Forger of Light Page 3

  It had been her Italian winemaker who’d suggested Celine hire Wanda to help with the running of the wine bar.

  “You cannot chase around after lost art, cara, and make and sell wine at the same time,” Andrea Giordano had said. “Get some help. You can afford it.”

  Thank God she’d acted on his advice. She had less than four hours to go into another trance before the Delft opened. She fervently hoped nothing would make her snap out of it before she succeeded in getting something.

  Anything.

  Please, Sister Mary Catherine, she prayed to her guardian angel, help me see.

  All you have to do is open your eyes, Celine. Open your eyes.

  Celine opened her eyes. A red Mustang parked diagonally across the street—between the Italian Cheese Market and the tasting room of a rival winery—caught her eye. It hadn’t been there before, had it?

  The driver, a tall man in a beige jacket and dark slacks, slid gracefully out of the sports car, adjusted his shades, and looked straight at her.

  As he strode purposefully across the street, Celine had the oddest sensation he was gunning for her. She took a step back; a flash of black caught her eye as her body crashed against a soft obstacle.

  “A-a-ah!” Her low scream pierced the stillness within the Delft.

  Why Richard Abath openly flouted security protocol has long been a mystery. But not anymore. New evidence suggests the night guard may have been following orders.

  Orders issued by a high-level museum official—or the museum itself.

  This was some accusation. Blake put the newspaper down, stunned. He understood now why Penny Hoskins had been so incensed.

  Worse still, the writer claimed to be citing an “anonymous source close to the investigation.”

  That was an outright lie. There had never been any evidence that someone high up in the museum’s hierarchy was involved.

  What the FBI had strongly suspected was that several low-level museum employees had been conned into helping the thieves.

  The theft of the Manet was a clear indication of that. Its gold frame had been left on the chair of the Gardner’s Security Director—clearly a brazen gesture of defiance.

  But the Post had managed to twist even that fact.

  Abath and his colleague Grayson Pike, investigators now surmise, took Manet’s Chez Tortoni off the museum walls during their security rounds—hours before they let Reissfelder and DiMuzio in.

  Clearly, the thieves didn’t order the removal of the painting. The question is: who did? The same official who encouraged the guards to violate security protocols?

  Blake’s stomach churned. It was a supremely clever twisting of the facts. The theft of the Manet had never fit. But had someone else—some individual not connected to the thieves; some person associated with the museum—commissioned its removal?

  That was a question the FBI had never considered. One that no journalist—in the thirty years since the theft—had ever speculated on.

  There’d been no reason to.

  So why now, Blake wondered.

  What had changed?

  Chapter Five

  “Celine! I’m sorry.” Annabelle’s fingers grasped her arm. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I—er—thought we had a customer.” Her head swiveled around to the window. She’d need to head the stranger off—tell him they weren’t open yet.

  But the man had disappeared. Her eyes shifted toward the curb across the street. The red Mustang was gone as well.

  “What customer, dear?” Annabelle peered out the window, mystified.

  “I—” Celine shook her head. “He was right there.” She pointed across the street. “I even saw a red car, but . . .”

  “A vision, perhaps?” Annabelle looked anxiously up at her.

  “I guess.”

  “Do you recall seeing anything else?”

  Celine was beginning to shake her head when she remembered the flash of black she’d glimpsed. It had been just a flicker, but accompanied with a brief, familiar twisting of her heart muscles that could mean only one thing.

  Death was near.

  “I think I caught a glimpse—just a glimpse of—”

  “Belle Gardner?” Annabelle interrupted, her eyes wide. She understood the implication of the vision.

  Celine nodded. “The Lady,” she confirmed. Referring to her as Belle seemed just too familiar—even though Sister Mary Catherine insisted the Lady preferred it that way.

  You can call her Belle, Celine. She would like it if you did.

  Annabelle’s face had turned pale. “Is someone going to die?”

  Celine silently put the question to her guardian angel.

  Yes, Celine, Sister Mary Catherine whispered. Death is near—closer than you think.

  “And the man? Annabelle wanted to know.

  “I don’t know.” But he had seemed to know her—had been heading straight for her.

  Gunning for her.

  The words repeated themselves in her head.

  Feeling like he’d been punched in the gut, Blake forced his eye to run down the Post column. How much worse could it get?

  Investigators have yet another fact to hang their theory on.

  During the eighty-one-minute theft, the Gardner’s motion sensors detected no movement in the Blue Room, where Chez Tortoni was displayed.

  But police reports confirm the Blue Room’s sensors were fully functioning at the time of the theft and would have picked up Reissfelder and DiMuzio’s presence had they entered the gallery.

  The sinking feeling in the pit of Blake’s stomach intensified. The facts were undeniable. Would anyone understand they’d been bent out of shape to fit a cockamamie theory?

  He doubted it. If you couldn’t refute the facts, could you really discount the theory?

  The lack of motion sensor activity in the Blue Room had led the FBI to the only reasonable conclusion an investigator could draw.

  That one or both of the guards on duty that night must have been responsible for the theft, plucking the painting off the walls of the Blue Room during their regular walk-through of the galleries.

  But the Post was taking the FBI’s logical conjecture as proof positive that Abath and Pike had been taking orders from someone in the upper echelons of the museum’s staff.

  The evidence points strongly to an internal motive for the crime.

  Where had they gotten this garbage from?

  A loud trill interrupted his thoughts. He glanced at his phone.

  Lawrence O’Rourke, the editor of the Boston Gazette. Great! Another newspaper shark alerted to the scent of blood.

  Chapter Six

  The hum of the air conditioner filled Celine’s ear as Julia guided her back into a trance. They were back in the sanctum—what had once been a sanctum before Dirck had been murdered. A secret space concealed behind a wall panel in the Delft.

  Let that thought go, Celine.

  His killers were behind bars, but faint traces of their energy still contaminated the space.

  Let it go.

  A rush of cold air made her shiver. The air from the vents in the ceiling? Or was it the cold wind blowing on the morning of March 18, 1990, in Boston?

  She was back on Palace Road, standing directly across from the Gardner Museum. The door to the employees’ entrance opened. A man glanced furtively out, peered left and right, and then emerged onto the sidewalk.

  He whistled—a low sound that brought his companion out. And a third man.

  A burly Liam Neeson-like figure. Grayson Pike. Younger. Not quite as burly as when she’d last seen him, but with the beginnings of a beer gut.

  “Wait!” Jonah’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Pike was one of the guards on duty that night? I thought the thieves restrained those guys before going into the galleries.”

  “He’s helping them,” Celine explained. “They’ve all agreed to help.” But that had been before they’d known the wo
rks would never be returned. “There’s no turning back now.”

  “Helping with what, Celine?” Julia asked. “What is Grayson helping the men do?”

  Celine peered through the darkness. “He’s helping them bring out the stolen items. There’s too much for two men to carry.”

  The taller of the two thieves adjusted his glasses and turned to Grayson. “The fella in the hat goes with you. You know where to take him?”

  Grayson nodded.

  “Where are you parked?”

  Grayson pointed to a beat-up old gray sedan a few feet behind the hatchback.

  The taller man—DiMuzio—jerked his chin at the small, flat rectangular object Grayson clutched to his chest. “Put that in your car first and get back here.”

  “What are they talking about?” Julia’s voice was low, soothing. “Can you tell?”

  “One of the works they stole. It’s small. About ten inches by thirteen. I can’t see it.”

  The rustling sound of paper being shuffled reached her ears. Celine knew it wasn’t coming from the scene before her. The file Julia had compiled on the Gardner heist was on Annabelle’s lap; she was paging through it.

  “The Manet,” Annabelle said. “I think she means the Manet.”

  “Grayson Pike had the Manet?” It was Jonah. “This whole time?” His voice rose. “That can’t—”

  Celine frowned, the image before her threatening to fade. “No, no.”

  “Shhh!” Annabelle hissed.

  “O’Rourke,” Blake greeted the other man curtly, not bothering to identify himself.

  “Listen, I just wanted to tell you they didn’t get it from us,” O’Rourke informed him.

  “I beg your pardon?” Blake was still reeling from the brazen lies the Post had spun.

  “I take it you’ve seen this morning’s newspapers.”

  Blake confirmed that he had.

  “That didn’t come from us.”

  “Yes, I know.” Was that the only reason O’Rourke was calling?

  “Both the Globe and the Herald have a watered-down version of the story.” O’Rourke paused. “I have to ask: Is any of it true?”

  So that was it! O’Rourke wanted permission to dish out the dirt as well.

  There was a moment’s silence, then O’Rourke continued: “The Gazette can’t be the only paper without a story as juicy as that.”

  Left unspoken was the deal the Gazette had struck with the FBI: an exclusive scoop on major developments in the Gardner case in return for keeping a lid on any inconvenient details that found their way to Jonah Hibbert’s desk.

  “The insider angle?” Blake leaned back in his chair, considering his words. “We always suspected something like that. After all, Abath knowingly flouted museum security when he let Reissfelder and DiMuzio in after hours.”

  “They were dressed as cops.”

  “On the night of the theft, sure. On the night before, they were just regular guys. He had no reason to let them in.”

  “And the Chez Tortoni?” O’Rourke probed. “Any truth to that?”

  “The motion sensors were on—the whole time. We know Reissfelder and DiMuzio went into the Dutch Room. We know they entered the Short Gallery. They were nowhere near the Blue Room.”

  “So it’s true, Abath or Grayson Pike took the Manet?”

  “It sure looks like it. It was the only thing stolen from the Blue Room. And whoever took it left the empty frame standing on the security director’s chair.”

  “Someone was deliberately thumbing their nose at the guy.”

  “Possibly. But it doesn’t follow they were doing it on orders from above.”

  “No, I guess not. And Ms. Skye’s statements—what do you make of them?”

  Blake had yet to read them. His blood boiled as he took in the offensive paragraphs in the Post.

  Chapter Seven

  “Grayson never had the Manet.” It was Julia’s voice—calm, low. “He was in charge of delivering it.” They’d discovered that in a previous trance session. It had confirmed the FBI’s suspicion that museum employees were involved.

  Celine heard Julia’s voice and allowed her mind to turn inward. She looked across the street.

  DiMuzio stood still, watching as Grayson hurried to his car. Then he pulled out a key from his jeans pocket, unlocked the hatchback, and tossed in a clear plastic folder.

  Celine stepped into the street, eager to take a closer look. But Sister Mary Catherine’s voice stopped her.

  You don’t have to walk across, Celine. Will yourself over.

  As Celine focused, the scene did a three-sixty-degree rotation around her. The shift in perspective was sudden and disconcerting. Instead of facing DiMuzio, she was staring at his back. Reissfelder was on his right.

  She moved forward to DiMuzio’s left.

  “The sketches,” she said. “He’s taking the sketches with him.”

  She turned to face the man. She was standing so close to him, it would’ve been impossible for him not to be aware of her. He stirred uneasily, his head swiveling from left to right.

  “It’s like I’m being watched by a ghost,” he muttered.

  “It’s just your mind playing tricks on you, Lenny.” Reissfelder, the shorter of the two men, chuckled. A goofy grin spread over his square face. “There’s nothin’ here. We got this.”

  DiMuzio nodded curtly. “You got the vase?”

  “Right here.” Reissfelder waved the black velvet drawstring bag dangling from his left hand.

  “Quit waving that thing around like an idiot. Put it in the car.”

  “Don’t get all cranky on me now, Lenny.” But Reissfelder obeyed the command, dropping the bag in the rear passenger seat just as Grayson hurried back.

  “What now?” Grayson looked from Reissfelder to DiMuzio. The taller man was clearly in charge.

  “You two take the rest of the stuff to the truck. And tell those kids”—DiMuzio meant Simon Duarte and Earl Bramer—“to drive straight to the warehouse. No funny business now. You understand. They drive the truck in, lock the warehouse, and scoot—just like we discussed.”

  “And then what?”

  DiMuzio’s lips widened. He seemed to be enjoying this. “And then we tie you down like a hog in the basement, and you wait for someone to find you.”

  Grayson’s eyes widened. “Hey, that wasn’t part of the deal. I’m supposed to be—”

  “They were in on it!” Jonah’s voice exploded, shocked. “The guards were really in on it. It was an inside job?”

  “Well?” O’Rourke asked.

  “I’m still reading this,” Blake replied tersely. He was actually re-reading the passage, trying to process the stuff the Post writer had casually bandied around. Attempting to fashion an appropriate response as well.

  Although the FBI and its psychic consultant, Celine Skye, have yet to verify the identity of the individual who masterminded the Gardner heist, our source confirms Skye’s visions have unearthed a valuable clue.

  Our source? Blake was troubled by those words. Who was the Post’s source?

  The question niggled at his consciousness as he read on. And why were these details being so publicly revealed?

  The person behind the theft, according to Skye, is associated with the museum at its highest levels, is well connected, and has a deep appreciation of Impressionist art.

  In fact, Skye suggests, the target of the theft may well have been the Degas sketches, and not, as is widely believed, the more valuable Dutch works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Flinck.

  The problem was there was a small nugget—a tiny kernel, really—of truth in the story. Celine had tentatively suggested that the General was working on behalf of someone else—and had been paid in kind with some of the works stolen from the Dutch Room.

  But there were only a few people who were aware of that. And none of them would have taken it to the press.

  “You still there, Markham?”

  “My guess would be that Celine didn’t mak
e these remarks,” he hotly informed O’Rourke. At least, not to the Post. To Jonah, perhaps?

  “Did Hibbert send you any details of this?”

  If not, Blake had an even bigger problem on his hands than he’d suspected.

  “No. That’s why I called.”

  Damn! This wasn’t good.

  “Wouldn’t want to see another paper get an exclusive when we have a deal.” O’Rourke paused. “Want me to set the record straight on this one?”

  “Nope.” Blake was decisive. “Ignore it. No need to fan the flames.”

  He was beginning to understand what was going on here. And it was a very dangerous game.

  Inside job. The words were swirling in Celine’s brain, sounding faintly in her ears. She repeated them. An image was coming through.

  “He’s connected to the Gardner.”

  “Who is, Celine?” Julia’s voice was gentle, careful not to disturb the fragments emerging. They’d done this before. Julia had learned how to guide Celine toward her insights.

  “Associated with the museum. Affiliated with it.” Her mind was wandering. She felt her right hand lift up, moving energetically. “Quick strokes that capture an impression. He’s fascinated by that. That’s why he took them.” Her hand moved. Black-and-white images flashed through her mind. “Just a few quick strokes.”

  “Celine. . .?” Julia sounded puzzled, worried.

  A phone was ringing, its tone getting louder and closer.

  “You need to answer that, Celine.”

  Julia? Could she hear the phone ringing in Celine’s trance?

  “It’s for you, Celine.”

  Celine lifted the receiver, glancing down at it in surprise. It was black, the receiver of an old-fashioned rotary phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Skye,” the icy voice of the General’s assistant sounded in her ear. “I have a message from the General. He doesn’t want to kill you. But you leave him no choice.”