I straightened and flourished the end of the cord that remained in my hand. I was ready to launch into my spiel about string theory, when someone on the other side of the room screamed.
“Call 911,” someone yelled.
“Any doctors here tonight?” another person called out.
Everyone in my audience swiveled around to see what the commotion was all about. I could hear them asking each other, “What happened?” “Is someone hurt?”
I knew immediately what had happened. Elizabeth, curse her black soul, had started her heart attack act earlier than planned. Or earlier than she’d led me to believe. She’d probably planned it that way all along. I never intended to let her get away with the necklace, and she must have sensed it.
I snatched up my pile of cord, jumped down from the stage and headed in the direction of the commotion. She still wasn’t going to get away with it. Not with me around.
I had to struggle to get through the crowd. “Excuse me, please. That’s my mother.” Apparently “mother” was a magic word. People turned this way and that to make room for me to squeeze through.
As I got closer, movement became nearly impossible. Kroy’s bodyguards had bulldozed their way to the front of the crowd and pushed back against the throng. I could hear them growling, “Get back. Give her room.”
“I’m a doctor,” one man announced. In this situation, doctor trumped daughter, and everyone pressed against me on all sides to make room for him.
“Please, please let me through to my mother,” I said in my most pathetic voice and dug my elbow into the linebacker-sized man blocking my path. It took a while, but I finally wriggled my way into the front ranks. EMTs had already arrived. A fast response time to the 911 call. They knelt on either side of Elizabeth, who looked awful—eyes closed, face ashen and lips with a bluish tinge. A voice in the crowd asked, “Is she dead?” echoing my own thoughts. One of the EMTs put an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose and adjusted the knobs on a portable tank while the doctor leaned over his shoulder and checked her pulse. The other EMT rolled a gurney next to Elizabeth and pushed a lever to lower it. He moved next to her head and the other one to her feet. “On three,” the first one said and counted, “one, two, three.” They lifted her onto the gurney, raised it to waist height and fastened straps around her waist and legs. And just like that the two EMTs and the doctor were moving her to the exit.
I ran after them. “I’m her daughter.” I caught up with them as they were wheeling her into the elevator. “Please, let me go with her.”
One of the EMTs said. “You can’t ride along in the ambulance. No room with the doc along. Just follow us in a taxi. San Francisco General. And take the next elevator please, we need the room to attend to your mom.” And with that, the elevator door swished shut.
I ran toward the stairs. Fortunately, the ballroom was one floor below the main level so I didn’t have to endure an elevator ride. I was upstairs and in the lobby and out the front entrance in just under a minute. No ambulance. No paramedics. No Elizabeth.
“Help you, miss?” the doorman asked.
“Was there an ambulance here just a minute ago?”
“No, miss. Is there an emergency? I can call 911 for you.”
“What about two EMTs with a woman on a gurney?”
He shook his head no.
In the distance I heard a siren. The real EMTs were on their way. And Elizabeth and her crew of fake first-responders were in the wind.
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you sure I can’t call 911 or the police?” the doorman asked.
“No thanks,” I said. “It isn’t necessary. And when the ambulance that’s headed this way gets here, tell them they aren’t needed. It was a mistake.”
I turned and headed back into the hotel and was met in the doorway by one of Kroy’s bodyguards. “You need to come back to the party. Mr. Kroy wants you.”
“For heaven’s sake, leave me alone, will you?” I could see the Bulgari man bearing down on us wearing an expression of determination mixed with panic.
I moved to meet him. “I’m really sorry. She’s gone.”
He jolted to a stop. “Gone? They couldn’t revive her? Are you sure? That’s terrible. Please forgive me, but where did they take her? I really shouldn’t have let her go unattended. It’s against all policy, but I’ve never had a client….” He stopped abruptly apparently unable to say the word “die.”
I jumped in as soon as he halted. “Not dead. Gone. Decamped. Absconded. Flew the coop.”
The Bulgari man’s face went white. He opened his mouth and closed it several times giving a pretty good fish-out-of-water impression.
The bodyguard took my upper arm in a firm grip.
“Hey,” I protested.
“We have to go back—now.” He pulled me away from the stunned jeweler’s rep.
I had no choice but to let myself be hauled away. Not that I wanted to stay there and try to explain to the Bulgari man how Elizabeth had pulled off her theft, but I wanted even less to return to the scene of my interrupted performance.
“Not the elevator,” I said to the bodyguard who persisted in holding my arm even though I was going along with him. I led him to the stairs and headed down to the ballroom. Kroy met us at the door.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing? I told you to stay close.”
I pulled my arm free from the bodyguard’s grip. “I was trying to save you from scandal since that would probably affect the amount of money people would be willing to donate.”
“What the hell are you talking about?
I leaned forward and whispered. “Elizabeth’s gone. With the necklace. The heart attack, the EMTs, even the doctor were all phony.”
“Not possible. I saw her myself. She looked bad.”
“Anything’s possible where Elizabeth’s concerned. There was no ambulance. The EMTs must have been in a room upstairs and came down at her signal. I bet they went back that way. She’s undoubtedly in disguise and out a service entrance by now. With the necklace.”
To my surprise, Kroy barked out a laugh. “The bitch. She told me she was good. I didn’t believe her.” He sobered. “The necklace is insured, so I’m only out that money. And as far as I’m concerned, she’s dead and that’s how I’ll play it. The jeweler will go along. He won’t want it known they’ve been scammed.” He checked his watch. “I have to keep the party going here, so she’s not dead yet—just critical. You got that?”
“You’re not going to make me go back in there, are you?”
He considered for a moment. “No. That wouldn’t look good.” He spoke to the bodyguard. “Take her the back way to the dressing room and see that she stays there.”
The bodyguard did as he was told and in a few moments I was back in the dressing room. He left me there, but indicated he’d be just outside the door. Once alone, I paced for awhile. I should have guessed Elizabeth would pull a switch on me. She’d never willingly tell me what I wanted to know. Not unless there was something in it for her. My instincts about people were all messed up. My gaze fell on the new cell phone Rico had given me. I crossed the room and picked it up. Case in point—Rico DiSera—if that was his real name. He’d lied to me repeatedly and each time I’d believed him.
I stopped pacing and slumped down on the sofa. Time to face facts. I’d believed him because I wanted to. I hadn’t lost my liar radar. I’d simply turned it off when I was around Rico. He’d saved me from the elevator and hadn’t said how stupid I was to have freaked out so much I couldn’t even move. And he’d kissed me. My fingers drifted to my lips and I sighed. No question, he was an amazing kisser, which led naturally to thinking about what other special skills in that direction he might have.
I eyed the phone and my finger hovered over the speed-dial number to Rico’s phone. So tempting to call on the pretext of telling him a
bout Elizabeth. After all, she would never have been in a position to pull off a ten million-dollar jewel theft if the FBI hadn’t made her their confidential informant. But he’d know about Elizabeth soon enough, and he might well guess that I was calling only to hear his voice. And how pathetic was that?
I shoved the phone into a pocket of my cape. I had to push all thoughts of Rico out of my mind. I had a big decision to make. And I couldn’t let the fact that Rico might not like what I decided influence me. Or even the fact that he might not like me at all once he found out about it. I stretched out on the sofa and wrapped myself up in my cape. I’d change back into my long dress when I’d thought it all through.
The bodyguard banging on the door woke me up. My hard thinking had led immediately to hard sleeping. The door reverberated with more pounding. “What is it?” I asked.
The bodyguard opened the door. “Party’s over. Time to go. Mr. Kroy is waiting.”
I looked down at my short dress, creased and rumpled from being used as pajamas. I looked a mess, but it didn’t matter. I looked good enough for what I had to do. “What time is it?”
“Four a.m.”
“Okay, I’m coming.” I heaved myself from the sofa, grabbed my duffel and my long dress and followed him out. We took the back stairs to the garage. Maybe this was the very route Elizabeth had taken when she made her getaway.
I climbed into the backseat of the limo where Kroy was already ensconced, tapping on his cell phone. He glanced up briefly, nodded at me and returned to his cell. We continued on like this almost all the way back to his house. His silence occasionally punctuated by a grunt. Finally he said, “The early news on the gala is good. Only one blogger mentions Beth. Columnists are bound to pick it up, but we had some big names there tonight. I’m betting that gossip about them will beat out everything else.”
“And the phone call you’ve been waiting for?”
“Not yet.” He looked out the side window. Clearly not wanting to continue the conversation.
He called Connie just as we turned onto his street, and Connie was at the door to greet us when we walked in.
“Everything okay?” Kroy asked.
He didn’t answer but looked past us through the still-open doorway with a look of alarm.
I spun around and saw a giggling Ashley coming up the front steps pulling Jeff after her.
“Surprise!” Ashley announced as they came into the foyer.
Jeff, my ex-hat man who’d robbed me of two thousand dollars and destroyed my most precious possession, looked stunned to see me. “Babe,” he said weakly.
“Don’t ‘babe’ me, jerk.” I marched up to him and socked him in the jaw, just as I promised myself I’d do the next time I saw him. He staggered backward but didn’t fall down. I mustn’t have hit him hard enough.
“What the fuck is going on? Where were you?” Kroy shouted at Ashley.
“Out,” Ashley replied with a stubborn set to her jaw.
Kroy looked on the verge of having a stroke. He swung around to face Connie.
“You let her go out? I told her to stay in her room.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kroy. I didn’t see her leave.”
“Sleeping when you were supposed to be on watch, I’ll bet. Get out of my sight. I’ll deal with you later.”
Connie ducked his head as if he’d been struck and returned to the monitoring room, closing the door behind him. Seeing the large man cowed by her father’s rage seemed to have a sobering effect on Ashley. Or maybe it was my immediate physical attack on Jeff. Whatever the case, she adopted a placating tone. “Daddy, Jeff is Valentine’s boyfriend. That’s why I brought him home. He’s in a band. They were playing at Gilman’s.”
Before Kroy could answer, his phone chirped. He pulled his phone out with one hand and pointed to Ashley and Jeff with the other. “You two, stay where you are.”
Jeff had been backing toward the open doorway but halted at Kroy’s command. Kroy answered his phone and gestured for me to join him. We moved a few yards away from Ashley and Jeff with Kroy speaking softly into his cell. He handed the phone to me and said. “Listen. It’s a new phone number.” I took the phone, listened to a man’s quiet voice recite a number, then handed the phone back to Kroy. “You got that?” I nodded and he ended the call. “That’s our go-ahead. Now you call the bank. That’s the first number on the list. Give them the signal to transfer the funds. Then you call the number you just heard, confirm the money transfer and give them the address.” He handed me the phone. “After you do that, make arrangements for the other shipment.”
A voice from the doorway made me freeze. “I’m here for the bitch.” I spun around. Dwayne the dodo—back again.
From that point on everything happened very fast, but I experienced it in slow motion, the way I did when I juggled and was in the zone. Since Jeff was right by the doorway, Dwayne focused on him first. “Where is she? And don’t give me any shit about a hospital. I know she’s not there.”
Jeff put out a hand toward Dwayne. “Hey, dude, chill for a second, will you?”
I don’t know if it was being called “dude” or being told to “chill” that bothered Dwayne more. Whichever it was, his response was immediate. He pulled out a gun and shot Jeff between the eyes.
In the same moment, Ashley screamed and Connie exploded out of the monitor room. As soon as Dwayne turned his gaze to Connie, I stepped forward, grabbed Ashley by the arm and ran, nearly dragging her with me, down the hall and around the corner into the kitchen. Kroy was nowhere in sight. “Get into the back stairway.” I pushed her in that direction. I heard two more gunshots, which I hoped meant that Connie, or even Kroy, had stopped Dwayne—permanently. But I wasn’t going to bet on it. I dashed over to the door to the garage, opened it and hit the garage door-opener button. Try to make him think we ran out that way. Then I ran toward the door to the back stairway where Ashley stood frozen. I opened that door and shoved her in. Ashley began to sob.
“Hush,” I whispered. “You have to be quiet.” I closed the door behind us and led her halfway up to the curve in the stairway.
Ashley kept crying and making little whimpering noises. “He shot Jeff. For no reason. Is he going to shoot us too?”
“No. He won’t find us if you keep quiet.” Or at least I desperately hoped he wouldn’t. I put my arm around her shoulders and we crouched together on a stair step. In a short while we heard Dwayne yelling, “You fucking bitch, I know you’re here.” He was in the kitchen.
Ashley trembled but kept silent. I held my breath.
“What is this fucking shit?” Dwayne screamed in his usual limited vocabulary, then came the sound of breaking glass and pottery. This continued for nearly a minute followed by silence.
I breathed in and out slowly trying to slow my racing heart.
“Is he gone?” Ashley whispered.
“We have to wait awhile,” I whispered back, “to make sure. I didn’t see your dad when we came in here. Do you think ran away or went to get a gun?”
“He’s probably in his panic room. It’s behind a panel in his study. I saw him running down the hall as soon as that awful man showed up. He didn’t even wait for me.” She started crying again and I immediately shushed her.
Panic room. I’d heard about those, but never seen one.
“Does it have monitors so he can see what’s going on?”
“Yes.”
“What about a phone?”
“I don’t think so. But he’d use his cell anyway.”
No, he wouldn’t. I had Kroy’s cell phone. So if that’s where he went he hadn’t called for help. And I didn’t want to make the noise a call would make until I was sure Dwayne was gone.
I sat and breathed for what seemed a very long time and thought about what to do next. Dwayne was vicious and cunning, but also impulsive and impatient. He had to imagine that s
omeone must have called the police by now. “Wait here,” I said, I crept down the stairs and cracked the door a fraction. The sliver of the kitchen I could see was totally smashed. And I saw something else—blood. That had to be Dwayne’s, which meant he was wounded. Not mortally, judging from the amount of damage he’d done, but eventually he’d be weakened by loss of blood. I pushed the door further open and scanned the entire kitchen. No sign of anyone and no sounds either. Although in a house this big, it would be easy to go unheard. I closed the door and climbed up the steps.
“How did you get out last night without Connie seeing you?”
“Down these stairs to the kitchen. There’s another door that goes to the backyard. I pulled out the wire that sends the ‘door open’ alert. Outside there are places where the bushes are overgrown so you don’t show up on the monitors. Then it’s sort of a climb uphill through the trees to the road.”
I could just picture it because I’d seen that view from the other end on the day Phil and I scoped out the house. “Okay, this is what I want you to do.” I pulled a couple of bundles of cash from the hem of my cape and pressed them into her hands. “Take this money. Stow most of it in your shoes and the rest in your pocket, if you have a pocket. Go out the way you went last night. Dwayne’s not in the kitchen…”
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