Chapter 52

“JESUS, NED!” Ellie’s eyes grew wide.

Or at least it looked like Ned, with his hair short and darker, and a four-day growth on his chin.

“Don’t be scared.” Ned put up his hand. “No abductions this time, Ellie. I swear.”

Ellie wasn’t scared. Just angry and aware this time. Her training kicked in. Her eyes darted to her holster on the coat-rack just inside the kitchen. This time, she was thinking, she was going to be the one in control.

She bolted toward the kitchen. Ned ran after, catching her by the arm. “Ellie, please…”

She spun wildly in his grasp. “Goddammit, Ned, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Guess I thought, given all the publicity” – he held back a smile – “your office just didn’t seem the place to meet.”

Ellie tried to pull away one more time, but he held her firmly, but not too hard. “I need to talk to you, Ellie. Just hear me out.”

She felt an urge to try and throw him, to go for the gun, but she had to admit that a tiny part of her was actually pleased, pleased that he was all right, anyway. That he was there. In her skintight suit, with his hand on her, she felt a little embarrassment take hold. She was blushing now. “What the hell are you doing, Ned?”

“I’m trusting you, Ellie. That’s what I’m doing. I’m showing you the new look. So what do you think?”

“I think when you get out of prison, you’ll be a helluva candidate for Extreme Makeover.” She pulled against him.

Ned relaxed his grip. “What I meant was, maybe you could start to trust me, too.”

She stood there, glaring at him. Part of her still wanted to make a run for the gun. The other part knew he wouldn’t even try to stop her. “It’s hard to trust you, Ned. Every time I do, someone else you’re connected to seems to turn up dead. You don’t just show up here like this. I’m a federal agent, not your AOL buddy. What the hell makes you think I won’t arrest you?”

“One thing,” he said, still holding her arm.

“What?” she asked, glaring back at him.

He let go of her arm. “I think you believe me, Ellie.”

Ellie took another quick glance toward the gun, but she knew it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going for it. Ned was right. She did believe him. She felt her body coil up with frustration. Then she finally gave in, staring into his eyes. “Did you kill that woman, Ned?”

“Tess?” He shook his head. “No.”

“And your brother? What happened to him?”

“All I did was go see him. That was after I met with my father. Ellie, my brother was dead when I got there. My brother, Ellie. Whoever did it was waiting for me. Nearly killed me, too. Someone sent him, Ellie. He thought I had the paintings. I still don’t even know who he was.”

“His name was Anson. He was a two-bit enforcer from south Florida with a record a mile long.”

“So, don’t you see… that proves it. Someone sent him from here.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes. “You live in south Florida, don’t you, Ned?”

“You really think I knew him, Ellie?” He reached into his pocket and came out with a folded-up piece of paper. “Look, I have something to show you.”

She recognized it instantly. The page ripped out of the art book. Van Gogh’s Dr. Gachet.

“Dave was trying to show me this when he was killed. He wasn’t trying to turn me in. He was trying to help me, Ellie.” Ned’s eyes were like some helpless, pleading child’s. “I’ve got nowhere to go, Ellie. Gachet’s real. You have to help me find him.”

“I’m a federal agent, Ned. Don’t you get it?” She touched his arm. “I’m sorry about your brother. I truly am. But the only way I can help is for you to turn yourself in.”

“I think we both know it’s a little late for that.” Ned leaned back against the porch rail. “I know everyone figures I took the art. Tess, Dave… my prints are all over the place. You want the truth, Ellie. It’s not about that anymore – clearing myself. Whoever sent that sonuvabitch to kill Dave was looking for the art. We both know that no one’s going to continue looking if they have me.”

“Will you please get real, Ned.” Ellie felt tears of frustration biting at her eyes. “I can’t join up with you. I’m with the FBI.”

“Get real, huh, Ellie?” Ned seemed to sink. “You don’t think every day I wake up and wish this wasn’t real…” He backed off to the edge of the porch. “I made a mistake coming here.”

“Ned, please, you can’t go back out there now.”

“I’m gonna find out who set us up, Ellie.”

Ned jumped off the deck and Ellie realized her heart was beating wildly. She didn’t want him to leave. What could she do? Make a play for the gun. Was she going to shoot him?

He stood on the ground and winked up at her on the porch in her dripping wetsuit, his gaze drifting to the kayak. “Nice board. What is it, a Big Yak?”

“No,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “A Scrambler.”

He nodded approvingly. The lifeguard, right. Then he started to back away into the night.

“Ned!” Ellie called.

He turned around. For a second they stood staring at each other.

She shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I liked you better blond.”

Chapter 53

WHEN DENNIS AND LIZ STRATTON threw a party, the A list people came, or at least the people who thought they were A list.

Ellie had no sooner walked through the door than a fashionably clad waiter put a tray of caviar canapés in front of her and she was face-to-face with some of the prominent people in Palm Beach art society, or so they would tell you. Reed Barlow, who owned a gallery on Worth Avenue, leading around a gorgeous blonde in a low-cut red dress. Ellie recognized a stately white-haired woman who owned one of the more ostentatious collections in town, with a tanned man half her age on her arm, a “walker.”

Ellie felt a little uncomfortable just to be there. All the women were dressed in designer gowns with major-league jewels, and she was in an off-the-rack black dress with a cashmere cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. Her one accommodation was the diamond solitaire studs her grandmother had left her. But in this room no one would notice.

She waded deeper into the house. Champagne seemed to flow at almost every turn. Magnums of Cristal, which Ellie knew cost hundreds of dollars a bottle. And caviar – a huge bowl rested in the hand-carved body of a swan sculpted in ice. In the den a quintet of string players from a Florida symphony. A photographer from “The Shiny Sheet” getting the ladies to jut a hip, angle a leg, turn on their brightest, whitest smiles. All this for charity, of course.

Ellie caught a glimpse of Vern Lawson, the Palm Beach head of detectives, standing stiffly on the edge of the crowd, wearing an earpiece. Probably racking his brains over what she was doing there. And along the walls stood at least five barrel-chested men in tuxedos, hands behind their backs. Stratton must have hired half the off-duty cops in Palm Beach as security.

A small crowd was buzzing in the corridor leading to Stratton’s living room. Ellie went over to see what all the commotion was about.

Her jaw dropped.

She was staring at Matisse’s Still Life with Violin, one of the most famous examples from his cubist stage. Ellie had seen it once at the MoMA in New York. She’d heard it had changed hands recently in a private sale. But seeing it there on Stratton’s wall, suddenly she felt angry. That’s why he had invited her. The SOB was trying to rub it in her face.

“So, I see you found the Matisse, Agent Shurtleff.” A haughty voice startled her from behind.

Ellie turned. Stratton was wearing a collarless white shirt and a cashmere blazer, a smug, self-satisfied expression on his face. “Not a bad example, on such short notice. Perhaps not as explosive as the Picasso, but what can one do…A collector has to fill his walls. Even if I had to overpay.”