The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

  “There you go!” Marcus said, giddy.

  I dropped my hair, turned, and lifted the mirror.

  “Oh!” Marcus gave a clap. “It looks amazing on you.”

  In the mirror, I watched the jeweler saying something to Vinnie. I reached up, touching the necklace, pretending to be interested. But the gold felt smooth and warm, and I could sense the peripheral glow, pulling my eyes like a magnet. I shifted my eyes. Gold lapidary leaves circled in a twenty-four-karat halo, with each leaf holding a dewdrop emerald. Marcus was beside himself.

  “Stunning!”

  Something my mother would wear. Elegant, and she would pair it with some flamboyant outfits she favored in good mental health. Gazing into the mirror, I stared over my shoulder again. I was doing some quick math when the jeweler lifted a short index finger, signaling Vinnie to wait. The man walked to the back of the store, disappearing around a corner. Vinnie wiped his forehead, looking anxious.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to know how much it is?”

  “No, I want it gift wrapped.”

  “Oh certainly—certainly! We gift wrap.” Marcus paused, feigning graciousness. “And how, um, would you like to pay for it?”

  In the mirror Vinnie stared directly at my back. I saw him squint, like his brain hurt, and as he began walking toward me, I knew time was up.

  I turned around. “Find something you like? Or maybe you’re selling.”

  Vinnie opened his mouth as the jeweler stepped from the back of the store. Marcus waved. Marcus waved like he was hailing a cab, afraid it wouldn’t stop.

  “Mr. Lister, Mr. Lister!” His voice was speeding up. “She wants to purchase the leaf necklace! With the emeralds! Gift wrapped!”

  Mr. Lister gave me a warm nod, so warm I started recalculating the necklace’s price tag.

  “Very nice choice.” His voice sounded like three packs a day with a lot of yelling. And he proved me right on the second part. He yelled, “Cheyenne!”

  The pretty blonde poked her head inside, making sure the jewelry tray still faced the boardwalk.

  “I need you in here! Gift wrap! Now!”

  She ducked her head under the halter’s leather straps, trying to maneuver the tray without spilling the valuables, when she suddenly fell to the boardwalk and the jeweler started yelling again.

  “Get him!” he cried. “Get him!”

  Confused, I looked at Marcus. But he was tickling the air with his soft fingers, uselessly.

  “Catch that thief!” The jeweler was bug-eyed. “Get him!”

  Cheyenne whimpered on the boardwalk, and a crowd was gathering. But Vinnie didn’t move one gigantic muscle. He stared at the blue stone in the jeweler’s hand.

  “I’ll call the police,” Marcus said, leaping for the phone.

  I ran out of the store and collided with a woman carrying a large bag. I tried to follow the string of exclamations bursting down the boardwalk, tracking the thief’s progress, but the path was clogged with rubberneckers. Jumping to the street, I raced to the corner and caught a glimpse of the runner’s back. A kid, no more than twelve, thirteen years old. And both hands clutched long strands of gold. When he turned the corner, I realized his flight had sparked the red-blooded American males on the boardwalk. They were in hot pursuit.

  Or warm pursuit.

  The first guy wore orthopedic shoes and whipped his fists through the air, yelling like he’d been personally robbed. Two men in Sansabelt slacks chugged like coal trains, cursing at the kid. As I ran past I heard the loose change jiggling in their pockets. One guy was ahead of me. He was tall and his arms pumped like a sprinter, closing the twenty yards between himself and the thief. The pebbly concrete was empty, the road wide and lined with picket fences and long front yards that set the houses far back from the cracked sidewalk.

  At the next corner, a dirt bike leaned against the stop sign. The sprinter was only fifteen yards behind, but the kid grabbed the motorcycle and kicked down the start. Gold fell from his hands as a blue cloud billowed from the tailpipe. And just beyond him was the forest. No houses, no roads. No way to catch him.

  “Get down!” I yelled.

  The sprinter turned, took one look at my stance, and dove for the ground.

  The kid’s hands clutched so much gold that he was struggling to steer the dirt bike as I unzipped my fanny pack. He spun out a U-turn, spewing loose stones across the intersection. I aimed the Glock for the back tire. My first round clipped asphalt. The second pinged the mud-splattered rear fender and went into the woods. The third round exploded rubber.

  The bike slid out from under him, but he still held the throttle. The engine whined and the blown back tire lopped torn rubber. The bike was racing in a circle, rushing toward his body when the sprinter leaped up and ran over, yanking the kid away. His fingers sprung open, gold spilling on the ground.

  The bike coughed and died.

  His other hand was still threaded with gold, tennis bracelets wrapped around his fingers like gilded worms. When I stood over him, staring into his young face, I thought at first his skin had road rash. It was his eyes that changed my mind. Deep brown, almost black, they had the vitreous blank expression of a hard-core addict. All shine, no light behind it. On his face the pox oozed.

  Automatically I patted my belt. No handcuffs. And in his eyes, the crazed impulses rattled around his damaged brain. In broad daylight, in the middle of town, with thousands of would-be vigilantes around him, he decided on grand larceny.

  “Roll over,” I said. “On your stomach.”

  The kid didn’t move. The sprinter picked him up like a twig, flipped him over, and placed his hand on the back of his head. “Hold still, son. Y’all got some explaining to do.”

  “Y’all?” I said.

  He started to answer but was interrupted by Marcus.

  “There she is!” he cried. “That’s her!”

  In his shiny green suit, he was skipping down the street. The three guys in warm pursuit were coming too. And zipping around them all was a police officer, gunning a four-wheel ATV. He pulled to a stop near us.

  “She was part of it!” Marcus told the cop. “See that necklace? She stole it!”

  Slowly I raised both hands. The Glock was still in my right hand and the cop looked young, and scared. “I’m an FBI agent.”

  “Oh, puh-leaz!” Marcus stood behind the officer. “She was supposed to divert our attention. She wasn’t even listening to me, she kept looking over her shoulder, using the mirror to watch the entrance. I guess when I went to gift wrap she was going to pull out that gun and clean us out.”

  The police officer’s eyes snapped between me and the boy. The gold on the ground. The necklace. The sprinter, who also had his hands in the air and his knee in the boy’s back.

  “My ID is inside my jean jacket,” I told the officer. “In the left pocket.”

  The officer didn’t move.

  The sprinter said, “Son, I’m a retired state trooper. I saw the whole thing. She blew out his tire. Otherwise y’all’d be lookin’ for this fella in them woods.”

  The officer told me to put my firearm on the ground and take out my ID. I pulled it out slowly, flipping open the case.

  “You must be kidding me,” Marcus said.

  The trooper apologized.

  I put the creds back in my pocket. “You’re being careful.”

  “We’re a little jumpy,” he said. “Two days ago one of them pulled a knife. Sliced the man’s face. They’re crackheads.”

  The boy’s bloodshot eyes darted like pinballs as the officer peeled the jewelry from his fingers, then handcuffed his wrists behind his back and radioed for a cruiser. Our audience began drifting back to Broadway, back to families and shopping and the best story to tell at dinner tonight. Marcus stammered, picking up the gold from the ground.

  I extended my hand to the retired trooper. “Raleigh Harmon, thanks for your
help.”

  “Bob Barner. Powhatan, Virginia.”

  “We’re neighbors,” I said. “Richmond.”

  “That right? Well, I’ll be.” He grinned. “Nothing like a takedown to add some zip to a vacation, huh?”

  I didn’t agree, but then, I was on a cruise from hell.

  “I’d love to talk to y’all,” he said, “but I better get on back. My wife’s gonna have a conniption.”

  The Skagway officer asked for a quick statement, and as they talked, I cupped a hand to my eyes. There was a distinctive buzz in the air.

  The dark blue plane swooped above town like a stellar jay. As it dropped, I could see white lettering on the door. I reached into my creds case and pulled out a business card, handing it to the Alaska trooper.

  “I’ve got to meet that plane.”

  “Wait!” Marcus said, still picking up the jewelry. “You’ve still got our necklace!”

  Fiddling with the clasp, I handed it out to him but now he was reluctant to take it.

  “For what you did,” he said, “I’ll bet Mr. Lister would take ten percent off.”

  “Thanks anyway.” I dropped the necklace into his hand and ran for the airport.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Skagway’s hearty souls lived along the western side of town. I ran past weather-beaten houses painted bright colors, defying winter with pink and turquoise and yellow, and small yards that sprouted fishing lines and crab pots and rubber rain boots turned into flower planters.

  When I reached the airport, the dark blue plane was taxiing to a stop. Behind the controls, the pilot wore a straw cowboy hat that looked as if somebody regularly sat on it. I flashed my credentials at the window and he leaned over to his right, keying open a small compartment beside the instrument panel.

  He opened the cab door and handed me the package sealed with FBI evidence tape. “Drugs?” he asked.

  I shook my head. His blue eyes were bleached from years spent staring at sea and sky and snow. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee, breakfast?”

  “Thanks for the offer.” He craned his weathered neck, peering up at the sky. “I gotta get out before the weather changes again. You can’t take any chances up here. That’s how people get killed.”

  “It’s one way,” I said.

  The bracelet was stuffed deep in my pocket as I walked down Broadway. When I turned into the jewelry store, it was like royalty calling.

  Mr. Lister ran toward me, both arms extended for an embrace.

  “Thank you, oh, thank you. Last week they robbed the pharmacy. Two days ago they tried to kill the bank clerk.” He must have seen the look on my face and went on, compelled to apologize for his town. “This is a nice place, Skagway. We’re nice people. Our biggest problem used to be potheads. And what problem were they? None. Too lethargic to bother anyone. But these people, they’re like animals.”

  Crack. Meth. Ice, Ecstasy. All the hard-core drugs were seeping into even the smallest communities, and the seep always turned septic. I was a little surprised the epidemic had reached this remote area, but as the Ketchikan mortician pointed out, the Internet was even offering tutorials on the sexual thrills of choking.

  “And you caught him!” He opened his arms again, still ready for that hug. “For you, anything in the store, twenty percent off.”

  I glanced around, not for jewelry. For Vinnie. The girl, Cheyenne, sat in a chair behind the counter, holding an ice bag to her right elbow. She looked impossibly sad. Marcus was wiping down the stolen goods, polishing them with a chamois cloth—and ignoring me.

  “May I speak to you in private?” I asked.

  “Then thirty percent.” He closed his arms; with that discount, no hug.

  “Thank you. Really. But I need to speak with you.”

  He led me down the counter, then around the corner where he disappeared earlier. It was a small space, a compact workshop with the tangy smoke scent of soldering metals. The planks on the floor were old and a foot wide, probably logged from the forest just beyond the back door.

  “The man in here earlier, when I left—?” I pointed to my forehead.

  “Yes, yes.” He nodded. “Here when the thief struck.”

  “Right. He gave you something to look at.”

  He immediately stiffened. I smiled, trying to keep him open.

  “A blue stone, it looked beautiful.”

  The merchant quickened. “You’re interested in it?”

  “It was such a lovely stone. Do you have it?”

  He struggled to size me up. “I might be able to get it back.”

  “It’s gone?”

  He waved his small hand, disgusted. “He wanted an astronomical sum, then refused to let me research its background. That large?

  It could be synthetic. Though I must say, I didn’t see any manufacturing tags.”

  “Do you know what it was?”

  “Benitoite.” He waved the hand again. “Or so he claimed. But that’s another reason I wondered if it was fake.”

  “Why?”

  “Benitoite, that large . . .” He paused, calculating again. “But if you’re interested in something like that, I have a marvelous specimen of alexandrite and with your thirty percent discount, we could possibly work something out. Why don’t you come with me, Marcus can show you . . .”

  “Where’ve you been?” Jack stood at the edge of the film set, arms crossed, feet planted. The posture of a security guard.

  “I was playing cops and robbers.”

  That morning’s shoot was in the atrium, which was empty because most passengers had taken the Whitehorse Yukon steam train over the pass. The train ride took most of the day; I knew because my mother and I were supposed to be on it, marveling at the wooden trestles and mountains and scenery we might never see again.

  “Did you get the bracelet?” he asked.

  I nodded and told him it was in the purser’s safe. I wasn’t taking chances. “How’s Milo—sober?”

  “‘Functioning’ would be more accurate.”

  Sitting in a wingback chair in the middle of the atrium, Milo stared at nothing in particular. Behind him Vinnie guarded the elevator doors and walked around the table where my aunt and Claire had set up their crystals. When he picked up the small white cards, explaining each stone’s powers, the mansard brow made Vinnie look like a remedial reader.

  “Mr. Bodyguard has a blue stone that looks like the one from the jewelry box.” I told Jack about the morning adventure in law enforcement. “Vinnie told the jeweler the gem was something called benitoite.”

  “Hold on,” Jack said. “You took out the back tire? Nice shot.”

  My eyes stayed on Vinnie. With his bloated sense of menace he was scowling at a passenger coming out of the elevator—in a wheelchair. Vinnie eyed the old guy as a potential terrorist.

  “He didn’t want the jeweler looking into the purchasing background either.”

  “What about our stolen gems records?” Jack asked.

  “I just called.” On my way back to the ship, I left a message with the mineralogy lab in DC. Due to the time change, it was Saturday afternoon back East, but I left a message for the forensic geologist, Nettie Labelle. “We might hear back, but I can’t count on it.”

  “All right, go find the Dutchman,” Jack said. “I’ll keep an eye on Vinnie. If your cell phone rings, don’t even answer. Just start running.”

  A block of Dutch ice escorted me down the hallway of Deck Fourteen, past the steward who lifted stacks of white towels from his housekeeping cart. When Geert paused, pretending to read from the papers in his hand, the steward went inside the open cabin two doors down. Quickly the head of security inserted his master key, opening the cabin at the top of our list.

  As a second thought, I reached back, grabbing trash bags from the cart.

  But the cabin was spotless. “Has the steward been in here?”

  “Stupid question.” Geert pointed to a dollar bill, pinned to the desk by a drinking glass. A tip.
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br />   But the bill told me other things. Vinnie Pinnetta was a compulsive neat freak. Under the dollar, he’d left a note requesting a clean blanket, clean duvet, and a new pillow. “Not pillowcase,” he wrote. “Pillow.” Underlining the word.

  “Will he get all new bedding?”

  Geert looked offended, the white eyebrows shooting up.

  “I’m saying, a new pillow seems extravagant.” I checked the closet and the trash can in both the living area and bathroom. I ran my hands under the mattress and looked beneath the desk. No jewelry box. No jewels.

  “What happens to the pillow?” I asked.

  “It goes to laundry. Customer says it is dirty, it is dirty.”

  I took both pillows off the twin bed and stuffed them into the plastic bags from the steward’s cart.

  “You said search,” Geert said. “Not take. I have enough worries without you taking our property.”

  They were nice pillows. Airy and fluffy, full of down feathers. Maybe small eiderdown feathers, the kind the coroner found inside Judy Carpenter’s cheek. “If you want to worry, worry about somebody else dying on this ship.”

  He twirled the mustache. “Help yourself.”

  Standing on the bed, I ran my hands over the curtains. The sun continued its valiant battle with the clouds, and the water was a pewter stage with bright spotlights flashing, awaiting the performer. The curtain rod had carved wood finials, flourishing classical motifs. When I grabbed the finial, the rod came with it.

  Geert looked shocked.

  “I take it that’s not supposed to happen?”

  “They are bolted to the wall, for safety.”

  Lifting the rod, I slid the curtains down to the right and unscrewed the finial. It was a metal rod and hollow, another safety consideration, and when I forced my fingers inside the tube, I felt something like pages in a book. I pulled out what I could. It was a wad of bills. The outer hundred tore but there were more of them. Plenty more. When I held up the money, Geert shook his bald head.

  “Now you feel vindicated.”

  But I didn’t. And I couldn’t tell him why.