James Patterson - Lifeguard

“Your ears must be burning, dear.” Sollie Roth smiled. “Look at your boyfriend. He’s so worried about you, he can’t keep score.”

“He’s right,” I said, and gave her a hug. “So, how’d it go?”

She shrugged, sitting down at the table. “Between getting Moretti killed and hanging out with you, I’m what you call an Agent’s Manual disaster. The ADIC took the appropriate action. Until we work this out, I’m on disciplinary review.”

“You get to keep your job?” I asked hopefully.

“Maybe.” Ellie shrugged. “Pending one thing…”

“What’s that?” I swallowed, figuring it was some sort of drawn-out procedural review.

“Us,” she said. “Taking down Dennis Stratton.”

I didn’t know if I had heard her right. I sat there, looking at her a bit quizzically. “You said us? ”

“Yeah, Ned,” Ellie said, the tiniest of smiles peeking through. “You and me. That would be us. ”

ELLIE HAD some digging to do first. In the art world, of all places. What the hell was it about this piece? The Gaume.

There were countless ways to do research on a painter, even one she had barely heard of, who had died a hundred years before.

She went online, but she could find hardly a thing on Henri Gaume. The painter had lived a totally unremarkable life. They were no biographies. Then she looked him up in the Benezit, the vast encyclopedia of French painters and sculptors, translating from the French herself. There was virtually nothing. He was born in 1836 in Clamart. He painted for a while, in Montmartre, exhibiting between 1866 and 1870 at the prestigious Salon de Paris. Then he disappeared off the artistic map. The painting that was stolen – Stratton hadn’t even put in an insurance claim on it – was called Faire le ménage (Housework). A housemaid gazing into a mirror over a basin. She couldn’t find a provenance on it; it wasn’t listed.

Ellie called the gallery in France where Stratton claimed he had bought it. The owner could barely remember the piece. He said he thought it came out of an estate. An elderly woman in Provence.

It can’t be the painting; Gaume is as ordinary as they come.

Was there something in it? A message? Why did Stratton want it so badly? What could be worth killing six people for?

Her head began to ache.

She pushed away the large books on nineteenth-century painters. The answer wasn’t there. It was somewhere else.

What was it about this worthless Gaume?

What is it, Ellie?

Then it struck her, not with a wallop but like a little bird lightly scratching away at her brain.

Liz Stratton had told her as Stratton’s men took her away. That resignation in her face, as if they would never see her again. You’re the art expert. Why do you think he calls himself Gachet?

Of course. The key was in the name.

Dr. Gachet.

Ellie pushed back from her desk. There had always been rumors, apocryphal, of course. Nothing had ever turned up. Nothing in van Gogh’s estate. Or when his brother went to sell his work. Or the artist’s patrons, Tanguy or Bonger.

One of the art books on her desk had van Gogh’s portrait of the doctor on the cover. Ellie pulled it in front of her and stared at the country doctor – those melancholy blue eyes. Something like this, she was thinking, would be worth killing for.

Suddenly Ellie realized she was talking to the wrong people, looking in the wrong books. She stared at van Gogh’s famous portrait. She’d been poring over the wrong painter’s life.

“YOU READY?” Ellie made sure, handing me the phone.

I nodded, taking it as though someone were handing me a gun that I was going to use to kill somebody. My mouth was as dry as sand, but that didn’t matter. I’d been dreaming of doing this since I first got that call from Dee and an hour later found Tess and my buddies dead.

I sank into one of Sollie’s chairs out on the deck. “Yeah, I’m ready…”

I knew Stratton would speak to me. I figured his heart would be pounding as soon as he heard who it was. He was sure I had his painting. He had killed for it, and this was clearly a man who operated on the assumption that his instincts were right. I punched in the number. The phone started to ring. I leaned back and took a deep breath. A Latino housekeeper answered.

“Dennis Stratton, please?”

I told her my name, and she went to find him. I told myself that it was all going to end soon. I’d made promises. To Dave. To Mickey and Bobby and Barney and Dee.

“So, it’s the famous Ned Kelly,” Stratton said when he finally came on the line. “We get a chance to speak. What can I do for you?”

I’d never talked to him directly. I didn’t want to give him a second of phony bullshit. “I have it, Stratton,” was all I said.

“You have what, Mr. Kelly?”

“I have what you’re looking for, Stratton. You were right all along. I have the Gaume.”

There was a pause. He was evaluating just how to react. Whether I was telling the truth, or screwing with him. Setting him up.

“Where are you, Mr. Kelly?” Stratton asked.

“Where am I?” I paused. This wasn’t what I expected.

“I’m asking where you’re calling from, Mr. Kelly? That too difficult for you?”

“I’m close enough,” I replied. “All that matters is, I have your painting.”

“Close enough, eh? Why don’t we put that to the test? You know Chuck and Harold’s?”

“Of course,” I replied, looking nervously at Ellie. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Chuck & Harold’s was a bustling, people-watching watering hole in Palm Beach.

“There’s a pay phone. Near the men’s room. I’ll be calling it in, let’s say, four minutes from now. And I mean exactly, Mr. Kelly. Are you that ‘close enough’? Make sure you’re there to pick it up when it rings. Just you and me.”

“I don’t know if I can make it,” I said, glancing at my watch.

“Then I would scoot, Mr. Kelly. That’s three minutes and fifty seconds from now, and counting. I wouldn’t miss my call if you ever want to discuss this matter again.”

I hung up the phone. I looked at Ellie for a split second.

“Go,” she said.

I ran through the house and into the front courtyard. I hopped into Ellie’s work car. She and the two FBI agents ran behind, climbing into another car. I shoved it into gear and took off through the gate, screeching in a wide arc onto County. I sped the six or seven blocks down to Poinciana as quickly as I could. I took the corner at about forty and screeched to a stop right in front of the place.

I glanced at my watch. Four minutes on the nose. I knew the way to the men’s room. I used to hang out at the bar.

Just as I got there, the phone started ringing.

“Stratton!” I answered.

“I see you are resourceful,” he said, as though he were enjoying the hell out of this. “So, Mr. Kelly, just you and me. No reason to have other people listening on the line. You were saying something about a painting by Henri Gaume. Tell me, what do you have in mind?”

“I WAS THINKING of handing it over to the police,” I said. “I’m sure they’d be interested in a look.” There was silence on the other end. “Or we could strike a deal.”

“I’m afraid I don’t deal with suspected murderers, Mr. Kelly.”

“That gives us something in common already, Stratton. Usually, neither do I.”

“Nice,” Stratton chuckled. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“I don’t know. Just sentimental, I guess. I heard somewhere it was your wife’s favorite.”