From a distance, when darkness still made it difficult to see things in their proper scale, it seemed as if a single sooty torch had been kindled in the vineyard parking lot. Powell slowed the car to a crawl. As he drew closer, a pattern of colored lights resolved itself into a fire engine and rescue unit. A third car, a hatchback, sat at the lot’s edge, not far from where the fields began. It was on fire.
He parked at a safe remove from the blaze and got out, followed closely by Wolfe. A fire investigator stood at the entrance to the lot, clipboard in hand. As they advanced, badges raised, he blocked the way. “Stand back, please,” the investigator said. “I’ll tell you when it’s all clear.”
Wolfe looked over the investigator’s shoulder at the flames. “Is it going to explode?”
The investigator grinned. “No, that only happens in the movies. But the pressurized struts in the trunk and hood can pop right out of the vehicle. You don’t want to get one of those between the eyes—”
Powell watched as the fire crew sprayed the car with foam. “How long has it been burning?”
“Maybe twenty minutes. The fire started on the driver’s side and spread back to the trunk. It hasn’t burned through the firewall to the engine, though, so it can’t have been going long.”
“This was the only car you found?” Wolfe asked. “You didn’t see a green pickup?”
The investigator shook his head. As the flames grew less intense, Powell could make out the figure in the driver’s seat for the first time. There was something wrong with the body behind the wheel, a strangeness, like an optical illusion, that had nothing to do with the fire.
Finally, when the blaze had gone out and the fire crew, following the usual procedure, had disconnected the battery, Powell and Wolfe got the nod to move forward. They approached the hatchback cautiously, breathing in the smell of scorched metal and hydrocarbons. Powell could see white goo on the dashboard where the air bags had deployed and melted in the heat.
Then he realized that the man behind the wheel was headless. Looking through the windshield, he saw the cylinder of the dead man’s neck poking up through the remains of his collar. His clothing had been badly burned, but the outlines of a suit were still visible. Peering into the side window, Powell looked at the dead man’s arms. Both of his hands were gone.
Wolfe stared at the stumps. “Don’t know about you, but I think I’ve seen this before.”
Powell only nodded. As Wolfe relayed the car’s description and license number over her phone, he bent down to study the gravel. Near the car, the uniform gray pebbles had been blackened with soot, but a few yards away, he saw traces of something dark and wet.
“They killed him here,” Powell said to Wolfe, who was closing her phone. “At least one gunshot wound to the head. Then they stuck him behind the wheel and took the trouble of cutting off his head and hands.”
Wolfe crouched to examine the bloodstained gravel. “Looks like a rush job to me.”
“Me too. Normally, a body like this gets dumped in the harbor. They must have been in a hurry—”
Powell went to the edge of the parking lot. Kneeling where the gravel gave way to the field, he noticed that some of the trellises were knocked over, their struts uprooted and flattened against the ground.
“A double cross,” Wolfe said from over his shoulder. “The thief brought the painting here, and somebody killed him for it.”
“It’s possible,” Powell said, although he found it hard to believe that the thief behind this heist could have ended up dead so soon. Fewer than ninety minutes had passed since they had lost the truck in the darkened streets, returning to the estate in time to see police cruisers pulling up at the entrance.
They drove back to the mansion, where guests were still gathered in uncertain groups on the lawn. Upstairs, the master bedroom was packed. Archvadze stood in one corner, a cell phone to his ear, next to Kostava, his assistant. A few steps away, Natalia Onegina was speaking rapidly to the chief of police, whose crew cut was so precise that it seemed as if part of his skull had been lopped off. Although Powell was unable to make out her words, he sensed that she was less concerned by the theft of the painting than she was by her party’s failure.
As Powell approached, Archvadze pocketed his phone. “Natalia, please calm down,” the oligarch said in Russian. Turning to the police chief, he said in English, “I apologize. She is very upset.”
Powell, his badge out, reached the circle. “Excuse me, but I was wondering if I could ask a few questions—”
To his surprise, Archvadze recognized his badge at once. “You’re based in London. What are you doing in this part of the world?”
“We’ve been keeping an eye on your house,” Powell said. “We had reason to believe that a crime would take place, but not a burglary.”
Archvadze’s eyes narrowed. “So what, exactly, did you think was going to happen?”
“We thought that there might be an extortion attempt,” Wolfe said, showing her own badge. “Who else knew that the painting was here?”
“No one,” Archvadze said. Then, correcting himself, he added, “Well, a few people did, of course. Natalia and myself. Kostava and a few members of my security team. My investment manager and my lawyer.”
Powell wrote this down in his spiral notebook. “And the painting was insured?”
“It was insured from the moment it left the auction house.” Archvadze made a gesture of impatience. “Please, this isn’t about the money. I can afford the loss. But this painting is irreplaceable.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” As Powell looked at his notepad, his eye was caught by something that he had written earlier that evening. “What about the witnesses who saw the thief? Did you know them?”
“I believe that we met the girl briefly,” Archvadze said. “I had never seen her before tonight. As for the other one, I don’t think that I met him at all. Natalia, do you remember him?”
Natalia, who had been following the conversation, shook her head. “No. But I do remember the girl. She struck me as too clever by half. I don’t know what she was doing here.”
Kostava spoke for the first time, his accent considerably thicker than that of his employer. “She was on the list. A guest of another invitee. The other one called us himself. He said that he was working for a major art investor. We checked his story and said yes.” By the end of this uncharacteristically long speech, his voice was shaking. “Were they a part of this?”
“We aren’t sure,” Powell said. “But we know that the getaway vehicle was disguised as a waste removal truck. How did it get inside?”
Kostava launched into a rambling explanation, from which Powell gathered that he had not hired the truck, but had allowed it onto the grounds on the assumption that the caterer had requested it. By the time he realized that no one had approved the pickup, the truck was already gone.
As the assistant finished his account, Archvadze broke in. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to answer the rest of your questions another time. If you require further assistance, you can get in touch with my lawyer.” He wrote a name and number on the back of an ivory business card. “Please—”
Archvadze gave Wolfe his card, then led the others into a far corner. Powell let them go, then entered the study, where technicians were dusting every surface for prints. As he examined the hole in the closet door, something else occurred to him. “According to the girl’s statement, the thief was holding a package that was exactly the size of the missing painting. No bag, nothing else in his hands.”
“That’s right,” Wolfe said, coming up to his side. “Nothing except the revolver.”
“Which means that he left some tools behind.” Powell turned away, his eyes passing across the desk, the chair, the shelves. Donning gloves, he looked inside the wastebasket, sifting through the wads of paper.
Finally, he went up to the bookcases. He checked behind each of the volumes, pulling them away from the shelf five or six at a time. Then, going around to one side, he saw a gap of several inches between the shelf and the wall. Reaching inside, he felt his fingers close around a leather strap.
He pulled the parcel out from behind the shelf. As the others gathered around, he set the bag on the desk and opened it. Inside, as he had expected, lay a portable drill with a saw blade, along with the rest of the thief’s tools, which he set on the desktop one by one. As he poked a finger through the hole in the bottom of the bag, it struck him that the thief had brought nothing except what he intended to use.
Powell noticed the police chief standing nearby. “The witnesses. Are they still here?”
“For now.” The police chief picked up the drill, hefting it in his hands. “We’re keeping them apart until we decide what to do with them. Technically, they’re guilty of criminal trespass. If you want to talk to them—”
“I do,” Powell said. Turning aside from the desk, he consulted his notes, reviewing what the witnesses had said. There were aspects of their accounts that didn’t make sense, and if he was going to figure out what had happened here, he would need to sort through their stories while he still could. He closed his notepad and turned back to the others. “All right. I’ll talk to the girl first.”