Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller (21 page)

The address she gave the shop turned out to be a fake, but they did have her cell phone number. I bribed them to call her and set up a free touch-up and detailing appointment. She came in and I followed her home.

I was staking out her place when she left at midnight and drove to Hollywood Place and parked.

I should have stopped her then. Instead I followed her to a high-rise condo building. She was up the rope before I realized what was happening. Another jewel heist. Why would she do that?

I’d waited an interminable sixty-five minutes for her to come back out. It gave me time to think about my motivations. She was certainly stealing jewels, based on her history, but I wasn’t trying to recover them or turn her in. Did I just want to be with her? I wasn’t in love with her, was I? I hardly knew her.

She put her arms up, and I kept the gun pointed down. “Viviana, you have to put it back.”

At the sound of her name, she spun around. “Dr. Beckman!
Is
you. I thought I recognized voice.” She lowered her hands and smiled. She was breathing heavily and shaking, too. She kneeled down, coiled up the rope and put it in her backpack. <
El nu va trage.
>

What did that mean?
Trage
meant shoot. He
something something
shoot. He
will not
shoot? “Viviana, you will ruin everything. Trust me, you cannot get away with this. They can’t prosecute you for your other crimes, but for this you’ll go to jail. I can’t protect you. I can’t help you if you don’t put it back. Whatever you stole.” Yeah, right. Like she would go back up into the building to return the goods.

She stood, staring at me. <
El este corect.
> He is right. “Okay, we go to other side of the building. Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you.” I started around the front.

“No! This way.” She grabbed my jacket and led me around the back of the building. She looked up to the top of the high-rise, then removed one strap from her backpack, brought it around, and unzipped a side pocket. She pulled out watches, necklaces, and bracelets and tossed them out onto the ground. I picked up a women’s Rolex watch, the dial encircled with diamonds. The real thing. I dropped it back on the grass.

Her strategy wouldn’t help much if someone came by and made off with the jewels. At least she wouldn’t have the stolen property on her. What a mess!

She felt around in the pocket, then took my arm. “Time to get hell out of Dodge, don’t you think, Dr. Beckman?”

I wanted to run, but she held me back.

“We are out for stroll. Lovers, maybe. No hurry.” She was still trembling.

I didn’t want to leave either car at the scene, but I wasn’t about to give her a chance to drive away again. I knew where she lived, but still. We took her car, and I drove. Why did I feel she was just letting me
think
I was in control?

Viviana pulled a throwaway cell phone out of a bag. She consulted a pad from the glove compartment and dialed a number. After a delay, she held a device between her mouth and the phone and said, slowly and distinctly, “The bishop threw the jewelry off your balcony.”

The device modified the sound of her voice. She sounded like a cross between a robot and Darth Vader. She lowered the window and tossed the phone out.

She turned to me. “How did you find me?”

“The bishop?”

She smiled. “Extra confusion. She will find jewelry. If am lucky, she won’t report it.”

“Viviana, why did you do it? You don’t need the money. You are the most famous person in the world. You could write a book and retire.”

“The car.” She slapped the dashboard. “You saw the car and traced it. I should have sold it or abandoned it. What is wrong with me?” She smiled. “But is nice car. You like?”

I ignored her and kept driving. A leathery, old-car smell filled the Porsche’s interior.

After two minutes, she broke the silence. “I am sick.”

I looked for a place to pull over. “You’re going to throw up?” Maybe she wasn’t as cool as she seemed.

She laughed, but only briefly, then looked down at her hands. “I have sickness. Am kleptomaniac—good word, yes? I can’t help it, I must steal. I only feel alive when I am on job, and even then, only when things go wrong. I know, is crazy. I try to resist. I can’t.”

“You don’t feel bad for the people you steal from?”

She shrugged. <
No.>

We pulled into her driveway. She pressed a button on the visor, and the garage door opened.

Inside, I shut the engine off and we sat. The car ticked as it cooled.

She sighed. <
Acum chay?
>

Ce
, pronounced “chay,” meant “what,” and I was pretty sure
acum
mean “now.” “Does that mean, ‘now what?’”

She frowned and cocked her head. “Does what mean ‘now what?’” She looked at me sideways.

Oops
. She had me flustered now. I never make that mistake. “Your face. Your expression. It looked like you were thinking ‘Now what?’ Is that what it meant?”

She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

I jerked my head back. “What was that?”

She smiled. “Just a little kiss. Are you prune?”

Now I frowned. “What?”

“You know, prune. Are you prune? Someone who is scared of sex.”

“Prude. Prude, not prune.” I blushed. “I just don’t know you—I don’t know what to think. I don’t trust you. You tricked me at the hospital.”

“How tricked you?”

“You pretended you liked me, but you were just trying to get infor—”

“I do like you.” <
Foarte mult.
>

Foarte mult, foarte mult.
I rehearsed it so I could look it up. Maybe it meant “I like you” or maybe it meant, “what a moron.” This was key.

She got out of the car. “Let’s go in and have some wine. We can talk and maybe you can get to know me.”

Said the spider to the fly.

* * *

“You investigate. You know, snoop around. I change out of burglar clothes, yes?” Viviana disappeared into a back hall. She was limping.

I paced around her living room. The house seemed to be furnished entirely from Ikea. Possibly from one massive shopping trip. A leather couch sat on a brown-and-tan checked rug. A simple coffee table held her laptop and an issue of
Climber’s World
magazine.

She called out from the back room. “Be like at home. Start fire. Open wine.”

Was she this calm, or was it all an act? I froze. She was escaping out the back window. I ran back into the hall, and she came out of the bedroom, bumping into me. She wore a cozy brown sweater and warm-looking slacks.

Her frown turned to a smile. “Ah, you are worrying I am running away again.” She patted me on the chest.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Can you blame me?”

She took my hand, led me into the living room, and pushed me onto the couch. She put some small logs into the woodstove and got the fire started. “I am going to get some wine and snacks.” She pointed to the open kitchen. “You can be watching me. I understand you don’t trust me. Yet.” Her thoughts were all Romanian gibberish to me. She dimmed the lights.

While she bustled around the kitchen, I tried to remember what she’d thought after saying “I like you.” What was it? It was important. Ah, yes, “foarte mult.” Almost lost it. I guessed at the spelling—Ibanescu was right to force me to read as well as understand—and entered it into my tablet. Translation: “Very much.” She’d said, “I do like you,” and then she thought, “Very much.” Huh. You would never lie in your own head unless you thought someone could hear your internal monologue.

Wow. So, maybe she meant it after all. Maybe I could trust her. Was I fooling myself because of my unwarranted affection for her?

She came in with a bottle of merlot, two glasses, and a plate with chunks of thick bread. The plate also held a bowl of the darkest olive oil I’d ever seen. She looked at me. “Face is red, Eric. Is fire too hot?” She put her hand near the woodstove. The logs had barely started burning.

“I’m fine.” I folded my tablet and put it in my pocket. Get a grip, here, Beckman.

She went out to the kitchen and came back with a plastic bag of ice. Sinking down next to me on the couch, she put the ice on her inner thigh.

I pointed to it. “Did you—”

She put up a hand. “Don’t want to talk about it. And no jokes, please.”

I poured wine into the glasses, gave her one, and said,
“Acum ce?”
in my best Romanian accent. I had the memory of how it had sounded in her head, so maybe the accent was pretty good.

She froze for a second, then turned so suddenly that she spilled wine on her slacks. “Oh, you are full of the surprises. How did you do that?”

I went into the kitchen and got a towel with some water and salt on it. I came back and handed it to her.

She pointed to the stain. “You can do it. Was your fault. Or maybe you are too prune.”

“Prude. Prudish.” I folded my fingers under the fabric and rubbed the stain. Nothing sexual, but her leg did feel nice. Firm and soft at the same time.

“Do you know what means,
‘Acum ce’
?”

“It means ‘Now what?’ … uh … right? Either that or ‘Your grandmother is sexy.’”

She ignored my joke. “And how did you learn these Romanian words?”

I shrugged. “Just something I picked up. But have more important things to talk about, yes?” Sheesh, now I was talking like her. “But
we
have … things—”

“Yes. We have much to talk about.” She picked up a chunk of bread. “Eric, I am glad you found me.”

She had more Romanian thoughts. I didn’t catch any of them. If only I could get her to think in English more often. “You didn’t seem glad last Saturday, at the CrossFit gym.”

She sipped her wine and stared into the fire. “You saw me hesitate, yes?”

I relaxed back into the couch. “Yes. You looked like you were deciding, stay or go.” Stop showing off. Do you want her to figure you out?

She turned to me. “Yes, exactly. You guessed my thoughts. Is very perspective of you.” She took a deep breath.

I heard her organizing her thoughts. I was in no hurry to get the answers. It was too nice to sit here with her. The lights were dim; the fire was warm. I didn’t want this to end. Sure, she smelled a little sweaty from whatever she’d done up in that building, but I was okay with that. Was I thinking with my … heart?

She put her hand on my thigh. “I didn’t want to be found by anyone. I don’t want to be celebrity. I like my freedom. But now you have found me, Eric, and I am thinking you will not turn me in.” She leaned in to me, just a little. “Being on run is very lonely.”

I would have been sure she was manipulating me, her words sounded so phony. But I had to trust in those two words she had thought.
Foarte mult
. She wouldn’t have thought that if she weren’t genuine. Right? I decided, then and there, to trust her.

“Viviana, you are the most sought-after person on the planet. I’m amazed you’ve stayed hidden so long. Did you have your nose changed? An operation?”

She nodded, put her finger on it, and wiggled it. “I got new nose on Halloween. You like? Very much or no?”

“I liked your old nose.” I looked between the couch cushions. “Do you still have that one around somewhere?”

She put on an exaggerated pout. “Silly. My hair I can grow again. You liked that, I know.”

“And you are renting this house?”

She chuckled. “Am spending very much on rent. Landlord thinks am growing the marijuana here. Everything is under counter.”

“Under the table.”

“Yes, under table. He didn’t even ask my name. I had to clean it up.” She leaned forward, soaked some bread with olive oil, and put it in my mouth. Her finger lingered on my lip. I took a sip of wine. We’d gone through half the bottle already.

“Well, Viviana, I’m not sure what we will do.” I glanced at her when I said “we.” She seemed to accept it. “But please, first, tell me what happened, where you came from. Start at the beginning.”

“Is much to tell. Are sure you want to hear it?”

“Foarte mult.”
Time to check my understanding.

“Oh! Very much.” She looked sideways at me. “How do you do that? You are holding on me, I think.”

“What?”

“Not telling me something. Can I trust you, Eric?”

“Ah. Holding out on you. Yes, I have a few secrets, but you can trust me, Viviana.” I enjoyed saying her name, like a teenager in love. Was I going to start writing it down with hearts around it?

“Let’s see. I was born in Romania, not Moldova. In 1950. My real name is Viviana Petki.” She turned to me. “Are you angry I lied to you?”

“No. I understand.” She was trusting me with the truth now. That was big.