The Cherbourg Jewels (2 page)

Ella finished her sales pitch and looked up into his thick-lashed eyes.  It was almost impossible to stay cool knowing he was searching her face, looking for a sign of weakness.  She found herself wanting to do all the things women did to get a man’s attention: flick her hair, lick her lips, adopt a sexier stance that showed off her curves.   She fought her natural instincts with the only weapon she had:  the memory of what Joey had done to her.  She’d learned the hard way that lowering her guard o
nly led to disappointment and pain.  She didn’t have the strength to go through that again—not for Sébasti
e
n Cherbourg and not for any man. 

“I see,” he said. 

Nothing in his tone of voice gave her a clue as to whether he’d actually hire her.  She decided to press on.  “I have letters of reference from the museum director and the special events coordinator.  They’ve both worked with me numerous times.”

“I believe you.”

Then what’s the holdup?
she wondered. 
Just hire me so I can get inside that vault!

Sébastien Cherbourg crossed his arms over his chest.  “What sort of time frame are you expecting?  As you know, the exhibition is less than 72 hours away.  I didn’t know until last night that my prior appraisal wasn’t valid. It occurred more than ten years ago, and the museum’s insurance company won’t sign off on it.”

Ella nodded.  “I can work quickly, Mr. Cherbourg.  You may not need to postpone the exhibition more than a week.”

Instantly, the famous Cherbourg temper reared its ugly head.  “A week?” he roared.  “I’ve been doing publicity for six months!  That exhibition is happening on time if I have to fly in every gemologist from here to Indonesia!”

Ella bit back a sharp reply.  It was just like a Cherbourg to assume the world was at his beck and call, that everyone else would bend to his will.  She wanted so badly to tell him to stuff it, that she wouldn’t work for him if she were starving and he held the key to the last grocery store on earth.  But she had to see what was in that vault.  If any of her father’s missing stones had appeared in Cherbourg jewels, she’d know the Cherbourgs were involved in his death—or at least knew someone who was.   Unless she pulled this off, she might never have another way to access that vault again. 

Ella could see Sébastien’s face harden and knew her window of opportunity was closing.  “Twenty-four hours!” she heard herself cry.  “I’ll have it done in twenty-four hours!”

Sébastien uncrossed his arms, green eyes sparkling wickedly.  “That’s more like it.”

Ella smiled weakly, her stomach aflutter with uncertainty and fear. 
What have I just done?
she thought. 

*

Sébastien Cherbourg watched the woman walk out of his office, heels clacking violently against his polished marble floors.  She’d put up a decent fight, but she’d finally given him what he wanted: assurance that his exhibition would go forward as planned.  No one at the museum had warned him she was so difficult to deal with—or so persistent. 

As soon as they concluded the deal, he arranged for a car to meet her downstairs.  He told the driver to shuttle her to her office to pick up her equipment then drive her directly to his home, where she’d begin work immediately.  Nothing could stop his exhibition from happening now. 

Sébastien smiled. 
Finally
, he thought. 
I’ll prove I can resume my place at the head of this family.
  Just last night, his mother had raised a toast to him before supper, praising the
dedication he’d shown to exhibiting her prized jewelry collection.  Although she’d left for Dallas that morning on a shopping trip, she promised to return in time for the exhibition’s grand opening. 

He hated to admit it—and wouldn’t, not to anyone—but his mother’s praise made him feel like he was on the right track again.  This exhibition was exactly what he needed to cement his status within the Cherbourg family.  It was the only way he could prove to them that he was still in control of himself and their collective destiny
,
that Amanda hadn’t thrown him for a loop.

Amanda Lessing, his former fiancée, had left him two days before their wedding when he’d presented her with the Cherbourg family pre-nuptial agreement.  He’d explained it to her several times already, but for some reason, seeing it in person had a different effect entirely.  She’d torn it up, sobbed, screamed and raged—and then walked out when he admitted the pre-nup was a condition of his father’s will.  It was non-negotiable, something he couldn’t get around if he tried.  The endowment for the museum, the trust fund, the company shares, the house, the cars, everything—it was all his by the good graces of his father’s will for one more year, until he inherited it outright at the age of 35.  Until then, he was bound to every codicil of that will. 

But Amanda hadn’t been willing to wait.  Once she understood that he wasn’t the master of his domain, she’d packed her things and fled into the gray San Francisco fog.  That had been a year ago.  She’d never communicated with him again.    

His family had warned him that she was a gold-digging virago, but he wouldn’t listen.  His mother, in particular, had tried to explain what she saw when she looked in Amanda’s eyes.  Like any son raised with a silver spoon, however, he’d assumed he knew best and forbid his aunts, uncles and mother from speaking against Amanda in his presence again.  Until her departure, of course, when he’d thrown all of her remaining possessions and any photographs of her over the staircase, frames and all, to watch them plummet to the foyer floor fifty feet below. 

Now no one mentioned her to him at all.  He’d learned his lesson the hard way—women wanted his money and nothing else.  They wanted the Cherbourg name and they didn’t care who was attached to it. 

He would never forget the look in Amanda’s eyes when he told her the conditions of his father’s will were inviolable.  Her eyes, so big and charmingly chocolate brown, turned hard and unforgiving.  All the emotions he thought he’d seen in them, ranging from desire to admiration, changed to disgust. 

Once he’d gotten over the shock and the pain, he’d realized how tragic a mistake he had almost made.  What if he’d married Amanda?  What if she got her hooks into his family? 
Never again
, he thought. 
I will never sacrifice my father’s empire for the sake of a woman.

He would have to marry someday, if only to perpetuate the Cherbourg name.  But when the time came, in his late thirties he assumed, he’d select a willing young bride from the legions of Upper East Side debutantes presented in New York.  He planned to whisk her home to San Francisco, where she’d bear his children and sit on the board of as many charities as he could wrangle, all while wearing a tidy strand of pearls and taking care to keep her hair the perfect shade of ash blonde.  He never wanted to be asked about money, or lack of it, and he never wanted to feel the pain that came along with realizing he came second to a pile of dead presidents. 

He picked up the file folder the red-coated woman had left for him.  It held a copy of her resume and letters of recommendation.  Her credentials were impeccable, but something about her made him feel ill at ease.  He closed his eyes and pictured her and tried to put his finger on it. 

Her clothes were cheap but serviceable.  She wore no jewelry to speak of.  But her body…just thinking about it made Sébastien smile.  Those luscious curves were visible even under her coat.  From her rounded calves to her plump posterior and full, high breasts, she was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it. 

But none of that was what made him nervous.  No, he realized, it was
her
—or, to be more precise, the way
she had
looked at him.  Her pale face, dappled with a sprinkle of freckles just beneath her eyes, had actually looked frightened at times.  Her gray-blue eyes, the color of the bay on a stormy day, held onto that fear so tightly it never went away, not even when she snapped at him.  Despite the cleverly applied makeup, she looked young and afraid.

What did she have to be frightened of?  With credentials like hers, she had to know he’d be an idiot not to hire her.  Anything she was feeling had to result from a personal fear rather than a professional one.  But she couldn’t possibly be frightened of him.  They’d never met until this morning. 

He placed her file folder in his briefcase and made a mental note to contact Jake Grodin about it later.  Perhaps his private investigator could dig up some more information and find out what the devil had her running scared.  If she’d set out to con him, she’d find out just how unprepared for the job she really was—and then he’d give her something to be scared of.  

He looked back out his floor-to-ceiling window and smiled.  That was the one thing his money could always buy—security.  Anyone who thought they could take advantage of him would get eaten alive, either by his fleet of private investigators or his fleet of flesh-eating lawyers. 

Sébastien picked up her resume and smiled.  “You can’t hide from me, Ella Wilcox.  No one can.”

The air in the vault was hot and sticky.  Ella had been working for twelve hours straight and her blouse was soaked through with sweat.

Sébastien had been as good as his word—he’d arranged for a car to take her from the Cherbourg Tower to her office and then to Joyeuse, his mansion in Russian Hill.  She’d gotten the key to the vault from the estate manager, Yves, and set up shop about 11 o’clock that morning.  With just her loupe, her digital camera and her laptop, she’d gotten through about one-third of the Cherbourg family jewels. 

She’d seen an emerald and diamond tiara that was undoubtedly Russian in provenance, and a sapphire brooch that looked suspiciously like something that used to belong to the Shah of Iran.  Sébastien’s grandmother, Annaliese Cherbourg, had been a notorious admirer of beautiful jewels and her deceased husband had circled the earth to buy them for her. 

So far, Ella hadn’t found anything illegal, let alone anything that linked the Cherbourgs to the stones that had disappeared from her father’s workshop.  Even though she had more than half of the vault to go through, it was already past 11 o’clock in the evening.  She would have to work fast if she were going to meet her self-imposed 24-hour deadline and search the Cherbourg collection for evidence.

The jewels were stored in their original padded velvet boxes, stacked on stainless steel shelves arranged against each wall.  She worked as quickly and as methodically as she could, cataloguing each piece with a photo, an appraisal and a rubber stamp on the piece’s existing paperwork.  If the receipt and certificate of provenance were from a reliable vendor, such as Harry Winston or Van Cleef & Arpels, she bypassed it almost immediately.  For jewels without such documentation, however, her job became much more difficult. 

First she had to search the jewel in order to find the craftsman’s insignia, usually stamped or carved into the back of the frame.  Then she had to cross-reference it with her online catalogue and try and match the jewel to a published listing of the artist’s work.  If the piece had no signature, she was up a creek—it was up to her to analyze the stones, the metal and the style and then form an opinion about the jewel’s origins. 

Sometimes she had helpful clues, like the true “pigeon’s blood” red color of a Burmese ruby.  Other times, she found herself stumped, wishing she had more than 24 hours.  Given a few days, she could uncover much more, but in a few hours, she had no time for exhaustive research.  What’s worse, none of the stones she’d seen in unmarked pieces matched the photographs she still carried with her—photographs from her father’s workshop, taken a week before the robbery.

Ella replaced a domed necklace case on the steel shelf and leaned against it wearily.  She could feel beads of sweat pooling between and under her breasts.  Her body ached as if she’d been beaten up by a playground bully.  “Twelve hours and not a thing,” she groaned aloud.   

It had never occurred to her that the Cherbourgs weren’t involved, somehow, in her father’s murder.  Frederick Wilcox had been the best jewelry restoration specialist in the Bay Area.  At the time of the robbery, he’d just gotten a big write-up in the Chronicle for the restoration of a Romanov prince’s family heirlooms.  San Francisco was filled with the sons and daughters of Russian émigrés who fled the revolution; her father had always loved seeing the treasured jewels their parents and grandparents had brought with them from Russia.  He labored for hours to re-set loose stones and make paste copies of stones that had been lost.  He believed jewels were pieces of fire and light, and their beauty never ceased to amaze him. 

“Jewels are a collection of memories,” he’d told her.  “When you look at a diamond necklace or a ruby ring, you’ll always remember what you did when you wore it, who gave it to you and why.  Now imagine wearing something a hundred years old, or even two hundred.  Imagine how many people lived and loved while wearing it.  The stone holds onto all of it.  When you wear it, you’ll feel them.  If you ever feel lonely, little one, just slip one of these on.”  Here, he’d handed her one of his Victorian rings, a gold band set with an amethyst and a tourmaline.  “You’ll never be alone, not with all the memories to keep you company.”

Her father’s words could still get to her, even eighteen years later. 

Ella bent her head and blinked back tears.  “But I wanted
you
to keep me company, Dad.” Immediately, she began to think of all the things they never got the chance to do.  He never met her at the finish line of her high school cross country races.  She never had to explain why she came home late after a first date.  She never got to wave to him in the audience as she graduated from high school and then college.  It wasn’t fair.  All her friends got to do those things.  Why didn’t she?