The Paris Caper (36 page)

CoCo was probably right.
Pierre need never know what was going on. And he’d help to establish their
alibis. That was critical. The only thing better than one cop to establish an
alibi was two cops.

All right. So Pierre was
in.

And everything was good.
She wouldn’t panic.

At least not yet.

♥♥♥

By Wednesday morning
Jean-Marc had solved the two cases Belfort had given him on Monday. This was
way too easy.

And not nearly
distracting enough.

Luckily, Pierre walked in
with a thick file of computer printouts right before Jean-Marc did something drastic,
like ask Belfort for more cases. Or drive the Saab to the rue Daguerre.

“Whatcha got?”

“I found the computer.”

Jean-Marc sat straight
up. “Yeah? Where?”

“The school where Davie
takes his photography courses.”

Within him, elation
warred with despair. Jean-Marc’s professional side was certain he was right
about Ciara, and this could prove it...and yet, for the past day or two, the
thought that his suspicions about her might actually be wrong had felt
strangely...compelling.

“Any hidden files or
secret photos?” he asked.

Pierre blew out a breath.
“Well. Yes and no.” He dropped the heavy file onto Jean-Marc’s desk. “No hidden
files, but lots of photos.
Tons
of photos.”

“And?”

“And...they all look like
student stuff to me. Portraits, close-ups of birds and flowers, every monument
in Paris.” His nose wrinkled. “A whole folder of naked guys. Yuck.”

Jean-Marc laughed. “Well,
he is gay.”

“Just my luck,” Pierre
muttered. “Anyway, the only picture of anything that looked remotely like a
possibility was some weird, fancy egg-shaped thing. Porcelain, maybe? Covered
in jewels and gold embellishments.”

“Egg-shaped?”

Pierre made a face.
“Antique Easter ornament?”

Something in the back of
Jean-Marc’s mind triggered. He’d seen an object like that recently. But where?
The image in his memory was black and white, but not sharp like Davie’s photos.
More grainy, like...newsprint.

That must be it. He’d
bought
Le Monde
on the way home from work Sunday. Jumping up, he strode
quickly down to the squad room.

“Anybody still have a
copy of Sunday’s paper?” he asked loudly, poking his head in.

Belfort’s secretary
motioned him over. He took the paper impatiently and swiftly checked the front
page. Nothing. He whipped it open and went page by page, until he found what he
was looking for.

“Here it is.” The cover
of the pull-out supplement for the Film Festival schedule had an article
featuring non-film-related exhibits. He held up one of the pictures for Pierre
to see. “Was it something like this?”

Pierre’s mouth dropped
open. “
Bon dieu
, that’s it! That’s exactly the piece in Davie’s photos!”
he said. “What the heck is it?”

Belfort’s secretary piped
up with a slight tone of superiority, “Why, it’s a Faberge Egg, of course. The
Anastasia Egg. Very beautiful, and extremely valuable.”

“How valuable?” he and
Pierre asked simultaneously.

“
Very
,” she
pronounced with a nod of her steel-gray head.

Jean-Marc met Pierre’s
gaze, then snapped it back to the article, skimming for an exact figure. “
Sacrebleu
—
It says here it’s insured for twelve million.”

“An egg?” Pierre said in
pure disbelief.

The secretary just rolled
her eyes. Jean-Marc could swear he heard a muttered, “Barbarian,” under her
breath, but her lips stayed tactfully immobile.

“May I take this?” he
asked, dropping everything but the supplement back on her desk. She nodded. He
jerked his head to Pierre and strode back out into the hall. When they were
alone, he stopped and scanned the rest of the article. “Says here the egg will
be on display for two weeks at the
Casino Palais d’Or
in Cannes.”

Pierre frowned. “
Palais
d’Or
?”

Jean-Marc glanced up.
“What?”

“That’s the casino where
Ricardo is working.”

This time the tingle in
his scalp was stronger. “Yeah?”

They both let that digest
for a minute. Could this really be it?

“But twelve million,” Pierre
said finally, shaking his head. “
Non
. I don’t believe it. That’s too far
out of her range.”

Jean-Marc was inclined to
agree. “Still, it’s quite a coincidence. And you know how I feel about
coincidences.”

“Same as I do. But get
out.
Twelve million
?”

They stood there mired in
indecision, letting the unreality and unlikelihood of the proposition versus
the coincidence factor filter through their cop radars.

“
Non
,” Jean-Marc
said, reluctantly embracing the unlikelihood. “You’re right.” He gave the
article one final glance, letting the newspaper fall to his side in one hand.
The page fluttered and flipped over. And there, in full, living color, was a
different photo.

A photo of a painting. Of
flowers. Water lilies, painted by Monet.

Which looked so much like
Sofie’s mural in the Orphans’ bathroom, he almost choked. Her inspiration was
unmistakable.

Above the photo the
headline read, “Rare Monet on display at
Casino Palais d’Or
.”

“
Merde
,” he
whispered.

Once might be a
coincidence.

Twice was a pattern. And
evidence that his worst fears had been correct.

Ciara was planning
something. Big.

Bigger than Jean-Marc
would ever have imagined.

♥♥♥

Jean-Marc felt almost
oppressively calm.

He’d expected to be
furious. To erupt in a black rage, wanting to beat someone bloody, to storm his
way to Ciara, sirens blaring, and demand an explanation.

But when the grim reality
finally hit him, he desired none of those things. What he really wanted was to
curl up in a tight ball and weep. For her. For him. For what might have been.

He turned to Pierre. “Are
you seeing CoCo tonight?”

His partner hesitated,
eyes darting briefly to the supplement. “I’m not sure.”

“When you do,” Jean-Marc
said, “do not tell her what we’ve found out. Not even a hint. Just make your
weekend plans as though you have no idea about any of this.”

“Okaaay. But—”

“
Not a word
,”
Jean-Marc growled, then spun toward the elevator. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Right
now I have something to do.”

With that, he went
swiftly down and found the Saab. Tires squealing, he flew out of the parking
lot and turned the car toward the rue Daguerre.

Halfway there, he changed
his mind. Pulling over, he stared straight ahead, frowning as a new thought
occurred to him.

Try as he might, it was
not a thought he could ignore.

All right. Change of
direction.

Fifteen minutes later, he
pulled into the driveway of a squat, oil-soaked garage squashed between two old
tenements in a part of town whose better days were probably several centuries
ago. The garage, however, hummed with activity. Jean-Marc steered his car
straight into an open bay, got out and strolled forward to lean casually
against the Saab’s front fender.

A man in greasy blue
coveralls came forward, a nervous smile on his face. “Hey, Jean-Marc. What’s
up?”

“Hello, Hugo,” he said
quietly. “I think it’s about time we had a little chat. Don’t you?”

Ten pm Friday. It was
time.

Ciara made a last-minute
adjustment to her henna-red pageboy wig as Davie pulled the Jaguar up under the
porte cochere of the
Casino Palais d’Or
.

“Stop fiddling,” he
admonished her, tipping his chauffer’s cap to the valet who was checking in
cars. “You look terrific.”

“Sorry. I’m a little
nervous,” she confessed.

He grinned into the
rearview mirror. “You? Nervous? The infamous
le Revenant
?”

“Oh, shut up.” She
grinned back, despite the adrenaline pounding through her veins like a herd of
elephants on speed.

“You can do this, Ciara,”
he said, his tone gentling. “
We
can do this.”

“I know,” she said as he
stopped the car in front of the impressive main entrance. “But there are so
many things that could go wrong.”

“None of which will
happen,” he assured her.

She hoped to hell he was
right.

With a final adjustment
to the plunging neckline of her backless Dior gown, she emerged from the Jag
and swept toward the monumental entrance, smiling brilliantly for the gaggle of
paparazzi who crowded in, furiously snapping photos of all new arrivals. The
Palais
d’Or
was one of the hottest casinos in a city overflowing with celebrities.
And she was a
princesse
.

As Jean-Marc had called
tonight’s disguise.

Had he known the
princess he made love to on the train was really her?

A poignant stab of longing
lanced through her, but she pushed it away. She couldn’t afford to think about
Jean-Marc now. There would be plenty of time for that later. A whole lifetime.

Even in a room full of
movie stars, heads turned to watch her regal, leisurely progress through the
casino. She knew she looked good. She’d taken great care to look fabulously
glamorous, matching hair and makeup to the magnificent sapphire blue
floor-length Dior gown Valois had bought her for the occasion. She wore only
one piece of jewelry, a narrow antique choker of emerald-cut diamonds, borrowed
from his shop. He had insisted on both, saying she must look her best to
impress Villalobo tonight at the exchange at midnight.

Her thumping pulse
slowed, now that the lay-down had finally begun. Threading her way through the
elegant tables and beautiful people, she stopped here and there to watch the
action—and to get a feel for the room tonight. Eventually she spotted Hugo,
looking youthfully attractive in his rented tux and poshed up hair, standing
casually next to a roulette table with a low betting limit. He was her lookout
tonight, and would always be near, even if unseen.

Steeling her nerves, she
sat down in an open seat at the roulette table.

Davie and Ricardo had
taught her the basics of the game, but she still felt like a fraud buying her
chips from the croupier like she had a clue what she was doing. In her purse
she carried a thousand euros—ashtray change to most of these people, but all
the money she and the Orphans could scrape together. She had to make it last
all night.

She lost on the first
spin of the wheel. And the second. And the third. After fifteen minutes she’d
only won once.

This was going well, she
thought dryly, tempted to change the position of her next chip though Davie had
specifically told her to pick one bet and stay with it. Even with the lowest
ante possible, at this rate she’d be broke in less than an hour.

“Try betting the
orphans,” a gravelly male voice murmured from behind. “You might have better
luck.”

Her stomach zinged and
her throat tightened.
Jean-Marc
.

His tuxedo-clad arm
snaked around her, a stack of euro notes in his hand. He placed them on the
table in front of her. “Black on full orphans
pour la princesse
,” he
told the croupier.
“
Pour moi
, the same on orphans split,
s’il
vous plait
.”

She dimly recalled Davie
telling her about a complicated bet called an orphan, but as of thirty seconds
ago her mind had gone totally blank.

He was here
!

Jean-Marc had found her.

The croupier finished
taking bets and spun the wheel before Ciara collected her wits enough to figure
out Jean-Marc had just placed an eight hundred euro bet for each of them.

“
Dix-sept noir
,”
the croupier called when the ball dropped into its final slot. “Seventeen
black.”

“We win,
princesse
,”
Jean-Marc murmured in her ear.

The croupier efficiently
raked the table and distributed the winnings. She almost fell over when she saw
the color of chips he set in front of her. It was well over three thousand
euros worth!
Four thousand dollars
.

She marshaled her worldly
sang froid and inclined her head, turning slightly, “
Merci, monsieur le
commissaire
. You are too generous.”

“My pleasure.” Still
behind her, he stepped closer. The luxurious fabric of his tuxedo whispered
against her bare back, radiating heat from his body. “Will you join me at the
blackjack table,
Princesse
?”

Needing distance badly,
she rose from her seat. By the time she’d gathered her purse and tipped the
croupier, Jean-Marc had cashed them out. He pressed a stack of chips into her
palm as they melted through the throng of people around the table.

“I couldn’t possibly
accept these,” she said, trying to give them back. “It was your money and your
bet that won.”

“I got my stakes back and
more. Keep it. Let’s play blackjack.”

She exhaled, recognizing
his mulish expression, despite the urbane smile. “All right. But you play. I’ll
watch.”

“You play. I’ll kibitz.”

They’d come to a halt
between tables in a large, open area which contained several guarded displays,
including the Monet and Faberge Egg. Her nerves shimmered.
Had he guessed?
Was he angry
? It was always so difficult to tell...until it was too late.

Struggling to resist the
urge to check the displays, she turned to face Jean-Marc. He looked more
handsome than she’d ever seen him. The cut of his stark black tuxedo was
straight from this year’s runways, classic in a rebellious sort of way—like its
wearer—nicely emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders. His strong,
clean-shaven jaw appeared more angled, his cheeks leaner than usual, his
expression more confident...and utterly relentless.