I stopped laughing, and the more I thought about it, the actual gravity of the situation sank in. This was not even slightly funny.
I knew I couldn’t do anything about whatever it was Thomas had going on but I could, and must, do something about the impostor. Aside from the more superficial issues of ego and professional prestige—I was, after all, a superstar, a celebrity, practically a household name, and I wouldn’t let some second-rate hack besmirch it—there were real issues at stake that could jeopardize my entire world. I couldn’t let them go unaddressed. And Thomas, of all the people in the world, knew without a doubt that I had been the Shamrock Burglar. As the big picture became clearer and clearer, I realized I could be in legitimate, serious jeopardy.
I sorted through all the possibilities of who this thief could be and came up empty, unless it was Thomas himself but that was highly unlikely. He would have used the proper color of ribbon.
No one came to mind who could pull off a burglary such as this with any style at all. No one was as good as I was. Any knucklehead could rob a museum, but this was someone special. It took someone with a little panache and sangfroid, a sense of humor if you will, to leave a calling card blaming it so neatly on someone else. Possibly a hotel burglar.
The most skillful “working” thieves are those who specialize in hotel burglaries because they require enormous flexibility; class, and cold-blooded seat-of-your-pants thinking. These robberies are seldom made public-only about twenty percent of the time do they come to light. Usually, the matter is handled privately between the guest and the management—the ladies being as eager to protect their reputations as the hotels, because more often than not, there was some sort of indiscretion involved that would embarrass an important customer. I’d had an opportunity to learn more about hotel robberies than most people. Frequently ladies in distress came to the auction house and discreetly asked that we help them replace certain items that had been stolen while they were on vacation. They didn’t want to tell their husbands or their insurance carriers. They simply wanted us to find similar pieces and leave it at that.
There are always a number of these cat burglars lurking around great hotels and expensive resorts, preying on rich, lonely women. They’re like lemmings, following the seasons, from the French and Italian Rivieras to Palm Beach and Aspen to the Saratoga races.
Almost always dashing Casanovas posing as aristocrats, these men are charming, good dancers, beautifully mannered, and oh so my-oh-my in bed. And they vanish into the night along with all their mark’s prettiest jewels. One of them even takes their bathrobes, which I’ve always thought was an exquisitely inventive twist, because it forces his victims to get dressed before they raise the alarm. I mean, what woman on earth would invite the night manager and the police into her hotel room wearing only her nightgown? None. At least none over fifty and they’re the ones with the best jewelry.
But, actually, it didn’t matter who’d stolen the Empresse emerald—I needed to find the person, bring him (or her) to justice, and get my good name out of the papers and off the caper.
And truthfully? If I were into all that Freudian, psychoanalysis business? This was exactly what I needed. It had the brisk, slap-in-your-face effect of whipping my attention off Thomas and giving me something else to think about besides myself and my humiliated heart.
By the time my cafe au lait was gone, I was completely revitalized.
E I G H T
I returned to the safe in my bathroom and sorted through the various identities I’d created and made a selection: Priscilla Pennington, wealthy widow of an English lord. The fictitious Priscilla lived on a large estate outside of London in Buckinghamshire.
Like me, Priscilla was a woman of a certain age. Elegant, slightly plump, still quite beautiful—easily mistaken for Catherine Deneuve or the late Princess Grace. A little tuck-up work done here and there to keep elements of the neck, chin and eyes gracefully in place.
And the body? Ah, yes, the body. Well, that’s what well-tailored clothes and fabulous jewels are for, n’est-ce pas?
Shortly after lunch I loaded the few pieces of luggage that would fit into the tiny trunk of my brand-new, black Jaguar XK convertible, tied an Hermes scarf over my head, put on my dark glasses, settled the dog and a handful of her toys in the passenger seat, and hit the road for Paris.
There wasn’t much traffic, and while the kilometers whizzed past, I thought about Sir Cramner and the twists and turns my life had taken since that day on Carnaby Street over thirty years ago. And now, just when I thought everything was settled and fine, a big change loomed. Where would it lead?
When I was still a fairly young woman, about twenty-eight or so—I’d been at Ballantine & Company for about ten years—Sir Cramner had come out of his office one afternoon and stopped in front of my desk. He was an imposing man, robust and mustachioed. Always impeccably dressed in a Gieves & Hawkes three-piece suit, a watch fob looped through his vest.
“We’ve had such a good month, Kick, and Lady Ballantine has gone to Scotland to visit her mother. I think it’s time for us to take a little pink Champagne holiday.” That’s what he called our occasional breaks at Claridge’s where we’d call room service nonstop for a day or two, “pink Champagne holidays.”
“Really?” I answered.
“Yes, but I mean a real holiday, a weekend on the French Riviera.”
“You don’t mean it, sir.” We’d never been outside the city limits of London together. In fact, outside of the office, we’d never even been seen in public together. Sir Cramner loved me, but not so much that he would risk a scandal. With the exception of our Claridge’s sprees, all our time was spent at my flat on Eaton Terrace, quietly enjoying each other’s company.
“I do mean it. We leave tomorrow morning. I’ve got the tickets. I’ll come for you at eight o’clock.”
We flew to Marseilles on a BOAC BAC-III—it was my first ride in an airplane and holding hands in public with Sir Cramner and the in-flight Dom Perignon calmed any butterflies I had. A car took us to the Hôtel du Cap in Cap d’Antibes where we checked into a vast suite that overlooked the gardens and sparkling bay.
I’ll never forget how thrilled I was to be out in the open with him—even if it was early spring and the glamorous Côte d’Azur season was weeks away and the hotel’s famous gardens had not yet reached their full bloom. We would be able to walk on the rocky “plage” and stick our toes in the cold water and have lunch and visit art galleries and go shopping and dress for dinner and dance in the moonlight on the terrace over the Mediterranean. We might even meet other couples. We might make some friends that would be our friends. Our first friends.
I had no expectation that Sir Cramner would divorce his wife and marry me. He wouldn’t. I had accepted that I would live in the demimonde and I didn’t mind, especially now that the conditions were so very comfortable. But there we were: together in public on the French Riviera. It was as though I were in a fairy tale. More than I had ever hoped to dream.
“You know what you mean to me, Kick.” He cleared his throat and I suspected he was struggling to control his words, that what he really wanted to say was, You know how much I love and adore you, Kick. But between the two of us, propriety always ruled, the real words had yet to be spoken. We were standing on the terrace of our suite where the sun made everything white and blinding and made the sea and boats glitter like diamonds. “Well, I thought you might like to have this.” He handed me a black velvet box. I opened it. Inside lay a brilliant-cut, white diamond suspended from a thin platinum chain.
“Cranmer,” I said. “It’s magnificent.”
“It’s the Pasha of St. Petersburg. Thirty-five carats.” He removed the necklace from its case and clasped it around my neck. “It came into the house for sale and I grabbed it before you had a chance to see it. You are my good luck charm, Kick, my life preserver. I wish there could be more for us.”
“You have made my life more than I ever imagined possible,” I tol
d him.
As it turned out, we never, through thirty years together, until the very end, seemed able to say I love you to each other. But we meant to. It was implicit. Sir Cramner couldn’t say it because he was a Victorian gentleman and they did not go for such admissions of weakness, and as I’ve already mentioned, he would never risk a scandal. And I couldn’t say it because I didn’t know what love was. Love, to me at that time, was anonymity, privacy and a meal ticket, and I would do anything to get and keep them. Anything. There was little honesty or honor in my motives. But I loved him as best I could. As the years passed, and I became more financially and personally secure, I believe I came to love him properly.
Since the moment he placed the Pasha around my neck, I have never taken it off. It is permanently nestled among my bosom and feeling the diamond against my skin or grasping it in my fist has kept me grounded on more than one occasion.
“I’m going down to change some money,” he said. “Meet me in the bar once you’re settled and we’ll have lunch.”
It’s hard to describe how excited I was. I lived a completely cloistered life between home, business and my time with Sir Cramner. My only hobby was stealing a piece of jewelry from the auction house every now and then, making a perfect replica of it in my workroom at home, and watching it go up for auction and sell, undetected, while the original stones and smelted precious metal ingots ended up in my vault in Switzerland. I never looked at other men, although many of them looked at me. I had no practical experience with men anyway. Amazing as it seems, when it came to sex, I had gone from the bench seat of a pickup truck in an Oklahoma oil field to a downy bed in a suite at Claridge’s with no experiential stops in between. But the fact was: I didn’t need anyone else. I was committed to self-preservation and everyone with half a brain knows that if you want to be in control of your life and protect yourself, the first cardinal rule is, you don’t fall in love. At least that’s what I thought, until I met Thomas. And frankly, now, as I sped along the A-8 to Paris, I wasn’t exactly sure what I thought anymore.
I dressed carefully that day at the Hôtel du Cap. No more colored mascara, minidresses, pink go-go boots, and ratted hair for me. I now wore expensive silk and lace lingerie, designer suits and shoes, and lovely, appropriate jewelry. My blond hair was smoothed into a sleek twist and my makeup was understated and professional I put on a taupe shantung suit with white piping, cap-toed Chanel sling-back pumps, pearl earrings, and a jagged torsade of uncut and unpolished amber. Brimming with happiness, I went down to the breezy lobby and into the bar.
I saw him immediately. He was sitting with another couple on the terrace. My natural reticence and instincts told me not to join them. I took a small table indoors and ordered a coupe de champagne. Shortly he came in.
“This is a disaster,” he said. “It’s Lady Ballantine’s sister and her husband, Lord and Lady Farmington. I’m simply astounded they are here. No one’s here this time of year.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I’m sorry to leave you by yourself for lunch, Kick, but I don’t see any immediate solution.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you after lunch. We’ll go for a walk.” I swallowed my disappointment.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of them.”
Well, after lunch it wasn’t any better. They were there for the same amount of time we were—resting up in preparation for the gala summer season ahead—and, since he was alone, they asked him to join them for dinner.
As I’ve mentioned before, I knew Sir Cramner loved me but would never risk or tolerate a scandal over me. And also, as I’ve mentioned, up until that time, my only forays into theft—since my release from reform school—had been strictly in-house affairs. But now, I was hurt, and resentful, and I wanted to get even. Not with Sir Cramner. As far as I was concerned, he was as much a victim of his sister-in-law’s overbearing hospitality as I was. No. I wanted to get even with Lady Farmington and her sister, Lady Ballantine, for stealing my holiday
Once Sir Cramner left for dinner—he looked so distinguished in his evening clothes—I broke into a supply closet using my lock-picking sticks and helped myself to a maid’s uniform. Then, dressed as help, I broke into Lady Farmington’s suite and stole all her jewelry, which was quite good for a stuffy Englishwoman—lovely old art deco family pieces with some excellent stones, mostly diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. It was silly how easy it was, if one were prepared, which I always was. (Since I turned sixteen, I’ve always carried a set of lock picking tools in my purse, along with a jeweler’s loupe and jeweler’s needle-nose pliers.) By the time Sir Cramner got back that night, the pieces no longer existed. I’d buried the stones deep in my cold cream jar and tossed the settings into the ocean.
The next day, while he was boating with his brother-in-law, I rented a car and drove to St. Rémy and put a down payment on my jewel box of a farm, La Petite Pomme. The minute I saw it, I knew it was home. My secret home.
Sir Cramner and I flew back to London that night, three days early, and never really left town again.
A week later, he presented me with a Van Gogh of a sunflower field in Provence as a consolation. He had no idea how providential the painting was—he never knew about my little farm—and how years later, the painting would lead Thomas to me.
N I N E
It was dark by the time I reached Paris.
“Bonsoir, madame, bienvenue a l’Hôtel Ritz.” The doorman opened my car door and helped me out.
“Thank you.” I was stiff from the drive and stretched my arms over my head.
“Have you driven far?”
“London.”
“Oh, my. How lucky you are in this beautiful car.”
I smiled at him and tucked Bijou under my arm. “Take good care of it.”
“Bien sur.”
“Welcome, Madame Pennington,” the young woman at the registration counter said. “Your suite is ready.”
I followed her into a tiny elevator directly across from her desk, up to the second floor, and down the quiet corridor to a set of double doors. My suite was blue and green satin damask, with the down cushions on the chairs and sofa plumped into giant marshmallows. A tall crystal vase of pink roses sat on the coffee table and filled the room with their sweet, subtle fragrance. Two sets of double doors opened onto the garden courtyard three floors below, where the cocktail hour was well underway. The sedate popping of corks, tinkling of ice cubes on crystal, and muffled rattle of plates and cutlery drifted up.
I knew the garden was full of bankers, businessmen, international tycoons, and famous models, all making deals, arranging assignations, admiring each other, and furtively looking to see who else was there and who was admiring them.
I unpacked, fed Bijou, arranged all my cosmetics and toiletries—which are significant in number—along the glass bathroom shelf (I always put the ones that aren’t in pretty bottles inside the cabinet), and then submerged myself in a steaming hot rose-scented bubble bath in a tub that was as big and deep as a swimming pool. I closed my eyes. I thought about Pamela Harriman. She’d been very, very savvy about men and on top of that, she’d had the sublime style and wit to die right here in this hotel, right downstairs in the swimming pool doing laps. What a woman. She’d never been caught with her mouth hanging open by one of her husbands leaving her. She spotted trouble coming and left them first.
What kind of a husband steals his wife’s jewelry? Have you ever heard of anything so low?
The bath soaked the long drive out of me, and in spite of the fact that I was in Paris on business, not here to enjoy myself, I still had to eat.
I dressed inconspicuously in a black suit and pearls and went down to the bar where I was seated by the door to the garden, perfect for watching people watching themselves.
“Madame?” The waiter placed a starched linen cocktail napkin and small dishes of olives and almonds on my table.
“Chopin vodka, straight up, please. Very cold. Two twists.”
“B
ien.” He made a quick bow.
I always carry a novel with me in my purse—tonight it was a wonderful, ripping adventure about African diamond mining—and once he was gone, I quickly lost myself in the story I’d only had a couple of sips of my vodka when the temperature in the bar suddenly changed, fizzed up, as though a electrical current had buzzed through and set everyone’s skin aglow. The waiters seemed to move more smoothly and the customers seemed to sit up a little straighter. Then, like Cleopatra on a barge, or Elizabeth the First on a progress, she sailed grandly through the door from the lobby, leading her entourage. Marjorie Mead. The movie star. Even I recognized her and I seldom go to the movies. Never, actually.
She was more magnificent in person than in her pictures, which I’d often seen on magazine covers. Maybe five-seven or -eight, glossy black hair cropped straight at her jawline and eyes the color of Burmese sapphires. Her skin was creamy and pink and her full lips shone with red gloss. Marjorie was in her mid thirties and had a filled-in woman’s body that she made no effort to conceal. She wore a flippy black chiffon cocktail dress and high-heeled black satin Manolo sandals, a serious diamond necklace encrusted with good-sized stones and matching ear- rings. A black fox stole hung jauntily over one shoulder. Marjorie was a movie star in the old tradition. She was combustible and it was fun to watch her move through to the garden. She knew she was causing a sensation, even in a bar as jaded as the Ritz’s Vendôme—she loved it, and we loved it. And then she was gone. Seated outdoors behind a screen of palms.
After a while, I finished my drink and signed my check. Bijou and I walked through the Jardin des Tuileries and across the river to one of my favorite restaurants, Voltaire, where monsieur took me into the cozy, paneled back room to a comer table and served me a fine dinner of sliced grapefruit and avocado, sautéed scallops, duchesse potatoes, and gratinéed tomatoes, a little cheese plate, and a half bottle of Chevalier Montrachet that was so lovely I was sorry I hadn’t ordered a full bottle. The service was formal and unobtrusive and gave me the uninterrupted time to formulate a number of strategies and scenarios for how I could reclaim the Empresse emerald. Of course, the constant fly-in-the-ointment, the brick wall each idea kept running into, was that they all hinged on my ability to identify the burglar. That was the issue and it was a big one. On the positive side, though, the robbery was only slightly more than twenty-four hours old, so things were just starting to shake out. The best possible scenario was that I would go to the museum, spot the thief, follow him or her to his lair, and while he was out, simply reclaim the necklace and leave it at a police station or bank—someplace safe—make an anonymous call about its location, and that would be that. That would be the simplest way, fully recognizing, of course, I had virtually no control over the situation.
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