Lost and Found (11 page)

Talk about a fantasy.

None of the three calls was from Mack. The first was unimportant. But the second, the one from her cousin Sylvia, stunned her.

The third call was from her parents.

Vesta Briggs was dead. The indomitable head of Chatelaine’s was gone. It was hard to grasp the sudden change in the world.

Cady hung up the phone and gazed unseeingly out into the night. Her eyes burned. In another minute she would be crying.

Vesta had become difficult and increasingly eccentric toward the end of her life. Nevertheless, she had been a presence in the art world. The funeral would be well attended, but Cady doubted that there would be many tears shed.

“
S
O
, what went wrong on the last job, Dad?” Gabriella asked.

Mack sighed inwardly and kept his attention on the early seventeenth-century tapestry hanging on the museum wall. It was one of several on display. Each showed vibrant scenes from a unicorn hunt and in the process depicted a past that was part reality and part myth. The colors, especially the rich reds and blues, were extraordinary, given the age of the wool and silk. The tapestries teemed with life and energy. Each of the faces of the literally dozens of human figures had been endowed with individualized features. The myriad animals ranged from hunting hounds to griffins. Plants bloomed in glorious detail.

The tapestries were on loan from a private collection. The special exhibition had given Mack an excuse to meet his daughter for lunch in San Francisco and an afternoon of wandering through a museum.

Museum-going was a family passion. He had met his wife, Rachel, at an exhibition of Impressionists during his sophomore year in college. Many of their dates had
taken place in museums and galleries. When Gabriella had arrived, they had continued the practice. Gabriella had toured her first museum in a carrier attached to Mack’s back.

After Rachel’s death, he had taken his daughter back into museums, endless numbers of them. Together they sought solace in the art and artifacts that were the tangible proof of the universal nature of the human experience.

When the natural vicissitudes of parenting a teenager had struck, he had discovered that museums could transcend, for short periods at least, a host of thorny issues involved in single-fatherhood. Other dads attended ball games with their kids. Mack and Gabriella toured museums. He learned that the two of them could talk in quiet galleries surrounded by art even when communication had become impossible everywhere else.

On summer vacations they had hit foreign institutions—the Hermitage, the Ashmolean, the Louvre and countless more of the great treasure-houses of Europe. On school breaks they had crisscrossed the country, touring everything from the New York Met and the Art Institute of Chicago to the Seattle Art Museum and the Getty.

“What makes you think something went wrong?” he asked.

“Dad, this is me, your one-and-only heir apparent. I can tell when things go wrong on a job. Just like you know when I’ve got a new boyfriend.”

He did turn at that and gave his self-proclaimed heir a considering look. She had always been Gabriella, never Gabby. Rachel had insisted on it right from the beginning. On the first day of kindergarten Gabriella had announced to the teacher that she would only answer to her full name. The edict had been enforced all through elementary and high school. She had just turned nineteen, in the midst of her freshman year in college, and she showed no signs of softening her stance.

“You’ve got a new boyfriend?” he asked with grave interest. “What happened to Eric? I kind of liked the guy.” He raised a hand before she could answer. “Wait, I’ll bet that’s what went wrong, isn’t it? I read somewhere that the quickest way to get rid of your daughter’s boyfriend is to tell her that you approve of him.”

Gabriella rolled her eyes. They were gray-blue, the same shade as his own. Her fair hair, fine-boned features and lovely smile, however, had come from her mother’s gene pool. It had been six years since Rachel had been killed by a drunk driver. The initial razor-sharp pain of loss had eventually worn down to a quiet memory. But sometimes when he looked into his daughter’s face like this, he could feel whispers of the old rage and bitterness that he had experienced when he had been forced to accept the brutal fact that Rachel would never see Gabriella grow up into a beautiful, intelligent young woman.

“Dad, I told you, Eric is just a friend.”

“You’re sure?”

“He’s gay, okay? Stop trying to change the subject. You told me that you recovered that old piece of armor and that Dewey and Notch made a deal to sell it to that software genius up in the mountains.”

“Ambrose Vandyke.”

“Whatever. It looks to me like it was a win-win situation for everyone. But you’re acting as if things went wrong. What happened?”

“I miscalculated,” he said. In ways he hadn’t even realized until too late, he added silently.

He moved on to the next tapestry, a scene of seventeenth-century French court life in all its elegance, charm and stunning decadence.

Gabriella hurried after him. “You never miscalculate.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Does this have something to do with that new freelancer
you’ve been using lately? The one you said had a special expertise in European decorative arts?”

That question gave him serious pause. He still wasn’t accustomed to the occasional flashes of adult insight that were starting to come with increasing frequency from his daughter.

“What makes you think it has anything to do with her?” he asked.

“Give me some credit here, Dad. You’ve used a lot of consultants over the years, but I knew there was something different about this one the first time you mentioned her.”

“Yeah? How did you come to that conclusion?” He was stalling. Sometimes it worked with teenagers. They were so focused on themselves and their own problems, so preoccupied with the business of becoming an adult, that they didn’t always pick up on the fact that other people were not supplying full answers.

“I don’t know.” Gabriella’s brows came together in an uneasy frown. “It’s the way you talk about her, I guess. You get sort of quiet whenever her name comes up in the conversation. If I ask you about her, you just tell me how good she is. What a great eye she has.”

“She is good. I’d swear she’s got a sixth sense where fakes are concerned. Terrific instincts when it comes to tracing missing art, too.”

Hell, Cady was good enough to follow through on her threat, he thought. She
could
become his competition. She certainly had the skills and the contacts to handle a lot of the trace work. The thought of her doing recovery, however, was nothing short of appalling. Granted, nine times out of ten there was little physical danger involved. But occasionally, as the Vandyke job had so graphically illustrated, matters got complicated. Cady knew nothing about that end of the business. The first time things went wrong, she would be in big trouble.

He winced, thinking of her parting shot.
“If I need muscle, I’m sure I can hire it.”

“You’ve used other freelancers who were good, but you never got that tone in your voice when you told me about them.”

“Gabriella—”

“Come off it, Dad, this case was the first time you met Cady Briggs in person, and you come back acting weird. Something happened, I know it.”

Gabriella wasn’t going to allow herself to be distracted, he realized as he moved on to the next tapestry. He studied the unicorn in the scene in front of him.

“Miss Briggs went outside normal procedures,” he said carefully. “There were some problems in the recovery. Everything turned out all right in the end, but we had to get the police involved.”

Gabriella brightened visibly. “You mean Miss Briggs screwed up?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“She
did
screw up. I can tell. She screwed up royally, didn’t she?” Gabriella looked very satisfied now. “So, did you fire her?”

“Not exactly.”

“Why not? You just said that she didn’t follow procedures and that you had to call in the cops. You’ve always told me that, whenever possible, you try to recover objects for your clients without involving the authorities. That’s the reason people come to Lost and Found in the first place. They don’t want publicity and attention.”

“Sometimes you can’t avoid it. This was one of those situations.”

“You just said that things went wrong because Miss Briggs failed to follow procedures. Why defend her?” Gabriella asked stubbornly.

“I’m not defending her. Freelance consultants have a certain degree of latitude. That’s why they’re freelance
rather than full-time employees.” Damn. Now he was making excuses for Cady. “She’s new at the business. She’ll learn.” Probably the hard way, he thought, when she tries to hire that muscle.

“What did you mean when you said that you didn’t exactly fire Miss Briggs?”

“I decided to give her a second chance because she’s good at what she does. But she said that she wasn’t interested in doing any more consulting work for Lost and Found.”

“You mean she got mad and quit?”

“That’s pretty much how we left it.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Guess that takes care of the problem, doesn’t it?” Gabriella was clearly relieved. “You won’t have to worry about her screwing up any more jobs in the future, will you?”

“Apparently not. Mind telling me what you’ve got against Miss Briggs? You’ve never even met her.”

Gabriella looked away, concentrating very hard on the tapestry. “I don’t think she’s good for you.”

He did a double take. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Gabriella flushed. “You get a sort of brooding note in your voice whenever you talk about her. It’s like she makes you depressed or something.”

This was what came of sending young people to college, he told himself. He was not about to attempt to explain the difference between frustrated sexual desire and clinical depression to a nineteen-year-old. He wasn’t sure he understood the technical nuances involved, himself.

“I’m not depressed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Maybe you should talk to Dr. Jenny, Dad.”

The thought of talking to the grandmotherly therapist who had helped guide Gabriella and himself through the
grieving process after Rachel’s death and later gave him advice on parenting a sensitive teen was daunting. He could just picture himself trying to explain the differences between sexual frustration and clinical depression to the good doctor.

“I’m fine, Gabriella.” It was past time to change the subject. “The good news is that Dewey and Notch are in clover, thanks to Vandyke.”

That comment successfully sidetracked her. She brightened. “Did he give them a ton of money for that old helmet?”

“He did, indeed. Vandyke is very casual about money. I think he’s more interested in surfing and collecting old armor than he is in good bargains. With what he gave them, Dewey and Notch can pay off the loan on their business and expand their exhibits. They’re happy as clams.”

Gabriella smiled. “Hey, that’s great. Bet Granddad was pleased when you told him that you had been able to help.”

“I gave him a call last night. He was glad to know that Notch and Dewey are now set, financially speaking.” He moved on to the next exhibit, mentally bracing himself. “Since we’re on the subject of finances, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about getting me a car this year? I don’t have to wait until I’m a sophomore?”

“No, I haven’t changed my mind about a car, honey. I’m going to sell the house.”

That stopped her cold, just as he had feared it would. She whirled away from the tapestry to gaze at him with a shocked expression.

“Are you serious?” she demanded.

“I’m still in the planning stages,” he said gently. “I haven’t listed it yet. But, yes, I’m serious.”

“Dad, you can’t mean it.” Her voice rose “You can’t do it.”

“Gabriella, it’s too big for me now that I’m mostly there on my own. I don’t have time for such a large garden. You know that I’m doing more traveling these days. It would be convenient to live closer to a major airport. It’s a long drive in to San Francisco from Sebastopol.”

“But what about when I come home at breaks and during summer vacation?”

He smiled slightly. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the new place has a second bedroom.”

“That’s not the point.” Gabriella moved her hand in a troubled gesture. “You’ve got Mrs. Thompson coming in once a week to clean the house. If you need a gardener, you can hire one. I realize that it’s a long trip to the San Francisco airport, but you can take a shuttle if you don’t feel like driving, can’t you?”

He had known this would be difficult. “Honey, I realize that this is coming as a shock to you.”

“It’s our house. We’ve always lived there.”

“You’re an adult now. We both know that you won’t ever be coming back there to live permanently.”

“Don’t count on it.” She made a face. “I hear that it’s real common for unemployed offspring to return to the nest to take advantage of free room and board until they find a job.”

“No sweat. If you need to freeload for a while after college, we’ll work something out. I’ll have my lawyer draw up a contract for indentured servitude for you to sign. Nothing fancy. Shouldn’t be any problem.”

Her mouth tightened. “This isn’t a joke. I can’t believe you’d actually sell our house.”

“Like I said, I haven’t listed it yet.”

“But you’re going to list it, aren’t you?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

Her hand tightened around the strap of her purse. “This
has something to do with what went wrong on the job you did for Dewey and Notch, doesn’t it?”