Impostor's Lure Read online

  She hadn’t thought this little adventure through. It wasn’t like her, but Adalyn...

  What had she got herself into?

  “Maybe nothing,” Tamara said aloud as she looked out at the sea, waves washing over sand and rocks. A good place to kayak, Graham Blackwood had told her. Then he’d promptly admitted he didn’t know anything about kayaking. He wanted to try while he was in Maine.

  Kayak, get past a friend’s murder. Why the hell not?

  Tamara spotted a seagull that on another day, under different circumstances, would have enthralled or at least amused her. Patrick, her ex-husband, considered them rats with wings. Killjoy. Good riddance to him.

  Twenty-two years of marriage up in smoke.

  “Blah. Don’t think about it.”

  Except she’d been thinking about it most of the ninety-minute drive up to Maine. They’d told Adalyn it’d been an amiable split. Different paths now that they were in their late forties.

  No mention of the cute young girlfriend.

  Tamara didn’t like herself for giggling when she’d heard they broke up.

  “More like cackling with joy.”

  She didn’t want Patrick to be miserable, but she didn’t want him to find true love or whatever he was looking for with a shallow paralegal who looked good on his arm. Tamara didn’t want to think about what the gold digger was like in bed. Maybe she wasn’t being very evolved, but there it was. Good, maybe, for a prosecutor who’d never had much bad happen to her in her life to experience such raw emotion.

  She shook off her thoughts. She needed to focus on why she was here.

  Where was Graham Blackwood?

  She’d pulled into a turnaround on a narrow road in front of his rental house—assuming she hadn’t made a wrong turn. It was on an isolated section of the coast near the Sisters of the Joyful Heart convent. Graham’s choice. He’d given her directions and asked her to keep their meeting private. Verity wanted to talk to you before her flight, but she’s already cutting it close. I’m staying in Maine for a few days. I’ll explain everything tomorrow. It concerns Adalyn. Verity and I are both fond of her.

  Tamara didn’t see another soul, hear any cars—just the breeze and the wash of the sea. That’s what she wanted on her vacation. She’d return to Boston for dinner and be on her way for three weeks of bliss as soon as possible. She might even get a head start and leave tonight. She’d packed after her unnerving brunch with Adalyn.

  Who are these Blackwoods, Adalyn?

  They’re friends. I met them in England. I know Verity better than I do Graham. She worked at the National Gallery in London.

  Why did they come here?

  They needed a change of pace. A friend of theirs died. Actually, he was murdered two weeks ago on his way home from London.

  Tamara had pounced. Wait. What friend? Murdered how? Have the police made an arrest? Did you know him?

  Mom...will you stop? Please. I shouldn’t have said anything.

  Tamara managed to pry the name of the dead man from her daughter. Stefan Petrescu. He was a Romanian linguist who’d lived near the Blackwoods in Oxford. He’d been shot. No leads, witnesses or arrests as far as Adalyn knew.

  Adalyn insisted the Blackwoods weren’t involved. It’s just one of those random, awful things that happen. I wish I hadn’t brought it up.

  Why did you?

  Because you asked why Graham and Verity are here, and Stefan is why. They have a friend who lives in southern New Hampshire, an hour north of Boston. He’s an artist. A painter. They decided to visit him and then spend a few days in Maine.

  Well, that was bullshit, only Adalyn didn’t see through it.

  Once Tamara picked her jaw up off the floor, she was convinced she had to keep her meeting with Graham Blackwood and find out if his concerns about Adalyn had anything to do with this linguist’s murder—how it had affected her emotionally, whether she was being straight about it, whether it was the catalyst for the Blackwoods’ visit to the US. Who this artist was and how they knew him.

  Why Heron’s Cove of all the many places to visit in Maine.

  Sharpe country.

  Whatever. Tamara needed to know what was going on. Period. After brunch, she drove to the HIT offices on the harbor and walked the few blocks to Emma and Colin’s place. She’d resisted asking too many questions until she could talk to Graham Blackwood, but she hadn’t gotten any sense that Matt Yankowski and his art crimes specialist or the rest of his team were involved in or even aware of the Petrescu murder investigation. She doubted they knew anything about the Blackwoods and their visit to New England. Yank, of course, knew Adalyn. They hadn’t seen each other in a few years, but he’d been at her party for her very first birthday.

  The Sharpe connection was more worrisome. Had Adalyn gotten mixed up in some kind of art crime? How on earth would the death of a linguist be related to an art crime?

  Jolie Romero, art conservation, a meeting near Emma’s former convent—Tamara didn’t know how or if they were connected to Stefan Petrescu’s murder, but they were enough to get her in a rental car and up to Maine. She needed information. She’d hear what Graham Blackwood had to say and then, if warranted, talk to the FBI agents tonight.

  A reasonable plan of action.

  She hoped she was just being a burnt-out, paranoid prosecutor who needed a vacation, but no way was she going off to Nova Scotia and leaving Adalyn here on her own. Tamara knew herself. She had to be satisfied her daughter wasn’t in trouble. She wouldn’t relax otherwise. Twenty-one was a milestone but it was still very young, and Adalyn spent her days fooling with musty documents and digital archives—she didn’t have her mother’s experience with the dark side of the world.

  Tamara stepped back toward her car. Maybe she was in the wrong parking area. Could Graham be waiting for her at the convent entrance? There was a trail, too, that hugged the rocks and water. It led into the woods onto the small peninsula where the convent was located and in the opposite direction, toward the village of Heron’s Cove. Ordinarily she would appreciate the solitude and the scenery, but right now she wanted to get on with this meeting and return to Boston.

  Graham hadn’t initiated contact. Verity, his wife, had. Tamara had arrived in Boston around the time the Blackwoods were to check in for their return flight to London. Adalyn had told her Verity wanted to meet her at check-in—only Graham was there, not Verity.

  He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. In his early fifties, balding, maybe ten pounds overweight, rumpled clothes, he was a former UK diplomat, a bit self-important. He’d struck Tamara as concerned but not panicked. They’d had a brief conversation. He couldn’t talk long now, needed to sort out his rental car since he’d decided to extend his stay, why not meet tomorrow in Maine? Not that far. Beautiful weather. Tamara had figured there was more to it, but murder hadn’t entered her mind. She’d thought, okay, maybe he and his wife aren’t wild about this Jolie Romero and they’re worried Adalyn jumped in with this woman too soon. I’ll have a nice drive to Maine, get this off my brain and then enjoy our birthday dinner and my vacation.

  Tamara had debated inviting Yank to join her in Heron’s Cove, but she knew Graham would disappear or clam up with an FBI agent present, and nothing about the Englishman’s demeanor had suggested he was dangerous. Obviously, he had concerns, or he wouldn’t have suggested this meeting. That didn’t mean they involved the murder of his linguist friend.

  Tamara’s rental car was a nondescript, four-door gray sedan. She pulled open the back door on the driver’s side. She’d get her tote bag, drink some water, think. Her phone was dead. It’d died while she was at the HIT offices. She’d let herself get so worked up she’d left her charger at the restaurant where she had taken Adalyn for brunch. She couldn’t call Graham and ask him where he was.

  She heard a sound behind her. The crunch of gravel, footsteps...

&nbs
p; A hood—a blanket—dropped over her. She gasped, sucking in hot fabric.

  Felt a pinprick in her upper arm.

  “No!”

  She kicked and flailed, but her attacker shoved her into the back seat, onto the floor.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  The key to averting an attack is situational awareness.

  Her self-defense instructor, a million years ago. She’d trained for just this sort of attack. She never should have come here alone. She’d expected cars, people, houses.

  She felt herself sinking, slipping. The drug was already taking effect. Morphine? What?

  She heard a car door shut. Hers. Then another car door open and shut. The driver’s.

  My key.

  She didn’t have it. “I have three FBI agents waiting for me.”

  Did she speak out loud? She couldn’t tell. She was sinking deeper, each breath more shallow than the last. She couldn’t keep herself awake.

  She went limp, drifting.

  Adalyn. My sweet baby...

  4

  London, England

  Oliver York was sipping a rare Islay Scotch at Claridge’s, his favorite London hotel, and arguing opera with Henrietta Balfour, an MI5 officer and sometimes garden designer. Or was it a garden designer and sometimes MI5 officer? He shuddered. He didn’t like thinking about the British Security Service. He’d been in trouble with them for years.

  Henrietta sat across from him at a cozy table in a quiet corner of the elegant art-deco bar, under dim light that made her skin seem even milkier. He wasn’t winning their argument. He knew less about opera than she did. Her grandfather Freddy Balfour, an MI5 legend, had been an opera buff, and she’d picked up a few tidbits from him before his death.

  “Most operas are elaborate confession stories with music,” Oliver said.

  Henrietta rolled her lovely blue-green eyes. “That is simplistic, Oliver.”

  Probably so. He and Henrietta had known each other since childhood but had only decided they were in love, or might be in love, earlier that summer. They’d been discussing an old flowerpot she’d unearthed at his farm in the Cotswolds when he’d noticed her reddish-brown curls, her spray of freckles, her long flowered skirt and muddy Wellingtons and had thought...dear Henrietta. What had happened to the lonely, outspoken seven-year-old who’d marched up to him, then only ten himself, and demanded to know who’d killed his parents? What had happened to the gangly teenager who’d liked to see how many sheep droppings she could clear in one leap?

  She’d followed in her grandfather’s footsteps was what had happened to her.

  Last winter, she’d told everyone in the village she’d quit her dull London office job—which had never existed—to design gardens in the Cotswolds. She’d inherited a house from a great-aunt, finally making a career change possible. That was her story, at least. Oliver remained convinced MI5 had taken advantage of her connection to him and sent her to the Cotswolds to keep an eye on him.

  Unlike his actual MI5 handler, whose name Oliver didn’t like to think never mind utter, Henrietta had never threatened to toss him in prison. A fate he deserved, he supposed. He’d been making amends for his thieving ways. Bit by bit, day by day. It wasn’t just to satisfy the authorities. It was to satisfy himself. He hadn’t hurt or killed anyone, but he had helped himself to a considerable fortune in art—all of it now returned, intact, to its owners.

  Well, except for the one unsigned landscape he’d kept for sentimental reasons. Its owner, an Irish artist in love with a priest self-exiled to a parish on the Maine coast, had tacitly gifted it to him.

  Within days of their flowerpot discussion, he and Henrietta had confronted a vicious killer and finally, after thirty years, learned the truth about his traumatic past—the murder of his parents in front of him when he was eight and his own kidnapping to a Scottish ruin.

  That incident proved to him she was MI5, no question, although she did know her way around a garden.

  They’d driven in together from the Cotswolds that morning, but Henrietta had booked a room at Claridge’s, a short walk from Oliver’s London apartment, where he was staying, alone. She’d given up her own London apartment—which he’d never seen—last winter to move full-time to her great-aunt’s house, not far from his Cotswolds farm. She’d stayed with him at the farm multiple times since June, but never in London. She wouldn’t discuss the details of her MI5 status with him, but he suspected her superiors were leery of their relationship. He’d coped with his childhood trauma by studying mythology, which MI5 didn’t mind, and by becoming an art thief, which they did mind. That he was of occasional use to British intelligence in thwarting far worse criminals hadn’t yet freed him from their clutches.

  “Have you ever listened to or attended an entire opera?” Henrietta asked him, a note of challenge in her voice.

  “Is that a requirement for an opinion?”

  “For an informed opinion, certainly.”

  “I listened to Madama Butterfly while feeling sorry for myself one rainy night at the farm. I was drinking Scotch. I was alone.” He noticed she’d narrowed her eyes on him, and he knew she was picturing him by the fire in the rambling old stone house he’d inherited from his grandparents. “I suppose it’s not a surprise to you that Madama Butterfly has a sad ending.”

  “No way out for the poor dear Butterfly.”

  Oliver ordered another Scotch. He and Henrietta often had this sort of rambling, open-ended conversation on a range of subjects in which they had interest but not necessarily a great deal of knowledge or expertise. He recalled a profound discussion about various types of sheep when he was fourteen and she was eleven, a city girl and only child dropped off at her great-aunt’s house while her parents went to Paris. Posey Balfour had been a keen gardener. Hence, Henrietta’s passion for gardening.

  Oliver tuned back in to the conversation and realized she’d meandered to something about Thor, explaining he was the Norse god of thunder. “I suppose you know that, though,” she added.

  He did. He was an Oxford and self-taught scholar of mythology, folklore and legends. He specialized in Celtic mythology but, of course, he knew a great deal about Thor.

  “I’ve seen all the Thor movies,” Henrietta pronounced.

  “The Thor movies?”

  “I thought we could watch them together one evening at the farm. Chris Hemsworth is a delight as Thor. Very hunky.”

  “Henrietta...”

  “The stories are based on Norse mythology. The Hulk makes an appearance in one of the movies. I know that’s a creative stretch since he isn’t a Norse god or Norse anything, but the movie’s loads of fun.”

  Hulk. Thor. Only Henrietta could get from opera to comic book heroes. “Shall I get a refill for your Scotch?”

  She grinned. “You’ll love Tom Hiddleston as Loki.” Mercifully, she glanced past him toward the bar’s entrance. “Here’s our friend now, but he doesn’t look happy. I wonder what’s wrong?”

  Oliver pivoted in his chair, rising when he recognized Wendell Sharpe making his way to their table. They exchanged a handshake. Wendell took Henrietta by the hand and kissed her on each cheek. He sat between them but refused Oliver’s offer of Scotch. “Just water, please.”

  “What’s going on, my friend?” Oliver asked, returning to his own seat. “What brings you to London?”

  “I’m supposed to meet with a woman here at the hotel. My choice. I figured I could get you two here for a drink afterwards, only she didn’t meet me in the lobby as agreed and doesn’t answer her door.” Wendell paused, as if contemplating how much to say. “She left the key for me at the front desk in case I arrived early and she was out. In fact, I was a few minutes late. I flew into Heathrow and took a taxi...hellish traffic for a Sunday...”

  “Who is this woman you’re to meet?” Henrietta asked, cutting through Wendell’s pre
occupied near-rambling.

  He didn’t seem to hear the question. He stared at Henrietta’s Scotch, but clearly his mind was elsewhere. Henrietta had only recently met him. He was Oliver’s friend and, for a time, his nemesis, a spry, wiry Dublin-based private art detective in his eighties. He wore a bow tie, a terrible jacket, somewhat frayed trousers, and walking shoes. He and Oliver had played cat and mouse for a decade. By unspoken agreement, Oliver didn’t admit to any of his thefts and Wendell didn’t press him to admit to them. Oliver had never profited from his heists, but he had, indisputably, broken the law in various cities and countries. Statutes of limitations, jurisdictional issues, evidence, the will and other considerations—namely, MI5 having him by the short hairs—had prevented his arrest and prosecution for any of his heists. Sympathy for his lonely plight since witnessing his parents’ murders at age eight played no role. Countless people were rotting in prisons having faced even worse childhood traumas.

  Wendell was semiretired now, and Oliver had lost any urge to slip into private homes, museums and businesses and make off with valuable art.

  “Oliver and I are here as you asked,” Henrietta said.

  “Yes, thank you. It’s good to see you. Apologies for being distracted.” Wendell’s water arrived, and he drained a quarter of it before he set the glass on the table and continued. “Who knows how long I’ll be able to make the trip. Dublin to London is a pop-fly, but I’m no spring chicken.”

  Oliver had no idea what a pop-fly was, but Henrietta seemed to. “It’s barely a pop-fly,” she said. “You’ll be flying to London into your hundreds.”

  “Ever the optimist,” Wendell said.

  The old man’s unusual melancholy mood had Oliver wanting to order his friend a Scotch. “Who is this woman? Can you tell us?”

  “Her name’s Verity Blackwood. She called me this morning and asked to meet with me as soon as possible. She said she’s a former exhibit coordinator with the National Gallery here in London. She left the gallery eighteen months ago when she married a former diplomat—Graham Blackwood—and joined him at his home in Oxford.”