The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(32)
She was the first person I saw when we entered his rooms. She was framed by the floor-to-ceiling window, playing a song on her violin. I stopped in the doorway to listen. The sound was spectral, almost galactic in its runs and rivulets—it had an aching descant. A song for worrying. Except for her, the rooms were quiet. Milo had bustled back to the kitchen, busying himself with a coffee grinder. This morning he probably razed a small city. Now he was readying a French press.
His place had a musty sort of lived-in feel, all midcentury like the lobby but shabbier. On the plaid sofa, August sat with a mug between his hands, listening to Holmes’s violin with closed eyes. I was surprised to see more feeling on his face now than I’d seen at all the night before.
“Jamie,” August said as I dropped down beside him. “You’ve met Peterson, right? He’s arranging a briefing for us on Leander. Holmes is waiting for coffee, but there’s tea.”
“Thanks.”
He settled back into the cushions. “I love this one.”
She’d changed styles. Now she was playing something straightforward and mathematical, which meant it was probably Bach. She was wearing a pair of my socks and her CHEMISTRY IS FOR LOVERS shirt and she was playing her ex-tutor’s favorite song, and I wondered if this was as close as she came to feeling sentimental.
She paused, a note still fluttering in the air. “Peterson,” she said to the doorway, her voice still thick with sleep. “So good to see you.”
“Ma’am.” He was wheeling in a kind of AV cart, but this one had twelve screens branching out from some kind of glowing processor.
Milo came in with a tray. He poured out the coffee carefully, in a way that suggested long practice.
“I would’ve thought you’d have someone to do this for you,” I told him.
“I think you discount the importance of routine,” he said. “My father always spoke about the importance of doing things for oneself, the same way every day. Frees the mind to focus on more important pursuits.”
Jesus, I thought, imagining him going through this whole ceramic-tray coffee ceremony alone, on this couch, as Peterson prepared his morning briefing. I’d surrounded myself with geniuses—the most miserably lonely geniuses I could find.
“Jamie.” Peterson powered up the monitors. “Feeling better?”
“I am, thank you.”
“We’ll be speaking more generally than we normally do,” he said in his affable way. “Mr. Holmes has requested that I bring you up to speed on the basics of art theft and law enforcement.”
“Wouldn’t the most expedient solution be to call the German government and ask them to tell you what Leander was up to?” Holmes asked, flopping down on the carpet.
“Mr. Holmes has in fact gathered that intel,” Peterson said blandly. “But he believes you are all in need of an education on the subject.”
With the air of long practice, Holmes waited until Milo raised his mug to his lips, and then reached up to whack his elbow. Coffee splattered down his front. She smiled her black-cat smile.
“When we’re finished here, I’ll fetch you a bleach pen and a new shirt,” Peterson said to a sputtering Milo. “Now, as for your basic education on modern investigation into art crime . . .”
We learned that the art world is largely unregulated. There is no worldwide database that tracks the buying and selling of works of art, so it’s incredibly easy for unethical dealers to sell stolen or forged pieces. Since most large governments only employ two to three full-time art theft investigators, those dealers can operate without any real fear of getting caught.
All of this is complicated, Peterson told us, by the staggering amount of art that the Nazis stole from artists and collectors—mostly Jews—as they fled Germany during World War II. Of course, not all escaped. When German Jews were put into concentration camps, their homes, too, were looted. Though the German government has made attempts to track down these pieces and return them to the families of their owners, many works of art have vanished altogether. In a field like this, it’s easy for those pieces to reappear, magically—and for no one to ever realize that they’re actually forgeries, despite the best efforts of authenticators.
“Essentially, it’s lawless,” Peterson told us, “and most law agencies have more pressing matters on their hands. Private investigators like Leander Holmes are often the last hope for those looking to track down forgers and forgery rings, networks of dealers selling art looted from Jewish refugees, or your token drug cartel using paintings as collateral. Since these are very small, exclusive circles, in order to investigate, he’d have to spend months establishing his cover before he could ever hope to gain access to any real information.”
While he talked, the monitors behind him played an aquarium screensaver. I took notes on a pad that Milo lent me.
August raised his hand, like we were all in class. “How do my brothers fit into this? Lucien? Hadrian?”
Peterson hesitated. “Hadrian Moriarty is best known for paying off the leaders of corrupt countries to look the other way while he and his sister make off with their national treasures.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, turning to Milo, “but how do they fit into this particular situation?”
Milo made a hand motion, and the twelve screens switched over to a security feed. A number of different security feeds, and none of them black-and-white, as they were in the movies, but full, deep color. A beachfront cabana, complete with billowing curtains that framed a view of the ocean. A bedroom with a four-poster bed. Other scenes, other rooms—and the four monitors on the bottom, which all showed a different approach to the Holmeses’ Sussex house. With a start, I recognized the woodpile where I’d last seen Leander.