Mickey perched on a stool at the wet bar, a position that gave him a vantage point to watch the suite’s door as well as the window and both bedrooms. While he appeared relaxed, Iris knew he was poised for action.
She sat next to Tatiana. “Your nephews claim Cosmo took something from you. What was it?”
The old lady nodded but held off speaking while Marko hurried back with something in his hands. She pointed to the small table before them, and he laid out an ornate necklace, taking time to spread the thin metal chains into their intricate pattern.
Iris leaned forward to study it. The luster of twenty-four-carat gold spilled out in a filigreed web of late Victorian design.
“May I?” she asked her aunt. When she received a nod, Iris lifted the necklace with great care to study the spots dotted with platinum. Indeed, they were settings, but the necklace was void of gemstones.
“Do you know what this is?” Tatiana asked.
Iris counted the fittings for ten stones, her heart pounding. “Is this the Romanov necklace?”
The old woman smiled. “Your mother told you the tale.”
“Oh, yes. Such a lovely and sad story.”
“When Czar Nicholas decided to have his crown dismantled, and the rare alexandrite stones fashioned into a gift for his wife, he commissioned the premier jeweler in all of Russia to design the necklace. That was my great-grandfather, Vladimir Gorseyev.”
“Is this a copy?”
“No, that is the original.”
From his perch, Mickey cleared his throat. “But I thought the necklace was dismantled during the revolution, and the stones dispersed to the crown heads of Europe.”
“They were.” Tatiana nodded with approval to Iris. “You told him.”
Iris made eye contact with Mickey and felt a blush warm her cheeks. “Yeah, well it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Tatiana wrapped both hands around the top of the cane to help her sit up straight. “The Empress Alexandra sent the stones to her distant relatives for safekeeping, but the necklace itself she returned to the Gorseyev family like a skeleton without flesh. We hid it through the revolution and years of communism, though we still hope one day it will take its place in a museum, a tribute to the devoted wife and mother who was murdered with her children in the midst of such political upheaval.”
Iris had always thought of the Romanov gems as a myth, the story a fairy-tale adventure, but her great-aunt’s words painted a tragic tale of a woman’s attempt to save some part of her family’s history even when she couldn’t save herself or her children. The gems were not merely a historical curiosity, a valuable artifact, but a deep cultural legacy.
And Cosmo had stolen them. But why? It still made no sense to her. Another question troubled her. “So, Cosmo removed the gems from here, but how did you get them?”
“We had them made.”
“Made?” Mickey rose to join them.
Iris spread the necklace out across the table so he could see it. For his benefit, she traced the spots where the gems would have fitted.
“How do you make alexandrite?” he asked.
Tatiana sighed. “I do not understand it all, but it can be done in a laboratory.”
Iris held up a hand. “In simple terms, you create a chamber and put in the chemical compounds necessary to make a stone or mineral, then create conditions that speed up the process. You can grow alexandrite in a lab in as little as two weeks.”
She looked at her aunt. “But for the size of these gems, growing them would take a few months.”
“Indeed. And it cost us much money over the years. For decades my grandfather and then my father continued to commission the growing of more stones, then they personally cut the gems to fit these settings.”
Reality settled upon Iris’s shoulders like a cold, hard burden. The stones she’d thought were the Romanov alexandrite must be these grown copies. “I’m sorry Cosmo took them from you. I haven’t seen him since Thursday.” She tried to make it sound like no big deal-which it wouldn’t be under normal circumstances. “I’m sure he still has the stones.”
“He said he gave them to you,” Tatiana said.
“When did he say that?” Mickey interrupted.
Though taken aback by his intense question, she grudgingly answered him. “An hour ago, maybe a bit more.”
“He was here?” Iris tried to remain calm. She’d never wanted to see her father so desperately.
Tatiana patted her hand. “Yes. So, he’s fooled all of us then. You truly don’t have them?”
Iris’s suddenly dry tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She threw Mickey a look.
Picking up on her silence, he came to her rescue. “I think it’s safe to say Cosmo didn’t give them to her. Did he, Iris?”
She released her breath. “No, he didn’t give me the stones.” They were stretching the truth, but since she had no way of knowing for certain whether the stones on Edgar’s collar were what Tatiana sought, she couldn’t very well promise to return them. More than ever she needed to find Cosmo.
“But if he didn’t take the stones to give them to Iris, then why did he take them?” Marko asked.
Iris sighed, unable to defend his crazy actions. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood him.”
Tatiana nodded sagely. “Of this I know-Cosmo never does anything by chance.”
Chapter Fourteen
“So that’s that,” Mickey said. “Your father’s had us all running around with our heads up our asses.”
“You don’t need to say it like you think I was in on it.” Any charity she’d been feeling toward him evaporated like dew under the desert sun.
They waited in the elevator lobby, a cul-de-sac of six metal doors. Instead of making eye contact with Mickey, Iris watched his reflection in the mirror on the end wall. He was studying her profile.
“No, you didn’t have a clue, did you? You never even knew you had relatives in Russia?”
Iris turned on him. “Second cousins. How many of your second cousins do you keep track of in the United States?” She bit her lower lip-yelling at Mickey wasn’t going to change the fact that she hadn’t even known she had sisters until this weekend. “What do we do now?”
“Only one thing we can do. Wait to hear what the lab discovered about the gems.”
They looked at each other.
“They’re going to be the Gorseyev alexandrite,” Iris said flatly. “I never thought the color was pure enough, but I so wanted them to be the Romanov stones.”
“So, you don’t think Cosmo ever got the Romanov gems?”
“That’s why he never wanted to hand them over. He knew someone would discover they were synthetic.”
An elevator opened with a subtle ding, and they stepped inside.
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Mickey said. “I mean, what was the point? From what I gather, the Boss wired ten million dollars to someone for those gems. Your aunt didn’t get the money, and Cosmo swore he never had the money in his hands. Why would he take something she valued so highly, if he wasn’t going to give them to the Boss?”
“You’d have to ask Cosmo that,” Iris said.
“If I could just lay hands on him.”
“I think he might be headed back to my store late tonight.” She admitted it grudgingly.
“Why?”
“He broke in last night, remember? This morning, I found this in the drawer where I originally found the alexandrite.” She withdrew the small paper from her jacket pocket and offered it to him.
Mickey took the note and stared at the single question mark. “What’s he asking?”
“I think he’s asking what I did with the alexandrite. When I found it yesterday morning, I had to make a quick decision.”
“So you found it and acted. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“You were the one who told me not to trust you.”
The elevator opened again, this time at lobby level. They turned the corner and were assaulted by casino noise and the hurried bustle of bodies. Mickey corralled her shoulders with one arm and protected her from the worst of the bumps as they moved among people trying to go in a dozen directions at once.