I shook my head. “No.”
“I haven’t either. To tell you the truth, I’d never heard of it until lunch today—we were just down the street at Le Grand Véfour—and the ladies wanted to come look. The rest of the collection is through there but there isn’t much to look at.”
“Really.” I returned to my pamphlet in the same sort of dismissive way that one does when the passenger seated next to you on the plane wants to talk about your trip, their trip, your life, their life.
“I wonder how he did it. The museum looks very secure to me—all these cameras and bars on the doors.” He indicated with his hands.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. The barred gates at the doors were a joke. Their binding cement was so old it could be chipped away with a mascara wand. But naturally I didn’t point that out.
“You look so familiar to me. Are you certain we haven’t met before?”
“Quite certain. Have a nice afternoon.” I smiled, picked up my dog, and walked away.
Just because my husband had deserted me didn’t mean I was desperate for attention. Besides, I’d never let myself get picked up before and there was no way I was going to start now, especially by some gigolo in a broken-down French museum—no matter how good-looking he was.
I wandered around for another hour, pretending to admire the so-so collection. Many of the pieces were actually very good replicas and I assumed that if the DeBussys had actually ever possessed the real things, they’d sold them long ago to keep the lights on. I studied entrances, exits, security, and patterns. I stayed until closing and saw a handful of other possible perpetrators I would keep an eye on over the next couple of days, but I was fairly certain I would be wasting my time.
T W E L V E
Bijou and I dined that evening at a table for two in the hotel garden, a perfect dinner that started with a Chopin martini and ended with a luscious crème bitllee. The entire time, a small voice kept asking me exactly what I intended to do, but the fact was, I didn’t know. I needed something more to go on—a further indication. Assuming it was an actual robbery, had it been a one-time thing? A prank? Or had there been other, similar incidents and this was the first time it had been made public? At the moment, there was nothing I could do but wait. If this was a real pro, he would strike again.
I slept like a baby, and when I got to the lobby on my way to La Durée for a little pastry and pot of hot chocolate to start my day, the blue-suited employees at the registration desk and cashier’s window, always the epitome of discretion and courtesy, seemed slightly preoccupied, distracted. And more of the hotel’s vigilant, low-key security detail, which was the size of a small private army, was evident. Even in the most normal times, there were more guards than guests, and this morning, they outnumbered us two to one.
I went to the cashier’s window to get some change. “What’s going on?” I asked the young woman.
“Going on, madame?”
“All the security” I handed her a stack of euros.
“Our security is always very tight, madame.”
“I know, but I can tell something has happened. I didn’t watch the news this morning. Has something happened in the world? Are we at war? Please tell me there haven’t been any terrorist attacks in Paris.”
“Non. Non.Nothing so serious as that, madame.” She leaned toward me. “Le Voleur de Trèfle,” she whispered. “One of our guests was robbed.”
I forced my expression to remain fixed. “Pardon?”
The young woman nodded slightly as she placed my large bills alongside the drawer and withdrew my change. ”C’est vrai. She put all her jewelry on her bed table and when she woke up this morning, it was gone, replaced by the note and the little bouquet of trèfles.”
“You’re joking, of course,” I said. My face remained composed, although I believe my eyes may have widened a little bit and my voice sounded normal. But inside? My heart fluttered and my knees went slightly weak. I was astonished. I tried not to gape at her.
“No, madame. This is no joke. She should have deposited her jewels down here in the safe because there’s nothing we can do to help her replace them and I don’t suppose her insurance will cover them since she took no step to protect them. However, they were exceptionally fine pieces, easily identifiable, so perhaps she’ll get them back.”
“Really,” I said, still trying to take it all in. “What were they like?”
“Very unusual—they were white tigers.”
“White tigers?”
The woman nodded. “I saw them. She showed them to me last evening when she came to cash a check before she went out. They were magnificent. A brooch, earrings, a necklace and two bracelets, oh, and a ring—all solid diamonds with onyx for the tiger stripes. They were very dramatic. The tigers were big.”
I knew the White Tiger Suite well. Cartier had made the pieces especially for an American collector, and when she decided to sell them, we did everything we could to try to attract her to Ballantine & Company. She went to Sotheby’s in the end. Her entire collection had been astounding, and the white tigers were the stars. The suite went for a disappointing million dollars—I know they’d been anticipating at least twice that amount. The hotel cashier was right: The tigers were big, three-dimensional, with pear-shaped emerald eyes. The brooch and the bracelet were particularly attention-getting. The brooch was a perfectly formed, five-inch-long tiger in a walking stance, and the slightly smaller version on the bracelet was draped across the wrist as though he’d been commanded to lie down but was ready to leap. Another thing I remembered about the suite were the tigers’ faces: They were beautiful. Sweet and inquisitive, begging to be understood. They were eerie.
This was no ordinary heist. It had obviously been planned for some time, and there was no question that the pieces had been taken as trophies. From a jewel thief’s point of view, the whole point of stealing jewelry was to take the most versatile, marketable piece possible, break it down, sell the stones, and melt the metal, rendering the lucre unidentifiable and easily concealed. That’s how jewel thieves make their living. Steal the stones, sell the stones. Not by stealing one-of-a-kind Cartier pieces that had no particularly important or large gems but were certifiable works of art with impeccable provenances. These had little breakdown value, they were all pavé. Excellent quality to be sure, but pavé nevertheless.
Well, I’ll say one thing for whoever this was: He or she had excellent taste, which I was grateful for because I’d hate to have my name associated with anything second-rate.
I don’t mean to be a snob, but I was so, so grateful my impersonator wasn’t Madame Debussy. But more than that, I was alarmed and angry. This person was obviously having fun, playing a game, at my expense. With Thomas out there, gone straight, I was the one who would take the fall. I realized I needed to distance myself from the scene as quickly as possible. My mouth had gone dry. I took a breath and licked my lips.
“Goodness,” I said. “Quelle dommage.”
“Oui.”The cashier snapped my crisp new bills into the shape of a fan across the marble counter. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Madame Pennington?”
I paused. “You know,” I said casually. “I’m going to do some shopping and then have lunch at the Pompidou before I head back to London. Now that I think about it, I think it will be easier if I go ahead and check out now and take my car.”
“As you wish.”
T H I R T E E N
I said I needed a little something more to go on—but this was much more than I’d bargained for. My mind raced as I drove into the cavernous, anonymous, underground parking garage at the Louvre. This was a serious mess. One robbery by the Shamrock Burglar was one thing and I could prove I’d been at home. But. two were inexplicable, and for me, indefensible. I was in the center of the crime. The Ritz kept every square inch of its common areas on film. I didn’t know about its upstairs corridors, but if they did make tapes of upstairs traffic, then based on what the thief looked l
ike and his size, I might be able to prove I hadn’t stolen the White Tiger Suite. But this person was bold and. talented, and whether or .not there was a video of him advancing to the doors and breaking in, he would have been camouflaged. Thomas, if I ever heard from him again, would never believe it wasn’t me. Worse yet, by now he probably had alerted the French Securité, told them of my identity and whereabouts in Provence.
All my old reflexes began to click smoothly into place, firing off each other like falling dominoes. I grew calm. My life had suddenly changed—but I had more lives and options than anyone could ever imagine.
For starters, I had to get out of Paris. Although I hadn’t been registered under my own name at the hotel, it wouldn’t take a genius to track down a middle-aged woman in a black Jaguar XK with a little white dog. But now, my future depended on finding my attacker and I would approach it the way I did everything: professionally. This was not a game. Before I left the city, I needed to visit the museum one more time to see if any of yesterday’s suspects reappeared. I wasn’t concerned about being recognized as a too-frequent, too-curious visitor, or being caught on film by the nonexistent security.
“Antonio Banderas” wasn’t there. And neither were “Cary Grant” nor Sissy McNally. Neither, for that matter, was anyone who could have filled the bill, in my opinion.
By eleven-thirty, I’d spent all the time I felt I could. I’d skipped breakfast and I knew if I didn’t eat a little something, a little hot chocolate, a little cake or cookie, something, before I started the long drive home, I’d never make it.
I picked up a copy of Étémagazine from a sidewalk stand, walked up to the Faubourg St. Honoré, and into Jean-Paul Hévin’s little treasure of a shop. Hévin is simply the finest. chocolatier in the world and I knew he’d have just the right thing for me to eat while I figured out what the hell I was going to do next. I went upstairs to the tearoom. It was just starting to fill up with others who felt hot chocolate and dark chocolate truffles comprised a valid meal.
“Madame?” the waitress asked.
“Un pot de chocolat, s’il vous plâit.”
“Oui. Et?”
I had to decide. It was excruciating. “Two truffles please: Amaretto and Grand Marnier.”
I settled into my table, trading my dark glasses for readers, and pulled the magazine out of my bag.
The actress, Marjorie Mead, was on the cover of Été. She was the guest of honor at this year’s Gala di Portofino, a glitzy, jet set, celebrity-heavy fund-raiser for refugee charities. The gala was always held at Villa Giolitti, ancestral home of Count Giancarlo Giolitti’s family since the 1200s and reliquary of the Giolitti collection, one of the finest private art collections in the world.
The article went on to say that DeBeers LV was underwriting the gala and not only would Marjorie Mead be there with many other luminaries, but so would the DeBeers Millennium Star, the largest perfect diamond in the world—203 carats of sheer perfection, to be exact. When it came to trophies, this one would head anyone’s list. I’d had the pleasure of seeing it at the Millennium Dome in London, before all the major stones at the show had had to be replaced with fakes in order to foil a grand-scale grand robbery attempt. The burglars should have checked with their children—a five-year-old could have told them their harebrained scheme would never work.
Their plan was that in the morning just before the Dome opened to the public for its daily business, they would crash a bulldozer through the wall and drive straight to the jewelry vault where the employees would just be bringing out the Millennium Star and a collection of twelve very rare blue diamonds to be displayed for the day They would grab the gems, race to the river’s edge, and jump into a waiting speedboat that was equipped with a mounted submachine gun, and make their escape.
There were a number of serious problems with this plan: First of all, when two or more people are in on a secret, it isn’t a secret anymore. There were five or six people in on this one, and as a result, somebody told somebody who told somebody who told the police. By the time they made their daring and spectacular smash through the wall of the Millennium Dome and roared to the vault, virtually every single employee in the building—janitors to ticket-takers to precious stones display attendants—was an undercover police officer. All the real diamonds had been replaced by undetectable fakes—synthetic replicas—weeks earlier when the authorities had first gotten wind of the plan. And, just to complete the robbers’ humiliation, the police let them run into the giant vault to grab their loot and slammed the door behind them, locking them inside.
If they’d succeeded, it would have been the largest jewel heist in history. Instead, they were all serving at Her Majesty’s Pleasure till Kingdom Come.
Understandably, DeBeers LV got a little edgy about showing off its crown jewel and the Millennium Star was not seen again until the firm underwrote the Oxfam gala at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. Their official spokeswoman, the well-known model, Iman, wore a dress especially designed for the occasion with the Star hanging as a pendant from her necklace. The up-coming gala in Portofino would be its next public appearance.
If the new Shamrock Burglar was taking his métier seriously, which he appeared to be, a successful grab of the Millennium Star would be a crowning achievement to anyone’s career.
I finished the truffles and ordered one of the little chocolate cakes, similar to the bagatelles I’d made at home, just to see how his were different from mine. Jean-Paul’s had a whisper of something, maybe Grand Marnier. And mine were wrapped in silver-leaf. Other than that, they were identically delicious.
By the time I left the tearoom, my plan was set.
F O U R T E E N
Strange as it may sound, taking the Ritz robbery into account, I left Paris feeling back to normal, back to my calm, controlled self. I had a sense of focus and security. The trip had been worthwhile because it gave me a glimpse into my nemesis’s modus operandi. This person was stealing for the thrill of it—getting high on the tantalizing danger of audacious theft. And I was right there with him, back in familiar territory, planning what would become the most sensational jewel robbery of all time, if it came off: the theft of the DeBeers Millennium Star. Let me be clear, I wasn’t planning to actually steal the Star myself, but I needed to think that way, and going to Portofino was the only thing I could think of to do. It would be the biggest gamble of my career, and gambling is something I have never taken to. However, it was time to get creative.
I put the top up on my car, and as soon as I was outside the City, I put my foot on the accelerator and tore into the country-side. I love to drive. And today, I particularly appreciated the power of my Jag and the concentration it required at high speed so I wouldn’t think about my husband. I couldn’t afford to. What I had to do was out-think him.
What was wrong with him anyway?
I wondered if he’d come home while I was gone. Two days ago, I wanted him to, now I prayed he hadn’t. I couldn’t predict what he would do, I could only assume he would arrest me. If he was there in the house, I’d make an immediate left turn to Plan B, and head for Switzerland where I’d stashed the majority of my assets.
Just south of Lyon, I exited off the A-7, the famous high-speed Auto Route du Soleil, and got on the old highway, Route 86, which wound down the opposite side of the river through local traffic that crept along at a one-horse, hay-wagon pace.
I reached over and patted my sleeping Bijou. “Don’t worry, darling girl. It will all be fine.” Of course, for her, everything was always fine, as long as her meals were served on time. I knew I was talking to myself.
I kept to the back roads from Avignon to Éygalières to avoid detection by the local gendarmes in case they happened to be looking for me, which I assumed they were. Evening shadows reached deep across the valley as I approached the farm, and I saw the blue of police lights flashing through the trees behind me. I switched off my headlights and darted onto the road opposite my entrance and watched, horrified, as two
police cars turned into La Petite Pomme.
Once they were out of sight, I checked carefully, saw no other traffic, and gunned the engine. The Jag leapt across the road like a rocket and shot straight into a small thicket of trees and bushes, where it was invisible. I tried not to think about scratches on the dozens of coats of its hand-rubbed paint. I got out and skirted the edge of the field along the cypress trees, and watched through the orchard where just four days ago Thomas and I had been sipping a special bottle of wine, eating lemon meringue pie, and celebrating our anniversary
More police cars arrived—there were six all together. All the lights in the house were turned on and I could see figures moving around, searching it.
“Oh, Thomas. How could you?” I muttered under my breath.
It made me sick. Not just that they were handling my things but because I knew he had betrayed me.
After an hour, they left and I drove home in the dark.
F I F T E E N
I loved my life. I didn’t want to start over somewhere else. This was where I wanted to stop. I looked around my perfect little house, everything just as I had collected and placed it with love and thought over the years. I didn’t like to travel. I liked the humdrum repetitions of my daily life—waking up in my bed and looking out my window to the mountains across the valley. And now I had to leave. What choice did I have? None. Unless I wanted to turn myself in and go to jail. I was a wanted woman. And now I was about to be a woman on the run. I was too old for this.
There was an official-looking note taped to my front door: “Mme. Keswick, please call the St. Rémy police department immediately. It is urgent. Chief Bernard.”
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