by Ritter Ames
My eyebrows shot toward my hairline, and the question even shocked Cassie enough for her crying to stop.
“No, Superintendent, I do not. Given the business she and I are in, the only reason I could imagine would not bode well for Nelly’s honesty. I prefer not to assume anything.”
“Understood.”
As the coroner’s van pulled away, another Met sedan drew to the curb. Whatley held up a finger to signal everyone to wait and stepped out to talk to the officer. He came back and said, “I think you’ve answered enough questions at the moment. You’ve both had a succession of shocks today. This car will take you home. I’ll contact you tomorrow.”
“The tapestry—”
“I’ll try to have it in a state to release to you then as well, if the tapestry is what we find packed into the box under the chair.”
I wondered about him suddenly wanting to get rid of us, but he was right. I felt wiped out and Cassie was upset. I had nothing else to tell him. Until I remembered my package from the hotel. “Superintendent, the package you picked up for me—”
“Oh, right.” He opened the outer door and stepped back, allowing us to leave first. He walked past us to his vehicle and opened the passenger door. “Here it is. The X-ray shows what appears to be a jewelry box. If you like, you can open the package here before you leave.”
“No, it’s fine.” I shook my head. “I feel silly having asked you to retrieve it. But with this afternoon…I…well…”
“Absolutely fine. If I hadn’t gone to fetch it, I might not have been as close when you called me from here.”
I shivered, though not from the cold.
“Let’s get you into the car and on your way.” Whatley herded us into the patrolman’s car, handing over the heavy box.
Before he shut the door, I asked, “Didn’t you have some pictures you wanted us to see?”
He shook his head. “Now that you’ve identified the victim as the guard in the back hall, there’s really no need. You said Babbage was the only one you could identify on the screen. The rest of the group you only heard, correct?”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw some arms and backs, but nothing to help me identify any of the others.”
“Very good. Try to relax tonight and get some rest,” Whatley said. He stepped back to close the vehicle’s door.
I squeezed Cassie’s hand and gave the uniformed officer the address of my new hideaway hotel.
Eight
My latest hotel home was slightly larger than my former abode. A little brighter, with a corner location and more windows. More neutrals in the furnishings. However, I regretted being farther from the city center. The old hotel was much handier, and cozier with its light mauve-y décor. I’d get used to the change, I told myself. Or the differences would force me to finally make a flat search a priority.
While Cassie wandered through the amenities, rubbing a hand along the fabric and woodwork in her tactile fashion, I pulled my cases and checked everything had been packed and transferred. Especially the not-so-public gadgets I used to get into places where I didn’t exactly have an invite.
Most of my smaller super-secret tools and gizmos stayed stashed in my Fendi for ready access. Larger things, like my climbing gear and the electronic wonders I got from a wizard in Zürich, waited patiently in a hard-sided case with a complicated keypad entry. I checked anyway. Everything seemed present and accounted for.
I sat down on the eggshell and beige bedspread and turned my attention to the box Whatley handed over as we left Nelly’s.
The wrapping showed no return address, just my name and the foundation’s address. A sticker on the wrapping showed the time of pickup—nine a.m. Greenwich—and the delivery service—Speedy Joe’s. My eyebrows raised a little. The name sounded more like a fast food enterprise than one bonded to deliver packages like an antique jewelry case.
At least, I assumed it was antique. The superintendent told me the X-ray appeared to show such a box. No age implied about the piece. But my line of work made it reasonable to assume the item was centuries old. The package was heavy.
I tore through the brown wrapping, keeping an eye out for any kind of business card or note attached to the paper. Cassie finally finished her tour and took a chair nearby to watch my progress. The jewelry case was well packed inside a cardboard shipping container. I pushed aside packing peanuts and unwound a final layer of flannel protecting the finish. The item was semi-vintage and made of some kind of blue marble. A white filigree design chased across the top and around the sides, and a brass lock on the front panel held the top tightly closed. The matching brass key was taped to the bottom of the box. Well-made, and obviously expensive, it measured approximately ten inches long by eight wide and about four inches tall.
“Oh, lovely,” Cassie said.
“Pretty, but seemingly contemporary and anonymous.” I checked out the bottom for marks and found one by an Italian artisan whose heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s. I hoped there was a letter or something inside to point toward the owner of the piece. The outside looked pristine. Whoever sent it likely wasn’t looking for restoration work. Maybe they needed authentication. I turned the key and lifted the lid.
Luckily, I was sitting down with the jewelry case on my lap. I might have dropped it otherwise. There wasn’t any kind of letter of introduction or instruction. There was, however, a large photograph positioned over the jewelry pieces in the two compartments. It was a picture of two people, one of whom was my mother.
Taken in an unguarded moment, the photo showed love radiating from her face. She looked exactly the way I remembered. Her hair and dress pointed to fashion shortly ahead of my birth, by maybe two or three years. No more than that. But the man to the side, the one looking back at her and whose expression matched the emotion on my mother’s face, was not my father. It was the same man who appeared in the smaller shot with my mother and her friend Margarite—the mysterious photo slipped into my purse at the October event in Florence.
I lifted the picture away to see inside, but kept the photo pinched tightly between my right index finger and thumb. In the two long velvet-lined compartments I found the kind of big eighties earrings my mother adored. There was a pair of aquamarine and diamond ones I knew had matched her eyes, along with a necklace and bracelet to match. A separate compartment held a pair of diamond chandelier-style earrings sharing space with a diamond choker and bracelet. There were more, but I was feeling overwhelmed.
“Laurel, what—”
I raised a hand to stop Cassie’s words. No way I could put voice to any of the questions running through my mind at the moment. Without a jeweler’s loupe I couldn’t be sure, but everything looked real. Real expensive. If these were my mother’s, where had they been stored? Why were they sent to me nearly twenty-five years after her death?
Returning the photograph to its place atop the jewelry, I looked closer at the man’s image. As with the previous picture, my thoughts as I gazed on it were how beautiful my mother looked, how much I looked like her—and how the man looked remarkably like Rollie, Devin Moran’s grandson and heir apparent to the criminal mastermind’s empire. Rollie, the same young man Jack and I had been trying to find for months, and who suddenly appeared before us during the fireworks display.
I wasn’t sure what this photo and jewelry box meant. The man in the picture would have to be in his sixties if he was still alive. Was he Moran’s son or a younger brother? Had to be some relative. I’d looked under every digital rug I could find but still didn’t know all the names Moran even used, and which was truly his family surname. Jack and Nico had helped with the task, but I hadn’t told them about the picture I received in Florence with this anonymous man in the frame of the shot. So they hadn’t been looking for another Moran heir. In time sequence, the first photo I received was taken almost a decade ahead of the one I now held.
>
Guilt and fear made me wish I had told Cassie and the guys. We could maybe have known who this mystery man was by this point. Guilt and fear were also the reasons I held back the information all these months. Fear of what I might learn about my mother, and guilt I was even thinking there was a connection between her and Moran’s family. She was my mother; I shouldn’t even be considering a connection with this criminal element. Yet my eyes told me otherwise. The gaze they shared in the shot was too intimate to ignore.
From research we’d successfully gained over the past couple of months, we knew Rollie was the son of Moran’s daughter. I’d never seen verified photos of Moran at this age, and I wouldn’t have been certain of a family resemblance between him and this mystery man if I hadn’t met Rollie during the first phase of this operation.
Rollie was a few years under thirty, and this man looked late thirties. I had to believe they were connected. Especially since each time one of these “presents” got delivered, Rollie turned up wherever I happened to be.
What was my mother’s relationship to this man in the photo and his family? Besides the fact I tried constantly to put Moran, the patriarch of the family, behind bars every chance I could?
I wasn’t sure what this photo and the jewelry box meant, but I knew one thing—I was sick of getting blindsided by someone determined to play mind games with me.
“Do you know her?” Cassie asked.
“She was my mother.” I brushed the photo softly with a finger, then passed it to Cassie.
Cassie studied the shot and said, “Of course. She could be your older sister, the two of you look so much alike. What’s she, five years older than you at the time of this shot?”
“Sounds about right. I’m thinking a couple of years before I was born.”
I delved into the treasure chest. Also inside was a pearl necklace matching a pair of earrings I’d been given from my late mother’s estate for my twelfth birthday. If I’d needed any more confirmation—which I didn’t—the necklace offered final proof to my hypothesis about the case and the jewels. Covered up by everything else, I found some bangles I was sure were hers simply because such bracelets were one of the strongest memories I carried in my heart about my mother. Her hand hanging onto mine and a cascade of thin gold, silver, and jewel-toned bangles tinging and dinging anytime she moved her arm. My mother loved bangle bracelets and left dozens behind after she died.
As a grieving four-year-old, I tried to wear them for a while, moving them past my elbow in a futile effort to keep them from falling off. My father confiscated them, saying he couldn’t take the sound. It reminded him too much of her. I wanted to protest, to say the sound was what I loved about them, and how the bracelets’ music made me feel she was yet with us. Except, I comprehended the pain of loss and didn’t want my father to grieve any more than he had to. I was young enough at the time to care about his happiness—I hadn’t been sufficiently hurt yet by his excesses and narcissism.
The bangles disappeared completely soon after my mother’s funeral. I never knew what happened to them. Whenever I brought up the subject I was told, “The topic will not be discussed.”
Fingers trembling, I caught each bracelet and ran the cool metal over the squeezed fingers of my right hand and up to my wrist. I couldn’t stop myself from making the bangles dance.
“This came from Rollie. I know it did,” I said. I set the jewelry case on the bed and got up to pace. Emotions and adrenalin were fighting for control, and I had to move or spontaneously combust. The previous “gift” I’d discovered secreted in my purse in Florence, a compact and picture of my mother before she married my father, had all the earmarks of being planted by Rollie at the black-tie event. I couldn’t be sure as others had equal opportunity.
After what happened last night—or rather, early this morning—and this anonymous delivery…Well, I wasn’t feeling puzzled any more. In fact, I was feeling righteously nosy.
I called Nico. He picked up immediately. “Pronto!”
“Can’t you say ‘ciao’ like other Italians?” I said.
“Other Italians say ‘pronto’ too,” Nico said, his accent making his words sound like a grumble. “I cannot help it if the English misuse the word. I expected you to call sooner. The Scotland Yard superintendent telephoned Jack about Simon’s little stunt, and the dead man you found a few hours later.”
The irritation in his voice came through clearly. Though I’d left a message for Jack to return my call, I hadn’t specifically mentioned the attack, and Nico’s testiness made sense. “I knew you and Jack had your hands full with the Tony B situation. I didn’t want you sidetracked, and Scotland Yard leapt right in as soon as I notified Whatley.” He gave a kind of soft snort, and I assumed it meant all was forgiven. I pushed on. “There’s more though, Nico. I want your help, but I don’t want Jack to know what I’m going to ask you.”
“Unfortunately, this will be problematico.”
Almost as clear as Nico’s voice, I heard Jack growl, “Let me speak to her.”
“I don’t want to talk to—”
“Not an option.” Jack had apparently liberated Nico’s phone and was speaking directly to me. “What don’t you want me to know?”
I chewed my lip. In order to break into Moran’s Mayfair address to see if there was anything inside pointing to this jewelry cache or my mother, I needed Nico. But I wouldn’t get to talk to Nico until I told Jack what I planned. Or lied my way out of the current predicament. It was already past six o’clock. No time to spare. “Okay, the truth is, I want to get into the Mayfair address you said Rollie stayed at last night. I want to see inside.”
Jack’s voice filled the speaker. “Why would you even consider such a foolhardy thing? We know he’s fled the scene.”
“He left something behind, and I want to see if there are any more surprises that may come my way.” I filled him in about the jewelry box, my mother’s picture, and her probable gems inside. “I didn’t tell you about a picture and compact I received the night of the Florence event. I wasn’t sure it was Rollie who slipped it into my purse at the time, but this delivery makes me certain. The reason I want to get into the Mayfair house is because Nico did a recon through it in September, the night you and I found the Welshman at the docks. He already knows the setup, and I figured he could help me get in tonight without getting caught. I’m going to wear the special computer glasses he gave me. He can see and hear everything I encounter along the way and talk me through any obstacles.”
Jack blew out a long breath. “Do you want to know the status of Tony B?”
“Well, sure. I was going to ask in a minute.”
“He’s dead.”
“From the assault in prison?”
“He was stabbed by an inmate,” Jack said. “The injury wasn’t what killed him, however. He’d been to surgery. The doctors thought he had every chance of recovery.”
“What do you mean?”
Cassie walked closer, trying to hear, and I activated the speaker option.
“Less than an hour ago, he was wheeled out of recovery and given a strong painkiller when he was put into his bed in intensive care,” Jack replied. “We were able to talk to him for a minute. He still suffered the effects of the anesthetic, but he repeated one sentence three times when he saw me.”
“What was it?”
“‘Get Beacham.’”
“That’s it?” Too many things were hitting me at the same time, and Cassie’s eyes grew wider by the second.
“Yes.” Jack sighed. “We’ve learned nothing else. You can see why—”
“Back up a second,” I interrupted. “You said Tony B is dead, but the doctors had thought he would recover. Are there some missing details?”
“As we left his area of intensive care, the doctor came to do a follow-up exam. Tony B was mostly out of i
t, so Nico and I and my friend in Italian law enforcement went downstairs for coffee. When we came back, the floor was a madhouse. Code blues were being shouted in Italian, and Tony B had flat-lined. Despite best efforts, no one could revive him.”
“What happened?” I had a sinking feeling I wouldn’t like the answer.
Jack spoke almost mechanically, like he was reading from a bulleted page of notes. “The guard told my friend everything went downhill once a redheaded nurse went into the room. She entered a few minutes after the doctor left. She had the proper IDs to get past the guard, and had a filled syringe on the metal tray she carried. She was in the room less than a minute and smiled at the guard as she left, hurrying down the hall toward the next wing. Seconds later, Tony B’s alarm sounded, and everyone came running. Everyone except the very tall redheaded nurse.”
“It was the Amazon,” I said.
“Our conclusion as well.”
“Did you get pictures off the security cameras?”
“We did,” Jack said. “She managed to turn most of her face away each time. Not enough to get an identification with recognition software. The last camera caught her leaving the building and jumping into a waiting Fiat 500 with obscured plates.”
“Damn!”
“The guard did get a good look at her,” Jack said. “Meaning there’s a chance of making an ID after he works with the police sketch artist.”
“I’m guessing she wore latex gloves the whole time.”
“No fake nurse and real assassin would be without them,” he quipped.
“Why can’t something ever be easy on this case?”
“What? Take out all the challenge?”
I started pacing again, trying to figure out what I needed to say. “I get why you don’t want me taking off on rabbit trails.”