Ten

“CONFIRMED HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE TOURISTS AND TWO priests dead,” Max said, joining Navarro and Daklin. They’d split up, each to do what they did best. Max to ask questions. Daklin and Navarro combing the Capilla Villaviciosa, the small chapel that had been the central point for the explosion. There was little left of centuries of priceless artwork, painting, statues, and tapestries. Not to mention the pile of rubble that now represented what had once been a highly regarded example of thirteenth-century architecture.

“What do we think?” he asked the others. “Same signature as the Madrid train bombing in ’04?” He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.

“Spanish judiciary,” Daklin murmured. “Loose group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian Muslims inspired by al-Qaeda and two Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants. Still doing their time.”

Navarro considered it. “Ahmed was extradited from Italy. There’s your connection.”

Max rubbed the back of his neck. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“To me either,” Daklin admitted. Navarro nodded.

“Hell. Back to square one.”

While the answers he’d gotten might let them form a more complete picture of the hours and days before, during, and directly after the explosion, it was the bits and pieces they’d collected that would give them the complete picture. Even in the midst of nearly complete obliteration, Max knew T-FLAC’s bomb techs would find enough pieces to reconstruct the important components.

Find the bomb’s signature, find the bomb’s builder. The trick was getting to the source before another fatal explosion shook the world’s religious communities.

Absently, Max ran a hand around the back of his neck as he stared at the remains of the small chapel inside the enormous building. He knew two things: One, whoever blew up the building knew what they were doing and two, he’d made sure there was a body count to go along with the structural damage. The building was only open to the public from nine to six. The son of a bitch who’d done this had intentionally detonated when the place was teeming with tourists.

The three men stood in the mihrab, the central prayer hall, and just outside what was basically a large hole in the mosaic floor. Bits of the small chapel’s stalactite ceiling, and chunks of plaster lace-work had been flung across the floor for yards.

Where the hell was Emily? Max glanced down the length of the enormous hall. Thick, oily black smoke hung in the still air inside the vast building, almost blocking the view of the geometric white-and-rust-red double horseshoe arches, and what was probably a magnificent ceiling. A forest of a thousand black marble pillars supported the arches, the stone polished at hand height to a shiny black gloss from countless hands running over them for centuries.

He had a theory, Christ it was a wild theory, but until they could send in samples from the bomb site and get some definitive answers, it was all they had.

“Five vehicles melted to the ground, and fifty plus people injured in the parking lot. The explosion was localized, and this area,” Max paused, pointing toward the starburst-shaped point of origin, “was destroyed.” Steam rose off some of the smoking rubble. “Sprinklers activated?”

Daklin nodded. “Just for a few minutes in response to the heat. As soon as they cleared the building of survivors, they started moving the art into other areas of the building to prevent further damage. According to the curator, several paintings were ripped, torn, blackened by smoke or soaked by water.”

“We’ll want to take a look at the paintings they moved to storage.”

Daklin took out a black square of linen and wiped his equally blackened hands. “Besides Black Rose, we have a smorgasbord of bad guys to pin this on.” His half smile was mocking. T-FLAC was unlikely to be out of work any millennium soon. His specialty was toxic chemicals, but he dressed like a fricking model for a perfume ad.

A smart man would be wise not to believe the suave façade. Max remembered how the man had once single-handedly taken on a dozen hyped-up druggies in a dockside bar.

Daklin had walked away without one sun-streaked hair out of place. The man was a machine.

“No, but this stinks of Black Rose,” Max said, giving voice to what they were all thinking. This was a well thought out, meticulous strike. Contained. Controlled.

He caught the eye of a man approaching them at a fast clip. “Hang on, that’s the chief of police. Let’s see if he has anything.” He walked off to intercept him halfway.

“There were lilies at this site,” Max informed the others when he returned to them a few minutes later. “A dozen, left out in a protected courtyard. No one connected their significance, until I asked, and it was only after the chief questioned those in charge that he found out someone had seen them, and taken them home to his girlfriend. They’re bringing the guy in for questioning.”

Daklin smiled. “And wrestling the flowers away from the girlfriend, I presume?”

A message.

A message they had to interpret fast. Before the tangos struck again.

“Definitely one of the larger groups responsible for this.” Daklin offered, digging his hands into his elegant black slacks. “I managed to get a good enough sample of the Semtex used to send it in for analysis. As soon as we piece together the trigger, we can pinpoint where it originated, then see where it leads. It’s not going to surprise me if this shit stemmed from the Bosnian jihadist support network. Same as the synagogue and other church.”

“No doubt about the derivation of the explosion, however.” Max held up the large chunk of ornate, gilded picture frame he was holding.

“None,” Daklin assured him. “The explosive device was in the frame. Slick, sophisticated. Interesting housing.” His eyes gleamed. “Haven’t seen anything like this before. I’ll know more when I check it out in the lab.”

Max let his gaze drift down the length of the hall again. It was completely empty. “I’m hoping Emily can tell us something about the painting.” And hoping like hell she can’t. Because if she could, it meant that somehow she was linked, however tenuously, to these latest three bombings. And as far-fetched as that sounded to him, Max couldn’t shake the certainty that Daniel, Emily, and the bombings were in some way connected.

Connected by the now dead Black Rose asset in Emily’s palazzo. Connected to him? Jesus. He didn’t know.

Navarro shrugged. “We got what we needed from Father Antonio. It was called The Holy Family, and was done by Raphael in the sixteenth century. We have photographs of the piece, and all the necessary documentation and provenance in here.” He tapped the thick file in his other hand.

“And out of all the paintings and other artwork,” Daklin indicated the space filled with a plethora of priceless antiquities and art objects, “this is what the tangos chose to blow up?”

“They got a twofer,” Max pointed out. “An Islamic mosque and Roman Catholic cathedral in one big boom. My vote is for a religious hate crime. Let’s start there.”

Navarro leaned against a pillar, crossing one ankle over the other. “Lisa Maki was thought to be head of the Black Rose and worked out of Barcelona.”

Savage had killed the woman in South Africa three months ago. “Even though some of her work had religious undertones, we know she’s not setting bombs from the grave. And her preferred kill was large groups, and more up close and personal,” Max reminded them. “Like that student uprising, or the embassy bombing on the night of a gala event. Even if she were alive, this doesn’t feel like Maki.”

Max had that familiar itch at the base of his neck as a chill pervaded his body. They’d believed that the angelic-looking blonde had been head of the Black Rose. But they were now learning they’d been wrong. Maki had been in charge of one cell of the tango group, but she had not been the principal. They were hoping that Savage would lead them to the guy at the top. The only reason she was still at liberty and not locked up for treason.

Before Maki could be interrogated, she’d been killed by Savage in Mano del Dios’s underground bunker. St. John’s jewel thief lady friend had sworn to it, and Max and the others had believed her.

“Let’s invite Savage to join the party,” Daklin said with relish. “We can keep the bitch close until we know what the hell is going on.”

Max shook his head. “Under different circumstances, I’d agree with you. But I don’t want her around on this op.” He didn’t want Emily anywhere near anything to do with Black Rose again. And that meant Catherine Seymour. Not until he knew the what and the why of how a Black Rose asset had broken into her palazzo.

If Savage had anything to do with the attempts on Emily’s life, he’d kill her himself. Slowly.

 

IT HAD BEEN SEVERAL YEARS SINCE EMILY HAD BEEN TO LA MEZQUITA. Then it had been crowded with tourists and worshipers, and had smelled faintly of orange blossoms from the grove of trees lining the Patio de los Naranjos on the north side of the building.

Today she was escorted by two heavily armed women through the south entrance. Only a handful of vehicles were parked in the lot, and half of those were blackened hulls. The sight took her breath away, and the thought of all that history and art gone caused a physical ache in her chest. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how many people had died or been injured in the kind of blast that could melt a car.

“Holy crap,” AJ breathed, looking around at the aftermath. “The blast was hot enough to melt the metal. Look over there.” She pointed to a stand of trees at the edge of the parking lot, some three hundred yards away. Chunks of cars and other debris hung from the charred tree limbs like macabre Christmas ornaments.

AJ and Keiko had filled Emily in on the bombing. But knowing was different from seeing. She was overwhelmed by the smell of smoke as soon as they stopped and opened the car doors. The thick, oily stench brought black paint strokes to mind, an artist’s rendering with undertones of centuries-old pain, framed with hand-hewn stone and crushed dreams.

So much art and history, ruined. Her heels crunched gravel as she rounded a corner, then received the full, devastating impact of the gaping hole in the side of the building. “God. Who could do something like this?”

“Unfortunately a lot of people,” AJ answered as they took the shallow stone steps up to a partially open, magnificent bronze door and went inside.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Emily murmured. The stench of smoke was stronger inside, and drifts of diaphanous charcoal-colored vapor floated in the air currents overhead like black ghosts. Goose bumps rose on her skin, and she rubbed her arms through the long sleeves of her borrowed T-shirt.

“This is—God. I don’t even want to imagine how many people died, or how much priceless artwork has been lost.” She brushed her fingers across one of the black marble pillars as they walked, the stone cold and hand-smoothed. If walls could talk.

Max stood with two men several hundred yards away. It looked as though he were waiting for her. And he was. Just not the way her heart was interpreting his expectant stance. She felt an irrational urge to run the length of the prayer hall and fling herself into his arms.

Instead she walked sedately between the two women on Max’s team. It felt like the longest mile stretched between herself and where he waited. Other than a brief respite in his arms, tension had been twining itself around her nerve endings for what felt like forever.

He didn’t see her, and glanced at his watch. A tiny show of his impatience that surprised her. She observed him curiously as she closed the gap between them. She’d had him pigeonholed long before she’d ever met him. More so afterward when his father had admitted the kind of man his son was. But Max surprised her at every turn. He was nothing like the man his father had claimed him to be.

He hadn’t lied and professed undying love and a rosy future. She had to respect him for being honest. At least about that. It was easier to deal with the truth than it was making whole cloth out of lies.

He knocked her off balance. And that surprised her because she usually kept her emotions very much in check. She’d learned to do that to protect herself, she supposed. Whatever. Now it was ingrained. Yet Max, whether he wanted to or not, was chipping away at her tough outer shell.

It was emotionally terrifying.

It was keeping her on her toes, she thought with the start of a smile for him.

“Did you know Jacoba Brill?” Max asked when she was still twenty feet away. Her smile faded. There was no tenderness in his voice, no softening in his hazel eyes. He was all business.

She hadn’t known why Max had sent for her, obviously not to declare his undying love. But she hadn’t expected him to ask about another restorer. Or, God help her, maybe she had. First Daniel. Then her break-in, then Franco’s family…

With his question she literally felt her scalp tingle as her hair tried to stand on end. “Only by reputation.”

Her heart started pounding way too fast, and she rubbed her damp palms on the legs of her borrowed jeans as the rubber bands around her nerves stretched another notch. She had to lick her lips to push the word out. “Why?”

“She died this morning.”

“Please tell me of natural causes,” Emily was amazed at how calm and controlled her voice was, when inside she was screaming like a frightened child. “She couldn’t have been over fifty-five.”

“They claimed a heart attack.”

She could tell his opinion by his closed expression. She had to lock her knees so she didn’t fall to the beautiful inlaid floor. This was an insane, terrifying, out-of-body experience. She wanted, no, needed, to wake up from this nightmare, in her own bed, preferably in Max’s arms. She dragged in a deep breath. Let it out slowly before she could speak again. “You don’t believe the diagnosis?”

“We’re having our own people do an autopsy now.”

The only way she was going to make it through this was to focus on things she could control. There didn’t appear to be much at the moment. Glancing at the two men standing beside Max she put out her hand and introduced herself. It seemed a rational, civilized thing to do in a world gone mad.

The one on the left with the tortoiseshell-colored hair looked like a fallen angel. Tall and well dressed, he slipped a large, tanned hand into hers with a charming smile. “Asher Daklin.”

The second man had eyes almost as black as his dead-straight, shoulder-length hair. He had a lean, clever face, and a mouth that looked as though he never smiled. Despite looking like some exotic member of royalty, Emily wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. Not unless she had Max with her. He took his hands out of his pockets, but didn’t shake her hand. “Rafael Navarro.”

She stuffed her fingers into the front pocket of her jeans, and glanced back at Max. “I can’t imagine how— but what can I do to help?”

Max handed her what looked like a corner of an elaborate gilt frame. “There’s a little painted wood under the frame that wasn’t blackened by the explosion. Enough for you to tell us anything about the painting?”

She traced a jagged triangle of charred wood across the corner, grateful for even this small thing she could do to help. “I can tell you something about even the blackened piece here. But not with the naked eye. I’d have to test it back at my studio and/or send it to the lab I use. But yes, I think there’s enough to work with. What am I looking for?”

“Can you authenticate what’s here as the original work?”

“Sure. As I said, with testing. I can do most of the chemical testing in my studio. But for the X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet tests, it has to be sent elsewhere. But I can certainly get started on this right away if you like.”

“You’re not going back to your studio. But if you give Zampieri a list, and where he’ll find the stuff at your place, he’ll buy what you’ll need. Is there anything you can tell us now, just by looking at this?”

Oil on wood. “What was the painting?” But suddenly she knew. God. It was exactly the right size. She just knew. The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she braced herself for Max’s answer as one would brace for a punch to the chest.

“The Holy Family.”

At his words the other shoe dropped in her mind with a resounding crash. Black sparkles filled her vision. The blood drained from her head, and it took a concerted effort to say through stiff lips, “Canigiani Holy Family. Raphael. I’m familiar with it. I-I did the restoration of this work six years ago.”

“Did you paint a copy?”

“I removed a distorting blue overpaint done sometime in the eighteenth century—”

The truth, but not all of it.

She felt the prickle of nervous perspiration along her hairline. She’d seen this exquisite work a lot more recently than six years ago when she’d done the restoration for Richard Tillman.

She’d seen it nine months ago. While she’d been copying it in Daniel’s studio.

 

THREE HOURS LATER THEY WERE IN UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS, ON their way to the home of Miss Brill. A car was waiting for them at Soesterberg Air Base. Max took her arm and led her to the black limo with tinted windows.

“Bulletproof?” she asked as he slid across the backseat to join her.

“Yeah. I told you I wouldn’t let anything hurt you. As soon as you’ve taken a look at Brill’s studio we’ll get you to the safe house. Zampieri will help you set up a studio there with anything you need to test what’s left of the painting.”

The truth, if he ever found out, could hurt her big time. Right now she didn’t see a need to tell Max anything. Because it wasn’t relevant. If that changed, she’d have to tell him about the arrangement she’d had with his father.

If things changed.

And if things changed it would mean that her suspicions about Daniel had been correct all along. Emily really, really didn’t want to be right.

Because if she were right her life would be irrevocably changed forever. “My mother’s expecting me in Seattle.” If she remembered I was coming at all.

“She’ll see you in—”

“A few days?” Emily interrupted as they left the air base behind. “A week? Two?”

Not only was she aware that she wasn’t being logical to ask him to pinpoint how long he’d need to keep her safe, it was immaterial how long she would have to stay locked up in a “safe house.” He was keeping his promise to protect her. As much as she was chafing at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff going on, if she couldn’t have her first option—going back to her normal life—then she was grateful to be secreted away somewhere out of the range of a maniacal killer.

If she believed for a moment that what she’d done had any bearing in this, she’d bite the bullet and tell Max now. But what would it serve to tell him that she’d been the one doing Daniel’s work for the last seven years? Not a damn thing. He already had zero sympathy or compassion for the man who was his father. But even Max couldn’t deny that Daniel had been a brilliant painter in his own right, a phenomenally successful restorer, and a man his peers considered a genius. Daniel Aries had been one of a kind.

She’d at least like to leave his professional life pristine for Max and the art world. She’d made that promise to Daniel. And she always tried to keep her promises.

The irony didn’t escape her. As long as she’d been in the business she’d been number two. And she was okay with that. Daniel deserved to win the prize. His work over a lifetime warranted it. Nobody, especially Max, needed to know his secret.

Her secret now.

 

SET IN A CLEARING, AND SURROUNDED BY PINE TREES, JACOBA BRILL’S small white house was picture-perfect. The lush spring-green lawn was bordered with flowerbeds bursting with early red-and-white striped parrot tulips, underplanted with sweet-smelling purple hyacinths. The glossy red window boxes beneath the four windows matched the paint on the front door, and were massed with brilliant yellow King Alfred daffodils waving heavy heads in the light breeze. The new leaves in the surrounding trees rustled like a taffeta skirt.

Emily filled her mind with the happy colors. “Beautiful.”

“Isolated,” Navarro observed, pulling up to the curving walkway.

“Yeah.” Max motioned to AJ. “Find a vantage point.”

With a nod, AJ got out of the car. She carried what Emily presumed was a sniper rifle. “Is that really necessary way out here?” she asked Max. The artist’s house was way off the beaten path, with no nearby neighbors. The scene was so idyllic it was impossible to believe anything bad could possibly have happened here.

Looks, Emily knew, could be deceiving.

Max shot her a glance. “We always prepare for the worst. Back.” He gestured toward Navarro, then to Daklin, “Perimeter. I’ll take inside. You,” he told Emily, “stay put until I come get you.”

She almost saluted. “No problem.” And it wasn’t. As much as she disliked the way Max issued orders, she was now more than happy to stay in a bulletproof car while trained professionals scoured the area for bad guys. She’d learned something from the past few hours at least.

From behind smoked glass she observed Max’s team go to work. Each held a weapon and appeared ready for anything. AJ, nimble and amazingly quick, climbed a tree near the bottom of the driveway, then lay across a thick branch like a lithe cat sunning herself.

Navarro moved like smoke around the side of the house and disappeared from view. Daklin vanished into the trees. One moment Max was standing at the poppy-red front door, the next the door opened, then closed behind him.

She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until Max came back to the car to get her a few minutes later. She let out the suppressed air in a rush as he opened the door for her.

He held out his hand. “All clear inside, let’s go.”

His hand was large and warm, and she would have enjoyed holding it as they walked. Just like regular people. But he wasn’t even close to a “regular person,” he was a counterterrorist operative, and he was working.

Releasing his hand before he let go of her, she adjusted the strap of her tote on her shoulder. It was enough that his strong, solid presence was beside her. She felt safe with him there. Physically, at least. Her rapidly racing heart was another matter altogether.

But that was just for her to know.

She took a deep breath of the crisp country air. The sight of the flowers, combined with their intoxicating scent, temporarily obliterated the stench of burning rubble imprinted in her mind. She was enchanted with the crisp colors and the charm of the cottage, but miserably sad that the woman who had lived here and lovingly tended this garden was gone.

Max placed his hand at the small of her back, urging her to walk faster. “Move it. It’s too exposed out here. I want you inside.”

“Great,” she muttered dryly, picking up speed. “That immediately conjures up the image of a bull’s-eye painted on my back.”

“I’ve got your back.”

Yes. He did. He’d slipped his arm around her waist, his hard forearm and splayed hand across her middle. He wasn’t just touching her, his body was angled to cover as much of her as possible. She’d never in her life needed, or thought she wanted, to be physically protected, but having Max do so was sexy as hell. She couldn’t figure out why she felt the prick of tears.

“There isn’t a neighbor for miles, and she lived alone, didn’t she? How sad.” Emily’s voice was not quite steady. “However it happened, by natural causes, or someone else’s hand. She was all alone when she died.”

“She wasn’t alone.”

“Good. It would be awful to—Oh.” The artist hadn’t been alone when she’d died. Right. The killer had been with her. Or at the very least, his was the last face she’d seen before succumbing to…to…whatever.

The only reason they were here was because a hazmat team had already been inside to take samples and had given the house the all clear. Max had wanted to look at the place before some other team came in to search.

Spreading his warm fingers on her midriff as they walked, he scanned her face. “How’re you holding up?”

It was chilly, but the sun was shining and visually it was a beautiful day, but nerves had a clamp on her neck and shoulder muscles, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel serene again. “I’m scared,” she admitted. “But I’m also furious that someone I don’t even know is capable of making me feel this way.”

“It’s not easy being a victim.”

“I’m only a victim if I allow myself to be,” she told him with asperity. “Believe me, I’m not planning on doing anything stupid. And I’ll try to be hyperaware of my surroundings at all times.” She suddenly froze. “My God, Max. Is my family in danger?”

“Nope. Got it covered. Someone followed what they thought was your car to the Bozzatos’, but it’s unlikely that anyone knows who or where your family is. I had to have my people dig deep to track down both your mother and sister so I could send people to watch them.”

A slither went up and down her spine. “You have people watching them? In Seattle? In Boston?”

“Yeah. Got a problem with that?”

“I’d not only be ungrateful if I was, I’d be pretty damn stupid with a killer on the loose. Thank you, Max. I appreciate you doing that.” She was stunned. Not only that he’d thought of protecting her family, but that he’d gone to the trouble of taking care of it so quickly.

“Tell me what you know about Brill.” Max followed her inside, then closed the door behind him.

“Nothing more than I’ve read.” Curiously, Emily glanced around the small room. She felt like a voyeur. “She had a good reputation as a restorer. She was—I think—unmarried.” She shrugged. “That’s about all I remember.

“I can tell you she was a very private woman,” she observed as they walked through the parlor. “See? Not just drapes, but sheers and blinds as well. She could have let the drapes drop, but she loved the look of the flowery tiebacks, and left them that way.”

“Well, she sure as hell wasn’t worried about security. She’s got an excellent system, but it was turned off.”

“She was done with whatever she was working on, maybe?”

“Maybe. What else do you see?”

“Quintessentially feminine, precise, and prided herself on her neatness,” Emily added, perusing the room with sharp eyes.

“You get all that walking through a ten by ten living room?”

“You know about iconography? It’s the study of subjects in art, and their deeper meaning. The same applies to our surroundings. Her pillows are trimmed with ruffles, her books are strictly alphabetized, and there isn’t a speck of dust or a thing out of place. The house is as neat as a pin. It wasn’t for show. Usually people’s living rooms, the public spaces in a house, show others who we’d like to be, but not who we really are. The rooms that visitors don’t see show us more of their real personality.”

“You’re very observant.”

“I have to be to do my job.”

Simple botanical paintings in identical white frames were lined up with military precision along the pale yellow walls above a red, white, and yellow striped sofa. The fireplace was flanked by similar antique wingback chairs covered in crisp yellow linen. A crystal vase shaped like a flower basket sat on the mantel and was filled with slightly drooping red-and-white parrot tulips from the garden.

A simple bunch of hyacinths filled a white bowl on the cherry-wood coffee table, perfuming the air with their sweet scent.

“No kids. No animals,” she told Max as they walked down a picture-lined hallway to the back of the house. The style of clothing in the photographs was dated, the color faded. Old photographs. “Too neat and clean.”

So was the woman’s glass-enclosed studio, which ran the full length of the back of the house. Almost a greenhouse, the room was flooded with light and had a breathtaking view of the landscaped backyard, surrounded by trees and overrun with flowers. Unlike the neatness and symmetry of the front garden, the one in back was a wild riot of color and texture with no apparent attempt at order.

Sunlight flooded the stone floor through the glass ceiling.

Like the rest of her home, Brill’s studio was immaculate, with everything neatly in its place. Besides the expected canvases, magazines and newspapers were neatly stacked on built-in shelving. Art books, sketch pads, and supplies filled various containers, from what looked like a Georgian, hand-chased silver soup tureen filled with paint tubes, to a child’s plastic rain boot filled with brushes. Emily touched the tureen. “She did pretty well for herself. This is worth about twenty thousand American dollars.”

An easel stood in the center of the room. She walked over to look at the stretched canvas. The impasto, the paint layer, was thick and raised from the surface. “The paint’s smudged. Is this the room where she died?”

“Yeah.” Max was crouched down looking through a stack of files in the bottom drawer of a bright red lacquered metal file cabinet. “How do you know?”

“She must’ve been working when she fell. The paint’s wet. Someone righted the easel and painting. You can see the fingerprints on the edge here where they held it on either side to pick it up off the floor. Something brushed against the high points of the wet paint, leaving a faint imprint.” She looked down at the stone floor. “The brush fell and then bounced here and here. See the orange splatter?”

“Nice catch. Let’s just hope those prints belong to the killer and not the sister, who found the body, or the EMTs.”

“Her sister picked this up.”

Max lifted a brow. “And you know this how?”

“Small hands. But I think if her sister came here to visit her and found her dead, after she called for help, and after she tried everything to save her, she would have spent the time waiting for medical help tidying up.”

Max raised a brow. “Her sister is lying dead on the floor, and she straightens up the room?”

Emily nodded. “Jacoba was concerned about appearances. She liked people knowing she was orderly. Her sister gave her order before the EMTs arrived.”

“Damn. That’s good. Logical.”

“Talking about good—” The painting was neither a restoration piece, nor a copy. “This is…interesting.”

Not to speak ill of the dead, but the painting was dreadful.

Head tilted, Max glanced at the painting. “Jesus. What’s it supposed to be?”

“An orange dog?” A very strange looking, five-eyed orange dog with only two legs. And either a super long penis, or a strangely shaped tail growing out of its front. The background was a slightly deeper shade of blotchy orange with a murky brown line running down the middle.

He smiled. “I think it’s a sofa with an antenna.”

“No, look. These are ears. Hmm, maybe they’re cushions—”

Max’s slid his arms around her from behind and she jumped a little because she’d thought he was on the far side of the room. He moved as stealthily as a ghost. “What are you doing?”

He turned her in his arms. “If you have to ask,” he murmured against her mouth. “Then I’m not doing it right.”