Family Jewels (A Stone Barrington Novel)

by Woods, Stuart

  “Maher.”

  “No doubts?”

  “None. He’s made a very successful effort, like Senator Bond, of getting along with his opposition, and I think that after the uproar from the right wing about his gayness has subsided, he would be easily confirmed and look good doing it on television. He’s also only in his mid-forties, so given good health, he’d be on the Court for a very long time.”

  “I invited him to a State dinner a few weeks ago, and I loved it that he and his husband turned up in their Marine dress uniforms. Lots of ribbons.”

  “That must have been a sight. Is there anything else I can do for you, Kate?”

  “Yes. Will and I are going to be in New York this week and we thought we might attend the showing of Ms. Fiske’s jewelry at Sotheby’s. Will you come with us?”

  “I would be delighted.”

  “Have you a date?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure Holly Barker would love to attend. Shall I bring her with us?”

  “That would be wonderful!”

  “Oh, good! She works far too hard on the National Security Council. Once in a while I have to take her away, just to be sure she has some fun in her life.” Kate paused. “I believe she has a New York apartment.”

  “She does, but it’s small and cramped.”

  “I trust I won’t have to put her in a hotel.”

  “Certainly not. I’ll see that she’s made . . . comfortable.”

  “Thank you so much, Stone. Come for a drink at the Carlyle and we’ll have dinner afterward. Say, five o’clock?”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  “Goodbye, then, and give Holly a call.”

  “I will certainly do so. Goodbye, Kate.” He hung up and called Holly’s direct extension at the White House.

  “Holly Barker.”

  “It’s Stone. I’ve been reliably informed that you will be in New York this week, and that, if I play my cards right, I might have the pleasure of your company.”

  “That depends. How are you planning to play your cards?”

  “Is this phone call being recorded?”

  “Thank you, no further details will be required. I’ll see you in Turtle Bay late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I will look forward to that.”

  “May we see Dino and Viv?”

  “That will be my next call.”

  They said goodbye and hung up.

  56

  The following day Holly arrived a little late, so they had only half an hour in bed before they had to dress for dinner.

  “I apologize for the brevity,” Holly said.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Stone said, kissing her, then watching as she got out of bed and padded around the master suite, collecting garments for the evening, followed everywhere by Bob. He and Holly were already in love. She gave him a little wave, then headed for the shower.

  —

  They arrived at Patroon nearly on time. Dino and Viv were only half a drink ahead of them. Everybody kissed, while Bob explained to a waiter about his bone.

  “It’s very good to see you back home,” Dino said to Holly.

  “Oh, Washington is my home now,” she replied.

  “You still have an apartment here, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I never use it,” she said, winking at Stone. “Besides, I’m told it’s a good investment, already worth twice what I paid for it.”

  “Speaking of apartments,” Dino said, “our friend Daryl Barnes doesn’t have one at 740 Park.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Stone said. “Maybe he has friends there?”

  “Marks, maybe—friends, no. And we can’t go canvassing the building, asking the residents if they have any guests who are con men and murderers. The mayor would be on the horn in seconds.”

  “Have you had your meeting with the Sotheby’s security people?”

  “Yeah, this afternoon. I think we’ve got it bracketed.”

  “How many of your officers will be there?”

  “Four. Sotheby’s will have another four.”

  “And there’ll be a dozen Secret Service people in the building,” Holly added.

  “Oh, are the Lees coming?”

  “They are. Kate says Christmas is only a few months away, and Will needs to be exposed to jewelry well ahead of time.”

  “That’s a pretty broad hint,” Viv said.

  “Kate doesn’t believe in little hints where jewelry is concerned.”

  “Smart girl,” Viv said, digging an elbow into Dino’s ribs.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Dino said. “We’ll be there, too—strictly out of security concerns.”

  “It can’t hurt to have a look at Carrie’s jewels,” Viv pointed out.

  “Oh, yes it can,” Dino replied.

  “Another nice thing about having the Secret Service there,” Holly said, “is that every person in the room and every staff member will have been okayed by them before the President arrives. They will have run the name, date of birth, and Social Security number on everyone, and anybody with a criminal record or who has ever threatened a president will be excluded.”

  “That should help make security easier,” Dino said.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing the Bloch-Bauer necklace,” Viv said.

  “You could have stopped by my office and seen it there,” Stone said, “until I turned it over to Sotheby’s.”

  “I don’t recall an invitation,” she said, glaring at Dino.

  “It never occurred to me that you would want to see it,” he said.

  “See it? Everybody in New York wants to see it. I want to wear it out to dinner.”

  “Not without an armed guard,” Stone said.

  “You forget, I’m in the armed guard business. I could have a platoon of them guarding me.”

  “Dino,” Stone said, “you are clearly remiss.”

  “Thank you for your support,” Dino replied.

  “Viv,” Stone said, “maybe after the reception I can arrange for you to try on the necklace.”

  Holly’s hand shot up. “Me too!”

  “All right, you too.”

  “They can arm-wrestle for it,” Dino said. “I’d like to watch that.”

  “You can go first, Viv,” Holly said.

  “You, my dear, are a gentlewoman of the first water,” Viv said, clinking glasses with her.

  “Stone,” Dino said, “you should bid on the necklace.”

  “Me? What would I do with a ten-million-dollar piece of jewelry?”

  “Want a suggestion?” Holly asked, snuggling up to him.

  “Tell you what,” Stone said, “I’ll bid on it, and you and Viv can take turns wearing it . . .”

  This received a chorus of cheers.

  “. . . if Dino will pay the insurance premiums.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dino said.

  “I want you both to remember that I made the offer,” Stone said, “and that Dino wouldn’t hold up his end.”

  “Tell you what,” Dino said, “I won’t pay the insurance, but I’ll be sure that whoever is wearing it will have an armed guard from the NYPD.”

  More cheers from the women.

  “Until I retire.”

  Groans from the women.

  Dinner arrived and was consumed.

  57

  Stone and Holly were getting dressed for the jewelry showing in their separate dressing rooms.

  “Viv phoned me,” Holly called across the master bedroom. “The Lees invited them to dinner, too. They’re going to pick us up at four forty-five.”

  “Great,” Stone called back. “Nice to have a police escort.”

  “I don’t get nearly enough of those,” Holly called back.

  “Not even traveling with Kate?
”

  “Mine is a White House job. I don’t travel with her that much, unless we’re in the middle of some foreign crisis.”

  Stone adjusted his bow tie and stepped into the bedroom. Holly was having a last look at her spectacular red dress. “Wow! Where do you find these clothes?”

  “I never have time for a day of shopping, so if I see something I like in a shop window, I buy it and save it for when I get one of these invitations, so I’ve always got something to wear.”

  “Smart girl. Where do you get the money to buy three-thousand-dollar dresses, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Not at all. I make a decent salary, and I have my army pension on top of that.” She looked at him coyly. “And I have money you don’t know about.”

  “Oh? And where did that come from?”

  “I found it in a tree.”

  “Not at the end of a rainbow?”

  “No, in a tree—literally.”

  “Kindly explain.”

  “I’ll tell you one of these days, when I’ve had a few drinks.”

  “I love a mysterious woman.” He looked at his watch again. “We’d better get downstairs.”

  As they reached the front door, Dino’s big black SUV glided to a halt out front, followed by an unmarked police car. They got into the rear seat.

  “Very nice, Dino!” Holly enthused.

  “It’s only my due,” Dino replied. “I’m a terribly important person.”

  “Don’t ever retire,” Viv said. “I like the car.”

  They arrived at the Carlyle and, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, took an elevator to the Lees’ apartment. A butler opened the door and they found former President Will Lee, in a tuxedo, with an infant in his arms.

  “May I introduce William Henry Lee the Fifth, called Will Henry, after his great-grandfather?”

  Viv and Holly made oohing and aahing noises, while Stone and Dino kept a respectful distance. A moment later, the President of the United States swept into the room wearing a knockout black cocktail dress, quite low-cut, for a president.

  “Now that you’ve all worshipped at the shrine of the latest member of the dynasty, can I force a drink on anyone?”

  Everybody made affirmative sounds, and the butler supplied them with chilled liquids and comestibles.

  “Well, now,” Kate said, when she was settled on a sofa, “tell me how we can steal this beautiful necklace tonight.”

  58

  Daryl Barnes stood in a line of male waiters and waited to be issued a uniform, while Annie waited in the female line. He stepped up to the issuer, who measured his chest and waist. “Forty and thirty-four,” the man said. “Do you know your inseam? Save me the trouble?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Daryl replied.

  The man went to a rack and extracted a red jacket and black trousers. The men had been told to arrive in a white shirt, black shoes, and black bow tie.

  Daryl received the clothes and the key to a locker and went into the men’s changing room. He dressed and found the uniform a good fit. He transferred the contents of his pockets to the uniform, including one item heavier than the others, regretting that he had been relieved of his switchblade at the metal detector. He wondered why a party would need a metal detector. He checked his glued-on mustache in the mirror, locked his locker, and went into the next room.

  “Okay, you, you, you, and you will be serving dips,” a woman said, including Daryl. “The rest of you will be taking orders for cocktails from those who don’t want to stand in line at the bar, then delivering them. Please note that I am aware that all the booze tonight is premium stuff, and that may be tempting, but anybody trying to cop a bottle for later use will be ejected without pay. Everybody got that?”

  Daryl had hoped for the dip. He collected a tray and was given a bowl of guacamole, then stocked his tray with chips. He could hear a pianist begin to play in the next room and the conversation of arriving guests. He walked into the room and began offering guests his tray, working his way toward the center of the space, where, like a beacon, the glitter of the Bloch-Bauer necklace drew him. He circled the little stand that held the post that bore the choker, under a glass lid, then continued to offer food until the bowl was nearly empty, when he returned to the kitchen for a new bowl.

  Annie was on her way out with a tray of canapés, and he stopped for a moment. “All set? You know where the panel is?”

  “Got it,” she said, and went on her way.

  As Daryl reentered the room the pianist stopped in the middle of a Cole Porter tune and began to play “Hail to the Chief.” Ah, he thought, that explains the metal detector. He stopped in his tracks and watched the President of the United States enter the room, followed by her husband and a small group of people, one of whom was Stone Barrington. He resisted the urge to escape; his dyed hair and the mustache were disguise enough; Barrington would never recognize him.

  —

  Stone watched as Kate waved and nodded to the applauding crowd, then held up a hand to the pianist as if to say, “Enough.” He went back to Cole Porter.

  Stone then slowly steered Holly toward the necklace, glittering under the spotlight.

  “My God!” Holly said. “I’ve never seen anything so . . . expensive. Wait a minute, I did see the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London once.”

  “The necklace would look good on you,” Stone said. “We’ll find out later.”

  Jamie Niven greeted the President and First Gentleman, then turned toward Stone. “Glad you could make it,” he said, shaking hands.

  “Jamie, this is Holly Barker, of the National Security Council. I’ve promised Holly and Vivian Bacchetti that, when this is over, they can try on the necklace. Can you arrange that?”

  “Of course. My office is just down the hall—we can do that before it goes back into the vault.”

  —

  Daryl continued his journey around the room. It occurred to him that, with the President in attendance, there would be Secret Service agents present, too, and he began to pick them out by the small discs in their lapels. They shouldn’t be a problem, since their attention was focused entirely on the President. He served another bowl of guacamole and went back for a third refill. “Hey,” he said to the supervisor, “since I can’t steal any booze, can I have dibs on the leftover guacamole? My wife loves the stuff.”

  “Oh, sure, why not? The health department won’t let us serve it again. There are some plastic containers over there.”

  —

  Stone stood with Kate, Will, Dino, Viv, and Holly, looking at the necklace.

  “That’s what I want for Christmas,” Kate said to Will.

  “Well, let’s see, if we sell the Georgetown house, the cattle farm, and the Carlyle apartment, that should get us within a few million of the price, but where would we live when you retire?” He steered her toward the smaller jewelry.

  “This Carrie Fiske had quite an eye, didn’t she?” Holly said, looking at a pair of diamond earrings.

  “She did,” Stone said, “but this is three generations of jewelry, so she didn’t choose it all.”

  “I read the story about how the necklace got into her safe,” Holly said. “Is it true?”

  “As far as anybody can tell. Your agent’s grandfather has been dead for a while, so all we have is Harvey’s word for it.”

  “I understand you suspected poor Harvey of Carrie’s murder.”

  “He was perfect for it—ex-husband cast aside, still in love with her, obsessive. Too bad you people alibied him out.”

  “He was in my old office in New York around the time of the murder,” Holly said. “Did you want us to lie so you could put a good officer in prison for the rest of his life?”

  “I think Dino would have found that convenient, but it wouldn’t be his collar, anyway. A county sheriff in New Mexico will get tha
t honor, if the guy can be caught.”

  “You have any doubts about that?”

  “He’s been on the loose his whole life and never been arrested. He’s not going to make it easy for the police. I’m kind of hoping he’ll try to steal it tonight, so I can grab him myself.”

  “Once a cop, always a cop,” Holly said.

  —

  Now, carrying his tray, Daryl was working his way back toward the center of the room. He was only a few feet from the necklace when the lights went off.

  59

  Stone, who was wandering across the room when the lights went out, made for the necklace, but he was slowed twice by bumping into people in the dark. Later, he would figure that it took him half a minute to forty-five seconds to reach the display case. He was nearly there when the lights went on again. Jamie Niven had beaten him to the necklace by a second.

  Jamie held up a hand, stopping Stone and two guards in dark suits. “It’s all right,” he said, pushing the guards back. “It was just a momentary power failure.” A waiter offered him guacamole, but he waved it away.

  “You’re sure there’s no problem?” Stone asked.

  “Everything’s fine, but I was glad to see that your reflexes were working.”

  “My heart hasn’t slowed yet,” Stone said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. He rejoined his group.

  “Your instincts were good,” Dino said.

  “How about yours? Where were you?”

  “Relaxing,” Dino said. “There are enough people in this room who would have handled it, if it had happened.”

  “I was hoping someone had stolen it,” Will said. “That would have let me off the hook for Christmas.”

  Kate laughed. “Please don’t think of yourself as off the hook, darling. The world has plenty of other baubles, and a lot of them are in this room.” She looked at her watch: “We’ll give it another few minutes, then decamp.”

  “If you’ll forgive us,” Stone said, “we’re going to go to Jamie’s office so that Holly and Viv can try on the necklace. Would you like to come?”

  “Why torture myself further?” Kate said. “It’s all right, dinner will wait for you.”