MOONLIGHT ON DIAMONDS (23 page)

Maggie proceeded to
perform her intricately choreographed number, pirouetting and leaping across
the slender cable as easily as a child scampering around a playground. As John
watched the crowd, the delight of the spellbound audience was almost as entertaining
as the act itself. She put on quite a show with her death-defying leaps and
saucy wicked grin, her red hair streaming behind her like a comet’s tail as she
spun across the thin cable. It was easy to see why she’d never had a problem
making her way over the most exclusive rooftops in Europe.

What is it about jewel thieves?
John watched as she
performed a final, impossible-looking spring in the air, flipped and hung by
nothing more than the dainty curve of her ankle, smiling and waving down at the
nail-biting audience. They were certainly a breed apart from all other
criminals. Flamboyant and arrogant, there wasn’t a one who didn’t have a flair
for the theatrical. John had to marvel as he thought about each of them
individually—Maggie showing off at the Diamond Ball only one night after
robbing Senator Hayes’ wife blind, the White Russian with his calling card and
family crest, the Granny and her magician’s slight of hand, and Zagen, far more
dangerous than the rest. He knew each of them; only the Ghost was impossible to
define. Maybe that was why the Ghost had never been caught.

John’s eyes darted
around the room as the audience broke into wild applause for Maggie. She stood
above them, eighty feet in the air, no doubt already singling out her next victim.
Her saucy grin froze on her face and for a moment, time seemed to stand still,
as the wire snapped beneath her feet.

The audience watched
in horror as the acrobat plummeted toward the marble floor. Veronica gripped
John’s arm as they watched a blur of red sequins and flaming hair tumbling
through the air.

At the last moment,
the wire tightened and caught on the sequins of her costume. With the lightning
fast reflexes of the cat she was named for, Maggie stretched out her hands to
grasp the broken cable just before hitting the ground where her weight would
surely have torn the wire from her leotard. Catching the lifeline just in time,
she swung across the room landing miraculously safe on one of the first tier
balconies.

The sigh of relief
was like a wave rising up from the audience, as ladies collapsed against their
husbands and the men swore out loud, forgetting their surroundings.

“I don’t think that
was part of her act,” said Veronica, her nails still digging into John’s arm.

“It wasn’t. Someone
cut the wire.” John scanned the third tier of the rotunda for signs of whoever
might have tried to murder the famous acrobat.

Veronica relaxed her
grip as she watched Maggie, ever the showgirl, jump onto the rail of the
balcony to take her bow. “Why would someone do that?”

“That’s Maggie the
Cat up there,” John informed her over the audience’s wild applause. “She’s one
of the most prolific jewel thieves in operation. Maybe someone here tonight
doesn’t want to compete with her.”

“You mean…another
jewel thief?”

“That’s exactly what
I mean,” said John. “Someone wants what’s around your neck badly enough to kill
for it, Veronica.”

Veronica raised her
hand protectively to the blue fire laying cool against her throat. “I’m not
afraid.”

He glared at her.
“Well, maybe you should be.”

“I’ll be fine,” she
reassured him and turned her eyes back up to Marguerite Gateaux.

John followed her
gaze. He had to hand it to Maggie, she was still pale as death, but the French
cat burglar once again sported a broad smile as she blew a kiss to the audience
and then disappeared behind the gauze drapes.

He shook his head.
“Eight lives to go.”

Veronica smiled, but
John noticed she looked a bit pale herself.

When the crowd’s
applause finally died down, the lights came up on the red carpet, which ran
through the center of the room. It was Lillian Spencer’s turn to hit the mic.
She stood in the spotlight smiling her best First Lady smile.

“Well, that was quite
a performance, wasn’t it?” she asked.

The audience laughed,
letting out the tension.

“My goodness, I can
see why the Ballet de l’Aire has such a magnificent reputation!”

More laughter.
Lillian Spencer had covered up the catastrophe as easily as her husband covered
up the corporate scandals and botched military operations his administration
was involved in. Everyone knew what had really happened, but they’d play along
anyway and pretend Maggie’s fall had been part of the act, because that was the
accepted protocol.

The First Lady smiled
warmly. “I want to welcome all of you and thank you for coming tonight. As you
know, literacy is a cause near and dear to my heart. For all of us in this room
it is the most basic of skills. We take for granted that we can pick up a book
or newspaper and read the words printed there, but I’m afraid that for some
children in the United States, those same words are as meaningless as a page
full of hieroglyphics. I am committed to changing this!”

A ripple of polite
applause went through the crowd. The First Lady paused, looking around the room
as if judging the response. “Tonight we have pledged our support, and more
importantly, our desperately needed dollars to build the new Donald Spencer
Library in Anacostia. Because of your generosity, a child will be able to come
after school and pick up one of so many reading choices. A new and magical
world will open up to them.” Lillian Spencer smiled beneficently at the crowd
as once more they broke into applause.

“Meanwhile they’re
cutting hours and programs at all the other libraries around the country. Why
doesn’t anyone mention that?” whispered John to Veronica, but she just put her
finger to her lips and turned her eyes back on Lillian Spencer.

“And now,” said the
First Lady, when the hoopla had died down, “I would like to introduce Kay
Hopkins, one of the directors of the Smithsonian. Kay has graciously donated
her time, this space, and some of the world’s most breathtaking jewels to make
this a night to remember!”

As Kay stepped
forward, Veronica leaned in and whispered to John, “I have to get in place
now.”

He clutched her arm
for a moment. “Be careful. I’m sure Maggie’s still on the loose somewhere in
this building along with God knows who else.”

“Don’t worry,” she
said with a smile. “What could happen to me while I’m on the runway with a wall
of photographers snapping pictures?”

“Don’t get cocky,” he
said, annoyed. “Remember what happened to Katherine Park.”

“Don’t worry, John,
no one’s going to get this diamond away from me.”

John pointed to a
place near the end of the red carpet. “I’m going to be standing right there if
you need me.”

“I’ll be fine.” She
turned to walk away, but then she stepped back and lightly kissed his lips,
sending a spark of electricity through every nerve in his body. “But thank
you,” she whispered and took off into the crowd.

The band swung into a
jazzy version of “
Diamonds Are A Girl’s
Best Friend”
as the show began. Gisela, the smoldering beauty who had
amused Cynthia Spencer so much by her allotment of jewels, was the first one
down the runway. The massive Hooker Emerald was pinned squarely between her two
jutting breasts, flashing green in the runway lights. The press went at it like
a bunch of piranhas attacking a side of beef while Kay recited the history of
the famous emerald that had once been the belt buckle of a Turkish sultan.

Jessica came next,
dripping in her family pearls, which were rumored to have once belonged to the
infamous Lucretia Borgia. She looked as stuck up and cold as ever, not even
cracking a smile when the storm of flashbulbs went off as she stopped to pose
at the end of the runway.

One dolled-up rich
girl after another had her turn on the catwalk, each sporting bigger and better
rocks than the celebutante before her. The crowd went wild for them. John
couldn’t tell if they were applauding for the individual young ladies or the
extraordinary jewels they wore.

“Ladies and
gentlemen,” said Kay, as Lillian Spencer stepped onto the red carpet in a
shimmering pair of massive baroque diamond earrings, “few objects in the
Smithsonian collection conjure up more dramatic images than do these earrings.
They were given to Marie Antoinette by Louis XVI and are said to have been torn
from her ears as she tried to flee during the French Revolution.”

The crowd really went
crazy as Lillian Spencer, wearing her ill-starred gems, slowly made her way
down the red carpet. She had her moment in front of the cameras, and as she
turned to walk back down the runway, Kay introduced Cynthia and her imperial
jewels.

John had seen a lot
of ridiculous things in his life, like the thief in Palm Beach who left his
cell phone at the scene of the crime, but the sight of Cynthia Spencer toddling
down the runway looking like an overstuffed sausage encased in pink satin,
shrinking under the glare of the public gaze with Josephine Bonaparte’s crown
slipping to one side of her head took the cake.

Miraculously, the
crowd didn’t seem to notice and gave her the same enthusiastic applause they
gave her mother. John almost felt sorry for Cynthia as she tripped on the hem
of her gown during her runway return.

“And now,” gushed
Kay, unable to keep the excitement from her voice, “for the first time in the
museum’s history, we have allowed our most prized possession to be worn at a
public event. Our model is the lovely Miss Veronica Rossmore. I’m sure you’ve
all guessed that the famous treasure I’m talking about is none other than the
Hope Diamond
!”

The crowd went silent
in anticipation as they looked down the empty red carpet. Everyone held their
breath, waiting to see the diamond that bore the most infamous curse of any
jewel in history. John felt himself tense up as the seconds ticked by and
Veronica did not appear. Almost starting to panic, he was about to push his way
through the crowd and find her when Veronica stepped into the spotlight.

Cynthia Spencer may
not have looked much like a princess while she walked the runway, but Veronica
did. With the deep blue diamond shimmering and sparkling against her white
skin, she cast a spell over the guests as surely as if she had waved a magic
wand covered in pixie dust. As she made her way down the carpet, the audience
rose to a standing ovation that sounded like an earthquake shaking the giant
hall. Veronica, poised and calm, smiled at them; her face glowing and radiant,
her eyes sparkling the same twilight blue as the Hope.

Someone who didn’t
know her might have thought Veronica was basking in the love of the crowd like
an insecure starlet blossoming under the approval of the masses. John knew,
however, that it was the diamond itself giving her this high. The feel of its
cold weight against her breastbone, the subtle life of the gem radiating its
energy to her, whispering all its dark secrets and infamous history. She
communed with the gem the way some hippies hugged trees or a great jockey
caught the rhythm of his horse.

She turned back down
the runway and as she passed him she caught his eye and winked.

When the lights on
the catwalk went down and the ball commenced, John had to fight his way through
the crowd to reach Veronica. A throng of admirers, camera crews and, he feared,
potential jewel thieves swarmed around her vying for her attention. As last she
gave her final interview for the eleven o’clock news and came to his side. She
grabbed his hand in hers and said, “Let’s get a drink. I’m about to melt from
standing under all those hot lights!”

“Over here,” John
pointed to a gap in the crowd at the end of the long bar. They moved quickly so
any lingering press would get it that showtime was over.

Apparently, Cynthia
Spencer had the same idea, and cutting them off, slipped ahead in the bar line.
She leaned her elbows on the wood, her imperial diamond necklace scraping the
bar, which was wet with splashes of liquor from the fast-paced pouring of the
overworked bartenders. “Hey, let me have a rum and Coke,” she called to the
nearest man behind the bar.

He caught her eye and
held up his hand to let her know he heard her and would be with her in a
minute. She turned to Veronica. “Can you believe this? My sorority house has
better bartenders than this! They needed to hire, like,
way
more people!”

John realized Cynthia
had not tripped on the hem of her dress as she traversed the catwalk out of
pure awkwardness. The president’s daughter was completely hammered. Veronica
ignored the girl, biting her lip as if holding something back.

Cynthia wavered on
her feet a bit and turned back to the bar as the bartender handed her a drink.
“Thanks,” she said, her eyes fastened on the glass in her hand. Before stepping
aside to let John and Veronica order, she took a deep drink. An infuriated
expression squished up her piggy little face and she slammed the glass down on
the bar. “Why is there no alcohol in this?”

“I’m sorry, Miss
Spencer,” said the bartender, looking uncomfortable. “Those were my orders.”