Chapter Eight
Sadie
I cast Kingston a glance as I drive the vintage Jag I’ve borrowed.
He hasn’t said much since I picked him up at seven. Not to me, anyway. The first part of the drive through the city towards the Bronx he’s on the phone. It sounds boring and work oriented and I tune out. As we hit the start of Hillside Park, he hangs up and rubs a hand over his face.
A different watch glints in the sun. I’m not sure of the make, as I only catch a glimpse and I’m driving, but I smile.
Yeah, I gave him back his Breguet last night, but I expected him not to wear one today. Seems like he wants to taunt me. I’ve half a mind to steal this one, but I also wouldn’t put it past the man to have managed to put on it some kind of alarm.
And stealing his watch means touching him again, something I don’t think I should do.
“Sorry about that. Apparently, they can’t do without me.”
“It’s nice someone wants you, Kingston.”
“You’d be surprised.”
The dryness makes me laugh and I can feel his gaze on me. I don’t turn to look at him. Just keep my eyes on the road in the bright and crisp morning sun.
“You’re not going to ask where we’re going?”
“Not really,” he says, “I don’t think it’s some dark place to kill me, or even some kind of roadhouse to shock me. So I’m thinking…White Plains.”
“I could be taking you to Valhalla.”
“The town or the Norse place for the dead warriors? But no, White Plains. Some of the most expensive real estate in the country’s in White Plains.”
He’s right, that’s exactly where we’re going.
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“Jenson has a property here. My mother’s more Hamptons. Hudson—my brother—owns some things out here, too. But I don’t think we’re going to any of his properties. What do you want with Jenson?”
The other questions hang heavy in his words.
Questions like what are you up to.
“Not Jenson’s place. There’s another, owned by Sinclair. It took me a little digging—” which is interesting because this wasn’t in anything I discussed with his mother “—to find it.”
“You’re saying it’s not listed?”
“Yes and no.”
“Subsidiary.” He stops and I can almost hear the frown. “But why would the location of the tiara be some kind of strange secret?”
“I’m not interested in that.”
He shifts in the seat. “You know, I never asked if it was reported to the police.”
“It wasn’t. I looked into it.”
This time he doesn’t speak for a long time. “It’s a test.”
I’m almost positive it’s a test, but whether it’s one that’s gotten out of hand, I don’t know. Faye’s paying me to locate it, and to take my time. She didn’t use those words, it was more along the lines of helping her son and not moving things along too fast, after she got me in to look at her security system.
She’s very good at whatever game she’s playing. And her son? The fewer opinions I form of him the better.
None of these people are my world.
I prefer the fringe.
“There are a lot of reasons not to report things,” I say. “Maybe there’s a stipulation or maybe it’s a matter of the insurance claims not worth it, or a myriad of reasons.”
“Or,” he says, “A test.”
“Yes. Maybe one that’s gone wrong.”
“Maybe.”
I drive along, following the highway to White Plains and the property I found in the digging I did. It might mean something or it might mean nothing. But that old familiar tingle of adrenaline when I stumbled on it says it just might be the former.
“Tell me about the Sinclair jewels. What you know,” I say.
“You know it all.”
“Humor me. On paper isn’t the same as from the heir.”
I glance at him and he’s studying me. Heat flares hot and needing inside at that look. I turn back to the road, fingers squeezing the wheel.
“My great-great-grandfather had them made for my great-great-grandmother many moons ago. Around the time he made his fortune, and they were, as legend has it, the reason she married him.”
“So she was a money-grabbing woman?” I say this before I can stop myself, but Kingston just laughs.
“That’s what I said. It didn’t please my mother.”
I glance at the google maps on my phone. No one has dared put a GPS system of any kind in this car.
“But,” he says, continuing, “Mother claims it was a symbol of true love. I’m not really going to argue. And they weren’t photographed up close or anything back then and rumor has it he locked them away when she died. Where they remained and faded into rumor. It’s not very exciting.”
“But rumor is. Stories get big and…things gain value. Especially now your father decided to posthumously release them to you all. Do you know why?”
I glance at him and he shrugs. “My father did what he wanted. And there have been stipulations.”
“Up until this last one, which has gone missing.”
“Not stolen?”
“No police record, remember? We don’t know why. We’d have to ask Jenson and your mother.” I tap my fingers against the wheel. We’re heading into the big properties outside of White Plains proper. The kind people need copious amounts of money for. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man to follow whimsical dreams, especially when they come with hoops and whips and stipulations.”
The air in the car thickens with my words and the accidental sexual undertone they carry.
“It depends on who has the whip and the safe word.”
Heat climbs my neck and his soft chuckle tells me he hasn’t missed that.
“The money,” he finally says.
“Cold, hard cash?”
“Come on, drop the censure. You’re telling me you did what you did—do what you do—for the beauty of the pieces and now the accolades?”
I pull onto a winding road and drive past manicured lawns and beautifully landscaped grounds, up to a sprawling mansion. I park and turn to him. “Fine, you got me. I like money, too.”
“But not as much as me,” he says, sliding a little closer to me in his seat and my breath catches in my throat. “Because what? You grew up poor?”
He’s touching on a nerve, on something I don’t think about if I can help it. But damned if I’m giving him a thing. “I have nothing to do with this.”
“My reasons for wanting something that’s mine do?”
I lean in to him, my blood hot and moving fast in my veins. “Not at all. Simply working this out.”
My heart thrums as he looks at me, those dark blue eyes with the gold and copper striations making something like desire whisper inside.
“Have you worked out why you kissed me if you don’t like me?”
His words streak a white heat down my bones. “I told you.”
“Curiosity. And I’m not sure I buy it. Maybe it’s because we’re so alike.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“Aren’t you?” He slides a finger over my cheek.
The touch is fleeting, and it shakes me. The Jag’s small, but somehow it’s suddenly grown smaller, tighter, and I want to close the gap. I want to run.
He shouldn’t be this observant. He shouldn’t look at me like he can see inside, and he shouldn’t be hard edged in exactly the right way. The way that turns me on.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Kingston doesn’t answer, just gets out of the car and leaves me to follow.
We’re at the door in no time, on the vast, wide verandah and there’s a hard-edged expression on his face that suggests he knows exactly who this place belongs to.
He rings the bell and after a few minutes of a strange, awkward silence between us, footsteps grow louder inside and finally, the door opens.
A blonde woman, about forty, looking maybe thirty and well dressed and familiar gives me a once over and then settles, warily, on Kingston.
“I can be here, Kinston,” she says, crossing her arms.
She looks like Faye. Not as beautiful, but there are similarities I can’t miss.
“Misty. You changed your hair.”
“I had an arrangement with your father,” she says. “I can live here. It’s not like he lacked properties.”
“Actually, we’re here to look at the pool house,” I say.
She blinks at me and a thousand questions crowd her face. “I don’t use it. That thing’s been locked up for years.”
“No problem. I have keys.” The lie comes easily.
She sniffs. “Help yourselves.”
As we make our way around the house and into the pool yard, the giant covered pool and area, I have to admit, are tasteful. It’s a show of wealth from the granite small pool and surrounds, to the carefully curated trees and deck chairs and seated pagoda, but one of quiet confidence instead of flash and bang.
“Your dad’s ex-wife?”
“One of them. She got discarded for the younger model he married a few years ago. It was his conceited rich man thing.”
“The string of ever younger wives?” I cast him a glance in the crisp air. He’s eating up the path we’re taking towards two builds. One is clearly the maintenance pool house, another is even smaller and pretty, so I’m betting it’s a bathroom and changing area for guests.
I’m interested in the larger building up further.
“You’re too late if you’re thinking of applying,” he says, with acid. “He’s dead. And, unfortunately for you, not his type if he lived.”
I’m not sure what the acid is aimed at, whether it’s me or his father or the string of women. If Kingston wasn’t rich in his own right, I’d guess it was because the string of women would eat into his inheritance, but…
No, that’s not right. I look at the lean and tall man next to me in dark jeans and black sweater, the expression on his handsome face giving the granite a run for its money. No, even if Kingston wasn’t rich in his own right, that wouldn’t be the cause of the acid.
He’s into money. But he doesn’t strike me as that level of entitled. He’s not a man who’d sit back and wait for it all to come to him, like he was owed.
If he wasn’t rich in his own right, he’d be doing well, or building something.
I shut down that line of thought. I don’t need it and it doesn’t matter.
“Not something I’ve been interested in.” I come to a stop at the door. It’s locked.
I pull out my tools and get to work. Kingston only glances at them and then leans back against the wall. “The one thing I never got is why my mother stayed so loyal, so close to him.”
“Through the betrayals? Maybe she left him?”
“I don’t remember. They split when Ryder was young. It never felt like that, even when he remarried.”
“Maybe,” I say, sliding the second tool into the lock, “they loved each other.”
He starts laughing. “My father? He loved Sinclair’s, he loved his empire and what his children could do, and looking good.”
“So, he was a bastard?”
He shrugs. “Aren’t most of us?”
The lock snicks and I open the door, the familiar flood of accomplishment running through me. There’s enough light coming in through the shutters to see, but I flick the switch next to the door so things are bright.
It’s like a giant office. Luxurious in creams and dark woods and it’s not for show. It’s definitely been used. I head for the desk because I’m curious about this place. I’m not sure Faye knows about the ex-wife staying in the house, or that she’d care. It’s none of my business. The job at hand is. And after much digging, Sinclair the elder spent a lot of time here.
In this get away office.
I rifle through work things and letters on the desk. Through files and photos and notes.
“You think the jewels were kept here?”
I pause, hand on the desk drawer. “I don’t know. Stands to reason he had them somewhere.”
“With Jenson. In a bank vault. The usual suspects.”
“Your father thought about them at some point. So, when my digging led me here, I figured it was a good place to start.”
Kingston has a portrait, large, gilt-framed, in his hands. It hung over a faux fireplace that’s filled with all the pieces made for keeping hearths clean, for stoking the embers. But it’s clearly not meant for use.
I know the portrait of Kingston and his brothers as kids hung there because I spotted it when I came in, and there’s a wall safe.
“Or he decided to fuck with us from the great beyond.”
“Other than holding a séance or finding a signed confession—” I pull open the drawer “—we won’t know.”
Just neat odds and ends in here. I go through the other drawers but find nothing that’s going to help.
“Why not one of his other places? His Manhattan home? The one in the Catskills?”
“Too obvious?” I cross to him as he sets the portrait down. And my gaze goes to the young Kingston. A boy, already with steel in his eyes, and something else, like he’s trying to prove something.
I don’t need to know about his daddy issues. I have enough of those to last a lifetime.
“I find it interesting he had this place. And he used it.”
“If Misty’s here, he used it because they spent time here.”
I nod and go up to the safe, careful not to touch him. He’s a little too disturbing. “Yes, but I get the feeling he used it after they broke up. And he’d come here alone.”
“And you get this feeling how?”
I turn a smile on him. “Research. Any chance you know the combination?”
“Aren’t you a master thief?” He crosses his arms.
“Don’t believe what they tell you in movies. Most safes are broken into by basically blowing them open or cutting them open.”
He sighs. And starts trying various combinations.
In the third drawer I opened was a picture. It had marks on it like it had been touched often. Looked at. “Try your mother’s birth date.”
“Okay, but I don’t know wh—” He stops talking as the safe clicks and he meets my gaze.
Electricity shoots high through me.
He opens the door.
“Photos. Some jewelry, documents.”
“Give me the photos.”
He pulls them out and I take them before he can say a word. Bingo, as they say.
Photo after photo of the jewels. “Are there any evaluation papers?”
Things rustle as I keep studying the pictures. “No.”
My fingertips tingle as I run them over a close up of the tiara, the intricate work, the stones. They’re the same with the others, but the tiara is the standout.
“I think these are by Mininchi.”
“Who?”
“A master jeweler who only did some pieces and stopped. A long time ago. He went in another direction with his art, but the way he worked metal and stones, all designed to be worn, are spectacular, especially the show pieces. There aren’t many, and if these are early Mininchi…well…”
“They’re worth a lot.”
“More than you can think,” I say.
He smiles slow. “I can think of a lot.”
“I’m sure you can. Someone else must have seen these. If word was somehow out that not only did the Sinclair jewels exist, but they were Mininchi, then…” I look at Kingston. “These are huge. Especially the tiara.”
“You have a look. Like you might have a lead.”
I shake my head. “No lead.” Yet. “But I know someone who’s into them.”
“Who?”
“My ex.”