Queen of the Hide Out

by Alice Quinn

  My mother’s song came back to me. The real meaning behind it.

  She clearly wanted me to actually make use of the diamond. She wanted to let me know that now was the right time. Weird! She knew I was in a sticky spot when it came to my Big Pink. Nothing had changed there. Surely she understood.

  Or maybe she knew something I didn’t. Or she’d finally lost it and gone loopy. If that was the case, I’d be pissed at her. I couldn’t handle her going schizo on me.

  “Mommy, what are you doing?” asked Sabrina. “Are you paralyzed?” She’d clearly been watching me for a while, gawking, her mouth wide open. “Don’t worry. I speak to Grandmamma too. She’s up in the sky.”

  I burst out laughing. This reassured her, and the little ones too. I grabbed the bags and dumped them in the container. We headed off to school at a brisk pace.

  10

  As soon as the kids were all dropped off in their respective places of learning (I think learning is a bit far-fetched. As far as I can see, kids all come out of school like little robots these days—no original thoughts), I went home to my trailer.

  And that’s when it came to me that my mother was certainly not short a brain cell or two. Either that or she had a clear view of things up where she was. She’s always at least three steps ahead, that one.

  I turned on the radio just as a live news bulletin came on.

  “Several arrests have been made following the mobilization of more than one hundred fifty police officers over the last few months within the region of Nice. The police have successfully managed to take down a ring of smugglers specialized in currency forgery, arms sales, and diamond smuggling. More than a dozen arrests have been made in Nice, Mougins, and Antibes. Among those arrested was the Bratva Godfather of the Russian Mafia, also known as the Red Mafia, aged fifty-nine and considered one of the world’s most dangerous criminals. Six men, including the Bratva Godfather, are now behind bars in Marseille.”

  When I heard the words “diamond” and “Russian Mafia,” I listened intently. Could I be so lucky this time?

  It then took me around ten seconds to realize they were talking about the big Russian boss. They’d been banged up! They were history! Old news! Well, today’s news, but soon-to-be old news! This was about to totally change my life. My mother had so sent me the right song. I was free to do what I wanted with my Big Pink. I was free.

  This meant I’d be free to spend a bit of cash without being filled with bullet holes.

  This was a big deal. I was a millionaire.

  I had myself a giant diamond of immense value, and the Mamma was out of the game now! My Big Pink! About time! There were now a gazillion better ways to be spending my time than visiting with some old rich guy and cleaning up after him.

  But I still had to make sure I played this safe. I needed to find an article with photos about what I’d just heard on the news. I had to make sure it was really him. My Russian Mamma guy.

  I came up with a plan: I’d go and get my rock, find a pawn shop—you know, one of those places that buys and sells your stuff, even if it’s stolen . . . They just do it discreetly—and I’d make me a ton of cash. A mountain of the stuff. Enough to last a while, anyhow.

  Do you think that’s a little dishonest? Well, OK, I suppose it is. Maybe a little dangerous too. I could wind up catching the attention of even more criminal types . . . and then the cops would find out what I was up to! That’s the last thing I needed.

  Should I give it back to its rightful owner? I bet they were paid back ages ago by their insurance company, though. Maybe I might take it to the cop shop? What? And not gain from it at all? There was no way I would even consider that. That’s not my style. I’d find a way to do what I wanted with it. I’d fool the lot of them somehow.

  I thought about it some, and then some more . . . about ten seconds in total . . . and then I came to understand that there was no other way around it. There was one path ahead of me. And it was the only choice I had.

  11

  So what was this plan? I had to get my old gray matter working on this one. First off, I had to find the diamond in all of Sabrina’s junk and then come up with a way of getting it off my hands.

  Rosie, there’s a whole load of money coming your way. The little ones will have the best gifts ever for Christmas. Everything they ever dreamed of. All that crap from the catalog. They’d be having fits over what I’d buy them. I’d be able to pay my debts for the kids’ meals at school, and I could give back all the money my buddies had loaned me over the last couple of months. Fantastic!

  It’s quite something, the things life can throw at you. One dark and depressing moment can quickly turn into a magnificent sparkling future!

  I went into Sabrina and Simon’s room and searched through their big wooden toy chest. I found a crumpled fabric bag with a doll, a whole heap of colored handkerchiefs, little plastic pearl headbands, bracelets, and . . . the necklace? My Big Pink? Where was the rest of Sabrina’s doll stuff and the fake (and real!) diamonds? My Big Pink was supposed to be here!

  No! Don’t tell me it’s not here! I was on the verge of having some sort of hysterical fit. Was Rosie Maldonne’s famous bad luck back again so soon?

  That’s right. I have some sort of curse or hex on me. It’s always been like this. I never win anything, never find anything . . . I have a permanent case of crappy luck. But I thought I’d put all that behind me. Apparently not. I played over the never-ending bad luck I’d had. What a loser I’d always been. And now I couldn’t find the one thing I’d ever managed to find in the first place!

  Since finding it, I’d just pretended the diamond didn’t exist. I’d felt like this was the best solution for me. But now look what a mess I’d gotten into. Now I could actually do something with it—anything—and I couldn’t find the damn thing!

  OK, let’s take a breather here. Don’t panic. I dove headfirst into the toy chest and started emptying the whole thing, throwing stuff all over the floor. It was like the kids’ section at a department store in that one wooden box: crayons, erasers, pencil sharpeners, Sharpies, an empty water bottle, rolls of tape, comic books, notepads, plastic cell phones, a calculator . . . I think my baby Sabrina has everything she’ll ever need to become the perfect little businesswoman!

  I continued to rifle through the contents and throw bits and pieces all over the floor. There was every kind of fabric in this box, every color, every pattern. Each piece was really quite beautiful. Where did she get them all from? She had silk, pieces of lace, glittery voile, and lots of pink. Pink made a big appearance . . . just not in the shape of a diamond.

  Of course, the reason she had all this fabric was so she could make little dresses for her doll. She’d also hoarded miniature perfume bottles, little purses, silk and satin wallets, a whistle, marbles . . . play dough that she’d tried to model into baby animals, human shapes, and flowers, but they were all stuck together and had gone rock hard. Other kiddy crap included wrappers, half-sucked candy bars with bits of fluff on them, Kleenex screwed up into tight balls, half-munched doughnuts, a tiny pocket mirror, a broken Hello Kitty makeup kit, pieces of string and ribbons. Added to what seemed like this endless pile were stuffed toys of all shapes and sizes (how did all this even fit in the box), a snow globe with a cute baby fairy inside, Happy Families card games (seven in total), one or two odd socks, a kids’ CD player, a few spoken-word CDs of fairy tales, and a whole herd of plastic animals from the farmyard, Africa, and prehistory! What a mix. Oh, and let’s not forget the neon-green bugs that cropped up now and again, making my skin crawl. I thought I was going to crack. There wasn’t a diamond in sight. Not even the teeniest of sparkles.

  This was turning out to be a marathon of a day. I was so pissed! I gave up for the time being and stomped off toward the library. The employment office had offered me a free IT course some months earlier, and ever since then I’d been an absolute whiz on a keyboard. But I didn’t have a keyboard, or Wi-Fi, or even a computer at my place, so I had
to use the library whenever I wanted to go online.

  As soon as I plonked my behind down in front of a computer, I set about typing in search words at megaspeed—I can do sixty words per minute, you know. I quickly typed in the following: “rushian mafya, netwurk, godfarther, and dimund.” An article popped up on the screen from the local paper. I recognized my Russian guy immediately. There he was with his two little gophers, my dearest friends Marc and Piotr. They were in custody.

  OK, it didn’t mean their whole hunt for the diamond was done with completely, but they currently had other fish to fry by the looks of things. So that was one worry out of the way. Now I just needed to get my pretty little hands back on my rock again.

  In the meantime, life had to go on. I needed to feed my kiddos and come back down to earth for the moment. That meant finding myself some work.

  12

  I decided now was the time to write my ad. I wrote up a great little piece all about myself.

  Yung, serius gurl, ofers companny for an elderley purson. Im good at entertayning fowk. I can do reeding and I sing real good to. My mayne songs are ABBA and The Beetles—Maybe this is the right time to talk about yesterday’s song (the one by the Walker Brothers). I could maybe sing their tunes too. I still don’t know what my screwy mother was thinking when she sent down that one—I also like doing funny sketchis. Anywon who I take care of never gets board. Salary is negotchabel. Availabel imeediatly.

  I read it over. Spelling has never been a strong point of mine, but I hoped for the best. There were lots of squiggly red lines everywhere. I don’t know what the heck that was all about. I added my cell number to the bottom so people could contact me and copied it all down onto a piece of paper. Maybe I could post the typed-up version online, and the handwritten paper version could go down to the bus station with all the others.

  Before leaving the library, I searched online about how to make money by selling tin cans. As I was looking through all the sites about tin and aluminum and the rest, I came across a blog that talked all about metals, raw materials, precious stones . . . and guess what? Diamonds!

  So that was it for me. I was obsessed. All I could do then was continue to look up information about diamonds.

  I got so caught up in it all, I didn’t even notice the time pass. I hadn’t even eaten anything for lunch, and now it was time to fetch the kiddos. There was no way I’d have time to drop off my ad at the station . . . and I somehow had to try to memorize everything I’d just read about diamonds. What a state I was in.

  The most interesting thing I found was a page mentioning my little beauty, my Big Pink (the official name was the Sissi Diamond), which had been all over the front pages just three years earlier. I found out that this rock—which had been in the hands of the Russian Mamma and passed on to my (boy)friend Jérôme, and had nearly cost me my life—had been stolen from a diamond convention in Basel, Switzerland, from right under the noses of hundreds of diamond dealers! The Pink Panther Gang was originally thought to be behind the theft. These guys were Chechen supercriminals with a real insatiable appetite for diamonds. My Big Pink was estimated to be worth millions and millions. According to the site, at the time of the robbery, the diamond had been set into a zirconium necklace in order to fool would-be thieves.

  The history of the stone was just as incredible as its more recent adventures. It dated back to Charles the Bold and had made several appearances on the crowns of many renowned leaders and statesmen—among them popes, the Medicis, Marie Antoinette, and even Napoleon. The stolen diamond had an authenticity certificate, with the name Sissi, and an explanation of its background.

  Scotland Yard had named the Chechens the Pink Panther Gang because at one point, they’d discovered that the Chechens had hidden a huge stolen diamond ring in a pot of face cream, just like in Pink Panther with Peter Sellers! I’d never seen the film, but I knew the music. Everyone does, right?

  So, we were talking about a fake, cheap necklace with a genuine diamond.

  And nobody had seen a trace of it since its disappearance. It was nowhere to be found.

  13

  Nowhere? That’s what everyone thought, but it wasn’t quite true! It had made an appearance in my lovely new trailer, and then someone had gone and run off with it again.

  Well, I knew it hadn’t been stolen. Nobody knew I had it. Not the Mamma, nor the police, nor Dopey and Dumbo (alias Marc and Piotr). They had no clue (or proof) it was with me.

  So I was back to square one.

  I didn’t have my hands on the necklace for the moment, I didn’t have a job, and I hadn’t received any calls about my ad. I was in exactly the same position as yesterday, and the many days before that.

  I’d visit Ismène the next day and find out if they needed an extra hand at her office. I could clean up, sweep, Xerox stuff, shine shoes . . . Anything while I waited to get a job as a care assistant or whatever. My Big Pink was my solution for the future, even though there wasn’t much it could do for me right away.

  I ran as fast I could down to the school, where I bumped into Véro, who was waiting to pick up her little Simon. I was glad to see she’d come to get him and that he wouldn’t be coming home with us again tonight. I had to quiz my Sabrina big-time, and it wouldn’t have been possible with Simon there. I explained to Véro that Simon needed some new boots because he didn’t fit into the ones he had. She had a huge smile plastered across her face.

  “I saw some down at the rehabilitation center. They were only two euro!” she said. I didn’t say a word. Moving on . . .

  After all the kisses and cuddles as we said our good-byes, Sabrina and I hastened over to get the baba twinnies. It was a blizzard out there. When we got to them, I wrapped them up as snugly as I could and tucked them into their stroller, then we all made our way back to the trailer.

  The place was frozen solid inside. I never leave the radiators on when I’m out. This isn’t because I want to save electricity, because to be truthful, I don’t even pay for it (thanks to a little secret scheme I have going on where I’m hooked up to a lamppost). It’s just the principle of the thing. Let’s not forget there’s a global social and financial crisis going on, and we all have to be careful about our energy consumption. I’m thinking of the wider community.

  I took some flour, what was left of the powdered milk, and a little water, and I started to mix up some pancake batter to make the cubbies a little snack. I was trying to think of the best way to tackle the whole diamond subject with Sabrina. I think she could tell she was in the line of fire, the poor little thing.

  The twins wanted to help me make the pancakes, and even Pastis looked like he would be delighted to get involved. So I let him. The three of them were in their element.

  At the end of the whole operation, Pastis looked like a little snowman and pretty much as pleased with himself as a cat can get. He jumped up onto my lap and licked his tiny paws clean. He’d gotten the cream. I hoped he hadn’t eaten too much flour. That wouldn’t do his digestion any good. Watch out swollen tummy!

  As we set about devouring our pancakes, I asked Sabrina innocently, “Have you still got that little necklace? You know? The one for your doll?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Mommy, you’ve got thomething to athk me,” she said. “Do you think I can’t thee it coming?”

  I was torn between feeling proud of how bright she is and being a bit peed off, even confused, at how a little kid could so obviously see me a mile off.

  “No, what are you talking about? I’m just interested, that’s all!”

  “Do you want to talk about Princthetheth?”

  “Sure, that’s right! Princesses! You know the little dolly you always say is your princess? Well, she’s got princess necklaces and princess clothes, doesn’t she?”

  “Yeth! I thee which one you mean, Mommy. You want to talk about her thiny diamond necklath. I’ve been waiting for months for you to athk me. You think I don’t know it’th a big treathure? If not, how come the pol
ith were tho horrid and wanted to thteal it from me?”

  “Oh, you think that, do you honey?”

  Sabrina’s words brought it home to me. We really did have a treasure on our hands here. It was time we did something about it. Seriously.

  14

  “OK, Sabrina, so if you’ve been waiting for months for me to ask you about it, it’s about time you gave me the necklace. It’s not right for a little girl to be going around with a real expensive treasure like that, is it? And you know what? It could come in handy for Mommy right now. I know you’re going to be upset if we sell the necklace . . . I mean it’s your princess necklace, right? But sometimes in life, we have to do things . . .”

  “I know, Mommy! I know we lotht out on the lottery of life! I’m not ath thtupid ath you think!”

  “That’s right, my little one. So here’s the plan. Give me the necklace, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do with it.”

  “You’re not going to give it to the polith, are you?”

  “And why shouldn’t I, my little poppet? He’s a nice guy. Monsieur Borelli—you remember him, right?”

  “No, Mommy. Mothieur Borelli won’t be able to control everything. And you remember that mean cop, don’t you? He tried to take me! We jutht need to find thomeone and then thell it to them.”

  “Yes, you’re right. We could do with selling it to somebody.”

  “Are you thure, Mommy? Maybe the necklath belongth to a real princeth and thee mitheth it!”

  “Of course not. You know what? I bet that necklace was just lying at the bottom of a trunk somewhere. I bet it was totally abandoned. And the best thing that ever happened to it was finding its way to you and joining in all your games. Because you are a real princess, my little sweetheart. I’m sure the necklace just loved spending time with you. And now, if we sell it, it could find itself wrapped around the neck of a really beautiful woman who’ll take it to palaces and to real live balls. After all, it’s the type of necklace that was made especially for pretty ladies’ necks and to be worn to balls. Am I right?”