Laced

by Carol Higgins Clark

  “No! Of course not! With any luck they’ll forget about us.” Brian pulled the covers around his neck and turned off the light. “Head of the Major Case Squad,” he muttered as he closed his eyes.

  I should have known that this project would be too risky, he thought uneasily. We could lose everything. Especially our reputation.

  But we’re in too deep to back out.

  I should have known.

  3

  There’s good reason they call New York the city that never sleeps, Sergeant Keith Waters thought late Monday night as he hailed a cab outside a downtown restaurant. He would be happy to get home. It had been a hectic day at work with his boss on his honeymoon. Jack’s top assistant, Keith—a handsome black man in his late thirties with boundless energy—smiled as he thought about Regan and Jack’s wedding. It had been a blast. People were on the dance floor all night.

  On Sunday, he’d spent the day recovering.

  After working until nearly 11:00 tonight, he’d gone to dinner with a couple of the guys from the office. As the taxi made its way up the West Side, he decided to check his messages at work one more time. Sometimes cases were agonizingly slow to solve. Other times they could break in an instant. Keith loved his job and, like Jack, was always checking in. It was not a nine-to-five existence.

  There was one new message on his voice mail—from one of their paid informants.

  “Keith, I know Jack is in Ireland on his honeymoon. I heard that those two jewel thieves, your favorite Jane and John Doe, are also aware he’s in Ireland. Word is that they might be there now. They plan to ruin Jack’s honeymoon by pulling something off right under his nose once again.”

  Keith couldn’t believe it. The Does were masters of disguise, traveling all over the world and stealing jewelry wherever they went. They worked under numerous aliases. For the last seven years, since their first hit, they had eluded law enforcement. But last year their capture had become a personal crusade for Jack.

  Regan and Jack had gone to a black tie reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A woman lost an emerald bracelet worth $300,000. She thought it had fallen off her wrist at the cocktail party. The next day one of the museum workers found a business card tucked in the corner of a painting. It read:

  WE LOVE EMERALDS. THANKS SO MUCH.

  JANE AND JOHN DOE.

  The thieves had obviously managed to slip the bracelet off the socialite’s wrist without being detected. Regan and Jack had spoken to the seventyish woman, a well-known patron of the arts, during the cocktail hour. Regan had complimented her on the exquisite bracelet. Then when the woman sat down to dinner, she noticed the bracelet was gone. After the calling card was left, Jack realized that the thieves were probably eyeing the emeralds at the same time Regan was admiring them. A month later a valuable diamond brooch was stolen during a fund-raiser at the Chicago Art Institute, and the Doe business card was found again.

  Jack was interviewed after the second theft, vowed to catch the Does, and made no bones about what he thought of their character.

  They must have heard the interview, Keith thought wearily, rubbing his eyes. He hadn’t planned to call Jack on his honeymoon. Heck, he knew he’d probably hear from Jack anyway. But there was no question he had to call.

  Keith looked at his watch. It was 12:30, which meant it was 5:30 in the morning in Ireland. I’ll set my alarm and call the boss in a few hours. He shook his head. Jane and John Doe were really out to push Jack’s buttons—and on his honeymoon, no less.

  He hoped they’d live to regret it.

  4

  At 8:30 A.M. the phone rang in Regan and Jack’s room. Groggily, Jack reached over and picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Is this my new relation, Jack Reilly?” a man with an Irish brogue asked with great enthusiasm.

  Jack rubbed his eyes with his right hand. “I’m not sure,” he joked. “Who’s this?”

  A laugh boomed in Jack’s ear. “Gerard Reilly. Regan’s grandfather and my grandfather were brothers, don’t you know?”

  “Really.”

  “Indeed. Did I wake you?”

  “No,” Jack lied. “Not at all.”

  “I wanted to make sure you were all right. I just heard on the telly that there was a wee fire in Hennessy Castle last night, and I wondered if you needed to come and stay with us.”

  “No!” Jack answered almost too quickly. “Thank you,” he added. “I think they have everything under control around here.”

  “Grand. Well then, I know you were planning on coming around sometime this week. Would you like to come to dinner tonight? They said it might be a day or two before the Hennessy kitchen is up and running again at full steam. My wife is making an Irish stew that is superb.”

  “Let me ask the boss here.” Jack related the conversation to Regan and handed her the phone.

  “Gerard, hello. That sounds great for tonight.”

  “Brilliant. How about coming at six? I think you already have the directions and such, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Gerard. We’ll see you later.” Regan handed Jack the phone.

  As he replaced it in the receiver, he smiled at Regan. “I’m sure your relatives are lovely people, but I don’t want to spend my honeymoon with them.”

  “Neither do I, but tonight’s a good night to have dinner with them—especially if the kitchen is out of commission.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Maybe it’s one of your cousins,” Regan quipped as she pulled the blanket up under her chin. The room was gray and cold.

  “Hello,” Jack answered. He sat up quickly. “Keith, what’s going on?”

  Regan watched as a stunned expression came over Jack’s face. I can only imagine what this is about, she thought.

  “Let me know if you hear anything at all about them. You can call my cell phone at any time.” He hung up.

  “Jack, what is it?”

  “Word is that Jane and John Doe are in Ireland and want to pull something off to embarrass me while we’re here on our honeymoon.”

  “How do they know where we are?”

  Jack shrugged. He was thinking of the large wedding announcement last Sunday in The New York Times and several other newspapers. But there was no mention of their honeymoon plans.

  “What should we do?” Regan asked.

  “Let’s get dressed and go downstairs. I want to find out what happened here last night.”

  When Jack went in to shower, Regan got up, wrapped a robe around her, and closed the windows in the room. She picked up the picture frame that had fallen on the floor, rested it on the dressing table, and studied the sketch of the grounds of Hennessy Castle. Regan then glanced out the back window.

  The lake was still, and the green lawn added some color to the dreary, gray day. All was peaceful and silent, if a little gloomy. In the distance, Regan could see one of the many islands in the large lake. A boat departed from the castle dock every morning and afternoon for an hour-long tour of Lake Hennessy.

  We should do that one of these days, Regan thought.

  Twenty minutes later they were both dressed. As they left the room, they encountered a young room steward in the hallway about to enter the room next door.

  “Good morning,” he said, nodding his head.

  “Good morning,” Regan answered. “There’s some glass in the corner of our room. A print fell off the wall last night.”

  “No problem. That’s the least of the hotel’s problems at the moment.”

  “That’s great,” Jack muttered as he and Regan walked toward the main staircase.

  Down in the lobby, the smell of smoke had diminished. The hotel was eerily quiet. It seemed that all of the other guests were still sleeping off the early morning disturbance. Regan and Jack helped themselves to coffee, which tasted wonderful. China mugs in hand, they walked through the archway to the small reception area just inside the front door, where a young woman was sitting at a computer.

  “May we speak
to the manager?” Jack asked.

  “Certainly, sir.” She stood up and disappeared through a door to a back office. The inner sanctum. The doors behind the front desks of hotels always seemed top secret, Regan thought.

  Jack turned to her—“Don’t worry, Regan. This honeymoon won’t be all about work. I love you.” As he leaned down to give her a kiss, a howl emanating from down the hall startled them both.

  “Ahhhhh!” A moment later a rosy-cheeked housekeeper, wearing a gray dress and carrying a feather duster, came hurrying toward the reception desk. Her eyes were popping out of her head. “May Reilly’s tablecloth is gone! Someone shattered the case in the memorabilia room and stole it! She’s really going to haunt this castle now!”

  Oh my God, Regan thought. I knew we should have gone up there last night.

  The door to the inner sanctum flew open. A weary Neil Buckley rushed out. “For goodness’ sake, Margaret Raftery, calm yourself down, woman!”

  “Calm myself down!” she shrieked. “May Reilly’s gorgeous tablecloth has been stolen. It’s been here for almost two hundred years. There’s going to be hell to pay!”

  Regan and Jack followed the manager who raced up to the memorabilia room. The glass display case had been smashed. Large shards of glass covered the polished wooden floor.

  Jack identified himself and Regan to a despondent Neil. “We’re here to help you,” he said.

  “This room was locked at eleven o’clock last night,” Neil explained, his voice rising. “This must have happened during all the confusion with the fire.”

  The housekeeper, who looked about sixty, appeared in the doorway. She was fanning herself. Sweat had broken out on her forehead.

  She doesn’t want to miss this, Regan thought.

  “Margaret, go home if you must,” Neil ordered. “The last thing I need is hysteria.”

  Margaret nodded and took off.

  But, then again, if you can get the day off, Regan mused.

  “The fire could have been started to cause a distraction,” Jack suggested to Neil. “If thieves tried to steal the tablecloth during the day or even at night, someone might hear them. But with the fire alarm going off and all the confusion, they could move in quickly without being noticed.”

  “Have any of the hotel guests checked out this morning?” Regan asked.

  “Just one elderly couple. They were so upset about the fire and too nervous to stay here.” Neil’s eyes widened. “As a matter of fact, they left an envelope at the desk for you, Jack.”

  Uh-oh, Regan thought.

  They all raced back downstairs. A minute later Jack was ripping open a plain white envelope with his name on it. He pulled out a business card. Scrawled in black ink were the words

  SORRY WE MISSED YOU! WE JUST LOVE LACE TABLECLOTHS,

  ESPECIALLY ONE MADE BY A REILLY!

  HAPPY HONEYMOON!

  JANE AND JOHN DOE

  5

  “Jane and John Doe” were enjoying a gleeful morning. Driving away from Hennessy Castle in their mini Cooper as dawn broke, they had high-fived each other. Anyone who spotted them might have thought it odd to see two elderly folks engaging in a salute most often practiced by a much younger generation. But, of course, Jane and John Doe were not as old as they appeared.

  They were both in their late forties.

  Anna and Bobby Marston, aka Jane and John Doe, never used those names in public or on legal documents. They traveled under several aliases but had decided long ago to address each other as often as possible by the terms of endearment used by couples everywhere, monikers that wouldn’t raise suspicion from anyone who heard them.

  Anna was Hon.

  Bobby was Sweetie.

  The few people they had met in Ireland knew them as Karen and Len Cortsman.

  Now, as they traveled down the old country roads, they were satisfied with a job well done. They were heading home, their home in the Emerald Isle. They had bought an isolated cottage in a small village by the sea, just south of Galway, where they would retreat after pulling off a job or two. It was easy to slip under the radar screen of law enforcement in a place where the only signs of life for miles came from the blink of a bored-looking sheep or the swinging tail of a cow munching on the endless fields of grass. The village was quite a change from the bustling streets of New York, London, and Sydney, places that Anna and Bobby usually frequented. But at the cottage they would relax, listen to their dialect tapes, and spend time on the Internet researching upcoming charity galas. To anyone who crossed their path, they appeared to be an unassuming couple who craved the simple life.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  “Sweetie,” Anna said, pulling off her gray wig, “we’re so daring these days.”

  Bobby waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fun. I just wish I could see the expression on Jack Reilly’s face when he reads our card. That’ll teach him to refer to us as lowlifes.”

  “It’s still pretty mean to do this on his honeymoon.”

  “Hon, we’re mean people.” Bobby started to laugh, a staccato sound that was unique and strange: henh, henh, henh. His cackle reminded Anna of a woodpecker. She had told him a million times to try to change his laugh, but it was useless. He was forty-one when she met him in New York City. She eventually realized there wasn’t much use trying to change anything about anybody once they had hit the big four-oh.

  As Bobby drove, Anna removed the gray toupee from his head and fluffed up his thick mane of brown hair. No sense looking like an elderly couple. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the police would be on the lookout for them. Anna placed the “his and hers” hairpieces in a travel bag at her feet and ran her fingers through her own stylishly cut short brown hair. She was wiry, as was Bobby, and they both were in good shape, thanks to regular workouts. She was five feet six inches tall, and he was five feet ten. There was nothing remarkable or unremarkable about their looks, which made it easy for them to both blend into crowds and change their appearance.

  Anna had been a makeup artist in New York City who’d been to many wealthy people’s homes to get them looking their best for anything from a television interview to a wedding or charity function. She saw how phony many of these VIPs could be. She heard them gossip about the other phonies out there. The amount of money some of them threw around was staggering.

  One of her most fortuitous jobs was doing makeup for a magician who taught her a few sleight-of-hand tricks.

  “You made me and my wife look good,” he joked. “That’s magic in itself. Let me show you a thing or two…”

  Then she met Bobby, who had drifted from job to job over the years, occasionally making a few bucks here and there in whatever schemes he could get involved in. But those schemes had been minor until he met Anna. Halfway through dinner on their first date she held up his expensive watch and asked coyly, “Were you looking for this?”

  Reflexively, he grabbed his wrist. The watch was gone! How did she do it? The woman was a genius!

  He fell in love.

  It wasn’t long before they decided to pool their talents and go for the excitement and money that was out in the world, just waiting for them.

  And in more than seven years they had never been caught.

  After nearly two hours of early-morning driving on twisting, turning, two-lane country roads, they were almost at their home, a three-room dwelling that was their only permanent residence.

  “What are we going to do with the lace tablecloth?” Anna asked as she dug in her purse for a piece of gum. After all those years of being two inches from people’s faces, she became addicted to any form of breath mint.

  Bobby shrugged. “Somebody out there will want it. It has historic value. It’s nice.”

  “Nice? It’s gorgeous. That May Reilly had talent. She was a lacemaker ahead of her time, I’ll tell you that. Not too many people knew how to make lace in this country until twenty years after she died. I think I would have liked her. If she were living today, I’d l
ove to do her makeup.” Anna paused. “I bet we could find someone who would pay a lot of money for that tablecloth of hers.”

  “Good.”

  Bobby turned down the dirt path that ended at their front door.

  “I get tears in my eyes whenever we return to our home by the sea,” Anna said as she unwrapped the foil around her favorite spearmint gum. “It’s like we’re the only two people in the world when we’re here. We’re really living our dream. It’s so peaceful. I just wish I had girlfriends to go to lunch with.”

  Bobby was unmoved. “This place is good for what it’s good for,” he said. “We spend a little down time here, and then when we’re about to go nuts from the quiet, we go back out into the world again, guns blazing.” He laughed his annoying laugh. “That’s why I like it. The boredom motivates me.”

  Anna nodded. “True. What I miss most when we’re here is having people to talk to. When I was a makeup artist, people would tell me stories that would curl your toes. I enjoyed that.”

  “Those stories didn’t pay for traveling around the world to five-star resorts,” Bobby snapped as he stopped the car.

  “I bet I could have sold some of them,” Anna replied

  “You would have if you had known me.”

  Inside the cottage it was damp and chilly. Anna turned on the heat, thankful they had bought a cottage with modern heating and plumbing systems. The message light on their answering machine was blinking. “Who could be calling us?” Bobby muttered as he pressed the playback button.

  “Karen and Len, it’s Siobhan Noonan from O’Malley’s pub here. I don’t know whether you’re in town, but if you are, come join us this evening, if you please. Three local musicians will be performing. It’ll be a good craic. You told me to let you know when we’d have live Irish music.”