It All Began in Monte Carlo (21 page)

“Barmen always hear everything,” Maha said, though anyway Maha also made it her business to know what was happening around her. She knew every detail of the jewel heist and the murder, including the fact that a very large-carat diamond had been involved. A famous stone, it turned out, known as the Babe Bailey diamond, more than twenty carats, flawless, D color and extremely valuable. Maha also knew its history. It had been cut by an expert who was now dead, an Iranian who'd known more about diamonds than any man Maha had ever encountered.

“I heard the Babe Bailey diamond was shattered in the jewel heist,” she said, taking a minuscule bite out of the miniature chocolate petit four and washing it down with a sip of champagne.

Sharon's face expressed her indifference. “I don't give a shit about diamonds,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Maha wished Sharon would control her language. Even though Maha had been brought up in squalor on Mumbai's streets where
cursing was an everyday event, along with violence, brutality and death, she was a refined woman. Now, of course, the beautiful jewels made by her craftsmen in Rajasthan had replaced those terrible childhood scenes in her mind's eye, but it was also the reason Maha knew evil when she saw it. And she saw it now, entering the bar, one more time. It was as if the redhead could not keep away. Was it only Sunny who lured her? Maha wondered.

“God, there's that bitch, again,” Sharon said, reaching over and snitching one of Maha's petit fours. “I wonder who she is and what she wants. Other than a man.” Since Sharon was a woman who had been in the fashion world and who now ran a model agency in Prague, she knew a lot about females.

“Only we women see that aura of corruption about her,” Maha said, watching as Kitty got Mac Reilly in her sights and, in her knock-kneed cutesy trot, thighs flickering through her wrap skirt, hurried toward him. “Men just get her come-on; the I'm so sexy and you're so wonderful chat. And I'll bet you most of them fall for it.”

Sharon laughed. “You mean she's getting more than I am?”

Maha glanced at her. “And are you ‘getting any,' as you so crudely put it, Sharon?”

Sharon shrugged. “I guess I could if I put it out like the redhead. It's as though she's wearing a label round her neck with ‘available' written on it. I mean, she's so middle-aged suburban and with that ghastly hair and those thighs, in that cheap wrap dress, you'd think guys would give her the brush-off.”

“What Kitty has,” Maha said, watching corruption taking place before her very eyes, “is knowledge. She knows how to flatter, how to sympathize, how to let a man believe he is wonderful, and that she needs him and wants him.”

“Well, he's not bad,” Sharon said with a grin that did not reach her beautiful eyes.

“Pity about that Babe Bailey diamond,” Maha said again, and
again getting no reaction from Sharon, who instead asked where the others were.

“Lisa left for wherever it was she came from. Ferdie and Giorgio are driving to Budapest.”

“And where does that leave me?” Sharon asked, looking angry.

“On your way back to Prague,” Maha said, softly.
“Bitch.”

 

 

Mac had left messages for Sunny, asking her to meet him anywhere she liked, just name it, only please agree to see him. Yet despite what she had said last night—that they must talk, reevaluate their relationship, Sunny had not called him back. So now Mac waited at the bar, with a beer he did not really want, hoping his phone would ring.

He leaned an elbow on the polished wooden counter, not seeing anything because his mind was still filled with the horrifying reddish blur that was Yvonne Elman's brains with the shards of diamonds spattered across them, tiny stars in a lost kingdom of the soul.

Mac had seen some horrifying sights in his career but figured this was one of the worst. And all for the lure of big money.
Fast
money. Or maybe not so fast. Eastern Europe was being touted as the new El Dorado for diamond trafficking, but he still could not figure how and where the stones would be cut. He knew many of the larger ones were identifiable and would certainly need to be recut before they could be sold on the open market. Perhaps they would try to sell them immediately on the underground market, which would be faster, though less profitable.

Profit from murder. Profit from a woman's life. Profit from a motherless child. From a bereft young husband.

“Ooh,
Mac,
there you are.”

There was an intimate squeeze of his forearm and he turned his head just in time to catch the brush of Kitty Ratte's lips against his.

“Ooh, Mac,” Kitty said again, her tiny blue eyes aglow with admiration and sympathy. “I just thought you looked so
lonely,
standing there.
So all alone.
I just felt you
needed
a little comfort.”

Mac removed Kitty's hand from his arm and placed it carefully on the wooden bar. “And exactly what ‘comfort' do you have in mind, Ms. Ratte,” he said, in a voice so cold it would have left any normal woman out in an ice field.

“Ooh, well, I know how much you care, about Sunny I mean. And she is so
beautiful.
”

“Sunny is beautiful,” Mac agreed.

“I mean, how can she not
want
you.” This was a favorite line of Kitty's.

“Y'know what, Ms. Ratte, whatever it is you're after, I'm not interested.” Mac stepped back but Kitty reached out for him again.

“Don't.
Please
don't go,” she whispered, easy tears glinting. “I'm so lonely . . . and Sunny has become such a good friend.” Her eyes sharpened. “She tells me everything.”

Mac was used to reading people like Kitty, experienced in dealing with the sociopath, the psychopath, the cold manipulating natures of people who felt nothing for others. He had heard the same line before from Kitty, but again because of Sunny he could not let it go.

“Please,
please,
sit here, next to me, so we can talk quietly. You know I was with Sunny today.” She put her hand on Mac's arm, linking them. “We had lunch together. She is very . . .” Kitty hesitated, as though searching for the right word. “Very independent in her thinking.” She caught Mac's eyes and brushed away another tear with a trembling finger. “It's as though this nonwedding has changed her character. I don't think you would even know the new Sunny, the way I know her now. Sunny wants to find a new life,
perhaps even a new . . .” She left the sentence dangling. “Well, no, I won't even go there . . .”

She ducked her chin and gave Mac her upward glance from beneath the red fringe, full of sympathy, making sure that, without her having to say another word, he understood that what Sunny wanted was a new man.

Mac got up and walked away.

Kitty's hard eyes followed him. For a minute, just a minute there, she'd had the great Mac Reilly in her power. Just watch out, Miss Alvarez have-it-all smarty-pants-better-than-everyone Sunny, she thought vengefully. I'll get your man yet. I'll make him squirm with delight and you will suffer the pangs of hell. Women like you, who saunter through life with everyone falling at their feet, always suffer the worst when their man betrays them for a woman like me.

 

Out it the foyer, Mac called Sunny again. There was no reply. In his heart he felt something that was close to grief. He placed another call, this time to Ron Perrin.

“Get down here, Ron will you,” he said abruptly. “I need you.”

“Y'do? What about Allie?”

“What about her?”

“I told you she's there, with Sunny. And the friend.”

“Jesus,” Mac said. He'd forgotten all about Allie.

“It's not only Sunny,” he said to Ron. “I've got a murder on my hands.”

“Not
again,
” Ron groaned. “Will you never learn?”

 

 

Mac was outside the hotel when he heard Sunny's voice. He looked at his phone, thinking he must be dreaming.

But she was just steps away. She had Tesoro on the lead and was looking at him with a half-pleading, half-stubborn expression, as though determined not to give in, even though she might want to.

He walked over, picked up her hand, held it to his lips. That invisible wall was still between them.

“Sunny. Please, let me tell you how much I love you.” He wasn't pleading, it was a simple statement of fact. “Love like ours doesn't just disappear.” He felt her hand grip his and breathed a little easier.

“No,” she said.

He gazed into her face, wondering did she mean love like theirs did disappear? Or no, it did
not
? How had he ever become a detective when he couldn't even figure out what a woman meant when she said something this important.

“Help me out here, Sun baby,” he said, running his hand gently up her forearm, which tonight was covered in a lavender-gray wool sweater that fit her body so perfectly he figured some expert little knitter in the English countryside must have fashioned it specially for her. The neck exposed her throat where he saw a bluish vein that almost matched the shade of the wool. A man in love, he missed no detail.

“You braided your hair,” he said, touching the glossy plait that lay across her shoulder. He so wanted to kiss her.

But then suddenly Sunny leaned across that chasm that lay between them and kissed him. And for a minute life suddenly became normal again. Until she pulled back and said, “Mac, why don't we talk?”

“Okay.” He would have agreed to anything right then. “Just don't let go of my hand.”

Sunny did not let go and they walked hand in hand with the little dog trotting between them, back into the hotel. She led him into the bar. Mac wondered why they hadn't gone to her room where they could be alone, but then he guessed right now “alone” wasn't what Sunny wanted.

She paused to say hello to the beautiful Indian woman, who was drinking champagne, along with a tall model-type with a sullen face.

A dozen bracelets jangled as Mac shook Maha's slender hand. Novice though he was jewelwise, he would be willing to bet they were expensive. Especially that huge gold-clad aquamarine brooch. He thought Maha was not only beautiful, there was an air of mystery about her that did not allow you to see the real woman hidden behind the smile, the gleaming dark eyes, the glamour. Sunny was smiling warmly at her as though they were old friends. Then Maha introduced them to her associate, Sharon Barnes.

“I feel as though I already know you,” Sharon said, looking Sunny up and down. “Maha's told me so much about you.”

“Ooh,
Sunny
. . .” Kitty's voice came from the bar where she was still sitting, a beer in hand. “I
hoped
I would see you here tonight.”

Sunny stopped to kiss her too and to introduce Mac.

Kitty gave him her best grin. “I'm so happy to meet you, Mr. Reilly,” she said, when just minutes ago she had kissed him.

Sunny excused them and they went to sit at a lamp-lit corner table. She put the dog under her chair and smoothed her black pencil skirt over her equally smooth golden knees. With a pang, Mac
noticed she was wearing the tall black leather boots he'd wanted to buy her for Christmas.

He said, “Tell me how you know that red-haired woman.”

“Kitty? She was here, in this bar, Christmas Day evening. I was alone and so was she. She wished me Happy Christmas and came over to talk. She was pleasant; we had lunch the next day. She said she understood my loneliness, and I felt she was . . .” Sunny stopped and stared blankly at Mac; she realized she had no idea what she had thought about Kitty then. But now she knew. “I thought she was
needy,
” she decided.

“And Maha Mondragon?”

Sunny smiled. “You're jealous because I made new friends.”

“That's true.”

“As a matter of fact Maha spoke to me that Christmas night too. It was so strange. She actually
warned
me against Kitty.
‘Take care with that woman,'
she told me. ‘
Corruption had its own unmistakable aroma.
' I couldn't understand what she meant by it.”

“Maha is a clever woman,” Mac said.

Sunny decided not to tell Mac what else Maha had said, about her taking the chances life offered her, nor about Maha's offer of a job. Which, because she really liked the mysterious Maha, and with her new desire for independence, she just might consider accepting.

Suddenly nostalgic for their summer in St. Tropez, she ordered a Cosmopolitan. “I know it's not fashionable,” she said, smoothing her skirt nervously again.

“And since when did you feel the need to apologize for ordering a girly drink?” Mac asked. He took her hand again. “Oh God, Sun baby, I love you so much. You can drink a dozen pink cocktails and I'll kiss the taste from your lips when I tuck you, intoxicated, into your bed . . .”

“
My
bed . . . ?”

Their eyes linked with that magical connection of chemistry, attraction, sex; memories of each other's bodies.

“
Our
bed,” he said, holding both her hands tightly in his now.

“With Tesoro biting your ears,” she whispered back.

“Or even worse places . . .” They grinned at each other.

She said, “And poor sweet Pirate, afraid to jump on the bed in case Tesoro chased him away . . .”

“Until you took pity on him and picked him up and put him there . . .”

“And Tesoro growled and the wind howled outside sending the waves slamming up the beach, frothing over the rocks sounding just like Niagara . . .”

“And the fire burned low in the grate and the house smelled of Mitsouko, your perfume, and apple logs and wine, and your lips tasted . . .”

“Of the peaches we had just eaten and the juice was running down your chin . . .”