Sweet Revenge (18 page)

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So I told him you weren’t feeling terribly well and left some flowers for you. When he got involved with answering a tenant’s summons, I sneaked up the staircase.”

Celeste raised one pale blond brow, a handy little gesture she’d cultivated decades before. “I was feeling quite well until a few minutes ago.”

“I took the elevator from the fifth floor up to the roof,” Adrianne continued. “I had the rope in my bag. Then it was over and down and through.”

“Fifty stories, Adrianne.” It wasn’t easy to block out the fear, but Celeste used anger to smother it. “Dammit, how would I have explained that Princess Adrianne was just practicing when she fell off the roof of my building and smashed herself on Central Park West?”

“I didn’t fall off,” Adrianne pointed out. “And if you hadn’t been foraging in the kitchen, I would have cleaned out the safe, gone back up to the roof, and made my getaway.”

“Most inconsiderate of me.”

“Never mind, Celeste.” Adrianne patted her hand before she sat on the arm of the chair. “Though I did want to see your face when I dumped your ruby necklace into your lap. I’ll have to settle for this.” Adrianne drew a chamois pouch from her shoulder bag, opened it, and poured out diamonds.

“Oh my God.”

“Gorgeous, aren’t they?” Adrianne held the necklace up to the light. It was a single tier of brilliant cuts dipping down to a huge center stone that would nest cozily in a woman’s cleavage. The gems seemed to drip with cold, arrogant life. Experimentally, Adrianne turned it in her hands.

“About sixty carats all told, just a touch of pink in the color. Excellent workmanship, well balanced. It even managed to make the old crow’s neck interesting.”

Celeste told herself she should be used to it by now, but had the sudden urge for a drink. Rising, she walked over to a French rococo cabinet and chose a decanter of brandy. “Which old crow was that, Addy?”

“Dorothea Barnsworth.” Dipping into her bag again, Adrianne plucked out matching earrings. “Now, these are nice, don’t you think?”

Celeste merely glanced over at several thousand dollars worth of ice. “Dorothea, yes. I thought it looked familiar.” Celeste offered a snifter of brandy. “She lives in a fortress on Long Island.”

“Her security system has some major flaws.” Adrianne sipped. After her cold trip down from the roof, the brandy slipped into her system like a warm hug. “Would you like to see the bracelet?”

“I’ve already seen it, last week at the Autumn Ball.”

“That was a pleasant evening.” Adrianne jingled the earrings in her free hand. She judged them to be about ten
carats apiece. There was a jeweler’s loupe in her bag as well, which she had made use of in the Barnsworths’ study. Just to make certain she didn’t leave Long Island with a bagful of pretty paste. “Once they’re fenced, these little baubles should bring about two hundred thousand.”

“She has dogs,” Celeste said into her brandy. “Dobermans. Five of them.”

“Three,” Adrianne corrected Celeste before she checked her watch. “They should be awake by now. Celeste dear, I’m starving. Have you got another banana?”

“We have to talk.”

“You talk, I’ll eat,” Celeste managed only a frustrated oath when Adrianne started out of the library toward the kitchen. “Must have something to do with all the fresh air I’ve had tonight. Christ, it was cold out on Long Island. The wind cut right through me. Oh, by the way, don’t let me forget that I left my mink on your roof.”

Covering her face with her hands, Celeste sank into the ice cream parlor chair by the kitchen window while Adrianne rummaged through the refrigerator. “Addy, how long is this going to go on?”

“What’s that? Ah, pâté forestier. This should hit the spot.” She heard the drawn-out sigh behind her and fought back a smile. “I love you, Celeste.”

“And I you. Darling, I’m getting older. Think of my heart.”

Adrianne balanced a plate filled with pâté, green grapes, and thin butter crackers. “You’ve got the strongest and biggest heart of anyone I know.” She brushed a kiss on Celeste’s cheek and caught the comforting scent of her night cream. “Don’t worry about me, Celeste. I’m very good at what I do.”

“I know.” Who would have believed it? Celeste took a deep breath as she studied the woman who sat across from her. The Princess Adrianne of Jaquir—daughter of King Abdu ibn Faisal Rahman al-Jaquir and Phoebe Spring, movie star—at twenty-five years of age was a socialite, benefactress of numerous charities, the darling of gossip columnists … and a cat burglar.

Who would suspect? Celeste had comforted herself with that thought over the years, though there was something of the Gypsy in Adrianne’s looks. The stunning little girl had become a stunning woman. She had the golden skin and dark
eyes and hair of her father’s heritage, and her mother’s strong bone structure, refined to suit her small stature. She was a combination of the delicate and the exotic with her slim, almost waiflike build and strong features. The mouth was Phoebe’s and always gave Celeste a pang when she looked at it. The eyes, the eyes, no matter how Adrianne might have wished to have nothing of her father’s, were Abdu’s. Black, almond-shaped, and shrewd.

From her mother she’d inherited her heart, her warmth, and generous spirit. From her father she’d taken a thirst for power and a taste for revenge.

“Adrianne, there’s no need for you to continue this way.”

“There’s every need.” Adrianne popped a cracker into her mouth.

“Phoebe’s gone, dear. We can’t bring her back.”

For a moment, just a moment, Adrianne’s expression was young and achingly vulnerable. Then her eyes hardened. Deliberately, she spread pâté on another cracker. “I know that, Celeste. No one knows better.”

“My love.” Gently, Celeste laid a hand on hers. “She was my closest and dearest friend, as you are now. I know how you suffered with her, for her, and how hard you tried to help her. But there’s no need for you to take these risks now. There was no need before. I’ve always been there.”

“Yes.” Adrianne turned her hand over so that their palms met. “You have. And I know that if I’d allowed it, you would have taken care of everything—the bills, the doctors, the medicine. I’ll never forget what you tried to do for Mama, and for me. Without you she wouldn’t have held on so long.”

“She held on for you.”

“Yes, that’s true. And what I did, what I do, and what I plan to do, I do for her.”

“Addy …” The fear came, not from the words, but from the cold, matter-of-fact way they were spoken. “Addy, it’s been more than sixteen years since you left Jaquir. And it’s been five since Phoebe died.”

“And with each day the debt increases. Celeste, don’t look like that.” Adrianne grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “What would I be without this … this hobby of mine? I’d be exactly what the press makes me out to be, a rich, titled
social butterfly who dabbles in charitable causes and floats from party to party.”

Adrianne made a face at the description and went back to her paté. “According to the gossip columns, I’m just another bored jet-setter with too little to do and too much money to do it with. Let them think it here, and in Jaquir. Let
him
think it.” Celeste needed no more than the look in Adrianne’s eyes to know she spoke of her father. “It only makes it easier to relieve the genuinely frivolous of their baubles.”

“You don’t need the money now, Addy.”

“No.” She looked down into the brandy. “I’ve invested well and could live off what I have quite comfortably. But it’s not the money, Celeste. Maybe it never was.” She lifted her gaze again. It was there, the heat, the chilling almost frightening heat of the diamonds she stole. “I was eight when we landed in America. And I knew even then I’d go back one day and take what was hers. What was mine.”

“He might regret; by now he might regret.”

“Did he come to her funeral?” The question ripped out as she sprang up to pace. “Did he even acknowledge that she was gone? All those years, those terrible years, he didn’t so much as acknowledge that she was alive.” Struggling for control, she leaned against the counter. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and certain. “In a very real sense she wasn’t. He killed her, Celeste, all those years ago, when I was too young to stop him. Soon, very soon, he’s going to pay for it.”

Celeste felt the shiver run down her back. She remembered Adrianne at eight. The eyes had already been dark and haunted and much too old. “Do you think Phoebe would want this?”

“I think she’d appreciate the irony of it. I’m going to take The Sun and the Moon, Celeste. Just as I promised her, as I promised myself. And he’ll pay dearly to get them back.” Turning around, she smiled and lifted her snifter to salute her friend. “In the meantime I can’t afford to get rusty. Did you know Lady Fume is having a gala next month in London?”

“Addy—”

“Lord Fume, the old goat, paid over a quarter of a million for her emeralds. Lady Fume really shouldn’t wear
emeralds. They make her look pallid.” With a laugh Adrianne leaned over and kissed Celeste’s cheek. “Go get some more beauty sleep, darling. I’ll just let myself out.”

“The front door?”

“Naturally. Don’t forget we have brunch at the Palm Court on Sunday. My treat.”

Adrianne swept out, reminding herself to make a quick stop on the roof to get her mink.

It had been at her mother’s knee that Adrianne had learned the art of makeup. Phoebe had always been fascinated that a few dabs of paint, a few strokes with a grease pencil, could add beauty or years or take both away.

Being in the theater, Celeste had taught her even more. After a quarter of a century on the boards, Celeste still did her own makeup and knew every trick. Adrianne combined the arts of her two teachers as she transformed herself into Rose Sparrow, girlfriend of The Shadow.

The process took forty-five minutes, but Adrianne was pleased with the results. Contacts turned her eyes into a muddy gray, and a little plumping added sleepy sacks under them. She added a half inch to her nose and filled out her cheeks. Heavy Pan-Cake turned her golden complexion sallow. The red wig was handmade and expensive and teased high. Cheap glass balls dangled at her ears. She slipped a wad of strawberry-flavored Bubble Yum into her mouth as she stood back from the full-length mirror to look for flaws.

Too tawdry, she thought with a quick grin. Couldn’t be better. Black spandex molded the hips she’d padded, and skinny spiked heels added three inches. A cheap fake fur was slung over her shoulders. Satisfied, Adrianne slipped on rhinestone-studded cat’s-eye sunglasses and headed out.

She took the service elevator. A small precaution; no one looking at her would see Princess Adrianne. Just as no one looking at Princess Adrianne would see The Shadow. Still, she didn’t want Rose to be seen leaving Princess Adrianne’s penthouse apartment.

On the street she ignored the cab she would have preferred and strode off toward the subway. She had a fistful of diamonds in her imitation leather bag. She smelled as
though she’d bathed in dime-store perfume. Which indeed she had.

She enjoyed these subway rides as Hose. No one who knew her would walk beneath the streets. Here she was just a body among other bodies. Anonymous, as she had never been from the day she had been born. Her heels clicked on the concrete steps as she descended, and she remembered the first time she had left the streets to go underground. She’d been sixteen and desperate. Desperately afraid, desperately excited.

Then, she’d been certain a hand would fall on her shoulder, and a voice, the cold, deep voice of the police, would demand she open her bag. It had been pearls then, a single twenty-one-inch strand of milky Japanese pearls. The five thousand dollars she’d exchanged them for had paid for medicine and a month’s therapy at the Richardson Institute.

Now she walked through the turnstile with the ease of long practice. No one looked at her. Adrianne had come to understand that people rarely really looked at one another down here. In New York, people went about their business while keeping up the stubborn hope, or defense, that everyone else would do the same.

There was a rush of sound and wind from an incoming train. There was a smell, faint but somehow comforting, of old liquor and damp. Adrianne avoided a wad of gum stuck to the ground and joined the smattering of people waiting for the train that would take them downtown.

Beside her, two women hunched against the chill and complained about their husbands.

“So I says to him, you got a wife, not a goddamn maid, Harry. I promised to love, honor, and cherish, but I didn’t say nothing about picking up your slop. I tell him the next time I find your smelly socks on the rug, I’m stuffing them in your big mouth.”

“Good for you, Lorraine.”

Adrianne wanted to second that. Good for you, Lorraine. Let the bastard pick up his own socks. That’s what she loved about American women. They didn’t cower and cringe when the almighty man walked through the door. They handed him a bag of garbage and told him to dump it.

The train rumbled to a halt in front of them. People filed
off, people filed on. She stepped on behind the two women. One quick glance had Adrianne crossing the car and taking a seat near a man wearing chains on his leather jacket. She always felt it wiser to choose a seatmate who looked as though he might be carrying a concealed weapon.

The train swayed, then picked up speed. Adrianne skimmed the graffiti and the ads, then the people. A man in a suit and tie with a briefcase tucked under his arm read the latest Ludlum novel. A young woman in a suede skirt looked dreamily out the black window while she listened to music through earphones. Down the car a man lay stretched along three seats with his coat over his head and slept like the dead. The two women were still discussing Harry. Beside her, the man shifted, rattling his chains.

At the next station the briefcase got off and three young girls who should have been in school piled on, giggling. Adrianne listened to them argue about what movie they would see, and envied them. She’d never been that young, or that free.

At her station she rose, shifted her bag more securely, then stepped out. It was foolish to regret what she’d never been.