his boarding pass to the attendant. Tracy looked around, desperate, and saw an airport policeman standing nearby. She called out, "Officer! Officer!"
The two men looked at each other, startled.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Trevor hissed. "Do you want to get us all arrested?"
The policeman was moving toward them. "Yes, miss? Any problem?"
"Oh, no problem," Tracy said gaily. "These two wonderful gentlemen found some valuable jewelry I lost, and they're returning it to me. I was afraid I was going to have to go to the FBI about it."
The two men exchanged a frantic look.
"They suggested that perhaps you wouldn't mind escorting me to a taxi."
"Certainly. Be happy to."
Tracy turned toward the men. "It's safe to give the jewels to me now. This nice officer will take care of me."
"No, really," Tom Bowers objected. "It would be much better if we - "
"Oh, no, I insist," Tracy urged. "I know how important it is for you to catch your plane."
The two men looked at the policeman, and then at each other, helpless. There was nothing they could do. Reluctantly, Tom Bowers pulled the chamois bag from his pocket.
"That's it!" Tracy said. She took the bag from his hand, opened it, and looked inside. "Thank goodness. It's all here."
Tom Bowers made one last-ditch try. "Why don't we keep it safe for you until - "
"That won't be necessary," Tracy said cheerfully. She opened her purse, put the jewelry inside, and took out two $5.00 bills. She handed one to each of the men. "Here's a little token of my appreciation for what you've done."
The other passengers had all departed through the gate. The airline attendant said, "That was the last call. You'll have to board now, gentlemen."
"Thank you again," Tracy beamed as she walked away with the policeman at her side. "It's so rare to find an honest person these days."
Chapter 18
Thomas Bowers - n泄 Jeff Stevens - sat at the plane window looking out as the aircraft took off. He raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and his shoulders heaved up and down.
Dennis Trevor - a.k.a. Brandon Higgins - seated next to him, looked at him in surprise. "Hey," he said, "it's only money. It's nothing to cry about."
Jeff Stevens turned to him with tears streaming down his face, and Higgins, to his astonishment, saw that Jeff was convulsed with laughter.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" Higgins demanded. "It's nothing to laugh about, either."
To Jeff, it was. The manner in which Tracy Whitney had outwitted them at the airport was the most ingenius con he had ever witnessed. A scam on top of a scam. Conrad Morgan had told them the woman was an amateur. My God, Jeff thought, what would she be like if she were a professional? Tracy Whitney was without doubt the most beautiful woman Jeff Stevens had ever seen. And clever. Jeff prided himself on being the best confidence artist in the business, and she had outsmarted him. Uncle Willie would have loved her, Jeff thought.
It was Uncle Willie who had educated Jeff. Jeff's mother was the trusting heiress to a farm-equipment fortune, married to an improvident schemer filled with get-rich-quick projects that never quite worked out. Jeff's father was a charmer, darkly handsome and persuasively glib, and in the first five years of marriage he had managed to run through his wife's inheritance. Jeff's earliest memories were of his mother and father quarreling about money and his father's extramarital affairs. It was a bitter marriage, and the young boy had resolved, I'm never going to get married. Never.
His father's brother, Uncle Willie, owned a small traveling carnival, and whenever he was near Marion, Ohio, where the Stevenses lived, he came to visit them. He was the most cheerful man Jeff had ever known, filled with optimism and promises of a rosy tomorrow. He always managed to bring the boy exciting gifts, and he taught Jeff wonderful magic tricks. Uncle Willie had started out as a magician at a carnival and had taken it over when it went broke.
When Jeff was fourteen, his mother died in an automobile accident. Two months later Jeff's father married a nineteen-year-old cocktail waitress. "It isn't natural for a man to live by himself," his father had explained. But the box was filled with a deep resentment, feeling betrayed by his father's callousness.
Jeff's father had been hired as a siding salesman and was on the road three days