Free Moving Target by Elizabeth Lowell

quest?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then it’s on the house,” she said dryly. “The House of Warrick, that is.”
    Erik thought quickly. Serena hadn’t hired him; she had merely made inquiries. If she decided to have him do the appraisals, there still wouldn’t be a conflict. Whatever he learned during his Rarities research became part of his expertise, which was exactly what she and Warrick paid for. “Is the old man having trouble deciding if the pages are worth appraising?”
    “I’ll let Paul Carson explain. Garrison and Cleary Warrick Montclair will probably be here, too.”
    “By here I assume you mean Rarities headquarters in Los Angeles?”
    “Yes. Ten o’clock this morning.”
    “Today?”
    “The old man is nearly a hundred, what do you think?”
    “I think I can’t make it before two o’clock even if the freeways are clear, and they won’t be.”
    “The chopper will pick you up at nine.”
    Erik let out his breath in a very soft whistle. The last time he had been chauffeured by the Rarities helicopter, he had been riding with the president-for-life of a small African country. The president’s passion, and eventual downfall, had been illuminated manuscripts. He had spent money on them that should have gone to military salaries, ammunition, and outright bribes.
    “Factoid is now head researcher,” Dana continued. “Shel is swamped with chasing some damned Old Master through four wars.”
    “Factoid? Should I be flattered or worried?”
    “Be whatever you want except late.”

Chapter 9
LOS ANGELES
THURSDAY MIDMORNING
    T he helicopter wheeled like a falcon beneath the pilot’s steady hands. Idly Erik wondered if rides like this were the source of his recurring dream. Then he decided it must be his own imagination. He had dreamed of flying like a falcon and running like a staghound long before he had ridden in his first helicopter. In any case, Los Angeles was the opposite of mist-shrouded oak forests and wild meadows swept by wind-driven rain. The hills of L.A. were carpeted by houses and eucalyptus trees. Coyotes rather than wolves sang, and they sang to each other about garbage cans set out at the curb for trash collection rather than a blood-humming chase through ancient oak forests after elk.
    The headquarters of Rarities Unlimited was cut into a hillside high above the concrete sprawl of the city. On the border of commercial and residential zones, Rarities had the best of both worlds. More compound than office or house, Rarities was laid out like a small, very exclusive college campus, with walkways connecting five buildings. No building was more than three stories high. All except one of the buildings were set in a landscape design that owed much to Japan: serenity and evergreens, the sculptural presence of boulders, the soft murmur of water trickling over dark stones.
    The exception to all the clean lines was Niall’s house. It was surrounded by an English cottage garden. No matter what the season, flowers climbed, towered, sprawled, bunched, and ran in careless riot around the wood-and-glass residence. Among the flowers grew herbs that were the source of a running argument between Niall and Dana. He insisted they were useless. She insisted that they were the only part of his garden that was useful.
    The pilot lowered the helicopter down to the pad as gently as a butterfly settling onto a flower. Larry Lawrence was a former marine, former National Forestry Service firefighter, and former traffic reporter for KCLA. If it could be done in a helicopter, he could do it.
    “They’re waiting in Dana’s conference room,” Larry said.
    “Anyone else?”
    “I brought in Garrison and Cleary Warrick Montclair. The Eiffel Tower, too.”
    Larry was five feet seven and one-quarter inches. He disliked really tall men on principle. At just under six feet two inches, Erik was right at the edge of Larry’s tolerance. Paul Carson, aka the Eiffel Tower, exceeded Larry’s personal limit by several inches.