Suspicious (On the Run) (20 page)

Wenzel blinked rapidly, shuffled more papers, and then lifted his head. “Yes. Gray Renault hatchback rented in Rome.” Zoe could tell from his face that he was beginning to believe them.

Neely and Alessi weren’t convinced. “If your…” Alessi waved a hand in the air like a magician preparing to conjure a rabbit from a hat, “…story is true, then where is the Flawless Set?”

“Right here.” Zoe pointed to the diamonds tumbling out of the unzipped fanny pack. “They fell out of McKinley’s pocket. Amy gave them to him on the terrace.”

“No,” Neely said. “Those are imitations.”

Without pausing to think whether the investigators would like it or not, Zoe pulled the stones toward her. “That can’t be right. I saw her give them to him myself.”

The gems sparkled and glinted under the harsh fluorescent light as Zoe spread them out. At first glance, they looked like the Flawless Set to her. The stones were the right shape and size, and they certainly looked dazzling, their facets cutting the light into a rainbow of color.

As she untangled the last of the diamonds, she caught her breath. It was the bracelet. Jack reached out and took the strand of diamonds pooled in her palm. As he held it up in the air, he glanced from the bracelet to Zoe. She noticed the detail the same time he did, and it took everything she had to keep her expression from changing.

Jack touched the clasp on the dangling bracelet. “It’s not broken. That’s how you know they’re fake?”

“Yes, that and the fact that we had an expert look at them,” Neely said.

Jack raised his eyebrows. Neely shrugged one shoulder. “We have one on call to verify anything we found…”

Anything they found on Harrington, Zoe mentally added. They expected to take in Harrington and any gems he had with him.

Zoe watched as Jack lined up the bracelet, the necklace, and the earrings on the table, but her thoughts had shifted back to what she’d overheard on the balcony. “She switched them,” Zoe muttered to herself.

“What did you say,” Neely asked sharply.

Zoe looked from the jewelry to the three faces across the table. “Of course she switched the real jewels for fakes. I bet she decided to make the change after she saw McKinley meet with Harrington at the Zugspitze. She couldn’t have McKinley returning the jewels to Harrington. It was too risky for her. I’m sure McKinley thought he could keep Harrington from ever finding out his source for the jewels, but Amy would have been afraid he’d slip up and betray her.”

“So she did what? Ran out and had a copy made?” Neely asked.

“Yes,” Zoe said. “I’m sure she told the jeweler she wanted a replica. And she wouldn’t have had to go to a big city to get it done. Plenty of high-end jewelers in Ischgl.” Zoe scooted her chair closer to the table and leaned forward. “It’s no wonder she did it, especially after that conversation between her and McKinley. He wanted to cut out their third person in their group, some guy named Terrance. Amy was resistant. She said it went against their agreement, but McKinley tried to talk her into it, even suggested they could take the money from the Flawless Set and run away together. Now that I think about it, she seemed to be feeling him out, seeing how far he would go. She asked him if he’d do it, sell Terrance out. He said he wouldn’t, that he was only joking when he suggested it, but I remember the way she looked at him. Her gaze was assessing and…distant, like she was calculating the odds of him meaning what he’d said. She must have come to the conclusion that if McKinley would betray Terrance, then he could betray her, too. I bet she planned to feed McKinley the fake gems and disappear, figuring she would have at least a few days to drop out of sight before McKinley learned about the switch. She didn’t count on him knowing about the broken clasp, that it would tip him off immediately that they were fakes.”

Jack said, “McKinley probably read some of the news accounts of the exhibit opening. Unlucky and rather careless of Amy. So where was she going?” Jack asked in an abrupt topic change.

Zoe realized he was trying to confirm that their speculations were on the right track, but Neely frowned, and Alessi remained stone-faced.

Wenzel blinked, which Jack seemed to pick up on as some sort of tell. Jack zeroed in on him. “South Africa? The Caribbean? Come on, you can let us in on that little detail. You were watching McKinley, and he spoke to Amy last night, so I’m sure you’ve run down any travel plans she had.”

Wenzel retrieved the Zugspitze photographs and carefully returned them to a file folder, which he closed with an air of finality. “Belize.”

Neely threw her gaze up to the ceiling and pushed away from the table.

“Excuse me.” Wenzel stood, tucked the files under his arm, and turned to the investigators. “A word, please.” He escorted them out of the room. They left the door open a crack, and Zoe could see them huddled in the hall.

Jack leaned back. “Wenzel believes us, and he’s the important one.”

“What about Neely and Alessi?”

“This is Wenzel’s territory. Even if Interpol is involved, this is Austria. Wenzel makes the calls here.”

“Well, I’m glad he believes us, but we need the other two on our side, too. We can’t stay here forever, and I’d like the option of visiting Italy again someday.”

“I think we can work out something. An exchange—” Jack broke off as the three investigators returned to the room. Wenzel moved confidently, this time taking the center seat. The sour faces of Neely and Alessi bracketed him, but they sat down.
Jack has it right
, Zoe thought. They don’t like the way this is going, but Wenzel has the last word here.

“Amy Beck did have a flight booked,” Wenzel said, with the air of a man getting down to important business. “Tomorrow morning from Innsbruck. Everything you say…is okay. Checks out with our knowledge on McKinley. I believe you. My colleagues are suspicious, but I believe you could be a great asset to us.”

During Wenzel’s labored speech, which had been peppered with many pauses as he thought of the right word, Neely had pressed her lips together. Finally, it seemed, she couldn’t keep the words inside any longer. “Assets,” she said, frustration lacing her words. “Sure, let’s bring them in. Let’s trust them. They can help us find the real Flawless Set.”

Jack tilted his head, ignoring the sarcastic tone. “It wasn’t in Amy’s hotel room?”

“No,” Neely said reluctantly.

“She wouldn’t leave it there. Too vulnerable,” Zoe said. “If McKinley happened to realize that she’d made a switch, the first thing he’d do would be search her room.”

“No, the first thing he did was try to choke the truth out of her,” Jack said. “He was shouting, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’ when I got on the gondola. Never mind that he wasn’t giving her a chance to answer.”

“We are glad you were there to intervene,” Alessi said, his tone serious.

“Anyone would have done the same thing.”

A faint smile crossed Alessi’s face. “No, many would
not
have stepped in.” Clearly he wasn’t sold on the idea that Jack and Zoe weren’t part of the gang of thieves, but he was giving Jack his due for trying to prevent Amy’s death.

“Unless we can get Amy Beck to talk, we’ll probably never find it,” Neely said. “It could be anywhere from Italy to here. She had ample time to hide it or hand it off to someone.”

“Did the medical people check her clothes?” Jack asked.

Neely laughed. “You think she kept it on her?”

Jack shrugged. “What was in Amy’s pockets?”

Wenzel consulted his phone. “Sunglasses, balm for the lips, lift ticket, key, thirty euros, and a passport.”

“Her own?” Jack asked.

“It does not say. I assume so. Otherwise, it would have been noted.”

“Did you say a card key? Like a key to a hotel room?” Zoe asked suddenly.

“No, a key. Metal.”

“Probably to her hotel room,” Jack said. “The smaller hotel and guesthouses don’t have key cards.”

“Right, but in those types of places you turn in your key at the front desk at the guesthouse. Like we did at our hotel in Rome, so it’s probably not a hotel key.” She grinned. “I know where it is. I know where the Flawless Set is.”

Jack sent her a warning look. “You mean you know where part of the Flawless Set is.”

Zoe shook her head slightly, trying to indicate that she wasn’t talking about the bracelet, the real bracelet that was back in Rome, which she knew Jack still considered their bargaining chip.

She sent him a reassuring smile. “No, I know where the whole thing is. We need that key.”

***

“It has to be here,” Zoe said to Harrington as they filed into the room lined with lockers. They were at the base of the ski lift, in one of the ski storage areas. Zoe had asked if Harrington could accompany them to see the locker, and Wenzel had agreed immediately.

“I would be absolutely thrilled to wrap this thing up, but why are you so sure?” Harrington asked. He looked as unflappable as ever, not a gray hair out of place and his trench coat neatly buttoned against the cold. His cheeks were ruddy, and he still had dark circles under his eyes, but his gaze sparkled with a new vitality that hadn’t been there this morning.

“Because I lost Amy earlier today when we arrived here.” We were outside, on the ground level. One moment she was ahead of me in the crowd and the next she’d vanished. I panicked, of course, and spent several minutes searching the crowd, then I raced up the stairs and found her waiting for the gondola.” She noticed Jack was taking in her story as well.

“You didn’t tell me that,” he said.

“I didn’t think it mattered. I’d found her again by the time I talked to you, but when Wenzel mentioned the key, I realized what had happened. She’d come in here to stash something, the Flawless Set of course—what else could it be—in a locker then she took the elevator up to the gondolas. That’s why I never saw her on the stairs and how she seemed to appear out of thin air.”

Jack looked around the room. “It does make sense. It was away from her hotel room, and she could retrieve it after the meeting with McKinley.” The locker depot reminded Zoe a bit of her high school locker room with its tile floor and full size lockers, but instead of a plastic bench in front of the lockers, this room had rows of padded chairs.

Wenzel, Neely, and Alessi had formed a group on the opposite side of the chairs. The ski lift was running again, and it had been a crowded and tense descent with all of them packed into one gondola.

A skier closed a locker, removed the key, and left, giving both huddled groups long stares.

A man in uniform entered, went straight to Wenzel, and handed him a key. Wenzel checked the number and moved to a locker near Zoe’s group. He had trouble fitting the key into the lock.

Zoe had been so sure on the way down the mountain, but now, with everyone’s attention focused on the locker, doubt pricked at her. What if she was wrong? Would she have just wiped out their credibility? Jack had insisted all the investigators agree in writing that their cooperation and return of the Flawless Set would insure immunity for herself and Jack as well as Harrington.

Wenzel finally got the key into the lock. He twisted and pulled. The door fell back and Zoe felt as if she’d swallowed a rock.

It was empty. Zoe shot a panicked look at Jack. “But it should be there.”

Harrington stroked his mustache and murmured, “Don’t give up yet, my dear.”

Instead of turning accusingly toward her as she’d expected, Wenzel was running his hands over the seams of the locker, examining the door, then the hinges, and the walls. Neely danced on either side of his shoulders, while Alessi was circling the room, examining the tops and bottoms of the lockers.

Wenzel, his head inside the locker, said something in German. Everyone crowded closer. Alessi stopped peering under the chairs and joined them. “I have found it. It is taped to the top.” As he spoke, he was working, pulling at something, then it gave and a cloth-wrapped bundle thudded to the bottom of the locker. Wenzel cringed at the noise, then carefully picked up the tape-encrusted bundle. He pulled out a pocketknife—a Swiss Army knife Zoe noted distractedly—and cut an incision in the tape.

He carefully opened the slit.

Zoe hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath, and it came out in a whoosh. He used the knife blade to extract the necklace. As his hand rose in the air and the strand of diamonds emerged, flashing and sparkling, they were all silent. The diamonds were incredibly beautiful—stunning. They literally took everyone’s breath away.

Wenzel peered into the bag then turned sharply to Zoe. “The earrings are here, but no bracelet.”

“I said I knew where the Flawless Set was. I never said the pieces were together.”

“I could get used to this,” Zoe said over the noise of the siren as the streets of Rome zipped by the window of the police car.

Jack looked across their coats, which were piled in the seat between them. They’d shed their coats the minute they stepped out of the airport into the balmy sunshine. It was sixty-eight degrees, but after the Alps, it felt as if they’d landed in the tropics. “I just hope this really is an escort to the bag deposit shop and not a one-way trip to the local police station.”

Zoe slipped on her sandals then stowed the bulky snow boots in the floorboard. “Oh, I think Alessi will keep his word.”

“Then you have more faith in the police than I do.”

“No, I know Alessi wants the Flawless Set, the
complete
Flawless Set. We have the advantage.”

“Until we turn over the bracelet,” Jack said.

“We’ve got a plan. It will work. You’re usually not this pessimistic.”

“I know.” Jack scrubbed his hand over his face. “Must be the lack of sleep. That nap on the plane didn’t help much.”

They had been up most of the night, repeating their story again and again to various officials. Finally, Wenzel had cleared them to leave Austria, and Zoe was sorry that he wasn’t coming to Rome with them. He was their strongest ally, but she supposed that he wouldn’t have as much pull in Italy as he did in Austria. Alessi had arranged for them to be on the first flight from Innsbruck to Rome the next morning, so they’d cleared out of the hostel and headed directly to the airport in the early hours of the morning, all with Alessi constantly by their side. Zoe hadn’t seen Neely, the representative from Scotland Yard with the American accent, since they left the room with the lockers.

Zoe glanced out the back window at the police car behind them. Alessi was in the passenger seat. She couldn’t see Harrington in the back. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Alessi has thawed quite a bit toward us.”

“You think?”

“Yes. He’s not glowering at us constantly. That’s an improvement. I think he might actually smile before the day is over.”

The narrow streets of central Rome closed in around them as the driver navigated through the motor scooters, cars, and pedestrians clogging the roads. The driver double-parked in front of the bag deposit shop, and cut the siren, then Zoe could hear the cacophony of the city: car horns, voices, engine noise, and distant sirens.

Alessi pulled in behind them, and he and Harrington joined them on the sidewalk. Alessi said a few words to the officer who had driven them, then gestured for Zoe and Jack to precede him into the shop.

Jack checked his phone. “We need a moment,” he said to Alessi while scanning the street. Alessi frowned. Jack raised his hand and a man in a dark suit and gray tie crossed the street to join them. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties. His neatly trimmed blond hair and a clean-shaven face gave him a fresh-scrubbed All-American look.

“Mark Downs, American Embassy,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand.

“Thank you for coming,” Jack said. “My wife, Zoe.” Jack proceeded to introduce him to everyone, ending with Alessi.

As Mark shook Alessi’s hand, he said a few sentences in Italian. The only words Zoe caught were good morning. With a glance at Jack, Mark switched back to English, saying, “I’m only here as a formality. Just to make sure the agreements are abided by.” He looked back to Alessi. “I’m sure you understand.”

Alessi nodded. “Now, we proceed?”

“Yes.” Jack propelled Zoe along with him through the door Alessi held open.

“Feel better now?” Zoe asked Jack.

“Immensely.”

“Good. I’m glad you were able to get in touch with the embassy last night.”

“It can’t hurt to have a little insurance,” Jack said, catching Harrington’s eye as they passed the rows of washing machines on their way to the luggage storage counter at the back.

“You’ll get no argument from me there,” Harrington said.

“Alessi is glowering again,” Zoe said with a sigh. “Well, maybe this will make him happy.” The same Indian man who had helped them before stood behind the counter, looking leery as the large group approached, but when Zoe handed over the luggage ticket his face cleared. He was back within seconds, placing the suitcase on the counter. Zoe signed for it.

Jack unzipped it, and Zoe pulled out the blanket, feeling the hard lump of the lotion bottle in the middle. She and Jack exchanged a relieved look. Neither one of them had mentioned the fear that the bottle might be gone, but she knew the thought had crossed both of their minds. She unwrapped the bundle and handed the bottle to Alessi.

He scowled. “Here?”

“Yes.”

He muttered something about a pink panther before spreading the blanket on the counter.

Zoe looked at Jack. “Pink Panther? Like the gang?” Zoe had heard about the group of thieves called the Pink Panther gang, who had pulled off daring, attention-getting robberies.

Jack shrugged. Alessi squeezed the bottle and dollops of lotion landed on the blanket. The man behind the counter shuffled closer, then backed away. Zoe thought he looked like he wanted to call the police, but since the police were here, creating a mess on his counter he didn’t know what to do.

Harrington leaned in and said quietly, “I believe he was referring to the original Pink Panther movies. In one of them, a diamond is hidden in face cream.”

“I had no idea,” Zoe said. “There was nowhere else to hide it.”

Alessi banged the bottle against the counter like he was hammering a nail. A string of dollops trailed out across the blanket. He dropped the bottle and used the corner of the blanket to wipe the lotion away, revealing a row of flashing diamonds. The man behind the counter gasped. Alessi’s scowl disappeared.

Zoe looked at Jack. “I told you he’d smile.”

***

Nigel crossed the room to Gemma’s desk, a lidded cup of coffee in each hand. He handed one to Gemma. “Café Mocha, your favorite, I believe.”

“Yes, it is. Thank you.”

Nigel raised his cup to her. “Nice work on the Flawless case and the country home robberies.”

She raised her cup as well. “Thanks.” She looked at the folded newspaper he held clutched to his side under his elbow. “Nice photo.”

Under the headline, “Flawless Find: Art Squad Recovers Famous Diamonds,” were two photos, one a close-up of the Flawless Set and the other of Nigel behind a podium at the press conference.

“I’m not photogenic at all. Too much reflection,” he said, rubbing his hand over his head.

“I meant the diamonds.”

“Of course you did. So, what happened with Terrance Croftly? I would have liked to have been in on that interrogation, but duty called,” he said raising the newspaper.

“Croftly couldn’t wait to sell out McKinley and Beck,” Gemma said. “He talked so much that it more than made up for their silence.”

“So he admitted to receiving stolen gems and his intent to sell them?”

“Yep. He gave me the background on the scheme. He, McKinley, and Beck grew up in the same neighborhood. They went their separate ways a few years ago. Croftly went to train with his uncle, the jewel cutter. McKinley hit the big time with the celebrity gossip show host job, and Amy bounced around from job to job in London, working as a bank teller, and then a few different secretarial jobs. They stayed in touch.”

“Sounds normal enough.”

“It does, except that McKinley wasn’t satisfied with his job or his income. Ambitious was how Croftly described it, always wanting more.”

“So a job interacting with people who made pots of money for singing a song or reciting lines in a movie must have rubbed him the wrong way.”

“Yes, but he didn’t go outside the lines until a starlet he was dating was written out of her television show and suddenly didn’t have any money to pay for her extravagant lifestyle. McKinley told Croftly it was the woman who came up with the burglary insurance scam idea. He agreed to help her stage the theft of some of her jewelry.”

“Handy that he should have a jewel cutter as an old friend.”

“Isn’t it?” Gemma said. “They pulled it off. The insurance company paid, and she had enough to stay afloat until her next part came through.”

“And a scheme was born?” Nigel asked.

Gemma nodded. “Apparently the word got out to the glitterati that if you needed cash and had some nice jewels on hand, McKinley was your man. Then Amy got the job working for Harrington and they brought her into it.”

Nigel sat down on the corner of her desk. “The opportunity must have been too good to pass up—all that information on those nice gems just sitting in country homes with lax security.”

“Yes, but Amy insisted on some guidelines. They each got an equal cut of the proceeds, and all their transfers had to be made in a public place. That’s why she insisted on meeting in Idalp.”

“Doesn’t sound like she trusted her partners completely.”

“With good reason,” Gemma said. “McKinley planned to cut out on her and Terrance. He had a flight booked that evening to New York. I suppose he thought that if he double crossed them, they wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

“They certainly wouldn’t be able to go to the police,” Nigel said.

Gemma leaned back in her chair. “That old saying about no honor among thieves is true. Beck and McKinley both had plans to escape alone with the Flawless Set.”

“No plans like that for Croftly?”

“Not that we’ve found, but he’s jumped at the chance to provide evidence on the other two, so he’s not exactly being loyal either.”

“And the gems from the country house thefts? What’s the status on those?”

“All recovered. Croftly removed them from their settings, but we found them exactly where he said they would be—stashed in a carrier bag in a storage facility. It will take some work, but it looks like they’ll all be able to be reset and returned, even the medieval cross.”

“Excellent.” Nigel tilted his head to see what was on her desk. “Ah, the Claesz, again. I think you’ve earned a few days to work on that. Carry on.” He handed her the newspaper. “For your wall,” he said and moved on to his office.

Gemma opened a drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and clipped the photo of the Flawless Set from the paper. She stuck a piece of tape on it and aligned it with two other clippings of paintings that were taped to the filing cabinet that edged her desk.

She sipped her coffee and studied the clippings with a feeling of intense satisfaction. Three closed cases. Three recoveries. Three recoveries were nothing compared to some of the old-timers on the Art Squad, but she’d helped recover stolen goods—priceless, beautiful items. She’d played a part in bringing them back from the seemingly bottomless pit of the black market.

She finished the coffee and swung her chair back to her desktop. “Now back to my Dutch paintings.”

***

Harrington raised his glass across the linen-covered table. “To uncovering the thieves and recovering the Flawless Set.”

Zoe and Jack touched their glasses against his. Zoe and Jack had met Harrington after the siesta at a café with a view of the Pantheon.

“Will it be back on display soon?” Jack asked.

“Tomorrow. I’m extending a few days to supervise the transition and wrap up everything with the Italian government. Then I’ll be heading home.”

“Just like us.” Zoe glanced around the piazza with a sigh. “Not quite the Roman holiday we expected, but at least we did get to see Rome.”

“With the added side-trip to the Alps,” Jack said.

“True,” Zoe said. “It was a one of a kind trip.” She took another sip of her fizzy drink and tried to fight off the sense of impending letdown, the end-of-the-party disappointment feeling, that had crept over her as they returned to the hotel and began repacking their suitcases for their flight in the morning.

There was no travel manuscript waiting when she got back—not that she wanted more manuscripts, but at least it would be work, which would bring in some money. Being a suspect in a jewel heist had pushed thoughts about work out of her head, but now that flat feeling was creeping back.

“So what has happened with Amy and McKinley?” Jack asked, drawing her attention back to the conversation.

“Bit of an international tussle, that one. The Austrians want to charge them and of course, we—the Brits, I mean—do, too. Then there is Italy, where the theft of the Flawless Set occurred, but we now have evidence tying both of them, as well as their jeweler accomplice, to the thefts at the country houses. Once the paperwork and jurisdictions are sorted out, I believe Amy will have charges filed against her here in Italy as well as in England. She’ll have to recover from her broken leg, but it’s mending nicely, I’m told. McKinley will face charges in England as well as several European countries where he made his deals. The courts will sort it out. I’m afraid neither one of them will get long sentences. In the end, they were thieves. Property crime isn’t punished as severely as violent crime. The bright spot is that the gems have been recovered. Croftly had only removed the gems from their settings and hadn’t recut them yet, so Millbank and Proust will be able to return the gems to the owners.”

“And save on hefty payouts?” Jack asked.

“Yes, indeed. The most important aspect of the whole thing in Millbank and Proust’s view.

“Has anyone figured out how she did it? How she got the Flawless Set out?” Zoe asked.

“She’s not talking, but Alessi told me they found emails confirming she ordered a second, hollowed-out plaque as well as copies of the Flawless Set. She also contacted a hacker and had him get into the power grid and cut the power to the palazzo as well as some of the surrounding buildings for several days leading up to the opening, creating intermittent power outages. On the night of the opening after everyone left, he cut the power to the palazzo, allowing her to get in and get into the Flawless display. Since temporary blackouts were part of a prior pattern, and there was also a thunderstorm in the area, the police discounted it.

“While the power was out, she used the codes she’d taken from my computer to open the display and switched the real diamonds for the copies. The next morning, she slipped into your hotel, took your room key while you were out, and planted the bracelet in your room. Then she raised the alarm about the switch and contacted the police with the anonymous tip about the bracelet being in your hotel room.”