It was still dark when a clatter in the kitchen awoke Joanna. The clink of dog food in Gemma’s bowl and the whine of the coffee grinder were clear signs someone wanted them awake.
“Gene,” Joanna grumbled.
Paul stretched and rolled over. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Barely six o’clock.”
It was so peaceful in bed. She’d had the best night of sleep in days, now that the Gene situation looked close to being settled. Crisp’s opinion that Joanna’s plan was sensible and low risk seemed to soothe Paul, and there’d been no tossing and turning during the night on his part, either. Too bad it had to end so soon.
The morning air filtering through the bedroom window was cool, giving no hint of the hot afternoon sure to come. Pepper jumped off the bed and slipped out the door through the shaft of orange light that sliced the dark floor.
“Uncle Gene clearly wants us up,” Paul said after a crash of frying pan and spatula.
“It’s the press conference. He’s antsy. I can’t call Mary Pat this early, anyway. You’d think another couple of hours wouldn’t be a big deal after all these years.”
“He wants to be clean of the past,” Paul said. Gene started in on an unseasonal rendition of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” “Wow, does he ever.”
Joanna slipped from bed and reached for a kimono. One hand on the wall to steady herself, she stepped into a pair of green Moroccan slippers with a tassel on each toe. “The baker lady has sure got his number.”
In the kitchen, Gene was cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. Joanna wondered if all that family’s men were so good in the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee. The whoosh of the shower sounded through the wall between the bathroom and kitchen as Paul started his morning routine.
“You’re sure up early,” Joanna said.
“Today’s the day, right? You’re going to see Bradley’s sister. You think she’ll go for it?”
“We’ll see.” She twisted her hair up and impaled it with a chopstick. “I thought I’d wait until it was light out to call, though.”
Gene left the eggs on the counter and took his coffee mug to the dining room. “It’s getting light, see?” Apricot sun stained the sky above the house across the street. He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just so ready to have it all behind me.” He pulled a folded napkin from the top of the buffet and set it in front of her. “Look.”
Joanna peeled back the napkin. Lying on its linen folds were the emerald earrings she’d already seen, now cleaned of stain remover. Next to them lay their dazzling companions, a choker-length necklace and a brooch, both emerald and diamond. She picked up the necklace, and its teardrop emeralds swung freely. The morning light on diamonds spattered the dining room wall with light, but it was the emeralds that caught her eye.
“How many carats in that central emerald? I’ve eaten Chiclets smaller than that,” Joanna said.
“Almost four carats and unusually good quality.”
“Why did the woman wear these jewels to a house party in Portland? You’d think they’d be locked up in a safe and brought out for royal coronations.” Yet here they were, on her humble dining room table, next to her grocery list and a set of salt and pepper shakers shaped like Eiffel Towers.
“That was part of this girl’s schtick. She had a complete set of fakes. Pretty common. Only she put the fakes in the safe. People would think they were looking at paste, but they were real. ‘Best paste you ever saw, huh?’ she’d say.” Gene got up to refill his coffee cup. “She’d treat them like fakes, too, leaving an earring off while she used the phone.”
“How’d you find out she wore the real jewels? I mean, she’d be foolish to tell anyone. Otherwise, why have the set of duplicates at all?”
“You’re right. She kept mum about it. When she was sober. Get a grasshopper or three into her, and she’d spill everything.”
Looking at Gene now, it took imagination to picture his life as a high-end thief. He was appropriately dapper in a Pink Panther way, sure, but his hair, although slicked into a movie star’s wave, was now steel gray and sparse. He was trim enough to wear a tuxedo well, but his daily uniform was jeans with a neat plaid shirt tucked into the waistband.
“Tell me about this woman, the one with the emeralds. What was her name?”
“Aimee. Not spelled the usual way, but like the French word for ‘loved.’ Aimee Miller.”
Joanna leaned back in her chair. “So, how did you pull it off, anyway? Crisp said you had a solid alibi.”
Gene took his coffee to the kitchen and busied himself with preparing breakfast. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The bathroom door opened and Paul passed by the doorway wrapped in a bathrobe. If it had been just the both of them, the bathrobe might have been just a towel. Someday, she thought longingly, those mornings would return.
“Okay, you won’t tell. Are you willing to admit being at the party?”
He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised, but said nothing.
“Maybe you can tell me what the party was like, at least. You might have heard” —she paused for emphasis— “rumors.”
“Oh, sure, I heard about the party.” He pulled a brick of cheddar from the refrigerator. “What do you want to know about? The dresses?”
He might be able to give her the lowdown on that, actually. He had a good eye. “You know, the scene. You weren’t there. We’ve established that. But say you were a guest, and you came through the door. What would you have seen?”
“I’ll tell you what I heard. It was a cold night. Raining. The party was at the Woodstock mansion up in the West Hills.” He grated cheese into a mixing bowl. “This was before the highrises went in, and the views from the porticos stretched out over downtown and the valley to Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens. That night, the mist covered it all, but you could make out the lights downtown.” His hands had slowed their grating of the cheese and his eyes took on a faraway look. “Get him out of Washington and away from the cameras, and Senator Woodstock had a different life.” He nodded toward Joanna. “Not for publication, you understand.”
“I get it. This was in the seventies, right?”
“Nineteen seventy-three.”
Women would have been wearing pastel blouson-topped dresses and loose-legged pantsuits with pumps. Makeup favored glossy lips. Not her favorite era for couture, but a good one for perfume. She cherished her flacon of old Diorella.
“It was loud,” Gene continued. “Good lord. And the crowd was a real mix. Portland’s whole underworld was there. Goldilocks—used to be a dancer down at Mary’s Club, you knew her, right, Joanna?—was sitting on the baby grand kicking her legs around. Lots of the rich kids showed up.” As he talked, in her imagination she saw the crowd, smelled the Harvey Wallbangers, and heard the piano tinkle. “Come to think of it, Bradley Stroden was there, too. Sitting on the couch, watching, nursing his cocktail.”
“No kidding. Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“He got around, Stroden did. Anyway, the Canadian ambassador was in town, and it turned out that he and the senator shared a taste for the nightlife. The ambassador and his, um, friend, Ms. Miller, were staying in the guesthouse out back. When they came in, the room got quiet-like, just like in the movies. That woman—”
“Aimee,” Joanna said.
“She had the whitest skin I’ve ever seen outside a baby nursery. Pure white but for an adorable sprinkling of freckles right here.” Gene touched his nose. “And those emeralds. How anyone could think they were paste—”
“What’s for breakfast?” Paul, now dressed in a more rumpled version of his uncle’s attire, came in, Gemma at his feet.
“Denver omelet. Going to the job site this morning?”
“Don’t stop. Sit down, Paul. You don’t want to miss this. Your uncle’s in the middle of a good story.”
“You’re sure you’re not bored?”
“Stop joking and get on with it,” Joanna said, her coffee cooling at her elbow. “Gene was telling me about the Greffulhe jewel heist.”
Paul pulled up a chair. “I’m listening.”
“Well, as the night went on, the ambassador’s girlfriend tore through the champagne. The other guests were dropping away fast—passing out behind the couch, taking over the guest bedrooms, one even settling into the bathtub. That Aimee could really hold her liquor. You could hear the birds singing, and the sun was coming up behind Mount Hood by the time she was ready to turn in.”
“What about the ambassador?” Joanna asked.
“He’d gone to bed long before.”
“What did you do next?”
Gene faced them, spatula in hand. “What do you mean, me?”
“Correction,” Paul said. “What did the thief do?”
“He was at the party with a friend” —Gene looked knowingly at them— “and hadn’t been planning a work night. In fact, he’d spread the word that he was fishing in Idaho. But the product at the party was too good to pass up. I suspect our thief was waiting in the guesthouse, likely under the bed with the ambassador snoring above him. Finally, the girl stumbled in and sat on the edge of the mattress for a long time. The thief was worried she was going to pass out right there.”
“Because you needed her to take off the jewels, right?”
He nodded. “Finally, she decided to take a shower. The thief saw her bare feet cross the carpet and the dress fall to the floor. She didn’t even bother to hang it up.”
“And the jewels?” Joanna said, barely breathing.
“She wore them in the shower. It was starting to get light by then, and the thief was worried about getting out of the guest house before the staff at the main house showed up. Plus, this was an ambassador, at a senator’s house, no less. There’d be security staked out at the property’s entrances.”
Paul lifted the necklace and spread it over the tablecloth. “But the thief prevailed.”
“Aimee Miller finally dropped the jewels on the nightstand. Last thing she did before cutting into snores louder than the ambassador’s.”
Gene set the skillet on the stove. The story of the party was over. Joanna took a last look at the Greffuhle jewels and wrapped them again in the napkin. “I’ll call Mary Pat and do what I can to convince her to hold a press conference. In the meantime, I’ll find a worthier container for these.” She lifted the bundle. “I have a velvet evening clutch that rumor has it used to belong to Lana Turner.”
“Thank you. I’ve been waiting a long time for this day.”