I might have told her the most likely scenarios involved her father’s business; but since I still had no proof that a crime had even been committed, sharing those thoughts would have been premature, maybe even slanderous.
“The shot last night. Was it meant for me?”
“Unlikely,” I answered. “I think you just happened to be outdoors.”
“My dad then?” Her cheeks and neck had gone red, her breathing shallow.
I gave her a moment to settle down, then I said, “There are two kinds of angry people, Chantal, the ones who raise their fists and bluster but are too cowardly to do any real harm and the serious ones who lash out however they want.
“Last night’s shooter fired once—badly—then fled, which seems to suggest that he scared himself more than he scared you. I doubt that he’ll come back.” A real looney, who knew? But this once I could make that statement with confidence.
Chantal’s eyes narrowed as if her inner thoughts were unclear. Time to drop the other shoe.
“Speaking of your dad,” I began. “He asked me to stay on awhile as your bodyguard. How do you feel about that?”
Laugher burst out of her. “You’re joking, right?”
Part of me wanted to assure her I was not, but a corner of my brain reminded me of Frank’s cavalier attitude toward his job offer. Unless he knew something he didn’t care to share, I could only attribute his refusal to acknowledge the potential danger to his daughters to egoism or pure denial. He’d hired professional body guards to accompany him when he was out and about, a reasonable response to being threatened multiple times, attacked and injured once. Yet he considered the estate security sufficient for the women. Maybe he was right, but he might also be wrong.
Chantal’s reaction made an honest response my only option. With a wry smile I admitted that Frank mostly wanted her and her mother off his back.
“How about you? Do you think I’m in danger?”
Since I knew very little about Frank’s adversaries, I stalled by plucking at Karen’s white slacks before I replied. “Sometimes we aren’t frightened when we should be, and sometimes we’re scared to death over nothing.” I shrugged. “Tough to tell which is which. All we can do is be reasonably careful most of the time, and, if fear is disturbing our everyday peace of mind, do whatever it takes to feel safe again.”
Chantal said, “Puh.”
I gave her that. Then I said, “How scared are you? Scale of one to ten.”
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “What will that tell you?”
“Whether you need protection 24/7 for your peace of mind.”
“I thought my father hired you for that.”
I shook my head. “No one person can do that job. He hired me to hold your hand.”
“So…?”
“So you have to decide whether you want 24/7 security.”
“If I had it, would I be safe?”
“Safer. You could eat bad shellfish or get hit by lightning anytime. Would you be safer in general? I really don’t know.”
Chantal’s thoughts drifted.
When she was ready, she told me, “I’m at about five, maybe four. I’m pregnant, that’s one thing. Stuff I never had to think about scares the hell out of me now. But do I think I’m going to be kidnapped or killed?” She lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t until last night. You say that wasn’t aimed at me, and I guess I believe you. I heard the shot, but the bullet didn’t exactly whiz by my ear.”
She thought some more before meeting my eyes in a contrite manner. “I guess I might have laid it on a little thick this morning, but some of that was for Abby. If Sykes—or anybody—wants to punish Frank Roitman, after Frank himself, Abby would be the most likely target. My father has to acknowledge that.”
“Actually, he did. His bodyguards will be driving your little sister to and from school.”
“That’s…that’s wonderful!”
“Please,” I said. “Finish what you were saying about yourself.”
The young widow wove her fingers together as if making a pact then lifted her chin for punctuation. “I don’t mind you staying on,” she said, “but I don’t think I could tolerate that 24/7 idea.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not a child, Lauren. I know rotten shellfish and lightning happen.”
From the moment Frank asked, I had always intended to protect Chantal from her father’s enemies to the best of my abilities. My efforts might not be enough, but vigilance and a big helping of common sense were on my side. Now it seemed I had to do whatever I could without smothering Chantal or alarming her unduly. Girlfriends, talking about nail polish and salad dressing. Yup, that’s us. But as Chantal pointed out, she was an adult, and I had to respect her position. Living in constant fear wasn’t much of a life.
“You’ll still be looking into Toby’s death, right?” Her clasped hands seemed to be raised in prayer.
“If you’re comfortable with it.”
She surged forward so fast it surprised me. “Absolutely.”
Heads or tails. Murder over suicide. The coin was in the air.
Movement outside the window had caught my eye—Abby running and stumbling down the brick path.
Now she was hammering on the pool house door.
Chapter 28
Frank succumbed to the lure of his city office soon after he finished with the state police regarding the gunshot incident. This left Marsha free to run her errand and return before he came home for dinner.
The safe in their walk-in closet had been disguised well, sunk as it was beneath a jigsaw-puzzlelike lid of matching oak flooring. Since she used the combination almost daily, it took thirty seconds to access a selection of her favorite jewelry, the square-cut ruby earrings and large matching ring, platinum settings, or so she thought; her diamond anniversary ring, a sapphire necklace, a gold bracelet studded with pearls and amethysts; a turquoise pendant surrounded by diamonds, and a few pieces more until her purse strap protested the weight.
The tennis bracelet in its small gray cloth bag, broken pieces included, was the last item in. Deciding whether to have it repaired could wait until her jeweler rendered his opinion.
Typically, she would have informed Lyle that she was going out; but considering the gunshot last night, the security man would have insisted on accompanying her. That, of course, would not do. Determining whether her husband was a shit-heel was not something you did with a witness in tow.
The drive to the nearby small town went quickly, focused as she was on what she would say to the jeweler. Hide her anger? Amplify it? Pretend to be determining her treasure’s worth for insurance purposes? An acting opportunity for sure, but was it worth the effort? Considering how often she stopped in to browse and drop hints, she regarded Mr. Ignatious as her jeweler. Frank was merely the go-between, the purchaser rather than the ultimate customer.
A diagonal parking space with money in the meter two spots from her destination buoyed her. Yes! She was decided.
Seeing her face, Mr. Ignatious tore himself away from an insipid woman in a mismatched plaid jacket. A glance from him completed the hand-off to his female clerk. Clutching her purse between two gnarled hands, the would-be customer blinked and sidled farther away.
“I need to speak to you privately,” Marsha announced the second Mr. Ignatious stood before her.
The proprietor’s eyebrows rose and lowered smoothly. “Follow me.” He indicated the rear of the store with a sweep of his hand.
From experience Marsha knew she was being guided to a room for private showings just inside the door to the workroom.
“Thank you,” she replied.
The jeweler’s head tilted forward permanently, it seemed. His hands were bumpy and white, fringed with unusually long, curled black hair, his nails—buffed. He wore a gray-striped cotton shirt with a gray wool vest, perhaps to hide his almost skeletal thinness. Black slacks, black shoes. A tiny diamond stud dotted his left earlobe, an oddity for his age, which was
approximately seventy-five, give or take half a decade. He did not wear spectacles, another oddity of his age that probably indicated successful cataract surgery.
After they were settled in comfortable antique chairs with an intimate, well-lighted round table between them, Mr. Ignatious leaned in the way he might with a close, but not too close, friend.
“Mrs. Roitman,” he said, since they hadn’t exactly greeted one another. “Please tell me how I can help you.”
Marsha shrugged out of her red, boiled-wool Chesterfield. “I…my tennis bracelet…here.” She rummaged through her purse until she found the correct bag then handed it over.
The jeweler—her jeweler—poured the contents onto the mauve, tightly woven tablecloth. “Hmmm,” he said. “It seems that we’ve had a bit of an accident.”
“A…yes,” was all Marsha could manage at the moment.
Mr. I’s gaze lifted. “Wherever Frank got this, dear, it wasn’t from me.”
Since that was not anything Marsha had expected to hear, she couldn’t think how to respond. Her mouth opened anyway.
“You’re aware these are cubic zirconia, aren’t you?”
“Suspected,” she said with a dry mouth. “I suspected when, when I saw that those two little ones broke.”
Mr. I looked at her askance. “Must have been hit with something very hard,” he remarked.
“Chair leg,” Marsha admitted. She didn’t care to add that she’d added considerably to the impact.
“Not as strong as diamonds, these aren’t, but it still takes a lot of pressure to break one.” He waited to see whether she intended to expand on her story.
She did not.
“The gold,” she wiggled her fingers, “is that real?”
“I’d say so, but the gems are definitely not gems.”
“You can tell that without your loupe?”
“Brighter. Surprised you didn’t notice yourself.”
Marsha tossed her head as if to excuse herself. “They’re so small,” she said. And I only use my reading glasses when I absolutely must.
She tried to swallow. Remembered the rest of the jewelry she’d brought along. Dug into her purse and handed each drawstring bag over as if it were the ashes of a friend.
Mr. Ignatious required no instructions. He produced a loupe and methodically examined each piece. When he finished, there were two piles, as if two pirates had divided their booty.
“These are imitation stones,” the expert informed their owner, dismissing the collection on the left with a gesture. “These are not,” he remarked regarding the pieces on his right.
Marsha glanced back and forth between the two displays. The ruby earrings/ring set and the anniversary ring were legitimate, a great relief. The turquoise pendant circled by diamond chips was not, nor was the gold bracelet studded with amethysts and pearls. The fakes numbered six pieces in all, and it took but a moment for Marsha to realize they were her most recent gifts.
“If these were real stones,” she thought aloud, “what would they be worth?”
“The workmanship is top notch,” Mr. Ignatious admitted with a contemplative wave of his narrow head. Then he calculated for a long moment before delivering a number in the high six-figure range.
Marsha had to ask. “And their actual value?”
The number aspired to tickle the top of the five figure spectrum but did not achieve its goal.
Marsha had a new appreciation for the expression “kicked by a mule.”
As she began to gather her non-Mr. Ignatious jewelry into their bags, another question occurred to her.
“These settings, are they real?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So somebody replaced the real stones?” Marsha sounded confused because she was.
“Doubtful,” Mr. I answered, rubbing his bony fingers against his chin. “Duplicating the stones well enough that you wouldn’t notice would be awfully expensive. Most likely they were never real to begin with.”
“Fake stones put into real settings.”
“Yes. Done at the production stage, I’d say.”
Marsha slouched back in her chair and gazed vaguely into the distance. “Who the hell would do that?” she wondered aloud.
Chapter 29
The instant I opened the pool-house door, Abby lurched inside.
“Hey, baby,” her older sister cooed. “What’s the matter?”
When that kid dressed down, she really dressed down—jeans with bald spots and holes, sneakers with neon orange laces, and a stretched-out aqua sweater wet with tears and other related excretions on the sleeve. I reached behind me for some tissues, and before I turned back, Chantal’s maternal arms were muffling her sister’s sobs.
“They’re fighting,” Abby sniffed as soon as she was allowed to breathe.
Chantal waved her head in dismay. Then she guided the two of them onto the nearest sofa, where they landed like one connected lump.
“Who?” I asked Abby just to clarify.
“Mother and Daddy.”
“Dad’s already home?” That seemed to shock Chantal more than the argument, almost as if it had never happened before.
Abby nodded, a bobble-head of a preteen with uncombed hair. “He came home early.” Two damp, older-than-their-years eyes magnified by stylish spectacles assessed my reaction with a glance.
Arms folded across my waist, I scowled with the appropriate concern. Never mind that I had no idea what was going on; the sisters’ distress had me riveted.
“What’s it about?” Chantal urged. She still looked thrown, and I thought I understood why. From my time in their presence, I’d seen petulance when Marsha felt ignored and irritation when Frank was late for lunch, but behind that sort of complaint was flattery. Marsha thrived in her husband’s company, literally glowed when they were together. I’d discerned nothing but a doting dependency on her part, so a fight volatile enough to make their youngest daughter cry had to be huge.
“Jewelry,” she said.
Chantal’s head snapped back. “They’re fighting about that?”
“Um humm.” Having secured our total attention, Abby began to relish her role in the drama du jour. The gleam in her eye and curl of her lip served as a drum roll.
“A bunch of it is fake,” she announced.
All at once the confusing jewelry-store transaction I’d witnessed in Punta Cana made sense. The backroom item, the cash, the extra cash handed over with reluctance.
Chantal’s eyelids nearly stretched to her eyebrows. “I really doubt…”
“It’s true,” the child insisted the way children do. “Mother took it all to Mr. Ignatious. That’s how she found out.”
Chantal’s mind was off somewhere processing, so I used the opportunity to ask where Abby was when she heard.
“Behind the living room sofa next to the vacuum pipe.”
“The what? Where?”
Chantal had returned to us. “Some of these old houses had a central vacuum system,” she explained, “pipes in the walls that end in the basement. The maid attached a hose to a hole in the room’s baseboard and cleaned the rugs with a lightweight sweeper. We don’t use that system anymore.”
“It broke,” Abby supplied. “When I was little I used to hide behind the sofa. One day I found out I could hear what Mother and Dad were saying in their bedroom.”
“Clever,” I said, and the girl beamed.
“What else did you hear?” Chantal prompted.
“Daddy said he needed some money nobody else would know about. ‘Off the books’ I think he called it.”
“Did he say what it was for?” Chantal again.
“Nope, and that made Mother really mad.”
I should imagine. And did. Of the panoply of possibilities—drugs, gambling, adultery, etcetera—adultery was my personal choice for Frank. I’d have forfeited half my pay to hear him spin that whopper, but he had chosen to remain silent. It was a wonder Marsha didn’t shoot him on the spot.
“I he
ard a big crash,” Abby again, attempting to reclaim the spotlight.
Her sister wisely changed the subject. “Oh! Did Daddy tell you? His bodyguards are going to drive you to and from school.”
The kid’s face instantly went pink, and her hands rushed to her cheeks to cool them. “For real? You’re sure?” She was indeed her mother’s daughter.
Chantal eyed me for confirmation. “Absolutely sure,” she answered. “Now. How about you and me go back to the house and get cleaned up for dinner?”
“That’s way cool,” Abby was still gushing as her sister deftly guided her toward the door.
“Make mine takeout,” I called after them.
I wanted to go see a horse about a man.
The chestnut gelding and I made eye contact across about twenty yards of early spring grass. He worked his nostrils to check me out, twisted his ears, swished his black tail in anticipation of a bribe.
I’d brought the apple I’d nabbed from the kitchen, scored its circumference with a thumbnail, then twisted it in two the way my father taught me. Offering one of the halves on the flat of my hand, I raised an eyebrow and whistled.
From the back corner of the pasture two plodders—probably gentler rides for newbies or guests—caught a whiff of me and my treat but chose not to investigate any further. It would be the gelding and I or nothing, just as I hoped.
I stepped onto the middle rung of the gate and whistled again.
Playing hard to get, Red stared off at the swaying pines. A huff. A headshake. With his cocky bearing and mischievous eye, I put my chances at 60/40 that he would bolt. His prerogative, so I cut his thinking time short by swinging both legs over the gate and dropping into the pasture. When he shifted his feet with indecision, I showed him the second half of the apple and made sweet talk as I inched forward. “Easy boy. Com’on. You know you want it.”
“Not as much as you do,” Lyle remarked, and I jumped like a cat.
The security man put two fingers against his teeth and blew a loud, high note. “Hey, Bobbyboy,” he called to the horse. “Over here, fella. Lady wants to give you that apple bad.” Then to me, “That all you want?”
Guilt Trip Page 13