Hidden Legacy (20 page)

“I did.” Juliana laughed. One hand reached for Lucas’s arm. When she noticed, she let it slip back, then tucked both her hands in her jacket pockets. “It’s good that she’s not pining away with homesickness.”

“She’s safe.”

“Safe and happy.” Juliana smiled more broadly. “She’ll still get her dose of Sunday adventure, despite everything.”

“Tradition?”

“Tradition.” She laughed again, and it felt good.

They ate at Martha’s Kitchen where the tables wobbled, the chairs were hard, the food heavenly, and every order came with a giant cinnamon bun whose odor wafted in ambrosial waves through the tiny dining room. Getting a table, especially on Sunday morning, was an art, but Juliana and Briana had long mastered it. Juliana timed their entrance to receive a prime window table.

Lucas maneuvered her away from the wall seat, which he took. His gaze surveyed the room. Always on duty, she thought. What was it like to expect the worst at every turn? She flinched. Her question hit a little too close to home. Hadn’t she done the same thing in a different way?

When he caught her staring at him, he flashed her a warm smile, making him look dangerously handsome. That’s what had so attracted her to him six years ago, his smile—confident, cocky, and well, disarming. It transformed his face, and made her feel… wanted.

Fire suffused her cheeks. Lowering her gaze, she concentrated on her plastic-covered menu. She didn’t want to think too much about him, or the way he could turn her bones to the consistency of cooked noodles with just a look. A field of obstacles still lay between them and an amicable relationship for their daughter’s sake. “The French toast is great. They make their own bread right here.”

“Um,” he said, putting down his menu. The waitress filled his coffee cup. He drank deeply and sighed contentedly. “So what’s this about Sunday adventures?”

She tilted her head and looked at him. His hair was still damp from his shower, curling at the ends, giving him an impish look she recognized only too well. That look lived in her daughter, too, a constant reminder of the man she’d loved. “Briana is a lot like you. She likes to move, to see things, to touch things. Can you imagine being five and already knowing what you want to be when you grow up?”

He chuckled. “I was going to be a police officer just like my dad. I kept telling my mom I didn’t need to go to all the boring art museums she was always dragging my sister Nadya and me to visit. What does a police officer need to know art for?”

“Did it work?”

“No, she told me I’d be a cultured cop and hauled me kicking and screaming anyway. Now look at me, I’m an expert on art thefts.” His smile faded. He twisted his cup on the table top. “What does Briana want to be?”

“A photographer, but not just any kind of photographer. She wants to work for
National Geographic
and go on adventures. Just like you’re not just a police officer, but an FBI agent.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Falling into the darkness of his eyes, feeling their strength as an indomitable fortress wrapping around her, their warmth heat her with treacherous wants happened much too easily. She snapped her gaze away and pretended to look at the blackboard of specials. “I’m getting her a 35mm camera for her birthday. Not anything fancy—just a small point-and-shoot.”

“She’ll love that.” His gaze drifted outside. He turned his cup round and round on the table. “Do you think I could get her a book on photography?”

“Uh, sure.” The offer took her by surprise. Unconsciously, she’d already seen him as having moved on by September.

The waitress reappeared to take their order, breaking the awkward moment.

“What did you want to be?” Lucas asked, after the waitress left.

She shrugged, unrolled the paper napkin from around the silverware. “A lot of things. Different things. Watching Mom work with her stones always fascinated me, but it wasn’t until I was eighteen that I decided I wanted to try designing jewelry myself.”

“A late bloomer.”

In more than one way. She shook her head, dismissing memories of the things she’d learned in Lucas’s arms.

“What’s your plan for the replica?” she asked to divert her thoughts.

“The wax and the photos are in my safe deposit box at the bank. I won’t be able to get to them until tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t do the plaster mold without the wax.” Juliana frowned. A delay? She wanted this over and done with. The Phantom caught. And Briana back home.

“How long will it take to get the whole replica done?”

She unfurled her napkin and patted it on her lap. “Depends. How much are you willing to pay? It might be a replica, Lucas, but for it to look good, it’s still going to cost.”

“Can you do all the work yourself?” He leaned back, one hand still holding to his coffee cup as if it would float away.

“I don’t have all the equipment or the expertise. The mold will take a day to make and a day to fire. Then I can cast the gold and do the polishing and finishing in a couple of days. I’ll have to send the brooch out to a setter when the stones come in.”

He tipped his head sideways. “A setter?”

“Setting stones is an art in itself. To have it look like the original, you’ll need someone with specialized skills and tools. Setting is all Louis Bickman does, and he does an excellent job.” She paused. “Then there’s the jeweler’s stamp. If the Phantom knows anything about jewelry at all, he’ll look for that.”

“I didn’t realize the process was that complicated.”

“That’s just the beginning.”

He frowned. Was she letting him down? If this didn’t work and the Phantom got away, would she forever have to look over her shoulder, worrying about Briana? She shook her head, concentrating on the task at hand.

“And that doesn’t take into consideration the synthetic sapphire,” she said. “You do want a synthetic stone, don’t you?”

He flashed her a brief, sardonic smile. “A sixty-five carat Kashmir sapphire isn’t exactly in my budget at this time. Besides, I want to give the Phantom nothing for something.”

That she could understand. After all the trouble the Phantom had caused, he deserved a dose of his own deceit. “A doublet is the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to go, but one good look at the stone and he’ll know it’s a fake. On a stone that large, the layers are going to be too easy to see. I’d go for a laboratory-grown stone.”

The waitress appeared with their breakfasts. Lucas pondered her suggestion. She could almost see the idea turning over in his mind, as he studied it from all angles, asking and answering a dozen internal questions. “He’s certainly stolen enough of the best to know a thing or two, though I don’t think he’s an expert. I think it’s more of a physiological response.”

She smiled. “Kind of like your ‘because.’”

“Kind of.” He smiled back sheepishly. “How long will it take to make a synthetic sixty-five carat sapphire?”

“I’ll have to call around. There’s only a few companies who have the knowhow and technology to make them.”

“More than a week?”

“Probably. More like three or four.” Anyway she looked at it, this project would eat up valuable time. Where was the Phantom? What was his next move? Who would be his next victim? How long would she have to stay separated from Briana?

“Will a synthetic stone look good enough to fool him?”

“There’s very little difference between the composition of the natural mined stone and the lab-created one. They’re made in a flux process that mimics nature. The only problem will be the growth zones because yours is a Kashmir sapphire.”

Lucas stirred his eggs around the plate. “What else do you need?”

“I have pearls in the safe. I’ll have to order some synthetic rubies and cubic zirconium. But that should be no problem. I’ll do that first thing Monday morning.”

No longer hungry, she pushed her plate away and glanced out at the traffic milling through the square of roads surrounding the green. Sun streaked through the haze, burning it away wisp by wisp. The day should be a beautiful one. “There’s a risk you should know about.”

“What’s that?”

She dragged her fork through the maple syrup pooled at the bottom of her plate, causing ripples in the thick golden liquid, then gazed straight and true into his eyes. “If I ruin the casting—and there’s always a risk that will happen—the wax will be lost. If that happens, it’ll mean more delays.”

He gave one sharp nod. His jaw twitched. “Yes, I know.”

She was glad he offered her no easy reassurance.

As they stepped out of the restaurant, he reached for her hand. Her gaze snapped up. He didn’t even seem aware that he’d twined his fingers around hers. He frowned, his mind engaged at untangling the mess of clues and setbacks around this case. Reaching out for her was seemingly by instinct.

Though her first reaction was to pull away, she didn’t.

As their footsteps fell into unison, so did their thoughts. Time was their enemy. Delays. Complications. They meant more ways for the Phantom to get ahead, to get away. They also meant more time away from Briana, and they put a tarnish on the lightness that had enfolded her earlier this morning.

“I’d like to make a detour on the way to your workshop,” Lucas said as they reached the house.

“Where to?”

“Cindy Marchand’s house.”

* * *

Cindy Marchand’s home yielded no clues. Juliana had never seen Lucas in action, and the sight was an education. He moved through his inspection in a methodical, thorough fashion. He prodded and looked, bent and studied, sniffed and touched, gave a grim huff here and there, but he said not a word. She couldn’t tell if his senses picked up something in the disorder that her untrained ones could not.

The small gray-and-white Cape held simple furnishings, but was lovingly refurbished. Right now, a layer of fingerprinting powder covered every door frame, every sill, every stick of furniture. Bits of carpet had been gouged out, presumably for testing at the FBI labs. Cupboards, closets, and drawers had been left open, their contents searched with no finesse. Juliana sensed Cindy would be outraged, perhaps even frightened, by such an invasion, and part of her felt sorry for the woman.

Inside an upstairs back bedroom, he studied the carpet and window for a long time.

“Find anything?” she asked, irritated at his prolonged silence.

“See those three impressions in the carpet fibers?”

They looked barely more than three fingertips. “So?”

“What do they look like?”

She crouched beside him. “I don’t know. A small curio table? A planter?”

“What about these?” He pointed to four bigger, deeper impressions just in front of the three smaller ones.

She frowned. “A chair?”

“Very good. What else do you see?”

She looked around and saw nothing. No impressions, no furniture, no markings.

“Look at where the impressions are. Look at what’s missing.”

Then it hit her. Three small impression before a window. Four larger ones behind them. “A tripod. A telescope. A man in a chair looking through the telescope.”

Slowly she rose and peered out the window. Lucas directed her gaze with his arm. Because of the terrain, the view presented her with a clear sight of downtown Aubery. And there through the leafing trees, she spotted the familiar bloom of her tulip tree, the soft butter yellow of her house. Magnified through the lens of a telescope, it would appear close enough to touch.

She gasped, feeling naked, exposed, violated. “He was watching us. Studying us.”

“A few months ago, the trees would have been bare, making it easier to have an unimpeded view.”

When he was done with the inside, Lucas headed back outside, and she followed blindly.

“I’ll bet you anything the prints that were lifted are all going to be Cindy’s. He knows what he’s doing. The lab’s not going to turn up much.” Lucas scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It all fits with his MO—careful, prepared, organized.”

“It confirms what you already knew.”

“And doesn’t give me anything new.”

The Phantom had performed another perfect vanishing act. Lucas’s frustration buzzed through her, mingled with her own sense of invasion. She wanted to help, but she was way out of her field of expertise. What he needed was something to give him a direction to pursue. More than ever, she wanted to see this monster behind bars.

She stood beside him, elbow to elbow, peering out over the pond in the park next to Cindy’s house. A family of geese pecked at bread crumbs offered by a mother and her two toddlers. A twinge of sadness sang through her. How often had she come there with Briana to do the same thing. Had the Phantom observed them then? Taken notes? She shivered.

The breeze ruffled the surface of the pool-size pond, bobbing the line of a fishing pole held by a middle-aged man dressed in rubber boots, camouflage pants, and a checkered flannel shirt. A little girl picked purple-and-yellow violas beneath the granite plaque marking the park’s entrance while her parents chatted on a nearby bench.

“What next?” Juliana asked, feeling as if she were in a rowboat without oars.