The Cherbourg Jewels (20 page)

Everything’s tumbling down around me
, she thought. 
And I don’t know how to pick it all back up again.

Ella blinked back tears and tried to turn away, but she wasn’t fast enough.  Dr. O’Malley saw her blink quickly and put a hand on her shoulder.  “I know what you need,” he said.  “Come on.”

With light pressure on her shoulder, he guided her into one of the front parlors, a room decorated in vibrant teal with white
moldings
.  A taxidermied peacock rested on top of a bookcase, its long tail sweeping down toward the floor.  Ella stared at it in awe.  The feathers were iridescent and beautiful, almost shimmering in the lamplight.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” O’Malley said.  “I’ve always thought so.”

“It is,” she agreed, stepping closer to it.  She reached out a hand to stroke the soft, multi-colored feathers.  “Sometimes I feel a little like this poor guy.”

“How so?” O’Malley answered, closing the doors behind them.  He set his bag on the coffee table and opened it.

“He looks alive, but he’s frozen forever.  He can’t move forward, but he can’t go back.”

“Why are you frozen, Miss Wilcox?”

“Please,” she said, coming to sit on the sofa beside him.  “Call me Ella.”

“Ella,” he acknowledged with a smile.

“Did Sébastien tell you anything about me or my family?”

“No,” he said.  “Sébastien wouldn’t do that unless you’d asked him to.”

“Well, he won’t be asking anytime soon, that’s for sure.” 

It felt
strange
to be discussing Sébastien.  Even though he was upstairs, it felt like he was hundreds of miles away.  Like he was separated from her by land, sea, air
,
and anything else that the Cherbourg money could buy.  It was like the hours of closeness and passion they shared had never happened. 

“Why did you mention your family?” O’Malley asked.  “What does that have to do with Sébastien?”

“It’s my father,” she confessed.  “He was one of the city’s best jewelry restorers.  He dabbled in jewelry design when he was young, but by the time I was born, he’d switched mostly to restoring.  He’s the one who taught me to love jewels and jewelry.”

“Let me guess,” the older man said.  “Something happened to him?”

Ella nodded.  “When I was eight, two men broke into his workshop and took everything he had.  Then they shot him and left him to die.”

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” O’Malley said. 

Ella looked deep into his eyes, hoping for comfort, but the old man still seemed strangely distant.  “It must have been a terrible shock,” he said.

“It was,” she agreed.  “I can’t forget that night, no matter how hard I try.  All I have to do is think about it.  Then, if I fall asleep, I’ll see it in a dream, happening right in front of me.  Every detail, right there, whether I want to re-live it or not.  It’s like my brain just won’t let it go.” 
Like it has something left to tell me.

O’Malley frowned, furrowing the loose skin of his brow.  “You were a child, weren’t you?  How much of it did you see?”

Ella clasped her hands in her lap as the painful memories flooded her brain.  She remembered the blood, the smoke from the gun barrel, the black sack the men used to load up the jewels, the song one of the men had been humming as she’d walked through the door.  “I saw everything,” she said grimly.  “I still see it every time I close my eyes.”

“That’s a terrible burden for a young woman to carry.” 

“That’s exactly what it feels like,” she said.  “Like something I’m carrying.  As heavy as an anvil, sometimes.”

Suddenly, she remembered the Irish lullaby he’d hummed when he checked her out after the Pasternak incident.  Even though it was just a song, something about the melody had calmed her.  It was wholesome and true, a reminder of simpler times in a simpler place.  It was something her father would have liked.  Maybe even something he might have sung to her, if they’d been Irish.  “Doctor O’Malley,” she said softly. 

“Call me Peter, please,” he said, reaching out and squeezing her hand.

“Peter, then.  Could you do me a favor?”

“Of course.  What can I do to help?”

She looked at the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, at the sagging skin around his jaw.  Her father might look like this today if he’d survived.  She’d been an unexpected surprise born late in his life, so it was very likely Peter O’Malley was about the same age. 

She felt a little silly even asking.  It was a ridiculous indulgence, but more than anything, she wanted to feel a father’s embrace.  “Would you give me a hug?” she asked.  “And sing me that Irish lullaby?  It’s silly, I know, but I—
”

O’Malley smiled.  “You don’t have to explain,” he said.  “It’s only natural.  You’re missing your father and he and I are the same age.”

Ella tilted her head. 
How would he know that?
she wondered. 

He just said Sébastien hadn’t told him anything about her family.  Why would he assume the father of a twenty-six-year-old woman would be in his late sixties or early seventies?  But maybe she’d let it slip one of the other times he’d checked up on her.  It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Still, the shadow of doubt in her mind made it hard for her to relax as Peter O’Malley pulled her into a fatherly embrace.  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the arms of her father, holding her tight.  But the feeling of warmth and safety just wouldn’t come, no matter how hard she tried to relax.  Her body felt tense and anxious.  To top it off, her mind wouldn’t stop ringing its internal alarm bells.

Then the older man began to whistle.  She leaned her head against his chest and tried to let the lilting melody carry her into a more peaceful state of mind.  But instead of the mellifluous tune he’d dazzled her with the other night, she heard something that struck a bone-cold chill of
fear in her heart.  It was a folk tune, all right—the one she’d heard one of her father’s killers hum as he cleared off the workbench.  The notes, the lilt, everything, was exactly the same as the melody burned into her memory.      

Ella knew she’d never heard that tune anywhere else. 

She pushed her way out of the older man’s embrace.  “It was you,” she breathed, searching his face for the recognition she knew was there, somewhere.  “Peter, tell me I’m wrong.  Tell me you weren’t there that night.”

“No, lassie, I was there,” he said softly.

“Why, Peter?  Why did you do it?”   

He kept a firm grip on her upper arms, keeping her near him.  His eyes still had that hazy, unfocused glow.  “You couldn’t understand,” he said.

She started to wonder if he was mentally unstable.  The thought made her heart race.  She struggled in his grip, but it was surprisingly strong for an older man.  “Let go of me or I’ll scream,” she said. 

“I don’t think so, my dear.”  With one hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a syringe. 

She tried to jerk her arm out of its hold, but before she could move, he’d already plunged the needle into her arm. 

“What are you doing?” she cried. 

Ella tried to struggle.  Tried to shake free of his vise-like grip.  But her senses were already becoming foggy.  The words she meant to say floated in her brain and she couldn’t quite grab hold of them. 
I’m sorry, Dad
, she wanted to say. 
I’m screwing it all up, aren’t I?

When she told her legs to move, to carry her away from the sofa, they refused to obey.  She was floating in a haze and her own body wouldn’t respond to her commands. 

Her vision went hazy and then faded to black. 

Her brain felt too large for her skull. 

That was the first sensation she could process into thought.  Ella tried to figure out why that might be. 
Was I in an accident?
she wondered. 
Did I fall and hurt myself?

Images and sensations came back to her dimly, as if she had to search for them through a thick, pea-soup fog.  She remembered something about a song, something about her father, and something about the eerie smile of a white-haired man.

If I could just get the ache in my head to stop…

She tried to press her hands to her head to help clear away the fog.  But when she moved them, nothing happened. 
Okay, that’s weird
, she thought.

Ella blinked and fluttered her eyes, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening.  But when she opened them, all she saw was a flood of deep, black darkness. 

A flash of memory returned.  With it came a jolt of fear that raced through her like adrenaline.  Her right upper arm stung as if it had been pinched hard.  The needle, she thought. 

She tried to move her hands again.  This time, she realized why they wouldn’t cooperate—she’d been tied up. 
Not good
, Ella thought. 

She took stock of the situation, one step at a time.  There was something rigid behind her, like a pole or a wooden post.  She was tied to it.  Jostling her body from side to side, she could tell there was a thick rope looped around her and the post behind her.  As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she tried to find something that could tell her where she was.

She could barely make out a small wooden staircase that led up to a door.  It looked like a basement of some sort.  But whose basement?  And where?

Peter, she remembered.  He had injected her with something and taken her out of the Cherbourg house.  A thrill of panic ran through her veins. 
How is Sébastien even going to know I’m gone?
she thought. 
He’ll think I’m holed up somewhere, finishing my report.

Thinking of him made her heart hurt worse than the rest of her body.  As afraid as she was for herself, she realized he was inside the house with a murderer.  What if Peter O’Malley had been the one holding the gun that killed her father?  Sébastien trusted him implicitly.  He had
no idea what terrible things the man was capable of.  If Peter decided to harm Sébastien, too, there was nothing she could do to stop it.  That fact made her feel helpless—and she hated feeling helpless.

Now, in addition to fear, she felt a surge of anger.  How dare Peter O’Malley repay the trust Sébastien put in him with this?  Sébastien was quick to suspect the people around him of betraying him or misleading him, but he didn’t suspect the one person who actually had deceived him.  The one person who’d been with the family longer than he’d been alive. 

Suddenly, she realized that Sébastien’s paranoia about the people around him was entirely justified.  How could someone as rich as a Cherbourg trust anyone?  If he let himself get too close to them, they might turn around and blackmail him or stab him in the back. 

It made so much sense now, seeing it happen firsthand.  Of course, it didn’t do any good for her to realize this while she was trapped in a basement somewhere.  Especially not while Sébastien was still at home, in the company of a murderer he would never suspect.

I have to warn him
, she thought. 

It didn’t matter whether he forgave her or not.  It only mattered that he stay alive.  She’d never have another chance with him if Peter O’Malley killed him, too.  The most important thing was getting to him in time to warn him.  If she could do that, she’d have plenty of time later to try and make up for lying to him.  And maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to forgive her.

Now that she’d seen more of the influences that shaped him, she was closer to understanding why he was the way he was.  It only made her more intrigued, more caught up in the Cherbourg mystique.  And more determined to tell Sébastien the whole truth, about everything. 

He’d let her in once—and the searing heat from their lovemaking still sent shivers down her spine.  They had something she’d never experienced before and she’d be damned if she let it go so easily. 

Come on, Ella, focus
, she told herself.  If she could get untied and get out of here, she could warn Sébastien, win back his trust, and catch the man who’d killed her father. 

That last thought made her pause for a moment.  She’d been so worried about Sébastien that she hadn’t thought about her father once.  It was strange to think she had the answer she was looking for…or at least part of it.  If Peter O’Malley was one of the masked men, who was the
other one?  How could she have failed to ask O’Malley that?  It seemed like all her priorities had gone out the window as soon as Sébastien came into her life. 

“Dad, I’m sorry,” she said out loud.  “I’ll get him.  I promise.” 

She wiggled her fingers and arms to find out how tightly O’Malley had tied the rope.  She was able to move her wrists a little bit, but there wasn’t much slack available.  Still, with a little time, she might be able to slide the rope up over her chest and shoulders and wriggle out beneath it. 

Sébastien would figure out she was missing sooner or later.  What would Peter tell him?  Would Sébastien believe him? 

They wouldn’t know where to find her, so she knew it was up to her to get loose and find a way back to the Cherbourg mansion.  She had to work fast, though.  Peter might not intend to leave her around long enough to ruin his plan…whatever that might be.