Читать книгу Heron's Cove - Carla Neggers - Страница 8

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EMMA BROUGHT HER red sable brush, saturated with cerulean-blue watercolor paint, to the dampened paper she had clipped to the easel on the back porch of the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove. She pulled the brush across the paper, right to left, practicing a simple flat wash and, out of the corner of her eye, watching the woman down on the docks. She had looked up at the house several times. She was small, with long, straight dark hair, and she wore a pumpkin-colored barn jacket that, even at a distance, was obviously too big for her.

A Sharpe Fine Art Recovery client? A sightseer who had wandered down to the waterfront and now was trying to figure out how to get back out to the street with its attractive houses, shops and restaurants?

Emma noticed her cerulean-blue was leaking down the page into her burnt-sienna. Probably should have stuck to one color. Perfecting a flat wash wasn’t as easy as it looked. In the weeks since Colin had gone after his arms traffickers, she had started taking painting lessons with Sister Cecilia, a young novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. She and Emma had become friends since their encounter with a crazed killer in September. The lessons at the sisters’ shop in the village were therapeutic for both of them, and always followed by a walk, tea or just a good chat. Sister Cecilia especially loved hearing the latest about Rock Point and the Donovans.

Yank had called an hour ago. He and Colin had arrived in Boston and were on their way to Maine. Yank would drop Colin off in Rock Point. Then he was on his own.

No handing over the phone to Colin to say hello. Not Yank’s style.

Colin, Emma knew, would want to know about her source. He would have figured out the tip about the Fort Lauderdale house had come from her, or Yank would have told him outright.

She stood back from her painting, her brush in hand. Not her best effort.

A lobster boat drifted from the open ocean through the channel into the tidal river. It was late on a still, cool autumn afternoon. Several pleasure boats had passed by, heading to the marina and adjacent yacht club, but there were fewer boats now, with the colder weather and the foliage past peak. In midsummer, Heron’s Cove would be bustling with boats and people.

Colin had been a lobsterman in his teens, before joining the Maine state marine patrol. Emma didn’t know why he had decided to become an FBI agent. Boredom? Ambition? A precipitating incident? An unsolved case?

How could she have fallen for a man about whom she ultimately knew so little?

She had showered and changed in Colin’s house that morning, putting on fresh jeans and a sweater she had brought up from Boston. She’d had little sleep, dozing in his bed. When she got word that he was safe, she called Mike Donovan, then Finian Bracken, and let them know all was well and Colin would return to Rock Point later today.

She had stopped at Hurley’s for coffee and a cider doughnut and took them with her to Heron’s Cove. A run on the beach, a visit to a local apple orchard, a stop at her brother Lucas’s house to check on his cats while he was away—it had been a long day. She had known she wouldn’t hear from Colin until he was fully debriefed and back home.

The woman in the pumpkin-colored jacket had circled up to the retaining wall and was squeezing past tall hydrangeas, their white blossoms turned burgundy with autumn, into the Sharpe yard.

Emma set her brush in a jar of water on a small dresser against the back wall of the covered porch and stood at the rail. “Hi, there,” she called down to the woman. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?”

“It is. And it’s a beautiful place.” The woman spoke with an accent that Emma couldn’t immediately place. “You’re Emma Sharpe, yes?”

“That’s right. What’s your name?”

“Tatiana,” she said, crossing the yard to the porch. “Tatiana Pavlova.”

Emma stiffened at the Russian name, what she now realized was a Russian accent with a British undercurrent, as if Tatiana Pavlova had learned English on the streets of London. “What can I do for you, Tatiana?”

She started up the porch steps. “You mind?”

“Just keep your hands where I can see them, okay?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. You’re an FBI agent. You must worry about villains.”

Villains? “Are you a Sharpe client?” Emma asked.

Tatiana joined her on the small porch of the gray-shingled house where Wendell Sharpe had started Sharpe Fine Art Recovery in a front room. “A friend was,” she said. “I’m a jewelry designer in London. One of my clients once hired your grandfather. But that’s not important. It’s not why I’m here. Your grandfather is retired now, yes?”

“He’s semi-retired.”

“Ah. I can see that. I want to work until I can no longer lift a pencil.” Tatiana tightened her oversize jacket around her slim frame. “It’s colder here than I expected but I’m used to the cold.”

Emma leaned back against the rail. Tatiana wore black leggings and black flats more suited to London than a walk on the docks of Heron’s Cove, but no makeup or jewelry. Her nails were blunt, unpolished. Stylishly unstylish, Emma thought. “You’re Russian?” she asked.

Tatiana nodded. “But I left Russia years ago.”

“Years? You must have been a child. You’re young—”

“Twenty-five. I was twenty when I left the country for good. It’s a long story.” Her dark eyes gleamed with emotion. “Are there any short Russian stories? Some of our fables and folktales, perhaps. Do you know the fable of the cat and the nightingale?”

“I don’t think so,” Emma said.

“It’s very short. Of course, since it’s a fable.” Tatiana stood at the porch rail and watched a great blue heron swoop low to the water. “A cat catches a nightingale and taunts the poor bird to sing for her. The terrified nightingale can only manage pitiful squeaks, which remind the cat of annoying kittens. Disgusted, the cat eats the nightingale.”

“Charming,” Emma said with a smile. “What made you think of this particular fable?”

“My walk, maybe. Seeing all the birds here.” Tatiana sighed as the heron dipped past a sailboat, then out of sight. “The cat and the nightingale remind us that we can’t expect beautiful songs from a bird trapped in the clutches of a creature that can devour it. Their story tells us that fear isn’t always the best instrument to get us what we want.”

“Are you describing yourself, Tatiana?”

She turned, smiling enigmatically. “But am I the scary cat, or am I the terrified nightingale?” She waved a slender hand in dismissal. “It’s just a fable. It’s best in Russian, of course. Do you speak any Russian?”

“A few words,” Emma said truthfully.

“Heron’s Cove is very beautiful. I knew it would be, but I hoped to get here for peak leaves—that’s what you say?”

“Peak foliage.”

“That’s it.” Tatiana’s smile brightened. “There are still many orange and yellow leaves, but the reds are all on the ground. But I’m not here as tourist.” She spied the easel and frowned at Emma’s attempt at a watercolor wash. “Such a pretty blue, but watercolor is not so easy, yes?”

Emma groaned. “Watercolor isn’t easy at all.”

“A painter and an FBI agent. I suppose that’s not such a surprise since you’re a Sharpe.” Tatiana lifted the brush out of the jar and blotted it on a sheet of paper on the small chest of drawers that held Emma’s painting supplies. “My English is better when I concentrate, have you noticed?”

“Your English is fine. When did you arrive in Heron’s Cove?”

“This afternoon. I have a cottage just on the other side of the yacht club. I have it for a week but the owner said I can stay longer if I wish. It’s very small. Adorable. It’s one room on legs—stilts. We’re neighbors.”

“Why Heron’s Cove?” Emma asked.

Tatiana laid the rinsed brush on the dresser, so that its natural bristles hung over the edge. “You shouldn’t leave your brushes in water. They will last longer.” She picked up the tube of cerulean-blue watercolor paint and screwed the top back on, then set it back on the dresser. “A rare, valuable collection of Russian Art Nouveau jewelry and decorative arts is arriving in Heron’s Cove soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. I’m afraid it’s another long, sad Russian story, but I don’t need to tell it, do I, Emma Sharpe? This one you already know.”

“I’ve learned in my work not to make assumptions.” Emma kept her voice neutral, despite her shock at mention of the collection. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

Tatiana sighed at the practice painting. “You didn’t wait for one color to dry before you tried another color. They bled together, and now you have mud.” She glanced disapprovingly at Emma. “You must not give in to the excitement of creative inspiration at the expense of craft. You must make the tension between the two work for you. That’s true mastery.”

“Tatiana…”

“You grow impatient,” she said lightly. “It’s the Rusakov collection. A dozen works of great beauty and artistry crafted during the last days of the Romanovs. You know it, yes?”

Emma nodded. “I know it, yes.”

“Twenty years ago, Dmitri Rusakov discovered the collection hidden in the walls of his Moscow mansion and hired your grandfather to help him understand it. Its history, its provenance, its value. We were just small girls then, you and I.”

Emma remembered her grandfather coming home from Moscow and reading Russian fairy tales to her and Lucas. Later—four years ago, when she dealt with Dmitri Rusakov herself—she had learned that each of the dozen works in the collection was inspired by some aspect of Russian folk tradition. Dmitri was a former army officer who had made a fortune in oil and gas in post–Soviet Russia.

He was also the trusted friend of the man who had called Emma last night with the Fort Lauderdale address.

“Dmitri Rusakov has never publicized his discovery of the collection,” Emma said. “How do you know about it?”

Tatiana pulled open the top dresser drawer and helped herself to a soft lead pencil, her dark hair hanging in her face as she continued. “Everyone in Russia knows about Dmitri Rusakov. I hear things in my work. Fabergé, Tiffany, Gaillard, Lalique—I study all the great designers of the late nineteenth century. It was a time when art met life, when an object as simple and ordinary as a cane knob, a picture frame or a cigarette case could become an artistic creation.” Tatiana smiled, a dimple showing in her left cheek. “I especially love Art Nouveau.”

“I do, too. Who is bringing the collection to Heron’s Cove?”

“Natalie Warren, the daughter of Rusakov’s American ex-wife.” Tatiana checked the tip of the pencil with her thumb. “Her mother died earlier this year in Tucson. I don’t think Natalie realized her mother had the collection, or perhaps even of its existence. That’s why she’s coming here. She wants to talk to the Sharpes.”

“My brother and grandfather are both in Dublin.”

“Ah. Well. Perhaps Natalie wants to talk to you.”

Emma noticed streaks of pale lavender high in the sky. It was dusk. Colin would be back in Rock Point soon after weeks of dangerous undercover work, after escaping certain death just hours ago. How could she tell him about Dmitri Rusakov?

About his connection to last night’s call?

She turned back to Tatiana. “Do you and Natalie know each other?”

“No, no. We’ve never met. She lives in Phoenix. I’m relatively invisible at my studio. I listen. I hear things. I heard about the collection.”

“That’s not all there is to it,” Emma said. “Why are you really here?”

Tatiana looked out at the water, gray now in the fading late-afternoon light. “I believe someone will steal the collection.”

“Who?”

“A villain,” she said, half under her breath.

“Tatiana, if you have specific information about an imminent crime, then you need tell the local police. I’ll put you in touch.”

She shook her head. “I have no proof of anything. I know you’re not with Sharpe Fine Art Recovery any longer, but can you help, Emma—Agent Sharpe?”

Emma considered her response, then said, “If the Rusakov collection arrives in Heron’s Cove, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good.” With a few swift strokes of the pencil, Tatiana sketched a graceful great blue heron, incorporating Emma’s washes and muddy drips, so that suddenly they didn’t look amateurish and awkward. She stood back from the easel and appraised her handiwork. “You can go from here. I love grand blue herons.”

Emma smiled. “Great blue herons.”

The young Russian laughed. “Yes, just so. Thank you, Emma Sharpe. I appreciate your help.”

She skipped down the porch steps and back across the yard, her hair flying in the wind as she jumped from the retaining wall down to the pier.

Emma abandoned her painting and went back inside. Although she had been to the house a number of times since renovations had started, she still felt a tug of nostalgia when she entered the kitchen and saw the counters were now home to carpenters’ tools, rags, cabinet brochures, paint chips and an empty box of Hurley’s cider doughnuts. Most of the guys working on the place were from Rock Point. She had promised them she would clear out the rest of the kitchen over the weekend.

She stepped past a roll of insulation. Renovations had been a long time in coming and a joint family decision, but Lucas was in charge. The idea was to transform the small house into a modern base for Sharpe Fine Art Recovery while still retaining its Victorian charm and character. Lucas, who had his own house in the village, had asked the architect to include a guest suite for family and friends, or for their grandfather should he eventually return to Heron’s Cove.

Getting Lucas to acquiesce to preserving the porch had taken some doing. He had envisioned taking over that space for the interior and adding a stone terrace out back, but Emma had reminded him how much of their family life had centered on the porch, especially before their grandmother’s death, the fall on the ice that had relegated their father to a restless life of chronic pain and their grandfather’s relocation to Dublin.

Emma rinsed dried watercolor paint off her hands and saw she had a text message.

It was from Colin: I’m home.

She smiled as she typed her response: I’ll come to you.

She headed out through the front and got his message back: Yank just left. I’ll be at Hurley’s.

Emma got in her car. She would be in Rock Point in twenty minutes. That gave her at least a little more time to consider how to handle his questions about how she had found him in Florida, and what to tell him about Tatiana Pavlova.

* * *

Colin was alone at Hurley’s bar, a bowl of steaming fish chowder in front of him. He patted the stool next to him. “Have a seat, Special Agent Sharpe.”

Emma climbed onto the stool, taking in his broad shoulders, the thick muscles in his legs, the smoky gray of his eyes as they settled on her. He was so damn sexy, she thought. So incredibly physical and down to earth. He could handle deep-cover work because he was focused, decisive and independent. Yet he wasn’t a man easy to get to know. Maybe that made him good at what he did, too.

She noticed a purple bruise on his forearm, then met his eyes with a smile. “Welcome home.”

He winked at her. “Nothing says home like a bowl of Hurley’s fish chowder.”

“Your brothers aren’t here yet, I see.”

“On their way. Finian, too. Word travels fast in Rock Point.” He touched a hand to her cheek. “How are you, Emma?”

“Glad to see you back in one piece.”

“I came close to being eaten by alligators.” He tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. “Yank says you saved my ass.”

“We all help each other.”

“Did he tell you to say that?” Colin turned back to his chowder. “As I pointed out to him, I had already escaped when the cavalry arrived. I do allow that if they hadn’t swooped in when they did, my new friends could have doubled back and thrown me to the gators.”

“That wouldn’t have been good,” Emma said.

“It would not. Then where would you be?” He picked up his spoon, dipped it into the milky chowder. “Sleeping alone in my bed again.”

She helped herself to an oyster cracker. She knew what he was getting at, had suspected it was coming. How much would she tell him about her source? How much could she tell him? She’d had a good chunk of last night and all day to prepare her response, but Tatiana Pavlova’s arrival in Heron’s Cove, with her talk of Dmitri Rusakov, had further muddled the situation.

“The call came to my cell phone. Not to your house phone.” Emma kept her tone even, without a hint of defensiveness. “Yank knew I was at your house because he asked and I told him. Father Bracken had organized a whiskey tasting.”

“What was your favorite?”

“I just know I don’t like the heavily peated ones.”

“An acquired taste.”

“Colin—”

“It’s okay, Emma.” His eyes softened. “It’s been a long month. You can sleep in my bed anytime.”

In other words, his questions about last night could wait.

“Were my brothers good to you while I was away?” he asked.

She nodded. “Mike’s not a big fan but we do all right.”

“Mike’s not a big fan of anyone.”

“He’s been down here more because of your family’s concern for you.”

Finian Bracken arrived, wearing his black suit and Roman collar today. He stopped short when he saw Emma. “Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” Emma said with a smile.

Colin eased off his stool. “It’s good to see you, Fin.” He clapped the priest on the shoulder in a warm greeting. “Mike, Andy and Kevin will be here in a few minutes.”

“They’re outside now,” Finian said.

“Then grab some glasses and pour the Bracken 15 year old.”

Finian glanced past him at Emma. “Wine for you tonight?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” she said, standing up. “I’ll let you gentlemen enjoy your evening.”

“Good to see you, as always,” Finian said, then headed to his favorite table by the window.

Emma buttoned her jacket, aware of Colin’s gaze on her. His questions about the past twenty-four hours wouldn’t wait forever. He wanted answers. But she saw the cut on his right temple, the fatigue in his eyes and the stiffness with which he moved, and she knew this wasn’t the time or the place for a serious conversation.

He needed tonight with his brothers and his Irish priest friend.

He seemed to guess what she was thinking and slipped an arm around her waist. “Missed you, babe.”

“I missed you, too. Be with your family and friends.” She leaned into him, just for an instant. “I’ll see you soon.”

He patted her hip. “Real soon.”

Emma managed to get out of there without running into his brothers. It was colder, clearer than last night. She listened to the tide wash in on the sand and smooth stones. A bright star had come out above the harbor. She took in a deep breath. She could still feel Colin’s strength and warmth—as well as his questions, his doubts.

If Natalie Warren was bringing the Rusakov collection to Heron’s Cove, would Dmitri Rusakov be right behind her?

Would Ivan Alexander be with him?

“Your man is in danger.”

Emma put her own doubts and questions out of her mind as she watched Mike, Andy and Kevin Donovan walk up the stairs to Hurley’s. They were one reason Colin could bounce back from the dangers he faced. His resilience wasn’t just due to his training and experience, or even his nature. It was also due to his family and friends, the solid foundation he had in Rock Point.

A gust of cold wind propelled her into her car. She debated what to do. She could stay at her parents’ house in Heron’s Cove, Lucas’s house, with friends. At the Sharpe house. The state of renovations meant it wasn’t as comfortable as in the past, but she’d manage.

She could check on Tatiana Pavlova and see if she was in her rented cottage, working on sketches.

Emma started her car. She needed to get in touch with Lucas and her grandfather in Dublin.

Would her grandfather remember Dmitri Rusakov?

“Of course he would,” she said aloud.

Wendell Sharpe remembered everything.

She noticed the bag of Northern Spy apples on her front passenger seat. She’d bought them at her visit to the orchard that afternoon, before her attempt at a flat wash. They were perfect for pies.

Tough to bake a pie in the Sharpe kitchen.

Emma smiled and decided she might as well head up to Colin’s house after all.