Mary Alice pantomimed at me, and I understood she was asking if that would really work. I didn’t feel like pantomiming back an explanation about the relative flammability of hydrocarbons and fat, so I clicked the lighter and blazed up a chip instead.
It caught instantly, and I shoved it under the door. Therewas an immediate shriek, and some stamping of feet. More important, there was an exclamation that definitely wasn’t Spanish. I lit a few more chips and shoved them where I’d sent the first, just to add to the confusion. At the same moment, I heard a thud and Nat’s voice. Banking on the fact that they would have turned to the window, I grabbed the door handle and wrenched it hard. Whatever they’d secured it with snapped under the strain, and we were in.
It took a long second to work out exactly what we were looking at. Two women sat on one of the lower berths—one was Galina and the other her murderous little friend, Tamara. Across from them was a crunchy-looking older traveler wearing Birkenstocks, thick glasses, and a crocheted vest. There was more crochet in the form of a floppy hat she wore over a long, grey ponytail. She turned to look at me, fear lighting up the dull complexion.
It took me just a second to place her, but when I did, every puzzle piece that hadn’t fit before slotted neatly into place.
My first thought was that I was going to have to send Lyndsay the P.A. a muffin basket for suspecting her. My second thought was—
“Marilyn Carstairs,” I said. “You utter and absolute bitch.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
If Marilyn was upset thatI called her names, she didn’t show it—she couldn’t. She seemed to be plenty upset already about everything else going on in her life at that moment. Next to her was a backpack—not a small knapsack, but one of the monsters meant for trekking up Everest or something equally torturous. On the floor, the pile of tortilla chips still smoldered, but nobody was looking at that. They were staring at us—except for Marilyn who was looking at the window in horror. Nat was clinging to the open panel like a monkey, her hands curled tightly over the frame. When she offered to cover the window exit, I figured she meant to wait discreetly outside in case anybody made a break for it. I should have known better. Natalie would never choose discretion over making an entrance. So she hung there like a spider monkey, face pressed to the glass as Marilyn recoiled in horror.
Tamara leapt to her feet—honestly she was so short, itdidn’t make much of a difference. (Generally, I don’t make a habit of poking fun at things people can’t choose, but Tamara frankly scared the bejesus out of me, and thinking of her as a pocket person helped make her less intimidating. Or I’m just not a very nice person. Maybe both.) She kept her knees loose and her hands up, curled into fists. She was ready for a fight and wanted us to know it. Marilyn kept shrinking further back into her seat, but Galina was composed, sitting quietly with a little smile playing over her mouth, as if she’d arranged a very nice tea party and her guests of honor had just arrived. She was dressed in nondescript black, the fingers of her right hand buddy-taped.
“Hola,” I said.
To her credit, she laughed. “I didn’t think that would fool you for long.” Her voice was surprisingly friendly. “How nice to see you again. I trust Wolfie is well?”
“No thanks to you,” Helen put in.
Galina shrugged. “I did not shoot him. Personally, I don’t much like guns,” she added in the same confidential tone women use to discuss yeast infections.
“Neither do I,” I told her. “But I don’t need one to get what I came for. Where is she?”
Galina widened her eyes. “Whoever do you mean?”
“Oh god, she’s a talker,” Mary Alice muttered. “Why can’t they ever just answer a question the first time.”
“She likes the feeling of power it gives her,” Helen answered. “Like she’s calling the shots. She’s outnumbered two to four, but she thinks Tamara can take at least two of uswhich evens things up. And she probably thinks having a hostage gives her a leg up.”
“It’s rude to talk about people as if they weren’t here,” Galina murmured, grinning.
I jerked my chin at Marilyn. “Oh, she’s not a hostage.” As the others turned to her, she drew back even further, darting eyes around the compartment. She gnawed on her lip, and judging from the blood there, it wasn’t the first time. I took a step closer.
“She’s a conspirator, aren’t you, Marilyn?”
Marilyn’s mouth went tight. “I’m surprised you even remember me. Nobody remembers Provenance agents,” she replied sourly. “We’re just the data grunts, chasing down information and filing it away, day after day, year after year.” The last thirty years hadn’t been particularly kind to her. She’d been colorless and drab in 1994, but at least then she’d been neatly put together. Now her glasses were smudged and her jeans grubby. Her fingernails were as gnawed as her lip, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“Is this where you explain your motive for betraying us is always being overlooked and how you’re just a tiny cog in a huge machine and selling us out was the only way you could take care of your poor elderly mother? Does she need an operation?” Mary Alice’s voice was so sharp with sarcasm, Swiss Army could have used it as an attachment instead of a corkscrew.
Marilyn blushed. Usually when you say that about someone, it means a pretty rose flush rising in the cheeks. OnMarilyn it was a blotchy mess of bright red patches that made her look as if she were about to have a small stroke. She was breathing heavily, and her eyes were dilated. She was scared shitless, and the contrast between her obvious panic and Galina’s calm menace couldn’t have been more pointed.
“Let me guess,” I said. “She”—I jerked my chin towards Galina—“has been terrifying you just a bit. Because when all of this started, you were probably sitting in your little cubicle, getting one day closer to retirement and thinking how unfair it is that everyone else is out doing interesting things in the world. Then what? Did you stumble onto the information that Jovan Muric had a lost Raphael masterpiece in his possession when he died? How did that happen?”
Marilyn licked at her lips, her tongue darting nervously. “It was my job to monitor the situation after his death, to see who took over his organization, if there were any loose ends we’d need to tie up. And then to write the final reports. I discovered Muric’s widow was trying to move the painting. She was discreet, she never named the painting or the artist, but since I had prepared the dossier during the Bosque job, I knew exactly what she was talking about. And I realized I was the only person who would make that connection.”
“That connection was a potential gold mine. What then? You had the details of when it would be on the move and who would have it, all you needed was the muscle to help you take it, right?”
“Something like that,” she said through stiff lips.
I went on, laying out my pet theory. “But you’re not exactly the type to tangle with a Montenegrin gangster by yourself, areyou? So you went trawling through the archives to find someone who could help.” I jerked my head towards Galina, who was listening with a little half smile on her face.
“And in the archives, you found the perfect accomplices in the Lazarovs, a brother and sister who had underworld connections, experience in dealing with art if you weren’t too fussy about the provenance, and who didn’t mind getting their hands bloody—just the right sort of people to help you in this little job. How am I doing so far?”
Marilyn turned even blotchier, but Galina laughed. “Full marks, Miss Webster.”