a row of acupuncture needles sticking out of the muscles on either side of her spine. A small Chinese woman glared at him as he approached.
“Bonjour,” Emmy said, her voice muffled since her face was stuffed into a padded hole.
“Bonjour. Ça va?” He asked how she was out of politeness.
“À quoi ça ressemble?”
How did it look? Well, he didn’t envy her.
“Plutôt vous que moi. Pourquoi parle-t-on Français?”
“Parce que Ling ne parle pas Français.”
Ah, they were speaking French because Ling didn’t. Ling, presumably, was the sadist with the needles, and Emmy didn’t want her listening in on the conversation. Since Emmy wouldn’t allow anyone she’d decided not to trust into her house, that must mean that Ling was new and the jury was still out on her loyalty.
“Bad back?” Alaric asked, sticking with French.
“I tweaked it jumping out of that house the other day. Ling’s part of Bradley’s ‘new and improved’ well-being program.”
“It can’t be both new and improved.”
“You know that, I know that…”
“What happened to all the DVDs?”
“Bradley edited the collection, moved half of them to the snug on the next floor, and repurposed the rest as coasters. He took some of those to the office, and there were a few raised eyebrows when Zander flipped one over and found that copy of Horny Hungarian Hookers you got me for a Valentine’s joke. Anyhow, shall we get down to business?”
With Emmy staring at the floor, Alaric had the opportunity to take a good look at his ex. The Hungarian hookers hadn’t been a patch on her. Still weren’t. Emmy had been fit before, muscular and athletic, but she’d bulked up just a little more. Every part of her was sculpted, and either she’d been somewhere hotter than England or Bradley’s program included spray-tanning. Alaric suspected the latter. Emmy never had time to sunbathe.
Was that scar on her arm new? Yes. She always got the bigger ones smoothed out, so either she considered the mark too small to bother about or she hadn’t gotten around to visiting her surgeon yet. Emmy had always cited vanity for the retouches, but Alaric knew that wasn’t it. She just didn’t like to let on that she might have chinks in her armour.
“Business…yes. Stéphane Hegler. Do you want to go first or shall I?”
“I might as well. Mack’s had a dig around, and—”
Emmy didn’t get a chance to finish before Ling interrupted.
“You tense.” She pointed at a second massage table, the twin of Emmy’s. “Lie down.”
Alaric held up his hands. “No, I’m fine. Really.”
“You hunch shoulders. Shirt off.”
Emmy started cackling. “It’s pointless arguing. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“How about I come back later?”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
“Tell me Black isn’t here? Because if he walks in and finds me half-naked…”
“Relax, he’s still in Belize. I half expected him to come steaming back, but common sense seems to have prevailed for once.”
Before, the man had half-heartedly attempted to keep his jealousy under wraps, but now that he and Emmy were an item, he didn’t bother to hide it. Black staked his claim at every possible opportunity, even though there was no need. Now that the pair of them no longer had an open marriage, Alaric wouldn’t touch her.
Ling was standing with her arms folded, waiting, and Alaric sighed and peeled off his sweater. Emmy turned her head to look at him, resting it sideways on her folded arms.
“Don’t be fooled by Ling’s size. She’s vicious with those thumbs.” Now she told him. “She got her hands on Black once, and the next time Bradley scheduled him a session, he suddenly remembered he had to do an Iron Man and flew to Hawaii.”
“Why haven’t you tied concrete blocks to her feet and dropped her into the Thames?”
“Because she’s also good. You’ll feel like magic tomorrow. Now, where were we? Hegler. Mack’s been digging, and we’ve got three possibles. Lucky it was an unusual name. One’s an art dealer working out of the free port in Geneva. The second is an aide to Senator Carnes. Well, ex-Senator seeing as he resigned two months ago. And the third’s a fund manager in New York. I’m thinking the free-port guy’s the best possibility. Those places are stuffed full of stolen loot.”
Ordinarily, Alaric would’ve agreed with her. A free port, one of those fortresses that sprang up around seaports and airports to facilitate the sale and storage of goods without hefty tax penalties, would be the perfect place to hide Red After Dark. But not this time.
Alaric winced as Ling dug in. “It’s Carnes.”
“How do you know?”
There was no accusation that he might be wrong, just curiosity.
“Two reasons. First, I have the log showing every private jet that took off from Heathrow last Wednesday.”
“Nice. Mack’s still trying to get hold of that.”
“You can tell her to stop. Naz had a backdoor.”
“Noted. So, who was on the list?”
“Doug Jenks. Multimillionaire philanthropist and long-time friend of Carnes.”
“That could be a coincidence. Doesn’t he have business interests over here?”
“Yes, and if it had been Emerald we were hunting, I’d say the same thing. But it’s not. It’s Red After Dark. Remember that anonymous quarter-million-dollar reward a kind-hearted donor offered for the painting’s return?”
“Shit. Carnes?”
The Becker Museum had offered fifty thousand bucks per stolen piece, but then Carnes came along and blew their bounty out of the water. Said he’d seen the painting once and it spoke to him.
“Got it in one. And the museum director told me Carnes had asked to buy Red on several occasions, but they always turned him down.”
“Reckon he was involved in the original theft? That he was just covering his tracks with the reward?”