The Paris Caper (12 page)

For a split second old
insecurities swamped over her. Her stomach squeezed with nausea before she could
remind herself that this was exactly the image she’d striven for with her
disguise.

She dared a peek over her
shoulder at Jean-Marc, who was still following them, a few paces behind. When
he saw her glance, he gave her an absent nod then continued to scan the other
guests.

She wanted to jump for
joy that he didn’t recognize her. Or maybe fall to her knees with relief. Her
confidence returned with a surge. She was really going to pull this off. If her
own lover couldn’t identify her, nobody could.

Making her way through
the crowded grand salon, she thought to rid herself of her unwanted escorts by
slipping through a set of double glass doors outside to the sprawling
courtyard. Even in the growing darkness, she could see the gardens were
spectacular. Flowers scented the cool evening air and soft music wafted in from
somewhere beyond the bordering box hedge.

Suddenly, there was a
loud crash. Behind her an explosion of glass shattered on the paving stones.
She spun, clutching at her overstuffed bosom, and it wasn’t all acting. Visions
of Jean-Marc drawing his gun, calling “Halt! Thief!” and firing when she tried
to escape whirled through her imagination.

Damn, she had to calm
down. She was nervous as a cat.

In reality, a tray of
drinks lay scattered on the ground in a glistening puddle of crystal shards and
still bubbling liquid that reflected the brightly colored lanterns overhead. In
the middle of it all stood Ricardo and a short man dressed in white, both
cursing and gesturing wildly. Ricardo’s eyes shot to her, dismayed. She gave
him a smile of reassurance and shook her head slightly.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured
to the officer, who seemed stuck to her like glue and must have been the cause
of Ricardo’s consternation. She had to get rid of him. “Perhaps you should do
something about those two before they come to blows.”

With a grunt, the officer
deserted her for the fray.

One down, one to go
.
She steadied her nerves and turned to politely thank Jean-Marc and get the hell
away from him. But he had disappeared.

Uneasiness crawled
through her. She swept her gaze over the crush of people crowding the artfully
lit gardens, seeking him out. He was nowhere in sight.

For a minute she stood
paralyzed with indecision. Should she call it off? A minute turned into two,
and then three, as she wavered between caution and necessity.

The hum of a dozen
conversations buzzed in her ears but no one said a word to her. No one even
looked at her. A handsome young waiter passed by with a tray of fresh champagne
flutes, another with a plate of hors de oeuvres, but neither paused to offer
her anything.

All of which served to
make up her mind.

She would not change the
plan.
One point three mil
. There wouldn’t be another opportunity such as
this. Not without weeks or months of research. Far too long. Sofie needed that
money now. Jean-Marc or no, she wouldn’t put this off. She couldn’t.

“Right,” she murmured
softly. “Off to the trenches.”

At a slow, dignified
stroll, she crossed the elegant courtyard back toward the manor house, humming
to an old melody that drifted in from a dance floor set up on the lawn behind
the gardens. Under her sensible old lady flats, the paving stones winked up at
her. They weren’t ordinary brick cobbles, but granite, or porphyry, or some
other natural stone that reflected the twinkle of lanterns and the hundreds of
fairy lights adorning the trees and paths, as well as the matching sparkle of
diamonds, sapphires and rubies hanging from the throats, ears and wrists of
every lady there.

Jewelry worth a
fortune...

Don’t switch horses in
mid-stream, Ciara.

She’d heard that
expression more than once, in the old movies that had kept her company while
her mom was out working her loser job waitressing at a local dive, and whatever
the hell she did after closing time. Ciara had learned a lot from those old
movies.

No, she wouldn’t switch
horses, as tempting as it was. The plan was set. The arrangements made. No
changes.

She re-entered the house
through a second set of mullioned double patio doors and found herself in a
massive salon, also filled with partygoers dressed to the nines. Quickly she
scanned the framed art crowding the walls. Valois hadn’t been able to pinpoint
her target’s location, so she’d have to wander around the chateau until she
spotted it. She recognized a pair of ornately framed old masters, several
stunning impressionists, and a large Henri Rousseau. Gorgeous. There were a
dozen others, mostly older paintings. But no Picasso.

She slipped unnoticed
through the throng to a paneled door that led toward the rear of the house.
Weaving past the guests she made her way to the narrow back servant’s
staircase, and up to the second level. There, the crowd thinned considerably.

It took her just a few
minutes of searching to find the Picasso.

And less than two to make
the switch.

♥♥♥

Five minutes later Ciara
was settling into the back seat of the Jag, which Davie had reinflated the tire
on and driven to the front of the house, dressed as a chauffer.

“Got it?” he asked.

“Rolled up in my purse,”
she affirmed, closing her eyes briefly and easing out the pent-up breath it
felt like she’d been holding since she’d spotted that police car earlier. Not
to mention running into her lover,
le commissaire
.

She didn’t even want to
think about how wrong things might have gone tonight.

But they hadn’t. Thank
God.

Opening her eyes, she
took one last look at the Michaud mansion as Davie pulled away from the front
entrance.

Her heart stalled. High
in a second floor window stood a man holding back the curtain and looking down.
Watching her.

It was Jean-Marc.

“
How could you let
this happen
?”

The Countess Michaud’s
voice screeched like nails on a chalkboard, making Jean-Marc wince.

Merde
. As if he
hadn’t asked himself that very question a hundred times already. Last night
he’d been so certain he’d foiled
le Revenant
and nothing had been
stolen.

“What are you going to do
to get it back?” the countess demanded. “That Picasso is irreplaceable!”

“It was insured,
non
?”

“Well, yes, of course,
but—”

“
Voilà
. There you
are, then.” He didn’t want to be unfeeling, but he had a job to do.

Before she could screech
any more, he glanced at a uniformed officer and jerked his head at her. Peace
thankfully descended on the room as she was led away, the echoes of her
unhappiness bouncing off the walls.

Jean-Marc squinted at the
neatly framed Picasso—
alors
, neatly
forged
Picasso—hanging on the
wall. It was a decent likeness, actually. The artist was talented and captured
the essence of the original without trying for a precise duplicate. It was more
like an interpretation than a copy, really.

“It reminds me of
something,” murmured Pierre. “Something I’ve seen fairly recently.”

Jean-Marc had had the
same feeling when he’d first looked at the painting. But at the moment he
couldn’t focus on figuring out what it reminded him of. He could barely keep
his anger in check.
He
was furious. Absolutely furious. At
himself.

While he’d been busy
watching over the guests’ jewels, the hosts had been robbed of a Picasso valued
at over a million euros. And he’d even
known
le Revenant
sometimes targeted paintings. There was no excuse.

“This can’t be the work
of the Ghost,” Pierre said, seeming to read his mind. “Sure, he takes the
occasional painting. But nothing else fits our profile—the value of the stolen
piece, leaving a copy in its place, no train nearby. All of that’s wrong.”

Jean-Marc contemplated
the ersatz Picasso. “And yet...” Something niggled at the back of his mind.
Something he couldn’t put a finger on. “It
feels
exactly like him.”

“How so?”

“The timing’s right—last week
of the month. And the painting is small, cut from the frame like he always
does. Stolen in the midst of a crowd.”

“But this Picasso is
worth a thousand times the other paintings combined! Why such a jump?”

Jean-Marc shrugged.
“Maybe he wants out. Or maybe he just wants a fancy new yacht.”

“I still don’t think it’s
him. Look at this thing! Our Ghost is a thief, not a goddamn painter.”

“He may have found an
accomplice. Or you may be right and it’s not him at all,” he conceded. “But
whoever it is, he made a colossal mistake leaving that fake for us to analyze.
With any luck forensics will be able to nail who painted it. And with the
cameras the Michaud’s have everywhere, we’ve definitely got the thief’s
picture. All we have to do is connect a face to the evidence.”

If
Belfort gave
them the chance.

Pierre was right, the
Picasso was in a whole different ball park than the modest jobs
Le Revenant
had pulled before. With the higher-ups breathing down Belfort’s neck about the
jewel thief, his boss might just take the easy way out and send
jurisdiction
of the Picasso investigation away from
36 Quai des Orfèvres
and up the
ladder, to a
juge d'instruction
.

Jean-Marc
wasn’t about to let that happen. He had a huge personal stake in solving both
cases.

“Any
fingerprints?” he asked the tech who was still nearby dusting.

“Two dozen or more in
this room alone. The forgery will be processed by the chief at the lab, of
course. But don’t get your hopes up. Doesn’t look promising.”

“Hairs? Fibers?
Anything?”

The tech chuckled.
“You’re kidding, right? This place is four centuries old. We’ll probably find
hairs and fibers belonging to Louis XV himself. There are bags of stuff to be
gone through by the lab.”

Jean-Marc turned back to
the painting. “
Dieu
, there had to be three hundred people at this party.
How did he manage the switch without being seen by a single one?” He rubbed his
temples, fighting off the beginnings of a headache. “
Merde
,” he
muttered. “First the Ghost. Now the Invisible Man.”

The corner of Pierre’s
lip rose. “Or Invisible Woman.”

Pierre was always busting
his balls about his tendency to assume the criminals they chased were male.
Could he help it if they usually were?

“A woman? You think?”

“
To Catch A Thief
,”
Pierre said.

“
Quoi
?”

“Nineteen fifty-five,
Cary Grant, Grace Kelly. The thief turned out to be a girl.”

“Pierre. That was a
film
.”

“Art imitates life. And
the whole end of the month thing could just be PMS.”

After rolling his eyes,
Jean-Marc waved an impatient hand. PMS. Yeah, right. “Okay.
Une femme, c’est
une possibilité
,” he granted. Though not too likely, in his opinion.
“Hollywood aside, women don’t usually go in for this kind of elaborate,
carefully planned scheme. They tend to do crimes of opportunity. Based on need
rather than as a vocation. The Picasso thief was a pro. He came prepared with a
fake painting, a utility knife and staple-pull to remove the real one, and
fast-drying glue to attach the forgery to the back of the frame so the theft
would not be discovered until well after he was gone.”

“And may I ask where a
man would hide all those things? A woman would have a purse,” his friend said
triumphantly.

Jean-Marc gave up. He did
have a point. “Okay, okay. I’ll keep an open mind.” He sighed. “
Merveilleux
.
You just doubled our number of suspects from half the world to everyone on the
whole damn planet.”

Pierre laughed and
slapped him on the back. “We should probably start with the big cities. He’s
got to fence this baby somewhere.”

OCBC officers had already
been to every pawn shop and purveyor of previously-owned jewelry, as well as
suspected fences, in Paris and beyond, asking about
le Revenant’s
stolen
jewels. Now they could do it all over again, adding art galleries, antique
stores and Picassos to the list.

“Swell.”

“Guess this bumps our
friendly Ghost down the priority ladder,” Pierre said. “Pity. Just when we were
getting somewhere.”

“This changes nothing.
The cases are similar enough we can work them together. We may even come out
ahead.”

When they got back to his
office at
36 Quai des Orfèvres
, Jean-Marc called
the
Laboratoire de Police Scientifique
and talked to Dr. Terrance, chief of forensics. “I want you to run every
conceivable test on that forgery,” he said. “And I need the results yesterday.”

Then he called the police
video lab. “Do you have photos isolated of all the soiree guests from the
Michaud’s surveillance cameras yet?” he asked Renard, who was in charge of that
department.

“Yes, sir. I’m just
sending you a set.”

“I want you to run them
through the facial recognition software, compare them to the arrest and prison
databases. All of them.”

“Sure thing, boss,”
Renard said.

“And run the photos from
the disco robbery last week through it, too.” He was about to hang up when a
thought suddenly occurred to him. “And while you’re at it, run the disco photos
against the Michaud guests. See if anyone pops.”

He replaced the receiver
and ran an excited hand over his mouth.
Holy shit
. If it was the same
perp, they had him! What were the odds of anyone being at both crime scenes if
he wasn’t the thief?