Forger of Light Read online

  Forger of Light

  A Celine Skye Psychic Mystery

  Nupur Tustin

  Foiled Plots Press

  Forger of Light

  A Celine Skye Psychic Mystery

  Foiled Plots Press

  Copyright © 2021 Nupur Tustin

  Cover Design by Crowe Covers / crowecovers.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Foiled Plots Press

  ISBN 978-0-9982430-8-5

  e-book formatting by bookow.com

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I've relied on a number of experts to get it right. Many thanks to: Lisa Caprino and Melinda McCurdy, Huntington Library; Jeffrey Holman, MFA; Manon van der Mullen and Erik Hinterding, Rijksmuseum; Gloria Williams, Norton Simon Museum; and art historian Gary Schwartz.

  For police procedure, I'd like to thank Adam Richardson and his Writer's Detective Bureau as well as the ever helpful members of his Facebook group.

  Many thanks also to my author friends, Grace Topping, Jane Gorman, and CJ Peterson.

  Finally, thanks also to my three adorable musketeers for being good while Mom wrote! And to my husband, Matt, for keeping them out of my hair when they weren't!

  ALSO BY NUPUR TUSTIN

  JOSEPH HAYDN MYSTERIES

  A Minor Deception

  Aria to Death

  Prussian Counterpoint

  CELINE SKYE PSYCHIC MYSTERIES

  Visions of Murder: Prequel

  Master of Illusion

  Forger of Death

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Murder in Vienna: A FREE Joseph Haydn Mystery

  Murder in the Sun: A FREE Women Sleuths Mystery

  The Baker’s Boy: A Young Haydn Mystery

  In Day of the Dark, Edited by Kaye George

  The Christmas Stalker

  In Shhh. . .Murder!, Edited by Andrew MacRae

  FREE Mysteries Available from NTUSTIN.COM

  Table of Contents

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  About the Author

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  The image looked instantly familiar.

  “Where did you get this?” Anthony Reynolds struggled to keep his voice calm.

  He carefully set the work on his coffee table and regarded the expensively outfitted man seated across from him.

  He was a client of long standing; a man Reynolds quite liked. An accountant with a taste for art. A bit of a fusspot.

  “Got it from a client.” Fussy Phil shrugged off the question, his insouciant response suggesting a disturbing lack of awareness of the image’s dark history.

  “Did he tell you where he got it from?”

  “From some dealer or other. Look, what does it matter? Will you do what I want or not?”

  His client sat at the very edge of his armchair now, an uncharacteristic edginess replacing his usual placid manner. The divorce—and its inevitability—were beginning to get to him.

  Reynolds felt sorry for the guy. He himself had no illusions about women. But Fussy Phil had been happily married—or so the poor sap had believed, erroneously as it turned out—for years.

  “Yes, but . . .” Reynolds stared at the work on his coffee table. “You’ve checked out the provenance, I assume?”

  “Why? You think it’s fake?” His client stared suspiciously at him.

  “No.” Reynolds felt a dull thud in the pit of his stomach. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

  Unless he was mistaken, it was much worse than that.

  “All right, then.” His client rubbed his hands together. “Good.”

  Reynolds wasn’t so sure it was. But he hesitated to share his suspicions. The man was just beginning to come to grips with the news that his ex would be taking him to the cleaners. Now to find out that the money spent on this work—God alone knew how much he’d shelled out for it—had in essence been flushed down the drain. It was a cruel blow.

  “Listen.” Fussy rose, indicating the meeting had come to an end. “This thing’s valuable. I don’t want my wife getting her gold-digging claws on it.”—Reynolds noted Fussy still couldn’t bring himself to refer to her as his ex—“Bad enough I’ll have to sell most of my collection to satisfy the bitch’s demands. I don’t need her accountants finding out about this little gem. I can’t let it go.”

  “Understood.” Reynolds stood up too. “I’ll figure something out.” He waited a fraction of a beat, then said: “But it might take me a while. I have several new commissions,
new clients, an exhibition.”

  And he wanted to assure himself that the work wasn’t what he suspected it was.

  “No problem.” Fussy pulled out a thick envelope from his jacket pocket—the initial deposit for the commission—and handed it to Reynolds. “Take your time. It’s safe here with you. And listen”—he tipped his chin at the money—“keep this off the books, will you?”

  “Yup.” Reynolds took the money, saw his client out, and returned to his living room.

  The piece stared up at him, drawing out the misgivings he’d squelched for his client’s sake.

  If he was right, it was an old master. One that had been made famous—or infamous—by the most outrageous art heist in the history of such thefts. Stolen, along with twelve other works, right here in Boston from the Gardner Museum.

  The sculptor sat at his desk and pulled his laptop toward himself. He double-clicked on the Chrome icon. It didn’t take him long to access the page he wanted. The URL came up seconds after he typed the first few letters into the address bar.

  When the Gardner Museum page devoted to the theft downloaded, he scrolled through its gallery of stolen works until he came to what he was looking for.

  He enlarged the digital image and zoomed in. He could detect no discernible difference between it and the piece on his coffee table. There were the same velvety strokes, the same subtle gradations in tonality that he’d admired in the work his client had left behind.

  He reached for the thick leather-bound book on the shelf above his desk and thumbed through its pages.

  Thomas Wilson’s Descriptive Catalogue was quite clear on the subject. There were only two known copies of this work. The Museum of Fine Arts had one—he opened up a second tab to confirm this. The Gardner had the other.

  And, as if to drive the last nail into the coffin of truth, the Gardner website described the work as being extremely rare.

  He’d gotten it from a client, Fussy had said.

  If the image was stolen, there was just one person he could’ve gotten it from. And if that were the case, the work was neither a gift nor a legitimate purchase. Fussy was merely its custodian, tasked with keeping it safe from the prying eyes of law enforcement.

  That meant, too, that this commission—Reynolds felt the thick wad of cash his client had handed him instead of the usual check—was actually a commission from . . .

  A sickening sensation of dread arose within him. He thought he’d put all that behind him—the associations with criminals; his dealings with the men who’d masterminded the Gardner Museum heist.

  But every time he managed to get away, he was dragged back again. Back into the murky depths of crime. He had no intentions of drowning there, though.

  A yellow popup glided up on his laptop screen. Bolded text urged him to call the number listed for more details.

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he reached for the holster clipped to his belt and yanked his phone out of it.

  Chapter One

  Paso Robles, CA. July 2019.

  “Where are you, Celine?”

  Julia Hood’s voice filtered through the swirling yellow-gray mist. The former fed’s husky cadence was so soft, Celine Skye could barely hear it.

  She strained her ears. But the words eluded her, fading into tenuous vibrations of sound.

  Too far . . . so soft . . .

  Celine’s mind sank back—unresisting—into the pillowy clouds of sleep surrounding her.

  “Celine?” Julia’s voice, louder and sharper, pierced the heavy stupor that had fallen over her.

  “I hear you,” Celine responded. Her mind was alert now, eyes trained on the mist, waiting for the wisps of yellow-beige and gray to completely dissipate.

  A building emerged. Large, square. Celine counted the windows—long rectangles of glass. Four stories. Then a tiled roof.

  “I’m in front of the Gardner.”Standing before it, shivering, even though her body was ensconced in an armchair in the Delft Coffee & Wine Bar.

  “Where exactly?” Julia’s voice came through crisp and clear.

  They were sitting—the four of them—in the space concealed behind the wall panel that had once been her departed employer Dirck Thin’s sanctum.

  Through the depths of her trance, Celine could hear the sounds they made. The rhythmic tapping of Julia’s pencil against the small notepad on her lap; Annabelle Curtis’s soft breathing; and the rustle of denim against upholstery as Jonah Hibbert restlessly shifted position yet again.

  Celine smiled, amused and exasperated at the same time. Jonah, a rookie journalist and wannabe author, just could not sit still. She wished she hadn’t agreed to his presence at this session.

  Jonah had insisted upon it, however. “It’s good research for my book, Celine. People will want to know more about your psychic visions; how you do it. I need firsthand information. Look, I’ll be so quiet, you won’t even know I’m there.”

  But she did know. And he was distracting her.

  Annabelle, Dirck’s sister, shushed Jonah and gently chided Celine.

  “Concentrate, Celine. Focus on Julia’s voice; turn your mind inward. Where are you?”

  Celine felt the cotton fabric of her armchair chafing the skin behind her knees. Deliberately, she turned her mind away from the sensation toward the scene unfolding before her mind’s eye.

  The cold early hours of dawn. The building before her. March 18, 1990. St. Patrick’s Day. Where exactly was she?

  She turned her head, shivering as the wind whipped around her neck, whistling and crackling through the branches of the trees above her. The building was shrouded in darkness, but a lighter gray, box-like structure—the portico to the entrance—projected out from it, centered between the rows of windows on the first floor.

  “Fenway. I’m at the front entrance of the Gardner.”

  “The front entrance of the Gardner Museum?” Jonah’s voice rose, heavy with skepticism. “On Fenway?”

  “She’s right. It used to be on Fenway, Jonah,” Julia responded sharply. “Could you please stop interrupting? You’ll bring her out of the trance if you keep this up.”

  “I’m walking around to Palace Road,” Celine said. It was the routine they usually followed. She’d emerge from the mist at the front entrance of the Gardner Museum in Boston, Julia oriented her and then guided her toward the side entrance—the one the thieves had used to enter the museum.

  This time, however, Celine didn’t wait for Julia’s voice instructing her to move to Palace Road.

  “The hatchback’s still there, parked in front of the employee’s entrance.” The car that thieves George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio had driven to the Gardner Museum that awful March day in 1990.

  A drunken couple—huddling close to each other, smooching—zigzagged past Celine. She winced, turning her face away from the stench of beer and their energy clashing into her aura as they brushed by her.

  A sudden gust of wind made her shiver again.

  “Get the blanket, Jonah,” Annabelle softly ordered. “She’s cold.”

  “No, it’s all right,” Celine said. “I need to feel this.”

  Maybe—just maybe—a few more details would emerge this time. She doubted it.

  Relax, Celine. You know more than you think. But her guardian angel’s whispered words, meant to reassure her, only served to increase her frustration.

  It had been months since Celine had helped Julia Hood, a retired FBI agent, recover the Gardner’s Vermeer and its eagle finial. Months since Celine had pored over Julia’s files with no further leads in sight.

  No, Sister Mary Catherine was wrong. Celine didn’t know more than she thought.

  And the pressure just kept mounting. Penny Hoskins’ anxious calls: “Any new insights, Celine? The Gardner would just love to recover the rest of its stolen treasure. And you, my dear, are our only hope.”

  But worse than the museum director’s breathlessly expressed hopes were the insidious comments of the journalists.


  “How can you be so sure, Ms. Skye, that Dirck Thins and John Mechelen didn’t spirit away all the stolen art to California? After all, two of the stolen works were found in your winery.”

  Anger surged through her and her eyes flew open.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I need a break.”

  Julia, a short, heavyset woman with her gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, and Annabelle, taller and slender with curly hair framing her face, exchanged a worried glance.

  “I don’t know much about these things,” Annabelle said. “But I don’t think you can force it.”

  “Fine, we’ll take a break.” Julia glanced over at Jonah Hibbert’s tall, ungainly form sprawled upon the couch next to her.

  “But when we get back, let’s get him out of here. He’s a distraction.”

  Jonah sat up; his wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose. “I’m not going anywhere.” With a firm forefinger, he pushed his glasses back up and jerked his chin at Celine. “We have an agreement. I get a seat on this train—in return for—”

  “Not giving into rampant speculation.” Julia snorted. “Some agreement.”

  But after the FBI had made an utter fool of itself—Julia’s words, not Celine’s—some kind of damage control had been called for. The bureau had felt this Faustian deal—Julia’s words again—was the only way to contain the media. In particular, the prestigious arts section of Jonah’s newspaper, The Boston Gazette.

  And Blake Markham, the member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team who was most directly involved with investigating the theft, had agreed.

  Chapter Two

  FBI. Boston Field Office, 10 a.m.

  Special Agent Blake Markham took a sip of his coffee and glanced at the newspapers his personal assistant had left for him to peruse.

  Jonah Hibbert is a jackass, he thought, grimacing at the size of the stack.

  Blake was an FBI agent, a member of its Art Crime Unit.

  And this was how his mornings began—with a review, not of case files, but of Boston’s major newspapers. The arts section of each outlet, to be precise.

  It should’ve been a job for Ella Rawlins, his assistant, or some lowly intern. But Special Agent-in-Charge James Patrick Walsh had insisted that Blake personally scour the newspapers to staunch any further embarrassing leaks of information.