“IS THAT YOU, MARK?”
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be? Unchain the door, for God sake.”
He heard the whoosh of her slippered feet scurrying down the stair, then next the chain sliding through the bolt on the other side.
“Why do you chain it?” He swept past her into the house.
“This is New York. Aren’t you supposed to do things like that in New York?” She rechained the front door, then followed him into the study, “What are you doing home at this hour?”
His eyes scanned the list of messages she’d left him on the hall phone table. “Are these all the calls? Nothing from Washington or abroad?”
“If it’s not there on the list, you didn’t get it.”
He looked up. Then, seeing her for the first time, he frowned. “What have you gone and done?”
“I had my hair cut. Don’t you like it?”
He wondered that she still thought it mattered. “I’m not sure. Is it too short?”
“Maybe. A bit. I saw it on a woman in Bergdorf’s this morning. I marched right up to her and said, ‘Where’d you get that?’ ‘On the eighth floor in the salon,’ she said. ‘Someone called a Mr. Marvin did it.’”
“So then you marched right up there to Mr. Marvin and said, ‘I’ll have one of those, too.’”
“Sort of,” she confessed somewhat anxiously. “Is it awful?”
“I never said that. Just a bit short. Anyway, it’ll grow back. Is there anything for lunch?” He steered off into the kitchen, with her following.
“If I’d known you were coming back, I would have gotten something,” she fretted. “There might be some cold roast beef from last sight. And I think there’s a half a baguette from breakfast.”
“What about yourself?” he asked. “Care to join?”
She must have heard the slight plaint in his voice. It brought her around. “I’m sorry. I can’t, Mark. I’m having lunch with Bill Osgood.”
It was his turn for surprise. “Really? How come?”
“He asked me. We’re just going down the street to the Stanhope. Is that all right?”
“Of course it’s all right.”
“Well, you seemed so … startled.”
“Not at all. I think it’s very nice.”
“It’s not awkward for you? If it’s Tom you’re thinking about …”
“It’s not awkward for me, and I definitely wasn’t thinking about Tom.”
“Because,” she went on, “Tom wouldn’t give a damn. Tom makes his plans. I make mine. That’s sort of the way things are.”
“Look, Maeve.” He turned toward her. “There’s no need for explanations. I’m delighted you’re having lunch with Osgood. He’s a bright, decent fellow. You’ll have fun together. He won’t bother you much in bed.”
The moment he’d said it, he saw the hurt on her face. “I’m sorry, Maeve. That was shitty of me, wasn’t it?”
They stood that way for a while, the two of them, neither speaking nor looking at each other. At last, Manship opened the refrigerator, knelt slightly, and peered in.
“I’d be happy to make you a sandwich,” she said.
“That’s all right, you run along. You’ll be late for your lunch.”
“My lunch isn’t until one-thirty. I’ve plenty of time.” She pulled a chair out from the table. “Sit down, Mark. While I throw something together, you tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” He sat despondently. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“I haven’t lived with you in uneasy cohabitation for the better part of ten years not to be unable to recognize that whipped-dog took on your face.” She started pulling things out from the refrigerator and marching them over to the butcher block. “Trouble with the show?”
“There’s always trouble with the show. What else is new?”
“Bad blood between you and Bill?”
“If my relationship with everyone else at the museum was as smooth as it is with Bill Osgood, I’d be riding high.”
“Would you?” Her question and the tone in which she’d posed it quivered with implications. “How about a beer?” She didn’t wait for a reply, but just planted an ale and a frosty mug before him. “Suck on that a while. Sandwich should be ready in a minute.”
He watched her slice the baguette and marveled half-wistfully at her youthful figure—long, slim legs, pert breasts, a patrician Kay Kendall nose with the sort of elevated looks that could be characterized anywhere from smart to decidedly arresting.
“Those calls you’re expecting from Washington, and abroad,” she said while she sliced cold beef at the block. “Is that why you’re back here at this hour?”
“There was nothing on my message machine at work. I just stopped back to check whether or not something might have come in here.”
“Must be fairly important for you to leave work at midday. Mustard?”
“Horseradish, if you’ve got it. There should be some in the fridge. Yes. You’re right. The calls are important.”
The beef sliced into a small neat pile, she removed the toasted baguette from the oven and proceeded to stack the meat inside it. “Sure you won’t have some of that nice honey mustard?”
“Horseradish is just fine, thank you.”
He watched her as she set a straw placemat before him, the good odor of soap and starch emanating from her freshly laundered blouse. He tried to reconcile this domestic image of her with that of the dynamic, high-profile, eagerly sought-after young American artist with exhibitions scheduled for the next half-dozen years in all the major capitals of the world. Here she was, making a roast beef sandwich for him in his kitchen. He resisted the temptation to touch her.
She set the sandwich down beside his mug of ale.
“What was your morning like?” he asked.
“Do you really care to hear?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
“I was at the lawyer’s office at the stroke of nine. Apparently, my father made a sizable grant to the Frick.”
“The Frick?” Manship laughed, his mouth full. “I’m sure that was intended as a smack in the face to me.”
“Don’t be silly. Daddy happened to love the Frick. It had nothing to do with you or the Met. After the lawyer, I was at my gallery until roughly eleven-fifteen, arguing with that stupid ass Plesdish. This is the last show I’ll ever do with him, and I told him so.”
Manship gulped ale. “And off to Bergdorf’s for your rendezvous with Mr. Marvin.”
“I hadn’t planned to go, but I was passing by on my way uptown and thought I could use a nice blazer to wear to lunch today.”
“For Osgood?”
She started to protest, then turned her head slightly sideward and laughed. “Yes. For Osgood.”
He thought it was a charming gesture. “You’re getting clothes-conscious in your old age, Maeve. In my time, you scorned personal adornment thought it very bourgeois. Liked to go about in soiled, paint-spattered jeans, announcing your life’s calling and your moral superiority.” Manship chewed thoughtfully. “What a nice change. I wonder if old Bill knows how honored he is.”
“Oh, Mark, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not being any such thing. You look swell. And Osgood’s a lucky fellow to be going to lunch with you.”
She frowned. “And don’t feel obliged to say nice things to me. You’ve been sweet to put up with me here all this time. Except for that—”
“Bitchy thing I said a few minutes back. About Osgood and bed. I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean half the things I say. You know that, Maeve. I don’t know what gets into me.”
Manship gulped the last of his ale and started to rise, but she pressed him back gently with her hand.
“I guess I wasn’t very good to you on that score. Back then all I thought about was career and winning. Getting there first The next exhibition. The next review. The next prize. Didn’t matter particularly what it was, just so long as I’d won it. There was so little time left over for you. For anything.”
He fiddled with a paper napkin, wadding it in his fist. “You’ve come quite a ways since then, Maeve. Don’t think I’m not proud. I tell everybody I knew you when.”
She laughed, then rose and started to carry off dishes. “Proud? Of me? If you knew what a god-awful balls-up I’ve made of things. Try spending a night with Tom and me. That’s if you could find one where the two of us were home together at one time. If you thought I was career-driven, you want to try Tom Costain—captain of Industry, with his beeper and cellular phone, his fax machine blinking twenty-four hours a day.”
She gazed off at some indeterminate point between the cooking island and the sink. “Let’s not discuss this anymore.”
He regarded her a moment, slowly chewing the last of his sandwich. “Well, in any event,” he said at last, “I’m glad you and Bill are hitting it off.”
“For now. No bets on for how long it’ll last. I know I can be a handful.”
“So can he. Don’t be fooled by all that grinning Texas charm. It can vanish in a trice.”
It was at that moment that the phone started to ring.
“Does the name Borghini mean anything to yon?” Ettore Foa sounded rushed, and as though he was eating bites of something between snatches of conversation:
“I can’t say that it does,” Manship replied.
“What about SRS?”
“What about it?”
“Stands for Societa Republica Salo.”
“Salo?” Manship searched his memory. “Means nothing to me, I’m afraid.”
“No reason it should. But it still sends chills up the spines of many self-respecting Italians of my vintage. SRS was an extreme right-wing paramilitary organization of the late thirties and forties. The headquarters was on Lake Maggiore. Count Ottorino Borghini was one of its founders and chief benefactors.”
Manship’s fingers drummed the tabletop. “I see, but what does all this have to do with the whereabouts of Miss Cattaneo?”
“Your gallery in Parioli—the Quattrocento—is leased for a period of seventy-five years to the SRS. The chief officer of the organization, as well as the gallery owner, is the son of old Count Ottorino—that is, Ludovico Borghini.”
Manship thought for a moment. “Rings no bells here, I’m afraid.”
“Oddly enough, my father served with old Otto in the Risorgimento Brigade during World War Two. By the merest chance; I happen to know his son, Ludo. But, then again, everyone in Italy knows of the Borghinis. The family dates back to the Middle Ages. Intimates of the Medici, Borgia, and Sforza families. The old count was one of Il Duce’s right-hand men. Right after the war, he was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving six years of his sentence, he hung himself in his cell on Galina, off the coast of Sardinia. As for Ludo, whom I knew at school, he’s a bit shadowy. Dropped out of sight years ago. Some sort of self-imposed isolation. His problems, I gather, have much to do with the father and his possible implication in the death of Borghini’s mother. Quite a scandal at the time. Are you still there?”
“Yes, of course,” Manship said, his fingers drumming somewhat faster oh the desktop.
“Forgive me.” Foa laughed. “I grow long-winded. This was all by way of introduction to the matter of your friend Signorina Cattaneo.”
“Have you located her?” Manship asked, trying to manage the tremor in his voice.
“Not exactly. However, as you know, the police have been up to her place in Fiesole.”
“What exactly does all this mean?”
“Nothing good,” Foa reported bluntly. “The police had the impression she was taken from the house by force, since the doors were open and lights had been left on. In any case, the housemaid mentioned a young man—Miss Cattaneo’s companion, whom she apparently just sent packing. A young fellow by the name of”—Manship heard the crinkle of paper through the wires—“Tino Grimaldi—a painter manqué who lives mostly off the generosity of gullible young ladies.”
“I know. I met him.”
“The police picked him up at a lodging house in San Gimignano. According to my sources in Firenze, the fellow knows nothing of the whereabouts of the signorina. He accused her of stealing money from him; then, for some inexplicable reason, he broke down and started to cry. To make a long story short, they checked out Grimaldi’s story. For now, the police believe him, but they’re keeping him under surveillance.”
“Isn’t it just possible she left town on a job, or went off with friends for a few days?”
“Many things are possible. Miss Cattaneo may well be off with friends somewhere, or on a job that requires her being out of town. I understand she does quite a bit of that.”
“Yes. She’s an actress. Small jobs in films, theater, commercials, things like that.” Manship reported that hopefully, trying to allay his own fears.
“Possible, but not probable, given the manner in which the villa was left—lights on, doors open, a window in the back broken.”
“A broken window? You didn’t say that before.”
“I know I didn’t,” Foa grimly conceded.
For a while, they listened to each other’s breathing.
Foa resumed. “Now, what is more probable—”
“Yes?”
“Given the fact that after you’d told Miss Cattaneo about your search for the missing Botticelli sketches—”
“Yes?”
“And she sent you down to Rome to speak with a signor …”
Again Manship heard the rustle of paper on Foa’s desk in Washington. “Pettigrilli,” Manship said, completing the sentence for him.
“Giusto. Aldo Pettigrilli. We had the police check him out, too.”
“And?”
“He turns out to be a small-time gangster with a long list of petty convictions. Nothing very impressive—pickpocketing, shoplifting, minor larcenies. The police in Rome tracked him to his last address, which turns out to be a doss-house in a decidedly disreputable section hard by the Tiber.” And here the deputy ambassador paused as if for emphasis. “It turns out that Pettigrilli is also missing. The manager of the doss-house claims they haven’t seen him for days. They’re quite miffed. He’s behind on his rent several weeks.’ They think he skipped out. However, if he did, I should add that he left all of his belongings behind.”
There was another long, weighty pause before Foa spoke again. “Did you know any of this?”
“About Pettigrilli, no. About Isobel—Miss Cattaneo—I had a hunch she was in trouble,” Manship explained, his hands suddenly clammy and cold. “Don’t ask why. I don’t pretend to be clairvoyant.”
Foa sorted and filed data in his busy, well-organized head. “And the last contact you had with Mr. Pettigrilli was just before you went out to investigate the little framing gallery in Parioli?”
“The last and only,” Manship confirmed. “So shouldn’t we—”
“We’re already a step ahead of you, my dear friend,” Foa reported, sounding expansive and pleased with himself. “Regrettably, since Borghini comes from a prominent Roman family, even with my extremely sympathetic contacts high up in the magistracy, it will be a bit sticky securing the necessary warrants to enter the premises.”
Manship’s fist clenched round the receiver. “But that woman may be in grave difficulty.”
“Yes, yes, I quite understand. If it’s of any consolation to you—”
“Very little of what you’ve told me consoles me at this point.” Manship could hear the edge in his voice and regretted it.
“Giusto. I understand. What I wished to convey, however, is that I have also been on the phone to your insurance underwriters, the Lloyd’s people in London. At our urging, they, too, contacted the police through their Rome office. They were put off in the same way by the Italian authorities, just as we were. The Lloyd’s people are understandably anxious about the damage already done to two of your Botticellis, and now with your show coming up, they are eager to forestall the possibility of any further incidents.”
“Do they believe there’s a connection between the Quattrocento gallery and the missing Chigi sketches?”
“They do, as well as the attacks on those two paintings. They’ve now applied directly to the office of the British ambassador in Rome to make specific inquiries along those lines.”
Manship gnawed the inside of his lower lip. “But how long will all this take? While these drowsy bureaucrats are pushing paper back and forth across the Continent, this poor woman’s life may be hanging by a thread.”
“I share your concern. The young lady must be a longstanding friend of yours.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve met her all of two times.”
“Indeed.” Foa chuckled. “Those must have been two very memorable meetings. However, for whatever it’s worth, “the deputy ambassador hurried on, “I can tell you that in Rome a polite inquiry from the chief representative of the Court of St. James is more apt to rouse the drowsy constabulary, as you so aptly put it, than anything from a Roman official of comparable rank. Sad but true.” Foa sighed. “Stand by. I’ll call you as soon as I have something more concrete.”
Manship gazed at the receiver for some time after he’d put it down.
“What was all that about?”
Startled, Manship turned. He’d completely forgotten that Maeve had followed him into the library when the phone rang. “Oh, you still here?”
“How could I leave? I got caught up in the plot.”
Manship rose and started out.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’ve got to get back to the office.”
She tripped after him. “Does it have something to do with those missing Botticellis?”
“In a manner of speaking.’.’
“Oh, Mark. Don’t be so goddamned secretive. Who’s this woman you’re talking about? What’s happening to her? It sounds awful.”
“It could well be.”
Something about the way he’d said it alarmed him as much as it had her. When she spoke again, her voice was strangely tender. “Someone you met, Mark? Someone you care for?”
He would have liked to respond, to share it with her. But the pity of it was, there was so little to share. “Oh, I don’t know, Maeve. Run along. You’re going to be late for your lunch with Osgood.”
He let the knuckle of his finger graze her cheek. “Get on to the Stanhope now. We’ll talk tonight.”
“Will you be home?”
“I have to be. I’m expecting this important call.”