Parisian Affair (48 page)

'You're not going to use that,' Ram said
nastily. 'You don't have any idea what you're doing.'

He lunged at her then, and Allegra pulled the
trigger.

The roar of the explosion was so loud in the
small room that her ears began ringing painfully. Time stood still,
and she watched in horror as Ram stopped, seemingly frozen in
place, his eyes wide, his arms outstretched toward her. Then a
geyser of blood spurted from his neck, and she could hear a gurgle
as he tried to speak.

He fell to the floor with a loud thump, and
his entire body spasmed briefly before all movement abruptly
ceased.

The room stank of cordite, and the only sound
was that of Allegra's breathing. Her breath came in gasps, and her
stomach lurched anew, the bile rising in her throat once again. She
didn't move for long moments, staring down at the body, transfixed
by what she'd done. Blood, what seemed like gallons of it, still
poured from the wound in his throat.

He must be dead,
she thought
, and I
killed him
.

Finally, she leaned down and picked up her
clutch bag, put the revolver in it, snapped it shut, then walked
out of the closet. She turned and closed the door. Seeing the
padlock that dangled on the wall, she closed the hasp, looped the
padlock through it, and snapped it shut.

She looked around the room with fresh eyes,
as if she had been gone from it for hours. Todd still lay slumped
on the couch, breathing shallowly. She noticed Ram's cell phone on
the console, and she calmly walked over and picked it up. She
dialed 17, the number for the police, then told them to come to rue
des Rosiers. She remembered the house number from her visit to
Solomon Weiss.
Another death I'm responsible for, she
thought.

At last she noticed all the jewelry on the
table. She gathered up the gold settings, the emeralds, and the
photographs from the table and put them all back in the garbage bag
where Ram had stored them. Then she searched for something to put
the bag in. In the entry hall was a small closet, and in it she
found a heavy nylon gym bag. After she managed to stuff the garbage
bag and its contents into the bag, she zipped it shut.

The party was held a week later, so Allegra
and Todd could attend. The American Hospital in Paris had treated
her for shock, and Todd had been held for observation for two days.
Then the hours of police interrogation began, which were carried
out with a civility that surprised them both. At that point Hilton
Whitehead and his powerful friends had intervened on their
behalf.

Allegra and Todd had finally arrived in New
York on Whitehead's private Gulfstream V. They had spent many hours
closeted in discussion with Hilton since their return, and they
found themselves in his private suite aboard his floating palace
while the party he'd planned was in progress.

'I still hope that something can be done
about Princess Karima,' Allegra said. 'You've all but proved that
she's funneling money to terrorist cells in the Middle East.'

Hilton nodded. 'Without the names and numbers
you found, the investigation would never have started,' he said.
'We still have no hard proof, but at least now Interpol is
involved.'

'It's outrageous,' Todd said. 'She's probably
already sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Middle Eastern
banks. I mean, Allegra saw the transfers.'

'Yes,' Hilton said with a nod, 'but she can
claim that the money was going to her family. I tell you the woman
is virtually untouchable.'

'There's no doubt that she was mixed up with
Monsieur Lorrain at the auction house.' Allegra said. 'I think she
may have wanted the ring for sentimental reasons, and like Ramtane
Tadjer, she would stop at nothing to get it back. They linked her
to the man they found dead in our hotel suite, didn't they?'

'The high-priced hustler? Her name was in his
address book,' Hilton said, 'but they can't prove anything beyond
that.'

'And Marcus Penhurst's death?' Allegra
said.

'His body was found in an alley in the
Marais,' Whitehead said. 'The police say he was cruising for sex,
and his family wants the case hushed up.'

'I know she was involved somehow,' Allegra
said. 'She and Marcus seemed thick as thieves to me when we
visited.'

'But nobody can prove anything,' Todd
said.

'Well, I think you'd both better try to
forget about it,' Hilton said. 'You've nearly gotten yourselves
killed and all because of me and that emerald.'

'Did Kitty ever get to see the ring?' Allegra
asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'I let her see it. Though I
probably shouldn't have.'

'Did you tell her that you'd bought it for
her?' Todd asked.

'Yes,' he said again. 'And all hell broke
loose when I told her I was going to return it to its rightful
owner.'

'She didn't want to give it up,' Allegra
said. She had met Kitty only briefly when they returned to New
York, but she got the distinct feeling that Kitty was not the type
of person to put much stock in concepts like rightful
ownership.

'No way,' Hilton said.

'You'll probably be made an honorary knight,'
Todd said.

'I doubt it,' he said. 'Nobody—and I mean
nobody—is supposed to know that the emeralds were taken, much less
that they were returned.'

'It's a shame,' Allegra said, 'because you've
really done a heroic thing.'

'Thanks to you,' he said, grinning. 'You're
the one who brought them all back in that little gym bag.'

'So now that the engagement party's going on,
what are you going to tell the guests?' Todd asked. 'I mean, with
Kitty gone.'

'Well, I'm sure not going to announce my
engagement,' he said. 'I'll probably never see her again.'

'Do you miss her?' Allegra asked.

'Yes,' he said, nodding. He shrugged. 'You
know, I always knew she was a kind of hustler. Hell, I am, too.
Pulled myself up by my bootstraps like she did. Nothing wrong with
that. But in the end she crossed a line. A kind of moral line as
far as I'm concerned.'

There was a knock on the door. 'Who is it?'
Hilton called out.

'Jason.'

'Come on in, Jason,' Hilton said.

The door opened, and Jason stepped into the
suite. 'Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting.'

'No, I don't think so,' Hilton said,
indicating a chair. 'Sit down.'

Jason eased himself into the chair and took a
sip of the drink he was carrying with him.

'I had a talk with Jason here,' Hilton said.
'He told me all about your business and, incidentally, about what
he'd done while you were gone.'

Jason's face reddened. 'I hope that I can
make it up to you, Ally.'

'You already have,' she said. She looked back
at Hilton. 'But what is it you've been discussing?'

'I know your business has been suffering, and
I thought that I'd help you out. I really owe you.'

Allegra began shaking her head vigorously.
'No way,' she said. 'Stop right there. I appreciate your offer, but
no thanks. Besides'—she looked at Todd and smiled—'I'm going to be
opening a retail shop in a building that Todd's bought. He and I
are going to be living there together.'

'Well, that's good news,' Hilton said.
'Congratulations to both of you.'

'Thanks,' Todd and Allegra said in
unison.

Hilton looked over at Jason. 'It's exactly
like you said it would be.'

Jason nodded. 'She's a hard case.'

Todd laughed. 'It's all I could do to get her
to take up my offer of having a shop in the building.'

'Then I would like to make this evening's
festivities a publicity party for the opening of the Atelier
Sheridan in Soho. The hot new jewelry shop in Manhattan,' Hilton
said. He held up his hands to stave off the protestations he could
see that Allegra was about to make. 'Give me just a minute. The
press is here, and you'd get a lot of advance publicity that
wouldn't cost you a dime. Come on, Allegra. Let me do this for
you.'

Allegra looked at him, then Todd, then Jason.
'Well, I don't know,' she said. 'The shop isn't even open yet, and
... I don't have a press kit or anything.'

'Yes, you do,' Jason said.

'What?' Allegra looked over at him.

'I hated to go behind your back again,' Jason
said, 'but after Todd told me about your plans, I thought I would
try to make things up to you. So I had a brochure printed and
brought samples with me. Don't kill me, Ally. It's—'

'I'm not going to kill you,' she said. She
got up and went over and kissed him on the cheek. 'Thank you,' she
said. 'But you've got to promise to stop going behind my back.'

'I will,' Jason said with a laugh. 'I
promise.'

'So,' Whitehead said as Allegra went back to
her seat beside Todd, 'since you're going to be moving in together,
maybe you'd like this to be your engagement party, too?'

Todd turned to Allegra, and she looked at
him. He didn't say anything, but she knew what he wanted her to
say. 'I. .. well... I guess we could do that. That is, if you
really want to, Todd.'

He threw his arms around her. 'You know I do,
Ally, and so do you.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I do.'

If the first thing you did when you started
this novel was flip to the back to check out the ending, I hope
you'll reconsider if you've stumbled upon the acknowledgments and
wait to read them. You'll have more fun that way. In any case,
while this novel is entirely a work of fiction, its springboard was
a bit of interesting history. Emeralds that purportedly had
belonged to Queen Alexandra and were bequeathed to King Edward
VIII, her grandson—who was later to become the Duke of Windsor when
he gave up the throne to marry the American divorcee Wallis
Simpson— were rumored for many years to have disappeared with the
duke and duchess when they left England for a life in exile. Many
people believed that the Duchess of Windsor had wheedled them out
of the duke. More likely, some historians believe, Queen
Alexandra's emeralds were distributed among female members of the
family. Years later, the duchess's jewelry box was stolen while she
and the duke were staying in the country with the Earl and Countess
of Dudley, and rumors flew around London that Buckingham Palace was
responsible for the robbery because they wanted Queen Alexandra's
emeralds back. Whatever the case, at least thirty pieces of jewelry
that had been reported stolen in the robbery—on which the insurance
was collected by the Windsors—turned up at the sale of the
duchess's jewels in Geneva in 1987 after her death. If the duke and
duchess ever had the emeralds, which is doubtful, they never
resurfaced, separately or collectively.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the late Lady
Caroline Blackwood, whose fascinating book
The Last of the
Duchess
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1995) first alerted me to
the story of the missing jewels. She discussed them at some length
in her study of the Duchess of Windsor's last days in Paris as a
virtual prisoner of her powerful lawyer, Maitre Blum. In addition,
the missing jewels and the rumors surrounding them are among the
startling revelations about the life of the Duchess of Windsor in
Charles Higham's book
The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret
Life
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988). The remainder of my story
is total fiction.

I would also like to thank Laura Lapachin and
Stefan Friedemann of Ornamentum Jewelry Studio and Gallery in
Hudson, New York, for their invaluable tutelage on jewelry making
and design. I hope your shop flourishes. My gratitude also extends
to jeweler David Gourgourinis and Ivo Stoykov of Mykonos, Greece,
and Boca Raton, Florida, whose stories about the jewelry trade,
intelligence, hospitality, and, above all, wit have been an
inspiration.