MOONLIGHT ON DIAMONDS (8 page)

John smiled. “One guy
does. He calls himself the White Russian because he claims his family goes back
to the aristocracy of the Russian Empire, though it’s more likely he’s a
descendant of the craftsman from the House of Fabergé. He seems to have
inherited some of their skill with jewels.”

“What has he stolen?”
she asked.

“His biggest heist
was about five years ago. He grabbed a Burmese ruby the size of an egg out of
the hotel room of a Saudi Arabian sheikh.”

“Did you catch him?”

“Well, yes and no,”
said John. “We knew it was him. He left his card for Christ’s sake. He was
staying in the same hotel, but we had no proof and we couldn’t find the ruby on
him.”

“Was the stone ever
recovered?”

“No, the thing about
the White Russian is since he’s a jeweler, he cuts all the stones himself,
which makes it more difficult to track him down. Normally, you get your guy
when they try to sell the stones or get them cut,” John informed her.

“If most thieves get
caught cutting their stones, why don’t more of them do it themselves?” she
asked, revving the engine and speeding up to pass a big rig truck.

“It’s no easy thing
to cut a gem,” he explained. “That’s a serious craft, often passed down through
generations. There are only a few places in the world you can even get it
done.”

“The White Russian,
he’s a trained gem cutter as well as a master craftsman?”

“The official name
for it is a lapidary, but yes, that’s his deal,” said John.

“What about the
Ghost?” she asked. “Why can’t you track him when he gets his stones cut, or do
you think he knows how to do it, too?”

“There’s something
about him,” said John, drifting back into the past. “You go to the scene of the
crime where the Ghost has struck and there’s nothing. No fingerprints, no
broken locks, nothing disturbed in any way, and there’s no word on the street
either. Not a peep. The stones don’t show up on the black market.” He shrugged.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What about my note?”

John frowned. “I’ve
never known him to do something like that before.”

“You don’t think he
wrote it?”

“It’s possible.”

“But why would
someone pretend to be the Ghost?” she asked, puzzled.

John shook his head.
“I don’t know.”

“Well, whoever the
real Ghost is, he must be pretty smart.” Veronica had a hint of approval in her
voice.

“He’s more than
smart, he’s a genius.” John sat wrapped in thought for a moment. “There is a
guy…Dornal Zagen. He was doing thirty years to life until he busted out of Sing
Sing two nights ago. He might have somehow written the note.”

Veronica was silent
for a moment and then asked, “Are you the man who originally put him behind
bars?”

“I was.”

“Are you afraid he’s
going to come after you now?”

John hadn’t thought
of that. He sighed. “One more thing to worry about, huh?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t,” said
John. “I’m sure the Feds’ll catch up with him soon enough.”

“How did
you
catch him?”

“Well, it was about
three years ago in Chicago. I had tracked him that far on a lead from one of
our favorite stool pigeons who’d heard there was a lot of ice floating around
town. Even though it was the middle of winter, he wasn’t talking about frozen
water, I can tell you that.”

Veronica smiled at
John indulgently.

“Anyway, it was a
little after one in the morning,” John continued. “I had just flown in, when
the local police called about an ongoing theft at a fancy Gold Coast jewelry
store. It was about a week before Christmas, so the owner had put all his most
expensive trinkets on display hoping to sell them to people looking for some
eye-popping holiday gifts. When I arrived on the scene, the alarm was going off
like crazy, but there was no sign of a breakin and nothing was missing.
Everyone figured the system had just freaked out. They got another call about a
homicide a few blocks away, so the police took off. I had a strange feeling
about the whole thing and decided to hang out and wait.”

He winced as Veronica
suddenly swerved to avoid a biker who darted dangerously in front of them,
before continuing his story. “I turned off all the lights and pretended to
leave the shop, but instead I slipped into the bathroom and just sat there for
a while. I waited for about twenty minutes. I was just beginning to think I was
wasting my time when I heard something in the main room. I cracked the door
open and saw one of the decorative ceiling panels slip aside. A pair of legs
soon appeared from a cavity where the thief had been hiding. I held my breath
and didn’t move until he was standing in the middle of the room with a diamond necklace
dripping through his fingers. Then I hit the lights, and before he knew it, I
had my gun against his back, catching him red-handed.”

“Very impressive,”
said Veronica.

He couldn’t tell if
she was actually impressed or just making fun of him.

“And he got thirty
years to life for that one robbery?” she asked.

“Oh no,” said John.
“Dornal Zagen must have stolen about fifty million dollars worth of stuff over
the years. There were also rumors that he worked as a hit man for hire, though
I was never able to dig up any real evidence on that one.”

“Sounds like a
charming person.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not
someone you’d be likely to run into at one of your garden parties.”

She just gave him a
cool smile.

“So tell me about
this Diamond Ball. What’s it for?” John asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, it’s something
Mrs. Spencer and her daughter, Cynthia, are doing. It’s a charity event to
raise money for a library,” she said, all the excitement gone from her voice.

“What’s the price of
admission?”

“Twenty-five thousand
a plate.” She said it like that was no big deal.

John whistled. “For
that price, people should get to take the Hope Diamond home with them!”

“Personally, I
wouldn’t
want
the Hope.” A little
shudder ran through Veronica’s slim frame.

“No?”

“No!”

“Afraid of the
curse?” he asked, studying her more closely. He hadn’t pegged her for
superstitious. She seemed too calm and controlled, too in charge of herself for
nonsense like that.

“I sure am,” she
admitted.

“Huh, I’m surprised.”
It was nice to find she had some vulnerable chink in her armor.

“I’m the daughter of
an archeologist,” she reminded him. “I’ve been with my father when he’s dug up
Egyptian mummies, raided tombs in Ecuador. There are certain things you
shouldn’t touch because they have a life of their own. Jewels, in particular,
have their own life, their own energy. You can feel it when you wear them. Some
of them are lucky. In ancient India, it was said that diamonds gave a person
virtue and purity and would protect them from evil. I think that’s generally
true, but not
all
diamonds and
especially
not the Hope.”

“Now you sound like
those New Age crystal freaks,” John laughed.

“Laugh all you like,
but look at what happened to Tavernier,” she said.

“Tavernier?” he
asked, baffled.

She turned to him and
smiled. “I thought you knew about jewels.”

“I know who makes
what and how to recognize it. I can tell if a rock is real and if it’s good
quality. That’s my job, or was my job,” he corrected himself. “But all the
airy, fairy stuff, the legends and hearsay, I never bothered with it.”

“Well then,” she was
enjoying telling him something he didn’t know. “Tavernier was the original
jewel thief. In 1661, he went to India and stole the Hope Diamond, which at
that time was not known as the Hope. He called it the French Blue Stone because
he sold it to King Louis XIV. But get this, he stole it from a very sacred
temple. He plucked the diamond right out of the Goddess Sita’s third eye—or at
least a statue of her. She’s very revered in India, even to this day. Anyway,
he brought the diamond back to France. Then he tried to go back to India to
plunder more jewels, but he never made it past Russia. He was torn to bits by
wild dogs in the streets of Moscow.” She raised her brows triumphantly now that
she’d proven the curse.

“That’s it?” asked
John, just to wipe that smug look off her face.

Veronica was enjoying
herself too much to get mad. She turned an eager, conspiratorial face toward
him as if she were sharing a dark secret. “That’s
not
it. There’s much more.”

“Oh, yeah? Like
what?” he asked, trying not to sound interested.

She got a funny
little Mona Lisa smile on her face and turned her attention back to the road.
“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“We still have a good
hour left.”

“Why don’t you pull
out another CD,” she motioned toward the glove compartment, her diamond
bracelet catching the light and his eye.

He fished through her
CDs. There were several of classical music which he didn’t know at all and one
Dean Martin album. Bingo. He slid the CD in and turned up the volume. The
catchy opening riff of “That’s Amore” started up.

She raised her
eyebrows. “You’re a big cornball, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “Maybe I
am.” John wasn’t afraid to like Dino.

For the rest of the
trip they didn’t speak. They just listened to CDs and the radio. A cozy feeling
continued to grow between them and John couldn’t help wondering if they’d have
adjoining hotel rooms.

The Puck Diamond
burned like electric ice in Delores Pigeon’s wrinkled hand. How she wished she
could go out into the living room and show her nephew Larry the lovely ring,
but of course she didn’t want to get him into any trouble.

She would never have
dared to come to his Chestnut Hill home, but she had traveled under the false
passport her antique dealer friend in Amsterdam had acquired for her and she
felt quite certain about not being followed. That Antoine was such a useful
fellow, always able to make the right connections when she needed them, finding
the perfect buyer for her wares, and he was always so polite and respectful,
too.

They know how to
treat their elders in Europe, she thought, remembering the shocking treatment
she had received at the Academy Awards four days ago when a teenage girl had
tried to push her out of her place near the red carpet.

But that nice
Antoine, she must remember to knit him an afghan before flying back to the
continent. Delores frowned. She didn’t have much more time. Her flight to
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was in only—she counted on her wrinkled but still
quite dexterous fingers—one, two, three, four days away.

Goodness!

And of course, she’d
be busy all day Friday preparing for the Diamond Ball the following evening.
After all, making off with the Puck Diamond, magnificent as it was, had just
been a warm-up. Use it or lose it, she always said.

She certainly had to
admit, though, it
was
exciting to see
Katherine Park in person. Why, she had even gotten to shake hands with the
star! She couldn’t wait to have a nice pot of that lovely bittersweet Belgian
cocoa with Antoine and tell him all about it.

She’d have to make
that stop in Washington first, but after that, with the Puck and the Hope in
her possession, she could cash in her bingo chips and retire to that lovely
little cottage in Wales she’d always dreamed of. Yes, she’d just do that little
bit of business in Washington and then wouldn’t everything be just lovely!

Delores Pigeon took
one last look at the glittering 33-carat diamond in her pruny, blue-veined hand
before firmly sticking a piece of tape to the end of the pale pink yarn she’d
been using to knit booties for her niece’s baby girl. She attached the yarn to
the diamond and began wrapping it around and around, until the stone was hidden
under a soft cloud of angora.

****

Veronica drove through
the historic cobblestone streets of Capitol Hill until she reached the circular
driveway of the Monticello Hotel. As the platinum convertible slid to a stop in
front of the Greek revival building with its white marble columns and gracious
veranda, a team of porters in spotless gray uniforms and caps swarmed to help
Veronica out and attend to their luggage. John had to stop himself from
snatching his bag away from a fresh-faced bellhop. Instead, with the ghost of
Simon haunting him from the dark reaches of his brain, he said, “Thank you, but
I can get that myself,” as he picked up his shabby suitcase and gave the kid
five bucks.

Veronica pranced
ahead, giving him a nice view of her shapely derrière. Waltzing through the
gleaming brass revolving door into the airy lobby with its sparkling
chandeliers and antique Persian carpets was as natural to her as it was for him
to slip into the bleachers at Shea Stadium. Though he tried to act natural, he
couldn’t help but watch her red alligator jewel case as she swung it back and
forth with her graceful gait.