The Jewelry Case (20 page)

"I'll drop it off tomorrow, when I get back," he promised. "You can use it the rest of your stay, and if you want to sell it back to me when you leave, we'll talk about it then." Ian looked at his watch and his face mimed shock. "Wow, where did the time go? I'd better get going or I won't make it to the historical library before my rendezvous with my friends." He headed for the door once more.

She padded after him, oddly reluctant for him to go. "Thanks for looking up the information for me," she said, as he fumbled his car keys out of his pocket. There was something reassuring about having a big, strong man present, after last night's burglary. The incident had reminded her all-too-vividly of the down side of living alone.

For a moment, she was tempted to take up his invitation to go with him to Berkeley. It might be fun. But it was too late to cancel dinner with Steve.

To make Ian feel better, she added, "It was nice of you to go to the trouble of getting the letter translated."

"I was just as curious about it as you were," he admitted as he walked down the path and opened the door to the truck. "It's not every day that I find a mysterious eighty-year-old message hidden inside wall paneling. I feel like a character in an Agatha Christie novel."

"The message wasn't mysterious," she corrected him. "Just a loving letter from an aunt to her niece. I only wonder why Esther didn't keep her diary with her other treasures."

"Diary?" He dropped the keys, and spent the next few minutes scrabbling for them in the dirt. "Did you say there's a diary too?"

She was taken aback by the strength of his reaction. "Didn't I tell you?"

"Tell me what, woman? You're so tight-lipped, you'd make one heck of a CIA agent." He stared accusingly.

"While I was at the bank yesterday, they gave me the key to Esther's safety deposit box. There was nothing in it but a passport and an old diary, the kind little girls write in. I thought I'd read it one of these nights when I didn't have anything else to do."

He stared at her for a moment, and then laughed. "For a treasure hunter, you must be the least curious person I've ever met. I wish I had your
sangfroid
."

"But I thought we'd established that there probably isn't any treasure. So there didn't seem to be any urgency."

"We haven't established anything," he said, getting into the truck and slamming the recalcitrant door. "Happy reading. See you tomorrow afternoon. With luck, maybe you'll even tell me what the diary says."

Chapter Nine

She spent the next hour trying to ignore Ian's parting jab. What right did he have to try to make her feel guilty? she thought angrily. She was under no obligation to share any information, even if he had volunteered to help with the research. And had been helpful in getting the letter from Auntie Adelajda translated.

Okay, the guy had been helpful. So what?

She tried to remember why she had welcomed Ian into her confidence in the first place. After all, he was just some guy she had hired to fix up the house, based on a mistaken call out of an out-of-date phone book. Her quest had nothing to do with him.

And yet she knew that at some point in time, their relationship had subtly changed. She had come to think of Ian as more than as a mere employee. His friendship had been offered generously and had proved valuable. And Ian took her concerns seriously, even if he did needle her at times.

How different from Jonathan, she thought, who had hardly taken her seriously at all, and who used to mock her weaknesses until she had learned to toughen up and fight back as best as she could. She forced her thoughts away from that dangerous topic. There was still too much unexplored pain there.

Even so, deep inside she felt something was healing.

Turning her mind back to her last conversation with Ian, she wondered about his extensive knowledge of the Perleman family history. While Esther was plying the teenaged Ian with muffins and stories, he had obviously listened attentively and forgotten nothing.

Paisley abruptly reached for her cell phone and punched in a pre-programmed number. She'd had enough of thinking about Ian, Esther, and the jewels. It had been a busy week, and she planned to make the most of the weekend doing what she had so far failed to do: relaxing.

"Hello, Shirley?" she asked. "Want to go shopping?"

#

It ended up mostly window shopping. The quaint stores along the main street were full of appealing merchandise, but her budget didn't stretch to more than a hand-tied hammock that would fit perfectly between two of the big trees in the back yard, and some pretty costume jewelry. Nothing like Ruth Perleman's legendary treasure, she thought, holding the dangling painted beads by her ears and turning her head this way and that in front of the mirror on the boutique wall, but who cared?

Shirley snapped up some sort of "wearable art" frock in patchwork velvet that made her look like a lumpy hausfrau gypsy, and sighed longingly at an overpriced ostrich-feathered hat with an enormous brim that looked like something British royalty would wear at a wedding.

As they sifted through the merchandise, Shirley asked supposedly discreet questions about Paisley's romantic life "now that you're free." It was clear that she considered both Ian and Steve to be appropriate suitors. Shirley obviously preferred Ian, although she was not immune to Steve's considerable charms. Or Kevin's. "Too bad that handsome kid from New Jersey is too young for me," she sighed, "I don't know, honey. Can you see me as a cougar?" She posed like a celebrity on the red carpet, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other holding the oversized shopping basket that Paisley privately thought made her look like a bag lady.

Paisley laughed and tucked her arm through the older woman's bent elbow. "Sure," she said. "Why not?"

#

The afternoon of female bonding, capped with tea at the caf
é
on Main Street Paisley had been longing to visit, was just what she needed. These past few weeks had been too caught up in repairing the house, working on the community theater play, and doing amateur sleuthing with Ian. Maybe it was time to resume a more normal life, she thought, one that involved friends and social events. As her external scars were growing less noticeable, perhaps the inner ones were too.

At home after shopping, she took a long, refreshing nap, finished the last chapter of her latest suspense novel, and dug out Esther's old cookbook to make a batch of homemade gingersnaps
,
a far cry, she thought, biting into one of the soft, fragrant brown discs, from the cardboard-tasting store-bought version. With the house smelling like Christmas, she marveled at how different this day had been from the fast-paced life she had led for the past few years. She could learn to like this.

Her memories of life with Jonathan was a blur of contests, vocal training, and airports. Paisley was surprised how quickly she was adapting to the slower pace of life in River Bend. Maybe she wasn't really cut out to be the ambitious diva she had been rapidly becoming. The thought of her old life, singing in front of appreciative audiences, still caused a pang, however.

After polishing off more gingersnaps that could have possibly been good for her, she finally could not put off reading Esther's diary any longer. She fetched it and went to lie down on the couch, bare feet propped on the armrest. If she was going to read it, she had better do it now. On Monday, Ian and his crew would be back to fill the air with noise, dust, and commotion, and all peace would vanish.

Opening the worn green cover, Paisley again felt grateful that young Esther had written in English. The girl had obviously adapted quickly to life in America. Nowhere in the diary's pages did she describe the details of her traumatic separation from her parents or the long journey to America. Instead, Esther wrote of the trivial details of daily life as if she had always lived in River Bend: going to the local elementary school, playing kickball with her best friend, Georgiana, and rejoicing in the gift of a gray kitten for her ninth birthday.

After a while Paisley closed the cover and wondered again if that cat seven decades ago was an ancestor of the one that hung around the kitchen door and left the food bowl empty each evening. What had Ray said, long ago?
The Perlemans always had cats
.

Something else rang a bell. Esther's childhood friend, Georgiana. Why did that name sound familiar? She couldn't remember why.

After a moment, she opened the diary again. Surprisingly, its pages contained few references to the members of Esther's American family. There was Aunt Henka, of course (Jonathan's grandmother); Uncle Borys (his grandfather), and their two children, one of whom, David, grew up to become Jonathan's father. What had happened to their other child, David's sister?

Paisley closed the book, trying hard to remember what Jonathan had said. His aunt had moved away somewhere on the east coast, where she had married and had a daughter
—
Jonathan's only cousin. What was the cousin's name? Paisley was pretty sure Jonathan had never mentioned it to her. The family had fallen out of touch with their eastern relatives.

As Paisley lazily pushed the porch swing with one foot, she thought it was almost as if Esther had left her American relatives out of the diary on purpose. On impulse, she re-opened the book and scanned a troubling passage that had caught her eye:
"Auntie Henka asked me again today. Then she slapped me and took my coat away. I hope she will give the coat back."
After that entry, the writing became more sparse as young Esther's interest in her journal seemed to fizzle out. After listing her favorite Hanukkah gifts that year, Esther had left the rest of the pages blank.

Paisley flipped through the empty pages, frowning. The reference to the slap startled her. But physical punishment was more common in those days. Perhaps the incident meant nothing.

More importantly, the record had been written by a sensitive, intelligent child who had escaped the most horrendous genocide of all time. Why hadn't Esther related anything of real importance or revealed her deepest feelings in her diary, as a girl her age might be expected to?

Paisley could only think of one reason. Esther suspected that her diary might be read and so had deliberately left out anything that might ruffle anyone's feathers. Except, that is, for one telling sentence that had seemingly burst out of her pen in spite of herself, and which Paisley could not get out of her mind:
She slapped me and took my coat away.

Paisley wondered what question Aunt Henka could possibly have asked her niece that would have resulted in an outbreak of anger when the young girl had refused to answer? Perhaps Esther had declined to do some chore, and Aunt Henka had considered her niece ill-mannered or defiant. But it was the reference to the coat that made Paisley wonder.

What if Esther
had
brought the jewels to America in the hem of the coat which her grandmother had carefully constructed for her? What if Esther had refused to hand them over to her American relatives, provoking Aunt Henka's ire?

Reading the diary once more, Paisley grew more certain than ever that young Esther had been miserable. How could she be happy with an aunt who constantly harangued her and who had, on at least one occasion, shown physical violence? Yet as an adult Esther had chosen to return to this small town, to the very house where these events had happened, and some of her friendships had apparently lasted a lifetime. Surely, River Bend must have held some good memories for the young holocaust survivor.

The sun had touched the horizon, and it was time to prepare dinner. Paisley put the diary with the worn green cover in the top drawer of her dresser for safekeeping, wondering when Ian would be back from Berkeley. Certainly, he would find the contents of the diary as interesting as she did.

Walking into the kitchen, she saw a flash of gray outside the window, in the shrubbery, and her heart skipped she raced to the door. Although she had faithfully filled the bowl every day, and seen every night that it was empty, she had not yet seen the elusive cat. But it was out there now, somewhere, in the shadows of the large back yard. It must be losing its fear of her.

"Here, kitty," she cooed, bending over with her hands on her knees and searching for another flash of gray. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

Like a genie emerging from a bottle, a pair of pointed ears appeared from the greenery, followed by a flat muzzle with a pink nose. She had no treat to offer, but she held her hand out, hoping to fool the cat into coming out of its hiding place. Carefully it put out one white paw, then another, until its entire form was exposed. For a moment the cat crouched still, staring at her from yellow eyes as if she were a mouse it hoped to stalk. Then, with a flash of a tail as fluffy as an ostrich feather, it was gone again, back into the shrubbery.

Impulsively she followed in its direction, before noticing a crushed stalk of honeysuckle in the flower bed and, just beyond it, magnified by the lengthening shadows of early evening, the clear imprint of a shoe. In the center of the footprint were two stylized letters: "VA."

She stopped short, stunned. The footprint was not hers. Not only was it far too large, but she hadn't stepped into the garden since before yesterday's rain had softened the dirt. Nor did she own a pair of Vans sneakers. But Paisley had no doubt to whom it belonged. Vans was a popular brand with teenagers.