Uncommon Criminals (12 page)

P
ierre LaFont was not unknown to the men and women who worked at L’Hôtel Royal de Monaco. He had singlehandedly selected the chandelier that hung in the recently renovated Royal Suite. He frequently dined in the hotel’s restaurant with visiting dignitaries and the occasional heiress who was in the market to either buy or sell. But as the valet held his car door open that Sunday morning, there was something different about the Monsieur LaFont who stepped into the bright sun, a copy of the morning paper tucked beneath his arm, photo out.

“Bonjour,”
he said, tipping his hat to a wealthy woman waiting for the valet.
“Bonjour,”
he told the bellman who stood beside the revolving doors.

“Now, that is a beautiful automobile.”

It was a by-product of the business that LaFont’s first instinct was to size and frame. As he turned at the voice, he expected to see the custom-made suit and expensive watch. The young man who had spoken had the wide smile and confident ease that often comes with wealth and privilege. But studying him in the morning light, there was something about the young man, LaFont thought, that was quite uncommon indeed.

“Is it a ’58?” the young man asked. His hands were deep in his pockets as he stepped out of the shadows and onto the cobblestone street, examining the old Porsche Speedster with a discerning eye.

“It is,” Pierre said.

“Nothing takes a curve quite like it,” the young man said.

“You know the ’58 Speedster?” Pierre asked in the manner of a man who appreciates people who appreciate things.

“I do.” The young man placed one arm around LaFont’s shoulders, and with the other, patted the man twice on the chest. “But I’d keep this one away from fountains if I were you. Water does terrible things to the upholstery.”

“Pardon?” Pierre asked, but the young man just waved the words away and reached for the hotel door.

“Never mind, Mr. LaFont. Never mind.”

The Long Con is a misnomer, Kat had always thought. Nothing in her world was ever truly long term, least of all the jobs themselves. Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were, in themselves, very, very short; or so she had to think as she stood watching Hale and Pierre LaFont in the foyer of the grand hotel below.

It had taken Hale no more than a second to pick the older man’s pocket. It was the blink of an eye before Hale passed LaFont’s phone to Gabrielle. Less than a minute later, Simon had swapped out the phone’s SIM card and done something very tricky with a laptop and a long wire and then given the device back to Gabrielle.

So, no, Kat was convinced, cons were never long. They were measured in the beats of a heart, and if in those moments, the mark looked the wrong way or the guard glanced up at the wrong time, then everything could go terribly, terribly wrong.

Kat knew these things, of course, but never had they been quite as evident as when she looked back to the revolving door and saw two tall, lanky, and very familiar figures appear.

“Oh, no,” she muttered to no one but herself, but it was already too late.

Hale was with Pierre LaFont, trying to rope him in. Gabrielle was halfway across the lobby, LaFont’s phone in her outstretched hand. So Kat was the one who bolted from the railing and ran down the stairs, knowing in her heart that it was too late long before she heard the loud voice call out, “Gabs!”

The Scottish accent was thicker than Kat remembered, but it was a voice that she didn’t think she’d ever forget (even though she wasn’t exactly sure which of the ruddy-faced figures had yelled).

They were walking away from her and moving quickly. It seemed to Kat as if they’d each grown a foot in the two months since she’d last seen them settled on opposite sides of Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table. Angus was still taller, but not by much. Hamish’s shoulders were even wider than his brother’s. And it was a laugh of pure joy that came from both of them as they saw Gabrielle walking silently and purposefully across the floor. She was shifting LaFont’s phone to her left hand. She was eyeing the inner pocket of the man’s well-cut suit. Gabrielle’s thoughts and gaze and step were locked on one purpose, and Kat knew there was no way she would see the danger that was ten feet away and closing in fast.

“Gabrielle!” Kat said, rushing across the floor. But any hope that tragedy might be avoided went away with the booming voice that drowned out her own, crying, “Gabby!”

No one would ever know how much blame should be placed on the curse, and what, if any, should lie firmly on the shoulders of the Bagshaws. All Kat knew for certain was that Angus had broken into a run and was throwing his arms around Gabrielle, lifting her off her feet and squeezing her tightly.

Through the comms unit in her ear, Kat heard LaFont saying, “Thank you very much, young man, but I’m afraid I have a pressing appointment with Maggie now.”

She watched Hale’s eyes go wide as he finally saw the way Gabrielle’s long legs dangled inches from the floor as first Angus and then Hamish took turns spinning her around.

Kat listened to the crash as the cell phone fell from Gabrielle’s hand and onto the polished floor, sliding, skidding across the marble.

She held her breath as it zoomed underneath a bellman’s rolling cart, barely missing the wheels. Kat could have sworn her heart stopped beating as a businessman stepped over it, completely unaware that it was there. It seemed to take forever for the phone to come to rest beneath the cloth that covered a long table not ten feet from where LaFont and Hale stood.

“Why, is that Hale I see over—” Hamish started to yell in Hale’s direction, but Gabrielle’s foot jabbed into his shin, cutting him off midsentence.

A hotel employee stood right beside the table where the phone had disappeared, and Kat ran to him. “Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed. “Are those two boys attacking that pretty girl?” she cried, pointing to where Hamish was rubbing his shin and Angus was still hugging Gabrielle, sweeping her long legs back and forth across the floor.

“You there!” the employee cried without a second glance at the young woman who had already dropped to her knees and reached under the cloth.

“Where is it?” Kat said to no one but herself. The floor was hard on her knees. It was cool against her hands. And still Kat crawled, looking, searching. Praying.

“Where is it?” she said again as she crawled, shrouded in the shadows, closer to the phone, but also to LaFont and Hale.…

And the big brassy voice that yelled, “LaFont, you rascal!”

Kat picked up the hem of the cloth and peered outside just in time to see Hale disappear out the front door and Pierre turn and say, “
Bonjour
, Madame Maggie.”

Kat didn’t let herself panic. The dread she was feeling was too great, the worry too strong, and it was entirely too useless a thing to do. She did allow herself to think
What else can go wrong?
—which, of course, was exactly when the elevator doors opened and an attendant ushered LaFont and Maggie inside.…

And the phone began to ring.

Kat lunged for it, tried to muffle the sound, but the harm was done, and LaFont was already stopping, patting his pockets. Searching.

“You wouldn’t keep a lady waiting, would you, Pierre?” Maggie asked in her thick Texas drawl.

“My apologies, Madame. I just can’t seem to find my phone.”

With the words, a faint crack appeared in Maggie’s smooth façade. “Your phone is missing?”

“Well…not missing. I hear the thing, you see.”

In the next moment, Kat was out from under the table and the phone was in her hand. She could see them moving into the elevators. She felt the seconds passing.

The seconds.

Always a matter of seconds.

And that was how long it took for Kat to call out, “Hello, Maggie.”

K
at should have been terrified, but she wasn’t. She should have turned and run, but she didn’t. All she could really do was look down at the phone that had suddenly stopped ringing and keep her steady pace across the lobby floor.

“Oh, Maggie,” she cried one more time for good measure. “Wait for me!”

Even the voices in her ear were quiet, her crew silent as she walked to the elevator and stepped inside as if she rode to penthouses on the Riviera every day (which hadn’t been true, strictly speaking, since the summer she’d turned thirteen).

Sometimes a con has to run. Sometimes a thief needs to hide. But as she gripped LaFont’s now-silent cell phone in her left fist and took her place in the elevator at Maggie’s side, Kat took a deep breath and told herself that a thief’s greatest skill is the ability to adapt.

She turned to the woman beside her and said, “Hello, Maggie.”

Kat felt LaFont watching her, so she turned. “Hi. I’m Kat.”

“Kat is—” Maggie started.

“A member of the family,” Kat finished.

Maggie smiled. “Indeed.”

“Pierre LaFont,” LaFont said. Kat placed her hand gently in his palm, and he kissed the top of it. “A pleasure, my dear.”

“Did you hear that, Aunt Maggie? I’m a pleasure,” Kat said.

“Yes, dear,” Maggie said as the elevator reached the penthouse. “I’ve known that for some—”

But then the elevator jerked to a stop. Maggie faltered. Kat stumbled. And Pierre LaFont never felt the small hand that slipped his cell phone back into the side pocket of his impeccably tailored suit coat.

The man smiled down at Kat, oblivious, and gestured toward the open doors. “After you.”

Kat was not unfamiliar with hotel suites. She’d spent too much of her youth with her father. She’d spent too much time lately with Hale. So she should have felt at home among the lovely linens and priceless views, but that time, of course, she didn’t.

“Pierre, you’re gonna have to give us a minute, darling.” Maggie put her arm around Kat’s shoulders and gripped her tightly. “I’m gonna have to go figure out a way to put some meat on these little bones.”

She squeezed tighter. Kat grinned wider. And then Maggie was pushing Kat into a small study and pulling shut the sliding doors. An old-fashioned key was in the lock, and Maggie turned it. In the silence of the rich paneled room, it made an ominous sound.

“Well, if it isn’t Katarina Bishop.…”

The change was so quick, so effortless, it was like flipping a switch. The brass Texas twang was gone, replaced by an accent that
was
British, but it wasn’t the voice that Kat had heard in the diner, either. Kat was standing across from the woman for the fourth time, but now Maggie appeared younger than she’d looked in New York; she seemed more regal than she’d been in the hotel lobby. Leaning against the big double doors, there wasn’t a doubt in Kat’s mind that she was finally face-to-face with the woman behind the con.

“Hello, Maggie,” Kat said. “Or should I call you Constance?”

The woman smiled. “Call me Maggie.”

Maggie walked to the sideboard and poured a drink. She offered the glass to Kat, then pulled it back. “Oops,” she said with a condescending smile. “I forgot. You’re a child.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Don’t you mean, is that why you were such an easy mark?”

Kat wished there was something she could say to prove that the woman was wrong, but there was no use.

“Age does not make the mark, Katarina. Surely dear Edward has taught you that?”

At the mention of Uncle Eddie, Kat felt her pulse race, her stomach turn; and Maggie must have seen it, because she smiled. “So tell me, where is Edward these days?”

“Paraguay.” Kat had to think. “Or Uruguay…”

Maggie chuckled and took a drink. “I get them confused.”

“Me too,” Kat confided. She looked around. “Speaking of family, where’s your ‘
grandson’
?”

“Who?” Maggie asked, then she seemed to remember the woman she’d been a few days before. “Oh, him…He was the help, dear. Someone who is useful on occasion, but not really at
our
level.” She held her glass toward Kat—a toast. “You are a very gifted girl, Katarina. Has anyone told you that?”

Kat was sure her father or Uncle Eddie must have said the words at some point, but she couldn’t remember where or when.

Maggie eyed her. “How old were you when you went on your first job?”

“Three,” Kat said.

“I was nine.” Maggie leaned against the rounded arm of a leather chair. “It was the jewelry counter at Harrods department store on the day before Christmas.” She touched the diamond studs in her ears. “I still wear them, see?”

“They’re beautiful,” Kat said.

The woman smiled. “Thank you.” She sank slowly into the chair. “There are too few of us girls in the Old Boys’ Club, I think.” She took a slow drink, then fingered the rim of her crystal glass. “Even fewer Old Girls.”

Kat had never known her grandmother. Her mother had been taken from her far too soon, and yet it had never occurred to her until then that there might be something—someone—missing from Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table. But watching Maggie touch the stones in her ears, Kat knew the con was over. There was no angle, no job, no lie—only a woman who could have been there. But wasn’t. The absence was like a gaping hole inside Kat’s chest.

“How do you know him?” Kat had to know. “Why haven’t I ever met you before? Why aren’t you—”

“Part of the family?” Maggie guessed. Kat nodded, too tongue-tied to speak. “That is a long story, my dear, and one that I will not be telling,” Maggie said simply. “Besides, I do my best work alone. I’m sure you understand.”

“I see.”

“I heard about Moscow, by the way. It was—”

“Risky, I know,” Kat said, unable to bear another lecture.

But Maggie just shook her head. Her eyes sparkled. “It was exactly what I would have done.”

When Maggie raised her eyebrows, she appeared younger than Kat had seen her yet. Age is just a number, after all. Youth is something else, and Kat could see that there—in the middle of the con—Maggie was turning back the clock, and Kat envied her. She thought of Gabrielle’s words and wondered if she was really looking at the female Uncle Eddie. Or maybe Kat was simply seeing the thief Kat herself might grow up to someday be.

“Personally, I love a Cézanne,” Maggie said longingly, and raised her glass again. “So I, of course, wouldn’t have given it away.”

And just like that the spell was broken. The last few days came rushing back, and there was only one thing about the woman that mattered. When Kat spoke again, she couldn’t hide her disappointment. “You broke the rules, Maggie.”

“There is no honor among thieves, Katarina. No matter what you might have read in storybooks.” She smiled a terribly wicked smile. “Part of the fun is getting the best of our rivals.”

“You said Romani sent you.”

Maggie waved the concern away. “I played the mark.”

“You used a Chelovek Pseudonima for your own purposes.”

Maggie pointed a finger at Kat, as if she’d just realized something. “I was once young like you—so fiery, so passionate.

When I heard about the Henley…I was impressed. That was very nice work, Katarina.” If she expected Kat to acknowledge the compliment, she was mistaken. “And then I started hearing stories of other jobs…and I knew that you had become noble. It is an adorable look on you. It goes with your eyes. You can tell your uncle that.”

“Uncle Eddie isn’t part of this.”

Maggie laughed. “Well, if Eddie didn’t send you, then who did?”

“Visily Romani.”

Maggie laughed harder. “Well, I’m here on behalf of the Easter Bunny, so—”

“We’re going to get it back, you know?”

Maggie nodded slowly. There was a harsh, sudden edge to her voice when she said, “You’re going to
try
.”

Rich, dense curtains blocked out the sun. It was quiet—almost peaceful—in the dim room, and Kat thought she heard her own heart pounding as she sat listening to Maggie say, “I’m very proud of you for coming here, Katarina. I would have found it insulting if you’d insisted on skulking around in the shadows as if I wouldn’t see you—as if I wouldn’t hear you.”

“Well, as long as you’re not offended…”

“So what would you like, dear? Ten percent?”

Kat didn’t even do the mental math—she didn’t dare. “That’s so nice of you to offer, but I think I’ll just take it all.”

Maggie threw her head back and laughed. “So you’re going to try…what? Birds of a Feather?” she guessed.

“Of course not,” Kat said. “Everyone knows the French government banned the importation of peacocks in 1987.”

“True.” Maggie frowned as if that particular development had caused her a great deal of grief on many occasions.

“London Bridge?” she guessed, but Kat said nothing. “A Jack and Jill?”

“Well, it is one of Hale’s favorites,” Kat managed to quip. “He makes an excellent Jill.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Kat felt a little dizzy, watching her options fall away like the shattered panes of a broken window. She feared she might get cut.

“So what
is
your play, Katarina?” Maggie poured herself another drink and sipped, her lips pursed against the crystal rim. “What is the master plan of the master thief who robbed the Henley?”

Kat prayed that her silence would read as strength instead of weakness, wisdom instead of foolishness. Most of all, she wished she knew the answer to that very question. But she didn’t. So instead she just said, “You shouldn’t have gone after the Cleopatra. You shouldn’t have used me to do it. But your biggest mistake was using the name Romani. When this is over, you’ll know that was where you blew it.”

“You’re good, Katarina. You really are. A bit reckless, though. And entirely too gullible. It’s a shame there is so much your family has failed to teach you. There’s so much
I
could teach you.”

“The thing you’re forgetting, Mags, is even if we can’t steal the Cleopatra back, that doesn’t mean you can sell it—not before I call New York and suggest that the Kelly Corporation run a few tests on the stone they’ve got under glass.”

“You won’t do that, Katarina.”

“Oh, believe me, Maggie. I would.”

Kat didn’t smile because she was gloating. It was simply the smile of someone who has made her peace with her mistakes and is prepared to live with consequences. But then Maggie joined her, a phone in her hand.

“I do love the new technologies,” she said, smiling down at the device. “They’ve made certain elements of our profession much more challenging, don’t get me wrong, but some things…” Her voice trailed off as she pressed a button. The tiny screen was instantly filled with a small but perfectly clear picture: Marcus and Hale outside the Kelly Corporation. Then the image changed, and Kat saw Hale and Gabrielle walking into the corporate headquarters in full dress and mid-con.

There were at least a half dozen images, but it was the final one that caused Kat’s heart to stop.

A small park. A quiet day. Maggie brought one heavily jeweled finger to the screen and said, “That’s me. That’s you.” Finally the fingernail came to rest on the envelope in the center of the screen, passing between the two of them. “And that is you giving me the Cleopatra Emerald.”

Maggie walked to the door and turned the key, then glanced back to the girl by the window.

“Do think about what I said, Katarina. I’d be most happy to teach you all I know.”