Island Getaway An Art Crime Team Mystery Read online

  “Sure.” But her voice was toneless; she could hear it herself.

  His eyes sharpened. “Was there something valuable inside? Money? Jewelry?”

  Annika surprised herself by laughing. Darkly. “Do I look like someone who owns valuable jewelry?”

  His eyes made a slow trip over her, from face to feet and back. “Why not?”

  Why not? Because she looked like what she was, a librarian. Not some femme fatale who’d carry expensive jewels around in her carry-on. “No, nothing like that.” Just a box of ashes and her eReader. But if she told him about the cremains, he’d probably think her crazy, and then he’d leave her to deal with this situation alone, and she didn’t want him to. And not just because he was easy on the eyes, but because having company—American company; someone who spoke her language, someone who understood—made her feel a little less lost.

  “What about your identification?”

  “It’s in my handbag.” Along with her money, her keys, and her ticket to Gotland. Things could have been a lot worse. Although— “I lost my eReader.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nick Costa said. “Let’s grab the stuff we do have and check lost and found. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’s there.”

  Maybe. He probably wished it would be. That way he could be finished with her and on his way wherever he was going. To save the world.

  “I appreciate you doing this,” Annika said.

  He grinned down at her. “It’s no problem. We Americans have to stick together, right?”

  “Right.” She managed a smile back, even though that grin had made her stomach swoop worse than when the plane dropped earlier.

  “C’mon.” He took his suitcase in one hand and put the other on her back, and off they went. Slowly.

  Chapter Two

  The missing bag wasn’t at lost and found, of course. Nick hadn’t imagined it would be, but they had to go through the appropriate motions.

  No, he knew exactly where the bag was. Or if not exactly, he knew who had it. Fredrik Berggren had called him three times in the last ten minutes. Even now, he could feel his phone vibrate in his pocket yet again. And although he hadn’t been in a position to answer, he could make a reasonable guess as to what the calls had been about. Fredrik had called once to tell Nick that he had arrived at the airport, once to tell Nick that he had located the suspect and the bag, and once to report that he had the bag in his possession. Admittedly, Nick couldn’t imagine why Fredrik had found it necessary to push the poor girl onto the baggage carousel to obtain it—she’d said herself she’d stepped away from the bag; all he’d had to do was pick it up—but maybe it had been an accident. Maybe someone else had jostled her and that’s why she’d fallen. Or maybe she’d lied about being tipsy, and no one had pushed her. Or—hell—maybe Fredrik had, to make sure everyone’s attention was on something other than himself. If that was it, it had certainly worked. Nick hadn’t even noticed him being there, so much of his attention had been on Annika Holst and those long legs waving in the air.

  Man, she had a great pair of legs on her!

  Anyway, he supposed the end justified the means, really. He imperatively needed to get a look inside that bag. All Fredrik had done, was get it for him.

  But even so he felt bad looking at her. She was clearly distraught, probably in pain, and very upset. Her bottom lip was quivering, and there were tears in those big blue eyes behind the round glasses.

  She didn’t look like a crook. Not even a little bit.

  But he knew appearances could be deceiving, and he couldn’t afford to be careless. In his almost nine years with the bureau, he’d seen guilt masquerading as innocence, innocence masquerading as guilt, and every variation in between. Just because Annika Holst looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, didn’t mean she wasn’t guilty as sin.

  In fact, she looked so much like the grieving daughter that it almost had to be put on. Head to toe unrelieved black: shoes, pantyhose, and shapeless dress that hung from her shoulders. Dishwater blond hair scraped into a no-frills ponytail, and not a drop of makeup on her pale face.

  Did anyone really mourn like that these days?

  The getup looked doubly sinister when he knew she hadn’t been close to her father. She spent her life at the Brooklyn College Library, while her father lived and worked in Greenpoint. Barely twenty miles separated them, but they were worlds apart. All his research had indicated that Annika only rarely saw her father and that he made no effort to contact her.

  Not that the others were any better. Annika’s brother Andy had been in Costa Rica when the old man died, and he hadn’t bothered to come home, not even so he could join Annika on this pilgrimage to Sweden. And Astrid, the older sister, was too busy working on her swimsuit collection to worry about the fact that her father had been rolled for his wallet on his way home from work one night and hadn’t survived the encounter. Life had pretty much gone on as usual for all three Holst siblings for the past few weeks, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Until yesterday, when Annika had stayed home from work. Until she had emerged from her apartment in the afternoon, dressed all in black, with a suitcase and a carry-on bag, and had taken the subway into Manhattan and from there a bus out to Newark Airport.

  It was all open and aboveboard. She’d booked the flight weeks ago, shortly after learning of her father’s death. Newark direct to Stockholm and from there to Visby, on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Where her father had grown up. And where he had—or so Nick believed—stolen a priceless silver treasure from the Visby Museum, just before leaving the island, never to return.

  Oh yes, and had shot and killed a security guard while he was at it.

  That was the last time anyone had seen the coins and jewelry. There had been no rumblings of its availability on the black market, and it hadn’t surfaced anywhere legitimate since. And Calle Magnusson had for all intents and purposes dropped off the face of the earth.

  It wasn’t until his death that the Art Crime Team’s technical analyst put two and two together and determined that he’d been living in Brooklyn for the past thirty years under the name Carl Holst, estranged husband of Anne Holst, professor at the Pratt Institute. The two of them married in Denmark and emigrated to the U.S. when Anne, an authority on medieval art, had accepted a position at Pratt. They’d separated ten years later, but had never formalized the divorce.

  And now Carl was dead, and his youngest daughter was on her way to Sweden with a black bag that she’d carried onto the plane as carefully as if it contained explosives.

  The same black bag Nick couldn’t wait to get his hands on.

  And that was why he’d called Fredrik. He’d worked a case with the Swedish Rikspolis once before, when he had helped them retrieve a painting that had been stolen from a private collection in Stockholm; a painting which later turned up in a San Francisco art gallery. He and the detective in charge, Fredrik Berggren, had hit it off. Fredrik was always up for an adventure—or dinner and a beer. Just as soon as Nick had taken care of Annika Holst, he and Fredrik would get together and he’d finally discover what Annika had been keeping in the bag she’d cradled so carefully. And if it wasn’t a thousand year old silver treasure, he’d eat it, whatever it was.

  They passed a door with the international sign for ladies room next to it, and she slowed down. “I... um...”

  She seemed to have a hard time meeting his eyes. Was she really embarrassed to have to tell him she needed to go to the bathroom?

  “Sure.” Probably a good idea for her to get out of that pantyhose before it got stuck to her scratches. “I’ll wait here. And guard the suitcases.”

  That got him a smile. “Thank you.” She hobbled off before he could say anything else. Good thing too, because he found himself staring dumbly at the spot where she’d been for several seconds before he shook himself out of it. But damn, that smile had changed her whole face.

  He’d been watching her for the past few days, and hadn’t seen h
er smile a lot.

  Of course he hadn’t watched her all the time. Just when she was out and about. Most of the time she looked pretty serious, hiding behind those big glasses which magnified her eyes to buglike proportions. It was possible she laughed and joked with her colleagues at work, or smiled fatuously at the cat she lived with, but he hadn’t been around for any of that. Mostly he’d just been parked across the street.

  It had been the most boring four days of work he’d ever done. There’d been nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that she had anything to hide. It was business as usual, one day exactly like the one before it. Up at 7:00, to work by 8:30, lunch at her desk, leave at 6:00, home by 7:00. On the weekend she went grocery shopping and stopped by the farmer’s market. She never went on a date, never had any appointments with anyone outside work, never even went to lunch with the other librarians. Best as he could figure, she spent her days cataloguing rare books and manuscripts, and her nights reading and talking to the cat. There wasn’t even the blue flicker of a television behind her curtains.

  The most exciting thing she’d probably ever done was take this flight to Sweden.

  Which reminded him—he should probably take the opportunity to check in with Fredrik. If she were like most women, she’d be in the bathroom more than long enough to let him make a phone call or two. He hadn’t met a woman yet who didn’t spend some time in front of the mirror checking her reflection whenever the opportunity presented itself. Putting his back against the wall, he fished his cell phone out of his pocket and thumbed the display.

  Yes, that last call had also been from Fredrik, just like the previous three. It’d be quicker just to call back and have Fredrik tell him the news rather than listen to each message. Especially since he figured he knew what the story was going to be anyway.

  He dialed the number and waited. The phone rang once on the other end and then was answered. “Finally!”

  “Sorry,” Nick said. “But I’m with—” He had his mouth open to utter ‘the suspect’ when he thought better of it. As far as he knew, she wasn’t in a position to hear him, but better safe than sorry. “...Ms. Holst, and I couldn’t answer.”

  “Oh.” Fredrik sounded relieved. “You are? Good.”

  “Someone has to be. Why’d you push her?”

  “Scuse me?” Fredrik said.

  “You didn’t have to hurt her. She’d put the bag down. You could have just taken it and walked away.”

  “I didn’t push her,” Fredrik said.

  “You didn’t?” Someone else must have done it, then. Probably by accident, in the jostling and fighting for access to the luggage band. “Sorry.”

  Fredrik’s voice had changed. “You haven’t listened to my messages, have you?”

  Nick admitted he hadn’t. “Like I said, I’ve been trying to help Annika—”

  “Right,” Fredrik said. “Pretty, is she?”

  Reasonably. Or she might turn out to be, once someone got past the ugly clothes and big glasses and the fact that she kept her hair scraped back into that uncompromising librarian-like bun.

  Not that Nick had any plans of getting past her clothes. He was an FBI-agent, and she was involved in a case he was working. Getting past her clothes wasn’t part of the job. But there was something about her that called to that protective instinct he had. She looked so lost and alone, like she could use someone to look out for her. He couldn’t just leave her there, to fend for herself. Clothes or no clothes.

  “Well,” Fredrik said when he didn’t answer, “if you’d bothered to answer your phone, you’d have known I got caught in a traffic jam on E4 on my way up there.”

  Nick yanked his mind away from Annika Holst with no clothes. “You mean, you’re not here? You don’t have the bag?”

  “I’m still on the other side of Arlandastad Golf Club,” Fredrik said, naming a landmark Nick knew was several miles away. “So no, I don’t.”

  “But if you didn’t take the bag, who did?”

  There was a pause. “I guess I can assume you didn’t?”

  “I thought you did! You were supposed to! That’s why I called you, wasn’t it?”

  “If you’d bothered to answer your phone,” Fredrik said again, “you would have known that I couldn’t have.”

  Yeah, yeah. This really wasn’t the time to rehash that particular argument. “Listen. She’s in the bathroom, and I don’t know how much time I have. I’ll have to talk fast. While she was waiting for her suitcase, someone pushed her onto the baggage carousel. Sent her sprawling. Hurt her. By the time I got her off—” and her skirt pulled down to her knees again, “—the overnight bag was gone. We looked all over for it, and it’s nowhere.”

  “Lost and found...” Fredrik began.

  “Don’t you think I thought of that? I’m telling you, the damn thing’s gone!”

  There was a beat of silence, while they both thought deep and not particularly satisfying thoughts. As far as Nick was concerned, he would much rather just go back to thinking about Annika with no clothes.

  “Who’d take it?” Fredrik wanted to know. “We know what might be inside, but no one else does. So who—?”

  “She carried the damn thing onboard like she was carrying spun gold. Someone could have decided it looked interesting just from that.”

  “Maybe,” Fredrik agreed. “Or maybe someone knows something we don’t.”

  “Maybe.”

  They stood in silence for a moment. It wasn’t a comfortable silence.

  “You still need me to get there?” Fredrik asked.

  It didn’t take long to decide. Good thing too, because he didn’t have long. Any second now, Annika Holst could come back out of the bathroom. “No. I’ve got this. I’ll get her settled in a hotel and call you later. Maybe the bag’ll turn up. Maybe someone took it by accident, thinking it was theirs, and when they realize it, they’ll call the police.”

  There were a few honest people in the world. When faced with a priceless national treasure they’d accidentally picked up at the airport, some of them might do the right thing.

  “I’ll make sure every precinct knows to be on the lookout for it,” Fredrik said. “They’ll let me know if it comes in somewhere.”

  “If it hasn’t turned up by tomorrow, we’ll have to figure out something else. Meanwhile, someone should have a look around for leftover black overnight bags. If someone took hers by accident, they would have left their own.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Fredrik said.

  “Pull the passenger list while you’re at it. See if anything pops. If someone was following her, there has to be a connection somewhere.”

  Fredrik agreed. “You just keep an eye on her. Until we know anything for sure, it’s best you stick close. If whoever took that bag knew what was in it, and it wasn’t just random, he’s already shown he’s willing to hurt her.”

  True. “I won’t let her out of my sight. Not until we know more about what’s going on.”

  “Good,” Fredrik said.

  “I’ll deal with things here. I’ll get the bag reported stolen through the proper channels and see what she wants to do next. I’ll call you when I know something.”

  “I’ll let you work your magic. Unless the bag turns up. Then I’ll send you a text.”

  “Please do. Sorry about that beer.”

  “We’ll celebrate when the case is over,” Fredrik said, and rang off. Nick turned to smile as Annika came out of the restroom, minus the black pantyhose. Her legs were long and pale below the loose black dress, and the scratches on her knees were still livid.

  “There’s a first aid station down the hall.” He put them back into motion, slowly, towing both suitcases now. “We’ll stop there first, then find the security office and report the bag stolen.”

  She shot him a glance. “You really don’t have to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Of course she could. According to her file, she was
twenty seven. She’d been on her own for years. She could put Band-Aids on her own knees if she needed to. Or find her own way to the first aid station and the security office. That wasn’t the point.

  He smiled. “I told you. We Americans have to stick together.”

  “But don’t you have something else to do? You’re here on business, surely?” The big blue eyes behind the glasses lighted on his dark business suit and tie.

  “I can take thirty minutes to help a pretty girl.” He winked. She flushed, and as expected, shut up.

  They hit the first aid station to get her knees bandaged, and from there they headed to the security office, where Annika explained what had happened, this time to an older security guard with thinning blond hair and those bright blue Swedish eyes. He wrote up a report and said he’d be in touch if the bag should happen to turn up. Then he asked for Annika’s address. Nick watched as those straight, white teeth sank back into her lower lip.

  “I don’t have a local address. I didn’t plan to spend any time in Stockholm. I’m supposed to go straight to Gotland. My connecting flight’s in—” She checked her watch, a dainty thing dangling around one thin wrist, “—just over an hour.”

  “We can forward the bag there if we find it,” the guard offered.

  But Annika shook her head, looking near tears again. “If I don’t have the bag, there’s no point in going to Gotland.”

  Nick’s ears pricked up.

  “What was in the bag?” the guard asked, pen poised over the rubric on the report marked ‘contents.’

  Annika blushed. “Cremains.”

  “Förlåt?”

  “Cremated remains,” Nick clarified. “Ashes.”

  And shit, if that was true, it explained the careful way she’d carried the bag onto the plane, as well as the guilty glances she’s shot up to the overhead bin during the flight. People tended to be uncomfortable around things like remains, and she’d probably been imagining the reactions of her fellow travelers if they realized what was in the bag.