2 Priceless

by Marne Davis Kellogg

  Pierre approached me, his stance slightly canted, unsure of himself. “Madame?” he said.

  I handed him Thomas’s note, now a soggy wad. “Monsieur is gone.”

  “Il est mort?” Pierre looked horrified.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not dead. Just gone. From me. From us.”

  He was relieved. “Non.” He shook his head. “He will come back.”

  “I don’t think so, Pierre.”

  “You’ll see, madame. He adores you.”

  “I don’t think so, Pierre.”

  “Then he’s a fool.”

  “Oui.” I buried my face in my hands.

  Pierre pulled a freshly pressed checkered handkerchief out of his back pocket and offered it to me.

  “Merri,” I said. I mopped my face with the cloth. “I’m fine. You go back to work. I’ll be fine. Really”

  Inside, the timer buzzed and buzzed. The pineapple upside-down cake was done. Shortly it would start to burn.

  After a while, I’m not really sure how long, except the smell of caramelizing sugar had crossed the road from irresistible to bitter, I went indoors. I took the blackened cake out of the oven and set it next to the sink, where it smoked and sputtered, and then went into my bathroom and repaired my face. Crying wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I needed to think.

  I poured a fresh cup of coffee and took it into the living room and sat down at my desk, a long, book-covered table beneath the windows. I’d spent many hours at this table looking out the window, contemplating various aspects and actions of my life. It was where I’d made the final decision to retire for good because I loved my life so much, I didn’t want to get caught and spend the rest of it in jail just dreaming about it. So my window table was a natural spot for me to retreat to now. Outside, far across the valley, Les Alpilles—the Little Alps—were scarcely visible through the noonday haze, while inside, the living room remained dim and cool. I turned and stared at the painting over the fireplace. The Polonaise Blanche. The Renoir Thomas had given me the night we fell in love. A painting of ice skaters waltzing in the snow.

  Suddenly a chill ran up my spine and I caught my breath. What if? What if?

  I got up and crossed to the bookshelves on the opposite side of the room and removed a section of fake books to reveal a wall safe. There was a knot in my stomach as I spun the dial. The tumblers fell into place and the safe door clicked free. I swung it open. The safe was empty. Gone—all the jewels were gone.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  F I V E

  To have your husband leave you is a bad thing. To have your husband leave you and take your pile with him is worse. It’s contemptible.

  The contents of the safe weren’t everything I had, far from it.

  But it held all the jewelry that Thomas thought I had, including the Queen’s Pet—a diamond bracelet I’d stolen from Lady Melody Carstairs’s estate and that originally belonged to Queen Victoria—and a ring I’d fabricated with one of my ten-carat Kashmir sapphires. I’d framed it with three emeralds, carved like leaves. The sapphire looked like a big blue grape waiting to be plucked. I still had sizable bank accounts in Switzerland, as well as safety-deposit boxes packed with cash, gold, silver, and platinum ingots, and millions in stones, none of which I’d ever told Thomas about. But it was the principle of the thing. I would have told him, in time.

  God damn you, Thomas Curtis. God damn you for making me love you.

  I closed the safe, replaced the section of books, and returned to my bathroom where I took the precaution of locking the door. The headache had disappeared, replaced by focus. And a sort of dreadful curiosity. I pressed on a small invisible button imbedded in the wall underneath the windowsill and then folded back the bathroom rug to reveal a large section of floor tiles that had been unlatched when I pressed the button and was now slightly elevated. I knelt down on the cold floor and slid aside the secret panel, revealing a safe with an extremely sophisticated electronic lock. As far as I knew, Thomas didn’t know about this hiding place, or any of the other secret stockpiles I had throughout the house and grounds.

  This particular safe contained twelve good-sized safe deposit boxes packed with gems and cash, including almost three thousand perfect diamonds separated by color, weight, and cut; over two hundred fifty thousand U.S. dollars in cash, as well as two hundred fifty thousand in euros. One box held several sets of fake identifications—credit cards, driver’s licenses, license plates, passports. I had dozens of options, dozens of contingencies—all developed over decades of imminent discovery and flight—that I’d meant to throwaway but had never gotten around to.

  I punched in the combination, and after a five-second delay, the locking bars withdrew and clicked into place. I pushed my hair back and leaned over to heft open the vault door.

  I felt calm and cool as a cucumber. This wasn’t the end of the world—it was, instead, a re-entry into a familiar byzantine world I thought I’d left behind.

  Methodically, I slid out each box and inventoried its contents that I knew by heart. It didn’t take long to see that everything was there.

  “Bon.” I closed the safe, replaced the floor panel and pulled the rug back into place.

  I threw away the pineapple upside-down cake—I’ve never cared for it as much as apple cake anyway—and uncorked a bottle of Pol Roger, non-vintage. As the bubbles effervesced and danced in the crystal flute, I leaned against the counter and tried to get a handle on the situation.

  I was beyond shocked that Thomas had left, but more than that, I was floored that he’d stolen the jewelry. What was he going to do with it? He had plenty of money of his own. How could I have misjudged him so totally?

  Maybe he didn’t steal it. Maybe one of the workmen had while we were adding on the wing. We hadn’t done anything lately that required pieces as dressy as these, so I hadn’t had any reason even to look in the safe for almost eight weeks. So just because he left me, I told myself, didn’t mean he’d stolen from me. And, why did he leave me, anyway? We love each other. I re-read his note: “… gone back to the Yard to help work on a case that has resurfaced. I couldn’t tell you in person. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Please don’t try to contact me. Forgive me.” All right. Maybe it really was a big secret and he really couldn’t tell me.

  I called his cell phone and left him a message. “Thomas. Call me up.”

  Well, hell. My stomach growled. It was past one. I stopped to think. What did I used to do when I had no agenda? No husband’s plans I had to take into account? What were all those things I used to do that made me so happy? I didn’t want to stand around the kitchen and drink champagne all day That would accomplish nothing, and I didn’t especially feel like making the cheese soufflé. I could take the dog for a walk but she’d actually been back and forth to visit Pierre at the far end of the garden a few times and taken herself for as much of a walk as she wanted or required. I could read a book or a magazine. I could do whatever I wanted. Why didn’t that make me happier?

  I picked up the phone.

  “Balfour residence.”

  “Good afternoon, Carole,” I said to Flaminia’s housekeeper. “Is Madame Balfour in? It’s Kick.”

  “I’m sorry, Madame Keswick, she’s gone to Paris overnight. She’ll be back in the morning. Shall I have her call you?”

  “Please.”

  There were a number of other people I could have called and invited to dinner, but actually, the minute I heard Carole’s voice, I’d regretted making the call and was relieved that Flaminia wasn’t available.

  I took my glass of champagne into the garden and put it on the table alongside my now dried-out breakfast and newspaper and went to work on the crossword puzzle.

  I’ve found that sometimes it’s just easier, and better, to pretend everything is fine than to deal with it straightaway.

  S I X

  The day paced itself along as they always do, no matter how quickly or slowly we think they should go, they follow thei
r course. It grew hot, then cloudy, then cooled off.

  I took a long afternoon walk through the fields and climbed up to the abandoned ruins of an ancient church and down into the next village for a light late lunch. Before I left home, I quarreled with myself about taking my cell phone along, in case Thomas called.

  “To hell with him,” I concluded and left the phone at home and took my dog and my book instead.

  The restaurant had a lovely view of Les Alpilles and between bites of cassoulet and sips of burgundy, I stared at them as though their chalky outcroppings and cliffs could provide me with some answers. They were ancient, tired mountains. Tired of their burden of stone, sagging beneath the crushing weight, longing to lay down and rest. I knew exactly how they felt. I paid my bill and walked home in the deepening twilight. The mountains and I commiserated with each other until it was black and the stars cooled them off and put them to sleep and I was alone.

  Now that it’s just me, and night has fallen, I have a lot of time to tell you my story.

  I was living proof of a person’s ability to change her or himself if the desire was strong enough. If someone who started under such diminished circumstances as I could do it, anyone could. Not to gild the lily, but I was born as the chronically overweight daughter of a chronically alcoholic, Oklahoma-oil-field camp-follower mother. My father was unknown, to both of us. Through sheer determination and a number of breaks, I remade myself into a comfortable, happy, successful, entirely different person. It wasn’t luck and it wasn’t magic. I made a concerted effort to change until virtually no trace of my roots remained. Well, except one. One that I’d welcome with open arms if the opportunity presented itself: my abandoned child.

  I got pregnant when I was fifteen, had the baby in a home for unwed mothers outside of Omaha and never even looked at its face. It’s hard to believe, but the truth is, I really have never even known if I had a son or a daughter. But it was the early 1960s and things were so different then when it came to illegitimate children. And now, I’d give just about anything to find out what became of that baby of mine. In spite of registering on all the Internet adoption sites, no one has come forward to claim me.

  It was then, when I was fifteen, that I grew up. I was on my own and had nothing to lose. I’d been turned down for a job by Homer Mallory in one of his jewelry stores because-according to him—I was too fat and had no class, so I turned to a life of crime and became a jewel thief. Being young and idealistic, I naturally viewed my forays as crusades, not crimes, on behalf of all overweight girls and all downtrodden people everywhere who were cruelly and insensitively insulted by the ruling class. A version of that ethic followed me throughout my career—I only robbed people who had enormous means yet still felt compelled to lord it over those who had nothing and could not defend themselves.

  I started with small, cheap items—lavalieres and flimsy engagement rings made of silver-plated metal, set with diamond chips so tiny you had to squint and use your imagination to see them. I quickly advanced to stealing fine jewelry from fine jewelry stores—specifically Mr. Homer Mallory’s fine jewelry stores. I was successful enough to buy myself a little yellow Corvair convertible for my sixteenth birthday I got the big head, of course. I’ve never been short on ego, which I prefer to think of as self-confidence, but we all get a little ahead of ourselves sometimes, and so I got caught. After a humiliating handcuffing in front of Homer himself, I ended up in reform school and found myself surrounded by what I considered to be white-trash losers, teenage girls doing time for stealing hair spray or hubcaps and who wanted nothing more from life than to get married and have babies. I had much more in mind for myself—I intended to be someone.

  Then one Saturday night, the one night a week when they showed movies at the school, I saw Doris Day in Pillow Talk, and it changed my life. She wasn’t married, she didn’t have any children, she worked hard at a job she was paid handsomely to do, and she wore beautiful clothes and had her own apartment.

  That was the life for me. But how to get it.

  Reform school didn’t reform me in the way it was intended to. Instead, for me, it was akin to attending business school. I planned and planned. I spent hours in the school library studying great museums of the world and English manor houses and using my imagination to figure out ways to break into them. I pictured myself as successful. When I walked out the gates of the Oklahoma Detention School for Girls and into Oklahoma State University, thanks to a scholarship for less than fortunate young ladies, I was changed. I had a goal and ambition: I would become the greatest jewel thief in the history of the world.

  The break I’d dreamt about came two years later on a junior class trip to Europe. It was one of those mind-numbing, whirlwind bus tours where you get dragged around to twenty cities in thirty days and finally have no idea where you are or where you’ve been except by looking at the stamps in your passport.

  In London, when the bus pulled out for a morning stop at Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-on-Avon before heading north to Edinburgh via Stonehenge and Balmoral, I wasn’t on it. I was breakfasting on hot buttered crumpets, cherry preserves, and thick hot chocolate at a little café on Carnaby Street, watching the rain pour down and waiting for the shops across the street to open and thinking I was pretty much the smartest bird on the face of the earth.

  The Mary Quant cosmetics shop opened first, so I had my makeup done—I was pretty sure I looked exactly like Twiggy. My false eyelashes were as big and wooly as caterpillars. Then I traded my prim Oklahoma State sorority sister clothes—the Kappas would have had a mass fainting spell if they’d had a clue they’d let a juvenile delinquent, a reform-school girl into their ranks—and all my money for a psychedelic mini-dress and hot pink go-go boots.

  “0oooo, aren’t you the looker,” the shop girl had said. She had platinum hair, black-rimmed eyes, and platinum lipstick.

  Of course, once I was out the door, the stupidity of my actions hit me like a sledgehammer: None of this was me. I wasn’t Doris Day. I wasn’t Twiggy. I was Kick Keswick from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and now all I had was this stupid dress and no money. Even my luggage was on the bus bound for Edinburgh. I wobbled down Camaby Street, filled with self-recrimination and crying my eyes out in a drenching rain that not only made the dress cling to my delectable well-rounded body like Saran Wrap on a platter of popovers, but also threatened to make my glamorous new eyelashes come unglued.

  And then … just like in the movies … my deus ex machina appeared in a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Sixty-year-old Sir Cramner Ballantine invited me out of the downpour and into his car, exactly the way Cary Grant did when he invited Doris Day into his limousine in That Touch of Mink.

  “Get in, miss,” he’d said. “Get in out of the rain.”

  This was how my real life began.

  Sir Cramner was managing director of Ballantine &. Company Auctioneers, founded by his ancestors in 1740. He gave me a job and set me up in a spacious flat in Eaton Terrace, one of London’s most envied addresses. He schooled me in manners and tutored me in discernment, teaching me how, thoughtfully, to seek out, identify, and appreciate fine things. We adored each other, and in spite of his day-to-day obligations to his wife, Lady Ballantine, and his family, we were as inseparable as a man and his mistress can be. He came for dinner at least once a week, sometimes twice. He was the only person I’d ever loved and I loved him until the day he died at age ninety-two, five years ago.

  Sir Cramner never would have abandoned me the way Thomas had.

  Thomas.

  Why did he leave me? I didn’t get it. We were having such a good time.

  S E V E N

  The next morning when I woke up, Pierre had already come and gone—I hadn’t heard him but my pain au chocolate, baguette, and morning paper were on the counter. I fixed a tray and went outside.

  I decided to keep pretending that everything was normal, because basically it was. It was back to the way it’d been for years before Thomas. Everything was famili
ar.

  I blended my cafe au lait, carefully pouring streams of rich dark coffee and hot milk that met just above the cup and foamed together into the bowl. I spread a bite of baguette with sweet butter and fraises de bois preserves, opened the paper, and saw the headline. My heart lurched.

  “What?!”

  LONDON’S NOTORIOUS SHAMROCK BURGLAR SURFACES IN PARIS.

  “What?!”

  I read it again. It said what it said the first time: LONDON’S NOTORIOUS SHAMROCK BURGLAR SURFACES IN PARIS.

  I could not believe my eyes.

  Last night, the cat burglar who operated for years in London’s swank Mayfair, Chelsea, and Kensington neighborhoods, stealing hundred of millions of pounds’ worth of jewelry from many of England’s most prominent individuals and families, suddenly reappeared in Paris after several months’ absence, making off with a necklace said to have belonged to the Empress Josephine. The piece, a collar of large diamonds, emeralds, and sixteen-millimeter Oriental pearl drops, has a 255-carat cabochon emerald pendant, known simply as l’Empresse. The necklace was stolen from the Musée Montpensier, a small private museum, owned by the DeBussy family. The museum, on rue de Montpensier, houses a small, very fine collection of jewels from the Bourbon and Bonaparte dynasties. L’Empresse was considered the centerpiece of the collection.

  The article went on to say that the piece had been replaced by the Shamrock Burglar’s signature: a small bouquet of fresh shamrocks tied with a gold satin ribbon.

  “This is absolutely ridiculous. And they didn’t even get it right. It’s an ivory satin ribbon—not gold.”

  I started to laugh. “Oh, my God. Wait till Thomas sees this. What am I saying? He’s probably already seen it. Oh, my God. I hope he doesn’t think I did it.”