Thief's Mark. Carla Neggers
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drive to work in order to haul tools, pots, seedlings, bags of soil and supplies—her Mini amazed her with its hauling capacity—but that morning she’d walked. She’d been working at the York farm for two weeks straight and had everything she needed there. The day had started with sunshine, but she enjoyed walking even in less-than-lovely weather.
She felt tense as she unlocked her front door. After twelve years with MI5, she liked to think objectivity and emotional distance had become natural for her. She’d managed in the midst of the crisis, with Ruthie Burns in a state and Martin Hambly about to have a stroke, but now, on her own, she was anything but objective and distant. It wasn’t that she was out of practice. She’d only left MI5 in March. It was that today involved people she’d known her entire life. Friends, neighbors, villagers.
Oliver.
She fumbled with the door lock. His fault, damn him.
She got the door open and felt her tension ease the moment she crossed the threshold. Posey had died in her sleep of general organ failure at ninety-four and left the house to Henrietta and small inheritances to Henrietta’s father and his cousin, Anthony’s only son.
Posey would have relished a mysterious death in the village, provided it wasn’t too gruesome and involved someone who’d had it coming. Henrietta had yet to figure out what to do with her great-aunt’s daunting collection of cozy mysteries. They lined the study shelves and filled more than one cupboard.
She went back to the kitchen and filled the kettle with water and set it to boil. In addition to the kitchen, the house consisted of a sitting room, study and powder room on the ground floor, and, upstairs, two slanted-ceiling, dormered bedrooms and a bathroom. Posey had had the house built to her standard. She’d decided on new construction rather than selling the lot and buying an existing house. She would never have had the patience to fuss with anything listed or mildly historic that would require her to follow rules and regulations and entertain unsolicited opinions from villagers. “I didn’t want my house to be the subject of postcards, tourist photographs or chocolate boxes,” she’d told Henrietta more than once.
Posey hadn’t cleared out a single possession before her death. Henrietta knew she needed to get on with sorting what didn’t suit her. Sell it, give it away, toss it. It seemed like a daunting process at the moment. Of course, it wasn’t. Surveillance and penetration of a violent cell bent on mass murder were daunting. Deciding what to do with Aunt Posey’s stacks of murder mysteries was emotionally challenging but hardly the same.
As she waited for the kettle to boil, Henrietta gazed out the kitchen window at the glorious June blossoms. As plain as the house was, the gardens were incredible. They were Posey’s creation and had been her greatest joy. Pink foxglove, cobalt-blue delphinium, white daisies, artfully placed grasses—Henrietta let the burst of color soothe her. In the months since her great-aunt’s death, she had maintained the gardens, at least to a degree, without touching their essential structure. The rose trellis needed replacing. Most of the perennials needed thinning and a good chop. She’d get to it all one of these days.
How far would Oliver get in his Rolls-Royce? It wasn’t an inconspicuous vehicle.
Henrietta shook off the intrusive thought but she couldn’t ignore a tug of emotion. She’d felt it before—this unexpected, unwilling attraction to Oliver. They’d known each other since childhood and she hadn’t felt anything remotely romantic toward him until last Christmas. She’d tried to blame winter for her sudden, uncomfortable feelings—the short days, the gray, the damp—and when that hadn’t worked, she’d tried to blame grief and nostalgia given Posey’s recent death. She’d looked up Oliver in London after the new year and joined him for a drink at Claridge’s, his favorite spot, thinking that would do the trick. He’d be back to being the Oliver who’d always been there—dashing, good-looking, solitary, a man coping with unspeakable tragedy, but not anyone she could imagine sleeping with.
But that hadn’t happened.
Henrietta wasn’t sure what to call how she felt. She’d been out of touch with anything resembling a romantic life or romantic feelings for so long, how was she supposed to know? She wasn’t in love with him, she kept telling herself. Oliver was irresistibly fascinating, with his knowledge of mythology, folklore and legends, and his unusual lifestyle. Given his expertise in karate and tai chi, he was fit and capable.
Sexy, in fact. That was the truth of it.
Maybe what she felt was simple lust. Maybe she just wanted to sleep with him and once she did, that’d be that.
“The man’s a bloody thief,” she said aloud, getting the teapot off an open shelf. It was hers, although Posey had left a half-dozen teapots. She needed a few things of her own in her new life.
In a way, learning Oliver was a serial art thief had somehow permitted her to indulge in these fantasies about him. His eccentricities and solitary ways kept people at bay. They didn’t ask questions about the true nature of his hobbies and travels.
Henrietta envisioned him slipping past security guards, disabling alarms, carrying off valuable works of art without breaking into a nervous sweat. Each of his heists had required detailed planning and careful execution. The man was brazen, brilliant, wily.
She sniffed. “He’s still a thief.”
One of his covers was his occasional work as a film-and-television mythology consultant, under his assumed identity of frumpy Oliver Fairbairn. He’d fly off to Hollywood and chat with writers, producers, actors.
Not an easy man to figure out, her one-time childhood playmate.
Henrietta couldn’t let her fascination with him lead her astray, but perhaps it was too late and it already had. She’d just come upon a dead body at his door, hadn’t she?
Her unsettling attraction to him wasn’t the only factor in her departure from MI5, but coupled with recent frustrations on the job, it had helped her to understand that twelve years in domestic intelligence had been enough. She wanted more from her life, or at least something else, even if she wasn’t sure what that was. Right now she needed to get a grip on herself. Oliver York was a thief, if a charming and sexy thief, who’d shown no interest in her whatsoever beyond their childhood bond, and he’d just taken off from the scene of a suspected homicide.
Any thought of a relationship with him was delusional.
For all his quirks and misdeeds, however, Henrietta couldn’t see Oliver as a murderer.
She rummaged in a near-empty bag for two slices of bread. Tea and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich weren’t a pint but they were what she needed right now. She’d reorganized the kitchen a few weeks ago to suit her. Slowly but surely, she was making the house her own. It needed remodeling but that would come in due course. She’d been focused on establishing her garden-design business.
She was slathering on Branston pickles when her phone vibrated on the table. She swooped it up and sighed when she saw it was Martin Hambly. She’d wanted it to be...who? Oliver? MI5? It didn’t bear considering.
She answered. “Hello, Martin,” she said.
“How are you doing?”
It wasn’t why he’d called. She could hear it in his voice. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“Good.”
She frowned, on her feet, silent phone at her ear. “Has something happened?” she asked finally.
“No, no—sorry. I’m distracted. Two FBI agents are on the way. The police want us to talk to them.”
Now this was interesting. “Are these Oliver’s FBI-agent friends?”
“Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan, yes, but ‘friends’ is perhaps too strong. I didn’t realize you knew about them.”
“Everyone in the village knows about them, Martin.”
“I see.” He sounded resigned to the fact, if not pleased. “They might be able to help us find Oliver. They arrived at Heathrow