Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (17 page)

“But?”

“But the fact that this is Gustav Sundin is
interesting to me. I want to keep an eye on things, since it might
be tied to our case.”

Nick nodded, since this was exactly his own
thinking. Out loud, he said, “Why the hell won’t he just let me
work with him? It’s obvious it’s related, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say obvious,” Fredrik said.
“It’s suggestive, certainly. It’s hard to believe it wouldn’t be
related. I mean, there you are. There
she
is. Magnusson’s
daughter. And the day after she arrives on Gotland, her father’s
old friend shows up dead. That isn’t likely to be a
coincidence.”

Nick resisted the temptation to take the
phone away from his ear to glare at it. It wouldn’t do any good.
“Have you lost your mind? Annika didn’t shoot him!”

“How do you know?” Fredrik said.

He just knew. However, that wouldn’t be good
enough for Fredrik. “She’s a librarian. What would she be doing
with a gun?”

“She lives in New York,” Fredrik said.

“Brooklyn isn’t the Wild West, for God’s
sake! You’ve been to New York, you should know that. Normal people
don’t carry weapons there.”

“Her dad did.”

“Her dad was a bartender in a dive in Green
Point. He worked nights. He carried cash. And let’s not forget that
we suspect him of being a murderer and a thief. It makes sense that
he’d have a gun. It doesn’t make sense that she would.”

“She could have brought his gun with her on
the trip.”

“She didn’t,” Nick said.

“How do you know?”

He just knew. But again, that wasn’t good
enough. “You’re the one who searched her room at the Lady Hamilton.
Was there a gun there?”

“No,” Fredrik admitted. “But she could have
had it on her.”

“Where? Hidden in her garter?”

Fredrik sounded intrigued. “She wears
garters?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I mean... how the
hell am I supposed to know?” He heard the snap in his voice and
wished he’d been able to control himself better. But it was too
late. Fredrik chuckled.

“You have it bad, man.”

No, he didn’t. “I don’t have it at all.”

The chuckle turned into a laugh, and Nick
added, “I didn’t mean that.”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t! Fuck you.”

“No thanks,” Fredrik said, “I’m sure you’d
rather—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He would. No doubt about it.
“The garters were a figure of speech. But she wasn’t carrying a
gun. Her father’s gun was a goddamn Magnum. There was no room in
her purse for something like that, and the way that dress fit her,
there was nowhere she could have hidden it, either. And you
searched her room, and it wasn’t there, so where the hell was
it?”

“Maybe it was in the carry-on bag,” Fredrik
said. “Maybe that’s what she was hiding in the box with the ashes.
Her daddy’s gun.”

The TSA would have found the gun before she
boarded the plane at Liberty. They may not be able to open the
container of ashes, but there was no law that said they couldn’t
scan it. And they had. There had been no gun shape inside. And
besides— “She didn’t have the carry-on bag in Stockholm.”

“She didn’t,” Fredrik agreed, “but someone
did. Maybe she met up with him the next day and got the gun back.
Before she headed to the ferry. That would explain why she didn’t
just use her plane ticket to get to Gotland. They wouldn’t let her
onboard with a Magnum.”

It made sense. It hadn’t happened that
way—Nick knew it hadn’t—but it made sense, logically. “What reason
would she have for shooting Gustav Sundin?”

Fredrik admitted he didn’t know that. Yet.
“We’ll have to figure it out.”

Along with a whole lot of other things.
Although— “There was this guy she met on the ferry. Apparently she
had dinner with him last night.”

“No kidding?” The grin in Fredrik’s voice
was unmistakable, even from miles away. “Is that why you’re so bent
out of shape? She likes someone better than you?”

“She doesn’t like him better!” Nick
snarled.

“You sure about that?”

No, he wasn’t. That was the problem. She
liked him—at least he was pretty sure she did—but he had no idea
whether she might like the other guy better. He had no idea who the
other guy was.

“His name’s Curt. And he’s an American. I’m
gonna look into him.”

“You do that,” Fredrik said, his voice still
uneven with laughter. “Let me know what you find out. Unless it’s
something I don’t want to know.”

Nick snarled, wordlessly this time. “Stay on
top of that bastard Steen. He’s not gonna tell me a damn
thing..”

Fredrik said he would.

“And while you’re at it, see if you can find
out anything about the burglary at her room last night.”

“Another one?”

“This was someone who wasn’t as careful as
you were. He left her stuff an unholy mess and apparently slashed
the pillows and mattress. She had to switch hotels in the middle of
the night.”

“Huh,” Fredrik said. “Wonder how that fits
into this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well... she booked the reservation from
home, right? Weeks ago? So maybe she realized, once she got there,
that she wouldn’t be able to leave the Valdemar Hotel at night
without someone noticing, and so she had to find somewhere else to
stay, where she could come and go more easily.”

“Why would she want to come and go easily?
No, wait, don’t answer that. She didn’t shoot Sundin.”

“So you say,” Fredrik said, and added, when
Nick cursed, “Relax. I’ll look into it. See if I can’t figure out
what the Visby police has discovered.”

“You do that. And let me know what you find
out.”

“Of course,” Fredrik said smoothly.
“International cooperation is a beautiful thing, don’t you
think?”

He hung up the phone before Nick had the
chance to respond. Nick growled and thought about punching
something, but contented himself with stabbing viciously at his
phone instead.

It rang a few times on the other end of the
line and then was answered. “FBI art theft. You steal it, we reveal
it.”

Nick snorted. It was almost impossible to
hang onto bad temper while talking to Kitty. The Art Crime Team’s
technical analyst was as irresistibly cute as her name, with the
personality to match. She was like a living, breathing anime
character, right down to the enormous purple eyes and double
pigtails. “This is Nick. I need you to do something for me.”

“For you, anything.” And she had purring
down to a science, too, even if it was all for show. She wasn’t his
type any more than he was hers. Nick was a legman while Kitty was
almost all bust, and besides, she had a crush on Agent Cruz. But
she was very sweet, and more than that, very good at her job. The
firewall wasn’t invented that Kitty couldn’t get around, and she
had the dogged persistence of a pitbull with a bone. She’d get what
he wanted.

“I need you to find out anything you can
about a man named Curt.”

“That should be easy,” Kitty said, and Nick
wasn’t sure whether she was being facetious or telling the truth.
“What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. He’s an American, but at the
moment he’s here in Sweden, on Gotland. I’m sure he has a
reservation at some hotel or other.” Unless he was staying with
friends. Or camping. “He came to Gotland yesterday, but he has to
have traveled to Sweden from the U.S. recently. Say within the last
week or two. You should be able to get his last name from either
his plane reservation or the hotel. Once you have that, I want to
know who he is, where he came from, and what he’s doing here. Along
with anything else you can tell me about him.”

“Sure thing.” He could hear Kitty’s nails
clicking against the keyboard even as they spoke. “You want his
shoe size and favorite brand of ice cream too?”

“Not the ice cream. The shoe size might not
be a bad idea.” The police might find shoe prints around Gustav
Sundin’s place, and if they did, Curt’s shoe size might become
important. Not that Nick had any reason to think the man was
involved other than the fact that he just didn’t like the idea of
him.

“Does he have something to do with your
case?” Kitty asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Nick
answered, ignoring the fact that half of him—the personal half—just
wanted to know who the hell this guy was, who’d had dinner with
Annika Holst. “He picked up Magnusson’s daughter on the ferry. I
want to know if they knew each other before that. And I want to
know if he has any connection to Magnusson or Gotland, apart from
the fact that he’s vacationing here.”

“Anything else?”

Nick hesitated. It felt disloyal, but the
alternative felt worse. “Anything you can dig up on Chief of Police
Johan Steen—S-T-E-E-N—of the Visby police force. Turns out he knew
Magnusson back when. As well as anything you can find on a man, now
dead, named Gustav Sundin.”

“Spell that,” Kitty ordered. “He’s
dead?”

“Shot last night.”

“Hmm.” Kitty’s fingernails clicked. “How do
you want this sent to you?”

It was a good question, considering that
he’d left his tablet, along with his clothes and everything else
he’d traveled with, in his hotel room in Stockholm. “Phone call.
Any files or pictures I need to see, send them to my phone.”

“You got it,” Kitty said. “Anything
else?”

“I think that’s it. At least for now.”

She was silent for a moment. “Everything
going all right, Nick?”

“Everything’s fine. I just didn’t see
another shooting coming. Not after so many years. And the chief of
police won’t let me in on the investigation.”

“That sucks,” Kitty said.

Yes, it did. “Just get me that information
as soon as you can. OK?”

“OK, Nick,” Kitty said, just as another
voice sounded on Kitty’s end of the line.

“Good morning, Kitten.”

“It is now,” Kitty purred, but not to Nick.
Special Agent Mateo Cruz had arrived at FBI headquarters, and Nick
might as well not be there. He grinned.

“Give Cruz my love, Kitty.”

“I’d rather give him mine,” Kitty said and
hung up. Nick did the same, shaking his head.

His last call was to his mother, who had
just finished taking her daily walk on the beach, and who was
delighted to hear from her only son. “Dominic! Where are you,
baby?”

“I’m in Visby,” Nick said.

“You are? Oh, isn’t it beautiful there?”

It was. Or would be, if he wasn’t working
and worrying himself sick. “I’m not here to sightsee, ma.”

“No, of course not,” Elin Costa said, “but
you can’t help seeing what’s around you, can you?”

He couldn’t. And that was part of the
problem. He was seeing Annika, entirely too much of her, and having
a hard time keeping his eyes off her when she was around, and his
thoughts off her when she wasn’t. And it was inexplicable. Like
Fredrik had said, she wasn’t even that pretty. He’d certainly known
more beautiful women. Gorgeous women; with all the confidence and
flair Annika lacked. She was unassuming and shy. She thought that a
guy like him couldn’t possibly be interested in her, and under
normal circumstances she’d be right. She wasn’t his usual type.
There was just something about her that appealed to him. That
immense vulnerability, maybe, or just the chance to play hero. The
fact that she was in deep shit and didn’t even know it, and he had
the power to get her out.

Not to mention that she had those long legs
he couldn’t help but imagine wrapped around his waist, and that
silky hair he could picture twisting in his hand, and that bottom
lip he just wanted to sink his teeth into...

He cleared his throat. “I just wanted to
touch base. See if there’s anything I can bring back for you.”

Elin Costa used to go back to Sweden to
visit all the time when she was younger, but as her family passed
on, and her friends settled into lives of their own, with jobs,
husbands and children, and those children grew up and had children,
she’d taken to visiting Sweden less often. Whenever Nick had
occasion to get there, he made sure to bring her something from
home, something she had a hard time getting in Florida.

“Just you back, safe and sound, baby,” she
cooed now. “And maybe some salty licorice?”

The request for salty licorice didn’t
surprise him at all. The Swedes loved their ammonia-laced licorice.
The taste made his lips pucker, but his mother devoured the stuff
by the bagful whenever she had the chance.

“Anything else?”

“I can’t think of anything. Are you leaving
today?”

Not quite. “I just got here. It’ll be at
least a few more days. It depends on the case.”

“How’s the case going?” his mother
asked.

Slowly. Frustratingly. “It’s turning out to
be a lot more complicated than I thought. Now there’s a fresh dead
body on top of the one from thirty five years ago.” And on top of
Carl Magnusson’s dead body too, although that didn’t really
signify.

Or did it?

“Oh dear,” Elin said.

“The woman I was following found the body,
so now she’s a suspect in the murder. And the silver is nowhere to
be found.”

There were rules about discussing active
cases with civilians, but Nick was on this case because of his
connection to Sweden, a connection which ran through his mother, so
it had seemed only natural to confide some of the better known
details to her and get her opinion.

His mother clucked. “That poor girl. First
losing her father, then the mishap at the airport when she arrived.
And now this.”

Nick nodded. She really had been slammed
with a whole lot of things in a short period of time.

“You’re watching out for her, aren’t you,
Dominic?” his mother said. “I remember what it’s like to be a young
girl traveling halfway around the world on her own. She’d probably
appreciate having someone to lean on.”