The Jewelry Case (35 page)

Several minutes passed, and the cat did not reappear. She began to grow concerned. Might it be stuck up there in the upper branches? Jonathan had once said sardonically that it was a waste of time rescuing cats from trees, adding, “Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in one?” For the first time, it occurred to her that he had possibly known this cat, or its predecessors. Hadn't someone told her that the Perlemans always had pet cats?

Fine, then, cat.
She shrugged and returned to the porch seat, reaching for her lemonade with its melting ice cubes.
Stay up there.

As she lazily continued to swing, pushing with one foot and waiting for the cat to descend the giant oak, she noticed something on the edges of her vision, so subtle that she was not sure if she had imagined it or not. A strange feeling grew in the pit of her stomach, like being on an elevator that dropped too swiftly. She had the impression of seeing a double exposure in an old photograph, a ghostly image superimposed over the actual scene before her. In the shade of the towering oak tree, she saw a young black-haired girl wearing a shimmering white dress, while a small, gray kitten romped nearby. Another girl was running toward her from the direction of the road, golden sausage curls bouncing. The friends greeted each other and sat down to play.

Just then, a taller, dark figure moved from the door of the house, just a few feet from where Paisley was standing. Paisley caught her breath as the shadow brushed by her.
Through
her? She felt a chill and shivered.

Frozen, she watched as the girls' smiles vanished. The blond girl leaped to her feet and ran away. The other girl—Esther, who else could it be?—quickly hid something in the folds of her skirt.

Paisley's heart beat quicker. Somehow, she knew the dark shadow was not aware of the girls' presence, had not yet turned in their direction. What would Esther do next?

The dark-haired girl seemed to be wondering the same thing. She stood with the hidden objects still bundled in her full skirt, and looked around desperately. The gray kitten had disappeared.

The images faded.

Paisley blinked. As if still in a dream, she rose from the porch swing and moved toward the spot under the tree where the girls had been playing, the same spot where the cat had launched itself upward. Her head tilted, and she squinted into the overhanging tree branches.

"I wonder," she said softly.

Esther had been searching for a perfect hiding spot, one accessible to a child but not to an adult, especially one of Aunt Henka's age and dignity.

It had been years since Paisley had climbed a tree. It was harder than she remembered: gravity pulled harder on her adult body, and some of the smaller branches threatened to give way under her weight, slim as she was, but steadily she pulled herself higher. She tried not to look down. Finally, from above, she heard a surprised meow.

"I'm coming," she said grimly, and adjusted her grip on the branch. No doubt she'd have plenty of cuts and abrasions when she got down, but she didn't want to think about the process of descending.
Just think about going up.

The cat sat directly above her, staring expressionlessly down. Cats were always expressionless, not like dogs, who always told what they were thinking. Was the cat urging her onward? Or was it silently mocking her clumsy progress?

"I made it," she said it as she drew level to the cat, half-expecting it to reach out a paw and swipe her face with its claws, just because. Instead, the cat presented its gray hindquarters to her and levitated to the next branch.

At that point, she hardly paid attention to what the cat was doing. She was too busy staring at what had been hidden behind it.

Chapter Sixteen

Perhaps the tree had been hit by lightning long ago, causing a branch to fall off. Since then, the scar in the trunk had been attacked by fungi and pests, leaving a hole whose opening was slightly wider than Paisley's fist. Without allowing herself to think what might be in that hole—bats? spiders?—she closed her eyes and reached in. Her groping fingers touched something solid but yielding, like an object wrapped in thick cloth. Her heart pumping harder, she pulled it out.

Afterward, she never remembered climbing down the tree. She might have floated down like a leaf in autumn. Safely back in her bedroom, she placed on the bed the heavy pouch of soft leather, gray with dust, twigs, and less savory debris that left streaks down the front of her clothes, and contemplated it.

Her hand approached the drawstring of the bag like an iron filing to a magnet. Then, with difficulty, she stopped. Once before, she had made the mistake of not including Ian in her discoveries. Things had been different, then. Now, she knew he had a right to be here.

Punching his number into her cell phone, she tapped her foot, phone pressed to her ear. After an interminable series of rings, his voice invited her to leave a message. She looked at the phone in frustration. Then, belatedly, she remembered he'd planned to spend all day working on his thesis. No doubt, he had turned it off to avoid interruptions.

She left a quick message and turned back to the dirt-covered chamois bag. She'd have to be less than human to resist any longer; surely Ian would understand, she told herself. After all, Esther had
meant
for her to find this. By now, Paisley was convinced the old woman had left the house to Paisley, had left clues, had even
,
hard as it was for her rational mind to believe
,
created paranormal manifestations to prod her along.

Why Esther had done all this for her, Paisley doubted she'd ever fully understand. She remembered that instant feeling of liking when her eyes had met the old woman's at the wedding. Perhaps the old woman had somehow sensed that Paisley would need the jewels some day; more likely, they may have been a symbol of the connection between her, Esther, and that other opera singer who had married into the Perleman family more than a hundred years before.

Flinging aside any lingering feelings of guilt, she struggled with trembling fingers to unloose the wrappings.

They had been gorgeous in the black-and-white photograph. In full, splendid, glittering Technicolor, the rubies took her breath away. The chamois bag had protected them well: not a speck of dust diminished the gems' brilliance or the luster of their settings.

Reverently, she ran fingers over them, then sorted carefully through the jumble. There was the pearl collar, with its dangling ruby pendants. Each ruby must weigh at least thirty carats, although she knew that estimate could be far off. Then there were the matching ear-bobs, and the lovely ring, which she couldn't help trying on at once. The round-cut gem surrounded with diamonds reminded her of the famous sapphire which graced the fingers of the Princesses Diana and Kate, although this ring glowed blood-red. Somehow, she wasn't surprised when the heavy band slid easily over her third finger as if made to fit.

The tiara was missing, of course. That piece of jewelry wouldn’t have fit in the hem of Esther's coat, and so it must have stayed behind in Poland. Paisley wondered if Aunt Adeladja had hidden it or sold it to finance Esther's escape to America. Another mystery, one that might never be solved.

Feeling as if she were in one of her dreams, she fastened the clasp of the necklace behind her neck. The tiers of pearls warmed quickly, conforming to the contours of her neck. As she dangled the earrings in front of her earlobes, picturing how they would look when inserted, she glimpsed the clock in the mirror and gasped. She had forgotten the time!

She had promised Shirley to arrive early and make sure everything was ready for dress rehearsal. Instead, she was playing dress up, like the little dark-haired girl in the dream. It
must
have been a dream, mustn't it? Yet it had seemed even more real than the others she had experienced.

At first she was tempted to skip practice. But her innate sense of responsibility would not allow her to let Shirley and the others down. Dress rehearsal was too important. So many things could go wrong at the last minute, and the cast had come to rely on her. Reluctantly she unclasped the pearl-and-ruby necklace and gently replaced it in the chamois bag with the bracelet and earbobs. The ruby ring, which had slid on so easily, contrarily stuck behind her knuckle and refused to slide off. Yanking it and even rubbing soap on her finger had no effect.

Chewing her lip, she considered her options. The house had been burglarized twice already. Perhaps she could return the jewels to the tree, where they had lain safely hidden for the past seventy-five years, but the climb was slow and difficult. Already, welts and scratches were appearing on her arms and legs.

Giving up trying to pull off the ring, she turned it around on her finger so it resembled a plain gold wedding band. The ruby dug into her palm uncomfortably, but no one, she told herself, would know. Tomorrow she would publicly announce the discovery, after the jewels were safely stored, but that left the question of how to keep them safe tonight.

Then the perfect solution occurred to her.

#

Using the key Shirley had lent her, Paisley let herself into the high school. The vacant, echoing halls reminded her of the old Stephen King movie,
The Shining
. Fortunately the auditorium felt more welcoming, especially after she flipped on the lights. The backdrop gleamed with wet paint and the props were all laid out on the prop table, ready to go.

The finished set looked even better than Paisley had imagined, and she surveyed it with pleasure. A plywood pirate ship took up a third of the stage, the mast and reefed sails reaching upward, almost to the catwalk. Someone had hauled in real sand to create a beach, on which a massive treasure chest spilled its glittering trove of dime store beads and foil-wrapped chocolate coins. Behind the beach rose painted cliffs down which Chloe would descend later, twirling her parasol as she sang the showy aria on which she had worked so long with Paisley: "Poor Wandering One." Paisley felt confident that after all their practice together, the waitress would hit all the notes.

She turned to study Steve's enormous backdrop, which smelled strongly of wet tempera paint. Skillful brushstrokes made the water shimmer; the azure sky with its puffy white clouds heralded a perfect day in the coastside village of Penzance. Behind the back curtain waited the backdrop for Act Two, with its elaborate tombstones, ghostly shadows, and a bust of Queen Victoria.

She made a mental note to send Steve a bouquet to thank him for his efforts. Or, rather, a gift certificate to that steakhouse he'd once mentioned. He wasn’t the type for flowers.

Moving on to the prop table, she checked that everything was there: parasols, swords, the head policeman’s whistle. The stage was neatly swept and everything appeared to be in its proper place. Everything, that is, except for a coil of rope someone had carelessly left in the center of the stage. Tut-tutting, she bent and picked it up.

A loud creaking sound startled her into jumping aside, just as she felt a gush of wind. The next thing she knew, something struck her violently on the shoulder and sent her sprawling. Too stunned to move, she lay on the wooden floorboards for several moments, covered by yards of billowing canvas and trying to comprehend what had happened. Cautiously, she angled her head upward.

The pirate ship’s mainsail had been fastened to the catwalk until it was to be lowered just before the performance began. Somehow it had come loose and fallen.

Pushing herself to her feet, Paisley stared down at the length of rope clenched in her hand. The cable must have been fastened to the mast, she thought distantly. Odd, that the mere act of picking it up had triggered the fall. The mast must have been carelessly fastened, making an accident inevitable. Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident at all. Someone must have left the rope there on purpose.

Her legs turned to sand and she sat down again, abruptly. If she had stood another inch to the right ... had not felt that warning gush of air ... her head would have been smashed in. As it was, her shoulder was already beginning to throb painfully. She really should get home and put some ice on it, she thought dully.

Instead, she remained sitting on the stage, staring at the broken mainsail that lay in the center of the stage like a dead bird. Three near-deadly accidents should pierce the complacency of even Officer Elliot.

When could the rope have been rigged to bring it crashing down like that? she wondered. The auditorium had been empty since practice last night. That left almost twenty-four hours that someone could have broken in. Although the school should have been secured, a door could have been left unlocked, or someone could have broken a window and crawled in. Was it possible the perpetrator was there even now?

At the thought, she held her breath, listening. Running footsteps broke the stillness, and the doors to the auditorium banged open.

"What was that? What was that noise? Is anyone there?"

Frozen, she stared in the direction of the voice. Someone switched on the stage lights, blinding her. Instinctively she scrambled to her feet, poised for flight, although in the recesses of her slow-working brain, she knew a murderer would hardly be charging down the center aisle straight for her.