Chapter 2 #3
‘I don’t know,’ I lied to Alice’s optimistic face. ‘I thought I recognized one of the necklaces, but maybe not. I’m just going to check the safe to be sure.’
‘Can I come with you?’ she asked, her wide eyes practically begging.
‘No,’ I said bluntly.
She huffed, and I decided to ignore her. Since I was going to the safe, I picked up the diamond earrings to put them away at the same time. Hopefully I could get them shipped off to Italy in the next couple of days and have Signor Giordano’s money in our bank account sooner rather than later.
Our safe was kept behind another door that looked like all the others in this hallway.
I unlocked it with a regular key, then flipped open a panel on the wall and pressed my thumb to the reader to release the door from its frame.
The safe was the same one my great-grandfather had installed – big and old and bolted to the foundations of the building, so it would take a lot of effort to remove it.
I carefully spun the combination and waited for the click before swinging open the safe door.
I placed the earrings on the top shelf, where I kept items that would move quickly. The lower shelves were stacked pretty full of inventory, including the most expensive pieces that would never go on display – they’d be sold on to known collectors.
I dug through the shelves once, then again, and silently cursed my terrible filing system. There were a few other places I’d need to check before I could be 100 per cent sure, but I was almost certain the jewelry was no longer owned by Walker Antiques.
Well, so long, fat insurance payout.
I sat back on my haunches and sighed in frustration before closing the safe.
‘It’s not there,’ I said to Alice as I stomped back into the shop, watching her expression fall.
‘This jewelry is really important to my family,’ she said. ‘It’s an heirloom.’
I played a hunch. ‘You’re supposed to inherit it, aren’t you?’
For the first time since she walked in, Alice shut up. I raised an eyebrow at her.
I loved it when my hunches were right.
‘The other items that were stolen were meant to go to different family members,’ Alice said defensively. ‘I’m not just out here looking for something that’s only important to me personally.’
‘Never said you were,’ I replied lightly.
‘But, yes, you’re right. My grandmother specified that her jewelry should go to her youngest female heir, which happens to be me.’
I took a breath, ready to tell Alice it was time to leave the shop because I couldn’t help her, and then I hesitated.
Goddamn hesitations.
‘Do you want to look through the cabinets?’ I said, hoping to stall her and buy time while I checked a few things I didn’t want her to see. ‘Just to make sure it hasn’t been put out on display?’
‘Sure,’ she said, brightening again, and then scuttling off to peer into the cabinets. That would keep her occupied for a while.
What the hell was I doing? I didn’t need to help her. I didn’t owe her anything.
Pushing my irritation at myself aside, I went back to the desk to check through the log book where I’d just added my notes about the earrings.
I had to flick back through several months of purchases to find it, past my own scrawled entries in cheap ballpoint pen to my mom’s elegant, looping handwriting in blue ink.
I swallowed hard, pushing down the painful emotions that swirled at the sight of her notes.
Then I found what I was looking for, and I shoved those feelings aside.
Case of Jewelry. Early 20th c. $250k. VW. SS.
So it had come from Wilson, and it was really fucking expensive jewelry, but it was clearly supposed to still be in the shop safe. Well, it wasn’t there now, which meant it was missing.
The most likely scenario for how Wilson had got his hands on the jewelry was that a corrupt employee at Van der Hausen’s had told him about it – a little whisper in his ear that a wealthy family had a large quantity of antiques in a house that was likely empty, since its owner had died.
Wilson then probably had one of his employees break in and do the dirty work for him, while he was busy being visible at the club – providing him with a solid alibi if he ever needed it.
Then he’d sold the jewelry on to my mom.
I hadn’t heard that he’d been involved in a heist this big …
well, ever. He liked to fly under the radar and sow chaos and confusion.
He’d steal things that wouldn’t be noticed as missing for weeks or months at a time.
One pair of earrings. A watch taken from a hotel safe.
Lifting a travel case from a harassed-looking couple at JFK.
I knew Wilson’s style, and this wasn’t it.
Nonetheless, Wilson was enterprising, and smart.
If he’d been informed about a valuable and unattended case of jewelry and thought he could get away with the theft, it was within his skillset to take on the challenge, especially knowing Walker Antiques would be more than happy to buy the items off him afterward.
As I started to piece together the backstory the image became clearer in my mind. It felt plausible, at least, that I was thinking along the right lines.
Out of curiosity, I reached for the filing cabinet next to the desk where we kept paper documents that showed the provenance of items that we’d bought through legitimate sources.
It took a few minutes to find the right file, and when I pulled it out, I found a copy of the appraisal documentation from Van der Hausen’s.
I winced, and glanced up to make sure Alice was still busy. She was peering into the cabinets, her face only an inch from the glass. I quickly turned back to the paperwork.
Wilson must have given it to my mom when he sold her the jewelry, to prove its value.
My mom’s notes said she’d bought it for a quarter of a million dollars, which was significantly more than I was authorized to spend, even with a trusted contact like Wilson.
That had to be why she’d handled it with Wilson herself, instead of sending me to do the deal.
I flipped through the sheets, just to check it was the same paperwork as what Alice had showed me, and immediately spotted the amends. Someone had taken out all references to the Mulligan family – obviously trying to hide the jewelry’s provenance.
When I reached the last page, I noticed it wasn’t the same as the rest – the paper had a different quality to it, immediately catching my interest. I turned it over and found a printed ticket to a guided tour of Grand Central Terminal stapled to the back.
‘What the hell?’ I muttered to myself.
Alice rushed over. ‘Have you found it?’
‘No,’ I said, annoyed. I rubbed my temples and promised myself painkillers very soon.
‘What, then?’ she demanded.
I decided, Whatever, and held up the ticket.
‘A guided tour of Grand Central,’ she read. ‘For the end of May. That was ages ago. What does that have to do with anything?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’ That was a lie. The puzzle pieces were well and truly slotting into place, and an image of my mom’s plan was emerging from my brain fog.
I glanced over the desk and my eyes landed on my mom’s last note.
Kendra, do inventory!!
Love Mom
Do inventory.
Shit.
If I had done inventory when my mom had told me to, I would have found the jewelry case missing from the shop safe back in May. I should have figured this out in plenty of time to catch the tour of Grand Central.
‘I don’t understand,’ Alice said, and I held up a hand to silence her.
‘Give me a second,’ I told her. ‘Please.’
I closed my eyes, begging my brain to stop throbbing for one minute.
Now that I knew the jewelry wasn’t in our safe, I had to consider that my mom had intentionally moved it somewhere else.
I had a growing feeling that this was something she wanted me to figure out: to see the note, go to the safe and learn that the jewelry was missing.
Then she had wanted me to go to Grand Central.
She knew I would check the paperwork and find the ticket, then follow the trail she’d laid out.
Had she hidden the case there for me to find?
But why had she needed to hide it in the first place?
And in Grand Central of all places. Our safe was pretty damn safe.
After thinking it through, I was certain her plan was to set me off on a treasure hunt, because she’d done the same thing dozens of times before.
Ever since I was a little kid my mom had created cryptic puzzles and scavenger hunts for me to solve.
It was our thing, something that she had loved and loved sharing with me.
On each of my birthdays, she would set out the most complicated challenge she could come up with – sometimes a puzzle box I had to break into, or a trail of clues to solve, or a multi-layered riddle.
My birthday was in May, only a week after my mom had died, and it hadn’t occurred to me that she may have already decided on my present for this year.
I was increasingly convinced that I had stumbled into the very last challenge my mom had set for me. And the first clue had been sitting here for months.
My mom’s note was stuck to one of my favorite books, The Codebreaker’s Handbook.
I kept a copy in the shop to read when I was bored, so it lived permanently on the desk, even though I could almost recite the pages by heart.
I vividly remembered the day I’d figured out the name of the book’s author: A.
Garman was an anagram of the word ‘anagram’.
A. Garman and The Codebreaker’s Handbook had been another thing my mom and I had shared.
She’d once told me that codebreaking was the ultimate intellectual challenge – a combination of linguistics, mathematics, logic and reasoning.
It forced you to think outside of the box, to find patterns, to have the patience to unpick a messy knot of clues.
All skills that came in handy when researching antiques.
Leaving the note on The Codebreaker’s Handbook wasn’t an accident – it was a clue. I couldn’t help the rush of frustration that flooded me knowing I hadn’t figured it out sooner.
And yet … for the first time since my mom’s death, I had a clear sense of what I was supposed to do next – not muddling through trying to run a business or even just taking care of myself.
My mom had connected Alice’s case of missing jewelry to Grand Central.
It was up to me to figure out the next step.
‘What’s going on?’ Alice asked.
I couldn’t tell her the whole truth – that would take way too long and get me into way too much trouble. Trying to find the right balance of telling her just enough to stop any more questions and not implicating myself would be tricky, but not impossible.
‘I think my mom might have had the jewelry at some point, but it’s not here any more,’ I said.
Her expression brightened. ‘Okay, well that’s something. I still don’t get the Grand Central link, though.’
I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant when inside I was churned up with a whole mess of emotions I didn’t have time to unpack.
‘We should go there,’ Alice said seriously.
‘What?’
‘To Grand Central. There’s clearly some connection between my jewelry and the terminal. We could even book new tickets for the tour.’
I tried to decide how I was going to get rid of Alice. I had every intention of rebooking the ticket and going on the tour as soon as possible – this afternoon? – but there was absolutely no reason to take her with me. This wasn’t about her or her family’s missing inheritance any more.
‘I don’t know,’ I said wearily.
‘I can help,’ Alice insisted.
‘I doubt that.’
Alice stared at me for a moment, sizing me up. I folded my arms over my chest and did the same. The last thing I wanted or needed right now was a hitchhiker. This was something I needed to do on my own.
Alice’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you help me find the jewelry, I’ll make sure you get the reward.’
I forced myself not to react. I was pretty good at that. ‘Reward?’
‘Didn’t I mention it?’ Alice said sweetly. ‘My mom put up a reward for anyone who helps recover the items that were stolen.’
‘How much?’ I asked, straight to the point.
‘Fifty thousand dollars,’ Alice said, maintaining eye contact.
I took a deep, slow breath, then let it out in a weary sigh.
Fifty grand wasn’t enough to fix all my problems, but it was enough to keep Walker Antiques in business for the foreseeable. I could pay the rent in advance and clear the bills, maybe even start advertising again.
‘Fifty grand,’ I echoed. ‘If I let you help me find the jewelry.’
She opened her mouth, and I was sure she was about to correct me and say the fifty grand reward was for finding all of the stolen items, not just the jewelry. I stared her down. If I was going to drag her along with me, I needed an incentive.
‘If you help me find the jewelry,’ Alice corrected.
I wouldn’t argue with her over semantics, though she definitely wasn’t going to be able to find anything without my help.
Grief washed over me again at the thought of solving my mom’s final challenge, this time with the addition of a stranger.
It felt wrong, but then again would it be so bad to have some company today after months without it?
Realistically, there was no harm in letting Alice come to Grand Central.
I could figure out a way to lose her after.
‘Okay, fine,’ I said.
‘Great,’ she responded with a sunny grin. She pulled out her phone from her pocket and started tapping at it. ‘The next tour is at eleven, but we won’t make that one. We should be able to get there by midday, though. Shall I book?’
‘Let’s do it.’