Double Take

on Pallack and his fundraising, some correspondence with various bigwigs, and the usual odds and ends in desk drawers. He said a silent prayer and powered up Pallack’s computer.

It was passworded, something he’d expected, and so he’d made up a list of likely words and numbers. He typed each one in, tried variations and additions, but none of them worked. He simply wasn’t good enough to hack in. He could have used Savich for that.

He found the safe behind an original Picasso line drawing featuring weird forms that resembled no human he’d ever seen. It was a tumbler safe and there was no way he could get into it without the combination, or a blowtorch. He went back to Pallack’s desk, got down on his knees, and pulled out each drawer, looking at the undersides. There was no combination underneath any of them. Then he lifted the keyboard and there, taped under the g and h, was a set of three double numbers. For the first time since he’d left the Sherlock house, Dix smiled.

A moment later, he pulled the safe handle open. It was about half full—mostly papers, separated with rubber bands, a big accordion-pleated folder, a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills, probably totaling five thousand, and underneath them, several velvet pouches. His heartbeat picked up as he pulled open the drawstrings of a dark burgundy velvet pouch and upended it. A magnificent diamond necklace and earrings filled his palm. He opened a dark blue velvet pouch—more diamonds, an emerald the size of his thumbnail, and a half dozen loose blood-red rubies, maybe ten carats each. Nothing else. No bracelet. He put the jewels back in their pouches and carefully replaced them by the pile of hundred-dollar bills. He pulled out a stack of papers, remembering how they were arranged, and methodically went through them. Pallack’s will, Charlotte’s will, half a dozen sets of partnership agreements, deeds to homes spread throughout the world, documents in French and Greek, insurance policies, business contracts he didn’t have time to read thoroughly but that had no immediate import to him.

He lifted out the single fat accordion folder, pulled away the rubber band. Inside were notebooks, maybe a dozen of them.

What was this?

There was a photo on top of them. Dix lifted out a five-by-seven color photo of David Caldicott standing next to—he became very still. Was it Christie? Charlotte? He couldn’t begin to explain it, but he knew to his soul he was looking at Christie, not Charlotte Pallack. David Caldicott had said he’d known Christie, said she’d admired his playing, that she’d come up and spoken to him. But they’d obviously known each other better than that. He could make out the familiar architecture of the Stanislaus buildings in the background. It was fall, with red, gold, and brown leaves mixed thick on the ground, tree branches nearly naked. Both David and Christie were smiling into the camera. Who’d taken the photo? He turned the photo over. There was a date scrawled but nothing else. Three years and four months ago.

He slipped it into his jacket pocket. He looked at the stack of thin notebooks and realized he had indeed found August Ransom’s journals. But how did they get here? Three folded sheets of stationery stuck out from under the cover of the very first notebook. He opened the first one, and stared down at a note pasted together out of words cut from a newspaper. He read:

Mr. Pallack, I have August’s journals. He told me all about you, and now I have proof. I want five hundred thousand dollars. Tomorrow noon leave the money in a carry-on bag on the foot of the statue in Washington Square.

Dix quickly read the other two notes, none dated so he didn’t know how far apart they’d been sent. The demands totaled two million dollars. He stared thoughtfully at the second note, read the final line several times:

We’ve had such a lovely thing going here, haven’t we? But August never believed I was greedy even when others said I was. You won’t hear from me again.

But of course Pallack had heard from the blackmailer again. The third note was short, simply instructed Pallack to leave a million dollars in a briefcase by the first jewelry counter just inside the entrance of Neiman Marcus, again at noon. It wasn’t signed, but the blackmailer had written Hasta Luega, whatever that was supposed to mean. More blackmail notes to come? Or had it indeed been the last demand?

Dix read them all once more, and realized that the tone, the implied intimacy of the words, bothered him. It hit him between the eyes—of course, it sounded like Julia Ransom had written them.

It all fell into place. Pallack had hired Makepeace to kill Julia because he believed she was the blackmailer.

But Dix believed her when she’d said she’d never even seen any journals, that she really didn’t think they’d even existed. So Pallack had been wrong.

Who then? It took Dix only a moment to realize it must have been another of Pallack’s psychics, probably none other than Soldan Meissen.

Meissen and August Ransom had known each other for a long time. Meissen must have known about the journals, even seen them. After August Ransom was murdered, he could have gotten into Julia’s house, stolen the journals, and discovered he had a gold mine. He’s started off with the blackmail, then lured Pallack in as a client.

Dix wondered what Pallack had thought when he finally tumbled to the fact that Meissen was not only his blackmailer but had made Pallack believe he could communicate with his parents, convincing him by using conversation notes lifted from August Ransom’s journals. Dix remembered clearly on the tape recording Sherlock had made of their interview with Pallack, how he’d sensed he’d had similar conversations with his parents before, a sort of deja vu.

Did it all become clear to you the moment you voiced that understanding, Pallack? Did you realize then that Meissen had a lovely scam going on you? All that money you paid him and it wasn’t enough. He sucked you into being his client twice a week, made a fool of you.

Dix wondered if Pallack had paid the last million before he’d killed Meissen or if he’d paid the money to Makepeace instead.

The rage Pallack must have felt. He’d moved quickly, Dix thought, and Makepeace had moved quickly as well. How convenient that Pallack had his own private assassin close at hand.

Dix thumbed through the first journal, sessions with Thomas Pallack, but he didn’t see anything incriminating, only reminiscences. He picked up the last journal, opened it to the last page, and read:

Thomas is frightened of me. I’ve tried to speak to him about it, but he refuses. I sense he deeply regrets talking about that other woman. He spoke of her only because his mother kept asking him where she was, what he’d done to her, and then his mother laughed, such a laugh that my flesh crawled. And he told her he’d met a woman who was her twin and he loved her the first instant he saw her. But she wouldn’t have him. He’d had to—Thomas shook