34 - The Queen's Jewels (26 page)

“Richard and Marcia were posing as honeymooners. Why would they do that? Remember the DVD I mentioned, the one about smuggling drugs? If I were smuggling a diamond aboard this ship, who would be the perfect person to carry it, someone considered unlikely to become involved in such a nefarious undertaking? A honeymooning couple! How perfect.

“Of course, I have to come up with a reason for this person to have agreed to smuggle something in the first place. Richard held the clue. What if he’s the disgruntled son of the executive director of an insurance company, the insurance company that held the policy for a famous diamond? What better way to get even with a parent you hate than by taking something that will hurt him both personally and professionally? And the bonus is getting paid handsomely at the same time by the jewel thieves? That works for me.”

I turned to Marcia, whose crying had subsided. “How much were you being paid to pretend to be married to Richard?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t being paid,” she said. “I love Richard. We really are engaged to be married; we’re just not married yet.”

“You jerk!” Richard Kensington shouted. “You stupid—I was never going to marry you.” A yank on both his arms by the security officers ended his tirade.

Marcia flew up the aisle after him. “You promised! Don’t call me a jerk. I’ll tell them everything I know about you.” She trailed after Richard and the officers as they escorted him out, screaming at her former fiancé.

I said softly to the audience, “Characters in my novels often do things for love that all the money in the world wouldn’t entice them to do.”

An audience member spoke up: “So he and his girlfriend stole the diamond from the character in your novel and killed him.” Another asked, “Is she the beautiful woman you referred to earlier?”

“Bear with me a little longer. We’re not finished yet,” I replied. “No, in my novel, this young man and his love-struck girlfriend only serve to smuggle the Heart of India into the U.S., hiding the diamond in plain sight in a pair of binoculars, as common a tourist accessory as you can find. They aren’t murderers; they were the mules. It’s very possible he had
her
carry the diamond so that if they were intercepted by customs agents, she’d take the rap, and he could claim to know nothing about the gem.”

A few people booed Kensington, evidently not for being involved in the scheme but for his lack of concern for Marcia.

“So,” someone said, “who killed the passenger and the guy in London who owned the diamond?”

I looked at Kiki Largent and Jennifer Kahn. “Would you like to help me answer that question?” I asked them.

Without warning, Kiki scrambled over Stanton and ran up the aisle in the direction of Haggerty and Peretz, who braced to intercept her. But she stopped short of them, grabbed a young blond woman from her aisle seat by the hair, and pulled her into the aisle. Kiki then pulled a knife from beneath her black sweater and held it to the woman’s throat.

“Get out of my way,” she snarled at Haggerty and Peretz.

“Don’t be foolish, Kiki,” I said into the microphone. “We’re at sea. There’s no place you can go.”

“Move!” Kiki told Haggerty and Peretz.

“Let her go,” Haggerty said.

Kiki’s answer was to pull the terrified young woman closer and to hold the knife up to her face. “You move or she dies,” Kiki said.

Haggerty and Peretz held up their hands as a gesture that they were complying and stepped aside. Members of the ship’s security staff did the same as Kiki maneuvered her hostage, whose face reflected her abject fear, toward the closest exit. I came down from the podium and approached Betty. “You don’t understand,” she said to me.

I ignored her, content that those with her wouldn’t allow her to leave, and went up the opposite aisle to the back. Rupesh looked at me but said nothing. Kiki appeared to be unsure of what to do next. She’d reached the exit doors but hesitated.

“Don’t compound what you’ve done by hurting an innocent bystander,” I said.

Kiki’s square face was a mask of anger and resolve, lips a thin, tight line, eyes wide as though reacting to a harsh light, the knife’s steel blade reflecting the planetarium’s lights. The hundreds of men and women in the audience looked on in shock as the tableau played itself out.

“We can take her,” I heard a security officer say to a colleague.

“Please don’t,” I said. “It’s not worth the risk; we don’t want anyone hurt.”

Kiki made her next move. She herded the woman out the door and into the reception area. We followed—Haggerty, Peretz, Rupesh, an assortment of uniformed officers, and me. Kiki headed for the elevators off Stairway A, which wasn’t far. Passengers who stood waiting for an elevator gasped as they saw Kiki and her hostage appear, and ran from the area.

The elevator arrived. Other passengers stepped from it, only to be confronted by a woman dressed in black holding a knife to the throat of a young blonde. They got out of the way as Kiki forced the woman into the elevator and pressed a button. The doors slid closed. We watched as the numbers above the doors indicated her ascent—four, five, six, and seven, where it stopped. Security officers ran up the stairs, followed by Rupesh. Haggerty and I frantically pushed the up button. Seconds later the empty second elevator arrived and we got in it. I pushed seven; the trip to Deck Seven seemed to take an eternity.

We reached it and stepped out. Kiki now held the woman against one of the heavy doors leading to the outside promenade. You didn’t have to be outdoors to know that we were in the midst of a raging storm. Harry’s prediction of a gale was accurate. Violent streaks of lightning reaching from the sky to the ocean cast bizarre slashes of light. The wind picked up the rain and flung it against windows and doors and sent anything loose on the deck flapping, as though the
Queen Mary 2
were being whipped by an angry god.

Our collective impotence was palpable. All we could do was stand and watch. Kiki had the upper hand. I didn’t have a doubt that she would go through with her threat to kill the blond woman if anyone tried to take the knife from her and wrestle her to the ground. But where could she go?

My mind raced. Would this saga that had resulted in two murders end with a third?

I pleaded with Kiki to let the woman go.

“Shut up!” she said. With that, she pushed the woman against the door with such force that it opened against the wind’s fury; windswept rain blew through the opening, spraying Kiki and her hostage.

They were gone, out the door and to the deck, where in fair weather thousands of happy passengers enjoyed the exhilarating experience of soaking in the vast Atlantic Ocean’s vistas.

Everyone looked at one another, confused as to what to do.

Rupesh bolted from my side, raced to the door, laid his weight against it, and tumbled out onto Deck Seven, where Kiki stood at the railing holding the blonde from behind, one arm around her neck, the other pressing the knife against her temple. She saw Rupesh in her peripheral vision and turned, the woman between her and him. He extended his hand to Kiki. Although we couldn’t hear what he said, it was obvious that he was attempting to coax her to give up.

“Somebody help him,” a security officer said.

Before anyone could react to his order, Kiki pointed the knife at Rupesh and loosened her grip. The blond woman broke free and threw herself across the deck away from her captor. That left Kiki, who held the knife, and a weaponless Rupesh. We watched with trepidation as Rupesh stepped closer to her. The security officers went into action and burst through the door. But they were too late. Rupesh had grabbed Kiki’s wrist when she lunged at him with the knife; he twisted her arm and flipped her onto her back on the deck. The officers swarmed on top of her, pulled her to her feet, secured her arms behind her, and led her inside, followed by a dripping wet Rupesh, his arm supporting an equally wet, but very relieved and grateful, ex-hostage.

 

I
t seemed I’d just gotten to bed at three o’clock that morning when my wake-up call sounded at seven. I resisted the temptation to answer the phone, hang up, and climb back under the covers. Instead, I staggered through my morning ablutions and emerged from the shower partially refreshed and somewhat ready for a new day.

Kiki Largent had been secured in the ship’s brig for the duration of the crossing, which would end in New York early the following morning. That such a genteel giant as the
Queen Mary 2
would have a brig came as a surprise to some, but it makes sense. On any given day the ship contains more than two thousand passengers and a thousand-plus crew members, the population of a small city. Rare as a seagoing crime is, having a secure facility in which to hold lawbreakers is a pragmatic necessity.

Betty LeClair proclaimed her innocence and balked at being sequestered in her suite with two crew members guarding her door twenty-four hours a day. There was no legal mechanism under which to charge her while at sea, and she posed a dilemma to the ship’s senior officers. But Haggerty used his MI6 intelligence credentials to establish priority and called the shots when it came to handling the various suspects. He alerted law enforcement officials in New York and London that there were individuals aboard with possible (and plausible) connections to two murders, as well as to the theft of the Heart of India and other recent jewelry heists.

Richard Kensington and his former fiancée and reluctant accomplice, Marcia, were sequestered in their cabin with guards to enforce that decree. But Marcia refused to stay with him—I applaud her for that—and was given a separate cabin in which to spend the final day and night of the crossing.

Jennifer Kahn posed a different sort of problem. Although she and Kiki traveled together, there was scant evidence to link her to any of the crimes, including the murder of Walter Yang and the theft of his Heart of India diamond. Marcia had been kept in the dark as to who else was involved in the conspiracy. Richard kept mum as to who recruited him to be the carrier of the diamond. Jennifer vehemently denied any knowledge of the jewel theft and expressed dismay that her “dear Kiki” could have murdered anyone. Apparently she was secure in the knowledge that her assistant would continue to protect her, even at the risk of her own life and liberty.

Haggerty and Stanton wanted to search her cabin, but without a proper warrant, there was concern that any contraband seized from Jennifer might be inadmissible in a court of law. But Haggerty wasn’t to be put off. He, Stanton, two members of the ship’s security staff, and I went to her stateroom. Haggerty knocked.

“Who is it?”

“Ship security,” an officer replied. “Please open the door.”

The sound of someone scurrying about inside could be heard.

“What do you think she’s doing in there?” Stanton asked.

Haggerty’s response was to knock again, harder this time. As the minutes passed, I was convinced that someone would have to break down her door, something I was sure would not please the ship’s officers.

Haggerty pounded again, using a key ring on the door for emphasis.

There was the sound of the door being unlocked, and Jennifer opened it, a wide smile on her finely etched, perfectly made-up face. “What’s this all about?” she asked.

“We’d like to search your cabin,” Stanton said.

“Why didn’t you just say so?” she said, stepping aside to allow us to enter. “There’s no need to make such a racket.”

We entered the room. The two security officers didn’t participate in the search. They stood to one side as Haggerty and Stanton started going through things, opening drawers, and pulling things from the bathroom medicine cabinet.

“Open the safe,” Haggerty ordered.

Jennifer laughed. “It
is
open,” she said. “The blind leading the blind.”

Haggerty ignored her sarcasm and looked into the open safe, which was empty.

Jennifer sat on the bed and watched placidly as the two men continued their hunt for something incriminating. I went to the balcony more to stay out of their way than anything. I sat in one of the chairs and allowed the breeze to wash over me. It felt good. I heard Haggerty say, “All right, that’s enough. There’s nothing here.”

Jennifer said in a mocking tone, “Of course there’s nothing here. What did you expect to find, diamonds or something?”

I got up and was about to rejoin them inside when something on the floor of the balcony caught my eye. It was roughly the size of a peanut, but it sparkled. I picked it up and held it in my hand. No question about it. It was a diamond. I took it inside and showed it to Stanton.

“What’s this?” he asked Jennifer.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“It’s a diamond,” Stanton said.

“Oh, let me see,” she said, getting up and going to him. “It does look like a diamond,” she said. “Imagine that, a diamond on my balcony. I knew this was a first-class ship, but I never expected them to go to this length to impress passengers.”

Stanton, Haggerty, and I looked at one another before Stanton led us to the balcony. He looked down into the waters of the Atlantic and shook his head. “I never expected this,” he muttered. He turned to Jennifer, who stood in the doorway. “You tossed them overboard,” he said.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re referring to,” she replied calmly and with a hint of victory in her voice.

“You threw millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds into the ocean,” he said, his tone now angry.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “What woman do you know who would do a dumb thing like that? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Don’t you know that? Or aren’t you familiar with popular songs?”

I handed the small gem I’d retrieved from the balcony floor to Stanton. “Sorry,” I said. “This is all that’s left.”