Page 74 of Edge of Ruin
“I can’t believe it.” Nell’s voice ended in a squeak.
“Who the fuck is the big L?” I said, frustrated.
Nell turned to him. “Leonardo,” she explained. “As in, da Vinci.”
“Oh.” I closed my mouth abruptly. “Oh. Holy fucking shit.”
There was a moment of dead silence. “I need a drink,” Liam said, turning toward the door.
“Bring the bottle back with you,” Duncan called after him.
A few restorative swallows of fine single-malt Scotch took the edge off our collective freak-out, and a half hour later we were all sprawled on the couches grouped around the coffee table in Liam’s living room, staring at the roll of parchment that sat in the middle of the table as if it were an unexploded bomb.
Which, in a sense, it was. After all, it had almost gotten all six of us killed, at one time or another.
“We have to tell the press,” Nancy said. “Get it on AP. All over the Internet. If the sketches are no longer secret, and that bastard knows that it’s now in the hands of experts getting authenticated, there’ll be no more reason for him to attack us. There will be no profit in it.”
“Wrong,” Vivi said, regretfully. “I’m so sorry, Nance, but that would only be true if you were dealing with a normal, reasonable criminal asshole. But John is special. He’s over-the-edge bat-shit, blood-hungry insane. I don’t think John even cares about the money. He’s just pissed. He wants payback. He wants to chop us into chunks.”
“Which means that we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?” Nancy said, dismayed. “God, I am so sick of it!”
“One thing’s for sure,” Liam said. “I will not have that thing in my house overnight. I’ve lost enough sleep lately.”
“It’s been in your house for weeks of nights,” Nell reminded him.
Liam gave her an eloquent look and tossed off another swallow of whiskey.
“I’ll take it,” Vivi offered. “My friend Jill has a big rare-book and antiquarian gallery in the city. She’ll be able to tell us how to take care of it, and store it, and get it authenticated. Somebody lend me a phone, and I’ll call her right now.”
Vivi wandered into the kitchen to make her call, and I listened to the animated rise and fall of her voice as she told her librarian friend the crazy tale. I felt beaten down, exhausted. Scared. Impressed about the famous art and the big L, for sure. Very cool, zowie, but only a tiny part of me really gave a shit. It was only parchment and charcoal and ink, after all. No matter how famous and charged with history and talent and genius it might be.
I was far more focused on the danger that bastard John posed to my living, breathing, beloved Vivi. And her sisters, of course.
Vivi came bouncing out and tossed Nell’s phone back to her. “It’s all set up. Jill just about had a stroke when I told her. She’ll make the arrangements for authentication, and she can store the sketches in humidity controlled her rare-book vault.”
“The sooner you get rid of them, the happier I’ll be,” Liam said.
Nancy gave him a soothing kiss, but the guy looked unsoothed.
Vivi was holding up the necklace to her sisters. “Should we detach these again? Do you want your necklaces back now?”
Nell and Nancy looked at each other. Nell took it from Vivi’s hand, flipping the lever to retract the three planes with the miniscule writing.
“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s stay united. When this is sorted out, we’ll get the chains fixed and wear them again. For now, you keep it, okay? Like a talisman.”
There were tears, at that point, and group hugs. I averted my eyes until Vivi’s voice caught my attention.
“Nancy, can I borrow your Jetta to drive into the city?” she asked.
My whole body seized up. “What? You’re going to just stick that thing in your purse? You mean to carry it around on the street?”
“I’ll put them carefully into the table leg where they’ve resided for at least eighty years, and I’ll put the table leg into a big shopping bag. No one will know they’re there,” she soothed. “We’ll all breathe easier when those sketches are safe in a vault somewhere.”
“I’ll breathe easier when that son of a bitch is dead,” I said.
Vivi kissed the top of my head. “Well, yes. That goes without saying. Afterward, we’ll drive out of the city. Find ourselves a hotel, okay? If Nancy can spare the car.”
“Sure, but the Jetta is kind of unpredictable these days,” Nancy warned. “The window in the back’s come loose, so don’t even try to roll it all the way up. It got smashed in by crackheads and methheads one too many times.”
