Hearts in Vegas. Colleen Collins
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Besides the cost of the necklace, the court tacked on their case-processing fees, plus an assessment for the victims’ compensation fund, which brought her financial obligation to just over $22,700. A hefty payoff considering her fence, a pawnbroker named Rock Star, paid her only $4,500 for the necklace, the standard 25 percent going rate.
At first she’d felt sorry for herself for getting into that mess. Then one day her probation officer called and said the victim, a woman named Leona, who’d recently lost her daughter in Afghanistan, wanted to meet her. Frances had balked, anxious about facing Leona’s justified anger, especially as the necklace had never been recovered.
Her mother, in the last weeks of her life, although Frances and her dad didn’t know it at the time, simply said, You owe it to her.
The following week, Frances had sat in a spacious, airy living room, eating chocolate cookies with Leona, a plump, fiftyish woman with eyes the color of water. She didn’t get angry. Didn’t mention the necklace, either. Instead, she talked for two hours about her daughter, Dena, who’d played the flute, raised bees and dreamed of being a veterinarian. She never mentioned Dena’s death, only said she’d joined the army to help pay for her college.
Later, Frances thought how she’d gone to Leona’s so the woman could yell and vent her justified rage. Instead Frances received something far greater. Forgiveness.
“But you weren’t caught stealing that necklace,” Charlie continued, “which is commendable.”
Frances was surprised he’d used the word commendable about her theft. For all Charlie’s education, sometimes he had the depth of a puddle.
“It was the fence that snitched you out, right?” he said pleasantly, as though this were a light, inconsequential conversation.
“The buyer of the necklace coughed up my fence’s name to the police, who in turn coughed up mine.” Loyalty among thieves.
“Which is my point—you’ve never been caught in the act,” he said, “because you’re good at what you do. Which our mystery Russian recognized after watching your brilliant audition on the surveillance feed.”
The waiter returned with her Baby Bellini, poured more champagne for Charlie and informed them their food would be served shortly.
After he left, Charlie said, “You’re not out of your league, Frances—you’re stepping up to it.”
As he paused to take another sip of champagne, she tasted her Baby Bellini, enjoying its peachy fizz, thinking she should call Leona and ask how her bee farm was going.
“Was the Russian at his office this morning?” Charlie set down his drink.
“Don’t know. Oleg was in the front area, working on a computer, but the other doors were closed.”
“Did Oleg discuss your work there?”
“Just to be there Monday morning around nine and to ask for him.”
“Oleg,” he mused, “is a very savvy hacker if he’s breaking into a government facial-recognition database. If the feds were to nail him, he could spend up to ten years in prison.”
“These people don’t leave electronic tracks.”
“No, they get caught after doing something stupid, like leaving behind a half-eaten sandwich covered with DNA.”
A famously stupid mistake in one of the largest jewel heists in history. After several years of rigorous planning, a brilliant jewel thief named Leonardo Notarbartolo executed a meticulous break-in of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre and its supposedly impregnable vault. Afterward, he tossed his half-eaten sandwich, along with receipts for some of the break-in tools, in a farmer’s field near the scene of the crime. The farmer called the police, angry people were dumping trash on his property, and read them the information on the receipts, which the police recognized to be the tools used at the crime. After running a DNA analysis on the sandwich, they identified Notarbartolo, who spent several years in prison, although he never divulged the whereabouts of the diamonds.
Cases like that taught investigators to never dismiss seemingly unconnected leads. That the jewelry was never located wasn’t a surprise, however, as in nearly half of such thefts, the gold would be melted and the gems recut.
Which made intact historical jewelry pieces, such as the Helena Diamond necklace and the fifth-century-BC coins, all the more valuable.
“Think the big man’s from Saint Petersburg?” Charlie asked.
“Chocolates were from there, but that doesn’t mean he is. Saw a name—Dmitri Romanov—on the envelope I delivered this morning to Braxton.... Apparently that’s the name he goes by, but I don’t know...could be an alias, too.”
“I don’t think we know enough about him. What else did you notice?”
“I’ve gone over and over our meeting in my head. He wore no jewelry, had no visible scars from what I could see, but the lighting was dim in the limo. I described that other set of Georgian earrings at Fortier’s in my email—learn anything about them?”
“The slight blue cast of the diamonds is unusual, but there’s no record of their theft.”
“And the license-plate numbers I forwarded?”
“Limo’s registered to Konfety, which appears to be a bogus corporation. That undercover cop’s vehicle is the real deal, though, as it’s registered to the city. My guess is he checked it out. I won’t subpoena the police for those records, because it would alert them that Vanderbilt has an interest in his identity, which of course would tie you to Vanderbilt.”
“That guy was nuts.”
“Maybe on purpose.” He lifted his glass.
“To throw me off?”
“He’s an undercover cop. You’re an undercover investigator. Both of you are good at deceiving people in the course of your work, right?”
If the singing detective was a Dmitri gofer, he could have acted that way to hide his real personality. On the other hand, if he was one of the good guys, maybe he’d acted silly to put her at ease, which had worked. That also meant the Las Vegas Metro Police were working their own case against Dmitri.
“You said the Russian asked you to deliver something this morning—what was it?”
“A manila envelope that felt like it had papers inside, but I didn’t want to open it and give myself away.”
“Who’s this private investigator?”
“Name’s Braxton Morgan. Works at Morgan-LeRoy Investigations downtown, but his brother’s the partner, not him. Apparently, Braxton is more of a security consultant.”
“Private dicks,” Charlie muttered, a look of distaste crossing his features. “Lowlife snoops in trench coats pretending to be Sam what’s-his-name.”
“Sam Spade?”
“Right, Sam Spade. Now, that was a private eye. Smart. Detached. Unflinching. Women wanted him, men wanted to be him.”
She almost laughed. Did pompous, corporate-America Charlie secretly yearn to be a tough-guy Sam Spade?
But Charlie had Braxton wrong. He wasn’t a lowlife in a trench coat. He wasn’t detached, either, but he was definitely smart.
On her way over here, she’d quickly checked him out on the internet, impressed with a news story about his saving a politician’s life years ago. Acting as a legislator’s bodyguard, Braxton had perceived a threat at a political rally and taken action that saved the official’s life. Such quick, calculated thinking proved his intelligence.
She’d have to do further research on Braxton Morgan.
“Most of those shamuses will do anything for a buck,” Charlie said, buttering a roll, “including break the law. Which this guy Braxton must be doing,