Wicked Business (7 page)

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

Diesel followed me down the stairs and chose a blueberry muffin. “I’d like to go back to Harvard,” he said. “I
have some questions for Julie. I don’t get the dating thing. At first I thought Reedy believed the sonnets would bring him true love somehow, and all he had to do was find the right woman, but that’s not it. The women were part of the search for the stone. I don’t think Reedy was interested in finding his own true love.”

An hour later, we met Julie in Reedy’s office.

“Unfortunately, I only have a few minutes,” Julie said. “I have a class at the top of the hour.”

“I appreciate the few minutes,” Diesel said. “Some women have come forward saying they dated Dr. Reedy recently. The family would like to know if he was serious about any of these women. We thought you might know.”

“First, let me say that I had the utmost respect for Dr. Reedy. And in fact I believe he considered me to be a good friend. Putting all this aside, I have to tell you he wasn’t always the most rational of men when it came to anything connected to John Lovey. He believed the Lovey sonnet book was a huge breakthrough. He said it contained the first clue to the Luxuria Stone’s location. He even paid a visit to someone in
Louisburg Square
who, according to Dr. Reedy, owned the object that held the next clue.”

“Do you know what the object or the next clue was?” Diesel asked.

“No. Only that Dr. Reedy got to see the object that held the clue, but he couldn’t decipher it. His contention was that only someone who believed in true love could decipher the
clue. Call me a cynic, but I think it’s possible there simply wasn’t a clue.”

“So he was looking for a woman who believed in true love to decipher the second clue,” I said to Julie.

She nodded and checked her watch. “Yes. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I have to run.”

“One final question,” Diesel said. “Who was Ann?”

Some color rose to Julie’s cheeks. “She was another one of the true-love women. The last, so far as I know. And Dr. Reedy changed after meeting her. He became agitated and untrusting. He even accused me of spying on him when I was waiting outside his office for our weekly meeting.”

“Do you know anything about her? Last name? What she looked like?”

“No. Nothing. Only Ann.”

Julie left, but we stayed in Reedy’s office.

“There has to be something here to help us,” Diesel said. “A
Beacon Hill
address on a scrap of paper. A map. A phone number for Ann.”

“I imagine it would help if we had the book of sonnets.”

“Only if we knew what we were looking for. Wulf has the book, but I don’t see him moving forward. He’s got Hatchet trying to steal the key. My guess is he needs the key for something more than just opening the book. I’m sure Wulf has already opened the book without the key.”

I sat in Reedy’s chair and studied his desktop. I’d already gone through everything on his desk and in his drawers
the other day, but I repeated my search. It seemed to me that if a clue existed, it would be close at hand. Reedy would have been at his desk, taking notes, doing his research. One of the items on his desk was a book on the life and works of Vincent van Gogh. It hadn’t seemed significant yesterday, but today it caught my attention because I remembered the librarian saying the cover on Lovey’s book of sonnets reminded her of Van Gogh’s almond blossom painting. I thumbed through the book and found the painting. Oil on canvas. Branches and blossoms against a blue sky. Completed in 1890. It was owned by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, but it was currently part of a traveling exhibit.

The page was held by a computer printout of what at first glance appeared to be the same painting, but on closer inspection showed small differences. Someone had circled the differences and written
private collection
and a Louisburg Square address in the margin.

“I think I might have something,” I said to Diesel. “Come look at this. The librarian said the Lovey book cover reminded her of a Van Gogh painting of almond blossoms. I found this art book on Reedy’s desk, and it looks like there were two almond blossom paintings that were similar but different. One is owned by a museum, but it looks like the second is in a private collection. There’s a Louisburg Square address here, and Julie said Reedy went to see someone in Louisburg Square about the clue.”

Diesel looked over my shoulder and ruffled my hair. “Way to go, Sherlock.”

Beacon Hill is a Boston neighborhood delineated by the Boston Common, the Charles River, and busy Cambridge Street. Streets are narrow, lit by gaslight, and mostly one way. No matter where you want to go on Beacon Hill, if you’re driving, you can’t get there from wherever you happen to be. Sidewalks are uneven from time and tree roots. Residences are primarily Federalist-style town houses, with some Greek Revival thrown in for variety. Charles Street slices through the residential area from one end to the other, with its antiques shops, restaurants, boutique stores, coffee shops, bakeries, and greengrocers. Louisburg Square sits two blocks uphill from Charles. The Square itself is a green oasis surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence and a sprinkling of trees. Houses around the Square are redbrick with black shutters, and usually five floors, with half of one floor belowground, opening out to a tiny backyard. This is high-end Boston real estate, with houses selling for multimillions of dollars. I’d walked the streets as a tourist, from Charles Street, up Beacon, to the
Massachusetts State House
, so I had a vague understanding of the geography.

Diesel left Storrow Drive for the flat of the hill, found Mt. Vernon Street, and turned into Louisburg Square. He
counted off houses and idled in front of a perfectly renovated town house that sat in the middle of the block.

“This is the address on the computer printout,” he said. “According to the text I just got from my assistant, the house is owned by Gerald Belker. He’s president of Belker Extrusion. Has a wife and two adult children. This is one of three houses he owns. It’s not clear if he’s in residence. Reedy was let into the house to see the painting, but that was a couple weeks ago. My assistant called the house and got a machine.”

“What’s your assistant’s name?” I asked Diesel.

“I don’t know. She’s been with me for three weeks, and it’s too late to ask. She’d get insulted and quit.”

“So how are we going to get in to see the painting?”

“We ring the doorbell. If someone answers, we lie our way in. If no one answers, we break in.”

“I don’t like either of those ideas.”

Diesel parked two houses down. “What’s
your
plan?”

“You treat me to dinner at a nice restaurant, we go home, and we pretend we didn’t discover the computer printout of the second painting.”

“Not gonna happen, but after we break into the house, I’ll buy you a pizza and a beer.”

“I’m not breaking into the house. Look at these places. They all have alarm systems. The police will come and arrest us.”

“No worries. There’s not a jail that can hold me.”

“But what about me? I can’t do the whole Houdini thing you do with locks.”

“Yeah, you’d be behind bars for a long time.”

“Good grief.”

Diesel grinned. “I’m kidding. I’ll take care of the alarm.”

“You can do that?”

“Usually.”

“Only usually?”

“Almost always.”

I followed him up the stairs to Belker’s house and waited while he rang the bell. No answer. He rang again. Still no answer.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “I don’t think we should break in. It’s daylight. People will see us.”

Diesel put his hand to the door and the lock tumbled. “No one’s looking.”

He opened the door, we stepped in, and the alarm went off.

“Bummer,” he said. “I usually block the electrical signal.”

“Shut it off! Shut it off!
Do something
.”

“Look around for the painting.”

“Are you insane? You set the alarm off. The police are rushing over here.”

Diesel was going room by room. “The alarm company will call first.”

The phone rang.

“What should I do? Should I answer it?” I asked him.

“No. You don’t know the code word. Just look for the painting.”

My heart was racing, and I was having a hard time breathing. “I’m gonna go to jail. What’ll I tell my mother? Who’ll make cupcakes for Mr. Nelson?”

“I found it,” Diesel yelled from upstairs, barely audible over the screaming alarm.

“I’m leaving,” I yelled back. “You’re on your own. I can’t eat prison food. It’s probably all carbs.”

Diesel jogged down the stairs with the painting.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I’m borrowing it.”

“Omigod, you’re
stealing
it.”

“Only for a little while. Help me wrap this bed sheet around it.”

“It’s huge!”

“Yeah, it didn’t look this big in the book. The gold frame doesn’t help, either.”

We got the sheet around the painting, and Diesel hustled it out the door and down the street to his car. I had the hood pulled up on my sweatshirt and my face tucked down in case someone was looking and making notes or, God forbid, taking pictures. We slid the painting into the back of the SUV, scrambled into the front seat, and Diesel took off. He turned out of Louisburg Square, onto Pinckney. I looked back and saw the flashing lights of two cop cars as they came in and angle parked in front of Belker’s house.

“See,” Diesel said. “No problems.”

“We missed getting arrested by two minutes. And we’ve got a hot painting in the back of the car. It’s probably worth millions. I mean, this isn’t like shoplifting a candy bar. This would be a felony. Remember what they did to Martha Stewart? They put her in jail. I don’t even remember why. I think she told a fib.”

“Nobody said saving mankind was going to be easy,” Diesel said.

“We’re
art thieves
.”

Diesel looked over at me. “Does that turn you on?”

“No! It scares the bejeezus out of me. Aren’t you worried?”

“No, but I’m hungry.”

CHAPTER NINE

We retrieved Carl from Diesel’s apartment, got takeout pizza in Marblehead, and brought it back to my house. Diesel hung sheets and towels over my kitchen windows so no one could look in, and we propped the painting up against a wall.

“It’s nice,” Diesel said, working his way through a piece of pepperoni with extra cheese, “but it’s just branches and flowers to me. I’m not seeing any clues.”

“Reedy thought you had to believe in true love to see the clue.”

Diesel took another piece of pizza. “I’ve gotta be honest with you. I don’t even know what true love means. If it
wasn’t for John Lovey living in the nineteenth century, I’d think the whole true-love thing was invented by Disney.”

I’d been staring at the painting for a half hour and I didn’t see any clues, either. I looked at it up close, and I looked at it far away. I looked at it with one eye closed. I examined the back. Nothing. But when I touched it, I felt the energy.

“Do you see a clue?” Diesel asked me.

“No.”

“Hunh,” Diesel said.

“What’s
hunh
supposed to mean?”

“Looks to me like I’m not the only one who’s cynical about true love.”

I sunk my teeth into a piece of pizza. “I’m starting to think John Lovey was a nut.”

Diesel gave a bark of laughter and took a long pull from his bottle of beer.

“Eeh?” Carl asked, pointing to the pizza box.

Diesel gave him a second piece and cut a slice off for Cat.

“Do you want me to help read through the papers you took off Reedy’s desk?” I asked Diesel.

“No, but thanks. I left them in my apartment. I’m going to spend the night here watching the game and guarding your body.”

“How much of the night are you talking about?”

“The whole night. All of it. And then some.”

This was a real dilemma. I didn’t want another Wulf encounter in the middle of the night, but I also didn’t want a Diesel episode in the middle of the night.

“The
whole
night might not be a good idea,” I said. “It’s, you know, awkward.”

That got another smile. “Afraid you can’t keep your hands off me?”

“It’s not
my
hands I’m worried about.”

“Better my hands than Wulf’s hands,” Diesel said.

“That’s true, but it wasn’t the answer I was hoping to hear.”

The game was in overtime when I went to bed. I brushed my teeth and went with the least seductive outfit I could find … a lightweight T-shirt and black Pilates pants. I crawled into bed, and Cat took his position at my feet. I shut the light off, and heard Diesel on the stairs.

“Bruins won,” he said, coming into the bedroom, carting the Van Gogh with him.

“What’s with the picture?”

“I didn’t want to leave it downstairs where it could get snatched.”

“You could have slept downstairs with it.”

“I don’t fit on the couch.”

“You don’t fit here, either.”

“True. But I fit
better
.”

Carl looked over the edge of the bed. “Eep?”

Cat rotated his head and looked slitty-eyed at Carl. Cat wasn’t big on sharing his bed with a monkey. Probably, he wasn’t crazy about sharing it with Diesel, either.

Carl inched his way around the bed to the point where he was farthest away from Cat, carefully climbed onto the bed, and sat hunched, trying to make himself small.

“Does Carl sleep with you when you’re home?” I asked Diesel.

Diesel stripped his T-shirt over his head and kicked his shoes off. “No. He has his own bedroom. You only have one bedroom, so he doesn’t know where to sleep.”

“Like you.”

“Honey, I know exactly where to sleep.”

His jeans hit the floor, and I told myself to look away, but I couldn’t force myself to do it. Diesel naked was a masterpiece of male perfection. I was tempted to turn the light back on, but I was afraid that would be too obvious. He dropped his boxers and slipped under the covers next to me.

“This thing that happens when two people with special abilities get together. You want to explain that to me again?” I said to him.