Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Dick was agog at Charmaine’s blunt words, and they seemed to torch the last of his reserve. “You gave it to me!” he exclaimed.
“I did serve the Rembrandt. Crated and delivered as discussed. And I’ll leave it up to Chief MacLaoch if he will press charges against me, but setting that aside for a moment, I need to have you acknowledge the repeated attempts I have made to contact you regarding this subject.
And the lengths to which you’ve gone to conceal your true motives. And I do not mean servicing the loan.”
“I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”
Charmaine was unfazed in the glare of his obvious lie.
“As of yesterday morning, the cash I deposited onto the loan equal that of the Rembrandt’s value was accepted.
And yet as we sit here at”—Charmaine recited the date and time down to the second—“we can confirm that the Rembrandt has not been returned to the client.”
She looked directly at Rowan for confirmation.
“Aye, it has no’ been returned.” His Scots was thick.
Back to Murdoch: “The return will need to happen today. The Rembrandt must be returned to the MacLaoch estate by four. End of the business day.”
The man was going puce, and he did not agree. In fact, I pictured a little, childlike him throwing a temper tantrum from somewhere inside him: NO! You’ll never get the painting back!
Charmaine continued. “Your inability to agree to these terms leaves me no choice but to air insider knowledge of the MacLaoch account that will leave you looking shamefully incompetent. Mayhap even devious.”
The man sputtered. Rowan and I were glued to Charmaine’s every word.
“After the Rembrandt was in my expert care, your courier took it to the Edinburgh branch, where antiquities are valued and stored. The paperwork was processed correctly, and the value was placed against the loan. It seems that was a show for me. As of this morning, the transactions are gone. The appraised value against the loan was reversed without a digital paper trail. Had I not attempted to apply cash value against the asset, something you had not anticipated, you would have succeeded in your subterfuge. I’ve discovered, much to my horror, that the Rembrandt was improperly handled.
The crate arrived. The Rembrandt did not. It was as if it never existed.”
There was a collective uh-oh that ran through the room. I could hear Rowan’s internal roar and reached out. I grabbed his hand before he could get both hands around the man’s throat.
“I must commend you on your assistant,” she said, leaning forward as if in a conspiratorial whisper to Dick, “as he was quite a helpful person—to me.
“These things,” she said, sitting back, “if revealed, can tarnish a man and his institution’s good name.”
Rowan’s responding grip was firm.
Dick sputtered.
“I’m sorry,” Charmaine said, sounding anything but.
“I realize you felt like I was in some alliance with you. I was, for the service of this loan and moving Clan MacLaoch out of bankruptcy risk. My job is to protect this historic institution, and as such, this time around, that involved me taking stock of my failures and rectifying them. This is by far the largest error of my career. I failed to see your ulterior motives until it was too late.” She wrote a few things down, which I could only assume was her lunch order since she was the only one in the room calm as a summer lake. “Where’s the Rembrandt, Mr. Murdoch?”
His gaze was turning into double saucers, his face apoplectic. He looked at Rowan and skated over mine before going back to Charmaine. “What are you talking about? We have it safely in our possession!”
“As I’ve mentioned, that is not true.”
“Lies! The account was unfrozen and allowed to receive payments. But that’s just the beginning! This is what I’ve been saying. The good faith payment was to delay foreclosure proceedings to allow time enough for the client—”
“The client?” Rowan snarled. “I’m right here, Murdoch, the name is Chief MacLaoch, and—”
“Then repay what is owed! Never in the history of this institution have there been such lax rules for an account. Not on my watch, MacLaoch; you’ll pay down the account, or I’ll take this castle brick by brick.”
Rowan went to ice. “Is tha’ a threat?”
My stomach twisted into knots. I thought we should tell them that we had another institution that was going to take the loan off their hands and make this man go away, with his threats and all. But there was something larger at play now.
“Mr. Murdoch.” Charmaine brought the attention back to her.
“I’m not finished. It took me a long while to get someone with a high enough pay grade in the tech department to open the loan and tell me about the creative footwork that had been applied to it.
The digital footprint, once revealed, is damning,” she said with a smile.
I might not be Charmaine’s best friend, but it was goddamn refreshing to have her working toward our interests instead of against them.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re trying to involve me in some sort of insurance payout for stolen art, I’ll not sit here and—”
Charmaine continued, “The digital trail leads back to your computer, your log-in, your…what did the tech expert say? Ah, yes, your ‘amateur-hour hacks’ were easily traceable.
“Might I remind you the MacLaochs are not Casswell’s only clients.
Over the course of Casswell’s prestigious three hundred years in operation, we’ve come across all kinds of dubious individuals.
That is why, no matter where, who, or what I’m transporting, it’s checked, logged, stored, and sealed to prevent tampering.
The MacLaoch file now has photos of the crate, tampered with, on file.
We can all assume where I’m going with this; I shall cut to the chase.
You did not take it to Edinburgh. You are still in possession of it.
What are you hoping to gain precisely? My apologies—that was a rhetorical question.
” And Charmaine plunged forward without waiting for a response.
“Five hours. That is the length of time you have to return it, or Casswell and Associates will begin a dastardly media campaign to expose you and will end with your arrest. I assure you, the client blowback will be unlike anything you or Scottish Trust Bank has ever experienced.”
“You!” he shouted, snatching his briefcase, tossing his folio back inside, and snapping it shut. “You’re to blame; you have shown that you’re willing to dirty your hands for whatever it is that you want. You’ll go to prison for this. You gave me an empty crate. This is all your doing.”
She continued calmly as Rowan and I listened as his story changed.
We were like two cats observing their exchange like the back-and-forth of a laser pointer.
“Casswell is willing to overlook an overachieving agent as long as their goals are for the betterment of the client. What you’ve done is purely for personal gain.
Return the Rembrandt. Money in equal value of the Rembrandt has been applied to the account, as I’ve said.
There is nothing else you could possibly require. ”
I wasn’t sure that something like this could be easily slithered out of. I was sweating for the guy now; he’d been cornered.
“You removed the tracking device and broke the chain of custody on a historically important and costly piece of art, and it seems you are purposefully hiding its location now. You know this. You know that I took the proper precautions. The crate was impeccably prepared for transport,” she explained to him as if he were new to the whole thing.
“Photographed and witnessed.” She slid out from her folder photograph after photograph of the art in various stages of being crated up.
“If it is returned in any condition other than the one seen here, the dastardly media campaign will move forward, as well as charges for theft, destruction of private property, and damage of a historical artifact.”
“This is— I’ll need these photographs to report to my superiors.”
“Take them—”
Rowan cut in, simplifying. “Discuss it with your superiors, discuss it with yer ma, but if it’s no’ back here in—”
Charmaine held up her open palm, fingers splayed. “Five hours.”
“—I’ll come for ye like a bloodhound tae a hare.”
“What Chief MacLaoch means to say is that we’ll press charges.”
Sweat dripped off the man’s brow onto the tabletop. I had the absurd thought that I’d need a boat soon.
“That’s incomprehensible, everything you’ve just said. You’re lying. You can’t get access to the vaults like you said you did. You’ve taken it and now are trying to ruin me!”
I thought I could smell rubber the man was backpedaling so hard.
Charmaine said, “I have requests to meet with your superiors in one hour. They will be as concerned as I am.”
I practically heard the little rat squeak. “Fine, a phone call, then. I’ll double-check the asset logs,” he said, doubling down on Charmaine being the perpetrator. “But it’ll take time; Edinburgh is hours away, and getting things here from Edinburgh will take days.”
Charmaine repeated, “You will have it here in five hours. I’ve had things shipped here from the continent in less time. Do not worry. I have a feeling it’s close and in your possession. Shall I get you my courier’s contact information?”
“Murdoch, ye look like you’ve had something spoiled tae eat. Be calm. I’m sure a simple phone call will set things to rights. Or have ye done something only ye would be proud of?”
Dick was skirting around the table. “This is most untoward.”
The man was a puzzle. There was so much risk in taking it. If this was about the raid in ’89, why now with his payback? We’d likely never see him again without law enforcement present, so I pressed.
“Dick, Mr. Murdoch,” I corrected, “any innocent human in your position should be shouting with joy that his loan is back on track and not headed toward foreclosure. And that the misplacement of a precious painting was discovered quickly, not after months. We have a saying in the States that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck? It’s a duck. ”
I lost everyone in the room. I clarified: “You look like you stole it. You’re covering your ass like you stole it, and you’re squawking like someone who stole it; I’m going to assume you stole it. So, why is the real question.”
His gaze on mine went ablaze, surprising me with the anger burning there. “Don’t address me, sassenach—”
“Careful.” Rowan was behind me and his hand went to my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
Sassenach, I had learned, meant English person, aka outsider. And while that definition alone wasn’t insulting in modern times, it had history. The connotation and tone were everything. He was using it in its derogatory sense, when the British were bloodily ripping Scots off their land.
I’m going tae fucking murder him.
There’s more here—hold on.
“Why are you gunning for the MacLaochs so recklessly?” I touched the band on my wrist.
He physically leaned into my question, having forgotten he was fleeing. “You’d never understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I’m just a dumb Ameri—”
“You’ve probably never seen a thistle but for a weed… Ye don’t know what it means tae be Scots.”
Rowan’s hand on my shoulder tightened. And I reminded him, I gave him some rope, love; let’s see what he does with it.
It took three heartbeats before he sang like a sinner on Sunday.
“But ye come for a tidy visit after discovering ‘Oh aye, I’ve a bit of Scots in me, so let me buy up land and pretend tha’ maybe it was once mine?
’ But it wasn’t, was it. It was divided up by clans centuries ago, and whilst now ye are in your romantic dreams of kilts and fucking in the pastures, the rest of us have to face the loss of lands tha’ took both place and meaning from us.
MacLaochs never had tae suffer like the rest of us.
But now…” His gaze went to Rowan’s. “Now your time has come, hasn’t it, MacLaoch?
I might no’ carry a sword or a pistol or the warrior title like ye, but I have a pen.
And come judgment time, tha’ pen will see to it tha’ you’re humbled like the rest of us. ”
I could feel the growl before I heard it, and I thought, Well, fuck, that popped that zit of a confrontation.
Rowan, whose entire lineage had been cursed since the times of the Vikings, growled his response from behind me, “Come judgment time? And who’s doing the judging?
Ye? Because if it is, I’ll curse ye, Murdoch.
I’ll curse ye with the good fortune ye think I’ve been strapped with, and maybe after a bullet or two has torn through yer body and another blown open your best friend’s head, you’ll see the kind of good fortune I’m most familiar with. ”
Murdoch kept his eyes on Rowan and walked backward toward the door.
With one last scowl at the room, he left.
We heard him thunder down the stairs and brush off Marion and Flora, offering him a freshly baked scone, before slamming the massive wood door behind him that shook the building.
The workmen hollered at him from up on their scaffolding, “Oy! Git tae fuck, ya sodding arsehole!”
Back in our conference room, Rowan was seething. “He’s a dead man walking.”