Copenhagen Cozenage (10 page)

Axel Rasmussen’s minions stopped their scuttling and the room quieted. Everyone turned toward the covered easels. The artist was walking up to the first sketch when an electric thought zipped across my mind. I had seen that elephant before.

I turned back to the fireplace and the snuffling marble beast. The same elephant was on my watch. The intricate little watch key that I kept dropping in the dirt was carved with the very same animal. Then my mind’s eye zipped back across my horrendous day to the airport.

My grandpa got this package with a weird pocket watch in it from an old lady in Denmark. He thought it might be some clue. So now, I’m here to visit the crown jewels and go to some fancy hotel. The old guy always loved a mystery.
August had pulled out a pocket watch, a pocket watch with the image of a creature engraved upon the case.

Then my memory returned to Rosenborg Castle where a nicely dressed gentleman with a cane had been taking pictures. I paused on the image of him and realized three important things.

One, it was most definitely August in a wig and colored contacts.

Two, he was wearing a pocket watch.

Three, I could barely glimpse a trunk curving around the edge of the watch toward the face. The elephant must have been carved across the back.

I had been instructed to visit the crown jewels, but Leroy, in all his hairy splendor, had altered my plans. Wasn’t there something about elephants in the castle brochure? I flagged down the waiter again.

He looked in horror at my oyster sandwich, but quickly averted his gaze. “Yes, Madame. The Chain of the Order of the Elephant is kept at Rosenborg Castle. It is the emblem of the highest order of knighthood in Denmark.”

The Chain of the Order of the Elephant. I stared back at the carved elephant by my table and bent closer, going so far as to actually peer up the flaring nostrils. Not only was it artistically disturbing on so many levels, but the elephant’s long reaching trunk contained two perfectly hidden keyholes.

Now, I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but I did manage to connect a few puzzle pieces. Two people had received antique time pieces in the mail upon the death of an older woman from Denmark. One person was the lady’s granddaughter. The other individual was a gentleman who had watched the theft as a child and spent a lifetime trying to find the truth. Both timepieces depicted elephants. Both were wound with intricate keys. And both individuals had been directed to dine at the Nimb, an old refurbished theme park ride that was now a fancy hotel.

My eyes slammed shut in horror. My watch was currently moldering inside my stolen purse wherever Maks the Horrible had taken it. I heard the crowd gasp and titter and my focus was yanked back to the room. I sat up and looked toward the easels.

Axel Rasmussen had pulled the cloth from his first sketch. I tried to forget the elephant and focus on my favorite artist’s latest work. It was always strangely cheering to watch his subjects sweat and struggle through their imaginary trials. At least something good could come of this whole Denmark debacle.

I stared at the sketch. It was rougher than his coffee table books, but I had expected that. His website explained that today’s showing had been created in a single day. Axel Rasmussen would finally reveal his process and the secret to finding such perfect subjects.

Wow. No wonder his art had always held that crisp feel of authentic humor and woe. The first sketch was of a young woman dressed to the nines, pushing a large black dog out of her cab. My stomach began to ache, like a vat of acid set to boil. The second sketch showed her dangling over the edge of the small bridge in front of Rosenborg Castle trying to unclasp the dog’s collar with some guy’s cane. The third exhibited the young woman at the pound yanking upon the dog’s leash while he begged for ice cream. The fourth pictured her dragging the dog out of the marble church. The fifth had her standing in a fountain in nylons and a ruined dress tugging fruitlessly on the beast’s leash. An insufferable fool in clown-garb bowed to her in the background. The sixth showed her watching a monster of a man run off with her purse as the dog bounded after him wagging and barking.

“She better be getting an enormous check in the mail for this,” I grumbled to myself.

Finally, the whole mortifying collage culminated in a pièce de résistance sketched across a large canvas that stood taller than the artist himself. This one had more color to it, smoother lines, and the kind of hilarious detail that I had loved ten seconds earlier.

Tivoli’s pirate ship sat upon gentle waters. The fanciful, blue painting upon the stern matched a cloudless sky. Sharks hung from the rigging above a deck crowded with happy diners. A young woman in a sopping, red sundress stood on deck wiping a soaking strand of brown hair out of her eyes to look across the waves. She had just snatched up a filthy, nylon dog leash and gripped it with white-knuckled ferocity. However, the young lady had yet to notice the actions of the beast upon the other end of the lead.

The great, black dog was stretched out in a heroic leap from the pirate ship. His stern eye focused on the head of a little boy who floundered in the water across the small lake. His fur had dried enough to blow in the wind as he plunged in a headlong dive to rescue the child. And anyone with a brain could see that the young woman was soon to follow.

Axel Rasmussen’s sketches were authentic all right, far too authentic. The fiend had set me up. With the help of August and Leroy, he had also managed to ruin my grandmother’s last and only gift.

My hands balled into small white fists. I held my breath and slid underneath the table. I sat there trembling with fury alone upon the beautiful tiled floor.

15

Freja

I curled beneath the table quietly fuming. How dare he? And apparently, I wasn’t the only one who should be upset. All those hilarious individuals whom I had grown to love as they sat in full color on my coffee table, were they all like me? Real people, gifted with an apocalyptic experience by a conniving artist. They must be. The briefcase trolley guy, the woman who lost her toddler’s teddy bear to a marauding peregrine falcon, even my personal favorite, the “Free Elephant Ride At The Zoo” octogenarians. If I’d been a rabid fox, I would have been frothing from the mouth and snarling. As it was, I was awfully close, even without the aid of a saliva-borne illness.

I turned away from the clapping art lovers and Axel Rasmussen’s putrescent canvases. OK, so the art show was a bust. My favorite artist was a charlatan.

But that was not why I had come to Denmark. I had family who had lived and loved and died in this country. I had a cousin who couldn’t wait to meet me, but was terribly late. I had a grandmother who had sought me out posthumously. A loving kinswoman who had sent me on a foreign vacation with a key that fit into an elephant’s nostril, given a similar key to some jerk with a big dog, and brought us both to this beautiful hotel simultaneously. Wow, this didn’t look suspicious at all.

August’s grandfather had been obsessed with the beautiful Cinderella Bandit, jewel thief and shoe fashionista. August gets a key. I get a key and instructions to visit the jewels. We both get a fancy brunch with a precise table specified.

Surely, my grandmother wouldn’t send an innocent relation on a jewel hunt, in a foreign country, with an ill-mannered stranger? That wasn’t safe at all. I thought grandmothers were supposed to buy their granddaughters pepper spray every year for Christmas and become fraught with worry if they were thirty seconds late from getting the mail?

I peered out from under my table at my most favorite artist ever. Hmmm. Not everyone was as nice or as naive as Bret. My artist hero was a fraud, what exactly had my grandmother been?

But it didn’t matter anymore. The key had been stolen, my fancy brunch was ruined, Freja had never shown up. All I could do now was eat as many authentic Danish pastries as possible and survive until my flight departed on Thursday.

Unless Maks the alley thug hadn’t taken the key…why would he? He’d stolen my purse as part of my great and marvelous Axel Rasmussen worthy day. My purse was probably in a dumpster somewhere or maybe right here in the hotel. Of course, Maks stole it for Axel Rasmussen, he would have handed it over to Axel Rasmussen. And Mr. Rasmussen was staying here in the Nimb Hotel.

I crept out from under the table and shot a look at the fabulous Axel Rasmussen that I would just like to see him try to paint. My purse was here somewhere. I wasn’t going to slink out of Denmark shamed by marvelously talented artists and gigantic purse-snatching actors alike. Oh no, I would do everything in my power to find that stupid key. Then, I would find August’s stupid key.

And then, by all that was holy, we would cram them up that elephant’s snout and discover what exactly my grandmother had meant with all these mysterious packages.

I took all of ten steps before I spotted him.

Maks stood at the back of the room talking to my least favorite coffee table artist.

Axel had left his beloved sketches to hold a hushed argument with the massive man in a suspiciously dark corner of the lounge.

Looking at Maks with his awesome height and broad, meaty shoulders, a cold unsettling thought touched my mind. What if Maks had done something to Freja? What if she had gotten all mixed up in this purse fiasco and Maks had hurt her or taken her somewhere?

I slipped off my shoes and crept toward them. Clacking girly shoes were not going to keep me from finding my possibly injured cousin and most certainly pilfered purse.

Maks nodded at something Axel was hissing in his ear. Then he turned and lumbered off down the hall. I waited for the artist to return to his adoring fans and followed Maks on silent feet. I lost him after five turns. But after visiting the beautifully furnished restroom and swinging back by the buffet table for one more croissant, I heard his deep growling voice coming from a narrow door back behind the kitchens.

“I tell you, the girl didn’t have the key,” said Maks.

“She must have hidden it in her room or somewhere in her clothes.” The second voice belonged to a young woman with a faint Danish accent. “I’ll deal with Morgan. You concentrate on August. He’s here somewhere. Just follow the destruction. That dog will be nearby.”

What did they want with August? I peeked around the corner and caught a glimpse of Maks’s massive back in the doorway.

A petite blonde stood behind him. She wore a delicate yellow scarf clasped to her throat with a cameo. The scarf was identical to mine.

My scarf had come in the mail from my cousin, Freja. She’d also sent baby pictures of our mothers playing on a grassy lawn in pale flowered gowns and floppy little hats. The scarves were supposed to be worn to the brunch to help us locate each other. How could the girl who had mailed me those beautiful photos, be standing there talking to Maks? But of course, she was. Everything else had gone wrong. Why not my touching family reunion as well?

Freja was apparently not quite as passionate to connect with long-lost relatives as she was to get her grubby paws on my antique key. My grandmother’s key. Maks wasn’t stealing my purse for a great candid photo. He wanted the key. And that meant Axel Rasmussen wanted the key. What in the world had my grandmother gotten me into?

16

The Sugar Cellar

A thick reaching silence shrouded the hall as I turned to slide away. I carried my delicate white heels dangling from one finger. As I reached the first turn back toward the main lounge, the open toe of one shoe snagged on a door. The door swung open a few inches, and then settled back with a quiet thump when I pulled the shoe free.

“Maks, don’t!” Freja’s gentle accent sharpened with panic.

I forgot all about stealth and bolted down the narrow hall. Thumping footsteps echoed behind me and my breaths came in burning gasps. I fell and scrambled to my feet. My hair slumped out of the French twist and hung in a wet tangle down my back as I ran. My throat was stiff and silent with terror though I longed to scream. Something snatched me backwards by the hair and I hit the floor hard. My scalp tingled and my head ached.

Maks crouched over me and grinned. “Told you she’d at least come for the caviar, Freja.” He slapped a strip of duct tape across my mouth and another across my eyes. I scratched deep furrows down his chest and spun away. But Maks hoisted me up by the waist and dragged me down the hall, while I kicked and flailed. “A shame you wasted all that time arguing with me. Missed your chance to get the key your way. But don’t fret, girl, my way’s always been faster.” He fumbled with a lock.

A door scraped across the floor as it opened, but the sounds ceased as a pair of high heeled shoes clicked up the hall behind us. “Don’t you dare, Maks. She’s his granddaughter, too, just as much as I am. He won’t take it well that you’ve roughed her up this much. The sugar cellar won’t do.”

I stopped fighting and froze. His granddaughter, too? Whose granddaughter? I thought back to whom Maks had spoken to. Axel’s granddaughter?

“I have my orders, Freja. The old man isn’t as soft as you think.”

“No, get her in a nice room where I can see to her bruises and you might make out all right. Throw her in the basement and you’ll regret it.”

A sudden electricity zipped across the silence.

Maks hitched me up tighter against him and fumbled with something in his other hand.

“You’re not much of a shot, Freja.”

“Only a moron could miss from this range.”

Maks lunged aside, dropping me in a heap upon the floor.

There was a quiet thump and the clatter of metal against the tile.

Someone slumped beside me. A floral perfume hung in the air. Not Maks, then.

“You’ve got to want to hit them, Freja. That’s why you always miss.”

Freja made no reply.

Maks patted my clothes, searching. He said something under his breath in Danish that I didn’t understand, and then yanked my sightless face close. “Where is the heirloom?”