She drove to St. Paul de Vence, and Steve did paperwork at his desk for the rest of the afternoon. They had a mountain of work to catch up on. And Athena had called Theo and asked if she could come by.
He was pleased to see her when she got to his house. She wore a plain white skirt and a blouse, nothing too sexy or alluring. She was actually there on business, to tie up the loose ends. There were some things he didn’t know that she wanted to tell him. It made no difference now, but in all fairness she thought she should.
He offered her wine when she arrived, but she declined. Contrary to what her partner believed, she wasn’t there to put the make on him, although she wouldn’t have minded if he did, now that the case was closed, but she hadn’t gotten that kind of vibe from him. He was a straightforward guy, and their dealings had been strictly police business. And she still felt in her fairly reliable gut that he was in love with Natasha. The portrait he had painted of her gave him away.
They sat at his kitchen table over coffee, and she looked at him seriously for a minute.
“It doesn’t change anything now, but we had an informant in the end.” He looked surprised by what she said, and waited to hear the rest. “I went out to see Stanislas’s girlfriend, Natasha, on the pretext of seeing him. I wanted to get a feeling for if she knew anything. I had a sixth sense that she did. We talked for a while, and she seemed very uncomfortable and a little off. Apparently, they were almost boarded by pirates off Croatia. And Stanislas ordered them to take out the guns. They keep AK-47s on the boat, and the crew know how to use them. That’s a very self-sufficient little ship,” she said wryly. “She was telling me about that, and we were getting nowhere, so we got up to leave, and I followed her downstairs. We didn’t take the elevator, and I realized afterward that there are surveillance cameras in it, and she didn’t want anyone to see what she did. She turned to me halfway down the stairs and whispered that the paintings were in the gun room, and she’d seen them. That was all she said. I tried like hell to get a warrant to search the boat, but my superiors said I didn’t have enough to go on. I wouldn’t identify my source, which made it tougher. I was afraid of what Stanislas would do to her if he found out. I don’t trust the guy, and if he went to prison because of her, God knows what he would do. I wasn’t willing to take the chance with her life. I’ve made that mistake with informants when I was younger. It doesn’t turn out well. I always protect my sources now.”
“She’d seen them?” He looked shocked, referring to the paintings.
“If they were in the gun room, which they keep locked, maybe she was around when they were handing out the weapons to defend themselves against pirates. Anyway, I never got the warrant, and they told me to forget it. And then the paintings came back mysteriously. I don’t know if he knew she had told me, if someone saw her, or he suspected she had talked after I’d been there. If he knew she saw the paintings, that might have done it for him. We’ll never know, and we can’t pin the theft on him. Anyway, you got them back, possibly because she told me. I just don’t know. But I thought you should be aware that she had the guts to tell me. That was a very brave thing for her to do. She could have been risking her life.”
“Is she all right?” Theo looked worried. “Has anyone seen her since then?” What if he had killed her, or was holding her prisoner on the boat, or was torturing her? Theo’s imagination was running rampant after what Athena had said.
“I don’t know much. The boat’s not here, and rumor has it that he took it to Greece for the rest of the summer, which is plausible. I can check if you want, but I don’t think it matters. My partner had drinks with a couple of the deckhands from Princess Marina before they left, and they said it’s very hush-hush, but Stanislas dumped her the day after you got your paintings back. The same day technically. They came back to you between two and four in the morning, and he dumped her at dinnertime right on the quai. He was supposedly taking her out to dinner, and he just told her it was over, and sent her back to Paris to pack up her stuff. If he did suspect her, she’s lucky he let her go, and didn’t do something worse to her. The boat pulled out a few days later, so he’s not with her. I don’t know where she is now, or where she’d go. Maybe back to Russia.”
“I doubt it,” Theo said, looking pensive and remembering what Natasha had said about her life there when they had lunch. He was a million miles away as he thought about her. He knew the address of the Paris apartment, but had no phone number for her. She had never given it to him, and she hadn’t contacted him.
“You really think he dumped her?”
“So they say. The crew was pretty shocked. They’d been together for eight years and they said she’s a nice woman. He just told her it was over, left her on the quai, got in the tender, went back to the boat, and never looked back. Those guys are cold. They’d just as soon kill you as look at you. I don’t like the type.”
“Neither do I,” he agreed. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Maybe he knew about it and it scared him, or woke him up. I don’t think he’s anxious to go to prison. And if he even thought she said something to me, he knew he couldn’t trust her anymore. And girls like her see a lot of what happens around those guys. He can’t afford a woman who talks to the police.” Theo nodded agreement again, and a little while later Athena stood up, wished him luck, and left. She stopped in at the office on her way home, and Steve was still there. He was surprised to see her.
“That was quick. No fun and games?” He had assumed she’d be there for hours if Theo went for her, or if she made a move on him.
“No fun and games. I sacrificed myself to young love.” That was why she had gone to see him. If he was in love with Natasha, as she suspected, he had a right to know what she had done for him, and the price she might have paid for doing it. Athena had told him all she knew. The rest was up to him. The information she had shared was a gift.
—
Theo sat thinking about Natasha for a long time that night, wondering what he should do about what he had learned: that Natasha had informed on Vladimir, and that she was no longer on the boat and was possibly in Paris, and that Vladimir had ended his relationship with her. He hoped she was all right.