Pink Topaz

by Jennifer Greene

  “I’m sorry you’re under the weather, sweetheart. But it’s very important that I see you today. For one thing, I want to return the ruby—heavens.” He dug in his suit pocket for a pristine white handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I feel a little warm.”

  Cole shot Regan a clear-cut warning message. There were times, physically and emotionally, when they seemed tuned to a telepathic wavelength. This wasn’t one of them. Regan took one look at the perspiration on the older man’s brow and rushed forward. Long before he could have stopped her, she’d guided Trafer to the Queen Anne chair and fetched him a cool glass of water.

  Trafer turned pink from all the attention, but his grateful smile was distinctly for Regan. He’d obviously expected to find her alone. “This is fairly personal business between myself and Regan, Mr. Shepherd. If you wouldn’t mind—”

  “I don’t have any secrets from Cole,” Regan interjected gently. “Anything you could say to me, you could tell him, too.”

  Trafer took a gulp of water, then wiped his brow again, his gaze on Cole. “So that’s the way it is?”

  “That’s the way it is.”

  “A shame,” Trafer murmured vaguely. “This is not what I anticipated, but I suppose it doesn’t really make any difference if there’s two of you. Sit down, dear. I have several things to tell you.”

  Regan sat on the peach couch. Restlessly Cole leaned a hip against the couch arm. He kept expecting to feel the buck of adrenaline, the muscles cramping in his neck—the physical symptoms that would have warned him of trouble. It had to be Trafer, but fear of him or the situation never happened. No one could conceivably look less dangerous than the calm, kindly faced man huddled at the edge of the chair.

  “As I said, sweetheart, one of the reasons I came was to return your ruby. Truthfully, I never understood why you gave it to me to begin with. I don’t know what Jake wrote in his journals, but we wagered for the right to the stone. A fair wager, which he won.”

  “And that’s what Gramps wrote,” Regan agreed, “but I had the impression that the ruby meant something special to you.”

  “All rubies mean something special to me.” Trafer smiled faintly. “As you may have noticed through the years, I’ve always had an empathetic feeling for rubies. But not that one. Years ago Jake told me that he was keeping it—and the topaz—for you. Which is why, frankly, I was totally confused when the stones were never mentioned in Jake’s will. I knew they existed. I knew you had to have them, but not once did you mention them after he died. You made things very difficult for me, Regan.”

  Cole immediately tensed. Regan felt as if there were a hammer hanging over her head, about to come down hard. Her hand flew to her throat as she stared at her old friend. “All this time you wanted the topaz?” she whispered.

  “Want, not wanted.” He gently corrected her verb tense.

  “Oh, Trafer. It was you who drugged me? You?”

  Trafer pushed up his spectacles and then neatly crossed his ankles as if settling in for a nice, friendly chat. “Before I came here, I considered how much I was going to tell you,” he said genially. “You obviously figured some things on your own, and I came to the conclusion that there’s no reason why you can’t know everything—simply because I’m leaving today, Regan. Not just leaving Chicago, but the country. I’m going to miss you, sweetheart, but I’m afraid the chances are very unlikely that we’ll see each other again.”

  Although Cole could feel rage building inside him, he warned himself to shut up and be patient. Trafer had the same as admitted his guilt…but for whatever reasons, he was also willing to confess the whole story. Regan had waited too long for her answers.

  “I never intended you to come to harm. Never.” Trafer patted his brow again before tucking away the handkerchief. “You know how fond I am of you, but in this case, there was more at stake than that. For anything serious to happen to you was the last thing I wanted. If you’d died, there would have been lawyers all over your estate. Any number of people could have found out about the topaz before I got to it. That would have been no good at all.”

  “Trafer, you drugged me.”

  He shook his head reproachfully. “It was no more than a little additive to your vitamin, and I researched it very carefully. There was nothing in that herbal concoction that would have seriously hurt you in the long run.”

  “It was weeks,” Regan said softly, fiercely. “I lost weight. I lost sleep. I couldn’t eat. I thought I was losing my mind….”

  He sighed. “It would never have gone that far, if you’d just been more cooperative,” he said plaintively. “All I wanted to know was the location of the topaz. I had a look-alike already made. You’d never have known the difference between the true topaz—not when you were so confused. But I took this place apart and couldn’t find it. I found your little strongbox in the bathroom—which was frankly nothing to get into, dear, you need something much more thief-proof than that—but it wasn’t there, either. And as hard as I tried, as confused as you were, I couldn’t get you talk about the stone. So I was forced to continue with the drug. Frankly, it should have been the ideal answer.”

  “How was it ideal, Trafer?” Regan asked softly.

  “For a dozen reasons. For one thing, no matter what happened, I couldn’t be implicated. No one could tie me to the additive in your vitamin. No one could tie me to the topaz. And the worst scenario that could have happened to you, sweetheart, was a short stay in a quiet little hospital. You’d have been all right after that, and all I needed was a bit of time—you remember giving us all power of attorney in the event of your illness? So I would have had access to your lockbox—the only place I couldn’t get into with you around.”

  Trafer clasped his hands together, looking as thoughtful as a professor. “And it was working so well. The drug did its own job. All I had to do was help it along a bit. When you were at work or gone, I used my key to come in and set up a few pranks. You scared so easily, sweetheart. No one had any reason to believe I was behind your ‘strange’ behavior, and it was nothing at all to feed the other two clues about my concern for your precarious mental health. It was barely a challenge to set up little incidents—like dates you thought you’d made, dinner invitations you were told you’d sent out. You believed it all. Every magician knows the trick of making illusion appear as the truth. We all believe what we see.” Trafer lifted his empty glass. “I would appreciate some more water.”

  When the moon shines blue, Cole thought. But when Regan twisted to get up, he squeezed a hand on her shoulder and fetched the devil’s water himself. He may have heard all he needed to, but the princess hadn’t. For her, the tale wasn’t finished yet.

  “This whole plan of yours took such brilliant planning,” she said to Trafer.

  When Cole set the water glass on a side table, the older man never looked up. His attention was all for Regan. His watery blue eyes shone with excitement; he was clearly gratified that she appreciated all his complicated planning.

  “It was better than brilliant. It was going perfectly—until you suddenly took off for Arizona. What a mess you created for me, Regan,” he said reproachfully. “For the first time it occurred to me that maybe you never had the gem, that Jake had it locked away in that desert place when he died. My Lord, you have no idea the logistics I had to arrange in order to drop you at the airport, separate from Reed and Dorinsky and get to the Learjet I had chartered. But it was obviously imperative that I get to Arizona before you did—”

  Cole had to interject a polite side question. “You screwed up my navigational system?”

  Trafer peered at him over the rim of his spectacles, as if suddenly remembering he was there. “All I did was plant a little magnet. You were all there on the plane. None of you noticed that I wandered into the cockpit for a moment. More magician’s illusions—it happened in front of your eyes, but no one was expecting it, so you didn’t see it.” And abruptly he smiled at Cole. “Mr. Shepherd, there is no reason to be upset. If I�
�d wanted to harm your plane—or either of you—I could have done it. I was flying before you were born. I know planes. All I wanted was for you to veer off course long enough to buy myself a few hours. Which I did.” Again, he mopped his brow, and then returned his attention to Regan.

  “Unfortunately, it didn’t help,” he admitted. “Although I’d never been to the desert house, I knew your grandfather had a safe there. I spent forty years of my life around the mining of gems. I know a little something about explosives. I was prepared—only I could not find the damned safe. And I could only risk an hour or two of searching before you two were bound to arrive. The truth is that I had no idea where the topaz was until I saw it on your neck last night at dinner.”

  Regan said gently, “I wore it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Power of attorney wouldn’t necessarily have helped you, Trafer. Neither would putting me away. Years ago, Gramps had several items of clothes made for me—one of them a bra—for the times I had to travel with stones. All those weeks after he died, I literally wore the gems next to my heart because I wanted them close to me. When I was traveling southwest, I put them in a carrying pouch, but the only other time they were away from me was when I was washing clothes.”

  Trafer made a clucking sound, part annoyance and part amusement—he’d obviously wanted to know where she’d hidden ‘his’ topaz all that time. Next to her, though, slugger had fire in his eyes. Regan had the uneasy feeling he was feeling tempted to strangle her for being so foolhardy. She swept on. “Trafer...I still don’t understand. Why? You went to all this trouble for the topaz, when there was nothing in the diaries to indicate that stone had any particular significance for you—”

  “There was no reason they should have.”

  She frowned. “Then was there some superstition about the gem I don’t know, some special sentiment for you?”

  “Only the sentiment known as money,” Trafer said wryly. “I’ve lived too high, sweetheart. Your grandfather would have said way beyond my means. After my wife died a few years ago, I had a run of bad luck with investments and real estate. For the last three months I’ve been dodging creditors, but bankruptcy is inevitable.”

  She lifted a hand. “But you gained a share of the partnership after Gramps died—” He shook his head, clearly indicating that the partnership alone wouldn’t have dented his debts. “And I gave you the ruby last night. You could have kept it, sold it. It’s worth more than the topaz….”

  For the first time Trafer looked impatient with her. “In a dealer’s market, of course that’s true. But you, if anyone, should understand that in a collector’s market, the value of a gem is determined by how much someone wants it. Your ruby would only have nominally helped me, Regan, because I didn’t have the right kind of buyer lined up for it— nor did I have the time to find one.”

  “But you had a collector lined up for the topaz?”

  “A Eurasian woman,” Trafer affirmed. “I met her years ago, discovered her fascination, her obsession with pink topaz. Jake showed her the stone once. She couldn’t forget it. She went to your grandfather again and again, but he wouldn’t give up the gem so she started calling me, upping the ante every time if I could get my hands on it. My only chance of doing that was after Jake died. She’s willing to pay me enough to disappear and live comfortably for the rest of my life.”

  He leaned forward. “I can’t get out from under any other way, sweetheart, and this is so easy. I’ll be gone. You’ll never know where.” He motioned to Cole. “He’ll never know where. No one will ever know. Once I’m gone, you can pretend the whole thing was an illusion. All you have to do is give me the topaz.”

  Regan fell silent, searching her old friend’s face. The familiar pale blue eyes were as warm as always. There was none of the coldness of a man without conscience, none of the wildness of a man who’d lost his hold on reality. Trafer was the same man she’d grown up with, the same partner Jake had trusted, the same Dutch uncle who had been generous and supportive and good to her over the years.

  She’d have given him the shirt off her back if he had an honest need or emotional problem, an excuse. Only she’d listened and listened and listened. He didn’t have an excuse on earth beyond greed. She’d loved him, and he’d put her through hell for nothing but money. Trafer was an eel.

  An eel who was going to rot before getting anything from her.

  “Forget it,” she said calmly.

  He shook his head. “Sweetheart, I need the topaz.”

  “No.”

  He sighed. “My dear child, I went to an incredible amount of time and trouble to find a way to do this so you wouldn’t be hurt. But I’m going to have that stone, one way or another.”

  She saw him reaching for his handkerchief, only he didn’t pull a handkerchief from his pocket this time. He pulled out a toy-size, pearl-handled derringer, and with gnarled and shaky hands pointed it directly at her chest.

  Her lungs stopped functioning. Her heart stopped beating. Her principles were extremely important to her, but as Cole had often lectured her, principles were expendable.

  “Slugger, if you act like a hero, I swear to God I’ll strangle you.”

  Cole’s quiet gaze never budged from Trafer’s face. Her eyes widened in alarm.

  “Slugger, I mean it.”

  “Listen to her, Mr. Shepherd. She’s a very bright girl, always has been, and my finger is right on the trigger. Neither of you are ever going to see me after today. All I want to do is leave. There’s no purpose of either of you being hurt, and absolutely no reason to make this more difficult than it needs to be. That’s my darling—”

  Quickly Regan reached behind her neck to unfasten the catch on the chain.

  Cole launched himself in front of her as if he thought he was a flying cannon. She couldn’t see. The derringer went off. She heard the pop, smelled something acrid and hot, saw her mother’s antique mirror on the far wall shatter in a million shards.

  “Cole!”

  “I’m fine, princess. And so is the bastard. Call the cops.”

  The police didn’t leave for more than two hours. Then neighbors, drawn by the noise and commotion, wanted to know what was going on. Regan called Dorinsky and Reed to explain to them what had happened. They arrived less than an hour later to hear it all again in person. Cole called Sam to relay the story, but that wasn’t enough for Sam, either. He showed up with a carton of milk, a bottle of champagne and an early dinner of packaged Chinese.

  The sun was down by the time Cole finally had Regan alone, but she was still wired, as keyed up as a kid at Christmas. He threw her in a warm bath, but she wouldn’t relax. He dried her off himself, rubbed some of her flowery talc all over her back and tense shoulders, but she still wouldn’t relax. He chased her bare tush across the hall to the bedroom and attempted to find her robe before she froze to death. She didn’t want her robe. She didn’t care if she froze. And she definitely didn’t want to relax.

  With more laughter than finesse, she pushed him onto the bed and then exuberantly jumped him. He took her full weight and duly endured a dozen bouncing, pouncing kisses. She wiggled her hips, just to let him know he was pinned.

  Cole already knew he was pinned. Which he was more than willing to tell her, assuming he ever had the chance. Regan, in the process of shagging off his jeans, seemed to need to clear some other subjects off her mind first. “Do you know what occurs to me?”

  “No, but I’ll bet you’re going to tell me.” He subtly pushed the pillows onto the floor, and when his jeans were gone, pulled her back on top of him.

  “It was love that brought out the truth. Love. You know, that intangible, foolish, silly stuff that makes you so nervous?”

  It used to.

  “Whatever faults my grandfather had, his love gave me strength and faith in myself. And my love for the partners eventually brought out their secrets. And then there’s you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Just a little love br
ought an incredible hero out of hiding. I’ve got your number, slugger. You happen to be one of those flesh-and-blood heroes of the old breed. One of those rare men that a woman can count on. A man of integrity and unshakable principles. A man of courage.” She took a nip out of his neck. “And a heck of a lover.”

  “Finally we come to the bottom line.”

  “Are you listening to me? About the relationship between truth and love?”

  It was difficult to concentrate when she was sliding her long bare leg against his. And deliberately taking slow, provocative bites from his shoulder. “Actually,” he murmured, “I was thinking about a different kind of relationship. I know how you feel about jewels, but how do you feel about plain gold bands?”

  That shot her head up. She searched his face with eyes softer than wet velvet. “You’re ill,” she said with conviction, and immediately checked his temperature with a palm on his forehead.

  “No.”

  “You know I’m in love with you. I’ll never deny it. But I’ve told you and told you that you’re under no obligation—”

  “There’s no obligation involved, princess. Never was.”

  “Heavens. You’re seriously bringing up marriage?”

  The vixen feigned the symptoms of cardiac arrest, making him chuckle, but he didn’t laugh for long. He saw the terrible vulnerability in her eyes, the uncertainty as to whether he was completely serious, and yes, the love.

  He dove his hands into her cloud of silky blond hair. There was a time the word marriage had made him cringe. There was also a time when being near a woman even half the trouble of Regan was enough to give him a bad crick in his neck.

  Cole knew how much it upset her that she’d so unwillingly roped him into her problems. Being roped into her problems, though, was the reason he’d had to take a good look at himself and his life and who he was as a man.