dress like this can do.”
He nodded, said no problem, no sweat, and pulled away.
On her walk back, Max avoided the road to the front of the castle, and the other cars she knew would be using it. She passed the place where she'd docked the boat the other night, and kept moving. Even in the short dress, the wall wasn't any more of an obstacle than it had been the first time, though that cabbie would have received quite an eyeful.
She glided around the house to the front, staying in the shadows, waiting until a larger group of six or seven people poured out of a stretch limo— their slightly drunken laughter like off-key wind chimes in the night— and breezed up the wide stairs toward the massive green dollar-bill door. As they moved up past the lions, Max just blended in with the crowd and, for the second time, entered the Sterling mansion.
A string quartet sat to one side of the foyer, their soft melodies providing unobtrusive musical wallpaper for the many conversations going on. Thanks to Moody, Max recognized the piece as Bach, though the name eluded her— it wasn't something you could steal, after all.
The last time Max had stood in this foyer, she'd broken and entered— and had felt much more at ease than in the midst of this crowd of tony people… chatting in little groups, sipping flutes of champagne, nibbling at canapes, courtesy of silver-tray-bearing waiters in tuxedo pants and white shirts with black bow ties, winding through the throng like moonlighting Chippendale's dancers. The male guests tended to be in their late thirties to midforties, wearing tailored suits and an air of success. The female guests often were ten years younger than their dates, and wore clingy cocktail dresses, and airs of excess.
Max fought a spike of panic— she had rarely felt more out of place in her young life, perhaps not since those early months after the Manticore escape.
Some rich people had not weathered the Pulse at all well, even spiraling into failure and poverty. For those born to wealth— or those capitalists (like, say, Jared Sterling) who saw in disaster potential for their own prosperity— it was as if there had been no Pulse. To such people, affluence was as natural as breathing; and those who'd been born to it, should they lose their fortunes, would wither and die.
This way of life was completely foreign to Max, who'd scratched for every cent she'd ever earned… or anyway, stolen. Oh, she'd seen her share of fancy parties and posh events in Los Angeles, of course; but she'd always been on the outside looking in, hoping to snag a bauble or snatch a purse when the wealthy left whatever function she and the other members of the Chinese Clan were staking out.
Despite the care Kendra and Original Cindy had taken to help her blend in here, that was impossible for Max; in a way, her home girls had done
good a job on her. Her dark exotic beauty, so fetchingly displayed in the low-cut frock, had attracted male eyes from the moment she walked in. The women took only a few seconds longer to catch onto her unique presence… and suddenly it seemed that Max wasn't the only female with cat genes in the room: the debutante girlfriends and trophy wives threw her looks of undisguised contempt.
A waiter paused for Max to select a champagne flute from his tray, and she exchanged smiles with him— two human beings trapped here in the Decadence Museum. Then he was gone, and she sipped, hoping the bubbly would relax her, but instructing herself to hold it to one glass: she was, after all, working…
As she eased off toward the gallery, Max nodded at several of the appreciatively gazing men, thinking,
…
The vast room where, not so long ago, she and a security guard had interacted now held fifty-some people, mostly milling about enjoying the artwork, murmuring appreciatively at Sterling's collection, about every third one trying to impress with his or her knowledge. Music from the foyer filtered in, but muffled, as if this were Muzak piped in.
Glancing around the room, Max saw that Sterling's people had cleaned up the mess after her visit, neatly, efficiently. The holes from the security leader's pistol shots had been patched; the Jackson Pollock ruined by Maurer's MP7A had been taken down (and replaced by a different Pollock painting!); and— much to Max's surprise— she caught glimpses of a new Plexiglas display case in the corner, where she'd found the Heart of the Ocean. But she would have to get closer, to see what new object had been put on display in the necklace's place…
Not wanting to arouse suspicion— and now starting to look for Sterling in earnest— Max went down the left side of the room (the side opposite the display case), gliding behind guests lined up staring at paintings. A stunning blonde in blue velvet who must have been straight out of art school was explaining a Georgia O'Keeffe flower to her much older male companion, specifically the “powerful symbol of life and female becoming.”
As Max slipped by the couple, she noticed the blonde's hand was brushing the thigh of her date, who was about as weathered as one of O'Keeffe's cow skulls. He was studying her, not the painting— though Max had a hunch the guy understood the blossom symbolism just fine.
Shaking her head a little, Max spotted, on the far wall, one of Andrew Wyeth's
pictures, which she wished she'd grabbed on her first visit. She smiled privately, moving on even as she considered the possibility of a third visit to the mansion, some night soon…
Still no sign of Sterling— or, for that matter, any of his security staff. She slipped in and out of the clusters of pompous people until she stood in front of another Grant Wood, which had taken the wall space that had belonged to
— another oil on Masonite, done in 1936— featured large green fields going on seemingly forever, rolling hills beneath a blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds. In the bottom foreground, a tiny man used a horse-drawn plow. At eighteen by forty,
was also a bulky painting; if she did return, she'd leave this one behind.
Again, Max slowly scanned the room for Sterling, and didn't see him. But before she'd move on to another room to continue her search, she just had to know how Sterling had filled that Plexiglas case. She waited until two couples blocking her way moved on, then stepped up and looked down at the black velvet pad…
… and its contents made her breath catch.
What the hell?… How could Sterling have gotten it back? There was no
— the necklace was hidden in her crib, and even Kendra didn't know it was there.
The necklace on display was breathtaking, and appeared to be the genuine article… but this was
Her heart pounding, her palms sweaty, Max stepped closer, leaning in, trying to get a better look. A gold plate labeled the exhibit: “The Heart of the Ocean— one of two prop necklaces from the famous film
the other resides in the Hollywood Heritage Museum.”
Just as she was forming an opinion on its authenticity, Max felt a presence— someone stepping up behind her.
“Beautiful, isn't it?”
Recognizing the warm masculine voice, Max turned to see Jared Sterling— a tall, blond man in his late twenties with intense blue eyes, a neatly trimmed, slightly darker beard; he wore a black suit with a crisp black collarless shirt, buttoned to the neck, and no tie— casual, in a formal way.
“Beautiful,” she said, adding, “for a fake.”
Sterling favored her with a small twitch of a smile. “Yes, a beautiful fake… like you, my dear.”
A shiver shot through her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Is the music too loud? Can you not hear me?” He was standing right next to her now, and leaned sideways to her and, with a tone that managed to be both pleasant and rather vicious, said, “The necklace is like you— beautiful, but not what it appears.”
She bestowed a smile of her own. “And what do I appear to be?”
“One of numerous beautiful young women, who were invited to my party… but you're not, are you?”
