Cut and Run (29 page)

 

Disgusted, Wilhelmina sat on the chair at the dusty Steinway concert grand in her niece's quiet living room. The bright winter sun streamed in through the big windows, and she could hear the traffic down on Central Park West. She was tired. She had just spent the last three hours searching every corner of her niece's monstrous apartment for the Minstrel's Rough. Wilhelmina herself had never seen the Minstrel, but she knew enough about diamonds to feel sure she'd recognize the world's largest uncut diamond when she saw it.

But she'd found neither the Minstrel nor any indication that Juliana had stashed it elsewhere or had even heard of the legendary stone. All she'd found of interest, minor interest at that, was a gigantic closet full of old clothes and a half-dozen different kinds of colored mousse—and cosmetics! Wilhelmina had never seen so much face paint! Such colors! And she didn't for a moment believe they belonged to a friend, as Juliana had suggested. Juliana was too solitary a person, and somehow the things reminded Wilhelmina of her niece. Whatever the case, that was her business and of no consequence to her aging aunt.

Yet Wilhelmina was still positive that Juliana had the Minstrel's Rough. It would explain so much. It was also logical, and the old Dutchwoman was not one to back away prematurely from what made sense.

At any rate, it had been a frustrating morning. The man posted outside the Beresford continued to stand in the cold, but Wilhelmina paid no attention to him whatever. But better to be aware of him than not.

She had made a cup of café au lait and now was tempted to play the piano. Would any of Juliana's monumental talent seep from the ivory keys into her old bones? Bah, she thought, I must be more tired than I feel.

The Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 was open on the rack. Wilhelmina knew it to be a difficult piece, but she'd never played it. She wondered if she should give it a try now, to clear her mind.

She pressed middle C very slowly, and no sound came out.

Hendrik…

Yes, he was in her thoughts. Catharina had called, tearfully telling her older sister about seeing him that morning. Wilhelmina wished she'd been able to speak up and ask Catharina to relate every detail of their conversation…how he'd looked, sounded, must have felt. Everything.

Not that she cared, of course.

“You're kidding yourself, Willie,” she muttered. “You still care. You always will.”

Suddenly she felt eerily alone amidst all that space, with so many people in the city around her. At home in Rotterdam, she never thought about being alone.

“Liar,” she said aloud, with vehemence.

She jumped up, suddenly spooked, and ran around into all the rooms, pulling drapes, checking the locks on the doors and windows, and then came back to the living room, shaking. She turned on the stereo. She didn't care what she listened to. Anything besides the cries and the screams and the prayers and the loneliness that too often whispered to her in the night.

Hendrik…may God damn you to hell!

And not just for what he'd done—but for showing her what might have been.

 

“You're being unfair,” Juliana informed Matthew as he walked with her to the shuttle gate. “Unfair, unreasonable, and damned provoking.”

He grinned. “Damned provoking, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so are you, sweet cheeks.”

“Me?”

“Uh huh. You're holding out on me.”

She didn't say a word.

“Maybe not much, maybe a lot. With you, it's hard to tell. But whatever you're not telling me, I figure I don't need to know. It's just not worth pulling you deeper into this mess. Whether by accident or design, two people are dead. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough.”

“I think we should work together,” she told him as the announcement came for her flight to begin boarding.

“God save me.”

“You have no right to tell me what to do.”

“I have every right to keep you from bird-dogging me—and I can do it.”

Her dark eyes gleamed with frustration and excitement, which both worried and pleased him. But the paleness was still there, the bruise on her wrist. He admired her for not wanting to run, but he couldn't let her determination undermine his own common sense. Having a piano player strutting around behind him wasn't going to accomplish a damn thing. And there was no guarantee she was ever going to get around to telling him what she knew about the Minstrel's Rough. She didn't believe in tit for tat.

Not, of course, that he'd told her everything.

“Matthew, listen to me,” she said, “I'm involved in this whether or not you like it.”

“That's my point: I don't like it. Get on the plane, Juliana. Go home, go to Vermont, go to the Club Aquarian, go any goddamn place you want to—just stay the hell away from me.”

“Maybe I'll go see Sam Ryder and find out if he's more cooperative.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Matthew jumped forward and pulled her around by the shoulders so she faced him. “Don't screw around with Ryder.” The words came out dark and angry, but he didn't raise his voice and his mouth hardly moved. “He'll eat you alive.”

His tone, his expression, his firm grip on her would have intimidated the hell out of anyone else. He knew it. But Juliana just wrinkled up her face. “That's not your problem.”

“I'll make it my goddamn problem.”

“I'm not your concern,” she said.

“The hell you're not.”

She was as worn out as he was, as testy, as independent, as used to getting her own damn way. She was never nice for the sake of being nice. It wasn't necessary in her world. Wasn't necessary in his, either. He looked at the uncompromising set of her jaw and her lovely mouth, and he said the hell with it. He pulled her even closer and kissed her hard, briefly, tearing himself away before the warmth of her penetrated too deeply.

Just as he'd wanted himself, a kiss wasn't enough. It wasn't even close.

“I don't want to see you zipped up in a body bag,” he said.

She teetered a bit, and he was pleased to note he'd had the same dizzying effect on her that she'd had on him. But she recovered. He could see her kicking herself back into gear. “So that's it, right?” she said hotly. “You kiss me and pack me off like you're Davy Crockett off to the Alamo or wherever he was off to.”

“That's right,” he said.

She tossed her head back, insulted.

Stark laughed. “You liked the kiss, sweetheart, and don't try to pretend otherwise. You kissed me back.”

“A reflex. Like playing arpeggios.”

“I don't think I've ever had one of my kisses compared to playing arpeggios.”

“Well.” She fell into the long line for the shuttle to New York. “If Aunt Willie and I are followed again, I'll know who
not
to call.”

Matthew's thick black brows drew together in a deep frown. Christ, if he only knew when to take her seriously. Her high cheekbones were pink, the rest of her face dead white. What the hell was she talking about this time? Followed—
again?
Bullshit. It was just a ploy. But Aunt Willie…

“Is that woman in New York?”

Juliana just smiled and waved.

Matthew swore, but she continued to ignore him. Finally, swearing some more, he scrambled for a ticket and got in line, at the end because she refused to let him cut in front of her.

She did, however, arrange to have him sit next to her. Their shoulders brushed lightly. Arpeggios, he thought, Jesus. She looked at him up close, her eyes sparkling. “I have an ulterior motive for permitting you to sit beside me,” she said.

He was thinking she meant their kiss had knocked some sense of fair play into her and she was going to tell him about Aunt Willie and being followed and maybe even something about the Minstrel's Rough. She might even want another kiss.

But she went on, matter-of-fact, “Now I know about helicopters. So tell me about platoon sergeants.” She smoothed her skirt and looked over at him. “What exactly is a platoon?”

C
atharina was impatient for the last of her customers to leave so that she could close up the shop. Over and over again she had berated herself for not telling Hendrik she had the Minstrel. That way, she could have protected Juliana—and even Wilhelmina. She could lead Hendrik away from them, just as Johannes had tried to do. It was a good plan; anyway, good or not, it had to be done.

If only she'd thought to do it when Hendrik was there.

But she would have another chance. She would
make
one.

The cleanup crew already had the kitchen spotless, and there was just one trio of friends lingering over a pot of tea and a tray of butter cookies. Catharina didn't rush them. She laid six miniature cream puffs in a box to take home to her husband; they were his favorite. He was urging her to go to their country house in Connecticut for a few days and make wreaths, gathering the pine cones, sprigs of evergreen, and perhaps some grapevines from their own woods. She remembered herself urging Juliana to go to Vermont. Was there really anywhere they could hide?

The little doorbell tinkled, and two men entered the shop. The trio had split up their bill, and each young woman was counting out her money; they had on their coats already. Catharina started to tell the men the shop was closed, but she stopped herself, staring at them instead. One was perhaps in his early fifties with a blunt, mean face and iron-gray hair. He wore a navy blue sweater that emphasized the breadth and strength of his shoulders; she thought the sweater was intentionally snug. She noticed the bulge of his thigh muscles beneath the sturdy pants. The second man was perhaps twenty, rangy and dark, wearing a jacket and baggy jeans. Catharina didn't think they had come to buy cream puffs.

“Afternoon,” the older one said, nodding in greeting.

Catharina nodded back, holding her head regally, and when she spoke, her Dutch accent sounded exaggerated, even to her. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”

The older man laughed, a twangy snort that she found disturbing. “Now that's the kind of talk I like. Yeah, you can help me—Mrs. Fall, right?”

“Yes, that is correct.” Again, the heavy accent.

“Sergeant Phillip Bloch.”

She closed up the white box, “What is it you want?”

“The Minstrel's Rough.”

 

Matthew had reluctantly agreed to split up with Juliana at the airport so she could fetch her mother, mostly because he wanted to have a word alone with Wilhelmina Peperkamp. She pulled open the door wearing an apron that had sixteenth-notes across the front and fit rather cozily around the old Dutchwoman's ample middle.

“You Peperkamps get around,” he said.

Wilhelmina was in a no-nonsense mood. “Come in, Mr. Stark.”

He did.

“Where's Juliana?”

He explained as he followed the old Dutchwoman down the hall to the kitchen. He remembered her story about feeding her brother's cat, but she showed no indication the silly lie embarrassed her. She just seemed peculiarly glad to have some company. She was an independent, stubborn woman—a Peperkamp.

“You two are being watched, I see,” he said. He'd compelled Juliana to describe the man who'd followed them and had spotted him outside the Museum of Natural History. He'd stopped himself just short of going over and pounding the bastard into the pavement.

“Yes, but he's not an expert. We have our ways of dealing with him.”

J.J. Pepper, for one. Juliana hadn't mentioned her on the plane, but Matthew had no doubt her services were called into use to handle her Burberry man.

The kitchen was a large, airy room, its faded elegance in need of remodeling, and Stark wondered how Juliana fit in with the rest of the crowd in the prestigious Beresford. Knowing her, she probably didn't care one way or the other—or even notice such things. She had any number of small, upscale appliances, but they looked relatively unused. Wilhelmina had already started cleaning the place. There was a mop standing in a bucket of sudsy water, and the counters were sparkling.

“I thought apartments were small in New York,” Wilhelmina said as she squatted down and worked at a spot on the floor with a fingernail, “but this place! Did you see that giant green something in the entry? I can't decide what it is. I've watered it, but who knows. Maybe it doesn't need water. How is your investigation coming?”

Stark debated grabbing a sponge but leaned against a counter instead. Yes, a woman of action was Wilhelmina Peperkamp. “Facts seem to be coming my way instead of me going theirs.”

“Ahh, yes. I know what you mean.”

He had a sneaking suspicion she did. “I'm glad to see you're just washing floors, but I have a feeling that isn't all that you're up to. Look, this thing's getting serious—”

She glanced up at him, annoyed. “My brother's body is being cremated, Mr. Stark. He died of a heart attack, but who's to say what brought it on? You don't need to tell me about danger, I assure you. I was in the Dutch Underground Resistance during the war. I know danger.”

Properly chastened, Stark watched her get up and swish the mop around, then wring it out. She attacked the floor under the table, complaining because Juliana had such a big kitchen for one person and so many gadgets and who knew how to work such things and there was no food in the place. No cheese. She'd already cleaned out the refrigerator, apparently, and thrown out everything that didn't look right to her. What it might look like to Juliana didn't seem to matter a whole hell of a lot. She finished up with the floor, dumped out the water, and proceeded to scour the sink, working fast and furiously.

Matthew found her opinionated and critical, but she also seemed to practice her own brand of tolerance: you could do as you goddamn well pleased, just so long as you didn't expect her to approve. Hell, maybe he didn't need to worry; the old battleax could probably handle Phil Bloch.

“Tell me, Mr. Stark,” she said, drying her hands with a linen dishtowel, “are you planning to write another book on these past few days?”

“Did Juliana tell you about
LZ?
”

Again annoyance flashed in her plain, square face. “No, I read it when it came out—in English, of course. I avoid translations whenever possible. It was an excellent work, but naturally with a book like that, there's always the danger it's the only one you have to write. Either you wrote that book over and over—under different titles, of course, and perhaps the readers don't mind, but still it's the same—or you just stop. If a new idea comes, it comes. If not, at least you won't starve.” She nodded at his feet, adding, “You have good boots, Mr. Stark. I'd say you're doing all right.”

“I'll tell my editor: judge me by my boots, not my lack of production.”

“You're lazy?”

A sin in Wilhelmina Peperkamp's world, to be sure. She scowled at some expensive European hand cream Juliana had on the sink but squirted some out and rubbed it into her tough old hands.

“Unmotivated might be a better word,” Stark said. “But never mind. You and Juliana are being watched—”

“Catharina, too,” Wilhelmina added perfunctorily.

“I suspected as much. I think it's because someone thinks one or all of you can lead him to the Minstrel's Rough.”

Wilhelmina put the cap back on the hand cream and looked at him, her stony expression matching his. “You know, Mr. Stark, if one looks closely, one can see how your eyes tell what is in your heart. It's not easy to see, perhaps, but it's there. You're not so tough.” She smiled at his look of surprise. “Why don't you just tell me what you know?”

“I haven't made all the connections yet,” he said, determined not to let the old Dutchwoman get to him. “I'm trying. But you put me at a disadvantage by not leveling with me. What do you know about the Minstrel?”

She shrugged, but he didn't for a second believe her look of nonchalance and ignorance. “It's a legendary diamond. I've never seen it and have no proof it exists, but I grew up in the diamond business. I've heard stories. If it could be located and successfully cut, it would be worth millions.”

And what would Phillip Bloch do with that much money? He was a retired army sergeant. “Why do people think you have it?”

“I don't know that people do think that. Do you?”

“It's a damn good guess.” He saw that his dark looks weren't inspiring her to talk. Another Peperkamp trait. “What about your sister?”

“Achh, she bakes cookies. She always could cook. In the war, she would come up with so many ways to stretch what food we had. Here, I've some coffee made. I don't know why Juliana doesn't have a regular coffeepot, but—” she shrugged “—one adapts.”

“Your sister doesn't like to talk about the war, does she?”

“No.”

Stark nodded. “I can understand that.”

“Yes,” Wilhelmina said, “I believe you can. For me, it's more difficult to understand, because I think we cannot afford not to talk. But Juliana's never pushed.”

“Good for her.”

The coffee maker, Stark noted, was top-of-the-line. He took a seat with her at a high-gloss rectangular oak table and watched without expression as she added two tablespoons of canned evaporated milk to her coffee. Aunt Willie's coffee was strong enough to kill a horse, but he drank it anyway.

“Do you want to tell me about Hendrik de Geer?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You knew him during the war?”

“Yes, but that's of no consequence.”

“At this point, probably not,” Matthew agreed. “What's important right now is getting you three out of the reach of the man I think de Geer's been working for. I'll help you get somewhere safe, then I'll figure out a way to stop these guys.”

“Is this man someone you know?” Wilhelmina asked, interested.

Stark grinned. “Tit for tat, Ms. Peperkamp. You tell me about de Geer and the Minstrel, and I'll tell you what I've got on my end.”

“Maybe you have nothing,” she said with a grunt, drinking some of the coffee, “and then where would I be?”

“Whichever way you want it. I have a call to make. Mind if I use the phone?”

“And if I do mind?”

Stark laughed at her combativeness. “Hell, Juliana can afford it.”

“Who are you calling?”

“The
Gazette.
” Wilhelmina Peperkamp followed him into the living room, making no attempt to give him any privacy, but Matthew didn't care. Ziegler picked up on the first ring. “Working hard, Aaron? Good. Got anything for me?”

“Zip,” Aaron said, sighing. “I got in touch with most of the men whose names you gave me, but none had heard from or about Phillip Bloch in a number of years—or were too keen to hear his name. They also hadn't heard from Otis Raymond. I checked the wires, too, and the morgue, but no luck.”

“Stay on it, see if anything comes up,” Stark said, and before hanging up, he gave Ziegler the number on the telephone next to the goldfish tank. Given the general disarray of the rest of the place, it was cleaner than he'd have expected, but he had to admit to a certain satisfaction that beautiful, talented, wealthy Juliana Fall didn't worry about maintaining the standard Central Park West opulence.

“Did he have anything?” Wilhelmina asked, her frustration with her own inactivity mounting.

“No.”

“Bah. I hate waiting.”

“Ready to knock heads together, are you?” Matthew grinned. “We could have used you in 'Nam.”

“A terrible war,” she said.

“Name me one that wasn't.”

She pursed her thin lips thoughtfully. “A good point. Where are you going?”

He was zipping up his coat. “See if I can find some heads to knock together. Sit tight, Aunt Willie. I won't be long.”

 

Catharina pulled out a length of delft-blue ribbon; it was real ribbon, not paper. The Minstrel. Of course. She wasn't surprised—or, after forty years, frightened. She'd known someone would come, not this man, perhaps, but someone.

“And why do you want the Minstrel?” she asked, nominally curious.

“I don't like to waste time, Mrs. Fall. The stone, please.”

“As you wish.”

With a few deft movements, she tied the ribbon around the box, which she tucked under her arm, nodding toward the kitchen. They would use the rear exit—less likely to run into any well-intentioned rescuers that way. This, Catharina thought, was what she had to do—and it was going to be easier than she'd envisioned. She hated only to worry Adrian, to sadden him…

No, she wouldn't think of those things now.

“Come with me,” she said, hearing the resolve in her own voice.

The two men followed her into the kitchen as her mind raced. Where should she take them? Johannes had led his merry chase to Amsterdam. She considered Rotterdam, the Hague—no, she thought. Switzerland. She would tell them the Minstrel was in a safe-deposit box in a Swiss bank. Her husband being a banker and herself a member, if a somewhat eccentric one, of the Park Avenue elite, she could name several. She would pick one, and they would go.