"Is it my size?" I asked, taking the tux when Martin passed it to me.

"I had to guess," Susan said, lowering her eyelids in a sultry expression. "But it wasn't like I didn't know my way around."

Martin's face might have flickered with disapproval. My heart sped up a bit. "All right then," I said. "Let's get moving. I'll dress on the way."

"Do I get to look?" Susan asked.

"It'll cost you extra," I said. Martin opened the door for Susan and I slid in after her. I filled her in on what I'd found out about the Shroud and those after it. "I should be able to find the thing if we get close."

"You think there will be any more of these Denarians there?"

"Probably," I said. "If anything gets ugly, we'll take the best part of valor, pronto. These guys play hardball."

Susan nodded agreement. "Sounds like the thieves aren't exactly shy about waving guns, either."

"And we'll have Marcone around too. Whither he goeth, there too goeth armed thugs and homicide investigations."

Susan smiled. It was a new expression to me-a small, quiet, fierce little smile that showed her teeth. It looked natural on her. "You're all about fun, aren't you, Harry?"

"I am the Bruce Lee of fun," I concurred. "Give me some space here."

Susan slid over as far as she could to give me room to climb into the tux. I tried not to mar it too badly in the limited space. Susan glanced at me with a faint frown.

"What?" I asked her.

"You're wrinkling it."

"This isn't as easy as I'm making it look," I responded.

"If you weren't staring at my legs, maybe it wouldn't be such a challenge."

"I wasn't staring," I lied.

Susan smiled at me as the car cruised through downtown and I did my best to dress like Roger Moore. Her expression became thoughtful after a moment, and she said, "Hey."

"What?"

"What happened to your leather coat?"

Chapter Nineteen

The downtown Marriott was huge, brilliantly lit, and busy as an anthill. Several blue-and-whites were parked nearby, and a couple of officers were helping to direct traffic in front of the hotel. I could see maybe twenty limos on the street and pulling through the archway in front of the hotel doors, and every one of them looked bigger and nicer than ours. Valets rushed around to park the cars of guests who had driven themselves. There were a dozen men in red jackets standing around with bored expressions that some might mistake for inattention. Hotel security.

Martin pulled up to the entryway and said, "I'll wait for you out here." He passed a palm-sized cell phone to Susan. She slipped it into a black clutch. "If you get into trouble, speed-dial one."

At that point, a valet opened the door on my side, and I slipped out of the car. My rental tux felt a little awkward. The shoes were long enough for me but they were an inch and a half too wide. I shrugged my jacket into place, straightened the cummerbund, and offered a hand to Susan. She slid out of the car with a brilliant smile, and straightened my tie.

"Smile," she said quietly. "Everyone here is worried about image. If you walk in scowling like that we won't blend in."

I smiled in what I thought was a camouflaging manner. Susan regarded the expression critically, nodded, and slipped her arm through mine. We walked in under the cover our smiles provided. One of the security guards stopped us inside the door, and Susan presented the tickets to him. He waved us through.

"First thing to do is find some stairs," I said from behind my smile. "The loading docks will be near the kitchens, and they're below us. That's where they'll be bringing in the art stuff."

Susan held her course toward the stairs. "Not yet," she said. "If we snoop around the second we get in the door someone is likely to notice. We should mingle until the auction is running. People will be distracted then."

"If we wait, the whole thing could go down while we hobnob."

"Maybe," Susan said. "But odds are that Anna Valmont and the buyer are both thinking the same thing."

"When does the auction start?"

"Eleven."

"Assuming the note means that the sale is at eleven forty-five, that doesn't give us much time to look around. This place is huge."

We got onto an escalator and Susan arched an eyebrow at me. "Do you have any better ideas?"

"Not yet," I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in a polished brass column. I didn't look half-bad. There's a reason the tux has weathered a century virtually unchanged. You don't fix what isn't broken. Tuxedos make anyone look good, and I was a living testament to it. "Think they will have anything to eat? I'm starving."

"Just keep the shirt clean," Susan muttered.

"No problem. I can wipe my fingers on the cummerbund."

"I can't take you anywhere," Susan said. She leaned a little against me, and it felt nice. I felt nice, generally speaking. I cleaned up pretty well, it would seem, and I had a lovely woman-no, I had Susan on my arm, looking lovely. It was a small silver lining compared to the troubled clouds I'd been floundering through, but it was something, and it lasted all the way up the escalator. I take the good moments wherever I can get them.

We followed the flow of formally dressed men and women up another escalator or three to a cavernous ballroom. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and tables laden with expensive-looking snacks and ice sculptures all but overflowed onto the floor. A group of musicians played on the far side of the ballroom. They didn't seem to be stretching themselves with some relaxed and classy jazz. Couples who also weren't stretching themselves danced together on a floor the size of a basketball court.

The room wasn't crammed with people, but there were a couple of hundred there already, and more coming in behind us. Polite but insincere chatter filled the space, accompanied by equally insincere smiles and laughter. There were a number of city officials whom I recognized in the immediate area, plus a couple of professional musicians and at least one motion-picture actor.

A waiter in a white jacket offered us a tray of champagne glasses, and I promptly appropriated a pair of them, passing the first to Susan. She lifted the glass to her mouth but didn't drink. The champagne smelled good. I took a sip, and it tasted good. I'm not a terribly impressive drinker, so I stopped after the first sip. Chugging down champagne on an empty stomach would probably prove inconvenient if it turned out I needed to do any quick thinking. Or quick leaving. Or quick anything.

Susan said hello to an older couple, and stopped for introductions. I kept my duck blind of a smile in place, and mouthed appropriately polite phrases in the right spots. My cheeks had already started hurting. We repeated that for half an hour or so, while the band played a bunch of low-key dance music. Susan knew a lot of people. She'd been a reporter in Chicago for five or six years before she'd had to leave town, but she had evidently managed to ingratiate herself to more people than I would have guessed. You go, Susan.

"Food," I said, after a stooped older man kissed Susan's cheek and walked away. "Feed me, Seymour."

"It's always the brain stem with you," she murmured. But she guided us over to the refreshment tables so that I could pick up a tiny sandwich. I didn't wolf the thing down in one bite, which was just as well, since it had a toothpick through it to hold it together. But the sandwich didn't last long.

"At least chew with your mouth closed," Susan said.

I took a second sandwich. "Can't help it. I got all kinds of joie de vivre, baby."

"And smile."

"Chew and smile? At the same time? Do I look like Jackie Chan?"

She had a retort but it died after a syllable. I felt her hand tighten on my arm. I briefly debated wolfing the second sandwich, just to get it out of the way, but I took the more sophisticated option instead. I put it in my jacket pocket for later, and turned to follow Susan's gaze.