The Property of a Lady (49 page)

“There’s no problem, Mr. Warrender,” he said. “Obviously we thought about the risk. We put a limo at Genie’s disposal and two bodyguards on her house. I shouldn’t
worry. She said she might be going away for a couple of days. She also said she knew she would be okay.”

“Wanna bet?” Cal said with a snarl, slamming down the phone and heading for the parking lot.

He covered the distance from Foggy Bottom to N Street in five minutes flat and sat in the car, staring at Genie’s house. It was dark. Fear gripped his throat as he walked up the steps and peered at the windows. All the curtains were drawn. He hesitated, his finger on the bell, then he tried the door handle instead. It opened under his touch and he stepped warily inside, calling her name. He heard a distant muffled bark and remembered Genie had a dog. He groped for the light switch, to the left of the door. The hall was tiny, a few feet of polished floor with a pretty rug and an antique console with his two dozen cream roses arranged in a tall crystal vase.

“Genie?” he called again, opening the door leading off to the left. He turned on the light and stared at the empty room. Oriental rugs, white sofas, flowers, soft lights—but no Genie. The door on the other side of the hall refused to budge and he put his shoulder to it savagely. It gave suddenly and a huge dog flew at him, lathering him with excited licks, barking with joy at being freed.

“Okay, okay, boy,” Cal said soothingly, trying to push the door wider. “Where’s Genie, eh? You tell me, boy.” He slid through the gap into the kitchen, peering behind the door to see what was stopping it. Two men lay on the floor, their wrists and feet bound and their eyes and mouths taped. They were ominously still. He dropped to his knees, feeling for a pulse. It was slow but they were alive, and he guessed they had been drugged. He searched the rest of the house quickly but there was no sign of Genie.

There was a wall phone by the kitchen counter. He called an ambulance and the police and then the FBI, and told them Genie was missing. Then he called Cornish at
home and told him to get his ass over to his office right away.

Even though they saw him every day, the White House Security detail at the west gate still checked his pass and the marine with the machine gun inspected his car before they let him through the gate. Cal thought furiously that it made no difference that he was in a tearing hurry, but he knew they were right. They could never afford to take chances.

Lights were still on in some of the offices and a presidential reception for some foreign dignitary was going on. The White House never slept. Cal checked his messages with the switchboard. There was just one and it wasn’t from Genie. In fact, it wasn’t from anyone he knew. He dialed the number and asked for Nurse Sara Milgrim.

She was calling from Fairlawns for one of the residents, Nurse Milgrim told him. It was difficult for the lady to call herself, you see, because she was ninety and a little bit deaf. She knew about him from the newspapers and had seen him on television, and was most insistent she had to see him personally. “She said to tell you she would only speak to you, sir. I don’t know what she means but she said it had to do with,” Nurse Milgrim lowered her voice. “It had to do with the Ivanoff emerald.”

Cal sat up straight. Cornish would have to wait. “Who is she? What’s her name?”

“Why, Missie O’Bryan, sir.” Nurse Milgrim’s voice faltered.

“O’Bryan, you say. Right, tell her I’ll be there right away. And thank you, Nurse Milgrim, for taking the trouble to call me.”

“I did it for her, not you,” Nurse Milgrim said tartly. “And when you get here, remember she’s an old lady. It’s very late and I don’t want you upsetting her.”

“I promise,” he agreed with a half smile.

Maryland

Missie glanced at herself in the hand mirror, patting her hair shakily, making sure that Milgrim had done a good job and she was looking her best for her visitor. A bit of the old vanity returning, she thought with a tired smile. It seemed everything from the past was returning to haunt her in her old age. Except Anna. Why hadn’t she called? Or come to see her? Hadn’t the murders of those two men convinced her what a dangerous game she was playing?

She shook her head and put away the mirror. She slept so little these days she was always glad when the early TV programs came on to keep her company. But she hadn’t expected to see Misha’s eyes looking at her from the screen this morning. Nor had she ever expected to hear the name Solovsky again. And now suddenly Anna was going to be exposed on television and she was afraid for her life.

She had wondered desperately what to do. She knew of no one who could help, except maybe the President. And that was when she had seen Cal Warrender on TV. They said he was the young man investigating the Ivanoff mystery and she remembered reading about him in the newspapers, “an up-and-coming young politician,” they called him, and “a man to watch.” They even said he had the President’s ear and that his views were respected, and he was always pictured at those Washington parties. Suddenly he had seemed the answer to her prayers. Surely a man who had the President’s ear and who was also involved in the Ivanoff affair would understand what she had to tell him. He would help Anna. No doubt Milgrim thought she had finally gone round the bend with all her talk of the Ivanoff emerald, but she had been forced to use the name in order to convince Mr. Warrender to see her.

Her hand trembled as she took out the beautiful jeweled frame with its photograph of Misha. She placed it on
the table beside her, displaying it for the first time in more than half a century.

“Well, Misha,” she said softly, “I’m going to have to break my promise after all. I’m going to have to tell them Azaylee’s story. Because if I don’t, my darling, then what you feared will come true and they will kill your granddaughter.”

After folding her hands in her lap, she sat quietly, waiting for Cal Warrender to arrive.

Missie was not what Cal had expected from an old lady. She had the kind of regal beauty even age could not wither, with her upswept silver hair and her magnificent violet eyes that were assessing him so anxiously.

Nor was Cal what Missie had expected. “You are younger than I imagined from television,” she complained in a voice as silvery as her hair, “but then, everyone seems impossibly young to me these days. Even my doctors are young enough to be my grandchildren.”

He smiled, “Do you have many grandchildren, then?”

She shook her head. “Only the one, by proxy as you might say. And thereby hangs the story. Please sit down, Mr. Warrender.” She waved her hand to the chair pulled close beside her, as Nurse Milgrim hurried in with a tea tray. “This may be a long night.”

“Not too late now,” Sara Milgrim warned anxiously. “Remember we haven’t taken our pills.”

“I have no need of pills tonight,” she replied, shaking her head impatiently. “There’s work to be done.” Her eyes were fixed on Cal’s as she added, “And I am hoping that this young man can do it for me.”

Milgrim handed him a cup. “It’s Earl Grey,” she said, glancing at him disapprovingly. “It’s all she drinks.”

“That will be all for the moment,” Missie told her haughtily. “Mr. Warrender and I have a great deal to talk about. Please do not disturb us.”

The nurse’s worried eyes met Cal’s and he said reassuringly,
“I’ll take care of her. If I see she’s getting too tired, I’ll send for you—and a fresh supply of Earl Grey.”

As the door closed behind her Missie said agitatedly, “There’s no time to be wasted, Mr. Warrender. Anna Ivanoff is in great danger.” She nodded her head as he reacted to the name. “Yes, she is Misha Ivanoff’s granddaughter. You see, here is his photograph.” She handed him the beautiful frame with its princely crest. “Anna is the daughter of Xenia Ivanoff, who escaped with me from Russia in 1917. It is a long story, most of which you have probably guessed by now, but I will fill in the details. And I will also tell you what happened to Misha’s son, Alexei.”

The old fear flooded through her again as she looked at Cal, wondering if she could really trust him, a stranger she only knew about from the press and her television set, but she had no choice. She was too old to be of any help now to Anna. Someone else must take over her role.

“It all began on the night of my eighteenth birthday,” she said softly. “We were at Varishnya, and even as we drank the champagne, we knew it was unlikely we would ever see each other again….”

The miniature tape recorder in Cal’s pocket made a faint whirring sound as he switched it on, but she didn’t hear it, and he listened, fascinated, as she unraveled a mystery for him that had captured the attention of nations for over half a century. He nodded when she finally told him about Eddie Arnhaldt; his suspicions had been correct—there
was
a third player in the game.

At last Missie leaned back in the chair, a flicker of exhaustion crossing her face, and he said worriedly, “This is very hard on you, ma’am, reliving so much fear and emotion. Maybe I should go now, and let you get some rest.”

“No,” she said, straightening her already ramrod back. “I’ve only told you the beginning. Now I must tell you the end. It’s important you know everything for Anna’s sake. But perhaps I’ll take a small glass of brandy, if you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Warrender.”

“Look here, ma’am,” he said, pouring the brandy and handing it to her, “you cannot go on calling a man to whom you are baring your soul ‘Mr. Warrender.’ Please, won’t you call me Cal?”

She smiled. “Is it short for Calvin?”

He shook his head. “Callum, for my Irish ancestors.”

Her eyes grew dreamy. “Ah, I knew an Irishman once,” she said, forgetting she had already told him about O’Hara. “A strong, brawny, red-headed charmer of an Irishman….” She sipped her brandy, thinking, and then she began.

“When we returned to New York from Germany, I left Azaylee and Beulah at a small, anonymous hotel on West Fifty-seventh Street, the kind used by traveling salesmen and the like. And then I went immediately down to Rivington Street to find Rosa….”

New York

The dark, sharp-faced young woman who answered Rosa’s door looked her slowly up and down, obviously impressed by what she saw.

“Nu
, so what does such a smart lady want with the Perelmans?” she asked, staring enviously at Missie’s expensive blue coat.

Missie peered past her into the room she knew so well, only now it looked different, strangely quiet, neat and tidy with no children’s clothes and toys scattered around. Yet there were the same old sticks of furniture and Rosa’s bits and pieces of china and pots and her Shabbas candlesticks. It was all Rosa’s and yet it didn’t look like Rosa anymore. She hardly dared ask where Rosa was, she was so afraid something bad had happened to her.

The young woman shrugged. “Gone,” she said, “and good riddance to her. What a man like Meyer Perelman was doing with such a lazy slut I’ll never know. Every
night he would come to the union meetings and tell me about how lazy she was, how she neglected his kids, squandered his money … so finally he kicked her out.” Her hard dark eyes were defiant as they met Missie’s. “Soon as he is divorced he will marry me. I will be the new Mrs. Perelman.”

Missie gripped the doorpost, numb with shock. “Where did she go?”

The girl shrugged. “Meyer was too good to her. Even though I said he should not do so much, he gave her money to feed the kids. Next we hear she’s taken off and gone to California. Hollywood, no less.” She smirked disparagingly. “Maybe with her looks she thinks she’s gonna be a movie star. She should be so lucky!”

“Where
is she living?” Missie stamped her foot angrily.

The girl shrugged. “Meyer doesn’t know, and what’s more he doesn’t care.”

“But what about the children?”

The girl stared at her thoughtfully for a few moments, “You know, kids is kids,” she said finally. “Meyer says he can have a dozen more kids if he wants.” She shrugged again, aiming a lazy, malicious smile at Missie. “A young woman like me can give a man like Meyer Perelman everything he wants.”

Missie thought of Rosa and her girls, kicked out of their pitiful home for the sake of this hard-faced bitch, and she wanted to kill her. She reached out suddenly and slapped her hard across her cheek. “Don’t you
ever
call Rosa Perelman a slut again,” she cried. “It’s you who are the slut, living here openly with a married man. A father who cares nothing for his own children! You and Meyer Perelman deserve each other.”