The Pretender's Gambit

“This is Charles Prosch. You left a message on my machine, Detective McGilley. Asking me to call you?” The speaker’s voice was old and hoarse, but held a quiet strength in the Western twang. “I don’t usually get phone calls from New York police detectives, and I haven’t been there or the East Coast in years, so you can understand how I’m curious.”

“Yes, sir. I’m calling in regards to a murder that took place last night.” Bart flipped open his notebook and took out his pen. “The victim was Maurice Benyovszky. I’d like to know how you knew him.”

“What happened?”

“Mr. Benyovszky was attacked and killed in his apartment by unknown assailants.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Prosch cleared his throat. “I never met Mr. Benyovszky, but he seemed like a nice guy. From what I saw on his site, he did a pretty good business. Why would you single me out from all those people?”

“An auction you were involved in finished last night.”

“The one with the elephant piece.”

“That’s right. Can you tell me about that piece?”

“I’m more of a collector than an expert, Detective. A dabbler, if you will. I buy a few things now and again, keepsakes mostly, of things I saw while I was in the Corps.”

“You were in the Marines.”

“I was. Thirty years. I did a lot of traveling, then I came back to Bonner’s Ferry where I was born and where I buried my parents. You put down roots doing something like that. I got married, but that didn’t take. She couldn’t be the Marine I was, and I don’t blame her for that. I’ve got two daughters out of it who I love, a handful of grandkids.”

Annja smiled at that. Prosch’s offspring sounded a lot closer than Benyovszky’s hand-me-down nephews. She felt a chill as the door opened and took a sip of her coffee to warm up.

“What do you know about the elephant?” Bart frowned and looked a little frustrated.

“Like I said, not much,” Prosch replied. “It’s an elephant. Looks Asian, if I’m any judge, and I could be just as wrong as I am right.”

“What’s it made of?” Bart consulted the sheet that had been printed out regarding the piece.

“Mr. Benyovszky wasn’t sure, but it looked like sandstone to me. I spent some time in Laos. As I recall, they did a lot of carving in sandstone in that area.”

“You paid a lot of money for an elephant made of sandstone.”

Prosch laughed good-naturedly. “Actually, I wasn’t going to spend that much, but I got caught up in a bidding war.”

Bart wrote that down and underlined it. “A bidding war?”

“Yeah. The other guy who wanted the elephant kept jumping my bid by a dollar. Just enough to edge me out. Kind of irritated me, and I’d talked to Mr. Benyovszky on the phone once when I called to ask him about the piece. He seemed on the up and up. So I figured I’d keep in the bidding game as long as I could, kind of drive up the price for him. Help him out. The other guy seems like he has plenty of money.”

“Do you know who the other guy is?”

“Sure. I looked him up after Mr. Benyovszky mentioned him. He’s a fella named Fernando Sequeira.”

Glancing up, Bart cocked an eyebrow at Annja.

She shook her head and mouthed, I don’t know him. But she turned her attention to her tablet PC and started looking the man up. She got a hit immediately. Fernando Sequeira was a successful businessman in Lisbon, Portugal. Scanning the links that turned up in her search, Annja also discovered that Sequeira was an amateur historian, an interest he had gotten from his grandfather.

Link me, Bart mouthed.

Annja sent the page address to Bart’s phone. While Bart continued talking, Annja searched for Sequeira’s name linked with “elephant” but didn’t pull up anything that seemed to fit with Bart’s case.

“Tell you the truth,” Prosch went on with a touch of chagrin, “I was surprised I won that elephant. I thought that Sequeira fella would swoop in at the last minute and take it. I musta waited twenty minutes for that to happen. When it didn’t, I realized I paid a lot more for that elephant than I had counted on.”

“What did you do after the sale closed?” Bart asked.

“Poured myself three fingers of whiskey, promised myself I wouldn’t stick my neck out like that again and figured I’d get hold of this Sequeira fella and see if I couldn’t get most of my money back. He was interested up to a point.” Prosch paused and his voice turned a little harder. “Unless Mr. Benyovszky and this Sequeira fella were working together to set me up. That what happened?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Prosch. For right now, I’d hang on to your money. Nobody seems to know where that elephant is.”

“Is that so? Well, now that does make a body curious, don’t it?”

Bart grinned. “It does indeed. Hang on to my number if you will, Mr. Prosch.”

“Oh, trust me, I will, Detective.”

“I’ll call back if I have any more questions, and if something turns up on your end, I’d appreciate hearing from you.”

“You will. Count on it.”

Bart broke the connection, laid his phone on the table and glared at it. “So I got a guy out in the wilds of Idaho who hasn’t been to New York in years, and I got a guy in Lisbon, Portugal, who were both interested in that elephant.” He wiped a hand over his mouth and smothered a yawn, but his eyes still glowed with bright interest. “How many others were bidding on that thing?”

Annja checked the list. “Eight people.”

“But they all bailed early.”

“They did.”

“And we still haven’t found the thing.” Bart knotted his hand. “I hate mysteries.” He looked up at her. “I know you enjoy them, but I could live without them. Give me a case where I catch a perp red-handed and just have to fill out the paperwork. Those are the investigations I like.”

Annja knew that wasn’t true. Bart McGilley was clever and knowledgeable. Those were things that underpinned their friendship. They loved puzzles and mystery shows. She didn’t offer to argue the point at the moment.

An Asian man entered from the street and the way he didn’t fit in caught Annja’s attention immediately. Bart tilted his head slightly, shifting his gaze to the man, as well.

The man wore a dark gray suit and a long jacket. On his head he had a black woolen cap. A shade under six feet tall, he looked thin for his size, but his shoulders were broad and he moved with economical grace as he strode toward their table.

Bart shifted slightly so that he could get to his service weapon more quickly, but the nonchalant look on his face never waned.

The Asian man stopped a few feet short of their table, just out of arm’s reach, and smiled slightly at them. “Good morning. I do not mean to trouble you.” His accent held a note of British English in it. “My name is Nguyen Rao. I have come about the elephant Mr. Benyovszky had for sale on his website. Do you have the elephant?”

Chapter 6 (#ulink_dbe0b997-0868-58e8-8ee7-289330475135)

Feeling nervous and out of place, Rao smiled at the man and woman seated at the table in front of him. Neither of them appeared to be surprised to see him, and that was good. Nervous people could sometimes make quick mistakes that would bring misfortune to all concerned.

The man broadcasted his profession in his narrowed eyes and readiness for physical confrontation. The move to access the pistol belted at his hip had not gone unnoticed. Rao had seen plenty of policemen during his journeys across Europe and throughout Asia. Criminals and policemen could be confusing, though, because both of them were similar in nature. Rao had dealt with criminals, as well. He much preferred dealing with neither and instead working on his studies.

The woman, though, was similar in some ways, but different in others. She did not seem like a policeman or a criminal because she was more open, more accepting and not shut down. Her curiosity about him showed in the glint of her eyes and the set of her lips. But she kept herself balanced and ready all the same. Composed for confrontation, yes, but she was more curious than cautious. In many, that would be a weakness. Rao was not certain that such motivation was a weakness in her.

He knew of her and of her work. Anyone who labored in the field of antiquities might possibly know her name and her face. The television show rendered her familiar to a great number of the populace, but such familiarity also took away remembrance of her work as an archaeologist.