GETTING HER MAN: Chapter Two
An hour after officially
accepting the Carmichael case, Diana pulled her vintage sky-blue Mustang
convertible to the curb outside Tulane University's Anthropology Building,
just off Audubon Street. She surveyed the beige stucco two-story building,
with its gray-painted trim and plaster embellishment. A number of its tall,
narrow windows were open, and the place looked a little shabby, with patches
of discoloration here and there.
Diana cut the engine, anticipation
coursing through her like a current of energy. After being up most of the
night reading through the file and doing preliminary research, she was
running on pure caffeine and adrenaline, and welcomed the familiar rush.
It had been such a long time since she'd gone on a hunt like this; a hunt
that wasn't predictable, safe, or easy.
Before getting out of the
car, she glanced at Luna's dog-eared copy of People magazine on
the seat beside her. It was the annual most eligible bachelors issue, and
right there on page 44 was Dr. Jack Austin, professor of archaeology at
Tulane, renowned Mayan expert, Discovery Channel regular, and all-around
boy wonder. He'd discovered the lost Mayan city of Tikukul when he was
only 27, and it had been his bread and butter for the following ten years -- the
past five of which had been heavily funded by grants from Steven Carmichael's
Ancient Americas Preservation Society.
Judging by his picture, Austin
had a rough, unaffected appeal that would attract women but not make men
feel uncomfortable: a man's man sort of guy. He wore canvas shorts and
a sweat-dampened ribbed tank, and lay sprawled on a slab of vine-encrusted
rock, muscular arms and legs spread-eagled, as if he were some sort of
human sacrifice.
A strangely erotic photo,
in the way the camera's focus drew the eye to certain erogenous zones.
Rather like banging a dinner bell: Come and get it!
She folded the magazine and
stuffed it into her purse, got out of her car, and headed for the building.
She'd scheduled a meeting with Carmichael later in the afternoon, but until
then she'd work her way alphabetically through the guest list for the Jade
Jaguar's opening night bash -- a list that had included a most impressive
number of wealthy political and society types, artists, and rival gallery
owners.
So far she'd learned that
the Allens were out of town and the Archers weren't morning people. Now
it was Austin's turn, although considering his dependence on Carmichael
for funding his excavations, he didn't rate high on her roster of potential
suspects.
In a pumpkin orange linen
suit and dark brown heels, wearing wide-rimmed oval sunglasses and a Hermès
scarf tied in a bow around her long, straight ponytail -- Jackie O would've
approved -- Diana walked with purposeful strides to the departmental office.
Today was not about being
surreptitious; today was about making a vivid impression on one of America's
most eligible bachelors and giving herself the upper hand by simply catching
the man off guard.
When it came to getting straight
answers, this strategy worked a good 90 percent of the time.
The departmental secretary,
an older, no-nonsense type in pants and blouse, plainly served as the first
line of defense between eligible bachelorettes and the good professor,
and her demeanor plunged from friendly to chill when Diana asked to see
Austin.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," she intoned.
"Dr. Austin doesn't hold regular office hours, but if you leave your name
and telephone number with me, he'll get back to you."
Right. Diana hauled out her
investigator's license from her purse. Occasionally, the thing came in
handy. "This is official business. I'm here on behalf of Dr. Austin's benefactor,
Mr. Steven Carmichael."
Ooh, successful shot. The
woman's mouth thinned. "I'm not allowed to give out his office number to
nonstudents, but he's teaching his Intro to Archaeology class right now
in room 150. You can wait outside and catch him there after class."
While she had no intention
of lurking outside any classroom, Diana smiled her thanks and walked away,
paying no mind to the secretary's hostile stare. Rattling cages for a living
usually meant annoying people.
Five minutes later, Diana
found the room, eased the door open, slipped inside, and leaned against
the wall at the back of the room.
Professor Austin stood
by the chalkboard at the front of the classroom, facing away from her.
He wore a white short-sleeved shirt tucked into khaki cargo pants, and
lectured as he drew a diagram with quick, aggressive strokes of chalk.
"...which is the theory behind
terminus
ante and post quem dating. Let's say you're excavating a refuse
pit and want to know how to date it."
Caught up in his subject,
he didn't notice the buzz of whispers, or the absolute silence that followed.
"The oldest artifact found
in situ will be --"
Austin suddenly broke off,
his body tensing as if he'd sensed a predator at his back, and turned.
Across the room, their eyes
met -- and Diana's first thought, with surprise and irritation, was that the
TV and magazine photos didn't do Austin justice. No camera could ever fully
capture this man's energy or magnetism.
The direct intensity of his
dark gaze commanded attention first, then she noticed how long days under
a tropical sun had added coppery highlights to his dark brown hair. And
how his tanned skin and lean strength made even conservative clothing look
sexy. If L.L. Bean ever recruited Jack Austin as a spokesperson, their
stock in button-down shirts would skyrocket.
With twenty-five pairs of
speculative gazes on her -- two-thirds of them female -- Diana watched Austin,
curious to see how he'd respond to her presence.
After slowly surveying her
from head to toe, Austin arched one eyebrow, turned back to the chalkboard,
and continued to lecture and sketch diagrams as if a strange woman in orange
hadn't just invaded his classroom.
"The earliest, or oldest,
artifact found in situ is often referred to as the terminus ante quem,
and the latest, or newest, artifact as the terminus post quem. Everything
in the pit will be dated after the earliest artifact, but before the latest."
Austin faced his class again,
resting a shoulder against the chalkboard. "Some of you look confused,
so let me put it this way. In my refuse pit I find dozens of record albums.
The earliest, in the bottom sediment layer, is Elvis Presley's Heartbreak
Hotel, first cut. The album in the topmost layer is a first edition
of the Beatles's Abbey Road. I know Heartbreak Hotel came
out in 1956, and Abbey Road in 1969. With nothing in the pit earlier
than 1959 or later than 1969, the artifacts I find as I excavate the layers
between will fall within these two dates. This means the people who tossed
their trash in my pit did so during the golden age of rock and roll. Is
that any clearer?"
Nodding heads, a few laughs,
and a murmur of assent followed. For the remaining fifteen minutes of the
class, Diana relaxed and enjoyed watching Austin in action. He had a laid-back
teaching style, a deep, slightly raspy voice with a hint of a Boston accent,
and no difficulty whatsoever in keeping his students' attention on him
rather than on her -- despite the fact he was talking about dating ancient
garbage.
This was charisma: when you
didn't care if that man thought garbage was exciting; you just wanted to
watch him move, hear him talk.
And she bet he'd turn that
charisma up to sizzling hot or down to icy cold as the situation demanded.
Probably she'd get something closer to icy cold; she often had that effect
on men once they realized all the little lady wanted from them was answers
to questions.
"That's it for today." Austin
parked his butt on the table in front of the room and folded his arms over
his chest. "Project reports are due next Wednesday. If you need to talk
with me before then, see me after class."
Oh, great. An open invitation
to get mobbed -- and keep her at a distance until, gee whiz, he just had to
move along.
Undaunted, Diana pushed away
from the wall and made her way toward the front of the room, paying no
mind to the curious stares. Austin, nodding as a young woman spoke earnestly
to him, watched Diana's approach with all the warmth of a big bayou gator.
"I'll be in my office at
three," he said to the petite student. "You can come by then."
The woman nodded, and reluctantly
moved away, the expression on her pretty face branding Diana an interloper.
Coming to a stop directly
in front of Austin, Diana flashed her most polite smile. "I'm looking for
Dr. Jack Austin."
"That'd be me," he said evenly,
the look in his eyes telling her he wasn't fooled by her claim not to know
him. "What can I do for you?"
"Diana Belmaine. Private
investigator." Again, she displayed her license. His gaze flicked briefly
to it without any obvious emotion, then returned to her face as she added,
"I'd like to talk with you. Alone, please."
He shrugged. "Fine."
No surprise at finding a
PI in his classroom? How interesting. She'd read up on Austin, and from
all accounts he was something of a hothead. Two summers past, he'd gotten
into a gunfight with would-be looters and ended up in a Guatemalan jail
for a couple of weeks -- and that hadn't been the first time he'd used a gun,
or his fists, to protect his excavations.
"Come with me to my office,"
Austin ordered as he pushed away from the table. He gathered together a
few books and papers and walked off without waiting to see if she followed.
Huh...maybe he was a little
annoyed, after all.
Diana lengthened her strides
to match his, which wasn't easy in three-inch slingback heels and a tight
skirt.
"Are we in a hurry?" she
asked, as they approached the department office.
"No," he said, but didn't
slow down.
The secretary watched their
approach. "I have a few messages for you, Dr. Austin." The woman's gaze
shifted to Diana as she handed over the yellow slips. "I see the lady found
you."
Austin folded the messages
without reading them and slipped them in his pocket. "It's okay, Carol."
To Diana, he said, "This way."
He led her up a flight
of stairs -- he took them two at a time, to her annoyance, although she didn't
mind the view from behind -- and down a long hall. As they passed offices
with open doors, Diana glimpsed people craning their necks to watch. Voices
abruptly halted in midconversation.
Well, orange was an
eye-catching color...and she supposed it didn't help that her heels sounded
sharp and aggressive on the linoleum tile floor.
Finally, Austin motioned
her into a small office and shut the door behind him. The room looked comfortably
messy and smelled like old books -- a great number of which sat on shelves,
on the floor, and on Austin's desk. The desk also held a computer, a phone
that looked older than most of his students, and a coffee cup with dried
residue at the bottom.
Two cheap stackable chairs
were angled in front of Austin's old Steelcase desk, and she dropped her
purse onto one as he sat. Instead of sitting, Diana examined book titles
and admired a series of framed pencil drawings of Mesoamerican hieroglyphs.
The drawings were amazingly detailed, but she couldn't make sense of all
the stylized curves and curlicues.
Behind her, Austin shifted
in his chair, and the atmosphere in the small room all but hummed with
his impatience.
After several seconds, Austin
said dryly, "You did need to talk with me, right?"
"Yes, I do." Confident she'd
regained the upper hand, Diana turned. "Lovely drawings."
"Mayan hieroglyphs. It's
a pictorial form of language." He sat back to watch her -- or, more accurately,
to better check out her breasts and legs. "Have a seat."
Diana smiled, despite her
annoyance at his blunt appraisal of her body. She rested a hand on the
back of a chair, but remained standing to keep him looking up at her for
a moment longer. "I know what glyphs are. I majored in archaeology in college,
but it turned out I didn't have the patience for the work. Plus I'm not
big on bugs and dirt."
"So you became a private
investigator?"
"I'm good at piecing things
together, and I specialize in art fraud and stolen antiquities -- so I put
what I'd learned to good use after all."
The muscles around his mouth
and nose tightened, ever so slightly.
"So why do you want to see
me?"
"I'm here on behalf of an
acquaintance of yours." Diana made a show of sitting down, smoothing her
short skirt and crossing her legs. "Steven Carmichael."
Austin leaned back, his chair
springs creaking loudly. "What happened? Did Steve lose another couple
crates of pots?"
"Something like that."
He rubbed his thumb along
his bottom lip, plainly skeptical. "So you're really a PI? This isn't just
a way of getting in my office so you can slip me your telephone number?"
Wow; nothing small about
this man's ego. She fixed him with a cool look. "In your dreams, Dr. Austin."
Smiling slowly, he looked
down, his gaze lingering on her mouth, then lower. "I'm already there."
His frank, wholly male aggression
surprised her, then immediately roused her suspicions. On a sudden hunch,
she deliberately recrossed her legs. He didn't look down to watch, much
less leer.
Well, well. Not exactly Mr.
Consistent. Austin was overplaying his interest in her, probably as a distraction -- which
intrigued her almost as much as that fleeting look of wariness on his face
moments ago. She'd go along with him -- for now. "You're trying to flirt with
me."
He made a face of mock concentration
and pointed a finger at her. "Good observation skills. I bet you're one
crack private investigator."
Oh, boy. Smart-ass alert.
Not rising to the bait this
time, Diana pulled a notepad and pen from her purse, catching sight of
the People magazine as she did so. On an impulse, she took it out,
folded it to the page with Austin doing his pagan sex god impersonation,
then tossed it on his desk. He looked down, face impassive, then pushed
it aside, out of his direct line of vision.
Almost as if it embarrassed
him.
"I'm sure there are a lot
of women across the country who'd love to worship you up close and personal,
Dr. Austin, but I'm not one of them."
Austin laid a hand over his
chest, drawing her attention to his long fingers, dusted with dark hairs.
Powerful hands, more a workman's than a scholar's, and yet somehow still
elegant.
"I'm crushed," he said.
Diana clicked her pen with
force. "No, you're not. Now, let's get back to business. These artifacts
are over three thousand years old, worth a heck of lot of money, and my
client wants them back."
He raised a brow in apparent
amusement. "It might help if you told me what you're looking for."
In spite of her sudden, irrational
urge to lunge across the desk and shake him, Diana maintained her poise.
"A small alabaster box with a gold statuette inside. It's Egyptian. Eighteenth
Dynasty. Were you aware my client had these objects in his private collection?"
Austin leaned even farther
back, resting an ankle across his knee, lacing his hands behind his head -- which
did wonders for showing off his chest. Oh, yes; the man obviously knew
a distraction technique or two himself.
"Steve collects lots of things,
including financially challenged archaeologists, but mostly he collects
pre-Columbian art," Austin said in that low, raspy voice that seemed to
rub against her skin, as soothing-rough as a cat's tongue.
Diana shook off the sensation.
"Did you know he owned Egyptian artifacts? Yes or no, please."
Something very like anger
flashed across Austin's face. "Yes, although not what you've described.
I've seen a few scarab amulets and rings. And I remember him mentioning
pottery and a late Roman funerary portrait. That's it."
Nodding, she jotted down
his answer, then looked up. "He funds your excavations at Tikukul, doesn't
he?"
"His foundation does, in
part. I'm high-profile, and the society likes high-profile. Good PR and
all that."
Diana detected a coolness
in Austin's voice, as if maybe he didn't think too much of his benefactor.
"And you also know about the shipment my client recently lost to thieves."
"Who doesn't? I read the
newspapers, and I talk regularly with Steve."
He jiggled his foot, drawing
her attention to his hiking boots. Well-worn and expensive; boots for someone
who did a lot of walking and climbing.
"And just so we're clear
on this, Ms. Belmaine, I'm paid to find artifacts, not steal them."
Alert to the tension rising
in the room, Diana said evenly, "I never said you stole anything."
"No, but you're considering
it." Austin smiled again, but it didn't quite mesh with his intent, watchful
expression.
"Nothing personal, Dr. Austin.
In my line of work, everybody's guilty until proven innocent."
"Bet that makes you a fun
girl to talk with at parties," he said dryly, then shifted in his chair,
lowering his foot to the floor with a loud thump. "So about this
box and statuette, I assume they belonged to someone famous."
"I'm not at liberty to discuss
specific details, but yes, they have a definite historical significance."
"I don't have to be an Egyptologist
to make a few guesses here. Are you talking about the last pharaohs of
the Eighteenth Dynasty? Tut and company?"
"Let's say that's true."
She kept her expression noncommittal. "Who among Mr. Carmichael's circle
of acquaintances would be interested in acquiring funerary artifacts from
this period?"
Austin laughed, a chest-deep,
genuine laugh that made it almost impossible not to want to laugh along
with him.
"Come on, you're looking
at a select group of wealthy people who obsessively collect old things,
and the older and rarer the better. You're gonna need to come up with better
questions, Ms. Belmaine."
Tamping back a fresh spurt
of annoyance, Diana smiled. Despite his arrogance and attempts to goad
her into losing her cool, she couldn't quite resist the pull of his attraction -- and
it wasn't just his good ol' boy sex appeal, either. Behind the smiles and
studied indifference, he was hiding something. She could all but smell
the lies he'd wrapped around himself.
"Oh, I don't know. I'm learning
quite a lot so far. More than you realize."
At that, Austin sat forward,
elbows on the cluttered desk, his face suddenly serious. "Okay. This has
been fun, but I have another class to teach soon. How about you tell me
why you're really here."
Pushy, pushy. Diana tipped
her head and asked, "What time did you arrive at the Jade Jaguar for the
opening party?"
"I got there at eight, and
left at about ten-thirty."
"At any time did you go upstairs
to the offices or storage room?"
"I drank a lot of Steve's
free wine, and had to use the upstairs john a couple times when the downstairs
one was busy. Other than that, all the action was in the gallery. I didn't
want to miss Steve's big night." Again, a hint of sarcasm colored his tone.
"Why are you asking?"
"Because the theft likely
occurred the night of the gallery's opening. I'm talking with all the guests,
starting with the 'A' names and working my way on down."
"Lucky me, that my name starts
with an 'A.'"
Diana raised a brow at his
sarcasm, then turned her attention to jotting down his answers.
"How good are you?"
Caught off guard by the question,
Diana glanced up. "Excuse me?"
"How good are you?" His focus
on her had suddenly intensified -- almost uncomfortably so. "As an investigator,
that is."
Her face warmed at the suggestive
tone of his voice -- and she didn't like how easily he flustered her. "I always
get my man, Dr. Austin."
Most of the time, anyway.
"That's not exactly an answer."
Diana didn't break eye contact.
"I just wrapped up an insurance fraud case, and last month I recovered
a quarter million in gold bullion looted from a shipwreck off the coast
of Florida."
"A quarter mil." Austin's
expression had turned speculative, assessing -- as if he'd finally decided
to take her seriously. "How'd you do it?"
"It takes hard work and determination,
though sometimes I don't have to work as hard as you might think. The thieves
tried to sell the gold on eBay."
"You're serious?" he asked,
incredulous.
"Nobody ever said crooks
are smart," she said lightly. "Most of them are pretty dumb."
His focus on her sharpened,
and then he smiled. "But you like it better when they're smart."
She shrugged. "It's more
of a challenge that way."
"You like the hunt."
"No, Dr. Austin." Holding
his gaze, she leaned slightly toward him, and smiled back. "I love
the hunt."
A charged tension filled
the room, and as the silence between them lengthened, she sensed she'd
just hit pay dirt. He knew more about what happened at the gallery that
night than he was telling; she just didn't know exactly how much yet.
"Are we done?" Austin asked
evenly.
"For now. Thank you for taking
the time to answer my questions." Diana stood, and pulled a business card
from her purse. "If you hear anything that might help, please give me a
call."
Austin took the card, but
didn't look at it. "Will do."
Diana hitched her purse over
her shoulder and donned the sunglasses for a touch more attitude. She didn't
move away from the desk. "I think you're lying to me, Dr. Austin."
As his smile widened, her
temper snapped. She hated it when people -- especially men people -- thought
they could toy with her just because she was female and blond.
Walking with a deliberate,
languid slowness around his desk, she leaned down, close enough to smell
the scent of his soap and shampoo; close enough to see the fine lines around
his eyes, the mingled brown and copper shades of his hair, the reddish
beard stubble...and to feel the tension vibrating off him.
A tension thick with as much
sexual awareness as anger.
"I'll be watching you," she
whispered in his ear, her lips nearly brushing his warm skin. She moistened
her lips with her tongue, and he tensed. "And if you did help yourself
to a couple extra party favors from my client's gallery, I'll take you
down, no matter how much it'll break my poor little heart to see your very
fine ass in jail."
In such an intimate proximity,
she could feel every touch of his breath. Finally, she stepped away. Though
she yearned to knock that damn grin off his face, she coolly blew him a
kiss, then strolled out the door and shut it firmly behind her.