Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Chips Falling Where They May
JAMIE
Moments later, Detective Sergeant Arliss Roverson entered the room flanked by two armed marksmen and the countenance of a general who had just won a battle.
“Thanks for your patience, folks. We know it’s been a long night.
To bring you all up to speed, what we originally perceived as a bomb was in fact merely the explosion of a series of transformers that service most of downtown Manhattan Beach.
We apologize for the lock-down, but our objectives were twofold: avoid public panic and track down the perpetrator.
Which is also one of the reasons we scrambled the cell service.
” He consulted his notepad, and added, “As to the matter of the recently deceased food critic, a one Nigel Spokes, forensics gathered evidence and took photos, so the coroner has arrived and will take over that situation.”
Nigel’s wife sniffled in the corner. Jamie hadn’t been aware she was still there until now.
Rick interjected, “Why blow the transformers?”
“At the moment, it seems that there was a robbery at one of the mansions on the beach. The transformers knocked out power to some of the alarm systems. At this point, the two seem connected.”
“What was stolen?” Holly asked.
“Did you catch the guy?” Shannon added.
“We have one suspect in custody, but we remain convinced this was the job of a small, expert crew,” Detective Roverson said.
Jamie stalked across the room and stood in between Cliff and Detective Roverson. She pointed her finger at Cliff, glared, and declared, “It was you.”
“What?” Cliff’s jaw dropped.
“Don’t look so innocent. You’re not a security expert.”
Cliff countered Jamie’s glare. “Yes, I am.”
She scoffed. “Sure. You might be a security expert, and well-read, and a gentlemen, and a lover of fries in the light of day, but under the cover of darkness, you’re a thief.”
“Jamie, no,” Cliff tried to correct her.
But she was on a roll. She walked toward him and circled him like a cat cornering a mouse. “I wondered why you felt so familiar. What a fool I am. I thought meeting you felt like coming home, like someone I’d known all my life even though we’d just met.”
“I felt that way, too,” Cliff admitted, as he reached for her hand.
She ripped it away from him. “No! I was so wrong. More wrong than I’ve ever been. What an idiot I am.” She shook her head in disbelief.
Cliff’s face said it all. He was at once confused and found out.
Jamie knew then that she was right. “But then when Robey told me there was a theft, actually a heist of epic proportions that required a small, expert crew, it all came tumbling back. I saw your rap sheet. I did an analysis of you over seven years ago. Cliff Weston. Master thief,” Jamie said, now listing all the data she remembered like a laundry list. “You started robbing banks at the age of eighteen when you aged out of the foster care system. You graduated quickly to antiquities and art and orchestrated more elegant heists because you were smart, extremely high IQ, with the manners and class that hinted at private schooling and a life of privilege. Parents both dead. No siblings. Your minor records were sealed so I couldn’t see the root of your criminality, but it matters not.
The only thing I, and Detective Roverson here, need to know is that you’re the master thief behind some of the greatest heists in the last twenty years. ”
Cliff reached for Jamie, but she dodged him. He spoke quickly, “You cannot think that I did this. Jamie, I’m not a thief, not anymore. I have changed,” he said, exasperated. “You said yourself you have a gift for seeing people. I’m imploring you to use it!”
Jamie remained wary. His influence over her had waned sharply.
Detective Roverson was watching Jamie work. He had taken out his notepad again and discreetly spoke into his walkie-talkie.
Facts crowded into Jamie’s memory as she methodically listed them out. “Jericho’s Cross, Madrid, 2008. The Sapphire Stone, Cannes, 2010. The Diablo Galleons in Bogotá, 2015. All heists attributed to you and whatever crew you assembled, but never fully proven.”
Cliff stood stock-still and dropped his head.
“My bet is you’ve been in prison for the last several years after the botched heist of the Stonewall Diamond, and my guess is you’ve just been paroled.” Jamie spoke quickly now, cornering him. “My guess is that you knew the house in question, that you cased the house in question.”
“I don’t even know which house it was,” Cliff replied, hands out, incredulous. But he was sweating now.
“Detective Roverson, can you describe the house, please?” Jamie asked.
“It’s one of the larger mansions on The Strand, the one that looks like a giant lifeguard shack.”
Jamie looked at Cliff. He paused, squinted, and cast his gaze to the floor, a tactic she knew criminals used when they knew something but would not share it. It was a tell.
“You know that house,” Jamie said quietly. Cliff’s lips went into a thin line. Another tell.
“I know of a house that looks like a lifeguard shack. I walk by it all the time on The Strand,” Cliff finally said. “But this is crazy. I am not the man I was. I am not a thief.”
Rick nodded along vigorously, as if eager to agree that everyone deserved a chance at a new life. He looked over at Holly, whose discerning eyes were trained on Cliff, her face betraying no emotion whatsoever.
Jamie, her skepticism in overdrive, barreled ahead.
“A master thief arrives in Manhattan Beach, one of the wealthiest enclaves on the California coast, and decides to go straight.” She smiled sadly.
“In my many years as a forensic psychiatrist, I would say that the chances are low that someone like you ever changes.”
Kyle interjected, “Hey, I thought we agree people could change?”
Jamie looked to Detective Roverson, “What was stolen?”
The detective shrugged and said, “That’s the thing. We don’t know.”
“What?” Cliff asked, incredulous. “I’m being accused of a theft and no one knows what was actually stolen?”
“Well, we’re working on it,” Roverson muttered.
Jamie turned to SWAT team member Jon Robey. “Who owns the house?”
“Duncan Reeves,” Robey answered.
Cliff whipped his head toward Robey. “No. That’s not right.”
Jamie seized on that. “How do you know that?”
Robey confirmed. “Yes, sir, Duncan Reeves, the tech mogul millionaire.”
Cliff looked puzzled. He squinted and looked sideways, trying to work something out. “My mistake, I guess.”
Jamie concentrated on Cliff with growing doubt gathering like thunder. She stepped toward him. “And then there’s the twenty minutes you went missing after the lights went out. And you wouldn’t put your phone up, come to think of it. You could have used that to detonate the bombs.”
Cliff looked at Jamie and the other four singles he’d come to think of as new friends.
Rick and Kyle reluctantly nodded. Shannon shrugged and held out her hands helplessly. Holly noted with a tone of regret, “You did disappear for roughly twenty minutes.”
“You guys,” he looked around the group, pleading. “Do you all think I did this?” Cliff looked at Kyle, then Shannon, Rick and Holly, none of whom could meet his gaze but chose rather to stare at the floor, ceiling, the middle distance. Finally, Cliff turned back to Jamie, defeated.
Jamie picked up her conclusion like a fumbled football and ran with it. “Twenty minutes. More than enough time for a master thief to execute his best laid plan and duck into a nearby mansion to steal the object of his desire. What was it? Diamonds? The Cross of Coronado? A Renoir?”
“Come on, Jamie.” Cliff exclaimed as he shook his head. “For those twenty minutes I was locked in the walk-in freezer!”
Jamie felt herself riding high on her Sherlock Holmesian thread, coming closer to the truth. “You don’t expect us to believe that, do you? You told me you were locked in the bathroom. Why were you locked in the freezer? By whom?”
“By the crazy woman who locked me in it!” Cliff pointed to Amber, the sly waitress who was carrying a tray of glasses back to the bar. She froze like a cat in a corner.
All eyes were on Amber as she stared innocently while blinking her fake eyelashes. “Why would I lock him in a freezer?”
Cliff looked at Amber even harder and reluctantly said, “Because we had a one-night stand three weeks ago and I never called you.”
The words hung in the air like a toxic cloud.
Amber wore a look of complete shock. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Cliff fumed as Amber dropped her surprised expression and stalked back into the safety of the kitchen. He turned back to Jamie, resigned to his fate. “Jamie, don’t do this. I am innocent. Except about the Amber thing.”
Jamie ignored the flutter in her heart, as if it was trying to get her attention.
She bowed her head, not wanting to believe the evidence in front of her, but finding it incontrovertible.
Her mind flashed to the report on Cliff, also known as Clifford Montgomery Weston.
She recalled her exact initial write-up: superior intelligence, master thief, pathological liar.
She realized with a rather large amount of despair that the only man that had sparked something inside her, in a cruel twist of fate, was also a career criminal, a liar, and evidently, a self-professed womanizer.
The others in the room began to encircle Cliff, including Detective Roverson and SWAT team member Jon Robey, who had checked for his cuffs hanging on his belt and put his hand on his gun. Robey shot Jamie a look, and she gave him a nod. He stepped away and spoke into his radio.
Cliff made a quiet plea to only her. “Listen, I was a thief. But I paid my debt to society. I am a legitimate businessman now. I have no intention of returning to that life. I want to be a better man,” Cliff said, but it sounded hollow somehow.
“Even if I wanted to believe you, wanting to be a better man is not enough. You have to actually be one.” All hope had left her, and her aching sadness crept back in and took up residence in her heart.
Cliff gritted his teeth and shook his head as if this was not how this was supposed to end.
He made a final attempt at reasoning with her.
“Think about it, Jamie. Something was stolen from Duncan Reeves but he won’t say what it was.
It doesn’t get any more suspicious than that.
He’s probably behind his own heist. Insurance fraud is common,” Cliff said sternly.
But then, with a deeply sad expression, he sighed.
“I guess it doesn’t matter at this point.
You only see what you want to see. You judge people. That’s some gift.”
Jamie felt the sting of that comment.
Moments later, three uniformed police officers appeared in the doorway of Piccolo and at the instruction of the SWAT team leader and Jon Robey, Cliff was handcuffed and taken into custody. He walked out without protest, like a man who knew his guilt, like a man caught, and did not look back.