Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 01 - A Brilliant Plan

by Alex Ames

  The public library was getting ready to close, I glanced at my watch and pondered the possibility of getting a library card to check the books out and take them home with me. Then another thought occurred to me and I sat down behind a public Internet terminal in the library and did a search of the UCLA library database. I found some more books and documents with the same keywords, most of them originating from before 1980. The most recent document I found was a history thesis from last year, “Maximilian and the Native Americans – The Last Attempt.” How convenient, Published by the Department of History, UCLA. I jotted down the author of the book and decided to leave the store in Mrs. Otis’ hands tomorrow morning and head out to the UCLA campus instead.

  When I got back home, I called to inform Mrs. Otis of the change in plans; she was OK with it. Then I called Mundy to update him. He listened to the results of my little detective work and promised to do a little research in the database of his newsroom, which was supposed to host newspaper archives for all of North America, including Mexico.

  Instead of spending the late night with David Letterman, I sat down near the pool, wrapped in a thick shawl and thought about jewels, murdered emperors and Ron. Why was it that Calendar Moonstone always fell for policemen and dominant males? Apart from the ‘attractive’ part. The night was silent and cold, hugging my shawl, I felt melancholic. I slowly swirled the wine in my glass and sipped now and then until I felt sleepy enough to go to bed.

  Chapter 21

  BY STARTING WITHOUT breakfast, I beat the rush hour traffic to the UCLA campus. Before I went into the library, I read the morning papers and munched a bagel in a nearby coffee shop. Together with eager students, I marched into the reading hall of the library and inquired at the information desk as to how to get the book that I wanted. After a half-hour wait, the thesis was mine.

  “Maximilian and the Native Americans – The Last Attempt,” was a scientific—read, boring—account of Maximilian’s short-lived efforts to unite Mexico with the goal of forming an independent state with a French model, blah, skim, blah, skim. Suddenly, a paragraph caught my attention: A second coronation was held in Mexico City in 1864. It was a low-key affair by today’s standards but most of the social and political groups of the day had made their way to greet the new emperor with their gifts and their agendas. Among them was a group of representatives of the natives of Mexico. The author wrote about the different native Indian tribes who had their home in the territory that we call Mexico around 1860. This conglomerate of natives partially lived a nomadic lifestyle and partially in the villages. In early 1865, a group of those tribes made Maximilian a gift to support him in his plans to reform Mexico, give the natives more rights, provide them better education and give them equal status as citizens. At that time, it was probably considered akin to science fiction. A group of ten priests and elders offered a special crafted set of jewelry to Maximilian, each high priest offered one piece. Every piece in the set was of such a high standard in design, execution and style that Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlotta were truly impressed by the dedication.

  The maker or makers of the jewelry were unknown. There was no mention whatever of the pieces that went down in history as “The Maximilian Set.”

  The annotations and citations gave some sources for the existence of the set: there was a thesis on royal coronation gifts from 1954, some documents from the Museum of Mexican History and some old newspaper articles from El Diario Nuevo, which must have been a Mexican newspaper. I wrote down all the sources, hunted down a copy machine and made photocopies of the important pages from the thesis.

  By intuition, I did a quick Internet search of the author’s name, Benito P. Salanca, and it turned out that B. P. Salanca was assistant professor at the UCLA’s history department. Such a small world, the university’s public white pages even gave the office and phone number. I walked outside the library and called Professor Salanca’s number from my cell phone. After three rings, a young voice said “Yeah.”

  “Professor Salanca, my name is Calendar Moonstone. I just read your thesis on Maximilian and the Natives. Could we meet?”

  A second of silence. “Are you a student? My hours are… ”

  “No, I am a jewelry expert and I also work as a police consultant.” Give it to him thick. “I am supporting the police in an art theft and wondered if you could tell me more about the Maximilian Set.”

  Another second of silence. “Sounds intriguing. When would it suit you? A meeting, I mean.”

  “What about now? I am at the library.”

  Salanca gave a small laugh. “What about Coffee Culture on Dickson Plaza?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” I said. “Look out for a stunning blonde with blue eyes and a black knapsack.”

  “This is California; you all look like that,” he said, laughing aloud.

  “It’s a Prada knapsack. See you in fifteen.” I hung up.

  Well, this was California, so I went back to the car and drove the one minute to Dickson Plaza to find a suitable parking spot, didn’t find any and then ended up in a parking garage for two bucks an hour, which took more than the planned 15 minutes. Coffee Culture turned out to be a Seattle coffee shop clone, up to the brownish interior. When I entered the shop, I did a small scan of the inhabitants and found a young blonde man with freckles and a corduroy jacket looking straight at me. I raised a hand in salute, got a double latte decaf and joined him.

  “Professor Salanca?”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, “I look younger than you expected. And why do I carry a Hispanic name and blonde hair?”

  I gave a laugh, shook his offered hand and sat down beside him. “All of the above,” I said and introduced myself, gave him my business card.

  He studied it, turned it over and asked, “What about this police consulting thing?”

  “They made me ‘deputy’ for the San Diego Police on Thanksgiving,” I admitted.

  Salanca looked me over with curiosity. “San Diego Police? Long way from L.A. Call me Benito. What is your interest in my work?” He got straight down to business. He indeed looked very young and was clearly Hispanic in complexion and build. On the other hand, he sported bushy blonde hair and his olive skin was counter-colored with an infinite number of reddish freckles. I wondered if he was an overachiever, being a professor already.

  I started my little story. “As I said, I am helping out the police of San Diego on an art theft case. It is possible that some jewelry was stolen that once had been in the possession of Emperor Maximilian or his wife. I did some research and got as far as your thesis, which is just about the most I could find published on it.”

  “Yup, finished it about six months ago, my professors and peers were so impressed, they offered me an assistant professorship.” He sounded proud, probably had all reason to be, despite the boring read.

  “I found it very… solid, very solid and mostly understandable even for a layman like me,” I freely improvised an opening to show my appreciation.

  Benito was pleased about the compliment and beamed. “Why did you come to me, though?”

  “I hoped that maybe you have more background information about the ‘Maximilian Set’ featured in your thesis. There was precious little in your work about it.”

  Benito leaned back, put his hands behind his neck and concentrated. “The Maximilian Set was one of the building blocks of the general hypothesis. The precious gift from the Natives was as goodwill and trust for his reign. Their influence was one factor of many. Another was Maximilian’s European and French thoughts on how to run a state. Plus, consider the civil war building up in the USA around the same time.”

  “Unfortunately, I am not well informed about Mexican history,” I admitted. “All I understand is that Mexico was at unrest after independence in 1821.”

  “Well, Mexico was not really independent for a long time after that. Unlike the USA, Mexico was an alibi battleground for the European powers, similar to the US territories 100 years before or Middle La
tin America in the nineteen eighties. Maximilian was born in 1832; he was an Austrian archduke and by French grace became emperor of Mexico in 1864. To everyone’s surprise, he turned out to be a reformer, initiated land reforms, started to educate the Native Americans and invited larger immigration. At that time, Mexico was at civil war, disunited and still looking for a national identity. After only a few years, which included state bankruptcy and estrangement from Maximilian’s European allies, the old republican crowd came to power again. Maximilian was court marshaled and executed in 1867.”

  “Three years of power,” I calculated.

  “Yup. The Native Americans presented the Maximilian Set to him, well, you probably read that. Ten priests, ten pieces. In a way, they tried to bribe their way into his heart.”

  “What else do you know about the Maximilian Set that was not written up in your thesis?” I asked.

  “Ah, bored by the science, straight to the glitter, no need for me to ramble about political motivations and social backgrounds of emperors, republicans and rebels.” Benito shook his head, good-naturedly. He frowned. “What else is there? The artist or artists of the set are unknown to me. And it looks like to anyone else, too. I couldn’t find any references or theories about it. The ten pieces held a diadem, a small crown, rings, a scepter, a pair of ear jewels and a necklace. Reportedly, they are of great beauty, not the tacky stuff that some royals have with lots of diamonds and pearls, more like straight lines with some selected stones of very high quality. I can’t say, really, as I have no knowledge of good jewelry.”

  “Do photos, drawings or paintings exist of the set?” I asked.

  “If I remember correctly, I have a partial drawing of a small diadem, a tiara style piece in my background documentation in my office. That’s all I found in my research, no photos, no other pictures.”

  “So, in reality, no one has actually seen them,” I felt discouraged.

  “Oh, but I have,” Benito said.

  My heart did a little jump. “You didn’t!”

  “Did!” Benito gave a smile. “When I did the research for my thesis down in Mexico City. One of the curators at the history museum who helped me find my references showed them to me. I mean, I have no knowledge of jewelry but the pieces I saw looked very nice, somehow very royal and spectacular, yet… Earthen. They had a… ” He was looking for the right words, “… simplicity.”

  I had a million questions for him and started to fire away to get a feeling for the design and make of the Maximilian Set but Benito raised his hands. “Come on, I only had a quick glance at them in a semi-lightened vault. You can torture me or use hypnosis, but I wouldn’t be able to make a phantom drawing or any such. There was a lot of gold and many colorful stones. And yes, I would buy one for my girlfriend for Christmas.”

  I had to rub my eyes and breathe in and out several times to get my racing pulse down.

  “You have reason to believe that the jewelry stolen from the San Diego gallery is the Maximilian Set?” Benito raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Maybe. Would it be possible?” I waved my arms around, almost knocking over our coffee mugs. ”Where exactly did you see them?”

  “Well, the Museum of Mexican History, Mexico City,” Benito answered. “At least they were there a year ago. If they were stolen in San Diego, they must have been stolen from the museum before that.”

  “So whoever stole them from the gallery stole them from another thief,” I continued.

  “Impressive, dear Watson. You are worth your money as a consultant.”

  “OK, but at least now I know what to look for,” I said and we stared into our empty mugs for a minute.

  “Do you know of any other jewelry that was in possession of Maximilian or Empress Carlotta during their time in Mexico?” I asked.

  “Sorry, can’t help you there. Imagine the times: Mexico was in a civil war, just like the US. The Juarez republicans were fighting the French reign. Nothing lasted for long then. If there is anything else that belonged to the emperor’s family besides the Maximilian Jewels, the most likely place to look is in the European collections.”

  “Why Europe?”

  “When her husband Maximilian was shot in 1867, Empress Carlotta returned to Europe to build support for her former husband’s politics,” Benito explained. “She was most likely able to save at least some of the family valuables.”

  “What became of her?”

  “Oh, sad story. She went mad. And lived for a very long time with that.”

  We finished our coffees with small-talk. Then, Benito and I walked over to his office. He had a small outfit on the second floor of the history department building, not very modern, slightly stuffy and smelly floors.

  Benito collected some papers from a huge binder labeled ‘Thesis Secondary Lit. MX’ and rummaged through them.

  “Here is the drawing of the tiara I was talking about earlier.”

  We studied a bad photocopy of an old Spanish paper. A small straight draft of a piece of jewelry was featured at the end. Straight lines, lots of presumable gold, a few clearly defined stones set delicately around the rim. Some opals for effect. At least an idea of what the ‘Max Jewels’ might look like.

  We tortured the old Xerox machine for a while making copies of Benito’s documents.

  He finally answered the unanswered questions from the beginning. “Mexican father, Swedish mother. He was looking for a big blonde, she for a Latin lover. So Dad gave me his size and Mom the hair.” I had to laugh at this and Benito pulled a face. “I always wished for it to be the other way round.”

  “Wow, a match made up in heaven. How very romantic,” I said.

  “Well, Mom got homesick for her fjords and Dad felt ridiculed by a woman 10 inches taller than him. Add to that the California disease… ”

  I raised my eyebrow dutifully and he explained. “Divorce, stupid.”

  We laughed again together. I didn’t find him attractive but he had a certain charm and I would bet that he had his success with women. Lucky female students.

  I thanked him for the papers. He thanked me for the coffee and I had to promise to tell him that when I found out, I would tell him what had become of the Maximilian Jewels.

  If I lived long enough to find out.

  On the drive back to Redondo, I wondered why he hadn’t hit on me and hadn’t asked me out. I felt slightly overlooked. Maybe he was gay?

  Chapter 22

  RON CALLED ME at the store around five.

  “Found your murderer yet?” I asked him.

  “No, but we got a possible lead on the wizard who opened the safe,” he said.

  “The FBI was of use then?”

  He gave a soft laugh. “Not exactly. It was your idea with the San Diego home connection. The list of specialists shrank to two names and then after rechecks down to one. A Norwegian guy named Hans Polter… ”

  “Sounds like the Scandinavian version of Harry Potter.”

  “Actually, he was naturalized a few years ago, came to the US with his parents when he was ten years old. He’s 28 now, used to live in L.A. and the Silicon Valley area. Worked for various software companies.”

  “Let me guess, his parents live in San Diego.”

  “Well, close enough. Parents got divorced five years ago, his mother lives in Carlsbad, about 45 minutes drive from San Diego. According to her, Hans had a night out with friends on the night of the break-in.”

  “You are on to him?”

  “Problem is, he seems to have vanished. His mother hasn’t seen him since last weekend, his apartment in Pacific Palisades is empty, and he hasn’t shown up for work.”

  “Pacific Palisades? Posh crib for a hacker,” I remarked.

  “He works for a movie special effects company in the Valley, makes decent money.”

  I stretched myself behind my workbench and pushed some gold specks into a little expensive heap with my little finger. “What about Altward and Faulkner? Do they know our hacker?”

  “I have
n’t decided whether to ask them yet or not. If they are involved, they would deny it anyhow. I don’t want to stir up things before I have the chance to talk to that guy or crosscheck phone records.”

  I chewed on my lip, tapping my fingernails on the receiver. “Don’t you think it strange that Harry Potter… ”

  “Polter, Harry, silly, Hans Polter… ” Ron tried to correct me.

  “Hans Polter uses his spare time to break into a jewelry store when he has such a nice well paying job.”

  “That is one of the things that make my cases so interesting. Nothing is ever what it seems. People have strange hobbies.”

  Was that a stab at me? And the thought stopped me from telling him about the Maximilian Set right away.

  Mundy visited me at the store after work. He always made a small circle around Mrs. Otis who scared him and he came walking backwards into the workshop.

  Finally turning to me, he asked. “I am here. What is so important?”

  I closed the door to the showroom, put the Benito papers down in front of him, and started my tale. “I bet you a night in Paris that this is what the burglary is all about.”

  “Should this be my lucky day?” Mundy started reading, his jaw working some imaginary chewing gum. “The Maximilian Set. Unknown artist or artists, presumably Native Americans, educated in Europe or by Europeans. Presented to Maximilian as a gift at his Mexican coronation as Emperor. Ten pieces. Particular design.”

  “Benito’s word was ‘spectacular,’” I added.

  Mundy held up his hand, continued to skim the papers while I picked up my work, my mind not really into it.

  “I must say, this looks convincing to my investigative eye.” Mundy carefully stacked the papers and put them back on my desk.