Chapter 10
“This is delicious.” Ethan finished off the last egg roll. Yes, he’d actually brought over Chinese. Ever since learning the guard’s food was clean, he had been craving fried rice and moo shu pork.
Olivia had been initially reluctant to warm up to the food, but she now ate a veggie egg roll. “I agree. But do you have some weird sense of irony that made you bring over Chinese?”
He shook his head. “I am not a superstitious man.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve had take-out. Thanks.” Her notebook lay splayed open on the table beside her food. “Did you have a chance to write up that list?”
Ah, the list of his father’s works spread throughout the city. He hadn’t forgotten about it. Much as he had tried.
“Coming right up, if you hand me a sheet of paper. Is there any more rice?”
“Sorry, I ate the last of it. I still have some apple tart left over.” She tore out a sheet and set it beside his plate, smartly placing a pen on top of it. “Would you like me to warm a piece for you for dessert? And tea?”
“Tarts and tea?” The woman quickly learned the ways to his heart. “Thank you.”
Ten minutes later, Ethan sipped an after-dinner tea and supped on warm apples and ice cream as he wrote out the title of yet another masterwork his father had forged, which he knew still hung in the Tate Modern museum.
What he was doing was laying out a part of his life—baring himself— to a woman he hardly knew. And yet, he’d had to tell her he knew the destroyed paintings were forgeries painted by his father. Such information could prove integral to the investigation. And when she’d asked for the list, a refusal could have put him in a bad spot.
Perhaps he need only write a dozen or so of them. He remembered most offhand, but the ones in London should satisfy her for now.
Olivia swung around the side of the sofa and pushed a stack of newspapers and books off what he’d thought was the end of the coffee table, but turned out to be another piece of furniture. A rather delightful piece, at that.
“An ottoman?” he asked. “In purple velvet. I had no clue that was even there. May I?” He motioned that he’d like to put up his feet.
“Yes, but take off your shoes.” She bent to grab his shoe and he allowed her to remove the offensive footwear. She placed the brown loafers by the door. “I’m a bit untidy around home, but never with my work. You’ll have to forgive me.”
“Absolutely not. I see no reason for forgiveness when none is necessary.” He stretched his legs across the ottoman. “I’ve a thing for ottomans.”
“Is that so? So do I.” With a secretive smile briefly curling her lips, she sat on the opposite side of the velvet square and opened a file on her lap.
Ethan’s “thing” was that he found ottomans sexy beyond belief, sometimes imagining having sex on one of them. If he told Olivia, would she have admitted the same fantasy? That smile of hers had indicated the possibility.
The wondering would drive him mad. And he was not a man to sit and stew when the answer could be easily obtained.
He leaned forward and tapped the edge of the ottoman. “What’s your thing about this piece?”
She offered him a coy smile over her shoulder. Her lashes fluttered, driving him into a deep fantasy that involved gasps and moans and hot, sweaty flesh…then she shrugged and turned back to the file.
Ethan swallowed. Mercy. The woman had the same thing for ottomans as he did. Now he’d never be able to concentrate on the list. Which was probably for the best.
“How’s the list coming?” she asked.
“Just off the top of my head, I can remember about a dozen works.” He offered her the paper, and she scanned it.
“The portrait of Antonio Palma by Titian?”
“My father was discerning. And he was a fan of Titian’s dark, moody backgrounds.”
“Caravaggio?”
“Cow-eyed and curly-haired men. And Christopher loved painting grapes for reasons beyond my kin.”
She turned and eyed him with as much discernment as his father once had when looking over one of Ethan’s projects. Frankly, he preferred her flirtatious lash flutters.
“Is that why you’re doing what you do now?” she asked. “You have such an appreciation for the forger. I don’t understand why you would want to lock them up.”
Careful, Ethan. Much as he hated lying, avoiding the truth didn’t cause quite as hefty a moral struggle.
“I grew up in a household that centered around art and the recreation of great masterworks. I know everything there is to know about hardening paint, fluorescing resins, using glue to pass the alcohol test, and sizing paper. What other job would fit me?” He splayed his hands in mock innocence.
“You could have become a forger yourself.”
And… He wasn’t going to continue this line of conversation. He picked up the plate and forked in more apple tart.
“Anselm Feuerbach’s self-portrait?” She read from the list. “Now there was a sexy man.”
“Really? You go for the dark and mustachioed?”
“Oh, yes. Had I lived in the nineteenth century, I might have stalked him. Tissot was another looker.”
“Dark hair and mustache again. Hmm… I believe you do have a type. Perhaps you need to update your Date Faces app to reflect your preference for the darker and more rugged features. What other famous painters appeal to you, if I may be so curious?”
“Hmm… Raphael. He didn’t have a mustache, but those big brown eyes. And Gustave Courbet—oh my God, I really do have a type! He’s another dark-haired man with a mustache.”
Ethan stroked his stubble and realized it would only take another week to grow into a half-reasonable mustache. And he did have the dark hair….
“You apply,” she said with a wink. “I mean, you’re very handsome. If a famous painter were to immortalize your image in oils, women all over the world would swoon.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I can see you in a leather riding coat and knee-high boots, with a tricorn pulled low over your eyes. A highwayman perhaps?”
“Stand and deliver?” he offered, surprised at her depiction of him. Though the highwayman was a romantic figure. It tickled him enough that he had to suppress a long and wondering smile at the woman’s assessment.
“So what is the vandal trying to say to you?” Olivia asked, changing the subject.
A bit too quickly. Ethan had wanted her to expound on her fantasy image of him, but she had said it all, hadn’t she? She’d called him attractive. He would take that.
“He’s called out to you with the coffee cup this afternoon,” she reiterated.
“Obviously, that he knows my connection to the forged paintings.”
“Does Interpol know your connection? About your father?”
“They do.”
She nodded. “The fame a forger receives upon revealing his crimes has always baffled me.”
“He is another artist. And his skills can be used to detect what the common detective or police constable cannot. Why not utilize such skills? As well, why not the fame?”
“Let’s not start on this again. We will have to agree to disagree on the merits of forgeries and fakes.”
“Agreed.” Ethan winked. “And disagreed.” He checked his phone, which had just beeped. “They have the security footage from CCTV around the coffee shop. Shall we run in to Scotland Yard and take a look?”
“Let me grab an umbrella.”
Ethan took the dessert plates and set them in the sink while Olivia disappeared into her bedroom. He stared at the ottoman a while, finding his fascination with the large purple square could not be dissuaded. And with Olivia sprawled across it, her lush red hair spilling over a breast, and her legs spread invitingly….
“Let’s take a cab. My legs won’t carry me that far in this rain.”
Oh, those legs.
“I drove here,” he said, absently brushing his knuckles across his stubble. “Parked just around the corner. Let’s be off.”
* * * *
The CCTV tapes clearly showed the face of a man walking down the alley and entering the coffee shop through the open back door, then exiting three minutes later. Enough time to slip in the cup for Ethan’s order.
Ethan could not recall seeing a man behind the counter when they’d been in the shop, but it didn’t matter. They had his image now. He stood about five foot eight, with brown hair and a round face. He wore dark clothing, but a conspicuous Rolex watch. Ethan guessed it was a fake, but the video was too grainy when enlarged. Didn’t matter; the face was what they needed. And they’d managed a side shot of him, which again, was slightly grainy, but forensics might be able to enhance it a bit more. And when matched with what he’d seen on the Tate’s security tapes, he felt positive it was the same man.
“Print me a copy of that,” he said to the video operator. “And have you done a cross-search in the police database?”
“Doing that right now, sir.”
When the printer spit out a copy of the vandal’s face, Olivia took it to study. “He’s young. Perhaps mid-twenties. Egotistical.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The watch and the diamond earring.”
“Could make him a thug.”
“Doubt it. He’s broken into a major gallery and a museum. He’s smart enough to intercept the security, and to call out a man he is obviously aware is investigating this case.”
That fact, stated so bluntly, set Ethan back. Because who could know such a thing about him? The ECU was virtually black ops. Their assets were not vetted, and any search on them would bring up redacted info, if anything. If the vandal were targeting him, then he must have information that tied Ethan to the Elite Crimes Unit.
Or could he have been watching their investigations? Leave the booby- trapped painting, then lurk in the shadows to see how the investigation would unfold? That made more sense. He hadn’t recalled being observed while investigating the gallery incident last week. But then, he hadn’t thought to look around to see if he was. Damn it.
“He’s watching us,” Ethan stated.
“Yes, I was beginning to think the same. How else would he have known to pick you out? Unless you know him? Do you recognize him, Mr. Maxwell?”
Ethan studied the photo, mostly to show he was truly concerned, but it was just a fluke. “If I’ve met this man before, I don’t remember where or when. He’s a stranger.”
“Do you know all your father’s acquaintances?”
“No. But this is not about my father.”
“Why do you say that? It’s his forged works the vandal is targeting.”
“Right, but… No. It’s not about Christopher Maxwell.”
He sensed it; that was the only explanation he had for that curt summation. And that was the only thing he had right now. Not fair to Olivia, but there it was.
“Thank you,” he said to the videographer. “You’ve been a tremendous help.”
“There’s no match,” the cameraman said. “The computers haven’t found anything.”
“Keep looking,” Olivia said. “He could be known for breaking-and- entering, or even petty theft.”
Ethan gave Olivia a cock of head.
“We need to start asking around,” she said. “Starting with the local fences.”
“You think they may have a line into slapdash forgeries? And why would they talk to you, might I ask?”
“Because I used to date one,” she said, strolling out of the video room.
Ethan exchanged surprised glances with the cameraman, then rushed after the woman who had just made herself more mysterious by a factor of ten.
“You dated a criminal?” Ethan asked as he caught up to her. They walked toward the front doors and out to the street, where the rain had slackened to a fine mist.
He took the umbrella from her, opened it, and held it over their heads, taking the brunt of the mist on his shoulders and back.
“I grew up in East London,” Olivia said. “I used to have a thing for bad boys.”
“And now you’re hunting them.”
“Forgers are the cockiest of the bad boys,” she said, walking toward his car. “They crave validation and in the process alter history. At least a fence is straight-up honest about what he does. They’re not loyal to anyone. He works out of an art gallery in Camden, near Regent’s Park. Let’s head there.”
“Now?” Ethan asked, but didn’t need an answer when she got into his car and closed the door behind her. “I guess now.” He folded down the umbrella. “Bad boys, eh? She most definitely needs to try a different dating app.”