do. There’s no one here I can ask. But in a way she was asking Erin. If the necklace wasn’t in the safe, it might mean that Erin had been the victim of a robbery when she attempted to deliver it. If it was there, it was almost certain proof that something had happened to her. Nothing would have kept Erin from delivering the necklace on time.
She opened Erin ’s address book and turned to D. Next to Dalton Safe was the series of numbers. “I have the combination,” she told Stratton. “I’ll wait for you to come here. I don’t want to open Erin ’s safe without a witness. And in case the necklace is here, I’ll want a receipt for it from you.” He said he’d be right over. After she replaced the receiver, Darcy decided that she’d ask the superintendent to be present as well. She didn’t know anything about Jay Stratton except that Erin told her he was a jeweler and the one who got her the Bertolini commission.
While she waited, Darcy went through Erin ’s files. Under “Project Personal,” she found sheets of personal columns torn from magazines and newspapers. On each page a number of the ads were circled. Were these the ones Erin had answered, or had thought about answering? Dismayed, Darcy realized that there were at least two dozen of them. Which, if any of them, had been placed by Charles North, the man Erin was to meet on Tuesday evening?
When she and Erin agreed to answer the personal ads, they’d gone about it systematically. They’d had inexpensive letterheads made with only their names at the top. They’d each chosen a favorite snapshot to send when requested. They’d spent a hilarious evening composing letters they had no intentions of sending. “I love to clean clean clean,” Erin had suggested, “my favorite hobby is doing the wash by hand. I inherited my grandmother’s scrub board. My cousin wanted it too. It caused a big family fight. I get a little nasty during my period, but I’m a very good person. Please call soon.”
They had finally come up with what they decided were reasonably alluring responses. When Darcy was leaving for California, Erin had said, “Darce, I’ll send yours out about two weeks before you’re due back. I’ll just change a sentence here or there to fit the ad.”
Erin didn’t own a computer. Darcy knew she typed out the responses on her electric typewriter but did not Xerox them. She kept all the input in the notebook she carried in her purse: the box numbers of the ads she answered, the names of the people she called, her impressions of the ones she dated.
Jay Stratton leaned back in the cab, his eyes half-closed. The speaker behind his right ear was blaring rock music. “Will you turn that down?” he snapped. “Man, you trying to deprive me of my music?” The cabbie was in his early twenties. Wispy, snarled hair hung around his neck. He glanced over his shoulder, caught the look on Stratton’s face, and, muttering under his breath, lowered the volume.
Stratton felt sweat forming in his armpits. He had to pull this off. He tapped his pocket. The receipts Erin had given him for the Bertolini gems and for the diamonds he’d given her last week were in his wallet. Darcy Scott sounded smart. He mustn’t arouse the slightest suspicion.
The nosy superintendent must have been watching for him. He was in the foyer when Stratton arrived. Obviously, he recognized him. “I’ll bring you up,” he said. “I’m supposed to stay while she opens the safe.” Stratton swore to himself as he followed the squat figure up the stairs. He didn’t need two witnesses.
When Darcy opened the door for them, Stratton’s face was set in a pleasant, somewhat-concerned expression. He had planned to sound reassuring, but the worry in Scott’s eyes warned him against banalities. Instead, he agreed with her that something must be dreadfully wrong.
Smart girl, he thought. Darcy had obviously memorized the combination of the safe. She was not about to let anyone know where Erin kept it. She had a pad and pen ready. “I want to itemize everything we find in there.” Stratton deliberately turned his back while she twisted the dial, then crouched beside her as she pulled the door open. The safe was fairly deep. Boxes and pouches lined the shelves.
“Let me hand everything out to you,” he suggested. “I’ll describe what we find.
You write it down.”
Darcy hesitated, then realized it was a sensible suggestion. He was the jeweler.
His arm was brushing against hers. Instinctively, she moved aside. Stratton looked over his shoulder. An irritated-looking Boxer was lighting a cigarette and glancing around the room, probably searching for an ashtray. It was Stratton’s only chance. “I think that velvet case is the one Erin kept the necklace in.” Reaching for it, he deliberately knocked a small box onto the floor.
Darcy jumped as she saw the glitter of stones scattering around her and scrambled to collect them. An instant later Stratton was beside her, cursing his carelessness. They searched the area thoroughly. “I’m sure we got them all,” he said. “These are semiprecious, suitable for good costume jewelry. But more important…” He opened the velvet case. “Here’s the Bertolini.” Darcy stared down at the exquisite necklace. Emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, moonstones, opals, and rubies were set in an elaborate design that reminded her of the medieval jewelry she’d seen in portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Stratton asked. “You can understand why the manager at Bertolini’s was so upset at the prospect of something happening to it. Erin is remarkably gifted. She not only managed to create a setting that made those stones look ten times their own considerable value, but she did it in the Byzantine style. The family who commissioned the necklace was originally from Russia. These gems were the only valuable possessions they were able to take when they fled in 1917.”
Darcy could visualize Erin sitting at this worktable, her ankles around the rungs of the chair, the way she used to sit when she was studying in college. The sense of impending disaster was overwhelming. Where would Erin willingly go without delivering this necklace on time?
No where willingly, she decided.
Biting her lip to keep it from quivering, she picked up the pen. “Will you describe this for me and I think we should identify every precious stone in it so there’s no question that any are missing.”
As Stratton removed other pouches, velvet cases, and boxes from the safe, she noticed that he was becoming increasingly more agitated. Finally he said, “I’m going to open the rest all at once, then we’ll list them.” He looked directly at her. “The Bertolini necklace is here, but a pouch I gave Erin with a quarter of a million dollars worth of diamonds is gone.”
Darcy left the apartment with Stratton. “I’m going to the police station to file a missing-person report,” she told him.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I’ll take care of getting the necklace to Bertolini’s immediately and if we haven’t heard from Erin in a week, I’ll contact the insurance company about the diamonds.” It was exactly noon when Darcy entered the Sixth Precinct on Charles Street. At her insistence that something was terribly wrong, a detective came out to see her. A tall black man in his mid-forties with military bearing, he introduced himself as Dean Thompson and listened sympathetically as he tried to allay her fears.
“We really can’t file a missing-person report for an adult woman simply because no one has heard from her for a day or two,” he explained. “It violates freedom of movement. What I will do if you give me her description is check it against accident reports.”
Anxiously, Darcy gave the information. Five feet seven, one hundred and twenty pounds, auburn hair, blue eyes, twenty-eight years old. “Wait, I have her picture in my wallet.”
Thompson studied it, then handed it back. “A very attractive woman.” He gave her his card and asked for hers. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Susan Frawley Fox hugged five-year-old Trish and guided her reluctant feet to the waiting school bus that would take her to the afternoon session of kindergarten. Trish’s woebegone face was on the verge of crumbling into tears. The baby, firmly held under Susan’s other arm, reached down and pulled Trish’s hair. It gave the needed excuse. Trish began to wail. Susan bit her lip, torn between annoyance and sympathy. “He didn’t hurt you and you’re not staying home.”
The bus driver, a matronly woman with a warm smile, said coaxingly, “Come on, Trish. You sit right up here near me.”
Susan waved vigorously and sighed with relief as the bus pulled away. Shifting the baby’s weight, she hurried from the corner back to their rambling brick and stucco home. Patches of snow still covered isolated sections of the lawn. The trees seemed stark and bloodless against the gray sky. In a few months the property would be lush
