Who Killed Tiffany Jones? (22 page)

Inside the study, he locked the door and went to his safe, which was concealed in the bottom of the pedestal on which an eighteenth-16470_ch02.qxd 7/12/02 4:40 PM Page 158

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century, Mendes figure was displayed. Kwabena carefully unpacked the stacks of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them with the uncut diamonds and the pile of money already in the safe. When he finished, he stood and stared out of the window at the few lights still flickering in the troubled city below. He was almost there, he thought; two, maybe three more trips, and he could quit and move to the Caribbean home that he had purchased last year. It was far too dangerous, and becoming increasingly more treacherous each day.

He turned out the lights, stepped outside the study, and locked the door. Before entering the bathroom to prepare for bed, he looked over the balcony to reassure himself that both the guard stationed at the front door and the heavily armed soldier at the bottom of the stairs were still there. Satisfied, he walked into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and bent over the sink. There was a slight rustling of the shower curtain before the light suddenly went out again, and, as he turned toward the switch, he felt a hemp cord graze the top of his forehead before it was yanked down to his neck. He struggled and tried to scream, but the thick rough fiber had not only cut off the air leading to his lungs but also stifled his vocal cords. All he could do was tug at the rope and gasp. A moment or so later, Kwabena sank to the floor clutching the cord in a dead-man’s grip.

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TWELVE

New Orleans—Friday, August 3

Ki m C a rlyl e ’s p la n e
touched down at New Orleans International Airport shortly before noon. As she made her way through the terminal, she had to stop herself from pushing past the lines of people leisurely sauntering down the long gray halls toward the baggage claim area. She was impatient; there was no time to waste.

She wove through the crowd, speeding past a slender Asian man walking a few paces ahead of her and practically knocking over an eld-erly couple when the woman stopped short to adjust the strap on her shoulder bag. The old man yelled something surprisingly obscene at Kim’s back. She mumbled a halfhearted apology over her shoulder but never slowed down as she dashed through the wide glass doors, hailed a cab, and headed toward the heart of the French Quarter.

As her cab moved along in traffic, Kim thought back to the call that she’d received from Josephine St. Claire. Kim had tried calling her 16470_ch02.qxd 7/12/02 4:40 PM Page 160

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several times the day before, but there was no answer. She had left two messages and spent the day doing some research on the woman.

Finally, earlier this morning, St. Claire had returned her call, and she sounded desperate. Kim wasn’t sure why she had called at six o’clock that morning, but she was convinced that St. Claire was in serious trouble.

St. Claire was an international art dealer known in celebrity jet-set circles for her exquisite beauty and poise. She’d been born into an old-money, mulatto family that had been seated at the pinnacle of colored society in New Orleans since the eighteenth century. She could trace her ancestry back to some of the greatest houses in Hol-land, France, and Spain. Her great-, great-, great-grandmother had been an intimate of Marie Lavaux, the legendary voodoo queen.

Since that time, there were persistent rumors that the family’s wealth and good fortune, including the lavish home that her grandfather had left her, stemmed not from hard work or even luck, but other, more sinister forces.

The cab stopped at the corner of Prytania and Third Streets in front of a colossal, pre–Civil War plantation-style mansion in the middle of the Garden District. Elegant mahogany shutters sealed off a view of the inside from the street. The broad, wrap-around porch burst with potted scarlet and ginger orchids, crepe myrtle, and creeping ivy.

Sweet-smelling magnolia and oleander trees shaded the three-story house on all sides. It was breathtaking. Kim could scarcely believe that a trendy twenty-eight-year-old jet-setter like St. Claire lived alone in this huge house.

She let herself in the gate, walked along the garden path lined with yellow rosebushes, and went up the short flight of steps to the front porch. Kim rang the bell and waited. No answer. She rang again and looked around for any sign of life within the mansion. Nothing.

She was rooting through her purse for her cellphone so that she could call inside when the door finally creaked open. Josephine St.

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Claire was hiding behind the door. She peeked out just far enough to grab Kim’s arm and practically yanked her in off the porch.

The house was as dark as night inside. As Kim’s eyes adjusted to the abrupt shift, she heard St. Claire behind her locking the three dead bolts on the door and pulling the chain back through its eye.

“Come this way,” St. Claire whispered. She took Kim’s hand and led her through the wide hallway until they came to a steep flight of stairs. Without flicking on the light, she walked down the stairs and waited at the landing for Kim to follow. Kim was reluctant to descend the darkened stairs. She didn’t want to trip and fall. More important, she wanted to know exactly what was waiting for her at the bottom.

“Turn on the light,” Kim called.

“No,” St. Claire answered. “Not until we get into the sanctuary room. I don’t want to take a chance on anyone seeing where we’ve gone.”

“But we’re the only ones here.”

“Maybe.”

Every bit of training that Kim had ever received in the department cried out in protest against this scenario. This was absolutely crazy. But for some reason, Kim’s instincts told her to go along with it. For now.

She held on to the banister with one hand and, with her other hand pressed against the wall, guided herself down the stairs. Even though she was wearing soft tennis shoes that made no noise, the weight of her body caused the wood stairs to creak loudly underneath her. At the landing, St. Claire grabbed her hand and led her into a room on the right.

She closed and locked the door behind them. Then she turned on the light. Kim had to cover her eyes with her hand for a minute because of the glare. Then, slowly, she began to look around.

The room was white. Even the smooth concrete floor, which had a drain in the center, was white. An altar covered in dead flowers with a picture of two serpents intertwined stood directly ahead of them. On 16470_ch02.qxd 7/12/02 4:40 PM Page 162

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the floor in front of the altar Kim saw three bowls filled with water, rosary beads, some sort of grayish meat on a plate, and about a dozen pennies strewn among the objects. Tall white candles surrounded the altar and were placed in the corners of the room. Lining the wall to the left was a long cabinet filled with jars and bottles. On the right was a sink with a hose attachment to the faucet. The room smelled of frank-incense, spoiled meat, and melted candle wax.

“What is this place?” Kim asked.

“It’s my sanctuary,” St. Claire replied. “No one else has a key. It’s the only place that I feel safe anymore.”

For the first time, Kim turned to face St. Claire in full light. What she saw made her gasp softly.

St. Claire looked haggard. Her smooth, almond complexion had turned to an uneven, pasty yellow. She had bags under her eyes and she had broken out with fiery red pimples across her forehead and cheeks. Even her thick, luxurious auburn hair, which she generally wore loose and swinging almost to her waist, seemed dry and brittle.

She had it pulled back into a tight braid, and the style made her face look even more severe. Kim couldn’t be sure, but St. Claire appeared much thinner than in the pictures Kim had seen.

“What’s going on?” Kim asked softly. “What’s this all about? Why did you call me here?”

“Well,” St. Claire answered, “I—I’m afraid. I think someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Why? Who would want to kill you?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s that gangster from Ohio. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but his name is Frank Napolini, and I think he’s after me because I have this.”

St. Claire walked over to the altar and removed the picture of the snakes, which she gently placed on the floor. There was a safe behind the picture, and she opened it without even attempting to make sure that Kim wasn’t checking out the combination. She pulled out a black 16470_ch02.qxd 7/12/02 4:40 PM Page 163

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satin bag and closed the safe. Then she sat down on the floor, opened the bag, and took out a black velvet cloth, which she placed on the floor in front of her. St. Claire motioned to Kim to sit opposite her.

“So what’s in the bag?” Kim asked, even though she was almost certain that she already knew.

St. Claire turned the bag over and emptied out its contents onto the cloth on the floor. Diamonds spilled out over the velvet, glittering and rolling so close to Kim’s crossed legs that she could have reached out and grabbed a handful. But she didn’t move. Instead, she sat silently and waited for St. Claire to explain what was going on.

St. Claire held one of the diamonds up toward the light.

“This is a class D, a River diamond. It’s absolutely flawless. Just about the best quality you can get. You see the shape? It’s a round brilliant-cut stone. This one little diamond right here is only about three and a half carats. Not even the size of my pinky nail. And yet, it’s worth about $90,000.”

Kim quickly scanned the diamonds on the cloth in front of her.

There was a mound of about forty or fifty of them.

“Yes. You’re looking at more than four million dollars. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“So, you stole these from Napolini?”

“No, I didn’t. They came to me through . . . someone else.”

“Who?”

“Well—”

“Look,” Kim said, “this is no time for games. If your life is in danger, and I believe it is, then mine is also. I’m sitting here with you watching you play with a lapful of stolen diamonds worth millions. If you can’t be straight with me, I’m leaving.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” St. Claire rushed to explain;

“it’s just that I’m afraid. Someone broke into my house yesterday. I’m sure it wasn’t just a random burglary. I’d seen that man recently in Europe, which leads me to believe that he’d been watching me for a 16470_ch02.qxd 7/12/02 4:40 PM Page 164

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long time. I was walking home at about three in the morning, and I saw him sneak into the gate and go around the back of the house. I followed him back there and saw that he’d broken in through a back window and disabled my alarm system. That terrified me. He had to be a professional. I have an extremely high-tech alarm system that’s monitored directly by the New Orleans police department. So either he knew how to disable it or he had help getting in. There was no way I was going to confront him. And I was too afraid to call the police because they’d start asking questions that I couldn’t answer. So I waited.

“My car was parked around the corner, and I stayed in it all night,”

she continued. “At dawn, I got up the courage to go inside and I found the house empty. That’s when I got your messages. At first I thought that he must’ve gone out through another window. But all of the other windows and doors were still locked from the inside. Then I realized that the door leading down to the sanctuary was open. I came down here and looked around, but nothing was wrong. This inner door was still locked, too.

“When I went back upstairs, I noticed that there were three large splatters of blood by the front door. That was the only indication I found of someone being in the house. Of course, my question was how did the blood get there and what happened to the man? Was someone else in the house waiting for me when the other guy snuck in? That’s what I think. I also think that if I hadn’t seen that man come in here and stayed away last night, I’d be dead already.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Kim persisted. “Where did you get the diamonds?”

Finally St. Claire relented. “Some were shipped directly to me. They came with the artwork. And some, well . . . they came from Clarence . . .

most people call him Mojo.”

“Clarence Johnson, from New York?”

“Yes.”

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“I’ve heard of him. Ruff Daddy told—”

“Ruff Daddy? Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Yes, I think so. But he’s also running scared. He’s hiding out somewhere. When he called, he told me to contact you,” Kim said. “But how do you know Mojo?”

“He’s my spiritual advisor. The leader of our religion.”

Kim noted that St. Claire had said “our” religion and that she seemed to be taking it all very, very seriously.

“So where did Mojo get the diamonds?”

“There were a number of ways. I’m not sure about all of them, but I think it all leads back to Klaus Svrenson and Frank Napolini. Mojo was never very open about his contacts and exactly how everything worked. He told me about a year ago that he’d had a way to make a lot of money fast. He was set to buy a large piece of property down in the Islands. He wanted to build a school and a compound there to house and train priests and priestesses. It’s been his dream for most of his life.