Three Fates

puzzled than interested, Cleo sipped her coffee, strong and black. “So?”
    “He was a collector, art and artifacts. There was a piece in his collection, a small silver statue of a woman. Greek style. I represent a party that’s interested in obtaining that statue.”
    Cleo said nothing as her breakfast was served. The scent of food, particularly food she wasn’t going to have to pay for, put her in a cooperative mood.
    She scooped up a bite of egg, picked up a slice of bacon. “Why?”
    “Why?”
    “Yeah. This client got a reason for wanting some little silver woman?”
    “Sentimental reasons, primarily. There was a man back in 1915 who was traveling to London to purchase it from your ancestor. He made an unwise choice in his mode of transportation,” Gideon added as he helped himself to Cleo’s bacon. “And booked passage on the Lusitania. He went down with it.”
    Cleo studied the selection of jams and settled on black currant. She slathered a slice of toast generously as her mind worked through the story.
    Her grandmother on her mother’s side, the one family member who’d been human and humorous, had been a White-Smythe by birth. So his story gelled, as far as it went.
    “Your interested party’s waited over eighty years to track down this statue?”
    “Some are more sentimental than others,” he said evenly. “You could say this man’s fate was determined by that small statue. My job is to locate it and, if it remains in your family, to offer a reasonable price for it.”
    “Why me? Why not contact my mother? You’re a generation closer that way.”
    “You were closer geographically. But if you’ve no knowledge of the piece, that’s my next step.”
    “Your client sounds pretty screwy, Slick.” Her lips curved as she bit into her toast. Her eyebrows winged up, making the beauty mark a velvet period on a sexy exclamation point. “What’s his definition of a reasonable price?”
    “I’m authorized to offer five hundred.”
    “Pounds?”
    “Pounds.”
    Jesus, Jesus, she thought as she continued to eat with every appearance of calm. That kind of money would fatten her get-out-of-Dodge fund. More, it would help her get back to the States without losing face.
    But the man must have tagged her as an idiot if he thought she was buying his story from top to bottom.
    “A silver statue?”
    “Of a woman,” he said, “about six inches high, holding a kind of measuring spool. Do you know it or not?”
    “Don’t rush me.” She signaled for more coffee and continued to plow her way through the eggs. “I might have seen it. My family has a lot of dust catchers, and my grandmother was the world title holder. I can check on it, if you add another fifty to that,” she said with a nod toward the note sticking out from under Yeats.
    “Don’t wind me up, Cleo.”
    “A girl’s got to make a living. And the extra fifty’s less than it would cost your client to send you to the States. Plus, my family’s more likely to cooperate with me than a stranger.”
    Which is bullshit, of course, she thought.
    Considering his options, Gideon slid the half bill across the table. “You’ll get the other fifty if and when you earn it.”
    “Come by the club tomorrow night.” She plucked up the bill, stuffed it into her jeans pocket.
    Not an easy feat, Gideon mused, as those jeans appeared to be painted on.
    “Bring the money.” She slid out of the booth. “Thanks for the eggs, Slick.”
    “Cleo.” He closed a hand over hers, squeezed just hard enough to be sure he had her attention. “You try to hose me, it’s going to make me irritable.”
    “I’ll remember that.” She tossed him an easy grin, tugged her hand free, then strolled out with a deliberate swing of hips.
    She made a statement, Gideon mused. Any man with a single red corpuscle would want to fuck her. But only a fool would trust her.
    Eileen Sullivan hadn’t raised any fools.
     
     
    CLEO WENT STRAIGHT to her apartment, though calling the single room an apartment was like calling a Twinkie a fine dessert. You had to be either really young or stupidly optimistic.
    Her clothes were hung on the iron rod that was screwed into a water-stained wall, stuffed into the banana-crate-sized dresser with its missing drawer, or tossed where they landed. She’d decided the problem with growing up with a maid was you never learned to be tidy.
    Even with its single dresser, cot-sized bed and lopsided table, the room was crowded. But it was