‘It sounds like they were looking for something specific,’ the first detective said. ‘Some particular piece of jewellery.’
A muffled gasp came from over by the windows. Felicity leaned against the wall, her hand clasped to the neck of her black turtleneck jumper.
‘Is there something wrong, Flicka?’ Ruby asked.
Felicity’s eyes darted to the carpet at her feet. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s just…who would do such a thing? Go to all that trouble?’
The first detective looked at her intently. ‘It depends on what they’re looking for. If it was a one-of-a-kind item, a unique piece, a serious collector might be tempted to do almost anything.’
The other detective said, ‘Is there something you want to tell us, Miss Upham?’
Felicity’s hand tightened at her throat. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, eyes trained on the weave of the carpet. ‘It’s all just so—’
‘Sick-making?’ Sam suggested.
Gerald stopped his pacing. ‘It has to be Sir Mason Green, doesn’t it? All of this happened right after he escaped.’
The first detective flicked back through his notebook. ‘Now you mentioned this Green guy before. Who is he? Is he the one that the gang leader called the Falcon?’
Gerald looked up to the ceiling in frustration. ‘I told you. Mason Green is the British billionaire arrested for murder after he had my great aunt killed. The story was on the front page of every newspaper in Europe.’
The detective jotted down a note. ‘I don’t read a lot of European newspapers,’ he said, giving his partner a wink. ‘And we should contact an Inspector Parakeet, you say?’
‘Parrott.’ Gerald was about to boil over. ‘Inspector Parrott. He knows all about it. I have no idea who this Falcon is. But the man with the deep voice said something about the Falcon coming through with one half of the deal. I’m sure it’s important.’
‘Talk to Parrott about the Falcon.’ The detective made another note in his book. ‘I think we’ve got all that we need for the moment. The phone here has been diverted to a trained police negotiator if the kidnappers call so you don’t have to worry about that. There’s a uniform at the door to make sure no one gets in and I’ll keep in touch with your Mr Prisk. Otherwise, you’re free to go back to London once the fog clears, whenever that is. It looks set in.’
The detectives went to leave, but one of them paused near the front door. He turned back to Gerald. ‘There’s one thing I want to know,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘What’s it like being a billionaire?’
Gerald thought for a moment. ‘There are days when it’s the worst thing in the world.’
The detective nodded, and turned to his colleague, ‘Still, not a bad position to be in,’ he said as they walked out the door.
As the door swung shut, Gerald caught sight of an enormous uniformed officer sitting in the corridor outside their hotel suite.
Sam let out a sigh and rested his head on the back of the couch. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
‘Really, Sam?’ Ruby said. ‘Really? Is that all you can think of?’ Then she shook her head. ‘I guess you may as well do something.’ She tossed Sam the room-service menu.
Sam thumbed through the pages, trying to mask the rumbling from his stomach.
Gerald squatted on the rug in front of Ruby. ‘You okay?’
She gave him a tight smile. ‘Not even slightly. I can’t bear the thought of what might be happening to Mum and Dad. Or Alisha and Ox. Can you imagine what it must be like for them?’ She rubbed her eyes.
‘Is it too late for blueberry pancakes with a side order of waffles?’ Sam asked.
Gerald picked up a phone and passed it to Sam. ‘It is never too late for pancakes and waffles,’ he said. ‘With ice cream.’
Sam dialled room service. ‘Ruby, do you want anything? Felicity?’
Ruby shook her head. Felicity hadn’t moved from her spot by the window. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m really not hungry.’
Gerald looked first to Felicity and then to Ruby. The Christmas hug with Ruby in the chalet seemed an age ago. No one had mentioned it since. It was almost like it had never happened. Felicity had held Gerald’s hand in the back of the police helicopter all the way to San Francisco. Ruby had been too upset about her parents for Gerald to talk to her about anything. He looked again at Ruby’s red eyes, and at Felicity’s vacant stare out the window.
He knew the conversation about that hug had to happen some time.
But not now.
Chapter 13
‘I may have over-ordered.’
Sam leaned back in the dining chair, a trail of melted ice cream snaking down his chin.
The table was a mess. Plates of half-eaten pancakes, swimming in maple syrup and whipped butter, were wedged up against soggy waffles soaked in chocolate. A serving trolley, bearing several bowls of melting ice cream, stood against the wall.
Sam rubbed his belly beneath his sweatshirt and groaned again.
Ruby picked up a spoon and twirled it in her fingers. ‘Those detectives didn’t fill me with confidence,’ she said. ‘They weren’t very interested in hearing about Sir Mason Green.’
‘I’m sure he’s at the centre of all this,’ Gerald said. ‘I keep expecting his sneering face to bob up somewhere.’ He bit his bottom lip. ‘I really don’t want to see him again.’
Ruby folded her arms across her chest and shivered. ‘I don’t like how that man in the cottage said he’d been looking for you, Gerald. If Green is involved, I have the nasty feeling we’ll hear from him.’
Then a thought popped into Gerald’s head. It landed gentle as a snowflake on a mountaintop, but within seconds it was rolling down the hill in a fully fledged avalanche. ‘That dinner jacket of Green’s that we got from the dry cleaners.’
Felicity sat at the end of the dining table. The waffle on her plate was untouched. ‘What about it?’ she asked.
‘He left some keys in the pocket. Remember?’ Gerald disappeared into a bedroom and reappeared a moment later with a silver key ring. ‘These must be for an apartment that Green has here in San Francisco,’ he said. He flipped the fob over. ‘The Palladium Apartments,’ he read. ‘Nob Hill.’
Sam let out a giggle. Everyone looked at him. His cheeks reddened. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘What are you thinking, Gerald?’ Ruby asked, suddenly brightening. ‘Do you want to pay a visit?’
‘If Green is running this show, I want to know what he’s after,’ Gerald said. ‘There’s no way he could sneak back into the US so soon after escaping from jail. So that gives us some time to have a look around his apartment. It probably won’t amount to much but who knows—we might find something.’
‘You don’t want to just call the detectives and tell them?’ Sam said.
‘No!’ Felicity’s response was emphatic. Gerald, Sam and Ruby turned to look at her. She blushed. ‘They’ll be too busy,’ she said. ‘Looking for everyone.’ She dropped her eyes to her uneaten meal. ‘And, like Gerald says, there’s probably nothing there.’
Gerald pushed himself back from the table. ‘It’s better than hanging around here,’ he said.
Within five minutes they had jackets, gloves and hats, ready to go. They gathered at the door and Gerald was about to pull it open when Ruby grabbed his arm. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘What about the policeman outside? He’s not going to let us just wander out of here.’
Gerald paused. ‘You’re right. There’s got to be a way past him.’ Then his eyes fell on the room-service trolley. He reached for the telephone.
It didn’t take much to convince the room-service porter.
‘A hundred dollars to push you guys down the hall in this trolley?’ the man asked, not sure if he’d heard right.
‘And there’s another hundred when you deliver us back in an hour or so,’ Gerald said. ‘But our friend outside in the hallway can’t know anything about it.’
The porter lifted a corner of the floor-length tablecloth that was draped over the trolley. ‘Climb aboard,’ he said.
Gerald wasn’t sure whose elbow was shoved under his nose, or whose kidneys he’d squashed with his knee, but the cramped journey down the length of the hotel corridor was worth every cent.
A short cab ride later and they bundled out onto the street opposite the Palladium Apartments. The sun had disappeared over the horizon and a dank night had settled on the city.
Gerald jangled the keys in his jacket pocket. Across the street, through a wall of glass at the front of the apartment building, he could see a man sitting behind a reception desk.
‘How do we get past him?’ Ruby asked, following Gerald’s gaze. ‘He’ll know we don’t live here.’
Gerald pondered this for a moment. ‘I’ll just have to use my Australian charm.’
Ruby snorted. ‘Oh, yes. Bend over and let him bask in your sunshine.’
Gerald gave her a dirty look, then scooted across the road and up the front steps. Felicity, Ruby and Sam joined him under the front awning.
Gerald pointed to a panel of door buzzers on the wall. Next to apartment 8 was a neatly typed name: Sir Mason Green.
Through the glass door, the man had his head down, engrossed in a book. Gerald raised his finger to his lips and jerked his head towards the lifts at the rear of the foyer. He eased the door open and slipped inside. The others followed.
They were halfway across the lobby when the man raised his head.
‘Can I help you?’ he said in much the manner of a cat interrupting a mouse in front of an open pantry door.
Gerald pulled the keys from his pocket and jiggled them in the air. ‘No thank you,’ he said, smiling pleasantly. ‘Just going up to my uncle’s apartment.’
‘Really?’ the man said. ‘And who might your uncle be?’
Gerald stopped walking. Felicity almost ran into the back of him.
‘Sir Mason Green,’ he said, trying to steady the tremor in his voice.
The doorman didn’t blink. ‘Yeah? Well, he’s not home. I haven’t seen him for months. So—’ the man lifted his hand and wafted it towards the door, as if shooing flies from his soup.
Gerald swallowed tightly. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But he’s coming back next week. He asked if I could, um, check the milk in his refrigerator.’
The man looked Gerald up and down. ‘The milk?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And it takes four of you to do that?’
Sam took a half-step forward. ‘It’s a very big fridge.’
Gerald quickly interjected. ‘My uncle’s a bit of a neat freak. He likes everything to be just right.’
The man gave Gerald one more look up and down. ‘Yes, I know. There were some cleaners here earlier today,’ he said. ‘Go ahead—I should have recognised the funny accent. Just put the key in next to button 8.’
Gerald uttered a quick thanks and hustled everyone into the lift. He pushed the key in, turned it and pressed button 8. The doors slid shut.
‘A very big fridge?’ Ruby said to Sam. ‘Are you completely insane?’
‘It worked, didn’t it?’ Sam said.
Ruby shook her head, then turned to Gerald. ‘What do you think he meant about cleaners being here? Is Green coming back?’
‘He’s on the run,’ Gerald said. ‘He’s hardly going to tip off the police by calling in the cleaners.’ The lift bounced to a stop. The doors slid apart, opening into the foyer of Green’s luxury apartment.
Gerald, Sam, Ruby and Felicity stepped into a scene of utter carnage. The place had been ransacked. Completely trashed. Furniture was upturned, cushions were slashed open and the stuffing strewn about. The contents of drawers were flung everywhere. Rugs had been lifted and thrown aside. The apartment looked like an earthquake had struck.
‘Oh gosh,’ Ruby said, her hands over her mouth. ‘What’s happened?’
Gerald took a tentative step into the piles of debris. ‘If I was Mason Green,’ he said, ‘I’d be looking for new cleaners.’
The main living room looked through a wall of glass onto the San Francisco night. The order in the grid of streetlights glowing through the fog was in stark contrast to the chaos inside the apartment. They picked their way through the wreckage. Cupboards stood empty, their contents vomited across the carpet in front of them.
Gerald peered into the study. The floor was littered with broken picture frames. Glass was smashed out and documents had been torn from their mountings. It was as if a family of chimpanzees had just moved out. ‘I’ll say this for the cleaners—they’re thorough.’
Ruby leafed through the rubbish at her feet. ‘I knew Green liked collecting historical documents, but some of this stuff is amazing,’ she said.
Felicity held up a yellowed parchment. ‘Is this a copy of the Magna Carta?’ she asked.
‘What’s the Magna Carta?’ Gerald said.
‘Foundation stone for modern representative government,’ Sam said. ‘It delivers power to the people through the extension of suffrage to the masses, not just the king.’
Everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at Sam.
‘What?’ Sam said. ‘That stuff is important.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘You amaze me.’
‘What are we looking for, Gerald?’ Felicity asked. She was inspecting a weathered green bottle. The top was sealed with red wax. It was about the only thing in the room that hadn’t been broken.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gerald said. ‘But whatever it is, it seems we’re not the only ones looking for it.’
Ruby picked up a piece of paper that had been crumpled into a ball. She flattened it out. ‘Oh my,’ she said. ’This is a letter from Paul McCartney to John Lennon. The Beatles!’
‘What’s it say?’ Gerald asked.
‘Um, basically, I don’t like your girlfriend.’
Gerald looked at the piles of documents on the floor. ‘This lot must be worth a blind fortune,’ he said. ‘But someone’s gone through it and left it all behind.’
‘They must be looking for something special,’ Ruby said. She gasped. ‘You don’t think it’s the same people who attacked the chalet? Who kidnapped our parents?’
‘The detective said they were looking for something specific,’ Sam said.
‘Then Mason Green can’t be responsible for this,’ Felicity said, still cradling the bottle in her hands. ‘He’d hardly need to turn over his own place.’
Gerald nodded. ‘That’s a good point.’ He thought for a second. ‘If it’s not Green, then who is it?’
From out in the foyer came a gentle ding, and the sound of the lift doors sliding open.
Someone entered the apartment.
Ruby let out a startled gasp and switched off the study light. They froze where they stood—Ruby by the window, Sam and Gerald by the desk. Felicity carefully pushed the study door closed.
Gerald strained to hear. There were footsteps—the sound of someone picking their way through the mess. Then the study door cracked open and swung in slowly. A head, silhouetted against the light outside, popped through the gap.
And Felicity brought down the bottle with a mighty crash, shattering it over the skull as if she was launching a yacht.
Glass shards flew everywhere. A man in a dark suit crumpled to the floor at her feet.
‘Do you have to beat up everyone you come across?’ Ruby said.
Felicity ignored her. She knelt next to the prone man. A rolled piece of paper, tied with faded ribbon, was lying between his shoulder blades. Felicity picked it up.
&n
bsp; ‘This must have been inside the bottle,’ she said.
Gerald snatched it from her. ‘Maybe you should ease up on the self-defence. We don’t even know if this guy is one of them.’ He shoved the paper into his pocket and rolled the man onto his back. He was breathing but his eyes were closed.
Felicity peeled open the man’s coat and started going through his pockets.
‘Now what are you doing?’ Ruby asked.
‘We may as well find out who we’re dealing with,’ Felicity said. She pulled out a black leather wallet and flipped it open.
‘Uh oh.’
‘What is it?’ Sam asked.
Felicity turned the wallet around. It contained a gold shield and a photo ID topped by three large blue letters.
FBI.
Chapter 14
Special Agent de Bruin sat hunched at the kitchen table, with a cup of instant coffee in one hand and his head in the other.
Felicity sat opposite him, biting her bottom lip. ‘I am truly sorry,’ she said for the tenth time. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I just got caught up in the excitement.’ She grimaced. ‘I’ve never done anything bad before.’
De Bruin ran his fingers over the lump that was forming on the back of his skull. ‘For a beginner,’ he said, ‘you’re doing a remarkable job.’
Ruby handed the man an icepack from the freezer. He nodded a thank you, placed it on the back of his head and winced.
Sam had been studying the special agent carefully from across the table. ‘Where’s your partner?’ he asked.
Agent de Bruin raised a tired eye and looked at him. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You guys always work in pairs,’ Sam said. ‘I was just wondering where your partner was.’
De Bruin adjusted the icepack to one side. He was a slender man and his lack of width made him appear taller than he really was. His dark hair was cropped short, and he wore his suit like a second skin. ‘I work alone,’ he said. ‘I follow procedures.’
‘Do those procedures tell you where our parents are?’ Ruby asked. ‘Where Ox and Alisha are?’
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