Suspicious (On the Run) (9 page)

There is only so long you can go without literally moving a muscle. Jack’s back was pressed up against Zoe, and normally if they were in that position in complete darkness, she would have cuddled up and enjoyed it, but with every muffled sound from the other side of the door, she expected the door to be wrenched open. Eventually, Zoe moved a foot experimentally to the side and gently shoved a mass over an inch so she could move her leg and shift her messenger bag away from where it was digging into her hip.

“What are you doing?” Jack breathed.

“Moving. I have a cramp. We’ve been in here forever.”

“Zoe, it’s only been about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes without moving
is
forever, to me.”

He chuckled softly. “If we time it right, we should be able to slip out soon.”

Twice, he had eased open the door a few millimeters, but the door to the apartment stood wide open and several people, some in police uniforms, some in suits, trailed in and out, so Jack softly closed the door again.

One guy lounged against the banister and smoked a cigarette. Then it sounded like a new group of people trooped up the stairs. The small space was hot and stuffy and had a curious mixture of ammonia and dust that made Zoe feel like she was on the verge of sneezing. She fought off the urge as they listened to the cadence of feet on the stairs and the rapid bursts of Italian. There was a break in the sounds for about a minute.

“Third time’s the charm, hopefully,” Jack said, and a sliver of light cut into the darkness. “We’re good. Ready?”

“I’m so ready.” The words were barely out of her mouth before the door swung open. She blinked against the blinding light as they stepped out of the closet. The warm air of the upstairs landing washed over them, and it felt almost cool in comparison to the airless closet. Jack checked over the banister then gave a quick nod. Suddenly her fingers felt clumsy, but she managed to close the closet door silently then swung quickly around the post at the top of the stairs and trotted down beside him.

They met no one on the way down. As they reached the main floor and the door to the building, which was also propped open, letting in gusts of hot, dry air, Jack said, “Here we go. Try to keep your face down so they can’t see it.”

“Right.” She flipped open her messenger bag and dug around it as though she were looking for something. Jack seemed to contract a sudden headache that required him to rub his forehead.

Zoe had no idea how many people or police cars were around the entrance to the building. She kept her gaze on the steps and then on the cobblestones. Everything else was just a blur of movement. Zoe and Jack paced quickly on, beyond the edge of the building, but it wasn’t until they turned off the street into a smaller, shadowed canyon-like alley that some of the tension eased. “Good grief, that was terrible,” Zoe said. “Next time we take the roof.”

***

Nico’s fiancée, Mara, lived in the fascist-inspired EUR neighborhood in the south of Rome that Mussolini designed. The severe, squared-off buildings looked boring and rather soulless compared to the heart of Rome with its ornate fountains, baroque buildings, and lively piazzas. The taxi dropped them in front of a grim apartment building. They made their way through the gray-tiled, echoing lobby to the elevator. As they rode to the twenty-third floor, Zoe put her hands in her pockets and felt paper crinkle against her knuckles. She pulled it out and opened it. “I forgot about this. I shoved it in my pocket when we realized the police were on the way up to Harrington’s apartment.”

Jack looked over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Papers from Harrington’s trash.” She handed the receipts to Jack.

He quickly glanced through them. “They just show Harrington bought food and coffee around the apartment.”

“I know, but look at this.” Zoe pointed to a few lines of text on the top of one of the larger pages. “Driving directions. I think this is the last page of a hotel reservation. When you finish your reservation, there’s a sheet to print with all the details of the reservation plus info on how to get there. Either Harrington decided he didn’t need this page and threw it away, or he didn’t realize it had the rest of the driving directions on it, and he tossed it by mistake. There isn’t a final destination address, but we have the last few lines of driving instructions and a city is named. All we have to do is find out where this Lermoos place is on road B 187, and we’ll know where Harrington was going.”

“But that could have been printed anytime Harrington was staying there, or even before he came, if the cleaning service is lax.”

“No, the receipts from the last few days were under it. This was thrown away after the receipts. And, there’s a date on this page, too.” She studied the fine print of the footer at the bottom of the page. “Printed yesterday.” The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Jack stepped out of the elevator as Zoe reached for the button for the first floor. “We don’t even need to talk to Nico now.”

Jack put his hand out to prevent the door from sliding closed. “Yes, we do. The more information we have, the better.”

Zoe shifted from one foot to the other. “Every second counts. Harrington has a huge head start on us. You know how Nico is. It will take forever to get out of there.”

“I’ll make sure we’re not here too long. In and out. Fifteen minutes, tops. Nico has good connections. He’s worth taking a few minutes to talk to.”

Zoe sighed. “Sometimes I hate it when you’re right. Especially when your logical method is the way to go.”

“Your
carpe diem
method has its moments, too.”

“Just not right now, I know.” Zoe put the papers away and checked her watch as they exited the elevator. “Fifteen minutes. I’m timing you. If we’re not in the elevator in fifteen, you owe me a pizza.”

“Deal. No stalling, though.” One corner of Jack’s mouth went up.

“Me, stall? I’m the one who doesn’t want to make this stop.”

Jack glanced at his watch and raised his eyebrows. “Time hack.” He knocked on Mara’s door, which was a shiny stainless steel, a shade brighter than the ashy tint of the walls.

Zoe was surprised when Nico opened the door to the apartment, and she saw it wasn’t impersonal and cold like the exterior, but had a modern design with warm hardwood floors and bursts of color in the red pillows on the boxy white furniture. The walls were covered with photos of Rome’s fountains as well as modern paintings with splashes of primary colors.

Nico greeted them enthusiastically as if he hadn’t just seen them a few days ago. He looked more mature than he had when they first met him. He still wore a causal fitted polo shirt and jeans like many young Italians she’d seen on the street, but he’d lost the skinny lankiness of adolescence. His face was wider now, and he’d filled out through the shoulders. He looked broader, more solid. He clasped Jack’s hand, then turned to Zoe and kissed her warmly on both cheeks. He stepped back, catching her hand and pulling it to his chest, drawing them into the apartment. “You look as beautiful as ever.”

“And you’re as full of it as ever.”

He tilted his head down and looked at her with sad dark-fringed eyes. “You do not know how your cruel words wound me.”

Zoe pulled her hand away and patted his shoulder. “You’ll get over it. You always do.”

A grin split his face, and he shrugged. “I must go on.”

“You know, you’ll have to give up this flirting when you’re married.” Zoe glanced at a framed photo of the couple. They’d met Mara when they had dinner, and there had been just the slightest hint of hostility from Mara toward Zoe. Mara had masses of dark brown hair, a severe Roman nose, and a commanding manner, which Nico didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t think Mara will like it.”

“Ah, but that is what Mara is doing, reforming me. A woman like Mara, she needs a project.” He tapped his chest. “I will keep her busy for years.”

Jack shook his head. “Be careful, Nico. It’s impossible to completely understand a woman.” Jack shot a look at Zoe as he said, “They’re more complex than a physics equation.”

Zoe said, “He’s learned just how much he doesn’t know about me. He’s catching on.”

Nico laughed. “You two, always with the joking. Come in, come in.” He waved them toward the couch in the living area, apologized that Mara wasn’t there, explaining she was away for a work-related conference in Florence. He offered them something to drink then brought them three bottles of mineral water on a tray with glasses. He poured the water, handed the glasses out, and then took a seat in a black club chair. He sipped from his glass, and his face turned somber. “Now, this is a serious problem, my friend.” He gestured at a laptop computer on the coffee table, which sat alongside a phone and a stack of papers. “The theft.”

Zoe couldn’t quite see the screen, so she said, “It’s in the news?”

Nico swiveled the laptop toward her. Above a close-up of the Flawless Set, the English headline proclaimed that world famous jewels had been stolen while they were on loan in Rome. “The incident reflects poorly on Italy, or so the article states. Italian officials are determined to…” he waved his hands around as he searched for the idiom he wanted—he’d always been a big fan of idioms, Zoe remembered. “…nip it in the bud,” he finished. “They do not want to be tainted with the reputation as a place where the wealthy—and their jewels—are not safe.”

“That explains why Alessi is pressing so hard,” Jack said. “I thought there was a lot of manpower on the case.”

Zoe frowned. “Nothing motivates like bad publicity.”

“We had nothing to do with it,” Jack said.

Nico said, “I did not think you did, even for a minute. No, this is another instance of bad timing, I think.”

“More like bad associates,” Jack said.

Nico picked up a magazine, which was folded open to an interior page. He handed it to Jack. “Take a look at that. Let me get you some more water,” he said to Zoe.

Zoe had drained her glass. “Oh, that’s fine.”

Nico glanced pointedly at the magazine, then stood and took her glass from her hand. “No, I insist.” He left the room for the kitchen.

“What was all that about?” Zoe asked Jack, but he just waved her closer and nodded at the magazine.

“He’s trying to tell us, this is the guy we want.” Jack pointed to a circled photograph.

“Christopher McKinley? But you asked him who Harrington would try to sell the Flawless Set to, right? It can’t be McKinley. He’s a celebrity reporter.” Zoe had seen the half-hour cable entertainment show he hosted.

The article was a montage of photos of men under the headline that Zoe could only decipher a few words of because it was in Italian. “What is the headline?”

“World’s Sexiest Bachelors,” Jack said. McKinley stood barefoot on a palm-tree lined beach with the cuffs of his tuxedo pants rolled up to his calves and the buttons on his shirt open to the waist. His fair hair was clipped short and a dusting of stubble covered his jaw. He held a bottle of Champagne in one hand and two long-stemmed glasses in the other and had a rough-and-tumble vibe that came through in the photograph. Jack read the caption, “ ‘British television presenter, McKinley, 37, is known for his killer smile and cajoling the world’s rich and famous into revealing intimate details.’ ”

“A gossip show host? No, it can’t be him.”

“Why not? Sounds like a good cover to me,” Jack said. “No one would take him seriously. He is on the road a lot for his job, which lets him mingle with the extremely rich. Sounds ideal, in fact.”

“So Christopher McKinley is some sort of fence to the rich and famous?” Zoe said, trying out the idea. It was hard to wrap her mind around the concept. Recently, McKinley’s name had popped up in the grocery store tabloids as part of a love triangle that caused the break-up of a celebrity marriage, if you believed the articles. After her run-ins with the media, Zoe took all news items with more than a grain of salt, but was he a criminal as well as a cad? “It’s just hard to imagine…”

She broke off as Nico returned with a fresh glass of fizzy water for her.

He sat down. “Yes, it is hard to imagine, but I assure you, he is the man you want to find.”

“But isn’t he in England?” Zoe asked. “Are you saying there are no jewelry fences here in Rome that Harrington could take the Flawless to?”

“Well, of course there are fences here,” Nico said with a slightly offended air as if she’d insulted him by doubting Rome’s possible black market network. “If the theft of the Flawless Set had been a typical smash and grab, then yes, your man would probably have gone to someone here locally, but the way the Flawless Set was stolen was different—there was elaborate planning, no? And the set itself, some of the value is in the history, the story, behind it.”

Nico settled back in his chair. “In most cases, a thief would make more by breaking up the set and recutting the stones—and I am sure that is still an option with the Flawless because the stones themselves are spectacular—but if it could be sold intact, the mystique of it alone, adds value, keeping the price high. But to sell a piece like the Flawless necklace intact,” he shrugged, “you would need someone with the right connections.” Nico looked pointedly at the magazine.

“And McKinley is that person?”

“Sì. First, he is a countryman of Harrington’s, is he not?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he would use him.”

“No, but it is a connection. A slight one, I’ll grant you, but it is still there. Of more importance is the fact that the word is out—at least among my associates—that if you need extremely high value jewels stolen, McKinley is your man.”

“When you
need
something stolen? I don’t understand.”

“So that you can collect the insurance money.”

“Oh, I see.” Zoe sat back, trying to comprehend the idea that someone would plan a robbery to claim insurance money.

“It is a specialized market segment he caters to,” Nico explained. “At a certain point the expenditure of insuring certain pieces is so high that it becomes, well, cost prohibitive. Often the value of the jewels does not increase enough to cover the price of insuring them over time.” Nico shrugged. “That is where McKinley has found a niche. He arranges for the ‘theft,’ and after the insurance pays, McKinley gets his cut. The piece is either quietly returned, or—and this is more often the case—he delivers it to a cutter where it seamlessly reenters the market after it is recut and a certificate is forged to show it came from some other location. Of course, pieces like the Flawless Set, McKinley will do all he can to sell it intact to the right—elite—buyer.” Nico finished his water and set down his glass with a click. “There is a second reason to find McKinley. I asked around and a dignified older man with a British accent was looking to meet McKinley.”