The door cracked wider. “But I’m not.”
“I’m a stranger. Why should you trust me?”
“Good point,” she said, but she was smiling.
Within a few more minutes, he had an appointment.
He showed up the next day with a plan of action for her apartment, which mainly consisted of a few motion detectors and a cheap alarm that was supposed to blow if anyone fiddled with the frontdoor lock. He had fun fiddling with wires, looking experienced. She stayed around while he talked. She listened, growing progressively more paranoid as he fed her stories, some real, some made up, of break-ins, attacks, and other unsavory local activities.
“Best thing,” he said, screwing a white box into the ceiling of a small hallway that wouldn’t do much, but had an official look about it and was supposed to blip in certain unlikely events, “is to defend yourself aggressively, not be passive and sit back and let them take you down.”
“Yeah,” she said. She wore blue jeans and a blue sweater. While he worked she swiped a mop around on the kitchen floor. “That’s my plan.”
He took a second to admire the apartment and to consider that this woman, who lived in this very elegant penthouse apartment, was his half-sister. Again, he couldn’t see much family resemblance, but then, they were only half-siblings. Was it really possible, this story about their father?
He had been reading his Russian history. He knew that most of the last tsar’s family had been found, but that the young tsarevitch’s body had never been recovered. So intriguing. And there had to be millions buried behind that story somewhere, in the jewels they tried to take with them when they escaped, or in money smuggled out before the revolution. How much had the tsarevitch made off with? Had their father managed to hide some away? How much did she have, anyway?
“Women need to be able to protect themselves because men won’t anymore. I believe in bearing arms,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said.
And then the conversation got around to what kind of gun, and what she would carry, given a choice. They groaned about the difficulty perfectly honest people had getting guns for their own protection.
He offered to get one for her.
She thought that was a great idea.
27
MAYBE HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ALL OF IT. ALL OF IT LED up to the night Christina Zhukovsky had died, and they were returning to that night in the words of the man who had evidently killed her.
Let him talk. From Salas’s rigid shoulders and Jaime’s intent eyes, Nina saw that they had no intention of inventing obstacles. Immersed in the testimony, the entire courtroom seemed to vibrate.
“What did you do after approaching Christina Zhukovsky in the guise of a home-security salesman?”
“The next day, I went to a lawyer. Alan Turk. The lawyer who handled Constantin’s estate.”
“I want every nickel accounted for,” Gabe had told the lawyer. He had dressed carefully in dry-cleaned navy blue slacks and a light blue dress shirt. He didn’t want to show up at a law office looking poor, like he was begging for something. Look powerful, be powerful. Across a shiny desk, Alan Turk played busy man, rearranging the orderly paperwork stacked in front of him, beside him, and behind him on a credenza.
“I’ve got a right to know the terms of my own father’s will, don’t I? As a member of the family.”
“Of course,” the lawyer said. He had listened to Gabe’s story about spying on Christina, about the theory that Constantin Zhukovsky had something to do with the Romanovs, and about how Gabe had offered Christina a gun in order to meet her, with an expression of complete disbelief. Then he had taken the 1973 copy of the marriage certificate of Wanda Sobczyk and Constantin Zhukovsky and read it word for word. Turk didn’t look very interested or very encouraging when he was finished. The lawyer held a folder up, like he ought to be thanked for achieving the bureaucrat’s eureka, the relevant closed file. He opened the file and read. “Hang on. My apologies,” he murmured, “just a second to review.” He scanned quickly.
Gabe looked around the office, at the Chinese vase on its carved pedestal, the silky rug, the display case of netsuke figurines, thinking he would have gone to law school if he’d had the money. He had cracked a few law books recently, since his mother’s little revelation and Christina’s blockbuster surprise, and he could understand most of it. You just had to want to know something.
He examined the books in cases against one wall. Yes, he could imagine himself, glasses on his nose, a client across from him needing his help, leafing through one of those red tax books, slapping it shut with satisfaction.
The lawyer looked up. “Tell me, Mr. Wyatt, why did you come to me?”
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? I want to know the terms of his will, which I was left out of. This is California. My mother, who was legally married to the guy, was entitled to half the estate, wasn’t she, at least whatever he made while they were married. Well, she got gypped.”
“Ah,” he said. “I contacted your mother after you called, because I had a few questions, too.”
Well, in that case, Gabe thought, annoyed, why the big show about reading his notes again? He must have read them before calling Wanda. Maybe he was the forgetful type. Or maybe he was stalling Gabe for some reason.
“I was not aware Mr. Zhukovsky had remarried. However, he and your mother signed a prenuptial agreement. They weren’t that common in those days, but apparently it was something he had drafted by another attorney. She was kind enough to send me a copy. It’s all very aboveboard.”
“Secretive bastard didn’t even want his own lawyer to know about my mother,” Gabe said. “Either that or he didn’t trust you anymore.” He laughed.
The way Turk’s jowls hardened showed he did not find Gabe’s little joke funny at all. He was younger than Gabe’s mother, maybe in his middle to late fifties, not too wrinkled, but with a receding hairline he tried to disguise.
Turk tapped a pen against the edge of the desk, arched his back, and got comfy in his leather swivel chair. “I’d like to know more about your interest in the will, if I could.”
Inside, Gabe laughed at the language. He could do that too, push people around with a delicate hand. However, unlike this fancy attorney, he didn’t have to. “I don’t see why,” he said. “Obviously, I have a right to know.”
“This will was written and probated more than twenty years ago. Naturally, I’m curious.”
Gabe got it now. He might not appear aggressive, but old Turk wasn’t going to give until he understood the scene. Well, Gabe considered, what would it cost him anyway? Nothing. This guy couldn’t tell anyone about what they said in this room. Gabe didn’t have to go to law school to know that.
“I only recently found out my mother was married to the guy, okay? Otherwise, I promise you, I would have stopped by earlier.”
“You had no idea?”
“None at all. My mother kept the information from me.”
The lawyer nodded. “It’s straightforward,” he said. “He wrote the will right after he married your mother, but before you or your brother were born. Other than a few small bequests to charity and to his church up in San Francisco, your father divided his estate between his first two children, Christina and Alex Zhukovsky.”
“How much did they get? Exactly.”
Turk’s nose hid behind the file for another minute. Then he put it down and stroked it with his hands. “I can’t say exactly. That is not in the will, of course. Assets are calculated after debts are paid, holdings are sold, and so forth. But I believe, at least, if memory serves me, each of the heirs received roughly a million dollars.”
“Each.”
“Yes.” He kept his hands on the file as if holding tight to something precious. They looked cold, and the buff color of his skin roughly matched the manila folder.
“That’s a lot of apple pie.”
Turk shrugged. “I don’t know how he made his money. He must have invested wisely over many years.”
“You know what my mother got?”
“Three hundred thousand dollars, invested in an annuity with certain restrictions that passed outside the estate.”
“Four hundred a month to take care of her for life. I bet she thought that was some chunk. What a laugh by comparison, huh? She’s always had to work, you know, for as long as I can remember. While that- Ever seen Christina’s apartment?”
The lawyer said nothing.
“Well, I have. It’s a penthouse. Must have cost her a bundle. Maybe she owns the building. In those days, back in the seventies when he died, two million bucks was worth something, wasn’t it?”
“That’s certainly true.” The lawyer smiled slightly. He was still trying to figure Gabe out.
“There’s another issue.”
“Oh?”
Gabe couldn’t help laughing. “Well, I told you about this Romanov connection. Somehow Christina latched on to the idea that her father, our father, wasn’t just a page to the last tsar of Russia. She thinks he was his son.”
Alan Turk let out a snort of disbelief. “His son? His
“She went to Russia and met some people and came back believing it. And she’s ready to go public with the idea, too.”
Gabe enjoyed the flabbergasted look on Turk’s face. “She must have some sort of psychiatric problem!”
“Yeah, delusions of grandeur,” Gabe said. “But even my mother says the old man talked more and more about Russia before he died. He said he couldn’t tell her all of it. He said he had decided when he came to America to keep his secrets.”
“You mean Christina’s going to say that she’s some sort of heir of the Romanovs?”
“The heir to the throne. She was the oldest of Constantin’s kids, and even though she was a daughter she thought she could be recognized by the Russian church, then the people. She thought she had a shot at it.”
“At what! There hasn’t been a monarchy in Russia since 1918!”
