Thieves Like Us Read online

  “Roberto Hernandez.”

  “Huh. I’ve heard of you before.”

  “Really? I’m sorry I can’t say I’ve heard of you.”

  Furley’s brow puckered as he thought. “I’ve seen your picture.”

  Rocky gave a modest shrug. “I’m quite photogenic.”

  Beckman, Furley’s partner, had said nothing while Janet spoke, and he didn’t move now as he regarded Rocky from his tipped-back chair. After several seconds the stony facade cracked, and a smile that was more like a sneer crossed his face. He whacked his partner in the shoulder. “Rocky Hernandez. Spent some time as a guest of the county.”

  Furley brightened. “Right. Now I remember. Burglary, wasn’t it?”

  “No.” Rocky corrected him with a tight smile. “Breaking and entering. But it’s nice to be remembered.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Thought you said you were a law student.”

  “I am.”

  “They let criminals become lawyers?”

  “With good character references.” He flashed a smile. “I have an exemplary character.”

  Furley smirked. “Ya don’t say.”

  Janet gave Rocky a worried glance. He looked unconcerned, even though his steady gaze seemed to hide a touch of annoyance at the line of questioning. Furley, on the other hand, was beginning to look like a lion stalking a zebra. “Rumor has it you’re a pro.”

  “You can’t believe everything you hear. And I’ll be glad to chat with you about it later, but my past has nothing to do with Janet.”

  Furley ignored the hint. “Jewelry, isn’t it? That’s your thing.” He looked between Janet and Rocky. “And your pretty little friend here was selling a hot necklace. Wouldn’t you call that interesting?”

  “I’d say it’s more ironic,” Rocky answered.

  Janet didn’t know how Rocky could remain so calm when Furley’s smile had become so predatory. Feeling uneasy, she shifted her gaze to Beckman. He stared back with the same intensity her cat had while watching birds, unflinching and ready to pounce. A tiny whiplash of panic sent her heart racing. “Rocky?”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s all right, Janet. These nice officers are right to be concerned, but you haven’t done anything wrong. You didn’t know the necklace was stolen, you went to a respected jeweler, and you didn’t try to hide your identity or deny what you did.” He looked at Furley. “Just like any innocent person would do.”

  Furley gave him an emotionless glance, then focused on Janet. “This friend of yours,” he consulted his notes, “Ellie. She heard the whole transaction?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like her address and phone number so we can verify your story.”

  Janet wiggled on the edge of her chair. “I can give it to you, but she’s not there. She left on vacation this morning, and she’s probably halfway over the Atlantic right now.”

  Furley raised an eyebrow. “She left the country?”

  Janet could almost hear alarm bells ring and fought to stay calm. “It’s a delayed honeymoon. She went with her husband.”

  “So the trip was planned for some time?”

  Damn. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. It was a spontaneous thing.” She widened her eyes at Rocky in an appeal for help.

  “Newlyweds,” he said with a happy smile, as if that explained everything. “They didn’t leave their itinerary, but I believe they’re flying to Heathrow, then Frankfurt. Perhaps you can find a way to leave a message for them.”

  They had a staring contest for several seconds. Since Rocky looked unperturbed, Janet sat quietly and waited it out. Finally, Furley turned back to her. “Did your husband give you any other pieces of jewelry?”

  “Ex-husband.” She and Rocky said it together.

  “No,” she told Furley.

  “Perhaps you forgot.”

  “Not a chance. We weren’t together that long, and he wasn’t that generous.”

  Furley rubbed his upper lip while waiting for her to volunteer more information. When she didn’t, he pulled out a business card and pushed it across the table. “If you find anything that indicates where your ex-husband bought the necklace”—he emphasized the ex part, as though indulging an unreasonable request—“give me a call.”

  He stood, and Janet breathed a sigh of relief. “I doubt I’ll find anything,” she told him. “Whatever I didn’t give away or throw out, I dumped into a big pile and burned.” She followed Rocky’s lead and rose, conscious of his hand on her back as she left the room. He kept it there until they reached the front door of the police station, and he held it open for her. Once on the sidewalk, he grinned at her. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  She shivered, even though the sun felt warm. “I felt like a suspect.”

  “You were a logical suspect.”

  He seemed too complacent about it. “It’s not funny.”

  “Sorry.” But he shook his head and chuckled. “I just never thought being questioned by the police was something we’d have in common.”

  That better be as far as it went; she had no desire to see the inside of a jail cell. She sighed. “Thank you for coming down here. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “My pleasure, even if I was your default choice for someone with criminal experience.”

  He was so amused by the whole thing, she decided she might be overdramatizing the incident. At least he’d gone to the trouble of wearing a power suit to impress the cops. She took a second to admire the look. “You know, for an ex-con, you clean up well.” She fingered his jacket. “I didn’t know you even owned a suit.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He gave her a smile that made her think of a mischievous little boy, but one who was all grown up and interested in far more adult pursuits. The trippy feeling hit her chest again.

  He didn’t seem to notice the effect he had on her. “You should have called me before you went to Portman’s. I could have saved you the embarrassment of being hauled down to the police station and treated like a criminal.”

  “I wasn’t ‘hauled’ down anywhere, I went willingly.” But he was right, it was embarrassing. His grin defused her temper. “How could you have prevented that? Are you telling me you know more about jewelry than Mr. Portman and his father?”

  “Apparently, I know more about stolen jewelry. I recognized the necklace.”

  “You did?” She couldn’t keep the amazement out of her voice. “They said it was stolen over two hundred years ago, so I know you had nothing to do with it.”

  He put a hand to his chest. “You wound me. I really must clarify my criminal history for you sometime.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance, thinking that might be a good idea. And a dangerous one—if she found out he really wasn’t the criminal she’d tried to pretend he was, she’d have fewer defenses against all that sexy charm. She needed to resist him. Rocky was the most tempting man she’d ever met, but she couldn’t afford to make the same mistake she had with Banner.

  “I really would like to hear what you know about the necklace.”

  “It’ll be best if I can use the Internet.”

  That meant letting him in her house. “Okay,” she agreed, telling herself it was for educational purposes only.

  The laptop was where she’d left it on the coffee table. Beside it, her large black-and-white cat sprawled in a pool of sunlight. She shooed him away while Rocky stripped off his suit coat and adjusted his vest before sitting down and tapping at the keys. For a moment she let her mind go fuzzy. He did the corporate look so well, it was hard to picture him in his stupid Hawaiian shirts. The man was a chameleon. Probably a good quality in a thief, but not in a . . . whatever he was to her. Acquaintance.

  After only ten seconds of searching, he turned the screen toward her. “There’s your necklace.”

  She sat beside him, studying the picture on the screen. The ugly necklace was laid out on black velvet, twinkling from every gold link that showed between the small pearls. The pend
ant glowed with rich red tones.

  “How can there be a picture of it if it disappeared before the invention of the camera?”

  “It’s a copy.” He stroked the cat, who had settled on the couch beside him. “Most famous jewels and jewelry are copied. Now look at this.”

  He reached across her and clicked open another window. Now the necklace was the central piece in an arrangement of matching jewels—two earrings, a ring, and a brooch. Red stones shone on all the pearl-encrusted gold pieces, but none as large as the one in the necklace. “Have you ever seen any of those?”

  She shook her head. “Were those stolen, too?”

  “Yes, all at the same time. And they most likely went to the same collector.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “No one knows. They could have been passed down through generations, but it’s more likely that whoever stole them cared more for money than gems and sold them through underground connections. They could have traveled the world several times since their theft as they changed hands. How they popped up now is the million-dollar question. Or, I should say, millions of dollars.”

  He had to be kidding. “For those ugly things?”

  “For the Pellinni Jewels. What’s this guy’s name?” He scratched a furry cheek in what the cat obviously thought was just the right spot.

  “Jingles,” she told him absently, looking at the computer screen.

  He winced. “Sorry, man,” he commiserated, scratching Jingles’s other cheek. The cat purred while Janet hunched forward to examine the earrings. Passably pretty, she decided. The ring and brooch were downright ugly.

  “Why is it so valuable?”

  “Large spinels are rare. The Pellinni is thought to be forty-two carats, but it’s only an estimate because accurate measurements weren’t available until the early twentieth century, and by that time it was long gone.”

  She stared at the necklace that she’d shoved in the back of her lingerie drawer a year ago, not even bothering to put it in the safe as Banner had instructed. Millions of dollars? She turned to cast a curious look over her shoulder. “How do you know about some Italian jewelry collection that’s a few hundred years old?”

  “Over six hundred years. And it started out Italian, but it’s actually considered German.”

  Janet sat back, waiting for the explanation.

  Bending toward Jingles’s furry head, he said, “He’s pretending not to be impressed with my wealth of knowledge.”

  She tried not to smile, which was difficult while he massaged her cat into a purring, drooling state of bliss. Not that she’d let it influence her, but the cat had disliked Banner, with what she suspected was good reason.

  Jingles flopped over, shamelessly begging for more attention as Rocky talked. “A rich Florentine bride, Giovanna Pellinni, brought it with her as part of her dowry when she married a German nobleman, Franz Konig. That was in 1465. It was passed down in the Konig family as the Pellinni Jewels, until they were donated to a museum in the eighteenth century.”

  “Probably when some smart Konig woman refused to wear them.”

  She wasn’t kidding, but he smiled anyway. “Maybe. They were stolen soon after that, in 1788, and never seen again. That is, until Banner gave you the Pellinni necklace and you sold it.”

  “Very impressive. So how do you know all that? Did you expect to come across famous missing German jewelry while looting someone’s safe in Bloomfield Hills?”

  His smile grew wider and more lopsided. Cuter, too, damn it. “No. You could call it professional interest. I like to know my trade.”

  “So you know what to steal.”

  “So I’d know what not to steal. I was extremely selective. And that”—he indicated the picture on the screen—“is something I would have avoided. But I’ll admit it would be nice to admire the workmanship up close.”

  The history of the necklace she’d temporarily owned was fascinating, but she was suddenly more interested in Rocky’s career as a jewel thief. She only knew what Ellie had told her, and she hadn’t been interested in hearing it back then.

  “Ellie told me you only stole from other thieves.”

  He wiggled an eyebrow. “You were talking about me?”

  Don’t blush! “I wasn’t, Ellie was.”

  “Ah.” She was relieved he let it go. “Stealing from other thieves is simplifying it. But yes, every person I stole from had purchased the gems illegally. They bought stolen goods, and they knew it. You could say I reclaimed them.”

  “Nice euphemism. It’s still stealing.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She thought about it for another moment. “But they can’t report it.”

  “That’s right. They can’t run to the police and say, this guy stole a hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds from me, when coincidentally that was the value of the stones taken in a recent robbery. Even if they can’t pin the robbery on the guy, he can’t prove the stones are his, and he’s drawn unwanted attention to himself. So he has to write it off as a loss.”

  “Or try to get even.”

  He winked at her. “You know, I always liked that about you, Janet. You think like a criminal.”

  She gave him a sour look. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Absolutely. That’s how you stayed alive when Banner sent you off with Colombian drug dealers who were supposed to kill you—you knew what they intended to do, and you found a way out of it. Successful criminals have to be resourceful and think a step ahead or they get caught.”

  “You got caught.”

  He actually looked embarrassed. “A technicality. I was set up by someone who held a grudge and I was stupid enough to fall for it. But smart enough not to get caught with the gems he was hoping I’d take.”

  He seemed to be waiting for more questions, but she didn’t want to ask them. If she knew his whole story she had a feeling he wouldn’t look like an ordinary thief at all. She might even admire him.

  “Thanks for telling me,” she mumbled. She folded the laptop closed, hoping he got the message—lesson over, time to go.

  He got up, receiving a surprised blink from Jingles, but made no move to leave. “You really have no idea where or how Banner got the necklace?”

  “No. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t steal it himself, if that’s what you mean. His style is to let other people do the actual dirty work while he pockets the money.”

  He nodded in a distracted way, as if it wasn’t pertinent. “Do you have any idea how long he had it?”

  “No. I had the impression he’d just bought it, but I don’t remember if he actually said that.” She didn’t like the concerned look on his face. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because whoever owned the necklace most likely owned the rest of the collection. And whoever stole it most likely stole those other pieces, too.”

  “But I don’t have them.”

  “No one knows that, Janet. And someone will be looking for them.”

  She knew he was right and felt the first prick of apprehension. “You know the jewelry trade. Will they be able to trace the necklace back to me?”

  “All too easily. Portman’s had it, and believe me, they’ll be talking about it. You showing up at Portman’s with that necklace is like someone walking into an art gallery with a missing Picasso. It’s news. Word will travel through the legitimate people in the industry, to the slightly less legitimate, right down to the shady fences you don’t want to meet. Everyone will know the Pellinni necklace has reappeared—and who had it.”

  She was afraid of that. “And you think someone will break in here, hoping to steal them from me.”

  His smile was forced. “Definitely. Whoever secretly owned that collection paid a lot for it. You’d better believe he wants it back before the FBI gets their hands on it and returns it to that museum in Germany, which is probably where the necklace will be going soon. Look at it this way: Most people think the necklace has been found. But someone out there think
s of it as lost. Missing from his private collection. And if he doesn’t move fast, the rest of the pieces will be lost, too.”

  She wasn’t ready to panic, but she knew the implications. “So I’m in danger.”

  “Let’s just say not all jewel thieves are as charming and suave as the one you know.”

  She couldn’t resist a sly comeback. “Or as filled with self-admiration?”

  He flashed his killer smile again. “Well, they might be, but of course it’s sadly misplaced.”

  “Of course.” Things were starting to feel too friendly, considering her determination to keep him at a distance. “Look, all kidding aside—”

  “I’m not kidding.” He cut her off, his light tone suddenly sharp. “This is not a game, and the people who will be looking for the jewels are deadly serious. Emphasis on deadly.”

  “I understand.” He’d stepped closer, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not helpless. You know I have an excellent security system, because you installed it yourself.”

  “Windows can be broken, wires can be cut, doors can be smashed in.”

  Irritation flickered. She knew what he wanted; he wanted her to move out. The ironic part was, if this had happened a year from now when she was more secure in her independence, she might not have argued. Logic told her he was right. But he’d touched on a purely emotional issue. She’d just rid herself of the last trace of her controlling ex-husband, and hearing another man tell her what to do aroused in her an irrational stubbornness.

  “I’ve been held captive by drug lords and faced down a killer. You didn’t know me well back then, but you were there, so you know I’m capable of handling myself.”

  “I know you’re brave.” His face softened. “But you’re not bulletproof, Janet.”

  Damn, he could be pretty persuasive when he stood that close and looked that concerned. Also, when he was right. “I’ll consider leaving,” she said.

  “Soon.”

  “Don’t push.” She said it quietly, needing him to understand.

  He studied her, then gave a brief nod. “Okay. But one question. If it were someone else asking, would you move out now?”