Veiled Magic by Deborah Blake Read Free Book Online Page B

one in the entire family without a speck of artistic talent. It was quite the disappointment, apparently.”
    â€œBut you just said he had great talent,” Donata protested.
    â€œAs a copyist and a restorer, yes, indeed,” Farmingham said. “He can reproduce anyone else’s work flawlessly. He just hasn’t got the gift for creating anything new, alas.” He started to fade again and brought himself back into focus with increasing difficulty. “I’m afraid I lost touch with him years ago and have no idea where he lives at present. He keeps a very low profile, both to reduce his association with his family and because of his . . . er . . . sideline.”
    â€œYou mean, because he’s a forger,” Donata stated bluntly. “Great. So now I’m going to have to go dig through the records at the station to find the address and phone number of a known felon. Terrific. The Chief ought to really love
that
.”
    Farmingham shook his head. “You won’t find him in any official records, Officer Santori. He’s never been caught, as far as I know. And while he occasionally surfaces for some sort of family gathering he can’t get out of, other than that he seems to vanish from society.”
    â€œWell, that’s just great,” Donata said with a scowl. “So how am I supposed to find this mysterious forger?”
    â€œCopyist,” Ricky the Kobold corrected, and then added helpfully, “I guess you’ll just have to use the Ghouls.”
    Aw, crap.

Chapter Six
    Donata chewed on a ragged cuticle and clicked through to another page in the municipal database. Nothing. Add that to all the other information she’d tracked down about the elusive Peter Casaventi and she had, well, nothing. Squared.
    She glanced at the notes she’d jotted down during a morning spent hunched over the computer hoping that no one would come in and ask her why she was looking up information on a well-known painter’s obscure son. Apparently Farmingham had been right both about Peter Casaventi not being known as a forger and his keeping a low profile.
Damn it.
    All she could find were a few references in the society pages, all concerning his attendance at various high-profile Casaventi family events. Most of the papers referred to him as a “reclusive restorer” and mentioned his “tragic” lack of artistic talent. A few showed pictures of him with beautiful blonde women—all of whom looked more or less alike, and none of whom ever showed up more than once. Not helpful.
    Donata had used all the not-inconsiderable resources available to her as a police officer and hadn’t even turned up so much as a home address. The man had clearly taken secretive to a new level. The address listed on his driver’s license was a condo owned by the family and apparently used as an occasional pied-à-terre by any of the members who might need it. The only phone number in the system was years old and long disconnected. Due to the unusual nature of her work (and the fact that, up until now, she had rarely left the basement to work on a case), she didn’t have the kind of informants network that a typical cop might use.
    She did have her sources, since she’d occasionally had to follow up on information given to her by a victim. But she
really
didn’t want to use them if she didn’t have to. Really, really,
really
didn’t want to use them. She could feel her stomach clench at the thought.
    A large fist rapped briskly on her half-open door, and the Chief slid his impressive bulk into her office and settled it into the only other chair available. It wasn’t as though she did a lot of interviews down here, after all—mostly the cop in charge of a case would come down, explain the case, drop off a file with a picture of the vic, and maybe a suspect or two, and skedaddle as fast as possible back upstairs where the