The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (13 page)

“But we didn’t steal the car.” Claire’s voice rose enough that a couple at a nearby table turned to stare at her. “It’s my friend Valeria’s. We borrowed it. You can call her.”

“I did,” Falcone said. “She confirmed she had lent you the car.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

“The car is reported to have held a package of cocaine, worth a great deal of money, hidden under the back seat. Drug smuggling and dealing always attract the attention of law enforcement.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Who made the report?”

“An anonymous source.” Falcone shrugged. “It’s a good way to stop you from getting help from the police. Had you gone to the
Questura,
you would have been detained for questioning.”

“Oh.” Claire appeared stunned, which was more or less how I felt too. One of my recurring nightmares was of being in prison. It seemed to me that the loss of liberty would be the worst sort of living hell. And in the last ten minutes, I’d been told I was a person of interest in a murder and had been accused of drug-smuggling.

“But we didn’t have drugs in the car.” I was determined to convince him we were innocent.

“Then how did they get in there?” Claire wondered out loud.

“Did you lock the car?” I knew she had, but the question slipped out before I could stop it.

She gave me a withering look. “Yes, I did.”

Falcone raised his hand to interrupt us. “It’s possible to break into a car without smashing a window or leaving any trace. An expert would achieve it easily enough.” He made a note in his book and then lifted his head to gaze at us. “May I ask why you came to Venice?”

Claire hesitated. “It’s just a place to recuperate. My family has a house here.”

Falcone nodded. “I see. And do you have the pouch and the key with you? Or is it at the house?”

“Neither,” I said. “We left it in a secure place.”

I couldn’t help it— my eyes were drawn to my bag, which nestled on the ground between my feet. Falcone noticed and he too looked down at the bag.

“A good idea,” he said. “You can’t be too careful.”

We sat in silence for a minute. I watched Falcone’s aura circle over his black hair. So he was going to die, but how? Were the men who were chasing us also pursuing him? Or was it just a coincidence? Would he fall into a canal and drown, or have a heart attack? On the whole, I don’t believe in coincidences. For the most part, people use them to explain away things they don’t care to think about too deeply, or don’t have the imagination to examine properly.

“So you know who’s after this key?” I asked finally.

He inclined his head, but said nothing.

“We deserve more information,” I said. “These men are hounding us and they lied to the authorities about us. Who are they?”

He tapped his pencil against his notebook. “All I can tell you is that there is a fortune at stake. The man who is running this operation is very well connected. If he has decided he needs this key for some reason, then he’ll stop at nothing to get it.”

“Then why don’t you arrest him?” I asked. “You have good cause. He’s got his henchmen pursuing us across Italy. And he’s probably responsible for Ethan’s disappearance.”

“There is no indication, from what you’ve told me, that Ethan has been abducted.”

“Then where is he?” Claire said, with a catch in her voice.

“You’ve heard nothing from him since Friday night?” Falcone asked.

“No. There’s been no word, and that’s so unlike him. If he were able to contact me, he would.”

“There’s something else,” I said. “Ethan’s assistant, Ben Shepherd, was found stabbed to death. The English police are looking for Ethan. They seem to believe he’s a suspect. We have to find him urgently, so that he can go to the police and assist in the investigation. He’s innocent.”

Falcone scrawled something on his notepad.

“Have you considered the possibility that Ethan killed Mr. Shepherd?” he said after a pause. “That he’s now hiding and evading the authorities?”

Claire’s cup hit its saucer with a faint chink. Her face flushed red. “You have no grounds for making that assumption. Ethan would never kill, never.”

“If you knew how many times I’ve heard that…” Falcone tilted his head slightly, bird-like. “It is good that you have faith in your brother, but if he has been taken against his will, why are his kidnappers not negotiating with you?”

Falcone was right. Our stalkers hadn’t made any attempt to talk with us in person or by phone. They just seemed intent on stealing the key and possibly harming us in the process.

Claire slumped back in her chair. I could only imagine how she must be feeling. Falcone’s conjecture that Ethan was guilty, or was involved in any way at all, shocked me. He and Detective Lake would make a well-matched pair.

“So we need to approach these men who are after us and offer them the key in return for Ethan,” Claire said.

“No.” Falcone shook his head, his gleaming black hair catching the sunlight. “I would advise strongly against such a thing. If I’m right about the identity of the man who is controlling these pursuers, then he is very dangerous. His family has been Custodian of the key for a very long time.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I will tell you enough for you to understand what is at stake here,” he said. He hunched forward over the table, his eyes like dark pits.

“There is, or was, a group called the Custodians, art aficionados who saved a number of paintings, books and other artworks from the ravages of Savonarola in 1475.”

“The Bonfire of the Vanities,” murmured Claire.

“Exactly. For many years, the priest Savonarola railed against the corruptness of the Church of Rome and he denounced Lorenzo de Medici, who had initially been his protector. He convinced the Florentines that they were God’s chosen people, but that they had to reform, to cleanse the city of immorality and sin. A group of gentlemen— humanists who understood the scope of the destruction that Savonarola intended— gathered up every artwork they could, sometimes even without the artists’ knowledge, and hid the treasures in a room in one of their palazzi. Once the scourge of Savonarola ended with his execution, they returned the art and other items to their various owners, with the exception of a few pieces whose owners had accepted Savonarola’s way of thinking and declined to take them back. Those artworks they sold privately, using the proceeds to acquire more art and to sponsor young artists.”

“That sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?” I said.

“It was perhaps initially a good thing,” Falcone agreed. “But, over the years, the Custodians became a profit-making enterprise. They took a vow of secrecy and everything they did was carefully orchestrated to protect the identities of the members. At any time, there were only five of them. When one retired or died, another was chosen. They began to acquire art on a grand scale, through theft, forgery, embezzlement and other creative forms of crime. Their wealth grew exponentially and, inevitably, they took whatever action was needed to protect it.”

“And they still exist?” asked Claire.

Falcone waved at the waiter, who came to take another order. I asked for a mineral water. My system was full of caffeine, but it seemed confused. I was jumpy and sleepy at the same time.

“We think so, but the years of the Fascist movement and the Second World War were particularly devastating for them,” Falcone continued. “After more than four hundred years, the group almost disintegrated. Several members disappeared, hunted down for various reasons by Mussolini’s death squads, and their replacements were killed in action during the war or in bombing raids.”

“But some survived?”

“Yes. But they believed that the keys were lost.”

“Keys, plural? More than one?”

He nodded. “There were always two, and two Custodians were appointed to be the keepers of the keys.”

We stopped talking when our drinks arrived, the silence drawing out even after the waiter had left. Knowing the history of the people we were dealing with didn’t help. It just made me feel worse. We were being targeted by an organized crime gang with plentiful resources, like the Italian Mafia.

“What does the key open?” I asked.

“It’s not entirely clear to me. A safe of some kind perhaps.”

“And where would it be?” I asked him. “In Florence?”

Falcone paused for a long beat before answering. “Possibly, or Rome. I rather hoped you would know something that might give us a lead.”

A gaggle of tourists, wearing sweatshirts emblazoned with the Norwegian flag, passed by us, following a guide towards San Marco. I wished I could join them and immerse myself in history and art for a while. It would be a pleasant escape. But I tuned back in as Claire spoke. “Do you think my grandfather was somehow involved with the Custodians? Maybe that’s why he had the book in his possession.”

“I thought you said an Italian soldier sent it to him after the war,” I said.

“Well, maybe the soldier was also a Custodian?”

Falcone held up a hand. “Slow down. What Italian soldier?”

Claire repeated what she’d told me earlier about the book arriving from Italy and being stored in her grandmother’s attic after her grandpa died.

“Then my father found the book about a year ago. I got the impression from something he said on the phone that he was in Italy to find out more about it. He met with someone in Rome, the day before he died.”

Falcone’s head jerked up. “Your father died recently?”

“Yes, he was killed in a car crash on his way home from Heathrow airport.”

Falcone jotted something in his notebook before looking up at her. Was it my imagination or had his dark eyes softened?

“I’m very sorry, signorina.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. The air itself felt heavy on my shoulders, and I sank lower on my seat.

“You said your father went to Rome? Whom did he meet?”

“I don’t know. He told me that he had a meeting but he never said with whom.”

Falcone nodded and scribbled another note. Claire leaned forward across the table towards him. “So you know the man who’s running the Custodians now. As Kate already asked, why haven’t you arrested him?”

“All in good time. We’re building our case and making sure we have the evidence we need to make our charges stick.”

Claire and I looked at each other. “But there’s no time,” Claire said. “If he has Ethan, you have to expose him now, before it’s too late.”

“This is my suggestion,” Falcone said. “I will take the key and use it to offer a deal. If my contact has your brother, I will secure his safety. But I’ll say again there is no guarantee that these people are holding Ethan. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking I can achieve something I can’t.”

I looked at Claire. Much as I’d welcome the chance to hand the key off and be done with it, Falcone was offering little assurance that he would be able to find Ethan. Maybe he was right that Ethan had never even made it to Italy. He could still be in England, or anywhere, come to that. All we had to go on was his text message telling me he’d meet me in Florence. I slumped in my chair. My head ached.

While Claire stared at Falcone as though trying to assess his motives, I sat up straight again. “We’d need something official,” I said. “A document to show that Claire has given you the key.” I glanced around the piazza. “This is all a bit unorthodox.”

“Of course—” he began, but Claire cut him off.

“No,” she said. “Even if I trusted you to use the key to help my brother, which I don’t, I can’t give it up yet. It’s my only connection to my dad and to Ethan.” Her eyes brimmed with tears that glistened in the pale light.

To my surprise, Falcone reached over and patted the back of her hand. “It’s okay. Please don’t distress yourself. You must do what you think is right.”

He straightened up and leaned back in his chair. “May I ask a favor, though?”

“
Certo
,” Claire said.

“May I look at the key?”

Claire looked at me, biting her lower lip. I waited. It was possible that Falcone was a fraud and that he’d do a runner once he had the key in his hand, but I didn’t think he’d do that. And I was quite sure I could run faster than he could, if it came to that.

“Give it to him, Kate,” she said.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the pouch, feeling the familiar shape inside. I withdrew the key and gave it to Falcone. As he ran his finger over the engraved C and the flames, his aura swirled faster, just as Claire’s had done when she’d first touched the key. “Remarkable,” Falcone said. “Quite remarkable.”

He gave the key back to me. I watched the air moving over his head while I slipped the key back into the pouch, but I saw no difference in the strength of his aura. It seemed that even touching the key increased the danger, which was a development beyond my previous experience. It was also a terrifying reminder that I probably had an aura too, but I couldn’t see it.

“So now what?” Claire asked.

“I will do what is needed to lift the alert for you both in connection with the cocaine. I assure you the police here do not have much patience with drug smugglers. I will also phone my contact in Rome to explain that I have access to the key. I will do what I can to ascertain if he has your brother. Until I can do that, you must remain out of sight and stay vigilant until I tell you otherwise.” He nodded at the business card lying on the table where I’d put it while I made the phone call to Falcone’s office. “You have my mobile number there. If you share your own numbers with me, I will contact you when I’m able to obtain more information.”

We gave him our numbers, which he keyed into his phone. “Thank you, signorine. Be cautious and stay in Venice until you hear from me. When you do leave, you must take a train. The car has been impounded. And trust no one. Not until I tell you all is safe. It should only be a matter of hours.”

“Then can we return to Florence?” I asked. “Will it be okay for Claire to go home?”

“Let’s move one step at a time,” he said.

Claire stood up and gripped the back of her chair, her fingers white against the black metal. Slipping the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, she turned away and strode off. I followed, with a backward glance to see Falcone still sitting in the sunshine. I didn’t know what to make of him. Detective Lake could check him out perhaps. I would call him as soon as we found a secure place to hang out for a few hours.