The sun had found an opening in the overstory now and was flooding the courtyard behind her in brightness. He could see the shadowy silhouettes of her long legs backlighted through the saffron summer dress, and again, in his mind, he saw her long body stretched out, in the opalescent water.
She obviously did not recognize him from those mornings at the pool a month earlier, and Strand decided to see how she would react to being reminded.
“You know,” he said, “I think we’ve almost met before.”
The phrasing was unnecessarily cryptic, and the instant he spoke he wished he had said it differently. Her reaction confirmed his mistake. She turned to him, a look of suspicion playing nervously at the corners of her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I swim every morning at the River Oaks Swimming Club. Five or six weeks ago I think you came there every morning for a couple of weeks and swam laps at the same time I was there. There were only the two of us.”
She studied him, still tentative, her mind searching back for the connection, her eyes raking his features for a hint of recognition. For a moment Strand thought he had made a terrible mistake. She almost had the look of a woman who was slowly realizing that the man she was talking to had been stalking her.
“I remember that,” she said in dismay. Then happy, relieved, she added, “Yeah, I do remember that. We swam together for about two weeks and never spoke a word.”
Strand smiled.
She laughed, now even more relieved. “That was you?”
“Odd, isn’t it?”
“Well, it is odd. Did you know who I was when you came here today?”
“Not until you opened the door. You used a different name.”
Slightly suspicious again. “You knew the name I used at the swim club?”
“When you stopped coming, I asked about you.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to know who you were.”
There was a moment when her face registered the unpleasant possibilities that must have suddenly sprung into her mind. Then in an instant she realized the innocence of it all, and she began to laugh.
He grinned. “Why did you stop coming?”
“Oh, long story.” She was still smiling.
They sat at her kitchen table next to the sunroom and talked, the seven drawings still propped on the cushions of the chairs and sofa, the reflected brightness of the sunny courtyard cheering the uncheerful sobriety of the tired town house. With only a few gentle questions from Strand, she pliantly, though not eagerly, talked a little more about herself.
She told him of her first marriage. She and her husband both had been art teachers at the Farnese Academy in Rome, and after his death she had stayed on there. In a few years she had met and married Mitchell Reinhardt, and for four years she had endured a marriage that from its consummation never found its balance, wobbling on unsteadily until it had become so shaky that no ballast could steady it, and she had filed for divorce.
“It was a sorry end,” she said, reaching over to a vase of geraniums sitting to one side of the table. She picked an orange red flower and toyed with its petals. The strong fragrance of geranium spilled into the room when she broke the stem.
“I’ve tried to sort it out for four years,” she added. “I take some responsibility. He deserves some. It was so wrong it could never have been right, and I do blame myself for not realizing that sooner.” She shrugged. “I quit wailing and throwing sand and ashes in the air a long time ago. Self-indulgence really isn’t of major interest to me.”
She stopped, looking at the flower, thinking of something. He watched her fingers as they felt the velvety petals and then plucked one and placed it alone on the tablecloth.
“Then you’re living here now?” Strand asked.
She looked up. “Oh, no, I’m just here for a few months. Mitchell’s lawyer-well, the one handling the divorce, anyway-is here. It’s easier if I am, too. The papers are complicated.”
“Where will you go, after it’s all over?”
“Back to Rome.”
“To teach.”
“That’s right.” She hesitated. “The thing is, I got a good deal in the divorce. Mitchell’s been wealthy all his life, and he’s used to defending his net worth. I knew he was prepared for a battle. I didn’t want a battle, and I didn’t want his money, certainly not bad enough to make a career out of getting it. I just wanted it to be over. He did have one thing I wanted, a home in Sallustiano in Rome. I told him I’d walk away from the usual financial fracas if he’d give me the seven drawings and the Sallustiano house with enough money in a trust for its upkeep and to pay the taxes on it for the rest of my life. He could be free of me with just a couple of straight, flat-out transactions. No strings.”
She sat back and looked at Strand. “He agreed.”
Strand studied her. She was turned aside from the table, her legs crossed at the knees under the saffron skirt, leaning slightly forward, her arms crossed on her long thigh, hands dangling limp. Her expression was open, frank.
She leveled her dark eyes on him. “I still have the teaching job. I was getting along just fine financially before he came along, and I was paying rent.” She smiled a little. “I sure as hell wasn’t living in a villa.”
Then she straightened her back, a gesture that said she had had enough of talking about herself.
“As for the drawings”-she looked over at them-“well, they just suddenly seem like such an extravagance now that I’m no longer in that league. I don’t know.” She puckered her mouth to one side as she looked at the drawings.
“My part of it will take some time,” Strand said. “I don’t know what kind of timetable you’re expecting, but I’ll need a few weeks at the very least to work up an appraisal. And then some more time to contact potential buyers. I expect they’ll sell fairly quickly.”
“I should be in Houston for another month or two,” Mara said. Her hands were folded in her lap now, and she was looking into the courtyard, presenting her profile to Strand.
“And you want the drawings sold by the time you go back to Rome.”
“I think so.”
“Okay, then,” Strand said, taking one of his cards out of his pocket and handing it to her. “Whenever you’re ready. I’d like to have the drawings while I’m working up the appraisals. I have very good security. They’ll be safe.”
She swung her leg a few times, looking at his card as she touched her bottom lip with her middle fingers, thinking. She made no move to end their conversation, no subtle gesture to indicate they were through. She idly flicked the bottom corner of his card with the fingernail of her little finger.
She looked up. “When could you begin working on the appraisals?”
“Whenever you want.”
She dropped her hand to her lap and laid the card on her long thigh, looking at it.
She looked up. “What about tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
“I have some letters, bills of sale, other items of provenance on some of them. They’re still in the bank. I’ll pick them up and bring everything to you in the morning. What would be a good time?”
“Same as today? Ten o’clock?”
“Sure. That’s perfect.”
“Good, I’ll look forward to it,” he said, standing.
“This has been kind of you,” she said. “I appreciate it very much.”
“My pleasure.” He smiled. “It’s good to be reunited with a misplaced mirage.”
CHAPTER 5
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Dennis Clymer had been in Brussels forty-eight hours. It was his third trip to the city in as many weeks, and it was his last stop before returning home. In the past month he had spent time in most of the capitals of Europe, carrying his black Hermes briefcase to meetings in glass office towers in London, to elegant old-world restaurants in Prague, to the shady terrace of a pale ocher villa overlooking Monaco and the hazy Mediterranean, to a stolid dacha deep in a forest outside St. Petersburg that smelled of woodsmoke and shchi and was filled with objets d’art.