Perfect (14 page)

T  W  E  N  T  Y  -  E  I  G  H  T

By the time I returned to the hotel from the spa, it was six-forty. In spite of the slight heartburn Lucy’s presence had given me, I felt relaxed and happy, and very aware that the patron cocktail party before Constantin’s charity concert in St. Moritz had begun ten minutes earlier. Had Sebastian Tremaine carried the briefcase with him or had he put it in the hotel safe? It didn’t make any difference. He, and it, would be entering my lair soon enough—sometime within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, I imagined.

I turned on the TV while I bathed and dressed for the evening, and there she was, Giovanna MacDougal, my nemesis. The glamorous SkyWord reporter who tried to steal my husband while I was in Portofino trying to salvage my reputation. Someone had been posing as the Shamrock Burglar and pulled off a number of fairly sloppy heists in Riviera resorts using my signature techniques. It became quite the story and Scotland Yard had asked Thomas to come out of retirement and apprehend the burglar. Every morning and every night on SkyWord news, I watched Giovanna interview my husband in one elegant, exclusive Riviera watering hole after another. They had obviously grown quite chummy. He, of course, claimed to have virtually no attraction to her, but still, I didn’t trust her any further than I could throw her. I know this is extremely petty, but tonight I was glad to see she was on a different continent. She was traveling with the queen in Africa. She looked hot and uncomfortable and had to keep brushing a fly away from the corner of her mouth. I secretly hoped it would get stuck in her lip gloss, she had on so much of it.

“Today”—she squinted into the camera—“we are on the border of Kenya and Sudan in East Africa. As you can see it is a very different scene from last night’s gala in Cape Town where Queen Elizabeth was feted in a celebration that was reminiscent of the days when South Africa was part of the British Empire.”

Footage rolled of the queen and her consort proceeding into a dazzling banquet hall filled with lighted palm trees and colorfully dressed men and women of every color. Many of the black South Africans were in native dress, the men with leopardskin pillbox hats and capes, and the women with their heads wrapped in bright scarves, covered with jewelry.

The queen had on a very pretty pistachio green ball gown and the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland diamond tiara, a wedding gift from her grandmother, Queen Mary. The Lesser Stars of Africa brooch, the Cullinans III and IV, were suspended as pendants from her diamond necklace. They were fakes, of course. No one outside of her immediate circle knew the real stones were missing and I wondered how many standbys the royal household has for each major piece of jewelry. Three or four, I supposed. She also had a beautiful smile on her face.

As I watched, I put on a pearl gray light cashmere jacket and slacks, a large very attention-getting diamond bow brooch, a multistrand garnet necklace, and diamond-and-garnet cluster earrings. I was looking forward to a quiet, early evening alone with my book in the main dining room. The phone rang.

“Margaret? It’s Lucy. We’re meeting some friends—the Tripps, I’ll bet you know them, Baxter and Barbara Tripp—at the hotel for dinner and thought you might be free to join us.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy. I’ve got plans.”

“Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Perhaps,” I said noncommittally. What exactly was going on here? Had Alma assigned her to be my watchdog? Had she told her who I was? Was she reporting back to Alma on all my activities? Was she one of those types who go goo-goo around royalty and can’t control themselves? Was she stalking me? Or was I just paranoid because she said she recognized me? I wanted to tell her to bug off but because she was such a close friend of Alma’s, I didn’t want to run the risk of offending her. However, I must say, envisioning her and Alma together was hard to do—they made a very unlikely pair.

I hung up the phone and called Klaus and ordered a double martini, ricotta agnolotti with sun-dried tomatoes and crunchy pancetta lardons, an apple-and-walnut salad, and a half bottle of Chianti riserva. Then I went into my dressing room and changed into a camel cashmere robe with soft curly Persian lamb trim. I could hear Klaus in the kitchen mixing my cocktail, and by the time I got back to the sitting room, he had placed a beautifully chilled crystal martini glass on the coffee table next to a little platter of dates stuffed with cheese.

“These magazines just arrived this afternoon,” he said. “I thought you might enjoy them.”

Paris Match, Paris Vogue,
and the
Robb Report.
Required reading for billionaires.

It was a delicious, comfortable evening, and that night I had the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life. I needed and appreciated it—I might not get another for quite a while.

“We have the High-Performance breakfast for you this morning, Your Highness.” Klaus lifted the dome from a plate arranged with a cheese omelet and grilled sausages. The basket with the cinnamon rolls was close at hand, as well. While I ate my breakfast and read the papers—I was pleased to see my name listed in the New Arrivals column of the Mont-St.-Anges Report—Klaus’s battalion of maids and aides arrived to pack my goods. He shooed them into the bedroom like a mother hen and closed the door so they wouldn’t disturb me. Fifteen minutes later, they departed practically without a sound, leaving my fur coat, hat, and gloves lying on the bed.

At ten, the phone rang.

“Your sleigh is here, ma’am.”

“Thank you. I’ll be right down.”

“Take your time.”

“My” sleigh turned out to be a grand antique affair. Not big but very bright and regal looking with a big curling swoop up the back. The entire thing was bright, shiny red with gold swirls painted all over it, a black leather driver’s bench, and a tufted black leather passenger seat. My horse was black and shone from brushing and good care. She was a big, magnificent horse—her muscles rippled beneath a glossy coat and I could tell she wanted to go. Not that she was rearing or pawing or bucking. To the contrary. She stood quietly, but the energy was tangible. She had a white, diamond-shaped mark on her forehead. The rest of her body save one sock on her rear right foot was as black and shiny as coal. Long wavy curls fell from just below her knees and covered her shiny hooves. Her black mane was tied into little knots with red ribbons.

Atop the driver’s box sat a rosy-cheeked, formally dressed gentleman in a loden suit and brimmed hat with a deertail brush. His jacket had buttons carved from reindeer antler. He had a beaklike nose, a crisp little gray mustache, and big blue eyes that were exaggerated by thick wire-rimmed glasses. He gave the impression of being wiry and agile, capable of anything physical or mechanical.

He turned as the doorman helped me up into the sleigh and tipped his hat. “Princesse,” he said. “I am Barnhardt. And this is Black Diamond.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Barnhardt. What kind of horse is that?” I asked.

“A black Clydesdale. Very, very rare. Excellent temperament.”

Elsa’s horse, Tati, had been a baby. Black Diamond was a babe. She got us up to Schloss Alexander in a flash—it felt as if we were speed skating.

T  W  E  N  T  Y  -  N  I  N  E

“Do you need anything more, Your Highness?” Barnhardt stood in the kitchen door. He had lit the fire in the living room and made certain the hearth had an adequate supply of wood. “Would you like me to tend the fire?”

“I don’t think
so, thank you. I’m set until later this afternoon. I’d like to go to town for the après ski at four o’clock.”

“Very well. If you do need me sooner, you can call my cell phone, the number is here”—he indicated a list next to the kitchen extension—“or use the intercom, which I think you’ll find is most practical—or ring this bell.” He pointed to a brass cowbell that hung to the right of the door with a little dinger attached by a thin leather thong. “Have a pleasant day, Your Highness. I am at your service.”

“Thank you.” I closed the door behind him and watched through the kitchen window. I was scarcely able to contain myself with excitement at finally putting my plan into motion. The complications and intricacies of planning the perfect heist were more energizing to me than chocolate, or wine, or sex. It was in my blood. It had been my livelihood since I was a girl and seemed always to shimmer just below the surface of my skin like a fizz of temptation. As long as I was away from it, I was fine. As a matter of fact, at home, I didn’t miss my former life at all. But now that I was back in the game, I was on fire. I watched Barnhardt on the monitor and as soon as he entered the stable, I locked the doors and went to work.

First on my list was to pull on a pair of tight latex gloves and conduct a thorough inspection of the premises looking for bugs, cameras, secret doors and cabinets. I always carry a small pocket flashlight with a powerful beam and I used it to look inside, under, above, below and around every square inch of the house. The only discoveries were a locked cabinet in the kitchen that I easily popped open—it contained Tinka’s personal sets of chefs knives, cooking pans, rolling pins, baking tins, and secret recipes—and locked drawers and a locked closet in the master sitting room that I put off exploring until later.

All my packages had been delivered from Zurich and were stacked on and around the desk in the kitchen. I opened each box, laid out the contents on the counter and did a thorough inventory, confirming all was as ordered, which, with typical Swiss precision, it was. The array was quite impressive. I had purchased the latest, most expensive, most technologically advanced equipment available—everything was state of the art. Close to a million dollars’ worth of electronic scanners that could do everything from find bugs and invisible beams, to mimic voice, digital and optical scans, to open the most sophisticated of safes. I had digital motion-sensitive cameras; cell-phone-looking gizmos that were actually complete audio/visual/communications centers; audio-sensitive microphones, and tape recorders, as well as a jeweler’s bench, with all its contingent manufacturing necessities.

I’d done a good job provisioning myself for every possible contingency I could envision.

Now that I’d seen the exterior settings—Mont-St.-Anges, the chalets, and the terrain—I reviewed my preliminary plan. The final one wouldn’t be developed until I’d had the opportunity to meet and watch the players—Sebastian Tremaine and Robert Constantin—and to surveil their style and daily schedule. Get my nose under their tent, so to speak. I wasn’t taking anything lightly or for granted. Sebastian Tremaine had major talent and nerve—he’d made off with some of the most highly protected jewels on earth and now it was up to me to figure out a way to rob him. I won’t go so far to say that this was Holmes versus Moriarty, but it takes a thief to catch a thief, and he was a good one. Was he as good as I was? Very possibly. My plan was based on the assumption that he was better.

The largest factor working in my favor was the element of surprise. And actually that’s one of the most fun things about being a jewel thief if you’re good. You know what you’re planning, but nobody else does because you work alone. I imagined Tremaine had a few surprises of his own up his sleeve, but until I got into his orbit, I couldn’t begin to picture what they may be.

I wondered if they’d gotten home from St. Moritz.

I tied my new tool apron around my waist and slid two tubes of paint and brushes into one of the pockets. Then I opened the tool kit and laid it flat on the counter. It was a good-looking case packed with a comprehensive assembly of stainless-steel implements with cushioned red rubber handles. I selected three screwdrivers and a pair of pliers. Finally, I clipped 10x magnification lenses (not the ultrastrong 55x ones I needed for making jewelry) onto a headband and adjusted it around my head, making sure it was snug and comfortable.

I changed the locks on all the doors. I installed specialized electronic dead bolts on the master bedroom, sitting room, and master suite porch doors. These locks were triple-controlled with voice recognition, eye scan, and fingerprint readers, which I concealed in the bookshelves. I programmed the devices and then painted the readers, locks, and locking bars brown to match the bookshelves or the wood of the doorframes. Unless someone was extremely observant, they would never even notice that new locks were there. I installed alarmed pressure pads inside the front door, and outside the master bedroom and porch doors and remoted them to one of my new cell phones. I found a step stool in the utility closet and installed battery-operated pinhole audio and visual surveillance cameras in the upper corners of the living room, master suite, and above the porch doors. I hid another in the bay-leaf wreath on the front door. Their pictures broadcast to what looked like a cell phone but was actually a receiver with a remote that could also control each camera. The technology itself and the minuteness of these gizmos was amazing.

There was still much to do, but I felt better once these steps were accomplished. My personal perimeter was established, my drawbridge in place. I would add other cameras and motion-sensitive scanners outdoors when I went out for a walk later this afternoon.

I armed the exterior system, fixed a pot of coffee, put on a Mahler symphony full blast and hauled the rest of the boxes into the master sitting room, Tinka Alexander’s private, personal hangout. Two walls had bookshelves with storage cabinets below. In addition to a wide selection of novels, the shelves had all of her cookbooks in every language and framed pictures of her from magazine covers and interviews with major journalists. The treadmill had a view of both the scenery and the television.

To me, however, the greatest attraction to this room was hanging over her desk—a four-by-six-foot horizontal color photograph of a shiny, moist chocolate cake—devil’s food, judging by the rich, dark glow of the cake and icing. One glistening slice had been removed and was lying on its side on a plate with a fork. One bite had been taken from the slice, leaving moist crumbs. A glass of milk, a little froth circling the glass, sat to the side, slightly out of focus. It was a masterful photograph, the detail was so intense, it was as though this giant piece of cake was hanging on the wall waiting for me to take a bite. Every time I looked at it, my mouth watered and I felt a little weak in the knees. It was such a common, everyday cake, not the sort of thing you’d expect one of the world’s most accomplished dessert chefs to focus on in her private study. No. You’d expect a spectacular creation. But this simple photograph told a much more powerful story than a soaring, floaty, filmy spun-sugar concoction could have. It evoked hunger, yearning, comfort, and happiness. It made you feel at home. I longed to have a piece.

I looked at my cold cup of coffee—it simply wouldn’t do. I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, which had been stocked with basic supplies until I could order my own. I selected a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, NV, poured a glass, and opened the old-fashioned tin bread box on the counter. Ahh. Just where I would keep them: dark chocolate truffles.

I placed half a dozen on a plate and headed back to the project, glancing at myself in the full-length mirror in the hallway. I almost screamed. With the headband around my forehead making a big dent in my hair and the magnifying lenses pushed up so they looked like little antlers, my reading glasses on my nose, my red tool apron bristling with implements and spread atop my hips in a most unflattering way, a stripe of brown paint swishing across my white cashmere bosom, a glass of Champagne in one hand and a plate of chocolate truffles in the other, I looked like something from outer space or an infomercial. The only things missing were flippers. Thank God the doors were locked.

I looked at the ceiling. “Please don’t let me die now.”

I always try to wear something I wouldn’t mind being caught dead in, because, really, who knows? This was a horrible exception. If I were caught dead in this outfit, it would kill me.

I put my head down and hurried along to investigate the locked desk drawers and closet, reasonable expectations of privacy in a house you were amenable to letting a stranger use.