Page 125 of Homeport

For now, she closed her eyes and tried to bring the time span, and the people in it, into focus.

Elise and Andrew had been married, and still by all appearances deeply in love. She could remember no fights or squabbles. Andrew’s drinking had been routine, but nothing she’d worried about.

Then again, she’d done her best to give him and Elise as much privacy as possible.

Giovanni and Lori had entertained each other with a brisk, friendly affair. She’d known they were sleeping together, but since it hadn’t interfered with the quality or quantity of their work, Miranda had kept out of that as well.

Her mother had come into the Institute briefly. A day or two, Miranda thought now. No longer. They’d had a handful of meetings, one stiff family dinner, and had parted ways.

Her father had stayed only long enough to see the bronze through initial testing. He’d only sat in on a portion of the meetings and had made some excuse to avoid attending the family meal.

Vincente and his wife had come in her father’s place, but even their vivid personalities hadn’t brightened the event. If memory served, Gina had come into the lab only once.

Richard Hawthorne she remembered only as a vague presence buried in books or hunched over a computer.

John Carter had been a constant presence, overseeing projects, worrying over reports. Miranda rubbed her temples as she struggled to pull in details. Had he been a little off his stride, sluggish, out of sorts? A touch of the flu, she remembered. He’d had a touch of the flu, but had worked through it.

How was she supposed to remember? In disgust, she dropped her hands. It had been routine, simply routine with her work as the driving force. Everything else was blips once she had that small, lovely statue in her hands.

She’d seen the acquisition of the David as another step in her career, and had used the authentication as the basis for one of her papers. She’d gotten quite a bit of attention for that, she recalled, in the academic and scientific worlds. She’d been invited to lecture on it and had won a considerable amount of acclaim.

It had, she supposed, been the true beginning of her rise in her career. That little bronze had lifted her out of the pack and put her solidly in the lead.

She stared blindly at the words on her screen, heard a dim buzzing in her ears.

The Fiesole Bronze would have sent her reputation rocketing. It would have cemented her as one of the top archeometrists in the world. Not just academic acclaim this time, but the lay press as well. We were talking Michelangelo here, romance, mystery, money. She shut her eyes and struggled to think it through.

Both pieces were hers. Both pieces had offered her a solid boost up the reputational ladder. And both pieces had been forged. What if they hadn’t been the target at all?

What if she was?

She folded her hands, waited for her insides to settle. It had logic, it had reason. It was more than plausible.

But where was the motive?

What other pieces had she authenticated that could be retested without too much speculation or comment within the Institute? The Cellini. Her stomach twisted painfully at the thought of it. The statue of Nike, she thought, forcing herself to be calm and thorough. There was the paperweight-sized bronze of Romulus and Remus nursing at the she-wolf.

She would have to get back into the lab. She would have to be sure none of those had been replaced with forgeries.

She jerked as the phone rang, stared at it for several long seconds before she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Miranda. I have some difficult news.”

“Mother.” She rubbed a hand over her heart. I think someone’s trying to hurt me. I think they’re trying to destroy me. It was real, the bronze was real. You have to listen. But the words only raced in her head. “What is it?”

“Sometime on Thursday night the lab was broken into. Equipment, records, data were destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” she said dully. Yes, I’m being destroyed.

“Giovanni . . .” The pause was long, and for the first time in too long to remember, Miranda heard raw emotion in her mother’s voice. “Giovanni was killed.”

“Giovanni.” You cared. Oh God, you cared. She shut her eyes as tears began to swim. “Giovanni,” she said again.

“From all appearances, he must have decided to come in and take advantage of the holiday quiet in the lab to work. We’ve been unable to tell what project he was dealing with. The police—”

Again that hitch in rhythm, and though the voice was stronger, it remained uneven. “The police are investigating, but they have no leads to date. I’ve been attempting to assist them for the last two days. The funeral is tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

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