“Not anyone,” Hale said. “I mean, I’m fairly certain she isn’t my aunt Myrtle.”
Kat felt her hopes falling. “And even if we know who she is—it doesn’t give us a clue where she is or why she…and her grandson…did it.”
Hale laughed. “Even on the black market, the emerald’s got to be worth millions of dollars, Kat. That’s plenty of reason right there.”
“But why do it this way?” Kat had to ask. “Why risk the wrath of Eddie and tick off an entire family if you can help it?”
“Easy.” Hale sat down and kicked his feet up. “They couldn’t help it.”
“But…why?” Kat asked. It felt good to fixate on the question, the puzzle. “Why risk having us do their dirty work when anybody who’d know the name Romani would also know a half dozen crews just as good? This woman…” Kat trailed off, words failing, as if she couldn’t even trust herself to speak.
“What?” Gabrielle asked, inching closer.
“It was nothing. Just…for a second I thought—”
“You knew her?” Gabrielle guessed.
Kat thought about the moment in the park—the look in the woman’s eyes when she’d called to Kat and said thank you.
“No. It was more like she knew me. Like she was appraising me and the job. Like she knew better than some little old lady from Loxley, and so I should have known better.” Kat felt herself trying to find the right words. “She looked at me like Uncle Eddie looks at me.”
“The female Uncle Eddie.” Gabrielle’s voice was full of awe and fear in equal measure, like the woman was a cross between a dragon and a unicorn—just as mythical and twice as deadly.
There was a TV on in the background, and the anchors talked of moving weather fronts and falling stock prices, as if those were the things in the world that really mattered.
“Uh…guys,” Simon said, but Kat had turned back to the window.
“Why con us into stealing the Cleopatra Emerald?” she said quietly, repeating the question that was sending them across the ocean and back again. It was the question, Kat knew, that could haunt her for the rest of her life.
“Guys…” Simon said again, voice rising, but Kat was lost in thought, staring at the glass.
“Why con us?” she whispered.
“Maybe because of…” Simon seemed to lose his voice before choking out, “That?”
Kat spun back in time to see him raise a finger and point at the TV and the picture of the woman that Kat had come to know as Constance Miller. For a second, she thought Simon had found her somewhere among Interpol’s files—until she realized the picture was live, and the woman was standing under the glare of what seemed like a thousand flashing bulbs, holding the Cleopatra Emerald out for all to see.
Simon cleared his throat. “Okay, is it just me, or does this make her the worst thief ever?”
CHAPTER 18
Although the plane was state of the art, the pilots perfectly trained, Kat couldn’t shake the feeling that they were falling, plummeting out of the sky. That was the only thing that could explain the knot in her stomach as Simon turned up the volume on the TV and she read the words at the bottom of the screen. Live News Conference: Monaco.
“Did they find the fake?” Hale said, leaning closer to the screen. “Is it an arrest?”
“No.” Kat’s voice was flat and even, as if she were watching it all from outside her body. She had the kind of distance—the perspective—that would make even her great-uncle proud. “It’s a con.”
Together they watched as a balding man in a nice suit stepped behind the podium. “Mesdames et messieurs, members of the press, I am Pierre LaFont of the LaFont Auction House here in Monaco. On behalf of Mrs. Brooks and myself, I thank you for coming today.”
He spoke English with a heavy French accent. He didn’t look up again until he’d finished.
“I will read a brief statement and then Mrs. Brooks has agreed to take questions.” He slipped on a pair of bifocals and studied a piece of paper, but the room stayed silent, transfixed.
“Three days ago, Mrs. Margaret Brooks was examining a collection of antiques procured by her late husband and recently shipped to her winter home near Nice, France. One of the pieces—an urn—broke in transit. It was then that Mrs. Brooks found a large emerald that presumably had been hidden inside. The stone is ninety-seven karats and of the highest quality. A team of experts is now en route to Monaco, where detailed appraisals, examinations, and verifications will take place. In the meantime, it is my expert opinion that—due to the size, quality, and cut of the emerald in question—what Mrs. Margaret Brooks has found is most likely the Antony Emerald.”
The man took a deep breath, as if he’d just dived off a cliff. “And now Mrs. Brooks will take questions.”
If the members of the press looked dumbfounded, their reaction was nothing compared to that of the four teenagers who sat watching it all unfold from thirty thousand feet. On the other side of the cabin, Simon’s slide show was still playing. Photos of every con woman that Interpol had ever known were flashing through the cabin, but none of them could hold a candle to the woman on the television then.