Free Capriccio by Joan Smith Page B

Sean. “He wouldn’t even tell me, and I’m Victor’s niece.”
    “I’m your fiancé,” he decided. “Maybe you better let me do the talking.”
    Help was one thing, and appreciated, but taking over was less welcome. This was a family matter, and he sounded like he didn’t think I could handle it. “No, maybe I better not!” He took my decision quietly, so I let him tag along.
    Mr. Bartlett looked more prepossessing than his voice had led me to imagine. He was tall, a slender man with graying hair and tinted glasses. He wore a dark suit, even in summer, and had a private office of sorts, the privacy diluted by a glass wall from the waist up.
    I introduced Sean as my fiancé, and rushed on to do the talking myself. I figured an appeal to Bartlett’s greed was my best lever, and outlined that my uncle would be greatly embarrassed to have his financial reputation stained by not meeting his loan payments, so if he’d just tell me how much the payment would be, and when it was due, I’d sell some securities (this I managed without a blush) and make the payment for him. Was it due now?
    “Oh no! Not till the middle of July. He only arranged the loan a week ago. It’s these distressing stories in the newspapers that have caused the alarm. As I said, it was rather a large loan,” he added, brows raised. A man probably in charge of millions, and he was as scared as a jackrabbit.
    “Over a million?” Sean asked nonchalantly. He had turned on the Texas accent for the occasion. “I don’t know as I see my way clear to handling anything over a million, darlin’,” he added in an apologetic aside to me.
    “Dear me, no! Not a million!” Mr. Bartlett exclaimed, and laughed aloud with relief. “More in the amount of a hundred thousand. Over one hundred thousand,” he added importantly.
    Sean smiled and tossed up his hands. “No problem. It might help us locate Mr. Mazzini if you’d let us have a look at his account. I reckon he deposited the money in his account here. If he drew a check on it, it’ll give us an idea what he did with the money and hopefully a lead on where we can find him.”
    “But he didn’t take a check. He asked for cash,” Mr. Bartlett said, and I believe he regretted the disclosure as soon as he’d made it.
    “Cash! Isn’t that very unusual?” I asked.
    “Highly irregular, but Mr. Mazzini has always been a rather—unusual customer. Not to say he doesn’t repay when he overdraws, but the artistic temperament . . .” He hunched his narrow shoulders forgivingly. “I thought it had to do with opening a Swiss account, or something of that sort,” he added, looking to the Texas tycoon for agreement.
    Sean nodded obligingly, as if he had a few million stashed in Switzerland himself. “How much over a hundred thousand?” he asked. To reproduce his accent would be impossible. It was Texan and broadly drawn.
    “He asked for two hundred thousand. I couldn’t see my way clear to letting him have that much. Of course he has good collateral. He borrowed between one and two hundred thousand—halfway between,” he said, giving us the total in this oblique way, and with some anxiety that he was straying from the path of banking rectitude.
    I blanched. “Now don’t you worry your pretty little head about a thing, darlin’,” Sean told me.
    We all three sat looking at each other for a minute, then Sean gave a jerk of the head, and I began the ritual of leaving, thanking Mr. Bartlett, and assuring him the loan was in no jeopardy. As Mr. Bartlett wasn’t aware of the insignificant nature of my bank balance and the spurious nature of Sean’s accent and fortune, he looked relieved.
    "A real pleasure to meet you, sir,” Sean said and clamped Bartlett’s hand.
    He took my arm, and we hustled out to the street. “At least we know what’s being looked for now,” I said.
    “He got the loan a week ago. Do you think he was still carrying around the cash?”
    Upon consideration, it sounded