“Vodka?”
Bokeria shook his head. “No.”
Mikhail fixed a drink for himself and strolled over to Sergei. “Please, sit,” he said. “I would offer you a cigar, but I know that Sergei Bokeria does not smoke.”
The big man said nothing.
“So, you have realized that I am not always where my daughter Natalia thinks I am.” He lowered himself onto a leather armchair and took a gulp of his drink. “The answer is simple, and one anyone would expect from a man in my position: I have a female friend, with whom I enjoy spending evenings, and I am often in her company.” He placed the tumbler of vodka down on a polished table.
“And for this you lie to Natalia?” He did not add, although he wanted to, “and me?”
“I did not wish to complicate my situation with Natalia by telling her of this special friend.” He reached for the drink and knocked it back. “I think it would be difficult for her to hear, especially because of her unsatisfactory relationship with Alec Rodin.” He looked thoughtful. “Although now it may be of little consequence.”
“Yes. Conveniently for you, the man is dead.”
Kazakova laughed out loud. “Such dramatics, Sergei! Are you imagining yourself in the starring role of an opera?” His laughter turned menacing and his jaw clenched. “How dare you talk like this to me!” The words were like little daggers. “Have you forgotten your role in this household? You are my daughter’s bodyguard. Your job is to keep her safe, not to comment on current events.” He reached for his glass, slamming it down when he remembered it was empty. He stood. “I’m going to bed.”
“I don’t think so. Not so quickly.” Bokeria reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun. “Sit down.”
Mikhail Kazakova chuckled, but it was a mean, low, sound. “You will regret this, Bokeria. I promise you, you will live to regret these actions.”
“Shut up and listen.” The bodyguard kept the gun trained on his employer. “While you are out sleeping with lady friends and I am here protecting your daughter, her fiancé finds himself stabbed in an alley and she receives a death threat.”
Kazakova’s face went white. “I was not told!”
“Of course you were not told. You were not here. You were too busy putting your private parts into your lover.” He narrowed his eyes, a difficult feat considering the lumps of flesh on his enormous face. “Before Alec was murdered, Natalia had made a friend, a boy named Jeremy, who works on Wall Street as a securities broker. He appears to live beyond his means and has many loans to his university. I am sure Natalia’s fortune must be appealing.” He shifted his bulk in the leather armchair. Across from him, Kazakova’s face was intent. At last I have his interest, Sergei thought.
“So far they have gone on a few innocent outings, nothing serious. He is a likeable boy and he makes Natalia happy.” He paused. “But I think back about this note, the one she received shortly after Rodin’s death, and I ask myself who would send such a thing.”
“Yes?”
“And I believe it was you.”
Bokeria waited for the outburst, the outraged denial that he was sure would accost his ears, but to his surprise, there was nothing.
“How did you know?” Mikhail pursed his lips, waiting.
Sergei ignored the question, because the truth was, he hadn’t known, only guessed. “If I am to keep your daughter safe, Mikhail, I must know if you are Rodin’s killer.”
“A difficult question.”
Bokeria waited. At last Kazakova expelled a long breath of air.
“I did not kill Alec, although I cannot say I did not consider it.”
“Because of Natalia.”
“He was going to take her back to Russia. After all of her years in America, she would not survive.”
“Yes.” Bokeria knew he meant that not only would Natalia dislike it, but that she would be in actual physical danger.
“I offered him—incentives—but he would not agree. The house in Palm Beach, a share of the casino in Monaco, but he laughed, said he was a wealthy man in his own right.”
“The power he had in Moscow—it changed him.”
Kazakova looked up, surprised. “Yes, that’s right.”
“But Natalia is not the only reason to have Rodin killed.”
“I am amazed, Bokeria.”
“Because you expect me to be ignorant of what is going on? I know more than you realize.”
“I see that. And yet you have never tried to extort anything from me.”
“I care only for Natalia’s welfare. She is my job.”
“But it is more than that—”
“Never mind.” He waved the gun. “We are not discussing Sergei Bokeria. Tell me the whole story. Start at the beginning so that I know it all.”
Mikhail Kazakova nodded heavily. “First I will get us both a drink.”
nineteen
Sherry and Penn Cooper were fighting again. After working for them for more than a year, Gina Trovata could see the signs, as clear as a billboard on the New Jersey Turnpike.
On this Tuesday morning, Penn wore his customary “I’m super pissed-off” pout. He poured his coffee and stirred his steel-cut oats while wearing it, managed to gulp them down while pouting, and relented only when kissing the boys goodbye. To his wife he gave a curt nod, much like one would give a leper.
Sherry was not so subtle. She slammed every single thing she came in contact with, including Honey’s water dish, which caused a pool of water to spread like a small farm pond across the kitchen floor. “Jesus @$%*&# Christ,” she screamed, in all her profane glory, and then a chorus of Cooper boys (three of them anyway, because the littlest could not yet speak) repeated her handiwork.
Gina had to pinch her thigh—very hard—to keep from laughing.
When the so-called adults had finally left, and the Designated Car Pool Mom had come to pick up the older ones, Gina looked at Sam and Trevor and clapped her hands. “Let’s do something fun, okay, boys?”
She’d already called Natalia, and invited her on a quick outing which dovetailed nicely with Natalia’s last investigative journalism class. “We’re going to go through Central Park,” Gina confided, “and look for everything we can find that digs.”
“Digs?” Natalia had been confused.
Gina laughed. “These are little boys, Natalia. They are all about trucks, destruction, flying dirt—you name it. The baby can’t even talk and he practically poops himself when he sees an excavator. It’s in their DNA.”
Natalia had sounded dubious, but she agreed.
“Where should we meet?” Natalia asked.
Without even trying she sounds like a KGB spy, thought Gina.
“Come to our residence,” Gina suggested. “Eighteen—twenty-two. See how the other half lives for a change.”
“The other half?”
“Oh, never mind. Just get on over here at nine o’clock. That way we’ll have some time together before your class starts at eleven.”
Natalia came and the little Coopers took curious peeks from their stroller. Gina steered everyone down to the lobby, past Ramon, and out to the park. “Truck,” Trevor was saying, his blonde head ready to find the first front-loader or dump truck that came his way. Gina smiled.
“So,” she began, looking at Natalia. “How are you doing, you know, since your fiancé was killed?”
The Russian girl shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I am sad that Alec is gone, but I cannot deny that the marriage was not something I wanted.”
“Then why were you in it?”
Again the shrug. “It was arranged for me, many years ago.”
Gina stopped pushing the stroller and looked into Natalia’s eyes. “Okay, so this is what I don’t get. You’re a smart girl, taking advanced journalism classes at Columbia, right? You let yourself get stuck in some archaic arranged m
arriage, and the only way you escaped was because the guy conveniently got stabbed?”
Natalia’s brown eyes flashed. “I do not need interrogations, thank you. I will head home.”
“No.” Gina reached out a hand. “I’m sorry. I’m like that—too outspoken. I shouldn’t comment on things I know nothing about.”
Natalia watched her awhile, and then jerked her head, indicating that they should resume walking. “I am really not so—how do you say—thin-skinned, but …”
“It’s okay. I was out of line.”
The women walked in silence for several minutes, the only noises coming from Trevor, as he attempted to identify nearly everything they passed.
“Have you ever been overweight,” Natalia asked, “but it has been long enough that you have clothes that fit you, and people who expect you to look a certain way. You don’t feel particularly bad, you just don’t feel totally like yourself.”
Gina nodded.
“Then one day you look at yourself in the mirror, and you say, ‘This just isn’t me.’” She turned to Gina. “That was how it was with my engagement to Alec Rodin. One day I looked at my situation and I said, ‘This is not Natalia Kazakova.’ I do not want to be this man’s wife, I do not want to be the mother of his children, and I do not want to be his property.”
“And what did you do?”
She smiled. “At first? Absolutely nothing. What could I do? My father had arranged the marriage. I’d known Alec for years and years. He was like a big brother to me, giving me advice, always watching out. I was just a pawn in their chess game.” She grinned. “But luckily, I was a pawn with brains.”
“Go on …”
“I realized that I was doing very well in my English classes, and that I loved to write. And so I begged the School of Journalism to let me take an advanced course.” She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t hurt when I ask for things that my father is a billionaire, and sometimes I use this to my advantage.” A quick shrug. “In any case, I was enrolled in the school, and I began my course of studies. The work, the research, it made me feel …” she paused, grew quiet, sought Gina’s eyes. “I felt completely happy, as never before.”
“You found your passion,” said Gina.
“Yes, I believe that is right. I am meant to be a journalist. I am meant to uncover the story, the truth.”
Gina nodded. “I understand. I really do.” She thought of the day she found her first vintage suit and realized that she was not the only one who saw the value in the design and fine workmanship. It was validation for her longings, her inklings—the first assurance that what she imagined could be her life’s work.
“And then what happened?”
Natalia tilted her head. “Instead of feeling happy for me, Alec was dismissive. He insisted that I wrap up ‘my little classes’ and help plan the wedding. He told me that I would be coming back to Russia, and that my American schoolwork would be unnecessary.”
Gina’s dark eyes smoldered. If this kind of thing could happen to the daughter of a billionaire, no wonder the women of the world were so challenged. She took a breath. “What did you do next?”
“Next?” Natalia shrugged. “I made a plan. An idea of how to be rid of him.” She put up a finger. “No, wait a minute—first I met someone with an interesting story.”
“Vera Graff?”
“I see I am not the only one with a good working brain.” She grinned. “Vera gave me the idea for my final Investigative Journalism paper. Her story had everything—greed, revenge, honor, and patriotism. I knew instantly that this was an account only I could tell.”
“Yes?”
“And Alec put his foot down, saying I was way out of line with such irresponsible reporting, and that I would get many innocent people in trouble, including himself and me. He explained the power of a new organization in Russia, the FSB, and warned me that their reach was long and wide. He knew better than to forbid me to publish the story, but he told me that if I did it, I would be ruined, and possibly killed.” Her voice grew softer. “I knew I had found my way out. I would pursue my research.”
“What is this all about, anyway?”
“Real estate that was stolen after the Russian Revolution.”
“Isn’t that ancient history?”
She shook her head. “In Russia, the past is always with us.”
“Yes, but what makes it important today?”
“Those buildings that were stolen from so many are being resold for millions of dollars, and the families of exiles are finally speaking out.”
“And Vera belongs to one of those families?”
“Apparently so.”
Gina bit her lip. “Did you hire someone to kill your fiancé?” she asked.
Natalia paused. “No. I thought about it, when I was angry, and I may have spoken to someone close to me, but it wasn’t a serious conversation. I could not kill Alec because I know that he did care for me.” Her lips curled upward. “However, it is true that someone killed Alec Rodin.”
“How do you know you’re not responsible?”
“The person I spoke to would never have used a saber.” She looked across the path, a short distance from where they were walking, and Gina followed her gaze. The hulking form of Sergei Bokeria loomed over the other walkers.
“I see,” Gina said.
“Believe me,” Natalia said, nodding toward her bodyguard. “He would have used his bare hands.”
Beside them, in the stroller, Trevor let out an excited squeal. Two men with shovels were digging an enormous hole, probably to replace a tree that had perished during the winter. To Gina it looked as if it could easily hold a body.
“Dig! Dig! Dig!” Trevor yelled.
Gina took a deep breath. Things were getting surreal.
_____
On the other side of the path, Sergei Bokeria kept watch over Natalia, the nanny, and the enormous stroller. He thought of the story Mikhail had told him in the early hours of the morning, a story that reminded Bokeria of a deadly game of roulette.
Mikhail admitted that he had decided the impending marriage between his daughter and Alec Rodin was a huge mistake. After Natalia’s four years in America, attending an American university, Mikhail had come to the conclusion that she would never again fit in Russian society. “She is too liberal,” he said, “too outspoken.” And so he had tried to convince Rodin to live in the States, offering his many real estate holdings as enticement. But Rodin had not taken the bait.
“I decided that if Alec would not come willingly, perhaps he needed to be forced out of Russia,” Mikhail admitted. As part of this plan, Mikhail started a covert campaign with Russian authorities to cast Rodin in an unflattering light. “I thought that if they began asking him questions about his real estate dealings, his investments, he might decide it was no longer wise to stay in Moscow.” Although he hadn’t known about it until after Rodin’s death, he realized that Natalia’s research paper had played perfectly into this scheme. “I know she thinks that I have been against her career, but I have kept up this pretense so that Rodin would not suspect.”
And yet, Mikhail had admitted to Sergei, his machinations against Rodin did not seem to be working. “He was more determined than ever to return to Russia, with Natalia as his bride.”
Mikhail said that the night before Rodin was killed, he’d decided that the only way to keep from losing his daughter forever was to tell Rodin the truth. “I thought of Irina, and knew that I must do whatever was necessary.”
“Including murder?” Sergei had asked.
Mikhail’s eyes were more hooded than usual. He downed the last of his third vodka and faced the bodyguard. “Yes, including murder. But I tell you, I did not do it. I had not yet spoken to Alec. I had been prepared to offer him my fortune if need be.”
Sergei could not envision Mikhail giving up his fort
une for Natalia, but stranger things had happened. The men had stood, embraced in a bear hug, and gone to bed.
Now Sergei regarded the young women across the stone path, glad that—at least for the moment—her world was safe.
_____
Rona let herself in to Devin’s apartment, feeling the hush of the space settle on her shoulders like a lacy shawl. The morning sun was coming through the windows and the noises from the street below were muffled. It really is a peaceful place to have lived, she thought.
She moved through the few rooms slowly, lifting objects that caught her attention, holding them, and putting them back in their places. She wasn’t sure why she was doing it, but it felt right, and so she continued.
Here, on the window shelf in the bedroom, was Devin’s small stuffed alligator, her go-to cuddle toy since age three. Rona remembered buying it in a tourist trap in Fort Lauderdale. They had gone to Florida for the funeral of Rona’s aunt Sylvia, and Devin had squealed when she saw the green gator. Rona picked it up, held it for a few moments, noticing how the tail looked as if it had been chewed.
Devin’s watch, which the girl had hardly ever worn, was on the dresser, along with her collection of earrings, and a lipstick, Crazy for Cappuccino. Rona smiled, looked at the color. She pulled open the top drawer. Birth control, a passport, and a small ring of keys, along with a few pair of underwear. Rona picked up the keys and noticed they were labeled. Under them was a business-sized envelope, puffed up as if it contained something. She peered inside. A neat stack of hundred dollar bills—at least twenty of them—were tucked inside.
Rona took the envelope and the keys and shoved them in her pocket. Where had her daughter been getting this cash? Selling drugs? Her friend Heather had mentioned something about a new man in her life—was he the one showering her with money?
Distracted, she let her eyes sweep over the rest of the room. Devin’s phone was on the nightstand, atop a thick textbook, and Rona put the phone in her pocket with the other items. Her hand brushed a few knickknacks but she was no longer interested. Suddenly the apartment’s walls were too close, and she felt as if she could not breathe. She stumbled to the door and locked it behind her, hoping to escape before she ran into Heather or anyone else.
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