Transgressions

'Now, Stefan.' Echo reached out to press the second-floor button.

'Some day you will have my job. But you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.'

Echo grinned again. The elevator stopped on two.

'What are you doing? Aren't we leaving?'

'In a little while.' Echo stepped off the elevator and beckoned to Stefan. 'This way.'

'What? Where are you dragging me to? I'm desperate to have a smoke and find out how My Little Margie placed in the fourth.'

Echo looked at her new watch, a twenty-second birthday present from her fiance that she knew had cost far more than either of them should have been spending on presents.

'There's time. I want to see the Ransome they've borrowed for their show of twentiedi-century portraitists.'

'Oh, dear God!' But he got off the elevator with Echo. 'I detest Ransome! Such transparent theatrics.

I've seen better art on a sailor's ass.'

'Really, Stefan?'

'Although not all that recently, I'm sorry to say.'

The gallery in which the exhibition was being mounted was temporarily closed to the public, but they wore badges allowing them access to any part of the Highbridge. Echo ignored frowns from a couple of dithering functionaries and went straight to the portrait by Ransome that was already in place and lighted.

The subject was a seated nude, blond, Godiva hair. Ransome's style was impressionistic, his canvas flooded with light. The young woman was casually posed, like a Degas girl taking a backstage break, her face partly averted. Stefan had his usual attitude of near-suicidal disdain. But he found it hard to look away.

Great artists were hypnotists with a brush.

'I suppose we must give him credit for his excellent eye for beauty.'

'It's marvelous,' Echo said softly.

'As Delacroix said, 'One never paints violently enough.' We must also give Ransome credit for doing violence to his canvases. And I must have an Armagnac, if the bar downstairs is open. Echo?'

'I'm coming,' she said, hands folded like an acolyte's in front of her as she gazed up at the painting with a faintly worshipful smile.

Stefan shrugged when she failed to budge. 'I don't wish to impose on your infatuation. Suppose you join me in the limo in twenty minutes?'

'Sure,' Echo murmured.

Absorbed in her study of John Leland Ransome's technique, Echo didn't immediately pay attention to that little barb at the back of her neck that told her she was being closely observed by someone.

When she turned she saw a woman standing twenty feet away ignoring the Ransome on the wall, staring instead at Echo.

The woman was dressed all in black, which seemed to Echo both obsessive and oppressive in high summer. But it was elegant, tasteful couture. She wasn't wearing jewelry. She was, perhaps, excessively made up, but striking nonetheless. Mature, but Echo couldn't guess her age. Her features were immobile, masklike. The directness of her gaze, a burning in her eyes, gave Echo a couple of bad moments. She knew a pickup line was coming. She'd averaged three of these encounters a week since puberty.

But the stare went on, and the woman said nothing. It had the effect of getting Echo's Irish up.

'Excuse me,' Echo said. 'Have we met?' Her expression read, Whatever you're thinking, forget it, Queenie.

Not so much as a startled blink. After a few more seconds the woman looked rather deliberately from Echo to the Ransome painting on the wall. She studied that for a short time, then turned and walked away as if Echo no longer existed, heels clicking on the gallery floor.

Echo's shoulders twitched in a spidery spasm. She glanced at a portly museum guard who also was eyeing the woman in black.

'Who is that?'

The guard shrugged. 'Beats me. She's been around since noon. I think she's from the gallery in New York.' He looked up at the Ransome portrait. 'His gallery. You know how fussy these painters get about their placement in shows.'

'Uh-huh. Doesn't she talk?'

'Not to me,' the guard said.

The limousine Stefan had hired for the day was parked in a taxi zone outside the Highbridge. Stefan was leaning on the limo getting track updates on his BlackBerry. There was a Daily Racing Form lying on the trunk.

He put away his BlackBerry with a surly expression when Echo approached. My Little Margie must have finished out of the money.

'So the spell is finally broken. I suppose we could have arranged for a cot to be moved in for the night.'

'Thanks for being so patient with me, Stefan.'

They lingered on the sidewalk, enjoying balmy weather. New York had been a stewpot when they'd left that