Take Me for a Ride (3 page)

Luc either cut himself by shaving too closely or left longish stubble here and there. He was meticulous when it came to the restoration of paintings, but not so fussy when it came to his own personal grooming. He was the sort of man who’d spend ten minutes looking for his glasses when they were perched on top of his head—abstracted in a sort of benign, mad-scientist way.

“Hi, Luc. Who was that Mafioso-looking guy in there?”

“Eh? Ah, hello, Natalie. Nobody important. Just a man with a repair.”

A man who makes you laugh like a nervous donkey
. But she didn’t say it aloud.

“What do you have there?” He squinted at her homely sandwich.

“Two pieces of low-carb toast with duck sauce.”

He looked revolted.

“I’m hungry, and the food bandit stole my oatmeal-raisin cookies.” She knew her voice sounded plaintive, the closest thing to a whine she’d allow, but honestly . . . did she have to get a safe just for lunch and bolt it to the floor of her office?

“Ah, ze food bandit.” He looked furtively at her bread bag. “Why do you not lock the cookies in your desk drawer?”

“I don’t have a desk, remember?” Natalie said, carefully removing the edge from her voice. “You haven’t authorized the expenditure.”

Luc looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Yes, yes,” he said, patting her arm. “Next month, perhaps. When revenues rise.”

He’d been saying the same thing every couple of months for the past year, even though revenues had risen enough for him to buy a new Mercedes and garage it in the city. And revenues had risen enough for him to park a rock the size of a robin’s egg on the fourth finger of his Russian lingerie-model fiancée’s hand. Nat was quite sure he’d find a way to write that off as a business expense, too.

Meanwhile, she was stuck doing restoration work on the top floor at a “desk” that consisted of two white melamine shelves laid over a pair of old sawhorses.

So for Luc to have eyeballed her bread bag so oddly got her ire up. Could Luc be the . . . ? No, surely not. Luc
owned
the place. He could afford to buy great gourmet food. He wouldn’t stoop to swiping his employees’ snacks, would he?

Natalie told herself she was being silly. And paranoid. After all, Luc took Giraffe—her real name was Giselle, but Nat thought of her as Giraffe—out to a late dinner on the town three to four times a week. She knew this because all the employees had overheard him recently as he complained bitterly about paying $200 for the future Mme. Ricard to eat a stalk of asparagus and three peas, however sumptuously steamed by a five-star chef of Cordon Bleu fame.

Natalie frowned. That, too, was out of character for Luc. He never used to complain. He had always just floated around beatifically on his own foggy planet . . . until Giraffe had galloped into his life—bony butt, cloven hooves, and all.

Nat sipped at her tea and told herself to try to be a nicer person. But it was hard, what with the nasty weather and the duck-sauce sandwich. She tossed the rest of it into the trash, grabbed her mug, and left Luc gazing fixedly into space with the green fuzz ball still stuck under his chin. Really, Giraffe should buy him a new sweater without holes in it instead of eating peas at $50 per . . . but it wasn’t Natalie’s business, now, was it?

She wandered back toward the staircase and had set her foot on the bottom step when she saw a flash out of the corner of her eye. She turned toward Selia’s desk. Her coworker was holding a necklace up to the light—and what a necklace.

She wasn’t a jewelry expert by any means, but the piece had to be crafted of at least twenty-two-karat gold, and it was almost more sculpture than necklace. Natalie approached Selia’s desk, opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again.

A solid gold dragon with claws, scales, long tail, and fangs turned its head to breathe fire at a knight in full battle regalia on a rearing horse. Unfortunately for the dragon, the knight’s spear penetrated its gaping, toothy maw. Bad day for the dragon.

“St. George,” Selia said.

Natalie nodded, every hair on the back of her neck standing at attention. How many times had she heard Nonnie, her grandmother, speak of a necklace like this one? A necklace confiscated by Nazi officers when her great-grandparents fled Russia during World War II. One that they’d never seen again.

What were the odds of it surfacing right here, at Natalie’s workplace? Astronomical. But what if . . . ?

How many necklaces like this one could there be?

St. George slaying the dragon was a popular subject for painters and sculptors—Raphael, Uccello, and Do natello had all depicted the legend. But for jewelers, no.

Natalie worked some moisture into her dry mouth. “How old is it?”

Selia drew her sparse, salt-and-pepper brows together and traced the knight’s outline with her gloved finger. “Mid-eighteenth century, I’d say. Russian.”

A hard pulse kicked up in Natalie’s ears. “Why Russian? St. George is the patron saint of England, isn’t he?”

Selia removed her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. “St. George has been everyone’s patron saint, it seems. Yes, England claims him—and specifically the Scouting movement, which I believe is the origin of our own Boy Scouts here in America. But so do many other sects and countries. The legend is so old that its origins are obscure.

“It may have started with the Greek myth of Perseus, who rescued the maiden Andromeda from a sea monster. But eventually it’s come to represent the triumph of Christianity over paganism and even the triumph in general of good over evil.” Selia settled her glasses back onto her nose and pushed them as high as they’d go. “Why do I think this piece is Russian? Well, because it’s similar to the image on the state emblem of the Russian Empire, which has evolved over many years to become the seal of Moscow.”

Natalie nodded and tried to slow her pulse. Was this her family’s heirloom necklace? It was an incredible long shot, but if it was, she didn’t kid herself that it would be easy to prove that it had been stolen and should rightfully be restored to her grandmother.

The legal issues were torturous. One had to prove the onetime ownership, then the theft, and finally trace the piece through a possible maze of owners since the theft had occurred. Often the process crossed international boundaries, muddying the legal waters even further, because different countries had different precedents and burdens of proof. Then there was the question of whether the current owner had purchased the item with the knowledge that it was “hot.”

Natalie knew she should just walk away from Selia’s desk and forget she’d ever seen the St. George necklace. But she stood rooted to the spot. “So why is the necklace here? Is it broken?”

“The clasp needs repairs and the whole thing needs to be cleaned,” Selia told her.

Nat wanted to hold it in her hands, but Selia’s tone directed her to go away. She never had been chatty. So Nat took her tea and went back upstairs, deep in thought.

The only person who could tell her for sure whether that St. George necklace was
the
St. George necklace was Nonnie, who lived in suburban Connecticut. And her chances of getting Nonnie onto a train and into the city were about the same as those of a gnat surviving a swim across New York Harbor.

Still, she had to try. Out of breath by the time she got to her third-floor office, Natalie located her cell phone in the depths of her knockoff Prada messenger bag and hit the speed dial for her grandmother’s number.

Reif’s was getting crowded, and Natalie’s voice could no longer compete with the music, the buzz of thirty other conversations, and the bustle behind the bar.

McDougal leaned into her space, propping his chin on a loosely clasped fist. Natalie blinked at his close proximity, and her cheeks pinkened a bit, but she didn’t move away.

The lady appeared to enjoy his company. He figured it wouldn’t be long before he could have her horizontal.

As soon as he had the thought, though, something disturbing—like guilt—rapped him on the knuckles.

Leave her alone. You’re getting the information you need.
It was clearly just a matter of tracking down Granny now.

Eric took a swig of his Guinness. “So you got your grandmother to come into the city to look at the necklace,” he prompted.

Natalie shook her head. “No. She’s housebound these days. I’m afraid she’s becoming agoraphobic. She won’t even go to the grocery store anymore—she pays a kid to deliver stuff. I had to take the necklace to her in Connecticut.”

“Why not just a snapshot of it?”

Natalie wrapped both hands around her whiskey glass. “Because Nonnie’s now legally blind.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Fan-frickin’-tastic, McDougal. You’re going to mug a
blind
little old lady. Aren’t you just the hero?

“She deals with it pretty well. But anyway, in order to tell anything about the necklace, she had to be able to touch it. She knew the weight and the contours from handling it as a child.”

“You’re telling me that she identified it by feel alone?”

Natalie nodded. “And then,” she said somewhat bitterly, “she started to cry for joy and wouldn’t give it back, even when I told her how much trouble I’ll be in. I’m going to get fired if I tell my boss.
Fired
. But she says that’s insignificant in comparison with having our heritage returned to us.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You have to understand—my grandmother actually prays to St. George. She has a shrine to him in her home. She communicates with . . . ah . . . dead family members through him.”

His lips twitched; he couldn’t help it.

“Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it’s something to do with the Order of St. George, a centuries-old military organization that my ancestors were a big part of . . . Anyway, this necklace has an almost mystical, religious significance to Nonnie.”

Under McDougal’s gaze, Natalie swayed on the stool and put her hand on the bar to steady herself. He should have been gratified—wasn’t this exactly what he’d wanted? But instead, he scanned the male faces in Reif’s and found too many that looked predatory. Even if he himself did the right thing and walked away from her, the sharks would circle.

Damn it. He’d have to keep her talking until she sobered up. “Surely you can talk some sense into your grandmother? Or failing that, wait until she’s asleep and then just take back the necklace.”

“I tried that. She hid it! And now she says I have to take her to Russia, and until I show up with the plane tickets she won’t open the door to me.”

“Russia?”

“The necklace is the key to claiming something. I don’t know. I’m really wondering if she’s gone bonkers.”

“Does your boss know that the necklace is missing?” McDougal already knew the answer to that, since the man had reported the loss to his insurance company, which had promptly hired his company, ARTemis, to hunt down the necklace. Since it had once belonged to a stout, bloodthirsty, German-born empress who’d helped to off her own husband, it was worth a cool two million. That meant a $200,000 commission for him, earmarked for the down payment on a Bertram 540 luxury sport-fishing yacht.

Natalie nodded. “He knows.”

“Is he a reasonable guy? Is there any way that you can go to him and tell him the story? Maybe
he
can reason with your grandmother?”

“You don’t understand.” Natalie repeated her habit of moving her now-empty glass in circles on the bar, which prompted the bartender to ask whether she wanted another.

McDougal opened his mouth to say no.

Natalie said, “Yes, please.”

The bartender brought her another Jameson’s on the rocks.

Hoo boy.
“What’s there to understand?” Eric asked. “Tell Grandma that if she doesn’t fork over the necklace, your boss will go to the cops, you’ll be charged with grand larceny, and she’ll be charged with receiving stolen property.”

Natalie leaned forward to pick up the glass and unwittingly flashed him some very inviting cleavage.

He was only human. He looked and enjoyed.

“What you don’t get,” she said slowly, “is that I don’t think my boss
can
go to the cops. He’s scared out of his mind. The people who brought him the necklace—well, I have a feeling that they’re not such nice people.And I think they might not have come by the necklace honestly.”

She took a large gulp of whiskey. “I can’t take the risk of them hurting Nonnie.”

Oh, Christ. What had this girl gotten herself into? McDougal found himself feeling sorry for her, of all things. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Listen, Natalie. If these people are that dangerous, then the only way to protect her—and yourself—is to get that necklace back so you can wash your hands of it. And then you may want to look for another job anyway. Because if your boss is doing business with smugglers or thieves, I can pretty much guarantee you that things are going to end badly for him . . . and you don’t want to be around for the particulars.”

She met his gaze seriously, even as she swayed again on the stool. He put his hand on her arm to steady her.

“I know,” she said a little woozily. She upended her glass.

Then she said, “I’m scared.”

Every art recovery agent who worked for ARTemis, Inc., had excellent instincts and situational antennae, so to speak. Now that he had more information, McDougal’s were on high alert, but he didn’t want to add to her anxiety.

She tossed back the rest of the whiskey in her glass and tried to catch the bartender’s eye.

“Natalie,” McDougal said. “No offense, sweetheart, but I think you’ve had enough.”

She opened her mouth to deny it but was evidently too honest. She frowned.