by Alex Ames
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Teeth, Claws, Blood and All
I think my looks scared Henry a little when he approached the scene thirty minutes later. His cop’s eyes inspected the scene routinely but were drawn toward me constantly. I was leaning against the side of a building near the crash site. The police had just reopened all lanes again, and the stop and go slowly dissolved. Police cars, an ambulance that was tending to Jamaica’s head wound, and the Oldsmobile wreck were still standing on the side of the road.
If I had been a smoker, I might have smoked a cigarette, but as I wasn’t, all I did was stand there in my dirty, cut jeans, my ripped shirt, and my uncombed hair, scratches and blood on my face and arms.
Henry wasn’t sure what to do, whether to take me into his arms or not. He leaned beside me; we were not touching each other.
“Are you all right, Cal?”
“Yeah, guess so. Need a new cellphone and clothes. Broke our bottle of wine for tonight and lost the dinner stuff. Lost my appetite. And I am not in the mood to watch the sunset.”
“Rip is on the way to the hospital. There will be guards around him constantly. He will be secured, I think.” Henry sighed. “Incredible!”
“You think?” I asked, too tired to be angry. “You had a suspected cat burglar arrested who may be a little more skilled than your average TV-stealing Joe. He probably had nicked a paper clip from his lawyer or from you. That’s enough for him.”
“You did a good job, honey.” Henry put his strong arm around me and pulled me close.
“Don’t honey me! The kitchen is staying cold tonight,” was all I was able to say.
We all rode up to North Hollywood again. I made my statements over and over; the media was beleaguering the police station. Shit had hit the fan all over the station, and the chief of the station would probably lose his pension over it. By sheer coincidence, an electronics shop manager had filmed Rip’s drainpipe adventure, and it made good showing on the evening news and went viral on Facebook and YouTube.
Good news came in around eight, when Detective Homer called in and told us about the fucking big diamond that had been retrieved from deep within the pool outlet behind a plug and a dead rat. From the description, it could be the Acura diamond. Yeah, high fives all around, one more bad guy behind bars, one more case solved.
It was ten o’clock in the evening when I opened my garden door and found Mundy sitting at the pool, wrapped in a blanket as he browsed a magazine under a weak garden light.
“Hey,” he said and put away the magazine, opening the blanket to invite me.
“Hey, yourself.” I dropped beside him on the large pool chair, and Mundy moved aside and wrapped the blanket around us both.
“You’re famous again.”
“Never been infamous.”
“Good catch. Heard that they retrieved Swan Collins’ famous Acura diamond from the pool of prime suspect Rip Delaware.”
“Yeah, piece of cake,”
“Post-war depression?”
“Just be quiet for a moment, and don’t move,” I said and cuddled up against him.
“What about your personal policeman?” he asked. “His strong arms fell off during the chase?”
“Too complicated for tonight. It was his responsibility, too, to secure Rip, and he slipped up. And he saw my other side today and probably didn’t like what he saw.”
“Your other side? Is that the cat burglar side I hate so much?” Mundy asked.
“No, that is my normal side as you know me. My other side is the tough, violent self. Doesn’t come out often. Scratching and fighting cat—teeth, claws, blood, and all, you know,” I said wearily.
“Hey, even I haven’t seen your other side, and I have known you much longer,” Mundy protested.
“You like me?”
“A lot.”
“See.”
“I see, and I bet your favorite chief of police will, too” Mundy conceded.
“Shut up and hold me,” I said.
He was warm beside me. I was tired, and when I awoke the next morning, I was lying alone on the very same pool chair under two thick wool blankets with a soft cushion under my head and a note pinned under a stone on the small table: “My privilege, luv, Mun.”
The morning papers mentioned my name several times as an important witness but played down the chase. Jamaica was cited with a photo on page three as “the bystander” who had taken on the master criminal when the authorities had been too slow to respond. I decided to call him up one of these days for dinner and a small present.
The case was hot because Rip seemed to fit the different burglaries in the Hollywood area and the Acura diamond had been found in his possession. Rip was in jail, and it looked bad for him and better for me. And that was all that mattered in the end. Dog eats dog.
Some people’s calls were waiting on the answering machine: Mrs. Otis and my parents to ask whether I was okay, probably just hounding for more sensational news. Henry, inquiring how I was, ending with a “Call me, whenever you are ready.”
“Ready for what, Henry?” I asked the answering machine, and it felt like post-war depression all over again.
Fowler Wynn: “Thanks for the Rip Delaware catch and the Acura, Calendar. Saves me millions. Pity about the missing Metro Imperial. Costs me millions. But, it seems you got your head off the block one more time. I’ll keep my eyes on you….”
Thomas Cornelius: “Thomas here. Car chase, retrieved famous diamond, super girl in action. Hope you are all right. Give me a call if you feel like it. You know, I love talking to you.”
Thomas-dear, I will never understand your attachment to me after all these years.
Nicole Berg: “Calendar, I just read about your movie-style car chase through the bay area, and I must say, I am absolutely thrilled and shocked at the same time. If you want to confide in a notorious Hollywood gossiper or meet someone to sell the movie rights, call me up. It’s time that we meet anyway. By the way: next time with an explosion!” I had to laugh about that. At least somebody was able to cheer me up. I decided to give her a call one of these days, indeed.
And the best call of the morning: “Ned Palmeri here, District Attorney’s office. Miss Moonstone, as the situation in the Swan Collins case seems to have been resolved by Rip Delaware’s arrest, we would like to officially clear things. Please give me a call, or have your lawyer Mr. Peters call me. Either way. Have a nice day.”
Delighted, I hung up and dialed Terrence’s number. Let him earn his money.
The next days brought things slowly back to normal. Fowler Wynn’s insurance paid for the stones that Rip Delaware had stolen from my safe and that had not been retrieved in Rip’s possessions. Money in the bank, back to business. My newly ordered diamonds from the East Coast enabled me to start working again and to clear away my backlog. Usually I preferred to buy them in person and be able to inspect them at the dealership, but as I wanted to get things going quickly and didn’t want to travel, I relied on the quality inspection and good taste of my East Coast connections.
Terrence Peters worked things out with Ned Palmeri. We had to appear before the judge a week later, and I was cleared officially of the theft of Pretty McAllister’s necklace and the two Collins’ diamonds. Fowler was sitting in the back of the courtroom and stayed quiet.
I called Thomas in New York. If Mundy and I were a clean 3 on the relationship complication scale from 1 to 10, Thomas Cornelius and I would wind up around 100. He was my former lover coming from an old East Coast family. We once had almost been married and had split under very tragic circumstances—and he had a secret identity as a major art theft crime czar where I had a secret identity as a cat burglar. Let’s put it mildly: things didn’t work out after we discovered each other’s secrets. As I frequently stole valuable art and he frequently bought stolen valuable art, our paths had crossed again, and we had struck a kind of truce simply by avoiding certain topics.
We chatted for a few moments.
&
nbsp; “Did that necklace thing clear up?” he asked.
“Yeah, don’t you worry. I got out clean. It all got blamed on Rip Delaware. By the way, you could do me a favor.”
“Sure, anything,” Thomas offered.
“Remember Uncle Mortimer? He quit New York and supposedly settled down in France or Italy. Could you find out his current phone number for me?”
“You are still not on speaking terms with the old man?” Thomas asked.
“No, after I had decided not to take over his business, we had that terrible fight … you probably remember.”
“How could I not?”
“I mean, he wasn’t close to my family either, so he simply wrapped things up after a few years and called it a professional life. And didn’t tell me where he moved.”
“I will find out. I have many contacts in Europe. Think he settled down under a new name?”
“Possible, but then…”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll let you know. Anything else on your side—you know what I mean?”
I gave a short laugh. “I think the complexity of our relationship is by far the most entangled web of activities, emotions, and hopes that ever existed.” He had to laugh at that, too.
“Well, to answer your question … let us say, I am making good headway,” I told him.
“Take care, Calendar,” Thomas said softly.
“Take care, Thomas,” I said and after a few seconds of silence hung up.
Glad, again, that this call was over.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Master and Apprentice
It took Thomas one day to come up with the contact—and it took me another few days before I built up the courage to make the call. Eventually I did. Uncle Mortimer in Nice, France.
“’allo, Stoneee residence.” A young girl answered in French, probably the maid.
“Mortimer Stone, s’il vous plait.” About as much French as I can utter.
“Qui-est-ce?” Her asking for my name was a good guess.
“Calendar Moonstone.”
“Un moment, s’il vous plait,” the girl said and was gone.
“This is Mortimer, hello?”
“Hi, Uncle Mortimer, this is Calendar.”
“Calendar, how very pleased to hear from you. I heard of your adventures.” He sounded easy going and a little bit older than five years ago when we had spoken last. Mortimer was the much older brother of my mother, Dolores Stone.
“Still well connected to the old home?”
“Just to Thomas. He keeps me in the loop about you from time to time.”
“Listen, Uncle Mort, can I ask you some questions regarding the two of us?”
“Regarding ‘us’?” Uncle Mortimer echoed. “Very intriguing, Calendar.” This was Mortimer at his coolest, not divulging anything, neither information nor emotion.
No reason to beat around the bush. “Listen, when I finished my apprenticeship with you, you expected me to take over your business in New York, didn’t you?”
Mortimer sighed. “Yes, you know that I would have loved to put it into your very capable hands. Your creativeness and the customer base would have made a great combination, but of course you had to do what you had to do. The young women of today have their own heads. Plus, your parents are way out west, and you are doing very well on your own.”
“Are you mad at me?” I asked him carefully to keep the trap open.
Mortimer laughed six thousand miles away. “No, my child, I am not mad at you. Not at all. It was just a business in the end, and I had a fulfilled life with it. And now I have a fulfilled life on the Mediterranean, looking at tourists and beautiful French women over a strong coffee.”
“Glad that you see it that way, Uncle Mortimer.”
“Is that all I can do to keep your uneasy conscience at rest, Calendar?” Mortimer asked.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I cooed. “Maybe I will come over one day and see how you are doing. Would that be okay?”
“Sure, you are invited, anytime you like. I would love your company.”
Time to snap the trap. I said, “Listen, one thing I was always puzzled about: when I finished my apprenticeship and moved back West, you didn’t close down your business immediately. I mean, we didn’t have much contact back then, but I was under the impression that you conducted business for a few more years.”
Uncle Mortimer was silent for a second and then said carefully, “Yes, that is true. I kept the business running for three more years.”
“Three years, a full apprentice cycle?”
“Calendar, is there anything you want to ask me directly?”
“I know that we had an agreement never to talk about the apprentices that were there before me, but if we consider this the fine print: what about any apprentices that came after me?” Now it was out.
Longer silence. “What do you say?”
“The case you read about in the papers? The suspect that was finally arrested was a young man called Rip Delaware. It is probably not his real name, but that doesn’t matter. Fact is, I saw…,” I had to choose the right words here; you never knew who was listening in, “…parts of his working style, and I noticed striking similarities to my work and your work. And after careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that Rip Delaware, or whatever his name is, was an apprentice of yours, just like I had been a few years earlier. And he is about four years younger than me, so his age fits, too.”
Mortimer suddenly chuckled. “Dear, dear Calendar, do I hear jealousy in your voice?”
“Am I right, Uncle Mortimer?” I asked him.
“Calendar, just to put your mind at rest: you have always been my best and most creative pupil, always. Your work will probably last the longest of all the pupils I have had over my long career. But that young man you are talking about, yes, he was an apprentice, too. Coming right after you, as you assumed correctly. And that young man, Robert Dee, as I know him—though I doubt that this was his real name either—he was the most driven one. Where you were happy with a fulfilled task, he wasn’t satisfied. It had to be better, more perfect, more daring, and more dangerous than before.”
I sat in my home, stunned from what I heard from Uncle Mortimer.
“And I find it extraordinary that your paths are crossing now and that you managed to put him away twice.”
“I only put him away once after his break-out attempt and the stupid car chase,” I corrected Mortimer.
He chuckled again. “Come on; allow me the bold assumption that the first time also had your touch. That boy was reckless, and you turned that fact against him. He probably deserves this.”
“Hope you don’t mind me catching him. I mean, it was either him or me to go down. Sounds corny like an old Western movie. For me, only the first outcome was acceptable,” I apologized.
“Oh, no excuses, Calendar, but don’t you think that the end game of your little play is over, yet. Robert, or Rip, has good resources and incredible patience. And he is usually prepared for any unforeseen eventualities, so don’t count him out, yet.”
“That’s what I feared.”
We chatted a few minutes more about this, that, my parents, and my sister and then said goodbye.
I hung up and made a fist in the air. “Rip Delaware, Robert Dee! One of the chosen!”
When I did my apprenticeship in jewelry crafts and cat burglary with Uncle Mortimer, we never talked about all the cat burglars before me. It had been an unspoken arrangement. I had been his first female apprentice, and I had to overcome his inhibitions. I had probably only gotten the job because I was one of the family and he had liked my mother. I had always wondered what had happened to the other artists and burglars. Had they ever been caught at the game? Were they still sitting in jail? Or had they opened small jewelry stores and never used their special skills again? For me, the power it had held in the beginning had never worn off over the years, and maybe I had even become addicted to it. The power to move into other people’s lives and steal precio
us, unique things had been irresistible, and it was hard to imagine that my fellow apprentices had not felt that way toward their newly perfected skills. But then, I had been in a very special situation at the end of my apprenticeship, a very skilled girl at crafting—and pregnant, only to lose my unborn baby and my lover at the same time before moving back to the West, hiding, and building a new life. Maybe that’s why it had become more than a game to me. And maybe Rip had similar motives.
And then: how many cat burglars could coexist in the tight market called the USA? Mortimer had kept his business over a span of almost forty years. Maybe he had churned out five or six apprentices over the years, but how many could have been active without crossing paths?
And Rip and I had quickly crossed swords, in a matter of four years after he had finished his apprenticeship.
The ringing phone brought me back from my thoughts into the present world. I had established my hunch as correct; Rip had taken over his style from the same master that had taught me the tricks of our trade.
I picked up the phone. It was Henry, calling to tell me that Rip had escaped. Again!
He wanted to send over an escort to guard me, as it was expected that Rip would get into contact with me. Henry was embarrassed to no end; fortunately, it hadn’t happened on his watch. And he was worrying about me—that was a nice thing, too. I assured him that I didn’t think that Rip was the grudge-holding type.
After we hung up, I stared at the phone.
And had to laugh aloud. Couldn’t stop laughing. This had turned out better than planned.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Won’t be fooled again!
After life had returned to normal, I picked up my routine—doing morning runs and gymnastics on the beach, spending the day in the workshop, lunching with Mrs. Otis or Mundy, crafting the new collection, and honing whatever skills in the evening.