Hidden Gems (12 page)

“Was there an ID on him?”

“His name was Freddy Bascomb.” Marissa lifted her shoulders. “Which means nothing to me. The cops are looking into his background, to see if they can find any connection to explain what he wanted. Apparently this guy was just a common punk. I got the feeling that the cops will mark him as just another street thug and give the case low priority.”

“But he was murdered,” Trish protested.

Cassandra leaned her chin on her hand. “And by whom?”

“The other guy,” Sylvie guessed. “The one you saw at the bottom of the fire escape.”

“You have a criminal mind,” Marissa said. “That’s exactly what the cops suggested. A falling-out among thieves. Which only makes sense if they took something so valuable from me that it was worth killing over, and they didn’t.”

“But you don’t know what they were after, so who’s to say?”

Trish chimed in. “Maybe your break-in was only one of a string, and then they argued after yours went bad.”

“Could be.”

“I’ll run the case by Sam,” Cass volunteered. “See what he thinks.”

“What does Jamie say?” Trish asked.

Marissa’s lips puckered. “Oh, Jamie. He’s more concerned with keeping me safe, but he did have a cockeyed theory about Shandi being involved.”

Cass and Sylvie exchanged looks.

“Who’s Shandi?” Trish had never met her.

“Shandi Lee. An old roommate of mine. She also dated Jamie for a very short time, years ago,” Marissa said. “Anyway, Shandi’s no longer a problem. I haven’t seen her since—” She cut off abruptly.

Cass raised her brows. “The night of the break-in.”

“Coincidence,” Marissa insisted. “Shandi disappears when she finds a new guy or a new interest.”

“Then why does Jamie suspect her?”

“We were only throwing out theories. I suppose it’s because she’s usually broke, but that’s nothing new.” Marissa felt uncomfortable. There was something going on concerning Shandi, something that Jamie knew and she didn’t. Not a dynamic she was used to. “Forget I brought it up. I don’t want Shandi hearing about this.”

“Maybe you’re on the hit list of the jewel thief that Sam’s after,” Cass said to lighten up the mood. “Your law firm has sent you to a few fancy parties. It’s possible.”

“Uh-huh. Little Mari, Queen of the Calle Oche Low-riders, running around with a stash of jewels? Any thief worth his salt would know that my jewelry is all costume.”

“You have those diamond solitaire earrings.”

Marissa had bought them for herself as a special indulgence after her biggest case to date. She’d played a vital part in negotiating a good settlement for one of the firm’s top clients. Afterward, Thomas Howard, the most senior of the senior partners, had begun greeting her by name and including her among the select group of favored associates. He’d even taken a fatherly interest in her, asking about her background and her ambitions for the future. Some said he was grooming her.

“And a pearl necklace,” continued Cass. A gift from a devoted swain who’d clung to Marissa like an oyster.

“I still have them. The burglar didn’t take a thing even after he busted through my bedroom door. But quarter-carat diamonds and one string of pearls hardly constitute a trove worthy of raiding.”

“Cass, is this Sam of yours on the Zoey Zander case?” Trish asked. “I read about the heist in the paper.”

“I was discussing that with my sister only last weekend,” Cass said excitedly. “I went up to Fairfield, and we were sorting through the store of antiques in the basement of her shop. Morgan came across an old French text. She was able to translate a few words here and there—enough to realize that the book was telling the story of the same amulet that was among the items missing from the auction house.”

“It’s called the White Star.” Trish dabbed her lips with a napkin. “I read about the amulet’s history when I minored in art history at Northwestern.”

“What’s the legend?” Marissa asked.

“Hard to say.” Cass tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Morgan’s French was too limited. Trish?”

“I don’t recall the details, except that the tale was supposed to be a thousand years old and it involved a legacy of true love.” Trish shrugged. “My brother, Alex, is the one to ask. He does PR for the Museum of Antiquities. He would know who could help you.”

Sylvie had finished her lunch and was growing impatient with talk of ancient legends and dusty tomes. “What does it look like?”

“There was a grainy photo of it in the Sunday Times,” Cass said. “It’s an ivory star.”

Sylvie sniffed. “I’d rather have a platinum Rolex.”

Marissa shooed her. “Your soul has no romance!”

“Not true. It’s tucked into my lingerie drawer. I only take it out for special occasions.”

“Sounds about right,” Cass said drolly, and they were laughing again.

A longing, almost a craving, lingered within Marissa. Considering her recent turn in affection for Jamie, a prophecy of true love that was meant to be would certainly simplify her love life.

ALLARD WATCHED from a corner table as the four women got ready to leave the bistro. They didn’t give him a glance. He had put on a suit and blended in with the crowd, remaining watchful and still except for the cell phone he’d lifted to his ear in imitation of the businessmen all around.

He’d been seated close enough to hear everything. He’d picked up a few interesting tips, verifying what he’d already deduced—though the blond “roommate” was no longer in the picture, the boyfriend on the fifth floor definitely was.

When they’d begun talking about the amulet, Allard’s neutral expression had almost cracked. He was sweating from every pore before their words had sunk in and he’d realized that the women knew very little. For once, Lady Luck was on his side, Marissa still had no idea what she possessed.

While that confirmation had pleased him, he could not let down his guard. Not yet.

“But soon,” he said into the dead telephone while he watched Marissa through the window. The women kissed cheeks, making their goodbyes. “Very soon.”

Despite the pressure being applied by his employer, he’d taken his time planning the next recovery attempt. The days of surveillance and discreet inquiries were about to pay off.

Allard tossed aside the cell phone. He signaled the waiter for the check. Marissa was hailing a cab, but there was no need to follow her back to work. He had a more lucrative destination in mind.

The Village. Marissa’s brownstone.

But not her apartment, with its new locks and bolts. Oh, no.

Twenty minutes later, he was at the brownstone, on time for his appointment to view an apartment. The super buzzed him in. When Allard heard the man clumping upstairs from the basement, keys jingling, he stepped behind the door.

The super walked by, looking in vain for the apartment hunter who’d called and offered a large cash payment as key money. Allard disappeared into the gloom of a sublevel maintenance room, where the super spent most of his day behind a battered steel desk, eating doughnuts and gambling online.

The passkeys for all the apartments were hung on a labeled pegboard. Allard liberated the keys to 3C and made a quick wax impression. As the super’s footsteps descended from above, he returned the keys, pocketed the small tin of wax and stepped deeper into the labyrinthine basement.

The darkness enfolded him.

He closed his eyes, listening for the super’s grumbling complaints about being stood up. The desk chair squeaked. A TV clicked on, tuned to a horse race.

Allard waited for the man to become absorbed. Then he silently slipped past, smug with how easy it was to acquire a copy of Marissa Suarez’s brand new keys.

She’d believed that once she was that woman, her life would be complete.

And it was. If she didn’t count her persistently unwise love life. But then, she’d never been the kind of woman who thought having a man was what would make her fulfilled, so it didn’t count. Much.

Until recently, when she’d realized that it wasn’t about finding “a man.”

It was falling in love with the man.

I’m not in love, she thought. What’s going on is some strange symbiosis of danger, adrenaline, lust and familiarity. I might be off my head, but I’m not in love.

Except there was the way she and Jamie had clicked.

That tiny little click that kept her up at night so she couldn’t even sleep in her own bed. Though she’d told herself not to get too cozy, she’d ended up spending most of the weekend with Jamie, at his place. He thought that was because she was scared. Which she was, but not of burglars.

Being scared wasn’t easy for her to admit, not since she was thirteen and her brothers had dared her to climb to the top of a ghostly abandoned construction site in their neighborhood. Saying “I can’t” was worse to her than anything else.

Nearing the elevators, Marissa slowed. She switched her brief-bag to the other hand and smoothed her charcoal pin-striped skirt, conservative except for the slit in the back. That morning, she’d needed the extra boost of confidence she got from being an attractive woman who could make men beg at the sight of the back of her knee.

Her nape was prickling.

She whirled around, half expecting to see Paul’s big toothpaste grin, the one he thought was so charming, but there was no one except suits gathering to ride the elevator. A security guard circled the lobby, stopping to chat to the woman who ran the kiosk where Marissa often picked up a café con leche on her way in.

She rubbed beneath her collar. Was the burglary still making her jumpy? She should be over that by now. She’d once kneed a man in the balls when he tried to feel her up on the subway, and had then reported to the courthouse to second chair a defendant’s trial without a hair turned.

A movement caught her eye. A dark-haired man was slipping out the revolving door. No one she recognized, despite the tingling at her neck. She boarded the elevator.

On the twenty-fourth floor, she was greeted by the perky receptionist who sat behind a monolithic desk of burled walnut and ebony wood. Marissa moved quickly to her office, feeling as if she were running a gauntlet. She’d have to face Paul soon. After her coffee would be preferable.

She sent no-nonsense smiles and quick nods at those who greeted her. As usual, the mood at the law firm was subdued and serious. The code of behavior and dress was conservative. Marissa had seen Bill Schnitzer frowning at her skirts beneath his bristly walrus mustache.

As an up-and-comer, Marissa’s office was a nice one. She had a window, a recent reward that had seemed momentous at the time. Her work life was more successful than her private life, but the thing about such achievements was that as soon as she’d accomplished one, she was on to the next. There was never an end. She never felt as satisfied or relaxed as she did hanging out with Jamie.

Her assistant, Ophelia Jackson, was waiting at her desk with a stack of messages, the open appointment book and a Tootsie Roll pop sticking out of the corner of her mouth. She was trying to quit smoking.

“Hey, O, didn’t your dentist tell you sugar’s bad for the teeth?” Marissa thought of the rotting breath of the burglar and suppressed a shiver.

“I should chew vitamins to stem my cravings? Not going to happen, honey.” Ophelia was a forty-ish black woman of rounded proportions and a sassy attitude. She and Marissa shared an interest in fashion and a dedication to rising through the ranks.

Ophelia looked Marissa over. “Nice shoes, but didn’t I tell you to wear a miniskirt so Paul will recognize what he lost when he decided to play beach-blanket bingo on ya?”

Marissa flashed the slit.

Ophelia’s eyes widened. “Ooh. Subtle. I like it.”

Marissa swung past the desk to her office door, snatching up the messages as she reached for the knob. “I’m going to play this off as discreetly as possible. For now, don’t put through any calls from—”

She stopped in the doorway. “Paul.”

He lounged in her chair with his feet up on her desk, smiling as if nothing had happened between them. Ophelia appeared at Marissa’s shoulder, making apologies. “He’s been waiting for fifteen minutes. I can get rid of him if you’ll let me use the staple remover.”

“It’ll be fine.” I hope. Marissa dumped her bag on one of the empty visitor’s chairs. “Maybe next time.”

Ophelia crossed her arms, frowning at Paul. “I don’t like him thinking he can get past me any old time. Truth is, I never even tried.”

Marissa loomed over him, hands on hips. “And I appreciate that, O. If there’s a next time, you have my okay to use any means necessary to keep him out.”

Paul looked from one peeved woman to the other, then removed his feet from the desk, laughing a bit nervously. “Hey, ladies. Why so touchy? What happens in the Caymans, stays in the Caymans.” He stood and tried to put his arms around Marissa.

She evaded. “Don’t bother.”

“I was hoping you’d have cooled off by now. But you’re still the same hot tamale, aren’t you?” He actually thought the canard was a compliment.

“Yes, and I’m an angry black woman.” Ophelia rolled her eyes at Marissa. Her expression said, I never knew what you saw in this yahoo.

Neither did Marissa, although the evidence was in front of her eyes. There was no denying that Paul was a handsome devil, with ice-blue eyes and short dark hair combed over his forehead in a careful wave. He was smart, yet deceptively shallow. Before she’d heard his recycled banter a hundred times, he’d seemed mildly amusing.

He was all flash, no substance. Even as a girl, she’d been attracted to shiny objects, such as the glitzy jewelry at the carnival that turned her skin green. She hadn’t learned her lesson then, either, spending all her piggy-bank savings on games of chance before she’d learned that she couldn’t afford foolish risks.

Paul shot the cuffs of his pin-striped shirt. “We have to talk.”

“We talked. I have no more to say.”

“Then you can listen.”

Marissa shooed her hand at him. “Not now. I have work to catch up on.”

Pointedly, Ophelia held the door open.

Paul ignored her. “I’ll talk in front of her if I have to.”

Ophelia snorted at the “her.”

Marissa sat and paged through the messages. She was trying not to look at Paul and especially Ophelia, who was making faces behind his back. “O won’t mind.”

Paul dropped heavily into the chair opposite her desk. “You’re so cold.”

“Two seconds ago, I was a hot tamale.”

“Don’t be that way, Marissa.”

Her hackles rose. He’d used an intimate tone, a throatiness that she used to think was sexy. Maybe still did. She was mad that he continued to have an effect on her, involuntary and unwanted though it was.

“Let’s get this over with then.” She looked at Ophelia, who shrugged and stepped out of the office, closing the door with a quiet click.

Marissa inhaled. There had been no click with Paul. Only the easy glide of slipping in and out of a relationship that had never gone beyond the superficial during the two months they’d seen each other.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, startling her. “I shouldn’t have neglected you on the vacation. I thought you’d understand about work—that was why the firm bought our tickets.”

“You didn’t tell me the firm was paying our way!”

“Does it matter?”

“Obviously not to you.” Furious now, she picked up the current files Ophelia had left on the desk and tapped them against the hard surface, aligning the edges. There was something to be said for order. Neat, clean, efficient. Why couldn’t she have that clarity in every part of her life?

She thought of Sunday morning with Jamie, snuggled in his lumpy sofa bed with the linens atangle and the newspaper in pieces, spread all around. Tufts of dog hair had collected in the corners. The leash hung off the doorknob. His running shoes sat in the middle of the floor, with the sweatpants that trailed one inside-out leg because he’d stepped out of them when she’d opened the blanket to reveal her nudity.

Her temperature rose. Cleanliness was not next to sexiness.

She looked up and Paul’s smile was almost gloating. “I can see you want me back.”

“Get your eyes checked.”

“This is it, you know. Last chance.” His cleft chin rose high above his collar. “I don’t grovel for any woman.”

But he’d come close to it. Not really for her, she thought, unsure of what his true motive had been. “Fine, then,” she said. “Tell me this conversation is as over as the relationship.”

“What about—”

“I don’t care what happened on the beach. We were through even before that.”

“Then you don’t have pictures?”

Understanding washed over her. “Is that what all of this has been about? You thought I’d pass photos of you and your bimbo around the office, maybe cost you a partnership?”

Paul was expressionless. His knuckles were white.

“I’m not vindictive. I only want this to be over.” She waved at him. “Go on. Get out of here. There are no photos.”

“You said there were.”

She grinned wryly. “I was being vindictive.”

Paul seemed relieved as he got up. He shook the tension out of his shoulders, tugged his tie into place. “So we’re through. Too bad. You’re the best looking chick at this firm. We could have made a damn fine team. A power couple.”

Mr. and Mrs. Shark. She wasn’t even remotely interested.

“I’ll see you around.” Marissa calmly opened her first file, trying not to show her triumph. She was pleased that he’d given up so easily, if a bit suspicious. “Watch out for Ophelia on the way out. She bites.”

SKIP SISMAN TRUNDLED his heavy frame into the staff break room at the Village Observer. “Whatcha got for me?” he asked Jamie, having caught sight of him on the way back from lunch. Sisman looked lost without a pastry, like a teenager without an MP3 player. He did have a spot of mustard—or custard—on his tie.

Jamie put an oversize mug of water into the microwave. “You’re not still after me about doing your research, are you? I won’t. And I thought the story was dead anyway.” The paper had run only the obligatory “the case remains open” follow-up.

“Nothing much happening.” Sisman huffed. “That’s why we got to lean on the human interest angle.”

“We aren’t leaning on anything but the countertop. I’ve got other work to do.”

“So help me out with the basics. I can massage them into a story.”

“I don’t embellish facts.”

Sisman flexed his sausage fingers. “I said massage, man.”

The microwave beeped. Jamie rummaged through the cupboard for dried soup mix. “What’s it matter to you? Aunt Dena’s not coming through with the goods?”

“I told you, nothing’s happening. You’d think a few of the pieces would have been fenced or pawned by now, right? But I got zilch.”

Jamie shook the empty box. Raided again. He flattened the carton and made a rebound shot into the waste can. “What about the suspects?”

Sisman hitched up his belt. “Info’s dried up.”

“No impending arrests?”

“Aunt—the cops figure the thief’s lying low.”

Jamie took the hot water from the microwave and popped in a little tub of macaroni and cheese labeled in Magic Marker: Alice S. Do Not Eat!!!

As soon as the timer beeped, he grabbed the food and a plastic fork. “Good luck with your story.”

“I’m running down a list of possible prime suspects,” Sisman called after him, “but you gotta help. You’re the culture guy!”

“Sorry. I have my own stuff that I’ve been avoiding.” The Guys and Dolls passes remained unused.

Jamie worked his way back to his desk, forking up the cheesy noodles. Tasted like home, when he’d foraged the cupboards on school-day afternoons. Marissa would scowl. She despised processed food.

He picked up the phone to call her, then put it down. Not a good idea to interrupt Marissa when she was in work mode, even for the scoop on the return of Paul Beckwith. He didn’t know why he was concerned. There was no doubt in his mind that she was through with Paul.

So it had to be the same old doubt—that he would go the way of Paul and all the other exes.

The fork snapped between his fingers. He tossed it away, muttering, “For chrissake. Quit being such a girl.”