Thief's Mark Read online

  Colin pointed at the bare tile floor in the bedroom. “No glass.”

  “I went ahead and swept it up. There wasn’t much.”

  “You shouldn’t have touched anything,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, I know. It would have been easier if I’d left the doors unlocked and he walked in and out again. Less of a mess to clean up and I might never have known anyone had been here. I’d never have looked if...” Wendell stopped abruptly. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter now.”

  “If what, Granddad?” Emma asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I spotted a piece of broken glass on the kitchen table when I got back from the pub. That’s why I checked in here. The intruder must have taken the glass with him after he climbed through the window. If I’d been here and put up a fuss—well, you know. He could have threatened me or slit my throat.”

  Colin angled a look at him. “But you didn’t see anyone?”

  “No one in here or outside. I wasn’t here when he broke in and I didn’t get my throat slit. And,” he added emphatically, “the glass could have been a practical consideration. A tool rather than a weapon, in case he needed to cut something.”

  Emma frowned. “Cut something?”

  He motioned with one hand. “Come.”

  Emma felt Colin’s tension as they followed her grandfather to his study, now his home office and where he spent most of his time. When the weather was dank and chilly, he’d have a fire going, but not today, given the lingering warm, dry June weather. It had rained only a few times during her and Colin’s stay in Ireland, but the occasional lazy, drizzly day hadn’t gone to waste.

  “I turned over most of my physical files to Lucas when I shut down my outside office,” her grandfather said. “He went through them when he was here last fall and took what he wanted back to Maine with him.”

  Lucas, Emma’s older brother, had taken over the reins of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery and worked out of its offices in Heron’s Cove, a picturesque village on the southern Maine coast. He’d just completed a massive revamp of the offices, located in the same Victorian house where a young Portland security guard had launched his career as a private art detective. Six decades later, Wendell Sharpe was world-renowned, and Sharpe Fine Art Recovery was a thriving business, but still small in terms of staff. His only son—Emma and Lucas’s father—had cut back on his role with the company after a fall on the ice had left him in chronic, often debilitating pain.

  “Lucas is considering reopening a Dublin office now that I’ve retired.” Wendell shrugged, waved a hand. “More-or-less retired, anyway. I work when he needs me or I land on something interesting on my own. The rest of my files are here.” He tapped his right temple. “I told Lucas what he needs to know for the business. Everything else can go to the grave with me.”

  “The stuff you want to hide,” Colin said.

  Wendell snorted. “Damn right but not from the FBI. You and your lot wouldn’t be interested. Neither would my family. Most of it’s memories, ideas, suppositions, speculations, conspiracy theories...mistakes I’ve made, people whose reputations might be harmed unfairly because of their association with me. I’m an old man. I’ve done a lot.”

  Emma sat on the couch. She’d spent countless hours here in her grandfather’s study when she’d worked for him before she’d left Dublin for the FBI. She’d wanted to learn everything—about the business, art crimes, his contacts, his methods, his resources. She’d been a sponge. But she eyed him with measures of skepticism, anticipation, curiosity—the usual mix when she was dealing with her grandfather. “What do your files and memories have to do with the break-in?”

  He hesitated. “Maybe I jumped the gun.”

  “Granddad, just tell us everything, okay? Don’t make me pry it out of you.”

  “Rusty after your honeymoon?”

  Colin took in an audible breath. “Quit stalling, Wendell.”

  “All right, all right. It’s tricky timing, dealing with a break-in and having your FBI granddaughter and her FBI husband show up. It looks as if my intruder had a look around in here. He didn’t toss the place, but there are signs.” He pointed to a small, dark wood box on a shelf by the fireplace. “He got in there. It doesn’t have a lock but there’s no label saying what’s inside. Never occurred to me anyone...” He didn’t finish, instead plopping onto a chair across from Emma.

  Colin remained on his feet. “What’s in the box, Wendell?”

  He clearly didn’t want to answer, but Emma knew. She sighed. “It contains the stone crosses our serial art thief sent Granddad after his heists.”

  “Oliver York,” her grandfather said. “I don’t mind saying his name out loud.”

  Emma noticed a muscle work in Colin’s visibly tight jaw but he said nothing. For most of their Irish honeymoon, they’d managed to avoid talking about, thinking about or dealing with Oliver, a wealthy Englishman with a tragic past. He was a self-taught expert in mythology, folklore and legends, a black belt in karate, a sheep farmer, a dashing Londoner with an apartment on St. James’s Park and an international art thief. He’d launched his art-theft career on a bleak November night ten years ago when he’d slipped into a home in Declan’s Cross, a small village on the south Irish coast. He’d walked off with paintings—including two prized Irish landscapes by Jack Butler Yeats—and an extraordinary sixteenth-century silver mantel cross. The police came up empty-handed in their investigation.

  Six months later, after a small Amsterdam museum was relieved of a relatively unknown seventeenth-century Dutch landscape, Wendell Sharpe received a package containing a brochure of the museum and a polished stone, about three inches in diameter, inscribed with a Celtic cross, a miniature version of the one stolen in Declan’s Cross. More thefts followed in at least eight cities in England, Europe and the US. After each brazen heist, another package with another cross-inscribed stone arrived at Wendell Sharpe’s Dublin home.

  Last fall a murder in Boston put Emma and Colin in contact with an eccentric mythology consultant advising on a documentary—Oliver York, it turned out, working under an alias. He was their elusive art thief. Without question. That didn’t mean he would ever face prosecution. He knew it, and they knew it. Over the winter, the stolen art—every piece except an unsigned landscape stolen on that first heist in Declan’s Cross—had been returned to its owner, anonymously and intact. Oliver, in the meantime, had put his unique skills, knowledge and experience to work for British intelligence.

  Given the unique relationship he and her grandfather had, Emma wasn’t surprised to hear Oliver York’s name, but she’d have preferred not to.

  She shifted back to her grandfather. “Is anything else in the box?”

  “A few photographs I took years ago in Declan’s Cross.”

  “Would they explain to an intruder the significance of the stone crosses?”

  Her grandfather shrugged. “Probably not by themselves. They’d be a clue, though. There’s nothing specific in the box or anywhere else in here that connects the stones and the photographs to the thefts or to Oliver. Nothing’s missing. The box lid was on crooked. That’s the only reason I know the intruder got into it.”

  “Had the box been sealed?” Colin asked.

  “No. Our perp didn’t need to use his glass shard to cut through tape.”

  Emma forced herself to stay focused. Her grandfather was restless, fidgety. “You’re sure the box was opened during the break-in?” she asked. “Could someone else have opened it on a different occasion and you didn’t notice?”

  “I’m positive,” he said without hesitation. “And I didn’t leave the lid on crooked and forget.”

  Colin’s gaze steadied on her grandfather. “You have a soft spot for Oliver.”

  “He’s an interesting character.”

  “You visited him at his farm in January. You stay in t
ouch.”

  “So?”

  Stubborn as well as fidgety and restless. Emma eased onto her feet. “Granddad, as you pointed out, Colin and I have no jurisdiction here. We’re family. We want to help.”

  “I know you do.” He uncrossed his legs and tapped his fingertips on his knees. “I didn’t want to involve you. It’s your honeymoon.”

  “Have you told Lucas about the break-in?” Emma asked him.

  “No. No point. There’s nothing he can do. He’s in New York on business. With the time difference and everything—no point bothering him. I didn’t tell your father, either. I can handle this situation on my own. I’m not five.”

  “You need to get the police in here, Wendell,” Colin said.

  He rose stiffly, with a small grunt, as if he was in pain. How much was a bit of an act Emma didn’t know. Colin sucked in a breath—it was a sign, she knew, he was on his last thread of patience. She pointed toward the back of the house. “Did you go straight to the kitchen when you got in?”

  Her grandfather nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I heard something. I don’t know.”

  “Was the back door open or shut?” Colin asked.

  “Partially open, like it hadn’t been latched properly and the wind caught it. Then I saw the glass and went into the bedroom and saw the broken window. I figured whoever it was must have heard me coming in through the front door and bolted out the back door. Someone looking for cash, drugs—maybe just getting out of the rain.”

  Colin shook his head. “People don’t break a window to get out of the rain.”

  Emma appreciated the back-and-forth between them. They were both strong, independent-minded men, each in his own way. Her grandfather grunted. “You know how to sweat a guy, Special Agent Donovan.”

  He grinned. “You’re just out of practice. That was nothing. We’ll see what the gardai want to do.”

  “Lock me up.”

  “Can’t say I’d blame them but they probably won’t. At least not tonight.” Colin dug his phone out of his jacket. “Catch your breath, Wendell. I’ll make the call.”

  * * *

  Emma wasn’t surprised when the gardai couldn’t do much, given the delay and little physical evidence. At this point, it was unlikely they’d locate passersby who might have seen something. To complicate matters, the broken window opened onto a small, fenced terrace with a private gate—which her grandfather had left unlocked. Someone walking through an unlocked gate wasn’t likely to draw attention.

  Once the gardai left, he insisted she and Colin return to the Shelbourne. “Go,” he said, opening the front door. “Enjoy yourselves. Room’s paid for. It’s too late to get a refund.”

  “I don’t like leaving you here alone,” Emma said. “You could always stay at the hotel, too.”

  “Three’s a crowd anytime but on a honeymoon?” He shuddered. “No way.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t mean in the same room.”

  Her grandfather grinned. “I bet you didn’t. Relax. I’ll be fine. If this guy wanted to harm me, he’d have jumped me when I came home instead of scooting out the back door.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better, Granddad.”

  “Lock up,” Colin said. “Gate, windows, doors. We’ll give you a hand.”

  “I don’t need a hand. Go.”

  Emma hugged him, kissing his cheek. “Call Lucas and fill him in or I will. Thanks for our night at the Shelbourne. We’ll stop by before we leave for London tomorrow.”

  He returned her hug, kissed her on the cheek. “Always good to see you, Emma.” He turned to Colin. “You, too, Colin. Welcome to the family. We’ll do better than a broken window next visit.”

  Once they reached the street, Colin glanced at Emma. “He’ll have the whiskey before he locks up the place.”

  “No doubt. He’s tired. He doesn’t like to admit he’s not forty anymore.”

  Colin slipped an arm around her. “We still have our fancy room for the night.”

  She leaned into his embrace. “That we do. I haven’t heard from Oliver since he left us the champagne at Ashford Castle our first night here. Do you think the timing of the break-in with our arrival in Dublin is a coincidence?”

  “I don’t think anything that involves Oliver York and your grandfather is a coincidence.”

  They crossed a quiet street. “We can see Oliver while we’re in England,” Emma said.

  “You can see Oliver.”

  “You’d let me go on my own?”

  Teasing time. As if Colin “let” her do anything. He tightened his hold on her, drew her closer. “I don’t know, I think I could get into a submissive Mrs. Donovan.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you think so?”

  His deep blue eyes sparked with humor, and something else. “We can find out tonight.”

  They walked hand in hand past Merrion Square, one of Emma’s favorite spots in Dublin, with its black iron fencing, lush greenery and soothing Georgian ambience. She’d spent countless hours there during her months working shoulder-to-shoulder with her grandfather, learning from him, enjoying his company, his experience, his brilliance as a private art detective and consultant. Everything she’d gleaned she’d put to use in her work with the FBI. The quiet, pristine square had been a pleasant spot to consider her past and her future. Her past had been a stint in a Maine convent. Her future was here, now, with Colin.

  Her grandfather had accepted her decision to leave Sharpe Fine Art Recovery, if not enthusiastically at least with his good wishes. “You’ll be Special Agent Emma Sharpe the next time I see you,” he’d said with a grimace. “I’ll never get used to it, but it’s what everything you’ve done to date has prepared you to be. Go catch bad guys, Emma. Stop them. Lock them up. Keep us safe.”

  Colin tugged on her hand. “Lost in thought?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Totally.”

  He pulled her closer. “It’s a beautiful evening in Dublin.”

  It was, indeed. The warm weather and the prolonged daylight of June had brought the crowds out to the streets. Shops, pubs and restaurants were bursting, and people were flowing into St. Stephen’s Green. Although tempted, they decided to skip a walk through the park and returned to the Shelbourne and their elegant room.

  A plate of chocolate truffles and two glasses of whiskey were set out on a small table, with a note:

  To Mr. and Mrs. Donovan,

  Enjoy the last night of your honeymoon.

  Love,

  Granddad

  Colin lifted a whiskey glass and handed it to Emma. “Your grandfather is impossible, but he does have his charms.”

  “It was a spectacular ten days, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Spectacular.”

  She nodded to the note. “I like the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Donovan. I’ll have an easier time in Rock Point as a Donovan.”

  “You think so?”

  “Your brothers won’t think you’re manly if I go by Sharpe.”

  “That’d ruin my reputation for sure.” He picked up the second glass. “I don’t care what you call yourself, you know.”

  “I know. I’m learning to tease like a Donovan. I love being married to you whatever anyone calls me. We’ll be home soon enough. Right now, we’re on our honeymoon.”

  His gaze settled on her. “Yes, we are.”

  A warmth spread through her. She clinked her glass against his. “Sláinte.”

  Colin smiled. “Sláinte,” he said, and he set his glass and then hers back on the table.

  2

  Near Stow-on-the-Wold, the Cotswolds, England

  “Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s an antique of any quality,” Oliver York said. “It could be rubbish.”

  Martin Hambly withheld his irritation. Henrietta B
alfour, a local garden designer, was either preoccupied with her bucket of loam or ignoring Oliver, or perhaps both. Martin had hired her but Oliver was paying her. They were gathered outside the potting shed, located in a small, centuries-old dovecote on the southern edge of the York farm. The farm itself was located on the outskirts of the tiniest of Cotswold villages, a short drive to the busy market town of Stow-on-the-Wold. Martin had expected Oliver to stay another few days in London, but he’d returned last night. He would have thought a lazy morning was in order, but now here Oliver was, offering input in matters in which he’d never displayed any interest prior to ten minutes ago. For reasons Martin couldn’t fathom, Oliver had decided to contribute his opinion of an old pot Henrietta had unearthed. She’d discovered it out back in a heap of discarded gardening materials, created when Oliver had converted part of the dovecote into a stone-cutting studio. At first, Martin had thought it just another of Oliver’s solitary hobbies. Not quite the case.

  Martin had worked for the Yorks for decades. He’d promised Nicholas and Priscilla York on their deathbeds he would never abandon their orphaned grandson, no matter how frustrating, annoying and outrageous Oliver could be.

  Some days that promise was easier to keep than others.

  Today wasn’t one of those days.

  Oliver had gone to London on his own last Friday and hadn’t required Martin’s assistance at the York home on St. James’s Park. That could mean he’d been on a clandestine mission for MI5 or he’d discovered more stolen art he needed to return to the rightful owners—or he’d simply had a stack of books he’d wanted to read without Martin hovering about. They never discussed Oliver’s decade as a brazen art thief or his current work with MI5. For that matter, his reading list was off-limits for discussion, too.