He must have done it.
Nina picked off a piece of pepperoni from the single piece of pizza swiftly turning rancid in its cardboard box. Her door was shut and she was alone in the building. To avoid the creepy feeling night fog always gave her, she had closed the blinds. She clicked back to Google on her computer and searched for some more of the Russian Web sites. So many things were still unexplained. What had brought Sergey Krilov to the U.S.? Where was he? What relationship had he had with Christina?
Yawning, Nina pushed her hair back. She had reached that bleary place beyond simple exhaustion, where you can go on forever.
What a story Christina could have told, if she had lived. Romance, Russia, assassination. An alluring fabrication, unfortunately, like Anastasia’s story, like the stories of all the pretenders to the Empire of the Russias. It would have made a lively press conference, though.
Even immersed in her fantasy, how could Christina explain to herself the one obvious fact that made it all impossible, that all the Web sites with their escape theories had to acknowledge? Constantin Zhukovsky could not have been a fourteen-year-old tsarevitch in 1918, for the simple, well-known reason that, aside from the fact that he was almost certainly assassinated at Ekaterinburg along with the rest of his family, the tsarevitch had hemophilia.
Alexis’s mother, the tsarina, Alexandra, had brought Rasputin in, hoping he could help cure her chronically ailing son. Ultimately, that relationship was one of the biggest factors in the downfall of the Romanovs. The Russian people, already reeling from the suffering caused by war, drew the line at being ruled by this haughty German woman and her wild-eyed lover.
“Hemophilia/tsarevitch.” Lots of sites. She scrolled down a Web page about a tsarevitch pretender who supposedly had come to Washington State via Estonia after escaping the bullets of the Bolsheviks. This particular site was chock-full of colorful theories. She read down the page, her head aching.
Then her eye stuck on a word. She went back and looked.
Thrombocytopenia.
“It is always said that even if the tsarevitch escaped the assassinations he would have died soon after from hemophilia. But maybe Alexis did not have hemophilia. He may have suffered from a similar condition called thrombocytopenia, a medical syndrome referring to a hemorrhagic condition which is underlain by another disease, such as-”
Had she read it right?
“Such as aplastic anemia.”
She stared at the page. Gabe Wyatt had just testified that afternoon that he had been diagnosed with aplastic anemia, which had led eventually to leukemia. She hadn’t known Gabe’s symptoms could include hemorrhaging.
Strange to have such a rare illness pop up twice in one day.
Where was that death certificate? She found it eventually, sandwiched between two sets of pleadings.
She had remembered correctly. The treating physician had listed the cause of Constantin Zhukovsky’s death as “thrombocytopenia.”
Associated cause of death: “aplastic anemia.”
Confused, Nina went back to the Web site. The site went on to quote an anxious letter from the tsarina in the early 1900s referring to Alexis’s bouts with fever. “It’s possible the diagnosis for his illness was in error, since hemophiliacs do not suffer fever during their attacks,” the Web page said.
She called Ginger. “You up?”
“Always.”
“First of all, is there any possibility Constantin Zhukovsky really was the tsarevitch? Was he misdiagnosed with thrombowhatchamacallit, but really had hemophilia?”
“I would have to examine his medical records to be sure,” she said, “but I would have to say no. He was born in 1904, before there was an adequate treatment for hemophilia. I don’t think he could have lived into his seventies. He would certainly have been an invalid from an early age. No, I don’t think it’s possible. He died of thrombocytopenia, which is also a hemorrhagic syndrome, but some of the symptoms are different.”
“Okay, then here’s something else. I’ve been doing some reading about hemophilia. This Web page says hemophiliacs don’t have fever during bleeding spells. Is that true?”
“Let me check. I know a lot, but not every single thing.” Ginger’s phone clunked down.
Nina rubbed her head, trying to move the aching from one side to the other while she waited for Ginger to return.
“It’s true. Fever isn’t associated with hemophilia in general, but Nina, people with that disease can get a lot of associated problems, infections, all kinds of things that might cause fever.”
They hung up, Ginger returning to her nocturnal lab ramblings, and Nina returning to the tsarina’s letter. So maybe the tsarevitch was a sick hemophiliac with complications that caused fever.
Or maybe the Web site was right and the tsarevitch was the one who was misdiagnosed, way back at the turn of the century. He didn’t have hemophilia, but had thrombo-thrombo-whatever.
His body was not buried at Ekaterinburg along with the rest of his family. Maybe he escaped.
Maybe Constantin Zhukovsky really was Alexis Nicholaevich Romanov. Then Christina had been heir to the tsar all along. Then Alex, then Gabe, and, ultimately, Stefan.
The doorknob twisted. Wearing a striped cardigan over a white shirt, white hair rumpled as if he had been napping, Klaus poked his head in. “How did it go today?” he asked as if it weren’t almost midnight.
“Did you drive here?” Nina asked.
“Still playing baby-sitter.” Klaus sat down heavily opposite her. “I am annoyed with you, Miss Reilly. I did not enjoy being hustled off to the doctor like a sick person. My wife got alarmed unnecessarily.”
“You didn’t seem well. I’m sorry.”
“Pizza?” He picked up the slice and ate hungrily. “Excellent. So. I hear you have implicated Mr. Gabriel Wyatt in the murder of Christina Zhukovsky.”
“Stefan never even went to Christina’s,” Nina said. “I think we’ll get an acquittal. Jaime still has a lot of cross-examining to do, but after he’s finished I think we should rest on the defense side and let the case go to the jury.”
“Very good. However.”
Nina felt her insides clench. Pizza or Pohlmann? “I can summarize the closing argument for you right now,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what happened after Gabe Wyatt got into her apartment, but I don’t have to know. He was there, he was jealous of her, and they got into a fight. He killed her. He’s a slimeball. He let his brother go through the arrest and trial, and probably would have let Stefan spend his life in jail.”
“Perhaps.”
“What? What, Klaus?”
“What happened to the egg?” Klaus said. “Constantin’s little blue egg? He seems to have been very proud of it. That is why I hauled my ancient body out of bed tonight, left my warm wife, and drove my car back here, even though I have no business driving. I want to look at the Zhukovsky probate file again.”
“The egg?” She didn’t ask, Are you crazy? So much craziness skulked around the fringes of this case, she couldn’t fight it anymore.
“May I have the file?”
Nina pulled it out of the stack.
Klaus pulled his chair up to the opposite side of the desk, bowed his head, and started looking through it. Bits of mozzarella clung to his white beard. “Here’s the inventory and appraisal for the estate,” he said. “Note the absence of an egg. Any egg, even a reproduction of a Fabergé egg.”
“Maybe Constantin sold it. Christina hadn’t seen it since she was a child.”
“He wouldn’t do that. It was his proof.”
“It proved he was the tsarevitch?”
“Yes. No need to get cranky, my dear.”
“You’ve been on the Net.”
“I twiddled my digits all afternoon. I went to the very same page you are on right now,” Klaus said.
“These people with their stories. There were doubts about the diagnosis. The tsarevitch escaped from Ekaterinburg with a friendly family to Vladivo
stok, then Japan. Or Vienna to Paris. Estonia to Washington. Finland to Monterey, California. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”
“Do you think I have lost my wits? Gone dotty?” His eyes were on her, rheumy to be sure but extremely sharp at the moment.
Nina decided the time had come for honesty. He deserved that from her. “I think you have trouble with your memory, and I wonder about your judgment,” she said.
“Then I’m wasting my time with you.” Klaus got up. “Good evening. I will see you in court in the morning.” The door closed.
He had taken the sheets from the probate file, and Nina was afraid she would never see them again. She got up quickly and looked out into the dark hall.
Klaus hadn’t left. He had skittered down the hall to Alan’s office. The door was closed, but she could hear drawers opening and closing, see light under Alan’s door.
The connection was obvious. Alan had handled the probate and Gabe had consulted him. Klaus was going to read the privileged file made after Gabe’s consultation.
What a wicked old man! But what a good idea; unethical, but good. They could always put the papers back exactly as they had found them and never tell anybody.
Pushing the door open a crack, Nina crept down the hallway. Klaus had already made a mess: Alan would never leave papers on the floor.
Klaus bent down in the corner, pulling up the rug.
He had truly fallen off the deep end. Nina entered the room. His back was to her. Crouching on the floor, he pulled mightily at the corner of the heavy rug. He had moved Alan’s prized reproduction gilt Louis XIV client chair aside.
“Need help?”
Klaus reared up, falling backward. “Miss Reilly! Do not do that ever, ever again!”
“I just thought you might need assistance with your completely unethical prying through Alan’s files. What are you up to?”
Klaus had gone back to his tugging. “Come help me.”
Together they pried up the corner, folding back a three-foot square.
Installed in the floor, black, about a foot square, was a safe. “He uses it for sensitive files, original wills, probate items he hasn’t distributed yet, that sort of thing,” Klaus told Nina.
“You know the combination?”
He nodded. “I have the information in case something happened to Alan. Although I have never tested them before, I assume my numbers are correct. Do it for me, please, my dear. My knees ache.”
Nina bent down and, using the numbers Klaus gave her, heard a click. She pulled on the handle and the door opened.
“Let’s have a look,” Klaus said. “Open sesame.”
“But Alan…”
“Are you in or out?” Klaus challenged her. Nina almost laughed. “All right then,” he said.
Inside, one compartment held files, the other, a few wrapped packages. She pulled the files out. “Ferrari,” the top one was labeled in Alan’s neat hand. The next one said “Pickering Will.” Then “Chavez Estate,” “Monte Rosa Will,” “Matter of Egler,” “My Will.” Nina said, “Nothing,” leafing through the files.
“Let us check the rest.”
“We are so bad.”
“In for a penny, in for a ruble. If you are having scruples, get out of my way.”
“I’ll do it.” She pulled out the boxes. They looked like valuable items from probates Alan was handling, just what they ought to be. She opened a box marked “Monte Rosa,” and found a mass of diamond and gold jewelry piled inside. Two other marked boxes contained jewelry and coins. She had been down the hall from a lot of money and hadn’t known it. Alan should have kept this stuff in a safe-deposit box at a bank, but apparently he liked to keep an eye on things. The floor safe was a safe, after all. There was no rule against it.
A smaller box caught her eye. Unlabeled, with an old red ribbon circling the long end, it was made of carved wood. She raised an eyebrow at Klaus, who nodded. They were both sitting on the rug like kids opening Christmas presents. Slipping off the ribbon, she opened the box. Inside, she found something wrapped in yellow silk. It glimmered blue in the light of Alan’s green banker’s lamp.
A jeweled egg. Sapphires, they had to be. Nina held it in her hand. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It can’t be.”
“The tsarevitch egg,” Klaus said. He whistled.
About three inches tall, it was encrusted with precious stones and gold filigree. Nina opened it. Inside, a frame of diamond filigree surrounded a tiny painting.
“Holy Mary,” she said. “It’s him. The tsarevitch.”
The little boy in the picture smiled. He had sandy, almost reddish hair, and wore a sailor suit. The picture was only about an inch square.
She was holding history. Gently she set it down on its blue-and-gold stand.
“Alan was holding on to it. But for who?” Nina said at last.
“I believe I will call him,” Klaus said.
“It’s after midnight!”
“You don’t think this is important enough?” Holding on to the desk, Klaus pulled himself up, bent to and fro a few times to get the cricks out, then lowered himself into Alan’s leather chair and picked up the phone.
“We have violated your safe,” he said to Alan. No beating around the bush, his tone said; it’s late. “Yes, at the office. We found the egg.” He listened for a moment. “I understand. I will explain everything. But first you will tell me about the egg.” Another flood of indistinct words emanated from the phone. “Very well. We will be here.”
Klaus hung up. “I have worked with Alan for decades,” he said, “and still he surprises me. He is on his way down to find out why we are meddling with his wills and estates.”
“Where does he live?”
“Carmel Highlands. Fifteen minutes away.”
“Then we’d better finish up our meddling.”
“My sentiments exactly. Check everything you haven’t already checked,” Klaus said.
“What are we looking for?”
“Like a lady in a hat shop,” Klaus said, “we are just looking.”
But there was nothing else of interest in the safe. Its precious contents lay spread around Nina, but the center of it all was the blue egg.
No word other than “glorious” would do.
She sat back on her heels. “Let’s figure this out. This could be a real Fabergé egg. Presumably it’s the one Constantin showed his daughter, in which case, either he stole it from the Romanovs or he was a Romanov. But how would Krilov know that?”
“Somebody helped Constantin escape. Perhaps they left some record. Perhaps the Russians knew all the time, and only now felt it would be politically expedient to bring back a hint of a Romanov. Someone they could control.”
“If I’d known about the egg, I think I would have dug up my father’s bones, too,” Nina said, so unhinged she had to stand up and pace around. “Alan must have some file relating to this. Maybe he mislabeled one of these files on purpose.”
Klaus pulled on his beard. “Check,” he said.
“He’s going to shut us down as soon as he gets here.”
“Yes.”
Nina sat down in the ornate client chair and opened the Pickering file. One of the heirs, a young woman, had filed for extra temporary support from the estate while it was probated, due to a sensitive psychiatric condition. The doctors’ reports were in the file. “No,” Nina said. She laid it aside.
She picked up the Monte Rosa file. The estate had been probated ten years before. Nina leafed through the paperwork. “Why put this one in the safe?” she asked. “He’s got three diamond necklaces. Maybe he’s still looking for the heirs?” She went to the inventory of the estate.
Funny. The necklaces she found nestled in their boxes did not exist on the inventory.
“Klaus?”
Head on the desk, Klaus snored lightly. Nina didn’t have the heart to awaken him and ask for his thoughts. She looked again at the inventory and at the box labeled “Monte Rosa.”
She turned to the Matter of Egler, a conservatorship for an elderly lady. Her daughter had taken over her possessions. Reading the list of items carefully, Nina looked again at the box of gold coins and diamond rings marked “Egler.”
No match. The items in the box weren’t listed in the inventory in the probate file. Puzzled, Nina closed that file. Klaus stirred, and Nina heard the sound of Alan’s Ferrari pulling up outside. He would find them here, and she no longer cared.
She touched the superb egg again. Fantastic. Why hadn’t it been listed on the inventory in the Zhukovsky probate? A dreadful realization spread like a cancer into her brain, making linkages, expanding and tying up loose ends, and making her hold her head as a jabbing headache took over.
“It’s late,” Alan said. In spite of being rousted from bed, he wore dark slacks and a Burberry trench coat. He looked prepared to take a meeting. His chin was dark, though, and his eyes…
“Oh, Alan,” Nina said. “Isn’t it beautiful? I can almost understand.”
Alan glanced at his peacefully sleeping boss. Dropping to the floor beside Nina, Alan picked up the egg and caressed it. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”
“It’s-historic, Alan. It could have been Christina’s proof.”
“But it’s mine, mine for twenty-four years. Adverse possession.”
“You kept it here in the safe?”
“A good spot, don’t you think? I loved having my clients sitting right on top of it. And I could look at it now and then.” He admired it. “When I listed Constantin’s assets for probate, I found it in the false bottom of a dresser drawer. I could never have afforded it myself. It’s worth millions.”
“Does this mean-was Constantin…”
Alan shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? The Soviet Union didn’t care. Constantin didn’t want it known, or he would have made it known.”
“Christina cared.”
“Silly woman. Another Anastasia. Doomed for a rout. Who would believe her? She could hardly keep her hair combed, no offense.”
Unlucky in Law Page 36