The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (29 page)

I put my sleek new iPhone in my pocket. So far, there was no connection. In England, it might have been turned on almost immediately, but I knew it would take longer in Italy. Rocco accompanied us downstairs and once again into the Mercedes that purred at the curb outside the front door. The rain was torrential now, sending tourists in plastic ponchos to take shelter in doorways and under awnings that were distended with water. It was only late afternoon but the beams of the car’s headlights were swallowed up by the darkness.

Claire and I sat in the back, an empty expanse of leather seat between us. I reached my hand out to touch hers. “Can we be friends again?” I whispered. “I’m really sorry. And I’ll apologize to Dante later too, I promise. My friends often tell me I’m too opinionated.”

She nodded and squeezed my hand. The drive took only a couple of minutes before we stopped in front of a tall dignified palazzo on the Via dei Tosinghi. The red dome of the cathedral loomed over our heads as we left the car.

“This is Dante’s gallery,” Claire whispered as a doorman came out through the glass front door and held up an umbrella to escort us inside.

“Welcome, Kate, to my place of work,” Dante said. He turned to nod to the doorman who pressed several buttons. I heard a series of clicks, presumably the door locking electronically.

The gallery was spacious, lit with modern halogen lights on silver wires, the walls white, and the floor paved in satiny black marble. I recognized some of the art, including a Luc Tymans, a Rothko, and a small pastel by Manet. One wall was dedicated to four large framed black and white photos of urban landscapes, grim places decorated with barbed wire and graffiti.

“I have to check on something,” Dante said. “Claire, perhaps you can show Kate around.”

“Is this really secure?” I said, aware of Claire’s eyes swiveling towards me. “I’m sure Santini’s men could shoot that glass door open with no problem.”

“First, they couldn’t and, second, they wouldn’t,” replied Dante. “I promise you are safe here. Take a look outside.”

I did. People hurried past under umbrellas or stood on the steps of the old palazzo opposite, waiting for the worst of the rain to pass.

“If you look closely,” he pointed. “There are policemen just a few yards away. Oh, and the door is bullet-proof. Even my brother isn’t arrogant enough to think he can break in here without bringing down a firestorm on his head. I’ll be back as quickly as possible.”

He disappeared into his office. I didn’t really want to look at any more art, having seen more than enough down in the warehouse, but I trailed around after Claire, who told me about each of the pictures. Her heart wasn’t in it, though. She kept glancing towards Dante’s office and sighing.

When we reached the far end of the gallery, I noticed a small square oil painting in an ornate gilt frame. It was a portrait of three stern-looking men in black frock coats. grey-haired, somber, they gazed out at us. The man in the center held a leather-bound book with a banded spine. It reminded me of the original
Della Pittura,
but the book in the picture had no writing, no gold leaf on the cover.

“Come and see this,” I said to Claire. “That’s what the
Della Pittura
looked like, with its thick spine and leather cover. It’s too bad you weren’t ever able to see it.” I slipped my arm through hers. “But maybe you’ll get it back when we do our deal with Santini. He won’t care about the book once he has access to all the treasure in the vault.”

We gazed at the painting for a while. “Who’s the artist?” I asked, more to pass the time than because I was interested. What was taking so long? I’d have thought Santini would have raced back to Florence once he learned that we had the diagram.

Claire bent forward to look for a signature. “Giuseppe Cades. He was painting in the mid-eighteenth century.” She took a step back and appraised the picture, her head tilted to one side. “Cades wasn’t known for portraiture, although he painted a few. He was from Rome but he traveled extensively and was in Florence for a couple of years in the 1760s.”

I turned to smile at her. “And you know all that because…?”

She shrugged. “It’s my job. If you wanted, I could recite the entire contents of the catalogue of Italian artists, from Fra Angelico to Domenico Zampieri.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “Not that I’m not impressed.” The fussy gilded frame reminded me of the painting in Claire’s apartment.

“That painting in your living room,” I said.

Claire turned to me. “The Madonna? It’s beautiful isn’t it? The artist was from the Ferrarese School in the early fifteenth century. Dante gave it to me.”

“It must be quite valuable.”

She turned away without responding, but after a few seconds she spoke, still looking at the painting in front of us. “That’s what I thought, to be honest. It’s probably worth nearly a hundred thousand euros. I was embarrassed, but he insisted. He has so many valuable paintings that maybe it just doesn’t seem like a big deal to him.”

When she moved off, I followed for lack of anything better to do. We wandered along, gazing at paintings of landscapes and still lifes. Who would want a picture of a dead bird surrounded by fruit hanging on their wall? When I turned back to follow Claire again, I noticed that her aura was accelerating. The sight of it made my stomach clench painfully, the way it always did when I was nervous. From the moment when I’d first seen her on Sunday morning, the aura had grown more distinct. I froze, unable to move my legs. What if
I
were the source of danger? If I hadn’t turned up at her apartment with the key, would she be safe?

I saw a black leather bench carefully positioned in front a large painting of red-coated horsemen engaged in a battle. I went to sit down, anxious to take the weight off my wobbly legs. The picture didn’t help settle my nerves. Amputated limbs lay scattered on a blood-soaked field. A horse rolled on its back, a spear through its stomach. A raised saber glistened over the head of a doomed young soldier.

Was Claire doomed? Was I? I leaned forward so my head touched my knees, fighting off the feeling of nausea. Then I straightened up and took a deep breath. I needed to focus, to work out where the threat originated. Realistically, I knew it didn’t begin when I found the
Della Pittura
and came to Florence. It all started with Ethan being taken, somehow, by Santini’s men.

But that still wasn’t right. The danger to Ethan and Claire had almost certainly been activated earlier, with their father’s discovery of the
Della Pittura
in the attic. When Simon Hamilton died, killed by Santini, Ethan had retrieved the
Della Pittura
from the safety deposit box. That was the moment when Claire and Ethan became Santini’s targets. I had just been an uninformed courier. But now I was a target too, because I knew as much as Claire did about the Custodians and the vault.

I looked up to see Claire standing in front of a small engraving. She seemed to be in a trance, rocking gently back and forth, her eyes blank. My phone pinged in my pocket. I grabbed it and looked at the screen. It had service. Of course, there were no voicemails or texts. No one had this new number. But I could make some calls. Leo would be worried and Laura would be frantic. And, in spite of Patricia’s assurance to the contrary, I was sure that Detective Lake must be angry that I had missed our meeting.

Just as I began typing in Leo’s number, Dante appeared. He gathered Claire to him and stroked her hair.

“I have something to show you,” he said. “And I think you’re going to be very happy.”

We followed Dante into his office. The gallery had been designed with clean lines and contemporary style, but the office offered ostentatious comfort. A gleaming walnut desk stood on a plush oriental rug in the center of the room. Two deep leather chairs that shone like chestnuts were angled in front of a flat screen television, and red-shaded lamps cast a warm glow. I expected Dante to tell us to sit while he shared with us whatever good news he had. Instead, he beckoned Rocco in. “Take them up,” he said.

Rocco nodded. “
Si signore
.” He tramped across the red and gold rug to a glossy wooden door in the corner of the office and then turned to check that we were following. We weren’t. I was too bewildered to move. Claire appeared to feel the same.

“But what—?” she began.

Dante held up a hand to stop her. “Please trust me. Go with Rocco.”

Together, Claire and I followed Rocco through a small lobby and up a red-carpeted stone staircase. We climbed two flights of stairs to arrive on a tiled landing with a single black-painted door. Rocco took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked it, pushing it open for us to enter.

My heart pounded. “What’s going on?” I asked, but Rocco didn’t answer.

We were in the living room of an apartment. A fire burned in the grate, casting a cheery glow on a glass-topped coffee table flanked by floral sofas. Through an archway, I saw a small kitchen with colorful Deruta bowls lined up on open shelving. We stood in silence, while Rocco typed something into his phone. Rain streamed down the window, blurring my view of the great red dome. It was like looking through an aura. I glanced at Claire, my eyes drawn to that gossamer crown on her head.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to massage away the headache that had taken up residence. What the heck was going on? It seemed that whatever we did, the threat to Claire remained. But what could it be? I eyed Rocco. It was hard to trust someone who looked like him. As a rule, I try not to stereotype people but Rocco fit the mold of mafia thug so perfectly I couldn’t help it. I’d have to keep a close watch on him.

He finished texting and then stuck the phone in his pocket, before leading us out of the living room, along a terra-cotta tiled corridor to a closed door, which he unlocked. He waved us through. Inside was a bedroom with a double bed, a white rug and an armoire. For a second, I panicked, thinking he planned to lock us in there. Then I noticed the figure in the bed.

“Ethan!” Claire ran towards him while I approached more slowly. He sat, propped against a stack of white pillows, with a white blanket pulled up to his chest. His curly blonde hair hung lank against his neck, and his normally boyish face appeared gaunt. The skin around his eyes was bruised and tender.

And his aura was still there, spinning fast. When Claire leaned over to hug him, his face contorted with pain.

“Steady on, Claire,” I said. “I think Ethan’s injured.”

“He is. Be careful,
per favore
.” A woman walked in through a door on the other side of the room. Dressed in blue scrubs, she had black hair tied up in a bun. “I am Ofelia, signor Hamilton’s nurse.” She spoke in Italian.

“What? Ethan, why do you need a nurse? What happened to you?” Claire’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’ve got so much to tell you, but what about you? Are you all right?” He reached out to touch the bruise on Claire’s cheek. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

“I’m fine, I promise. Kate’s been looking after me.”

Ethan smiled at me. “I knew I could depend on you, thank you.”

I patted his arm, momentarily overcome with emotion at seeing him again. “Where are you hurt?” I asked.

“My knee. Someone bashed it with a pipe. I might have a broken rib or two as well.”

“Good God,” Claire whispered. “Who did that to you?”

“No idea.”

Claire turned to glare at Ofelia. “We need to get him to a hospital, right now.”

The nurse shook her head. “He’s fine. The doctor examined him and there’s no serious damage. The painkillers are making him sleepy, but I’m reducing the dosage gradually.”

Ethan pulled himself up higher on his pillows with a grimace. “I’m all right, sis. Don’t worry, really. Everyone sit down and we can talk.”

Claire perched herself on the edge of the mattress. I dragged a red upholstered chair over from under the window, and Ofelia sat on an upright wooden chair tucked in beside the big armoire, took a paperback out of her tunic pocket and started to read.

“How did you get here?” Claire asked him.

“Where is here?” he asked, looking around the room. “I have no idea where I am.”

“In an apartment attached to Dante’s art gallery in Florence,” Claire said. “You know, Dante, my boyfriend.”

“So Dante kidnapped me?”

“No, no, he didn’t. He rescued you. Where were you before? Where did he find you?”

“I’m a bit fuzzy on that actually. I just remember two men and the nurse bringing me up here. I think that might have been an hour or so ago.”

“Then where have you been since Friday?” I asked.

Ethan frowned, as though trying to remember. “What day is it?”

“It’s Tuesday,” Claire said quietly.

“Well, let me think. I’d finished a meeting and was passing through the lobby when a man in a black macintosh came up to me and said he wanted the
Della Pittura
.” His voice trailed off, and he took a deep breath. “I told him to sod off or I’d call the police. Fortunately, a group of my colleagues made an appearance right then, so the man walked away.”

“What did he look like?” I asked. Ethan seemed to think for a moment, but then I realized he’d dozed off. Claire shook his arm gently. “Hey?”

He opened his eyes again. “Oh, right. Where was I? I went back to my office. Ben was in the Library, you know, that book cupboard next to my office, trying to find something, and we chatted for a minute about our weekend plans, then he carried on looking for his book. I had to drop a report off with my boss, so I went up to his office, and we talked for a while.”

“Ethan.” I leaned forward. “Do you know that Ben is dead? He was murdered in your office that evening.”

“Murdered? Why? Good God, I didn’t know. The last time I saw him, he was fine.” He covered his face with his hands. “Jesus.”

Claire glared at me and stroked his arm. “It’s okay. And I think that’s enough for now,” she said to him. “You should rest.”

“No, no. I feel much better than I look. So, after seeing my boss, I was on my way back downstairs when I got a text message, telling me to hand over the
Della Pittura,
” he continued. “From the end of the hallway, I saw the man in the black mac outside my office, looking at his mobile. I decided to try luring him away from the office, away from the safe where I kept the book. I dashed outside and got a taxi.”