Sleight of Hand: A Novel of Suspense (Dana Cutler) (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Vancouver, British Columbia, was a symphony of towering snow-capped mountains and picturesque bays that made its setting one of the most beautiful in North America. On Tuesday, Dana phoned Margo Laurent from Seattle before driving there, but the call went to voice mail. She phoned again after she checked into her hotel in Vancouver, with the same result.

On Wednesday morning, Dana caught the 6:00 a.m. ferry to Victoria. One and a half hours later, the ferry docked in the Inner Harbor and Dana found herself facing the Empress, a massive, elegant Edwardian-style hotel that would have been at home in England. The glass-and-steel building where Dana was headed was only a few blocks from the Empress, but centuries away architecturally.

Dana walked through the revolving door into a thoroughly modern lobby at five to nine. A security guard and a desk clerk examined her closely.

“Will you please tell 515 that Dana Cutler is here?”

Five minutes later, the doors of Dana’s elevator car opened into a living room that was almost as big as Jake’s house. The blond giant who had followed her from Rene Marchand’s office was waiting for her. He was wearing Nike trainers, pressed jeans, a black turtleneck, and a shoulder rig. The butt of a .45 automatic protruded from the holster attached to the rig. Behind the bodyguard, through floor-to-ceiling windows, Dana saw a seaplane landing in the Inner Harbor.

“The countess is ready for you,” the blond said in German-accented English. He reminded Dana of the Nazis in World War II movies. She was tempted to ask him if he was just following orders when he tailed her in Seattle, but she tamped down the desire to crack wise.

The Aryan turned his back to her and walked to the far end of the living room, where a stunning blonde was seated. The countess had high cheekbones and iridescent blue eyes and looked to be an inch or so taller than the detective. She was dressed in a black-and-red body-hugging, floor-length, high-necked silk cheongsam decorated with flowers and dragons that made her look like a madam in a Shanghai brothel.

“I am Countess Carla Von Asch, Miss Cutler. Please sit down. Can Kurt get you something to drink?”

Once again, Dana heard a German accent.

“I’m good,” Dana said as she sat in a comfortable armchair opposite the countess. “Let’s discuss the scepter? Do you have it?”

“If we can agree on a price I will be able to secure it for your client.”

“So you don’t have it?”

The countess smiled. “Let’s leave any discussion of the location or ownership of the Ottoman Scepter until you can assure me that your principal is willing to pay for it.”

“Okay. What’s your price?”

“Ten million dollars.”

It took all of Dana’s self-control to keep from reacting. “I’ll tell my client. How can I get in touch with you?”

“I will be here on Friday morning. Let’s agree to meet at the same time.”

“What if my client isn’t willing to pay that much? Do you have a cell phone or e-mail?”

The countess smiled. “This is not a negotiation. If your client wishes to meet my price you will be here on Friday morning and we will work out the details of the sale. If you are not here I will know your client has declined.”

The bodyguard escorted Dana to the elevator. On the way down, the private investigator was overcome once more with a feeling that something was not right. As soon as the doors opened, Dana walked over to the desk clerk, who was manning the desk by himself.

“This is some place,” she said, smiling.

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

“What does one of these condos go for?”

“You’ll have to talk to the rental agent. I don’t have that information.”

“Yeah, good. Can you give me the agent’s name and number?”

The clerk handed Dana a card.

“I was just in 515. Does the countess own that or is she just renting?”

“I can’t tell you that information.”

Dana had anticipated this type of response. She placed her palm on the counter and pulled her hand away, revealing four fifty-dollar bills.

“Are you sure you can’t help me?”

The clerk eyed the bills greedily. Then he looked down the hall across from his station, on the alert for the security guard. When he was certain they wouldn’t be disturbed he leaned toward Dana and whispered.

“The woman and a blond guy checked into the condo yesterday, but she doesn’t own it.”

“Who does?”

“Horace Blair.”

Dana had never heard of Horace Blair.

“Thanks,” she said. “One more thing.” She slid another fifty onto the pile. “What car is the woman in 515 driving? A license number would be great if you have it.”

Dana staked out the condo’s garage. Ferries left for Vancouver every hour. If the countess was headed back to the mainland she would be leaving soon. Two hours later, a Volvo that had seen better days drove out of the garage with the countess at the wheel and the bodyguard in the passenger seat. The arrangement struck Dana as odd, and the car was not of the sort she was expecting a countess to own.

Dana let several cars get between them once she was certain where the Volvo was headed. Then she drove onto the ferry just as the countess and her companion were getting out of their car to go to an upper deck. The bodyguard was still dressed in jeans and a turtleneck, but he wasn’t packing. The countess had pulled her hair back into a ponytail and was wearing jeans and a green cable-knit sweater.

Dana decided to stay in her car during the trip to Vancouver. She didn’t want to risk being seen. While she waited, she reviewed everything that had happened in the past few days, starting with her meeting with Margo Laurent. What was her first impression of her client? She remembered thinking of her as a French femme fatale, a character out of some old mystery novel. Dana frowned. Now that she thought about it, every person she’d dealt with was like a character out of some old mystery novel. Professor Pickering was an oddball who lived in an eerie mansion on a spooky island. Captain Leone had reminded her of a pirate captain. And there was definitely something odd about Rene Marchand. A high-end antiques dealer would want to impress wealthy clients. Marchand’s office looked as if it had been thrown together hastily. It didn’t even have a phone, and she didn’t remember seeing a computer. Finally, there was Countess Von Asch with her slinky Chinese dress and Teutonic bodyguard.

But most of all, there was the case itself. In real life, private detectives were not tasked with finding golden scepters belonging to Ottoman sultans. Was it possible that none of this was real? When she thought about it, her adventures were like something out of a 1940s pulp magazine, or . . . Dana’s jaw dropped. It was like that old movie that Jake loved. They’d watched it on the Turner Classic Movies channel during an evening devoted to Humphrey Bogart. What was it called?
The Maltese Falcon!
That was it. This case was exactly like that movie.

But someone had tried to murder Otto Pickering, and the money was real. Margo Laurent had given her twenty-five thousand American dollars and a first-class ticket to Seattle. If it wasn’t so she could find the Ottoman Scepter, what was it for? Still, the whole setup didn’t feel right. When they docked, Dana planned to follow the countess. Maybe she would see something that would help her make sense of the Case of the Ottoman Scepter.

Chapter Fourteen

Shortly after the ferry docked, Dana was driving south on I-5 toward Seattle, a few car lengths behind the Volvo. Several hours later, the Volvo got off the interstate at the Mercer Street exit and Dana followed it up Queen Anne Hill until the Volvo pulled into a parking space in front of a tavern. Dana cruised by and saw the countess and her bodyguard walk into the tavern. Then she found a parking space a block away that gave her a clear view of the tavern’s front door.

While she waited, Dana got her laptop and searched the Internet for Countess Carla Von Asch. She came up blank. She also drew a blank with Margo Laurent, Otto Pickering, and Rene Marchand. Then she tried Horace Blair, and got several thousand hits.

It didn’t take long for Dana to learn that Horace Blair was the multimillionaire head of a conglomerate with tentacles in shipping, scrap metal, real estate, and other lucrative enterprises, but nothing she learned helped her understand why Margo Laurent, or whoever she was, had sent her across a continent in search of a golden scepter.

Was the scepter even real? Dana hadn’t questioned its existence until now. It didn’t take her long to confirm a part of the story Margo Laurent had told her. Mehmet II had given a gold, jewel-encrusted scepter to Gennadius after bringing him to Constantinople on a horse from the imperial stable that was outfitted with a silver saddle. But she could find no further reference to the scepter.

Dana looked up to make sure the countess and her bodyguard weren’t leaving the tavern. After watching the door for a few minutes, Dana got another idea. She typed in Isla de Muerta and brought up a website run by the island’s chamber of commerce. The Stanton’s B&B was recommended as a place for tourists to stay and she learned that sport fishing trips and nature hikes were among the island’s draws.

Dana clicked on a section that gave a history of the island and learned that it had indeed gotten its name from the men who’d died on the ships that had wrecked on the rocks surrounding it. She was about to leave the history section, but she paused when she saw a paragraph mentioning famous people who had vacationed on Isla de Muerta. Horace Blair owned one of the summer homes on the island. Dana bet she knew which one. This was the second time Horace Blair’s name had come up. What did he have to do with a golden scepter?

Dana was about to research the millionaire in more depth when Otto Pickering walked into the tavern. Pickering had told her that he didn’t know who owned the scepter, so this was either an amazing coincidence or Pickering had lied to her.

Dana got out of her car and headed for the tavern. When she walked inside she saw the bodyguard and the countess seated at a table talking to Professor Pickering and Rene Marchand. The bodyguard said something that made the others laugh. Dana was willing to bet that the joke involved her.

“Hey, guys,” Dana said as she walked toward them, “I’m looking for the Maltese Falcon and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Do any of you know where I can find them?”

Heads swung toward her, and Rene Marchand said, “Uh-oh.”

Dana pulled a chair over to the table and sat down.

“So, who are you really?”

They looked at one another, unsure of what to do. Then the bodyguard shrugged.

“I guess the cat is out of the bag.”

Dana heard a bit of the South where his Teutonic accent had been.

Otto Pickering held out a handbill that announced that the Queen Anne Players appeared Fridays and Sundays in LaRosa Restaurant’s Interactive Comedy Mystery Dinner Theater.

“You’re actors?” Dana said, not really surprised.

“Part time,” Pickering said.

“Am I safe in guessing that none of you are who you said you were?”

The professor held out his hand. “Ralph Finegold, at your service. I teach chemistry at the university.”

“Patty Weiss,” said the countess without any trace of a German accent. “I’m a student.”

“George O’Leary, accountant,” the bodyguard said.

“And I’m Marty Draper,” said the antiques dealer. “I own an art gallery, and I do sell antiques through it.”

“And who is Margo Laurent?” Dana asked.

“Ah,” said Ralph Finegold. “That we can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Dana asked.

“Can’t. We have no idea who she is,” Patty said.

“We got a call on the Queen Anne Players’ answering machine, last Thursday,” Ralph said. “The woman had a French accent and she said she was willing to pay twenty thousand dollars and expenses if we would role-play a mystery. That definitely got our attention.

“I called her back and she said she wanted to play a practical joke on a friend who was a real private eye. She said that two of us would have to go to Isla de Muerta. One of us would wait in a summer home for you and the other person would wait outside and shoot into the house. George and I went up and Captain
Leone
took us across. He runs the only taxi service to the island.”

“So he’s for real?” Dana said.

“Yeah,” George laughed. “You couldn’t invent a character like that.”

“The Stantons were in on the prank, too,” Ralph said. “Mr. Stanton unlocked the house where we met and hid George after he shot at you.”

“That was pretty stupid,” Dana said to O’Leary. “You could have hurt one of us and I would have shot you for real if I’d caught up with you.”

George shook his head. “You were never in danger. I was in the army and I’m a very good shot. If you examined the bullet holes, you would have seen that they were very high and very wide.

“I also had the distances worked out and I left my car engine running. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t just charge out, and I was pretty certain you wouldn’t get to me before I drove off.”

Dana didn’t challenge him. The incident was in the past and there was no way to know what would have happened if she’d reacted a little quicker.

“What was the point of the joke?” Dana asked, still mystified.

“We don’t know,” Marty answered. “We were just told to run you around until Friday. Then we wouldn’t have to do anything else.”

“Why Friday?” Dana asked.

“Laurent didn’t say,” Ralph answered.

“How did you choose your characters?” Dana asked.

“Laurent sent us a scenario with a sketch of every character and what we were supposed to do,” Marty said. “The condo on Victoria and the house on the island were arranged in advance. I had to find an office to rent and I had to get the stenciling put on the door. Otherwise, we just played our parts.”

“And you did a good job,” Dana admitted.

“Not good enough,” Patty said ruefully. “How did you figure it out?”

“You may be phony mystery characters but I’m a real live private eye. Though I do have to admit you had me going for a while. Then I realized that the plot and your characters were right out of a potboiler. So I tailed you and George here from the condo on Victoria.”

“Do you have any idea who Laurent is or why she’s playing a practical joke on you?” Ralph asked.

“I haven’t a clue. I live outside of Washington, D.C.
Laurent
—or whoever she is—met me at a D.C. restaurant and told me she’d pay me twenty-five grand plus expenses to recover this Ottoman Scepter.”

Ralph whistled. “You got twenty-five grand and expenses and we got twenty and expenses. That’s an expensive joke.”

“Exactly what I’ve been thinking, but I may have dug up a clue as to the person behind it. The house on the island and the condo on Victoria are both owned by Horace Blair, and Blair is a multimillionaire. Do any of you know him?”

“I do,” Marty Draper said.

“How?” Dana asked.

“I haven’t seen the Blairs in a while, but I’ve sold them art for their home on Isla de Muerta. His wife, Carrie, has been in the gallery a few times.”

“This makes no sense,” Dana said.

“Do you think Horace has it in for you? Was he involved in some case you worked on?” Patty asked.

“I’ve never met Horace Blair. I’ve never even heard of him. And I can’t think of any case I worked on where his name came up. Besides, this prank doesn’t smell like revenge. I’ll come away with almost twenty-five thou for a few days’ work. He could have hired someone to hurt me for a hell of a lot less than that.”

“You said you’re from D.C.?” Patty said.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe Laurent needed to get you away from the East Coast. She sent you three thousand miles from home and told us to run you around until Friday.”

“I can’t think of any reason for her to do it. I don’t have anything going on this Thursday.” Dana shook her head. “None of this makes any sense.”

“I can’t agree more,” Ralph said with a cheerful smile. “And there’s no sense brooding over it. We’ve all made a nice fee for very little work, and I for one am not going to complain.”

There was a pitcher of beer sitting on the table. Ralph pointed to it. “Can we treat you to a pint and dinner? It’s the least we can do.”

“Beer and a cheeseburger sounds great,” Dana said. “Maybe if I get good and drunk, this caper will make some sense.”