One True Secret

Today they’d joined up at the Miami airport and taken the bumpy and jammed commuter flight into Key West. Eli had come from New York, Merriman from Toronto. As soon as they landed, they’d checked into their hotel on the Atlantic end of Duval and dropped off their luggage. Now, sitting in this dimly lit bar, they had their first chance for a real conversation.

Merriman was a muscular, genial man with deep-set blue eyes and straight blond hair that looked perpetually rumpled. He went only by his last name because, he said, his first and middle names were too horrible to mention. He had the odd habit of wrinkling his forehead when he smiled, which was often.

Eli thought he would like Merriman. His only worry was that maybe the guy was too genial. This gig would be damn tricky. Was Merriman too easygoing to make the best of it?

Eli took a sip of beer and made his voice casual. “So what do you know about Nathan Roth?”

Merriman gave a good-natured shrug. “Just the basics. Giant of the art world. A golden boy in his heyday. Moved here twenty years ago. Lately, he’s gotten reclusive. Hasn’t granted an interview in six years. Or been photographed.”

Eli nodded. A lean, dark man, his face could seem handsome or dangerous, or both at the same time. He could have credibly passed himself off as an aristocrat or as a high-priced hit man.

He tried to pinpoint how much Merriman knew. “For a painter, Roth’s a rich man.”

Merriman licked the foam from his upper lip. “So much for starving artists.”

“Right.” Eli knew Roth’s canvases weren’t selling at the prices they’d once commanded, but they still sold. But for the past six years, speculation and gossip had circulated about both the work and the man.

Eli raised a dark eyebrow. “You know his son was his manager.”

“Till he died. Uh—five years ago.” Then Merriman flashed him an abashed grin. “But look. All I know is what I read last week. Modern art isn’t my thing. I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like pictures of naked ladies.”

Eli’s mouth crooked at one corner. Merriman had photographed a series of paintings celebrating women’s bodies. He’d done a hell of a job, and he obviously loved the subject. The book was called, simply, The Female Nude, and it was equally admired by esteemed scholars and horny teenage boys.

“Roth was an outgoing guy once,” Eli said. “But something happened. We don’t know what.”

“I knew a guy like that once.” Merriman lifted his beer mug, signaling for a refill. “News photographer. Real hell-raiser. One day he ups and goes into a monastery in Tibet. Go figure.”

Eli wouldn’t let the conversation stray. “Roth had a lot of acquaintances. Only one good friend. William Marcuse, another painter. But after Marcuse died, Roth closed himself off to everybody except his family. And they’re loyal to him. Absolutely. They don’t talk, and they don’t want to.”

“A wife and two granddaughters, right?” Merriman accepted a frosted mug of beer and nodded his thanks to the barman.

Eli’s expression grew more intense. “Roth’s son, Damon, handled his father’s business. All of it. And protected his privacy. He was good at it. Since he died, it’s the granddaughters’ job. They’re just as good. Maybe better.”

Merriman cocked his head. “What you’re saying is you want me to be aggressive. But discreetly aggressive.”

“Right. Take all the pictures you can. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t offend them if you can help it, but don’t let them push you around.”

“I take it nobody has to tell you to be aggressive.”

Eli let the remark pass. Anybody who thought the art world was stodgy, highfalutin and boring didn’t know it. He’d uncovered smugglers, forgers, black marketeers, thieves and killers. In his business, he’d dealt with everything from tomb robbers in Yucatán to looters in Baghdad.

He stuck to the subject of the Roths. “I hear the younger granddaughter’s the more pliable. Less worldly. You may be able to work her better than the older one.”

Merriman looked dubious. “Are you saying come on to her? Flirt with her? Me?”

“Whatever.” Eli kept his face and voice impassive.

“These women will pretend to cooperate. We’ve got to get past that.”

“So what’s she like? The younger, pliable, unworldly one? What’s she do?”

“The domestic stuff. She’s the stay-at-home one. The older one handles the business end.”

Merriman smiled, and the lines appeared across his forehead, under a lock of sun-gilded hair. “Oh, yeah. She comes to New York. I hear she’s a looker. What’s her name? Emilene or something?”

Eli’s face grew more guarded than usual. “Emerson. Yeah. She’s a looker.”

He’d seen her once, last year at a gallery opening in Soho. He’d caught only the briefest glimpse. But in that glimpse, Eli had seen she was a true beauty: flowing dark hair, the eyes of a gazelle and the long legs to match. But though she had a gazelle’s grace, the word was that she also had the protective instincts of a lioness when it came to her family.

Almost as soon as he’d spied her that afternoon, she’d left, simply vanished. Later he heard she’d left because of him.

Like her, he had a reputation. When he went after the truth, nothing stopped him, and he had the scars to prove it. If she thought she could keep things hidden from him, she was dead wrong.

“These people don’t live in this town, right?” Merriman asked. “They live on the next key or island or whatever you call these things.”

“Three islands up. Mimosa Key. About fifteen miles away.”

“Pretty isolated?”

“Fairly isolated. Mimosa’s been built up in recent years. But not much. The estate’s on a finger of land that juts away from the main body. No close neighbors. People who’ve seen it say it’s a little bit of paradise.”

Merriman grinned. “If they’re going to team us, this is the right assignment. A little bit of paradise? Couple of women with a rich granddaddy? Beats chasing after criminals and con men. Me, I’m allergic to danger.”

“The only danger is that these women hold us off.” Eli was concerned about this, but not worried. Not deeply.

“The older one? Emerson?” Merriman said.

“What about her?”

Merriman shrugged. “I heard she’s smart, that’s all. And she can be tough.”

“She’s not as smart as she thinks.” Eli finished the last of his beer and he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“And she may be tough. But she’s not tough enough.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Emerson sat in the library, curled up in the ancient velvet armchair, her legs dangling over its arm.

The library was on the second floor of the house, and its large glass doors opened to a balcony that looked out on the ocean. The ocean tossed more than usual today because the wind was high, with long, gray clouds streaking the sky.

Books crammed the teakwood shelves, books of every sort, and they were piled on the desk and floor and on the antique sofa where no one ever sat.

A teak counter ran along the east wall, and the wall above it was covered with framed paintings, wild with color and boldly signed Roth. Beneath the counter were cabinets designed to hold magazines, some decades old.

Magazines were what interested Emerson this morning. A fallen stack of them spilled across the wine-colored ottoman, and others littered the carpet.

The library was Emerson’s favorite part of the house. It had its own fireplace for the rare spell of winter cold, and an old-fashioned ceiling fan to dispel heat. She loved the feel of being surrounded by books yet being only steps away from the sense of space and freedom offered by the balcony.

This room was Claire’s bane, for Claire was neat, and the room defied all her efforts to make it tidy. But Emerson did not mind that the place was a hodgepodge. She found its disorder as comfortable as a pair of old jeans.