Blood Rubies

by Jane K. Cleland

  He opened the heavy wooden door, and we entered a special, rarified world. The Blue Dolphin was housed in a curved brick building that had been designed in 1740 to fit into the narrow rounded corner lot.

  We greeted Frieda, the hostess, and waved hello to Suzanne, the manager.

  “Is Ana Yartsin here?” I asked Frieda.

  “No, she left about an hour ago. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Did you want to get seated now?”

  “Thanks,” Ty said. “We’ll have a drink first.”

  We headed into the lounge, a cozy room with bay windows overlooking the Piscataqua River. On most days, you could see across to Maine. Jimmy, the bartender, was filling a silver-colored martini shaker with gin and chatting with a couple sitting at the bar. Ty and I made a beeline for my favorite table, in a corner by the window.

  “Hey, Josie!” Jimmy called. “Hey, Ty. Be right with you.”

  Jimmy served the martinis, then came to us. He had red hair and freckles and a ready smile. He’d been one of the first people I’d met when I’d moved to Rocky Point nearly a decade ago, and one of the most welcoming.

  “I’ll take a watermelon martini,” I said.

  “And I’ll try an Effinghamburgherbrau.”

  “You got it,” Jimmy said, flipping cocktail napkins onto our table with his signature flair, as if he were skipping rocks.

  When our drinks arrived, I clinked Ty’s glass. “Here’s to silver light in the dark of night.”

  “And to us.”

  “I love you, Ty.”

  “I love you, too, Josie.”

  I looked out the window. The river glittered as if someone had sprinkled sequins across the water. “Look what the sun is doing.”

  Ty followed my gaze. “Sparkly.”

  “Like me!”

  He smiled, but before he could reply, a woman called my name. I spun around and saw Heather and Jason settling in at a table near the entry.

  I waved hello. “Hi, there! Small world, right?” I introduced Ty.

  Heather greeted him warmly. Jason looked bored, raising his eyes from his smart phone to say hello, then looking down again.

  “Jason and I decided to sneak off for some one-on-one time.”

  Jimmy approached to take their order as Peter walked in.

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered. “Trouble’s at the door.”

  Peter stood by the entrance surveying the lounge. He paused when he saw Heather, then continued his canvass. He smiled at me and nodded. I nodded back but didn’t smile.

  Ty took in the scene at a glance. Before he’d taken his big-cheese job at Homeland Security, he’d been Rocky Point’s police chief. “Who is he?”

  “Peter, Ana’s brother.” I repeated what Ana told me about his relationship with Heather, and their breakup, while surreptitiously watching the minidrama unfolding in the lounge. Peter slid onto a barstool at the far end of the bar, apparently ignoring everything and everyone except Jimmy, the bartender—except his eyes weren’t on Jimmy; they were on the mirror, where he had a full view of the lounge. From the angle, I could tell he was watching Heather.

  “I can’t tell if he’s a gnat or a stalker,” I whispered.

  “That distinction rests in his intention, whether he intends merely to irritate or to interfere.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What should Heather do?”

  “Short term, leave. Long term, get an order of protection.”

  “Will that work?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How could Peter possibly think Heather would find this behavior attractive?”

  “I don’t think he’s doing it to attract her. I think he’s doing it to piss off Jason.” Ty nodded in Jason’s direction. “Look.”

  Having realized Peter was in the lounge, Jason had turned his chair so he faced him. Peter swung his barstool around so he was facing the room, his elbows resting on the bar. The two men were locked in a silent battle. Heather leaned in toward Jason, talking animatedly, her expression earnest. Jason wholly ignored her.

  “Peter’s out for revenge,” I said, thinking it through.

  “Possibly.”

  “Or he’s crazy.”

  “Or he’s simply following a well-thought-out plan to get under Jason’s skin.” Ty nodded toward Jason again. “If so, it seems to be working nicely.”

  Heather touched Jason’s forearm, and he shook her off like a flea.

  “Ick,” I said.

  Ty turned to me. “Ick?”

  “An official term for I don’t want to see any part of this. Take me in to dinner, please.”

  Ty smiled, then leaned over and kissed me, a teasing brush of lip on lip. “With pleasure, ma’am.”

  I nodded at Peter as we passed his stool and did the same to Heather and Jason as we passed their table. I was glad to get away.

  * * *

  Frieda asked Suzanne, the general manager, to seat us, and we followed her into the dining room. Suzanne was tall and slender, like a model. She wore her auburn hair twisted into a high chignon. Her blue sheath fit her perfectly. Most women walked; Suzanne glided. I’d seen her frequently since she and my appraiser Fred had begun dating,* and the more I saw her, the more I liked her.

  She led us to a nice table by the fireplace. Five-foot logs lay across giant brass andirons. A mishmash pile of kindling lay underneath, ready to be lit.

  “We’re having a big debate,” she said. “Should we light the fire?”

  “No,” Ty said at the exact same moment as I said, “Yes.”

  We all laughed.

  “It’s not cold enough,” he said.

  “But it’s so pretty,” I said.

  “We’ll roast.”

  “True.” I turned to Suzanne and smiled. “No.”

  A swarthy man in black-and-white-checked chef’s pants and a tall chef’s hat slammed open the swinging kitchen door as if he hoped to catapult it to Missouri, then stood by our table, his arms crossed and his chin jutting like a bull about to charge.

  “Maurice,” Suzanne said, surprised.

  “We must talk,” he said to her in strongly accented English. “You must listen.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you the pastry chef?” I asked, smiling.

  “Oui. Yes.” He didn’t smile.

  “I love your vanilla crème brûlée. Best ever.”

  He lowered his arms, and his expression softened. “Merci.”

  “And your chocolate tower.”

  He bowed.

  “I’ll come to the kitchen in a moment,” Suzanne said.

  Maurice spun around and pushed through to the kitchen, sending the door furiously swinging.

  Suzanne shook her head. “Maurice is a passionate man.”

  “He doesn’t seem happy,” Ty said.

  “He’s not.” Her eyes sparked fiery daggers. You don’t get to be a turnaround general manager star by taking guff, and I could see the steel in Suzanne’s demeanor. “He objects to our including Ana’s Fabergé egg cakes in our dessert offerings. We’ve had them on the menu for a week—they’re selling well.” She lowered her voice, talking to us as friends. “I hope he finds a way to deal with his anger. He’s threatened to walk out if we don’t cancel our order, and I told him we weren’t canceling, and that if he wanted out, I wouldn’t try to convince him to stay. I’m not sure he believed me.”

  “What does Chef Ray say?”

  “That we need him.” She raised her chin. Her eyes were as hard as iron, and unforgiving. “Everyone’s replaceable.”

  * * *

  After we’d finished our entrees. Suzanne stopped by our table. “How was dinner?”

  I made a yum-yum smacking noise. “Wonderful. As always.”

  “Terrific,” Ty said.

  I glanced at Heather and Jason. They’d moved to the dining room for dinner and were seated by a window, along with another couple, maybe Jason’s be
st friend, Chuck, and his wife, Sara. I was glad to see that Heather and Jason seemed calm and that although Jason’s smart phone sat on the table beside his knife, he wasn’t using it.

  “Any dessert tonight?” Suzanne asked.

  “I was telling Ty more about Ana’s cakes. I was filmed today for her pilot, by the way.”

  “You’re in the show?” Suzanne clapped softly. “How was it?”

  “Nerve-racking. Ana was amazing, though. Polished and warm and engaging.”

  “I saw her on Good Morning, New England last fall sometime. She demonstrated how to convert doughnut holes into cute little apple treats using a red glaze, green frosting for the leaves, and black licorice bits for the stems. She made baskets of them as favors for a kid’s party. I couldn’t take my eyes off her demonstration—and I don’t bake!”

  “Even just hearing about it from you,” I said, “I want to know how to do it. What a gift!”

  She laughed and drifted away to the next table. Ty and I decided to try one of Ana’s cakes. Ten seconds after our waiter disappeared into the kitchen, a plate shattered. I was about to say, “Oops,” when a man began yelling.

  “No more!” he shouted.

  From his accent, I could tell it was Maurice.

  Ty’s brows shot up. “I’d say Maurice has anger issues.”

  “Narcissism. If I don’t get my way I’m going to scream and pound my fists and heels on the floor until you give in.”

  “Amazing seeing adults behave that way. You’d think someone would have corrected his behavior by the time he reached puberty.”

  “Or killed him,” I said.

  Suzanne mouthed, “Sorry,” as she hurried into the kitchen.

  A moment later, the same man’s voice yelled, “You should be ashamed. A cheap gimmick in a fine restaurant. And you want me to endorse it? Never!” A full minute of silence, then, “No. No. No.”

  “He sounds crazed,” I whispered.

  Suzanne reappeared, smiling around the dining room. She approached our table. “I’m so sorry you had to hear that. Your dessert will be right out, and of course, it’s on the house.”

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  She laughed without humor. “You know I don’t have children, right? My brother does, though, so I know all about time-outs. In this case, taking a breather is a practical solution to what really is a complex problem. Maurice is incredibly talented and dedicated—but he doesn’t play nicely with others.”

  We thanked her for comping the dessert, an unnecessary gesture, and she moved to the next table and repeated her apology.

  We’d selected a cake that featured a woodland scene, and it was delightful—trees and wildflowers and a moss-covered rock, a miniature forest filled with enchanting details sculpted out of frosting in about five inches of hollowed-out cake. Amazing.

  “Look at those violets,” I said. “And those are lilies of the valley.”

  “I like the moss.”

  The cake was as tasty as I expected, rich and creamy and sweet, but not too sweet. I felt myself purr.

  “Wow.”

  I took another bite. It was even better than the first.

  “I want to tell Heather how good it is.”

  I turned toward the window where Heather and Jason and the other couple had been seated, but they’d already left. I glanced into the lounge. Peter was still at the bar, staring at the muted wall-mounted TV, eating a hamburger, a lonely man eating alone. I felt sorry for him, and sad.

  I’d known a girl in college whose life was forever changed by a boyfriend’s breakup. She’d been blindsided by his end-of-the-semester-I-need-some-space “Dear Jane” letter, weeping for days, unable to get out of bed. She missed her finals, didn’t take the makeup exams, and flunked out. She wrote him daily missives pledging enduring love and promising to change in whatever ways he wanted. When he read her letters in open court, offering them as evidence in his petition to get a restraining order against her, she’d tried to kill herself, ending up in a mental institution. I’d felt stunned and horrified at her breathtakingly fast downward spiral, and helpless. I heard later that after a few months of hospital care, she’d recovered her equilibrium. She moved back in with her folks and went on to graduate from a different college. Four years later, she’d married a nice fellow from her hometown. Last I heard, they had three kids. What frightened me was how totally I’d misjudged her mental state. I’d known her pretty well, and it had never occurred to me that she was fragile.

  Ty took my hand as we walked to the central garage.

  “Peter is trying to spoil Heather’s wedding. I wish I could do something.”

  He squeezed my hand. “You have a good heart, Josie, but you can’t always fix things.”

  “I know.”

  “Talk to me about Fabergé eggs.”

  I laughed, surprised. “Now?”

  “Yeah. Take your mind off Heather’s troubles. How did Ana get the idea for those cakes?”

  “Her family owns an important Fabergé original—or so the story goes.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I’m reserving my opinion. Of the fifty Imperial eggs known to have been produced by Peter Carl Fabergé, forty-two are extant. The Yartsin family believes theirs is the fifty-first produced, the forty-third extant. They’re convinced that it’s the real deal, the last egg commissioned by the tsar as his annual gift to his wife, Empress Alexandra, in 1917. Ana says that when the Bolsheviks seized the Fabergé workshops, this egg, the Spring Egg, was one of the few treasures that Fabergé was able to save as he fled. Afraid that it would be confiscated like everything else in his workshops, Fabergé crafted a unique hiding place: He hid the egg in plain sight, inserting it in a snow globe, certain that to a layman’s eye, it would appear to be a cheap fake, a novelty knock-off sold as a souvenir.”

  “That sounds like a movie, doesn’t it? The master craftsman escaping one step ahead of the marauding bad guys, then working by candlelight to fabricate a hiding place for a treasure.”

  “It gets better. According to the story passed down through the Yartsin family, Fabergé gave the Spring Egg snow globe to his wife, Augusta, for safekeeping. Augusta and their eldest son, Eugène, escaped Russia by sleigh and on foot, making their way through snow-covered forests until they reached Finland. Fabergé escaped separately, alone. His ruse worked, and the egg went undetected. Augusta sold the snow globe to a Swiss art dealer shortly after her husband’s 1920 death. Ana’s great-grandfather, Serge Yartsin, bought it as an Easter gift for his wife in 1922, and it has been bequeathed from mother to eldest daughter ever since.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “Ana gave me a copy of the last appraisal. Eighteen years ago it was valued at four million dollars.”

  Ty stopped short under a streetlamp. “In today’s dollars, that’s worth about what? Five and a half?”

  “Five point eight, according to my calculations. Giving the current market for high-end antiques, though, and assuming I can confirm provenance, I think it’s worth at least twenty million dollars, possibly much more.”

  “Who on earth would pay that kind of money?”

  “Many museums. People who are proud of their Russian heritage. Status seekers. Investors. Lots of folks.”

  We climbed the parking garage stairs to the second level and walked up the incline to my car. Ty opened my door, and after I got behind the wheel, he closed it. I waited for him to drive by, then backed out and exited after him. We drove to Ty’s house in separate cars, together.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At ten of nine the next morning, Tuesday, as Cara and Gretchen were settling in for the day, Sasha, my chief antiques appraiser, said, “I just got off the phone with an account rep in Austria, Hans Micher. The Vienna Snow Globe company didn’t produce Victorian Christmas scenes.”

  I picked up Ana’s snow globe from Sasha’s desk and shook it lightly, then placed it on her blotter and watched as silvery speckles whirl
ed to the bottom. The scene showed Christmas on a quiet late nineteenth-century London street. “Couldn’t it be a special order? Vienna Snow Globe is known for their custom work.”

  “Maybe, but if so, their account rep couldn’t find any record of it.”

  “The company was founded in the late eighteen hundreds, right? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some order forms have been lost.”

  She tucked her lank brown hair behind her ear, a sure sign she was feeling anxious.

  “So what’s worrying you?” I asked.

  She turned over the globe revealing the Vienna Snow Globe mark, a lightbulb. “Maybe someone faked the company’s logo.”

  I considered how it might have worked. “So some guy in the early nineteen hundreds gets his girlfriend a cheap Christmas present and slyly applies the lightbulb logo to trick her into thinking it’s a pricey gift from a posh store. It’s possible, I suppose.”

  I picked up the globe again. It felt heavy, substantive, a good sign. I brought it to the guest table, where I used a loupe under the strong light to examine the scene closely. Small-scale row houses ranged along one side of a cobblestone street. Each house was decorated for Christmas in a different way. There were evergreen garlands, boughs of holly, red bows, and wreaths ornately embellished with pine cones and tiny glass birds. Gas streetlamps lined the sidewalk. Gold-flecked bulbs seemed to flicker when the light hit them in a certain way. Several rooms were visible through the itty-bitty windows. In one, a young girl held a ball of yarn for her cat to swat. In another, a couple placed presents under their Christmas tree. Overall, the construction appeared flawless, the level of detail remarkable. It didn’t look like a fake.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Gretchen asked.

  “Very,” I said. I shook it again, holding it at eye level so Gretchen could see. After a moment, I raised my eyes to Sasha’s. “We’re going to have to open it up.”

  “I know.”

  I set the globe down. “Let’s call Dr. Grayman and see if she’ll take a look at it.” Elizabeth Grayman was the curator of decorative arts at the New England Museum of Contemporary Art in Durham, and an expert on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European decorative artifacts. “Do you want to go, Sasha? Or would you rather work on the ice-skating snow globe?”