Jenn Bennett - Grim Shadows

“Be my guest. I can’t stand to touch the thing. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Adam turned it in his hand, leaning closer for inspection. “Same strange red tarnish to the gold as the crocodile statue, but completely different method of casting.”

“A thousand years older, different place. Pay close attention to the hole at the top.” Lowe pulled out a black pocket notebook from his suit and roughly sketched the finished shape of the amulet with the four crossbars stacked on the top—or how he theorized it would look, based on known descriptions and other djed pillars depicted in stoneware and jewelry from that time period.

“A curator at the de Young Museum looked at it—daughter of the antiquities department head.”

“The one who offered to buy it?”

“The very one. I just came from seeing her.” Lowe tapped his fingertips on the table and felt Adam’s eyes boring into him. “Came from seeing her father, I mean. Her and her father.”

Adam made a guttural noise that was both judgmental and amused. “Pretty?”

“The father?”

“Screw you.”

“Hadley, then.”

“Oh, Hadley,” Adam drawled. “Ech. One day home and you’re already on first-name basis? Damn you and your crazy Viking height and that lying smile of yours. What does she look like?”

“She’s interesting.” Well, she was. And he didn’t really know how to describe her. Part of him wanted to tell Adam about the “cock” slip and the astounding shape of her ass, but some irrational part of his brain selfishly wanted to keep it all for himself.

“Fine, don’t tell me. Is her father still buying this from you?”

“Even better. The man claims he found the crossbars that fit into the top. His dead wife hid them around the city years ago. He wants me to track them down and sell him this so he’ll have the whole thing.”

Adam looked at him above his magnifying spectacles. “How much?”

Lowe told him.

“No.”

“Oh, yes,” Lowe confirmed. “And God willing, if I find them, I want you to copy each piece exactly.”

“It’ll take me a couple of weeks to forge this one.”

“That’s fine. The crossbars will be smaller. Less detail.” Lowe slipped his friend an envelope with a rather hefty wad of bills he’d pilfered from Winter’s petty cash that morning; he’d have to replace it when Bacall’s check cleared. “Money to purchase the gold. And keep that thing in the warded vault, Adam. Just in case anyone comes sniffing around.”

“Why would anyone have reason to?”

“Well, for one, Monk is furious about the paperwork for the statue.”

Adam raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Your uncle and his schemes. Are we in trouble?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I made sure I wasn’t followed here, but watch yourself.”

“Hold on a minute. Am I making the amulet copy for Monk? To repay him for the statue? Why would he trust you again if you’ve cheated him once and got caught?”

“He wouldn’t. You’re making the forgery for Dr. Bacall. I’ll give Monk the real thing.”

“Damn. Sure you’re confident enough to pass off a forgery to an expert?”

Lowe leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Dr. Bacall is blind.”

“Ah.” Adam smiled. “That helps, I suppose.”

“If those crossbars really do exist and you can forge the entire amulet, we’ll be rich. Still, worse case scenario is no crossbars, Monk gets the real base for no charge, and we get fifty grand from Bacall for the forged base.”

“Fifty grand. Even that’s a fortune.”

“Your cut’s half.”

“Lowe—”

“Half,” he insisted, nodding to Stella. “For her, if not yourself. All I did was dig the thing up. Besides, Miriam would whip your ass from the Beyond if you didn’t take it.”

Adam sighed and removed his eyeglasses. “It’s so much more than the statue. Maybe you should just clear your debt with Monk, sell Bacall the forged base, and be done with it.”

“But if I can find the pieces, it’s fifty a piece, Adam. Fifty.”

“If you find the pieces. If.”

“I found part of a mythical object buried in a flooded room halfway across the globe. Searching the city for a few more will be as easy as duck soup.”

LOWE WAS AN EXCELLENT schmoozer, as Adam would say. But several days later, when he climbed the white marble steps of the Beaux Arts–style Flood mansion and passed his things to the doorman—invitation, hat, white gloves, and overcoat—an old loathing resurfaced. Tailcoats and evening gowns thronged the Grand Hall and the adjoining rooms spilling into it. Old money. Prestige. San Francisco high society.

Everything Lowe was not.

Sure, his family home was in the same prestigious neighborhood, and his telephone number started with the same exchange name, but the Magnussons weren’t exactly on the same level. To start, he doubted any of them had spent the week avoiding Monk Morales’s telephone calls, completely paranoid that the man’s goons were watching him. Nothing so far, but the shoe had to drop sometime, didn’t it?

And even though no one here suspected Lowe owed a gangster fence a fortune for a forgery, everyone did know his family’s money came from bootlegging. Hell, the entire police department knew: his brother dutifully paid them off every month.

So, yes. The champagne these partygoers were all tossing back might very well be Magnusson stock, but Lowe wasn’t one of them. They knew it. He knew it. So he pasted on a smile as Dr. Bacall, walking with a gold-tipped cane, was steered in his direction by a much younger man.

“Mr. Magnusson?” The young man was built like a fire hydrant, low and squat. Seemed to be Bacall’s guide dog for the night.

“Where is he?” The old man’s white eyes stared at nothing as turned his head.

“Here, Dr. Bacall,” Lowe answered, guiding the man’s hand in a firm shake as the younger man assisted. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Think nothing of it, m’boy. They’re pouring drinks down the hall, and I’m told dinner will be served soon. Miss Tilly couldn’t make it tonight, I’m sorry. She had another commitment.”

Lowe feigned disappointment. “Maybe some other time.”

“Quite a few people here I’d like you to meet. Stan here helps me get around, but he doesn’t know all the faces yet. So why don’t you track down Hadley.”

Hadley. Would she tell him to shut up again? He’d thought of little else the past few days. God only knew why. Maybe he was a glutton for punishment.

Bacall leaned closer, nearly butting Lowe’s shoulder. “Have you considered my offer?”

Extensively. Lowe had also spent a little time getting to know Winter’s spirit medium wife. But if Aida really could call up Bacall’s dead wife, then she’d be privy to Lowe’s business. And she was, unfortunately, married to his brother.

“I’m definitely interested in trying,” Lowe told Bacall. “But if I do, I’m going to need something more tangible than a gentlemen’s agreement before I bring my sister-in-law into this. I don’t like family mixing with business, and keeping something like this under wraps will require tricky juggling.”

Bacall nodded. “I know precisely what you mean, my man.”

Good, because Lowe wanted to collect as much money as possible upfront, just in case Monk came calling and needed to be pacified with an installment payment.

“Dr. Bacall? Over here,” someone called.

Lowe assured the old man he’d hunt down Hadley. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Leaving Bacall and his assistant behind, Lowe meandered through the hall, grabbing a coupe of champagne on the way—definitely Winter’s stock—and introduced himself to a widowed art critic he recognized from the newspaper. After his second glass of champagne, he bumped into a railroad tycoon who recognized him from the newspaper, but still no Hadley.

Until he glanced toward the end of the great hall.

Segregated from the main crowd on the far side of two immeasurably long tables set for formal dinner service, Hadley chatted with a man. Behind her, three bowed windows looked out over the night-blackened Bay. A single pendant light chased slow-moving shadows across her face as she talked.

Her pale arms and neck were bared by a layered sleeveless gown: silver bullion beneath a net of black beadwork. The beaded web gradually wove tighter and tighter to make ripples of sparkling obsidian strands that eddied around her hips and thighs, like a black whirlpool.

She wore curved silver heels on her feet, white gloves to her elbows, and diamonds on her wrists. And then, when she turned her head, something caught his attention. Something that softened every hard line on her face, every sharp note of her personality.

Every toughened wall of his lying heart.

Pinned behind her left ear, swaddled by a ruffle of raven hair, was a single star-shaped white Siberia lily.

Such an ordinary thing. But it unlocked an undiscovered door in his head. And when it creaked open, the music and clinking glasses and the snobby conversation in the hall faded to a muffled hum.

She wasn’t skinny; she was elegant.

Her arms and legs weren’t long; they were endless.

She wasn’t pretty; she was knee-weakeningly, dazzlingly beautiful.

Lowe blinked several times and looked again. Not a dream. Still beautiful. She nodded her head in answer to her companion’s question while stealing a glance at the crowd, and her gaze found his.

They stared at each other. Or rather, she looked at him while he stood rooted to the marble floor like a small child who’d been asked a question in class and was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know the answer. He became lost looking at her. For how long, he wasn’t sure. But one moment he was drowning, and in the next, he felt the stem of his champagne coupe slipping through his fingers.