This time tomorrow I’ll be on the Eurostar on my way home.
It couldn’t come soon enough for Jean Rizzo. He missed his children, his apartment, his life. But he felt deflated. He’d arrived in London two weeks ago full of hope and excitement. Tracy’s hunch about Elizabeth Kennedy had been the right one. Elizabeth had returned to London after her failed L.A. job, to regroup and plan her next move. After a lot of good old-fashioned detective work, Jean had tracked her down and begun a grueling, week-long surveillance. He’d watched Elizabeth set up to swindle Edwin Greaves, the multimillionaire philanthropist and art collector. Brilliant in his day, Greaves had been cruelly ravaged by Alzheimer’s in old age, making him a vulnerable target. Like a shark smelling blood, Elizabeth Kennedy had exploited the old man’s weakness, making off with a painting worth millions.
Jean Rizzo thought, She has no scruples. She’d sell her own child if the price was right.
But he wasn’t here to catch Ms. Kennedy out in a con, or to recover stolen art. He was here to catch a killer. There had been no more murders since Sandra Whitmore, back in the summer. Since Elizabeth walked out of Cadogan Gardens with the oil painting, Jean Rizzo hadn’t let her out of his sight. But she’d met with no accomplices, made no sudden or unusual moves of any kind. More importantly, no murder had followed the art theft. Four days had passed now. The Bible Killer always struck within two days. The trail was as cold as Jean’s toes in his sodden, rain-drenched socks.
Tracy called from Colorado. “Maybe she works without a partner. It’s perfectly possible, Jean.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe the murders only happen after bigger, more high-profile jobs? It could be an adrenaline thing. If so, this con on Mr. Greaves might have been too low-key.”
“Hmm.”
Tracy had been true to her word and had helped Jean immensely with the investigation. Her insights into the workings of the con artist’s mind had been invaluable. And yet Jean Rizzo couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something, something crushingly obvious.
Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely. Maybe Milton Buck was right after all. Maybe there is no link. Jean had been able to trace Elizabeth Kennedy to some of the cities at the times of the murders, but not to all of them. Was he spinning something out of nothing? Had finding first Tracy and now Elizabeth made him complacent—a king admiring a fine, golden cloth that no one else could see? A cloth woven from the threads of his own desperation?
“This is Paddington Station. Paddington is the next station stop. Please alight here for trains to Oxford, Didcot, Birmingham New Street and Reading.”
The tinny-sounding announcement jolted him back to reality. He’d decided to pay a visit to Gunther Hartog, Tracy Whitney’s old mentor and partner in crime. Not really in the hope or expectation of a breakthrough, but because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. According to Tracy, Hartog’s country house was a treasure trove of fine art, albeit mostly stolen or at least dubiously sourced.
“It’s the eighth wonder of the world,” Tracy told Jean. “And Gunther’s unique. You can’t leave London without meeting him.”
GUNTHER HARTOG LAY SPRAWLED out on a chaise longue, a cashmere blanket draped over his frail frame like a shroud. An oxygen tank hung next to him on an ugly metal frame that was utterly out of place in such a beautiful room. Tracy’s hyperbole on that score had turned out to be an understatement. From the second Jean Rizzo’s taxi pulled up outside the seventeenth-century manor house, he realized he was in for a treat. The gardens were as immaculately manicured as any park. If the exterior was a delight, the interior was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of treasures. Oak-paneled walls dripped with fine art the way that an old Vegas drag queen might drip with diamonds. Every rug was antique Persian, every glass Venetian, every cornice original, every stick of furniture plundered from one of Europe’s grand estates or Asia’s great palaces. Gunther Hartog was a man of both immense wealth and impeccable taste. In Jean Rizzo’s experience, the two very rarely went hand in hand.
Gunther Hartog was also dying. The gray patina of death hung over his sunken eyes and skeletal frame like an early morning mist. His limbs were like twigs and his skin was as dry and fragile as old parchment. He dismissed his nurse and invited Jean to sit beside him.
“Thank you for seeing me,” said Jean.
“Not at all. I have a conflicted relationship with most members of your profession, Inspector, as I daresay you know. But when you mentioned dear Tracy’s name, well . . . curiosity got the better of me.” Gunther’s voice was faint, but his mind was as sharp as ever. The devilish twinkle in his eye was also undiminished. “Have you seen her?”
“I have.”
“Is she well?”
“She is,” Jean answered cautiously. “She sends you all her love.”
Gunther sighed. “I suppose you can’t tell me where she is or what she’s been doing all this time?”
Jean shook his head.
“Even though I’m dying and would take the secret to my grave?”
“Sorry,” said Jean.
“Oh, don’t apologize,” wheezed Gunther. “I daresay you and she came to some arrangement. And I daresay she has her reasons for staying away. I do miss her, though.”
His pale eyes misted over. Jean could see that he had slipped back into the past, back to the glory days when he, Tracy and Jeff used to outwit the authorities again and again, from one side of the globe to the other. They’d helped to make one another rich, but Jean could see that the bond between them ran far deeper than that.
“So Tracy is helping you with your inquiries, is she?” Gunther asked.
“She is.”
“And what dastardly deed is it that you’re investigating, Inspector?”
“Murder.”
The playful smile on Gunther’s lips disappeared.
“Twelve murders, to be more precise.”
Jean Rizzo filled Gunther Hartog in on the Bible Killer’s victims, and the link he’d discovered between the murders and the string of robberies. He explained how he’d tracked Tracy down, suspecting that she might be the missing link that would lead him to the killer. Tracy had helped him to find Elizabeth Kennedy, but that was where the trail had gone cold.
At the mention of Elizabeth’s name, the old man became quite animated.
“Vile woman. So she’s still working, is she? I suppose I’m not surprised, although I’d rather hoped she might be rotting in a Peruvian jail by now.”
“You’re not a fan?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Inspector. She’s a class act, very good at what she does. But she’s typical of the younger generation.”
“In what way?”
“She’s heartless and greedy. Utterly devoid of principles, never mind romance.”
“Romance?” Jean frowned.
“Oh yes!” Gunther cried. “There was terrific romance to our business in the old days, Inspector. Tracy and Jeff weren’t thieves, they were artists. Each job was a performance, a perfectly choreographed ballet, if you will.”
Jean thought, It’s a game to him. To all of them. But no one told Sandra Whitmore or Alissa Armand or any of the other girls the rules. Somehow they got caught up in the dance and paid for it with their lives. There was no romance in their lives, or their deaths, God help them.
Gunther was still talking. “Tracy and Jeff only ever took from the undeserving. They weren’t in the business of mugging old ladies. Not like Miss Kennedy. Money’s the only thing that motivates her and she’ll stop at nothing to acquire it. She destroyed Jeff and Tracy’s marriage, you know. From what I could learn at the time, she was paid to do it. Someone with a grudge against one or both of them hired Elizabeth to wreck things. Can you imagine such a thing? In my day such behavior was considered beyond the pale.”
He slumped back on the chaise longue, exhausted by the effort of such a long diatribe.
Once Gunther had caught his breath, Jean asked, “Did you ever hear about Elizabeth working with a partner? A man?”
“Years ago, yes. But I haven’t exactly followed the young lady’s career. Why?”
Jean shrugged. “The Bible Killer’s male. I’m looking for a man connected to Elizabeth Kennedy or Tracy Whitney. Or both. Of course, there is one person who fits that description perfectly.”
Gunther frowned.
“You don’t mean Jeff?”
“Jeff Stevens was intimate with both women. He’s also still active, traveling all over the world looting antiquities.”
“Whatever else Jeff’s doing, it isn’t looting,” Gunther protested.
“The point is he’s out there, using a string of aliases. He could have been in any of the cities in question at the right time.”
Gunther shook his head. “Jeff had nothing to do with this. I’d bet my life on it.”