Tell Me No Lies by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page A

did you know this one was fake? Wasn't the surface dirty enough?''
    Lindsay's laugh was soft, rippling, as sensuous as silk sliding over skin. Catlin sensed Yi's indrawn breath as the Chinese leaned toward the glass like a man seeing a dream condense just beyond his reach.
    "Mr. O'Donnel," she murmured, trying not to smile, "that isn't dirt, that's patina, the pride and glory of mature bronze. And no, there's nothing wrong with it. After the first five hundred years, it's almost impossible to date a bronze on the basis of its patina alone."
    She turned toward the third bronze.
    "Then how did you know that this was a fake?" persisted O'Donnel.
    Lindsay glanced up from the table. "The inscriptions."
    "Oh."
    With a cynical smile of male understanding, Catlin saw O'Donnel admiring Lindsay's legs as she bent over the table again. Catlin himself was watching each of her movements, listening to each nuance of tone and word choice, trying to find the person beneath the smile and the indigo silk. Two things had come through very clearly to Catlin so far: Lindsay handled the bronzes with love; and she disliked the fraudulent Shang bronze with a feeling that went deeper than an art buyer's desire to avoid being cheated.
    O'Donnel came closer and bent to peer at the rejected bronze. Catlin noted the brush of bodies and the fact that Lindsay took a small step aside that ended the physical contact without making an issue out of it. O'Donnel noticed, too. Without looking up from the bronze he was studying, he eased away, no longer crowding Lindsay.
    "What inscriptions?" asked O'Donnel after a minute, baffled by the mazelike patterns that covered the kuang.
    "On the body," Lindsay said absently, "beneath the handle."
    She picked up the third bronze and turned it slowly in her hands. The piece looked rather like an artichoke sitting in a bowl, with triangular leaves overlapping in an elegant pattern. Holes were cut in the bronze to allow incense to escape. Unlike the other bronzes, the patina on this one was an even cinnamon color that showed off the gold-inlaid hunting scenes to spectacular advantage.
    O'Donnel picked up the rejected kuang, grunted at its weight and peered at the faint line of ideographs. "What's wrong with the inscription?"
    With great care, Lindsay set down the hill-censer she was holding. Catlin saw the slow caress of her fingertips up the bronze's curved side as she withdrew her touch and gave her attention to O'Donnel.
    "The inscription shouldn't even be there," said Lindsay. "Of all the scientifically excavated Shang sites, not one of them has yielded an early bronze with an inscription. Even a simple tribal mark is rare."
    O'Donnel squinted at the damning ideographs and set the kuang back on the table with an audible thump. "What about the third one?"
    "Genuine," Lindsay said quietly, her voice husky. She touched the bronze again, savoring it with her fingertips as well as her eyes and mind. "Exquisite. Han dynasty."
    Catlin sensed Stone's sudden attention and guessed that Lindsay's estimate of the bronze disagreed with that of the other experts the FBI had brought in. Yi, too, seemed surprised. As was Catlin himself. The patina on the piece was simply too even, too perfect. Suddenly he wished that he were in the room himself, able to question Lindsay personally, and to hear her husky answers.
    "But it's smooth, not rough like most of the other bronzes," protested O'Donnel. "And it's a different color."
    "Patina forms quickly in water or wet ground, very slowly in air. That hill-censer was a prized family possession passed down from hand to hand through the centuries, and used only for the most important rituals. It was never a funeral offering buried with its owner."
    Lindsay smoothed her palm over the incense burner that had been cast to resemble hills rising to a central peak. "And the gold," she added, tracing a hunting scene with a delicate fingertip, "never corrodes. This is an extraordinary piece. Where did you