Sleight of Hand - By Phillip Margolin Page 0,12

a mountain lion eyed her threateningly from two other walls.

A massive desk illuminated by a gooseneck lamp stood in one corner of the large room. Papers were spread across the blotter and books were stacked next to a laptop, one of the few modern contraptions Dana had seen since entering the house. Pickering sat behind the desk and Dana sat in a straight-back chair across from him. Its seat was not cushioned and it was hard and uncomfortable.

“What is all this about a scepter?” Pickering asked cagily. Dana noticed that his liver-spotted fingers fluttered nervously and he avoided looking at her directly.

“You do know about the gold, jewel-encrusted scepter Sultan Mehmet II gave to Gennadius after the fall of Constantinople when Gennadius agreed to be the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church?”

“Young lady, I have degrees in history from Harvard and Oxford and my Ph.D. thesis was on the Ottoman Empire, so you may assume that I am aware of everything there is to know about the reign of the sultans.”

“Yes, well, Antoine Girard, my client’s grandfather, found the scepter in the early 1920s in the Khan-el-Khalili. The scepter was kept in a safe in a mansion in New York, but it was stolen in a burglary. Recently, my client learned that the scepter was to be auctioned off by a bankrupt Turkish businessman, but the scepter was withdrawn from the auction. My client believes that you appraised and authenticated the scepter. She needs to know who commissioned the appraisal.”

Pickering looked upset. He shook his head back and forth.

“Any such work I may have done would be confidential.”

“You’re not a lawyer, a doctor, or a priest, so you don’t have any legal right to keep client information secret.”

“And we are in my house and not in a courtroom, so you have no legal right to—”

Glass shattered and a bullet smashed into the wall above Pickering’s head. He looked confused. Dana threw herself across the desk and knocked the professor to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Pickering protested.

More bullets tore through the room.

“Someone is shooting at us,” Dana said as she drew the gun she wore in a holster secured to her ankle. “Get under the desk and stay there.”

Dana stared into the forest but the light from the fireplace reflected off the window glass. She crawled closer to the windows and crouched behind the sofa, straining to hear any sound outside the house. Then she rose up cautiously and stared over the top of the couch and through the shattered panes. She didn’t see any movement in the forest.

“Stay here,” she ordered. “I’m going after the shooter.”

Pickering didn’t protest, and Dana darted through one of the French windows onto a patio. Another shot ricocheted off the outside wall and Dana heard someone crashing through the woods. She waited a moment, drew a second gun from the holster secured to the back of her belt, and crept forward, keeping low and moving her eyes back and forth.

A car engine started and Dana dashed toward the sound. By the time she reached the road, two taillights were disappearing around a curve. Dana debated getting her car but rejected the idea. The shooter had too much of a head start. Besides, she’d been hired to get information from Otto Pickering that could lead to the scepter, and she was curious to see the professor’s reaction to this attempt to murder him.

Pickering was still cowering under the desk when Dana reentered the living room. She holstered the gun she kept in the small of her back but held on to the snubnose revolver from her ankle holster.

“You’re safe now, Professor. The person who tried to kill you drove off before I could get to him.”

“Kill me?” Pickering said as he crawled out from under the desk and slumped in his chair.

“I can’t think of anyone with a motive to kill me,” Dana said. “If I died, my client would send someone else in my place. You’re the one with information that can lead to the scepter, so I have to think that you were the target.”

Pickering put his head in his hands. “This can’t be happening. I’m just a consultant. All I did was give an opinion about the authenticity of an antique.”

“For who?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Listen, Professor, once you tell me who hired you, the cat is out of the bag and no one will have a reason to kill you.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Pickering said. He was sweating and he was pale.