Meet Me in Venice (12 page)

She paced the small apartment, brushing impatiently past the dangling crystal that was supposed to ward off the evil Dragon River God spirits, sending it jangling, like her nerves. She’d lost him, she knew it. And with him the buyer. And Voortmann was turning out a loser, she hadn’t heard from him in a week.

But Bennett said he had a buyer willing to pay a deposit. She
had no choice but to work with him. She
had
to get the necklace. There was no time to be lost.

She remembered that Lily went for breakfast at eight every morning to the Happy bird Tea House and that she would be likely to be away for at least an hour. Time enough to get the necklace from the safe and be gone.

THE NEXT MORNING MARY-LOU ARRIVED EARLY
, waiting until she saw Lily’s car emerge from the courtyard and disappear down the alley. Once it was out of sight, she opened the gate with her own electronic key and drove in. She parked, then temporarily disengaged the security camera that tracked her movements. By the time Lily got back from her breakfast, the camera would be working again, but Mary-Lou would not be on it.

The little canary bird in its cage gave her a hopeful chirrup as she crossed the verandah but she ignored it, and unlocked the door and entered the house. Slipping automatically out of her shoes she walked barefoot to the cellar door, and leaving it ajar, climbed down the rickety steps. Hurrying past the piled boxes to the back, she pressed the button, the panel slid away and the safe was revealed. It took only a minute to open it. The heavy iron door swung back. And there was the red leather jewel case.

She ran her palm across the smooth expensive leather. Even age had not destroyed it and she guessed it had been kept somewhere clean and dry all these years. She clicked the case open. Her eyes widened and a shiver ran down her spine as she touched
the pearl, thinking of it in the dead Empress Cixi’s mouth. What a waste, she thought contemptuously, clicking the box shut. The other stolen pearl that Soong Mai-ling had worn on her party shoes was put to much better use than in a dead woman’s mouth.

She was about to close the safe when she heard a noise. Lifting her head, she listened.

“Mary-Lou? Is that you down there?” Lily’s voice echoed down the cellar steps.

Heart throbbing, Mary Lou flung the jewel case back into the safe, slammed the door and locked it. She leapt backward and pressed the panel, hearing it whirr shut just as Lily appeared at the top of the steps. She stood, hands behind her back, facing her.

“Mary-Lou, what on earth are you doing here this early?” Lily said, astonished. “You gave me quite a fright. I thought I had burglars.”

“No, no burglars, only me. I came to work early to take care of packing the rest of the Buddha replicas. I know we have to deliver them today.”

Lily came down the steps. She was holding a paper cup of coffee and looked disturbed. “That’s very unusual for you. What’s wrong? Couldn’t you sleep?”

Mary-Lou allowed a few tears to trickle down her cheeks. “No, I couldn’t. And it’s all Bennett’s fault. He came back last night, just showed up on my doorstep as though nothing had happened. And do you know where he’d been, Lily? To Paris.”

Lily took a sip of her coffee. “So why does that upset you?”

“Because he was with your cousin, Precious Rafferty.”

“What!” Lily was so shocked she spilled her coffee.

“That’s right. Remember, you told him about her, said she was a rich girl? Well, that’s exactly what Bennett’s looking for. Another rich girl to marry. Just like Ana Yuan. Maybe the rumors were right and he really did marry his wife for her money. Maybe he killed her for it. Maybe he’s thinking of doing the same to your cousin. Who knows . . . with Bennett anything’s possible.”

“Come on, you can’t be serious,” Lily said shocked. “You’re just upset, that’s all.”

But Mary-Lou looked blankly back at her. She had lost Bennett and now she’d lost the necklace. Right now she would have killed him if she could have gotten away with it.

“He came over to my place,” she said. “We made love. Then I found the phone number written in lipstick on a tissue in his wallet. I have it upstairs, I’ll show it to you.” She wanted to get Lily out of the cellar in case she noticed that she had not packed a single one of the waiting Buddhas.

Lily led the way back upstairs and Mary-Lou followed her. She had left her purse on the chair by the open cellar door and now she took out the tissue with the number and handed it to Lily.

“Keep it,” she said disdainfully. She already had the number and address written in her phone book. “Maybe you’ll want to call your cousin someday. And I certainly don’t want it.”

Lily put the tissue in her pocket. She looked worriedly at her friend. “Are you sure you’re all right? Listen, I know what. I was just going for breakfast but I forgot my purse and had to come back. Why don’t we go and get a bite and you can pour out your heart to me.”

The heart that’s made of steel, Mary-Lou thought bitterly, as
she closed the cellar door and followed Lily out to her car.
Oh my God, she’d forgotten about the camera.
It was too late now, Lily was waiting for her, she would have to fix it later.

LATER THAT EVENING, MARY-LOU CALLED
Bennett. To her surprise, he answered.

“I tried to get the necklace today,” she said.

“And you failed. You are letting me down, Mary-Lou. ‘Tried’ simply isn’t good enough, I want the necklace by tomorrow evening. Or . . .”

“Or . . . what?”

“Or it’s too late and you and I have lost a multimillion-dollar deal. Better pull up your socks, Mary-Lou.”

He rang off and she slumped back in her chair. Real tears coursed down her cheeks this time. Voortmann had given her his cell-phone number and sitting back up, she punched it in.

He answered after a dozen rings. “Voortmann.”

His voice was gruff and there was a lot of background noise: loud music, a woman’s shrill laughter, the roar of conversation and clink of glasses. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was in a bar and from the tone of his voice, already drunk.

“It’s Mary-Lou,” she said impatiently. “What news do you have for me, Voortmann?”

“Hah, Mary-Lou . . . . You’ll be pleased to know I’m on track, I have a couple of customers interested, wealthy men, Shanghainese . . . .”

“Shanghainese?” she
repeated, horrified. This was much too close to home. Rich or not, they were unlikely to be interested because it was too dangerous a game for them. She needed an American, or a Swiss, a true collector, a man with real money, not a rich Chinese businessman.

“I showed them the photo,” Voortmann boasted, his words tripping over each other without pause. “Don’t worry, they’ll get back to me soon.”

Mary-Lou cut him off. The man was a drunk. He’d shown the picture around to his cohorts in the bar and they would tell their friends. It didn’t take long for rumors to start in this town and she knew she was in trouble.

Tomorrow, she had to get the necklace out of the safe.

L
ILY
was in her office filling out some forms for the tax man, when her doorbell rang. She switched on the security camera to see who was there and found herself looking at a blank screen. Disturbed, she pressed the gate intercom and asked who it was.

“Police” was the reply.

She shrank back in the chair, pulses racing, mouth suddenly dry. What had they found? What did they know? Had the antiques smugglers been caught at the airport and spilled the beans? A million questions ran through her mind. Sweeping the papers from her desk into a drawer, she slammed it shut and pressed the button to allow them to enter.

There was only one, a young officer, hard-faced and solemn.
“Madame Song, I have complaints about parking on the street. They say it is your car that blocks the way.”

“Ohh,” Lily said, relieved. Of course it must be Mary-Lou’s car, and since she had no wish to incur a fine or the wrath of her neighbors, she promised to do something about it. Still, she was glad when he left after delivering his warning. And there was no doubt seeing the cop had given her a shock. In her line of business she needed to stay as far away from the law as possible.

The necklace was still uppermost in her mind and she got on the phone and called her Swiss contact. He told her his client wasn’t sure, that it might take time, and that anyhow he feared the price might be exorbitant, even for a rich collector.

“We can come to some arrangement on the price.” Lily backed down, but still he demurred.

“I’ll get back to you” was all he said.

As if to reassure herself that the necklace was worth the fortune she believed it was, she walked down the cellar stairs in her house flip-flops and dialed the combination numbers to open the safe. When the door swung back she stared, stunned, at its contents.

The jewel case was flung to the very back and the packets of banknotes were tumbled untidily to one side. She was a neat woman, everything had its place—and this was not it. She knew she had left it in perfect order with the jewel case in front.

She took it out and, fearful the necklace had disappeared, opened it. Relief made her hands shake. It was still there.

She sank onto a packing crate, clutching it to her heart. Someone had been there. But who? She got to her feet again and went and counted the bundles of money. A substantial amount was
missing. She remembered the security camera that was no longer working, and Mary-Lou down here alone so early in the morning when she had known Lily would be taking breakfast a couple of miles away.

But then how did Mary-Lou know about the safe and the combination? Only she knew that and it was written in her brain, not on a piece of paper for anyone to read.

She rearranged the bundles of money and taking the jewel case, locked the safe. She walked outside to inspect the camera and found it had been dismantled. She fixed it and ran the tape back. There was only one person on it and that was Mary-Lou, at eight-o-five on the morning she had found her here, in the cellar, supposedly packing up Buddhas.

She had to find another hiding place for the necklace. Of course she could put it in a bank vault, but that might prove dangerous if things went wrong and there was an investigation. She thought about hiding it under her mattress, but that was the obvious place anyone might look. She heard her little canary chirping out on the verandah and the answer came to her. Of course, she would hide it under the sandpaper base in the bottom of his cage. No one would ever think of looking there.

The bird came and sat on her hand while she accomplished her task, singing with delight at her attention. He was a sweet little creature, she thought smiling. Little did he know he was sitting on top of a fortune.

She decided to set a trap for Mary-Lou, try to catch her in the act. She called her, said she had to go out for the day. She had a meeting with a dealer and expected to be away for several hours.
Would Mary-Lou please come over and hold the fort while she was gone? As she had expected, Mary-Lou said yes.

Then she hurried back upstairs, put on her shoes, smiled at the songbird and drove out of the courtyard. The gates clanged shut behind her.

T
HE
first thing Mary-Lou did after Lily called was telephone Bennett. To her surprise he answered on the first ring.

“Well?” he said coldly, and she sighed.

“I’ll have it for you tonight,” she said.

“Where and what time?”

Mary-Lou hesitated. There was something icy about Bennett that had her scared. Like now for instance, when he’d answered the phone in a tone of such total indifference she felt she didn’t really matter. She didn’t want to risk being alone with him while she handed over the necklace. She didn’t trust him.

“At the Cloud 9 bar, eight o’clock,” she said. And this time she was the one who rang off.

She drove over to Lily’s house and checked the security camera
in the courtyard, but it had been fixed. Once inside she went directly to the cellar. She opened the safe, then stepped back in horror. The jewel case was not there!

She shuffled through the bundles of money, for once uninterested, but the red leather case was gone.

Oh
—
My
—
God.
Lily had sold it. Or else she’d hidden it someplace new. Hope spurred her on and she ran back upstairs, found the key to Lily’s little “home safe” hidden under a pile of sweaters, then opened it. The necklace wasn’t there. She rummaged through every drawer and every cupboard. She even looked under the mattress. Nothing.

Still in Lily’s bedroom, she stared with empty eyes at her pale reflection in the mirror. She would have to stall Bennett again, keep him guessing until she found out the whereabouts of the necklace. It was her only chance.

Shaking with nerves, she knew she had to get out. Grabbing her bag, she walked out onto the verandah. The canary fluttered on its perch then burst into song. Its shrill warbling seemed to dart like needles into her head and she wanted to kill it. She stood looking at it in its pretty little cage. Her hands shook with fury, but of course it wasn’t the bird’s fault.

She needed a drink, and praying that the false courage it might give her would get her through the day, she drove to a crowded bar in the Old City patronized mostly by antiques dealers.

She found a free stool, ordered a vodka martini with three olives and, still shaky, sat looking morosely at her unhappy reflection in the mirrored wall in back of the counter.

“Mary-Lou, how are you?”

She turned to look at the man who’d slipped onto the barstool next to her. He was an antiques dealer she knew slightly.

“I’ll have the same,” he said to the bartender. “So how’s business?” he asked, smiling.

Everyone knew everyone else’s business and just how well they were doing, except for the secret trading of course. “Much as usual.” She took a gulp of the martini.

“There’s a rumor about a special piece going around,” he said. “Have you heard it? About some jewels. A necklace. Said to have belonged to the Dowager Empress. Now wouldn’t I like to get my hands on that!” He laughed loudly. “And so no doubt would the cops.”