I had met Naomi a handful of times and even liked her a little. She was thirty-something with a couple of kids and a foot firmly on the next rung of the career ladder. Every board member mentored the curator under them, which meant she was in line for Carapaz’s job when he retired, and she made no bones about wanting it. She didn’t make bullshit conversation just to hear herself talk, and I could see how that would make Natalie uncomfortable.
I crossed her off the list. “Martin?” I asked.
“Do we really want to do that to him?” Helen put in. “I feel sorry for the boy.” Martin Fairbrother wasn’t a boy. Like Naomi, he was mid-thirties, but that was about all they had in common. Where she was confident and took no bullshit, Martin was diffident and preferred his gadgets to conversation. We’d once sat next to each other at a daylong conference on hydro-explosives and he had said exactly one word to me. Pen? His had exploded, leaking ink all over his cuff. I’d given him my ballpoint and gone back to sleep. But he was very good at his job, ensuring we had everything we needed for each mission, no matter how small. If Mary Alice wanted peppermint L?rabars or Helen requested hollow-point ammunition with Chinese manufacturing stamps, Martin was the guy.
“He put some calcium chews in my work bag because he heard me complain about my last bone-density scan,” Helen added with a smile. “Chocolate macadamia.”
“And he got me the sweetest little yawara the last time he was in Nagasaki,” Natalie put in.
They looked at me and I shrugged. “He got me a slapjack from a leathermaker in Texas.” It was a nice little weapon. It looked like a Bible bookmark but it had enough lead in either end to crush a man’s temple. “He’s good at details and he’s thoughtful.”
“See? A nice kid,” Helen said. “Look, the board obviously believes we did something wrong, wrong enough to kill over. And by now they know the first attempt to take us out didn’t work. They’ll realize the natural thing for us to do is ask questions, and whoever we ask is at risk.”
“And Martin is the first person we’d ask since Vance’s curator is dead,” I finished. I rubbed a hand over my face. “Helen’s right. Contacting Martin could put him in danger.”
“We don’t know that,” Mary Alice argued.
I held up a hand. “Let’s call Martin Plan B. There has to be someone else who might have a line on what’s going on. Someone less vulnerable than Martin but with an ear for gossip.”
We were silent a moment, thinking. I tipped back in my chair, balancing on two legs as I considered. Natalie picked up the marker and started to doodle on a corner of the tablecloth while Mary Alice plucked at her paper napkin, tearing little pieces off and putting them into a pile. Helen simply sat, staring into the middle distance, and Minka finished off the last of the beignets.
Suddenly, I set the legs of my chair down with a thump. “Sweeney would talk.”
“I haven’t seen Sweeney in twenty years,” Mary Alice said.
Helen sat forward. “It might be worth asking. He’s always been very fond of us.”
“He retired last year,” I said thoughtfully. “He might not be as inclined to keep Museum secrets now that he has his pension.”
“Provided he knows any secrets,” Mary Alice pointed out. “If he’s not active, he might not be up on the latest gossip.”
“Targeting four active operatives is not exactly a story they’re going to be able to keep a lid on,” I said. “Trust me, people are talking.”
Nat looked up from her sketch—a male nude that was in danger of crossing over from tasteful to mildly pornographic. “Sweeney will help.”
I flicked her a look. “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
Her expression was smug. “I ought to be. I slept with him last year.”
Anybody listening to what came next would have mistaken us for the world’s oldest slumber party.
“Euw, Nat, Sweeney—”
“You don’t like redheads.”
“Was he any good?”
The last was from me. Natalie grinned. “Better than you’d think.”
“But how?” Helen asked plaintively.
Natalie gave a satisfied little stretch, remembering. “It was in Osaka. We’d been assigned two members of the same crime family. Somebody in Provenance screwed up and didn’t realize they were related because the surnames were different. Otherwise we could have coordinated the job. As it was, when we crossed paths in the Ritz, we almost blew our covers. We had to compare notes, so he came to my room. One thing led to another.” She shrugged.