Whiskey Sour (5 page)

The problem with escaping in the middle of the night was that I didn’t exactly have anywhere to go. I could call Kate, but she’d done enough for me lately. I didn’t want to get her out of bed in the middle of the night. I could call Rosemarie, but I’d have to share the guest bed with her two Great Danes. My third option was Nick, but he’d have my clothes off by the time I crossed the threshold, and I was still sunburned and in pain.
My last option was the agency. I had a key to the outer door, and I’d have access to the shower and the lounge, which had an overstuffed couch I could sleep on.

With the decision made, I headed toward Savannah. And the first chance I
got, I was going to look for another place to live. I had enough to make a deposit, and if I ate like I was in college again I could probably pay most of my bills every month. Maybe every other month.

Friday

“
W
hat do you know about Vince Walker?” I asked Kate the next morning.

She hadn’t looked surprised to see me asleep on the couch when she’d come in
to the office a little after seven. Nothing much surprised Kate, so I rolled off the couch and followed her into her office, my clothes rumpled from sleep.

Kate’s
boxy linen suit was already creased with wrinkles and her hair was still damp from her shower. She’d pushed it back with a black headband, and her face was free of makeup except for a touch of mascara. Kate was one of those women who didn’t need makeup. Her skin was flawless, her cheeks naturally rosy and her gray eyes wide and clear. She had a cute little button nose and delicately arched brows a shade darker than her blond hair. She hadn’t changed much since high school—mostly she was a little fuller in the hip and a lot more cynical.

“He’s a good cop,” she answered. “Solid reputation and someone who’s looked up to in the department.
No smirches on his name or badge. I’d think you’d know all that considering he was your dad’s partner for ten years. What’s going on?”

“Yeah, well, sometimes it’s hard to know what a person’s really like until it’s too late.
Especially when they ruin a perfectly good song.” I’d forever associate Pour Some Sugar on Me with debilitating gorilla sex.

I watched Kate go through her morning ritual—hang ugly
suit jacket on the coatrack by the door, lock gun in desk drawer, turn on computer, get messages out of the box that had arrived after she’d left the office. Kate was very regimented. It was an impressive sight to see, and I wished frequently that I could be more like Kate.

I sighed and
went to the Keurig coffeemaker she kept on a sideboard, making us both a cup and doctoring it the way she liked—with too much sugar and a third of a cup of milk. I’d never seen the point of drinking coffee at all if you were just going to turn it into dessert. I sat in the chair across from her massive walnut desk and waited for her to sit down, staying unusually silent.

Instead of taking the chair behind her desk
, she sat in the one next to me and gave me an arched look.

“
Spill it, Addison. What do you know about Vince that I don’t?” she asked.

“
You have to promise not to laugh. And you can’t tell anyone.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Let’s just say that Vince doesn’t seem to have a problem with premature ejaculation. And the walls of my bedroom are thinner than I thought.”

She tipped her head back and laughed until tea
rs rolled down her cheeks.

“You promised not to laugh.”

“No, I promised not to tell anyone,” she hiccupped. “Jesus, Addison. That is not something I needed to have a visual of. So your mom is doing the nasty with Vince, huh?” Kate’s grin was evil and I shot her a dirty look.

“Either that or he was giving her a hell of a pelvic exam.”

“All women should be so lucky.”

The bitterness in Kate’s voice had my head snapping up and my eyes zeroing in on her face, but Kate was really good at not showing anything she didn’t want to be seen.
A hell of a poker player was Kate.

She’d been married for a handful of years to Mike McClean, another Savannah cop, and I’d never gotten the impression that anything was wrong in their relationship. In fact, I would have described their devotion to one another as damned near perfect.
Before I could ask if anything was wrong, she changed the subject, and I knew whatever it was, she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“The FBI will be here at ten
to meet with us about the case,” she said. “It’s very high profile and they’re trying to keep it as quiet as possible, so everything said in this room is privileged information. Understood?”

I made an X over my heart and tried to look trustworthy and unassuming. The secrecy was my
least favorite part of the job, considering most women in the south cut their teeth on gossip.

“No offense, but I can’t imagine why you’d need me for this job. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d use me for.”

She smiled and moved out of the chair next to me and into the one behind her desk. “Normally you’d be right, but we’re dealing with professional criminals in this case, and professionals can sense a cop a mile away.”

I straightened my shoulders and examined the cuticles on
my nails. I needed a manicure, only that was one of the recent budget crunches I’d had to make.

“I’ve decided I’m not going to
take offense at that statement,” I said. “I’m going to pretend like you need me because I’m so good at blending with my surroundings.”

“Yeah, you blended right in with the bushes when you fell out of that tree on your last case.”

Kate opened a thick file on her desk and pushed it toward me. The photo on top was gruesome enough that I felt the color drain from my face and a clammy sweat pop out on my skin.

“Geez, Kate. Warn a girl, would you?”

“Sorry. This whole mess started when a man named Christian DeLuce was the highest bidder for a package of loose gems during a series of auctions the Russian government was holding to raise money. The gems supposedly belonged to the Romanovs, and DeLuce bought them sight unseen.”

“Christian DeLuce, jewelry designer for the stars? That Christian DeLuce?” I asked.

“The one and only.
”

“Why would he buy gems sight unseen?”

“Apparently, that’s all the rage right now among jewelry designers. It lends a little mystery, as well as history, to whatever pieces they design. Countries in need of actual cash are making a killing doing auctions this way. They state only how many loose gems are in the package—not what kind or the carat. They promise the gems came from a specific time in history, and were worn by specific historical figures. The bidding wars normally exceed six figures, sometimes seven. The jewelers in turn easily make that back ten fold because the story is often more lucrative than the actual gems. Though to be fair, all of the gems auctioned so far have been of good quality, if not especially large.”

“Nice,” I said, turning the photo of the mutilated corpse over since I couldn’t seem to stop staring at it. “I assume the body that looks like it
’s been through a meat grinder and left in the sun too long is important to this case somehow?”

“DeLuce made the money transfer
from his bank after he won the bid on the gems per the auction rules, and the package was opened via Skype so he could see what he’d gotten out of the deal. Turns out there was an engraved emerald the size of a baby’s fist inside that hasn’t been seen since the reign of Catherine the Great.”

I let out a low whistle and
looked at a photocopy of the emerald. “The Heart of Ivan,” I said, recognizing it immediately. “Lots of rumors about the emerald’s origin, but apparently Ivan the Terrible procured it through dubious means from China’s Jiajing Emperor.”

“No one cares about Ivan the Terrible,” Kate said, getting up for more coffee. “It’s the Romanov legends that send all the crazies out.”

I gave Kate an arched look. “As I was saying,
Ivan’s first wife, Anastasia Romanovna—” 

“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Sorry. You know I could never stay awake during history.”

“Anyway, Anastasia became ill not long after she and Ivan married. She was very young, early thirties if I remember right, and she was really the only one able to truly keep Ivan’s temper under control. The sickness tore through her body for weeks, leaving her frail and unable to eat. Ivan reportedly never left her side and was out of his mind with worry because he really did love her.”

I sighed a little because I’m a romantic at heart. I cry at commercials and sappy greeting cards, and despite the hand fate’s dealt my love life, I believe in happily ever after. Kate shook her head at me and I knew she’d read my mind.

“Ivan somehow got word about the emerald and that it supposedly had healing powers, so his men took it from the emperor of China, and Ivan brought it to her while she was in the last hours on her death bed, hoping for a miracle.”

Kate’s eyes were starting to glaze over, and I shook my head in wonderment that the two of us could be so different. Tingles were shooting all through my body at the excitement that a new piece of history might be discovered, and Kate looked like she was about to bury her cat.

“I take it the emerald didn’t do the job?” she asked.

“Nope. It turns out poor Anastasia was poisoned, so there wasn’t anything that could have been done for her. She died anyway, and what little sanity Ivan had left died with her. His reign of bat
shit insanity started shortly thereafter, and accounts say Ivan wanted to have the emerald ground to dust, but the Romanov family had a clearer head and put the emerald away with the rest of the family jewels until Anastasia’s grandnephew, Mikhail, took over the Tsardom.”

“
Huh,” Kate said, shaking her head. “Anyway, after the sale was completed and DeLuce gave the approval to transport the gems, a courier was dispatched with the package to the United States with plans to hand them over to DeLuce here in Savannah.”

“I didn’t realize DeLuce was from Savannah,” I interrupted.

“He’s an implant,” she said with a shrug. “Said California drove him crazy and he likes to make the celebrities come to him as some sort of power trip. He’s known for his eccentric behavior, and for being a bit dramatic. His shop is only a few blocks from here. Very exclusive and expensive.”

“I take it DeLuce and the courier never met up?”

“Bingo,” Kate said. “The courier didn’t show up. Turns out he’d been shot point blank in the face and shoved in a waste barrel for a couple of days, so he was unable to attend the meeting. Then DeLuce calls Russia and gives them some of his temper because his gems didn’t show up and he’s out half a million dollars. Russia’s pissed because they say the emerald was never supposed to be in the package in the first place and the courier never should have left the country to deliver it.”

“So it’s a complete clusterfuck is what you’re saying.”

“Oh, yeah. The FBI is involved because this is considered international gem theft. Also because the jewels that had been in the briefcase attached to the courier’s arm were removed—along with the arm—and because the body was moved across state lines into Savannah. The Savannah police are involved because they discovered the body at the docks. And we’re involved because Christian DeLuce has hired us to find his gems and get them back to him before someone from Russia can get here and whisk the emerald back across the ocean.”

“And I’m here again, why?” I asked. This sounded so out of my league I didn’t even know where to start.

“Because you work for me and the FBI told me to find someone they could use that didn’t look like a cop. The FBI also wanted someone young and female for what they have in mind. And no, I don’t know why,” she said just as I was opening my mouth to ask. “I’m sure Agent Savage will tell us why during the meeting.”

“Agent Savage? Seriously?”

“That coming from someone with the last name Holmes,” Kate said.

“
Touché, my friend. Very good.” I stood up and grabbed my purse. I had a little over two hours until the meeting. It was enough time to grab a quick shower and start looking for another place to live. “I’ll be back in time for the meeting.”

“Where are you going?”

“To look for apartments. I can’t survive through another night of Vince porn. I’m pretty sure I won’t even be able to look my mom in the eye again until after Christmas. I’ve been traumatized.”

“How are you going to afford an apartment?”

By the way she asked, I could tell she’d already heard the news about my recent unemployment.

“Who told you?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I still live in Whiskey Bayou
,” she said, which was explanation enough. “I found out the minute I pulled into my driveway last night. Mr. Lester stopped watering his roses long enough to hightail it to my car before I even got the door open. I thought he was going to break his neck, all bony arms and legs, his gardening hat flying off and the hose soaking the bottom of his trousers.”

“Hmmm,” I said for lack of anything better.

Mr. Lester’s wife was on the school board, so he’d probably been one of the first to know. Part of me was hoping his roses died sometime soon. The other part still felt sorry for him for having to be married to Mrs. Lester. She had a full mustache and a goiter on her neck the size of a cantaloupe.

“And I didn’t say anything because I kept expecting to get a distraught phone call sometime during the night and it never happened. Then when I saw you this morning, I started to wonder if you’d even heard the news.”

“Oh, I heard the news,” I said, thinking of Rosemarie.

Kate was right. I should have called her and
told her about the problem, but as soon as I’d made the decision to get my private detective’s license, I stopped worrying about the unemployment issue. It had all been settled in my mind. And maybe I wanted to avoid talking to Kate for a while until I figured out how to tell her about my decision.