Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“We need to find out more about this whole situation,” Kathleen commented as she leaned back in her chair.
The exhaustion was back. Her limbs felt heavy, but she knew they needed to sort all this out as soon as possible.
Bianca needed them to be as well-armed as possible against anything that could happen.
Information was part of that. A big part.
Enzo snorted. “That’s an understatement.”
Kathleen tried not to be impatient, but his attitude was getting under her skin. Her words were clipped when she replied, “What I mean is we need to talk to Alex.”
“I already called her while you were in the shower.”
“You’ve been busy,” she said, a little miffed that he’d already reached out to her friend.
Then Kathleen reminded herself of what was at stake.
“What did she say? Alex has to know something. She’s the one who set all this up in the beginning.
She was supposed to steal Ernie for someone. Whoever that was has to know more.”
“Agreed,” was all Enzo said.
Kathleen pulled out her phone and hit Alex’s number, the excitement of solving this riddle overriding her hesitance at interrupting Alex and Mitch’s honeymoon. This was important. “Let’s see if she’s found out anything yet.” She put the phone on the desk and put it on speaker.
Alex’s voice came down the line. “Kathleen, what’s going on? Has anything changed?”
“A few things, but maybe…” she glanced at Enzo. Had he told Alex about Bianca already? He shook his head.
“OK, just a second. I’m going to put you on speaker.” A fumbling sound came out of the phone, and then, “I’m here with Mitch, Gage, and Logan, and Lacey.”
“Wait, what? Aren’t you on your honeymoon?”
“We came back early, after we first heard about your trouble in Switzerland,” Mitch replied.
“I’m sorry—” Kathleen began.
Mitch cut her off. “Don’t be. The whole mystery of that ugly gnome is intriguing. It sure has caused a bunch of big problems… for a small, ceramic bauble.”
“Okay, well, hi, everyone,” Kathleen said.
Enzo grimaced.
Kathleen continued, “I’m here with Enzo Valardi. He’s a good friend of my brother’s.”
Voices came down the line in a chorus. “Enzo, nice to meet you.”
“I assume Alex filled you all in.” Enzo’s tone indicated he wasn’t pleased about this turn of events.
“No, I didn’t provide details,” Alex countered. “But I think it would be wise to bring them in if the situation is as dangerous as you say.”
Enzo’s brows pinched.
Kathleen stepped in. Enzo could nurse his ego later.
They needed all the help they could get.
“Well, it turns out that Ernie the gnome, the ugly statue Alex was supposed to steal, had a treasure map inside. I think Enzo mentioned. Only now, somebody new is after that treasure and has taken someone else hostage because of it.”
“What?” Alex’s voice came out as a harsh bark.
“Did she say treasure map?” a voice said. She thought it was Logan.
She understood his incredulity. Even as she had said it, Kathleen thought about how ridiculous this sounded.
“I know. A treasure map. It’s just so over the top, but that’s where we are.
There’s more to it, of course. The hostage is a friend of Enzo’s.
Anyway, we’re supposed to give this man the map to get the hostage back.
” She licked her lips before continuing, “I think it would be smarter to recover the treasure first and then do the trade.
But either way, we need more information about the whole thing.
“Have you talked to Leo? Do you know anything more about who wanted the statue in the first place and what the story is?”
“Oh yes,” Alex chuckled. “I know a lot more. As a matter of fact, I was just talking to Leo and the person who hired him when you called. Let me conference them in.”
Enzo frowned but maintained his silence. He seemed to be brooding. Kathleen didn’t have any time for that kind of nonsense, so she just ignored him.
After a short pause, Alex said, “Leo, Carlotta, this is Enzo and Kathleen.”
“Kathleen, always a pleasure to speak with you again,” Leo said.
Enzo grunted, his lips pressed into a thin line.
Kathleen shot him a quelling look, then said, “Hi, Leo. Hi, Carlotta.”
Nothing.
“Carlotta, be nice,” Leo pushed.
There was a loud huff. “Fine. Hello.”
Alex spoke up. “So, Carlotta, would you fill us all in about the statue and the story behind it?”
There was another sigh. “I fail to see why this is important. Who are these other people? Why do they need to know? The circle’s gotten large enough as it is. This is not what we agreed upon.”
Enzo said in an icy tone, “One of my friends has been kidnapped by a dangerous man because of your statue and what it contained. So perhaps you could deign to start talking. Otherwise, it’s not going to be so pleasant for you.”
Kathleen blinked. Enzo had just threatened some stranger on the other end of the phone. Things were getting out of hand. She cut in.
“Carlotta, we just really need to know what’s going on. Let’s just say the threat level has gone up immensely.”
“Kidnapped. Someone’s been kidnapped?” Carlotta’s voice had gone from sullen to the edge of hysteria in the blink of an eye. “Oh my God. This is just such a disaster.”
“Start talking, Carlotta,” Enzo growled.
“Yes. Fine.” Carlotta paused, and Kathleen assumed she was taking a deep breath. “My father, the esteemed Ronald Wilson, thought it would be fun to create a treasure map and stuff it in this stupid, ugly statue so that when he passed, we would have one last adventure.”
“OK, wait,” Enzo’s voice changed. “Ronald Wilson? The adventurer Ronald Wilson?”
“Yes.” There was no doubt Carlotta was speaking through gritted teeth.
“My father loved adventure. He loved traveling around the world and exploring undiscovered, unpopular places, hard-to-get-to places, anything along those lines.
He loved looking for treasure; he loved doing all of those things, and as kids, he dragged my brothers and me all over the place.
We saw the world through the adventure lens, whether we liked it or not.
When he found out he had terminal cancer, he apparently decided to set up one last adventure for us.
“The thing is, none of us really loved his adventures to begin with. That was for him. We were all much more like our mother. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.
He…my father, made a lot of money on his adventures.
Not just because he found shipwrecks and things like that, but because he knew how to invest and when to invest, and because people invested in him.
He was sort of an influencer before influencers were big.
“Anyway, my father decided to take his entire fortune and invest it in whatever the treasure is. Then he left this map for us to find it. But he couldn’t just leave the map.
No, he had to put it in that ugly little statue.
We had no idea. He just told us that the map was hidden somewhere in the house.
We’d all searched the house top to bottom and started getting rid of things.
That’s when we donated that stupid statue, along with some artwork, to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
That was his favorite museum. None of us had a clue that the map was inside it. ”
“First of all,” Kathleen said, her hand flashing up to cut off Enzo before he could say something mean. “Let us extend our condolences on the loss of your father. That’s hard.”
“Thank you,” Carlotta said with a small sniff.
“But he has made it so much harder,” Carlotta continued.
“If he had just been a regular dad, a responsible father, he would have just left everything to the three of us equally. But, instead, he set it up as a stupid treasure hunt. Problem with that adventure is we’re not the only ones to know about it now. ”
Enzo cut in. “We’ll get to that. But let’s go back. You have no idea what the treasure is?”
“Not a clue,” Carlotta agreed
“And it’s worth a lot of money?”
“Yes. No. Maybe? We don’t know exactly how much, because we don’t know what it is. The guess is it’s worth close to one hundred million dollars. My father was very savvy when it came to investments.”
Someone on the other end let out a long whistle.
Kathleen recognized Mitch’s chuckle. “That’s a big number.”
“It is,” Carlotta agreed. “We don’t know how much he had to invest to begin with, and we don’t know when exactly he turned his cash and investments into the treasure, so honestly, it’s all a guess.”
“I see,” Enzo looked thoughtful. “And then he hid this treasure and put the map in Ernie, and you and your brothers…”
“Yes,” Carlotta agreed.
“…are supposed to find it and split it?”
“Yes.”
“So then why are these other people involved? Did one of your brothers hire people besides Leo?”
Carlotta sighed. “No. My brothers didn’t hire anyone. One brother is a doctor, and he works for Doctors Without Borders. He’s in Africa currently. My other brother is a writer. Neither one of them are the organized type. They couldn’t figure this out. They left it to me.”
“So… If that’s true,” Gage’s voice came down the line, “then how did other people know? And who was kidnapped and by whom?”
“I have no idea about the kidnapping,” Carlotta mumbled.
“But I have my suspicions about how others got involved. My cousin, Brad, knew about this whole thing. My father left him some trinkets, so he was there for the reading of the will. Because of that, he found out about the map. My cousin is, for lack of a better word, greedy. He’s also a loser, and he’s made every mistake in the book. My father got tired of bailing him out.
“His father, my father’s brother, was the same way and committed suicide many years ago.
I have no idea what happened to his mother; she dropped off the face of the earth.
My father had helped him along the way, but then he got tired of helping because Brad refused to make any changes.
I think Brad thought he was going to get some money when my father died, and all he got was a few tokens of a trip that he went on with my father as a reminder, and that’s it. So he’s bitter.”
“You think Brad hired someone who then kidnapped someone else so he could find the treasure?” Mitch asked.
“I have no idea about the kidnapping, but I am certain if there are others out there looking for the treasure, then Brad hired them.”
Enzo leaned forward. “OK, can we get some details? What is Brad’s name?”
“Bradley St. John.”
“And you think he has contacts that could be involved in this? Have you ever heard the name Alessandro Vitale?”
Logan’s voice quickly cut across the call. “Is that who kidnapped somebody?”
“Yes,” Enzo confirmed.
“Shit.”
“Who is Alessandro Vitale?” Gage asked.
Enzo responded. “Alessandro Vitale is… a businessman, really. He’s a connector. He connects people so they can do business together, and he takes a cut.”
“Why do I have a feeling there’s more to it than that?” Alex asked.
Interestingly, it was Lacey who responded.
“Because Alessandro Vitale has connections all throughout the mob, organized crime, and terrorist organizations across the world. He doesn’t just connect people, he makes deals with the lowest of the low, and then he cuts other people out of them.
But he keeps a private army, so no one can get to him, although since he’s a sort of keeper of secrets, many people would like to.
Vitale is a mover and shaker, and he is deadly as hell.
He’s also on Interpol’s watch list for Transnational Organized Crime, but he’s slippery.
They’ve never been able to pin anything on him. ”
“How do you know all this?” Alex asked Lacey.
“My father has had some dealings with him.”
“Right, that makes sense,” Gage responded.
Enzo frowned and caught her eye.
Kathleen leaned forward, hit mute, and said, “Her father is Armand Fontaine.”
Enzo’s eyebrows went up two notches. “That is a surprise.”
“Isn’t it just?” Kathleen unmuted the call and leaned back. “So where does this leave us?”
“I’m still trying to figure out,” Enzo started, “how this Brad would meet someone like Alessandro Vitale. It doesn’t seem like they move in the same circles.”
“No,” Carlotta agreed. “Organized crime or a fixer does seem out of Brad’s wheelhouse. But it wouldn’t surprise me to know that Brad owes money to people who are somewhat on the wrong side of the law, and maybe they know Vitale.”
“So, at this point,” Gage’s voice came back across the line, “we don’t know exactly how many groups of people are after this map.”
“I can take a guess,” Enzo replied. “So far, I think there are three very distinct groups: Carlotta, who hired Alex, Vitale, and another unnamed group. I’m going to say those are probably the people that Brad spoke to first. And then those people must have spoken to Vitale, or he had some connection to them.
Carlotta sighed. “This is just insane.”
“Who is being held hostage?” Gage asked.
“A friend of mine, Bianca Rinaldi.” Enzo supplied.
“Christ,” Logan commented. “That doesn’t help any. Does her brother know? Is he involved?”
Kathleen rubbed her forehead. It was her turn to be bewildered. How did Logan know who Bianca’s family was? Should she recognize the name? She was going to have to ask Enzo for more details.
“I don’t think her brother is aware, but even if he was, I’m not sure he would care. They aren’t that close.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Logan said.
“So, what’s our next step?” asked Gage.
Enzo grunted. “There’s no next step for you all. I will take care of it on this end. Thanks for the information.” He leaned forward and killed the call.
“Hey!” Kathleen said, shooting to her feet. “What did you do that for?”
Enzo also stood up. “There are too many people involved as it is; any more, and someone will get hurt. And I don’t want that person to be you.”
Kathleen blinked. He was not wrong. Now what the hell were they going to do?