MOONLIGHT ON DIAMONDS (28 page)

“I never dreamed
Veronica could have taken it,” continued Buzzy. “The necklace was one of the
great treasures of antiquity. It was a protection amulet, very sacred. The
ancient Egyptians recognized no difference between the ornamental, magical, and
even medical. Veronica, of course, knew this. In retrospect, I think it was the
talisman she wanted more than some decorative piece of jewelry.” Buzzy shrugged
his shoulders. “But as I said, I had no idea she was the one who had stolen the
thing. She was only twelve-years-old and a very well-behaved girl, too. Rachida
had a reputation for being wild and careless. I simply thought she was
responsible somehow for losing the necklace herself.”

Buzzy grew silent for
a moment as his mind seemed to drift back. John shifted in his chair and Buzzy
refocused and continued the story. “The following year, when we returned to New
York, we were exhausted from traveling, so we spent a very quiet New Year’s
Eve. I took Veronica to the Russian Tea Room for a birthday dinner with her
grandmother and then we stopped off at Serendipity for ice cream sundaes before
returning to our suite at the Pierre to watch the ball drop on television. The
Pierre does such a good job of keeping their guest’s business private, I never
even realized that damned diamond bracelet had been stolen from the South
American widow down the hall. I didn’t hear about it until the following year
when the press starting talking about the Ghost and mentioned that a bracelet
had been stolen from the hotel while we were guests there.”

“That’s when I first
learned about the Ghost—about Veronica.” John shook his head still trying to
get his mind around it.

Buzzy smiled sadly.
“It was on her fourteenth birthday that I discovered what my daughter had been
doing. We visited the Baroness Hull in Vienna. She was sponsoring my next
expedition in Turkey. It was New Year’s Eve, and she had a fantastic holiday
party after the Kaiser Ball. Everyone in Vienna was there, and of course, since
it was a formal party, they all wore their best jewels. Like Veronica and
myself, many of the guests were staying with the baroness. That night a diamond
tiara, which was once owned by Queen Victoria, disappeared from one of the
lady’s rooms.”

The old man shook his
head and looked heartbroken, “and I knew Veronica had taken it. I think it was
her way of feeling important, like she mattered, at least in the beginning
before it turned into a compulsion. Or perhaps it was a way to compensate for
losing her mother. I didn’t have the heart to confront her about it. I knew
that was wrong, but I thought it must be a phase. At any rate, I decided what
she needed was companionship, so I sent her to boarding school in Switzerland
where she could be with other girls her own age. I think that only made things
worse. I’m afraid what she really needed was me. If only I’d spoken to her then
about the thefts, perhaps I could have stopped her kleptomania before it got
out of control. I should have been there for her.” Buzzy wrung his old hands
together and his kind face was riddled with guilt.

“But you seem to be
close now,” said John.

“Oh, don’t
misunderstand me. My daughter and I are good friends, and she has been
invaluable to me in my work over the past few years, helping me catalogue all
my discoveries and organizing the mess I scribble into legible books.” Buzzy’s
face brightened a bit and some of the good humor returned to his eyes. “As far
as I know, she stopped stealing after she divorced Derrick. I think when that
marriage fell apart Veronica made a decision to change a lot of things in her
life. She began seeing a therapist and stopped spending time with some of her
friends, whom I had never felt were very good for her in the first place. At
any rate, she’s seemed happier and more at peace. Since then no reports of the
Ghost have turned up. Until now, of course.” He looked worried again. “I cannot
believe Lillian would use Veronica like this!”

“Believe it,” said
John.

The old man just
shook his head.

“There are still some
things I don’t understand,” said John. “Like who sent her the note you received
warning her to stay away from the Diamond Ball?”

“That’s right.” The
old man looked perplexed. “I still have it.” He rose, went to the mantle, and
opened a little ebony box. “Here it is.” He handed the note to John.

John unfolded the
paper and read it aloud.

“Stay away from the
Diamond Ball, Miss Rossmore, or you could find yourself an unwilling character
in the latest Ghost story and the ending won’t be a happy one for you.”

The old man frowned.
“I never could understand why someone would send this to Veronica and pretend
to be the Ghost.”

“But that’s just the
thing,” said John, the truth dawning on him. “No one was pretending to be the
Ghost. This is a note to the Ghost not from the Ghost, probably from someone
who didn’t want the competition.”

“You mean some other
jewel thief?” asked Buzzy astonished.

“That’s my guess.”

“Well!”

“Okay, that explains
the note,” said John, still not satisfied, “but what happened to her jewels?
She tried to say tonight that they weren’t stolen, but I could tell she was
lying. Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” said
the old man, looking mystified. “Maybe she was telling you the truth.”

“She sure put on a
show when she first came to tell me they were gone, crying and sniffling like
her childhood dog had just been flattened under a Mack truck,” said John
confused.

“It’s not like her to
lie and pretend,” said Buzzy. “I know that’s hard to understand considering all
the thefts she’s committed, but really, I’ve never known her to lie outright or
to fake tears.”

“Well, she did seem
genuinely heartbroken,” admitted John. “I can’t say I understand getting that
upset about a bunch of rocks. You have insurance, don’t you?”

“For all the jewelry
she legitimately owns, yes,” replied Buzzy. “But I hope you won’t think she’s
too materialistic,” said the old man, appealing to John. “It’s not greed. It’s
just…well, haven’t you ever owned anything that you really cared about? A
family heirloom maybe or something from your childhood? I believe somehow her
compulsion to hold onto these jewels was tangled up with her feelings about her
mother’s loss, about being vulnerable and alone in the world. After all,
diamonds are one of the few indestructible, seemingly eternal things in our
ephemeral world where people can die or desert you. A world where all too often
disaster seems to be just around the corner.”

The WWII medal with
the wrinkled black-and-white photograph of his father immediately sprang to
John’s mind. He felt a slight, painful tightening around his heart when he thought
of losing it. “Yes, I guess maybe I do understand, but that still doesn’t
explain what happened to her jewelry.”

Buzzy frowned. “No,
it doesn’t.”

They both sat in
silence for a moment pondering the situation. Then the archeologist thumped the
arm of his chair. “Well, it seems we have no choice but to go straight to the
source!”

“That’s what I
thought when I drove down here tonight.”

“All right, then.”
Buzzy stood and walked across the room to a pile of neatly stacked files. He
lifted them up and handed the pile to John. “My eyesight is not what it used to
be. Too much hanging around dimly lit tombs,” he laughed. “Tell me if you see a
file marked
Amritsar
.”

Confused, John took
the stack of files and looked through them until he came to one marked by that
name. “Here it is.” He handed the file to the old archeologist.

Buzzy beamed as he
flipped open the folder and pulled out a yellowing, tissue-thin map. “All right
then!” he said, excitement lighting up his face, making him look about ten
years old.

“Mr. Rossmore, are
you okay?” asked John, suddenly afraid the old man had gone senile or cracked
under the stress of his daughter’s escapades.

“Never better,”
crowed the old man and he leaned down to John, a twinkle gleaming in his eyes
and asked, “Do you know how I got my nickname?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, come dawn,
you’ll find out! Just give me a moment to get some decent clothes on and we’ll
be off.” The old man dashed out of the room leaving a confused John still
sitting on the parlor sofa.

****

John did indeed get
to find out how Buzzy Rossmore got his nickname as the platinum convertible
pulled into the Westchester County Airport. The archeologist led him through
the washed-out grayness of dawn to a small plane. With the brightly lit eyes of
a maniac, he told John to climb aboard.

An engineer was
carefully examining the engine with a flashlight, doing his preflight check.
John couldn’t help feeling some concern and evidently the look on his face must
have reflected his thoughts. The reliable looking young man nodded his head in
an encouraging way, so John took Buzzy’s advice and climbed the steeply pitched
steps into the cockpit.

Buzzy exchanged a few
polite pleasantries with the young engineer outside and then came aboard
himself, wincing as his arthritis kicked in. He sat rubbing his knee after
parking himself in the pilot’s seat of the flimsy-looking plane.

“Well, what do you
think?” asked the old millionaire beaming. He reminded John of Veronica when
she was excited about a particularly bright, shiny diamond.

“I saw an old movie
once with Cary Grant where he played a pilot. In the movie, they had to kick
one of the pilots off their squad because his eyesight was shot,” said John
nervously.

Buzzy laughed, “Oh,
that was in the old days before we had high tech gadgets like this.” He tapped
the elaborate dashboard of bells and whistles in front of him. “You better
fasten your seatbelt, though.”

John fastened the
buckle around his waist and white-knuckled it as Buzzy eased out on the
throttle and the plane shot forward down a runway which looked much too short.

“You want to tell me
where we’re going?” asked John over the roar of the engine.

Buzzy’s eyes
twinkled. “You’ll see.” He turned his attention back to the runway, but then
said as an afterthought, “I hope you’ve had all your shots.”

The plane lurched and
rose sharply into the air.

John swallowed hard
and tried to breathe long and deep like his friend Bethany had shown him. After
the initial terror had subsided and his adrenaline level had returned to normal,
the lack of sleep hit John like a ton of bricks and the drone of the plane soon
sent him into a coma-like sleep.

****

He didn’t wake up
again until the ear-popping descent of the plane brought him back to
consciousness. They landed in a private air field outside Lisbon, refueled, and
stopped in for some lunch at a little fado café where they ate a Portuguese
version of seafood piala and thick cut, greasy French fries before returning to
the jet and resuming their flight.

The archeologist
still wouldn’t tell John where they were going and seemed to take a gleeful
pleasure in the prospect of surprising him. The old man reminded John more and
more of Veronica with every passing hour. Buzzy amused them both by telling
John stories about his days as an archeologist in Egypt, Mexico, and the Island
of Crete. It turned out Buzzy Rossmore had been a regular Indiana Jones in his
time. At least that was how he told it and John didn’t doubt the older man one
bit.

Finally, they landed
again just outside Bangkok, in an airport that was really no more than a
glorified field with a rusty control tower, a snack shack, and a gaggle of very
territorial chickens. After all of their hours of flight, John insisted they
find a hotel and Buzzy get some sleep. The old man put up a fight, but finally
agreed, and they bunked down at the house of the friendly man who served as
engineer, air traffic controller, and baggage claim boy at the “airport.”

They ate a good
noodle stew with some ingredients John didn’t recognize and knew better than to
ask about. After the meal, they slept on the brightly colored wool blankets in
their host’s living room for about four and a half hours before Buzzy, all
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, thanked their host in his native tongue, handed
him a generous wad of American money, and they were off again.

“You never really
know a man until you’ve shared a pig intestine or logged fifteen hours of
flight time together in a two-man plane,” said the archeologist once they hit
their flying altitude.

“Pig intestine, huh?”
said John, trying not to get too queasy.

“Oh well.” Buzzy
smiled and his soft wrinkly face became a happy mandala of lines and light.
“You’re in love with Veronica, aren’t you?”

John didn’t know what
to say, so he simply answered, “How did you know?”

“You never would have
come this far,” said Buzzy, smiling warmly at John.

“Has this whole trip
been some kind of test?” asked John suspiciously.

Buzzy’s smile grew
even broader. “I like you, John.”

John shook his head
and looked out at the miles and miles of pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

“Have you ever heard
of the Hindu goddess, Sita?”