He looked over at Dr. Hicks. His face was red, and he looked ready to be ill himself.
Savich lightly touched her forearm and said, “Thank you, Marilyn, you’ve been a big help. If you could choose, right now, what would you like to do with your life?”
She didn’t hesitate for a second. “I want to be a carpenter. We lived for about five years in this one place and the neighbor was a carpenter. He built desks and tables and chairs, all sorts of stuff. He spent lots of time with me, taught me everything. ’Course I paid him just like he wanted, and he liked that a lot. In high school they told me I was a girl and girls couldn’t do that, and then Tommy got me pregnant and killed the baby.”
“Just one more question. Was Tammy planning to contact you from the Caribbean?” He’d asked her this before. He wanted to see if she added anything under hypnosis because now he had a plan.
“Yeah. She didn’t say when, just that she would, sometime.”
“How would she find you?”
“She would call my boyfriend, Tony, up in Bar Harbor. I don’t think he likes me anymore. He said if the cops were after me, then he was out of there.”
Savich hoped that Tony wouldn’t take off too soon. He was still there, working as a mechanic at Ed’s European Motors. He’d check in again with the agents in Bar Harbor, keep an eye on him, maybe some wiretaps. Now they had something solid. A call from Tammy.
“Thank you, Marilyn.” Savich rose and went to stand by the door. He watched as Dr. Hicks brought her gently back. He listened as he spoke quietly to her, reassuring her, until he nodded to Savich and led her from the room, holding her shoulder.
Savich said, “It’s time for lunch, Marilyn. We’ll eat in the Boardroom, not the big cafeteria. It’s just down the hall on this floor.”
“I’d really like a pizza, Mr. Savich, with lots of pepperoni.”
“You’ve got it. The Boardroom is known for its pizza.”
Eureka, California
Simon was pissed. He’d sent Lily back to Washington. She’d been as pissed as he was now, but she’d finally given up, seen reason, and slid her butt into the taxi he’d called for her. Only she hadn’t gone back to Washington. She’d simply taken the same plane he had to San Francisco, keeping out of sight in the back, then managed to make an earlier connection from San Francisco to Arcata-Eureka Airport. She’d waltzed right up to him at the damned baggage carousel and said in a chirpy voice, “I never thought I’d be traveling back to Hemlock Bay only two weeks after I finally managed to escape it.”
And now they were sitting side by side in a rental car, and Simon was still pissed.
“You shouldn’t have pulled that little sneaking act, Lily. Some bad stuff could happen. We’re in their neck of the woods again, and I-”
“We’re in this together, Russo, don’t forget it,” she said. She gave him a long look, then glanced out the back window of their rental car to study the three cars behind them. None appeared to be following them. She said, “You’re acting like I’ve cut off your ego. This isn’t your show, Russo. They’re my paintings. Back off.”
“I promised your brother I wouldn’t let you get hurt.”
“Fine. Okay, keep your promise. Where are we going? I was thinking it would be to Abe Turkle. You said maybe you could get something out of him, not about the collector he was working for, but maybe about the Frasiers. Since he’s here, that pretty well proves he’s involved with them, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“You said Abraham Turkle is staying in a beach house just up the coast from Hemlock Bay. Do we know who owns it? Don’t tell me it’s my soon-to-be-ex-husband.”
Simon gave it up. He turned to her as he said, “No, it’s not Tennyson Frasier. It’s close, but no, the cottage is in Daddy Frasier’s name.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner? That really nails it, doesn’t it? Isn’t that enough proof?”
“Not yet. Just be patient. Everything will come together. Highway 211 is a very gnarly road, just like you told me. Are we going to be passing the place where you lost your brakes and plowed into that redwood?”
“Yes, just ahead.” But Lily didn’t look at the tree as they passed it. The events of that night were growing more faint, the terror fading a bit, but it was still too close to her.
Simon said, “Turns out that Abraham Turkle has no bank account, no visible means of support. So the Frasiers must be paying him in cash.”
“I still can’t get over their going to all this trouble,” Lily said.
“After we verify that Mr. Olaf Jorgenson of Sweden now has three in his possession-no, we want him to have all four of the paintings, it’d keep things simple-we may be able to find out how much he’s paid for them. I’m thinking in the neighborhood of two to three million per painting. Maybe higher. Depends on how obsessed he is. From what I hear, he’s single-minded when he wants a certain painting.”
“Three million? That’s a whole lot of money. But to go to all this trouble-”
“I can tell you stories you don’t want to hear about how far some collectors will go. There was one German guy who collected rare stamps. He found out that his mother had one that he’d wanted for years, only she wanted to keep it for herself. He hit her over the head with a large bag of coins, killed her. Does that give you an idea of how completely obsessed some of these folk are?”
Lily could only stare at him. “It’s just hard to believe. This Olaf Jorgenson-you told me he’s very old and nearly blind in the bargain.”
“It is amazing that he can’t control his obsession, not even for something as incidental as, say, going blind. I guess it won’t stop until he’s dead.”
“Do you think his son Ian has the real
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“Are you going to tell the people at the Rijksmuseum?”
“Yeah, but trust me on this, they won’t want to hear it. They’ll have a couple of experts examine the painting on the sly. If the experts agree that it’s a forgery, they’ll try to get it back, but will they announce it? Doubtful.
“We’ve been checking out Mr. Monk, the curator of the Eureka Art Museum. He does have a Ph.D. from George Washington, and a pedigree as long as your arm. If something’s off there, Savich hasn’t found it yet. We’re going deeper on that, got some feelers out to a couple of museums where he worked. You keep looking back there. Is anyone following us?”
Lily shifted in her seat to face his profile. “No, no one’s back there. I can’t help it. To me, this is enemy territory.”
“You’re entitled. You had a very bad experience here. You met Mr. Monk, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
“Tell me about him.”
Lily said slowly, “When I first met Mr. Monk, I thought he had the most intense black eyes, quite beautiful really, ‘bedroom eyes’ I guess you could call them. But he looked hungry. Isn’t that odd?”
Simon said, “He has beautiful eyes? Bedroom eyes? You women think and say the strangest things.”
“Like men don’t? If it were Mrs. Monk, you’d probably go on about her cleavage.”
“Well, yeah, maybe. And your point would be?”
“You’d probably never even get to her face. You men are all one-celled.”
“You think? Really?”
She laughed, she just couldn’t help it. He pushed his sunglasses up his nose, and she saw that he was grinning at her. He said with a good deal of satisfaction, “You’re feeling better. You’ve got a nice laugh, Lily. I like hearing it. Mind you, I’m still mad because you followed me out here, but I will admit that this is the first time I’ve seen you that you don’t look like you want to curl up and take a long nap.”
“Get over it, Simon. We must be nearly to Abraham Turkle’s cottage. Just up ahead, Highway 211 turns left to go to Hemlock Bay. To the right there’s this asphalt one-lane track that goes the mile out to the ocean. That’s where the cottage is?”
“Yes, those were my directions. You’ve never been out to the ocean on that road?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Okay now, listen up. Abe has a bad reputation. He’s got a real mean side, so we want to be careful with him.”
They came to the fork. Simon turned right, onto the narrow asphalt road. “This is it,” Simon said. “There’s no
