Forger of Light Page 2

  All thanks to the ill-advised article Hibbert had published—with the single push of a button on his laptop—four months ago in the arts section of the online Boston Gazette.

  Clueless FBI Calls in Psychic to Recover Gardner Art.

  An unconfirmed piece of news based on an anonymous press release faxed to Hibbert’s credulous desk. The idiot hadn’t bothered to call either the Gardner Museum or the FBI for verification of the news or any comment on it.

  Apparently the FBI, with exactly zero leads to go upon, had gone running to a psychic for clues!

  What exactly did they teach in Journalism school these days—anything?

  “But the news release,” Hibbert had whined when tasked on his dereliction of journalistic ethics. “Why would I call the Gardner when they faxed the news over?”

  He’d jabbed at the sheet of paper. In his defense, it had looked like it had come from the Gardner Museum.

  But that was no excuse. Hibbert should’ve known better. Should’ve called the FBI for comment. But, of course, he hadn’t.

  And as it happened, the Gardner had sent no such fax. “Don’t be ridiculous, Blake!” Penny Hoskins, the Director of the museum, had retorted when he’d asked her about it.

  Nevertheless, Hibbert had run with that bit faux news, even questioning the FBI’s existence based on it. If psychics could successfully investigate and solve crime, were law enforcement agencies absolutely necessary?

  No, Hibbert had answered his question. Law enforcement was simply “a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars!”

  A sound bite that every television station had gleefully run with.

  But being anti-law enforcement didn’t mean the journalists were pro-psychic. Celine and her powers had also come under fire. Was it really her visions—or more likely, access to the stolen stash—that had resulted in her recovery of two of the Gardner’s stolen works?

  The insinuations were so pervasive, they’d forced the FBI—SAC James Patrick Walsh, to be precise—to launch a raid that was a spectacular bust.

  Not only had it yielded zilch, it had also, at the end of the day, proven Hibbert’s point.

  The FBI was clueless!

  Blake shook his head and scowled at the newspapers. Jonah F-in’ Hibbert! What an unrepentant dipshit that guy was.

  SAC Walsh had for once done something useful—ensured the failed raid didn’t receive too much media attention. In exchange, he’d struck a bargain with Hibbert’s paper.

  A deal that would’ve meant allowing Hibbert to tag along with Blake as he worked the Gardner case.

  Blake had reluctantly agreed, mentally preparing to endure the insufferable Hibbert, when he’d caught a profoundly lucky break. It wasn’t Blake the bozo wanted to follow. It was Celine. Apparently the smug, self-satisfied prick had become an overnight believer in psychic phenomena and was now more interested in covering Celine’s psychic methods.

  Thank heavens for small mercies!

  With a barely suppressed shudder at what might have been, Blake pulled the newspapers toward himself. What piece of garbage was he going to unearth today? What idiotic notion that could hobble an investigation?

  He’d just started scanning The Massachusetts Post when his phone rang.

  Penny Hoskins.

  Somehow Blake didn’t think this was going to be good.

  “Blake, what is the meaning of this?” The Director of the Gardner Museum began without preamble.

  Blake pulled the phone away from his ear. Penny’s voice—breathy and high-pitched—tended to get unpleasantly shrill when she was agitated.

  “I’m looking into it, Penny,” he replied calmly. He had no idea what she was talking about, but to admit it would have enraged her even further.

  Now, how in the hell was he going to elicit further details from her?

  “I’ve been fielding calls from reporters all morning, Blake. This has simply got to stop!”

  Fielding calls? From reporters?

  Jesus Christ, that meant another f-in’ leak!

  “I know. It’s simply outrageous.” He turned to his laptop, called up Google and began typing rapidly into its search bar. “I’m as appalled as you are.”

  “The reputation of the Gardner Museum is being called into question, Blake. It’s worse than outrageous.” Penny seemed almost in tears now.

  God! What had that idiot Jonah published now?

  His search results had by now populated the screen; Blake clicked on the topmost link. The Arts Gazette, the pompously named arts section of the Boston Gazette. It was an online-only newspaper; there was no print copy to peruse on his desk.

  Even so, it carried considerable weight in the art world—at least in New England. If you saw it in the Arts Gazette, it had to be true. That’s why Hibbert’s article had been so reprehensible.

  But a quick scan of the homepage and sidebar yielded . . . nothing.

  Nothing?

  “There’s . . . nothing in the Arts Gazette, Penny,” he stammered.

  “I don’t care, Blake. It’s in every other paper. And if people think there’s even a grain of truth in that foul accusation, we could—” Penny broke off.

  She didn’t have to spell it out for Blake. Any suspicion of scandal, and the Gardner could lose its collection. As stipulated by the eccentric Isabella Stewart Gardner in her will. Any replacements of the art she’d assiduously collected, the slightest change to the way she’d arranged it, or the merest hint of disrepute, would result in her art being entrusted into the care of Harvard University.

  It was a blow from which the Gardner would never recover.

  The reason for the clause eluded even Gardner insiders. A way for Mrs. Jack to assert control over her beloved museum in death as much as in life, maybe?

  To Blake it made about as much sense as cutting your nose off to spite your own face. But that didn’t change the issue. He could see why Penny was near hysterical over the situation—whatever it was.

  “The FBI needs to put a stop to this, Blake,” she continued a minute later, her voice hard. “It really does.”

  Chapter Three

  “Some deal this is turning out to be,” Jonah muttered under his breath as he tucked his notebook into his shirt pocket. “She’s given us nothing we don’t already know.”

  Celine flinched. She realized Jonah probably hadn’t meant for her to hear his complaint. But, nevertheless, she’d heard. And the words were like a hard, stinging slap across her face.

  “I’m sorry, Jonah,” she said quietly. “I’m as frus—”

  “Oh, don’t apologize to him.” Julia’s eyes blazed. She shot up, a sturdy forefinger pointing to the door. “Why don’t you just get the hell outta here, Jonah Hibbert?” She thrust her finger at his chest. “You should’ve lost your job for that hit piece you published.”

  Jonah stumbled back against the onslaught of her fury; Annabelle looked on aghast. But Julia wasn’t done.

  “Frankly, you should’ve been prosecuted. You compromised an ongoing investigation with your idiotic insinuations. Instead, you get a front seat at the table because—”

  Celine could stand it no longer. “That’s enough, Julia. Leave him alone.”

  Wave upon wave of Jonah’s confused emotions—frustration mingling with desperation—crashed upon her psyche.

  “You’re worried about your mother, aren’t you?” She turned to him.

  “What do you think?” he snapped. “It’s always at the back of my mind—the treatments she needs, the constant care.”

  And the money he could ill-afford to spend on a reporter’s salary. Celine understood his fears all too well.

  The reporter was an irritant—she would’ve been the last to deny that. But his devotion to his mother—confined to a nursing home, a victim to Alzheimer’s—had elicited Celine’s sympathy from the start—and Annabelle’s maternal instincts.

  Jonah’s glasses misted over. “And there’s no one to shoulder the burden.”

  “Oh, Jonah!” A
nnabelle put her arm around the young man’s shoulders. Although she’d never mentioned it, Celine was aware that Annabelle worried about becoming a burden on her only son as she aged.

  In Jonah, Annabelle saw her son, Bryan, and despite his flaws, he’d earned a place in Annabelle’s heart.

  Julia snorted. “Oh, good grief! You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

  Celine ignored the former fed. Julia was single, childless, and she hadn’t had a particularly loving relationship with her mother. That coupled with a lifetime in law enforcement had given her a cynical attitude that very little could shake off.

  Celine concentrated on Jonah instead.

  “You may think there’s no one to shoulder the burden, Jonah. But there is. Your mother will be taken care of. You have to believe.”

  “In what? Whom?” He rolled his eyes upward. “A God that doesn’t exist?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Although what she had meant, Celine didn’t know. She’d simply conveyed the message Sister Mary Catherine had passed on to her.

  He’s on the wrong path, the nun said. This impatience will get him nowhere.

  “You have to be patient, Jonah,” Celine said, but the reporter was in no mood to listen.

  He surveyed his opulent surroundings. “Yeah, says the woman who, lucky for her, inherited a lucrative business. Wish I had it like that.”

  It was another wound that dug deep. Celine’s nails dug into her palms, willing him to stop. But steeped in his own pain, Jonah was oblivious to hers and blind to the misery in Annabelle’s eyes. Dirck had been her beloved younger brother.

  “You know, even if O’Rourke”—that was Jonah’s editor at the Boston Gazette—“died on me, I’ll bet he doesn’t have much to leave. And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t leave it to me.”

  He had no idea what he was talking about. Dear God, he had no idea. If he’d lost someone he loved, he’d realize that money wasn’t everything.

  “I’d give it all away in a heartbeat, if I could bring Dirck back.” The words forced themselves out of Celine’s constricted throat.

  The shock of finding Dirck’s murdered body four months ago still hadn’t subsided. It had been second only to the raw pain she’d endured as a twelve-year-old when she’d learned she’d never see her parents again. She’d failed to secure justice for their death. But at least the men who’d tortured Dirck were behind bars.

  Julia turned to Annabelle.

  “For God’s sake, get him out of here.”

  Flustered and somewhat taken aback, Annabelle could only nod. She brushed the tears from her eyes, struggling to regain her composure. “Let’s get you some breakfast, Jonah,” she said briskly.

  Promising to return with a cup of tea for Celine, she pulled Jonah out of the room.

  “I swear, that woman has the patience of a saint.” Julia sat back down. “Sure you’re okay?” she turned to Celine.

  Celine smiled wanly. “I’ll be fine. I don’t think he means any harm, but he sure has a knack for grating on one’s nerves.” She sighed. “I guess I need to learn how to deal with it.”

  “Nonsense!” Julia’s hand swept the air in a gesture of impatient dismissal. “If he’s interfering with your process—and I can see that he is—he shouldn’t be here.”

  Celine didn’t respond. The door was ajar, and she watched as Annabelle led Jonah to the Delft’s kitchen. She’d put the reporter off for as long as she could. But they’d promised to work with him, and a deal was a deal.

  Julia, however, wasn’t so easily fobbed off.

  Leaning forward, she placed a gentle hand on Celine’s knee.

  “I’m serious, Celine. I don’t like the idea of Jonah being here.”

  “And I don’t like him being in my kitchen at this hour,” Celine responded, seeing Jonah push open the bar’s kitchen door. “He gets on Wanda’s nerves.”

  She wasn’t being entirely flippant.

  She was grateful to Annabelle for offering their visitor some breakfast and heading off a potential argument with Julia. But the Delft’s new assistant manager, Wanda Roberts, and Jonah had never quite hit it off either.

  Having the reporter in the kitchen while Wanda supervised their staff, just hours before the bar opened, was a recipe for disaster.

  “He’s a distraction at best,” Julia went on, undeterred. “And I strongly suspect he’s blocking your vision.”

  Julia had the typical law enforcement agent’s aversion to journalists—in particular those as abrasive as the Boston Gazette’s Jonah Hibbert. That antipathy hadn’t abated one whit since she’d retired. With good reason, Celine had to concede.

  She herself hadn’t been particularly happy about Jonah’s bombshell revelation a few months back—in Boston’s most influential online newspaper at that.

  Celine had asked that her role in the recovery of some of the Gardner Museum’s stolen art be kept quiet. The FBI had agreed. Giving out any more details than necessary could jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

  There was also—they’d all agreed—absolutely no need to drag the names of Celine’s former employers, Dirck Thins and John Mechelen, through the mud.

  But Jonah—Jonah had done just that.

  Celine gripped the edge of the couch, her anger surging again. She could forgive Jonah everything but that. The media scrutiny she’d been forced to endure, the name-calling—“science-denying kook” had been the worst of it—had been bad enough.

  But suggesting that Dirck—who’d been murdered trying to return two of the Gardner’s stolen items—was behind the 1990 heist was simply beyond the pale.

  Besides Dirck Thins, owner of the Delft Coffee & Wine Bar, and John Mechelen, founder of the Mechelen Winery, had given Celine a chance when she most needed it.

  She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, her breathing becoming shallow.

  Julia’s hand squeezed hers. “Anger is your enemy, Celine. It blocks your vision.”

  Celine took a deep breath, an effort to calm herself down. “I know.” She inhaled again.

  “You can cut him loose, you know,” Julia suggested yet again. “There’s nothing Jonah Hibbert can publish without it going through his editor. And O’Rourke’s agreed to get the FBI’s blessing before printing any news on the Gardner case.”

  Celine sighed. “I know,” she said again. “But I promised I’d let him see what I do.”

  Jonah was every bit as obnoxious as Julia considered him. But his hustling was due in large part to his anxiety for his mother—slowly but surely succumbing to dementia. His dogged persistence fueled by his determination to get the woman who’d singlehandedly raised him the very best care he could afford.

  It was the only reason Celine had agreed to help him.

  She got to her feet now and gave Julia a weak smile. “I think I’d better go see about that tea Annabelle promised me.”

  She walked away before Julia could stop her.

  So much had changed at the Delft since Dirck had died and she’d taken over. Wanda, her new manager, had taken over much of Celine’s former duties. And Annabelle, Dirck’s sister, had become an unofficial partner—creating unique blends of tea that were now on the Delft’s menu.

  If only Bryan would come around, she thought. Annabelle’s son resented her—whether for inheriting Dirck and John’s wine bar and winery or for offering the Curtis family a share in her newly acquired business interests, she didn’t know.

  He’s hurting, Celine, Sister Mary Catherine whispered into her ear. He feels betrayed. Just like you did.

  And he’s taking his pain out on me. Celine communicated back. I tried not to do that. I tried very hard.

  She pushed open the kitchen door. God, she really needed that tea!

  Chapter Four

  Blake found it at last—the news story that had gotten Penny Hoskins’ hackles up. It was in the Massachusetts Post. Not on the front page, but on page three with a prominent headline that sprawled across the page:

  Gardner He
ist—Orchestrated From the Inside?

  It was a headline calculated to get hits. Deliberately couched as a provocative question to make the situation appear far worse than it actually was, Blake bitterly reflected. The first line was absurdly inane:

  The FBI has long suspected an insider angle to the Gardner Museum heist.

  Blake rolled his eyes. The FBI had suspected an insider angle.

  Of course it had! Any self-respecting investigator would. That someone on the inside was in cahoots with the thieves was obvious right from the start.

  He skimmed the article, the facts of the case—so well-rehearsed they were easily recalled—coming to the forefront of his mind.

  The FBI had zeroed in on Richard Abath—the night guard who on two consecutive nights had acted against security protocol to let outsiders into the museum after hours.

  But—

  Blake’s gaze caught on a paragraph. His eyes scrolled up, and he re-read it.

  Jesus Christ! The Post had concocted quite the theory from a single mundane fact.

  Celine stood by the front window of the Delft, nursing the mug of tea Annabelle had brewed for her. It was too hot to drink, but Celine welcomed the warmth that seeped into her icy hands—cold from the trance she’d snapped out of fifteen minutes ago.

  Going into a psychic trance state usually drained all the energy—and heat—out of her body.

  She bent her head to the rim of her mug and sniffed deeply. The fragrance of chamomile, mint, and hibiscus in Annabelle’s tea was beginning to restore her, calming her ragged nerves.

  Outside, washed-out gray clouds hung low over the city and a light drizzle fell on 13th Street, nearly deserted at this hour. Few businesses in downtown Paso Robles opened before 10 am; it was just about a quarter past seven now.

  She closed her eyes, took a cautious sip of her tea, and sighed. The Delft would open at eleven. There was no prep work to be done; the kitchen staff, under Wanda Roberts, was taking care of that.