MOONLIGHT ON DIAMONDS (7 page)

He helped her out.
“John.”

She ignored him. “You
know I hate having people around. I’ll have no privacy at all.”

As John watched her
try to convince Buzzy, he remembered something from his doings with the
Manhattan blue bloods. During his time tracking jewel thieves, it was
inevitable that he would pick up a little Park Avenue gossip. It must have been
about three years ago that he had heard about Veronica and her husband who had
thrown her down the grand staircase at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume
Institute Ball in a jealous rage. There had been lots of pictures of the event
floating around the tabloids. That year the ball’s theme had been ‘Goddesses’
and Veronica had come dressed as the Egyptian deity Isis. She had adorned
herself in a vintage 1930s beaded gown and piles of the gems her father had
given her during their time on archeological trips to the East.

There had been one
particular photo of Veronica lying unconscious at the foot of the staircase
with her ball dress fanned out all around her, her shapely legs exposed, and
her head thrown back showing off a swan’s neck encased in an exotic necklace.
She had looked like a fancy broken doll flung on the ground by a careless
child. Standing over her was her drunk husband, his black bow tie hanging loose
around his neck, his jaw dropped open as if he couldn’t believe what had just
happened. For about a month this picture, and others of Veronica and her
husband, had graced the covers of the
New
York Post
and
People
magazine
.
Then it had all blown over and gone
away.

John studied her more
curiously now.

“I will not have you
put yourself in danger, Veronica,” insisted her father. Taking a piece of paper
from his breast pocket, he handed it to John. “We received this last night.”

John unfolded the
paper and read the note. It was typewritten on a plain, white piece of paper.

“Stay away from the
Diamond Ball, Miss Rossmore, or you could find yourself an unwilling character
in the latest Ghost story, to which there will not be a happy ending.”

“Have you notified
anyone yet? The police or the FBI?” asked John.

“We don’t want any
publicity, and really, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” insisted Veronica.

“Miss Rossmore, you
really ought to take this seriously. Why don’t you let me take this down to the
lab? They could test it for fingerprints, DNA, all kinds of things.”

“I really think this
whole thing is silly,” she said with a cold smile. “I’m a big girl and I don’t
want a high profile police investigation
or
a bodyguard.”

“Will you at least
promise to be more careful with your jewels?” pleaded Buzzy. Clearly his little
girl had him wrapped around her finger.

“What’s careful?” she
asked.

“She won’t be,”
exclaimed the old man, now turning to John. “She flaunts her diamonds all over
the place, even wears them on the subway or walking through Central Park
alone—at night, for God’s sake!”

So she did take the
subway. What else was she lying about? John raised his brows at Veronica, but
she wasn’t looking at him. She had fire in her eyes and all her attention went
to her father.

“I can take care of
myself and you know it.”

Her father shook his
head and collapsed back into his chair looking as if his daughter would be the
death of him. “You understand, Veronica, that I have a very important lecture
to give on Saturday night. I cannot accompany you to this affair.”

“I’m not asking you
to!” she said, exasperated.

“Veronica, I will not
be able to sleep at night worrying about you and those jewels. Not with this
Ghost on the loose and every other thief worth their salt probably lining up to
take turns stealing from the people attending this ball!”

Veronica shook her
head and a curtain of dark hair fell over one eye. Annoyed, she pushed it back
behind her ear.

“All right,” said
Buzzy with a sigh, “I’ll cancel my lecture.”

John almost smiled.
So he and his mother weren’t the only people who went through this.

“You will
not
cancel your lecture,” declared
Veronica.

Buzzy was about to
reply, when he turned to look at John and, taking a deep breath, remembered
himself. “John, I’m so sorry. Perhaps I can call you tomorrow when my daughter
and I have straightened this thing out.”

“That sounds like a
good idea.” John rose and handed back the note. He paused a moment, not wanting
to interfere but feeling it his duty to say something. “You know, you really
should call the cops about this note. The person who wrote it might be
dangerous.”

Buzzy nodded his
head. “Thank you, John. Veronica and I will discuss the matter and decide what
we think is best.”

John shrugged; it
really wasn’t any of his business.

Buzzy rose. “I’ll
walk you out.”

“Don’t worry about
it.”

“Well, here,” the old
man pulled a beat-up leather checkbook out of his jacket pocket, “let me at
least compensate you for your wasted time.”

John shook his head.
“It’s okay.”

“It would make me
feel better.” Buzzy’s pen was poised over a blank check.

John felt Veronica’s
cool eyes on him, watching to see if he’d take the money.

“Seriously, Mr.
Rossmore, I had a great walk through the park on my way over here. It was a
pleasure meeting you and your daughter. You don’t owe me anything.” John
couldn’t help but wonder just how much the old man would have given him.

“Well…all right.”
Veronica’s father slipped his checkbook back into his jacket. “Thank you for
coming by; I’ll be in touch.”

John nodded to
Veronica, who sat stone-faced tapping her heel on the ground. She inclined her
head a fraction of an inch in his direction.

“It was a pleasure
meeting you, Veronica.” He flashed a smile in her direction. “Maybe I’ll catch
you on the A train sometime.”

She smiled back with
hard eyes. “Don’t count on it.”

The next morning,
John sat quietly reading a passage out of the
Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
as he’d done every morning for the
past year. This morning he’d been reading about Step Two: “
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity
.”

He drank his coffee
and thought about this concept. He still had trouble with the idea of a Higher
Power. If there was one, why had his father’s liver burst one day? Why had he
watched his old man vomit blood all over the immaculate floor his mother had
spent hours scrubbing before she left to run the day’s errands? Why should any
seven-year-old be left alone with his father crumpled against the refrigerator,
the older man’s eyes bugged out with fear, his face a waxy yellow? John could go
back there in a heartbeat and see his father coughing up noxious poisons,
unable to speak or move until his system was so polluted it shut down
completely. Then he had just been a dead man with a little boy shaking his
beefy blood-drenched shoulder. The little boy had cried and screamed but there
had been no one to help.

John closed his eyes
and whispered, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

That’s when the phone
rang. It was Veronica.

“I’m downstairs in my
car,” she said, in her cool, low voice. “I’ll give you ten minutes to get down
here. If you have a tuxedo, bring it. Otherwise, we’ll be gone four days, so
pack accordingly.”

He was in a bad mood
and a lot of not-so-nice comebacks sprang to mind, but instead he said, “I
haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“Okay, eleven
minutes.” She hung up.

He was used to having
to pack on the double from his days at the FBI. When a jewel thief struck,
whether it was in Lisbon or Los Angeles, he had to be on the first plane out
before the trail got cold.

When John came out of
his apartment building, he found Veronica waiting in a platinum convertible.
Her hair was covered by an iris print scarf and she wore big bug-eyed, Jackie-O
sunglasses, a perfectly pressed sleeveless button-down shirt, and a preppy
floral skirt. But what caught his eye was the shimmer of diamonds dancing
around her wrists as she clutched the steering wheel and another white hot
sparkle peeping out from beneath her collar.

“Showing off your
collection?” John asked, tossing his suitcase into the back seat and sliding in
next to her.

She smiled and shook
her glittering wrist in front of him so the diamonds danced in the sunlight.
“This is nothing.”

Then she reached into
her purse and pulled out an envelope with his name scrawled across it. “My
father asked me to give this to you.” She presented it to him with a pearly
white smile that seemed a little too much like a smirk.

“What is it?”

“Probably money.” She
shifted the car into gear and tore away from the curb. “I’m sure you’ll have
expenses and things and my dad, being the sucker he is, probably threw in a
nice advance, too.”

John slipped the
envelope in his pocket. He sure wasn’t going to give Veronica Rossmore the
satisfaction of watching his eyes light up at the sight of a few greenbacks or
a fat bank check.

She pulled onto the
West Side Highway and quickly shot ahead of a cab driver who was vying for the
same crack in the traffic flow to get into the fast lane. She appeared to be in
a good mood today. Something about getting out on the open road with the wind
whipping around them seemed to appeal to her.

John watched the
Hudson River flash by in a blur. “Of course, it would have been better to hire
a limo with bulletproof glass and tinted windows.”

“I detest
limousines,” she scoffed. “I think they’re the most vulgar cars. Any wannabe
rap star or pimply seventeen-year-old on a prom date can drive around in one.”

She had a point.

“Still, if you want
security…”

“But I don’t want
security, or rather, I’m not worried about it. It’s my father who’s the big
worry-wart.”

“I take it he’s not
coming to the ball?” remarked John.

“No, he hates these
big social things.”

“What about you?”

“I hate them, too,
but Lillian Spencer was a friend of my mother’s. They went to Vassar together
and she specifically asked me to come and, of course, I
am
curious to see all the beautiful jewels. I won’t be able to
stand most of the ladies wearing them, but that doesn’t matter. Just seeing
this collection of gems all in one place will be something.”

He could imagine her
eyes lighting up behind the Jackie O’s. “It’ll be a security nightmare is what
it’ll be.”

“But there will be
secret service and the museum’s security and, of course, I’ll have you,” she
said with a slight condescending lilt to her voice, which John did not
appreciate.

“Listen, I’m telling
you, it’s a security nightmare. You’re lucky your father had the foresight to
hire someone to watch over your stuff,” he insisted.

She shrugged and they
rode in silence after that all the way through the state of New Jersey.

Somewhere around
Trenton, Veronica reached over and flipped open the glove compartment. She
pulled out a CD and slid it into the built-in player on the dashboard. The
velvety voice of Lena Horn purred out of the speakers with a swanky band
arrangement to back her up.

Veronica sang along
with Lena as she flew past the other cars on the highway. John liked the way
she drove. She was sure of herself and had quick reflexes. She didn’t tailgate,
choosing instead to jump ahead of any slowpokes on the road. He stretched back
in the leather seats and watched the world fly by with the sun on his face and
the music soothing his spirit. This might not be such a bad job after all.

They were speeding
through Pennsylvania when Veronica said, “So tell me some exciting stories
about your days at the FBI chasing jewel thieves.”

“Well, let’s see.” He
thought about it. “The man who gave me the most trouble is your friend the
Ghost.”

“The one who wrote
the note.”

John nodded.

“I read about him in
the newspapers,” said Veronica. “He took Katherine Park’s diamond ring.”

“It’s possible. I’ve
tracked him all through Europe, down to Charleston, and over to Los Angeles,
among other places. The thing about him is…he doesn’t leave any trace—nothing.”
John bit his thumb and shook his head. “Every other thief leaves some kind of
telltale sign. Some of them are just glorified thugs who pull off jewelry store
robberies like they were hitting a local gas station. Some of them are so
caught up in their own crazy game they get arrogant and leave calling cards.”

“Actual calling
cards?” asked Veronica, unable to keep the interest from her voice.