Nelia Tyler had half-mast eyes set above dark-circle pools, the look of someone who’d gone without sleep for days. Drayco had worried her grueling schedule would catch up with her, even as he respected her strength and resolve.
As they drove away from her apartment near the Georgetown campus, he handed over a cup of coffee. “Your morning dose of uppers.”
She smiled, then popped off the lid and took a big gulp. “You said you needed a respectable-looking lady partner, but I’m not sure I qualify right now.”
“Sure you do. I’ll just tell our target I wore you out from ‘partnering.’” She looked more than respectable, in her form-fitting powder blue sweater dress with a chain-link belt and knee-high cream-colored boots.
He quickly added, “It may be a wild gander chase.”
“Gander chase?”
“Do I look like a goose to you?”
She laughed, then shot him a sideways glance with a slight flutter of her eyelashes. “How do I know if you have the right anatomical qualifications?”
He grinned. “I think I have my papers around here somewhere.”
She feigned horror. “Don’t tell me you’ve been neutered.”
“Last time I checked, no.” An image of Darcie and her red bow made him suddenly uncomfortable.
As if sensing his thoughts, Nelia changed the subject. “I take it our quarry’s real name isn’t Faust Marchand.”
“No, but that’s the name he’s known by in the trade. Even uses it at his gallery in Fairfax.”
“I’m surprised Gogo Cheng didn’t turn Jerold Zamorra in for theft. Who knows? Maybe if he had, Jerold would still be alive, safely locked away.”
That notion had crossed Drayco’s mind, too. “We don’t know if Gogo’s story checks out yet. He may be the one who’s lying. Even if he’s telling the truth, it could cut both ways. Might help give Gogo more of a motive. Or less. With any luck, this little outing will help track Jerold’s movements and methods.”
“The fraud scheme he and your mother were involved in?”
“Maybe it was art theft. Maybe something else.” He hadn’t told her about Alistair Brisbane yet. He hadn’t told anyone, save for Sarg and Benny. Until he knew just how much of a player his uncle was in D.C. power circles, it was best to keep Brisbane off everyone’s radar—and vice versa.
“Who knows what Jerold, and by extension, my mother, were involved with. After talking to Lauralee yesterday, I have to wonder if she was right when she said everyone is a scam artist of some kind.”
Nelia smiled. “I’ve got a lovely piece of property in Bermuda I can sell you.” Then her smile faded. “You called Maura your mother just then.”
He shook his head, confused.
“You’ve called her Maura McCune or ‘that woman’ until now.”
Her words caught him off guard—he thought the wall he’d built to keep Maura out of his inner sanctuary was solid. He was grateful for the distraction when they reached the art brokerage, its no-nonsense white brick facade with plain black trim suddenly comforting.
If Faust Marchand made a deal with the devil, he should ask for his money back. He was already half-way to his eventual skeletal form, and everything else about him seemed designed to match, from his pencil-thin yellowing silver mustache to the bone-white shirt and jacket. When Nelia stood next to him, he barely reached her nose.
“May I help you?” Marchand’s voice, on the other hand, was deep enough to reach down into the fires of hell.
Nelia looked around the gallery. “We were hoping to find Asian pieces for our dining room walls. I’m leaning toward Japanese, but my husband has his heart set on Chinese. Maybe some calligraphy. Isn’t that right, dear?”
Drayco slipped his arm around her shoulders. “I know how you love Japanese landscapes, honey bun, but I think a calligraphy would set off our china better.” He leaned over toward Marchand and added, “It’s china that’s really from China. We can’t afford anything from the Song Dynasty, but we’ve budgeted seventy-five thousand for it.”
Marchand tented his fingertips together. “Let me show you what I have,” and he proceeded to walk them through a room filled with Asian ceramics and wall hangings.
Drayco and Nelia made a show of conferring over a few of the items in Marchand’s collection, but Drayco finally shook his head. “I hoped you’d have something dramatic, fairly large.” And he proceeded to describe Gogo’s painting.
“I did have something similar to that. A man brought it to me a few months ago, and I ended up selling it and a few others to another art dealer. Unfortunately, Mr. Nardello has since passed away and his business with him.”
Drayco didn’t have to pretend to look disappointed. “The man who sold it to you in the first place, can we talk to him? He might have other paintings to sell.”
Marchand’s stiff posture indicated how affronted he was at the idea. “I have strict privacy policies at my shop, Mister ...”
“Brock. Name’s Brock.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brock, but unless it’s the police who do the asking, all transactions remain anonymous. Even then, they’d better come armed with a search warrant. I’m sure you would appreciate the same courtesy.” He tried to rescue a sale. “Perhaps there’s something else I can interest you in today?”
Drayco turned to Nelia, who shook her head, and the two left Marchand the way they’d seen him when they arrived, obsessively straightening his paintings.
Nelia waited until they were out of earshot. “Honey bun?”
He shrugged. “I’m hungry.” To his surprise, he really was.
“Starved for information, maybe. Sorry to come away empty-handed.”
“Maybe not. We have the name of the other broker, Nardello. And although we can’t prove it was Jerold who sold Gogo’s painting, it was brought in by a man at around the right time.”
Nelia looked back at the white brick building. “Jerold’s actions before his death reek of desperation. Stealing from his future son-in-law, gambling debts, the mystery fraud scheme.”
“Desperate men get careless.”
“And leave trails.”
Drayco’s cellphone rang with another unfamiliar number, but it wasn’t Brisbane this time. It was Ashley Zamorra, who’d kept the business card he gave her. She was working at the shelter again and wanted to see him as soon as possible. Remembering his unwelcome male presence last time, he turned to Nelia, “You up for one more, Tyler?”
“Absolutely, sugar pie.”