Sleight of Hand - By Phillip Margolin Page 0,30
What was it called? The Maltese Falcon! That was it. This case was exactly like that movie.
But someone had tried to murder Otto Pickering, and the money was real. Margo Laurent had given her twenty-five thousand American dollars and a first-class ticket to Seattle. If it wasn’t so she could find the Ottoman Scepter, what was it for? Still, the whole setup didn’t feel right. When they docked, Dana planned to follow the countess. Maybe she would see something that would help her make sense of the Case of the Ottoman Scepter.
Chapter Fourteen
Shortly after the ferry docked, Dana was driving south on I-5 toward Seattle, a few car lengths behind the Volvo. Several hours later, the Volvo got off the interstate at the Mercer Street exit and Dana followed it up Queen Anne Hill until the Volvo pulled into a parking space in front of a tavern. Dana cruised by and saw the countess and her bodyguard walk into the tavern. Then she found a parking space a block away that gave her a clear view of the tavern’s front door.
While she waited, Dana got her laptop and searched the Internet for Countess Carla Von Asch. She came up blank. She also drew a blank with Margo Laurent, Otto Pickering, and Rene Marchand. Then she tried Horace Blair, and got several thousand hits.
It didn’t take long for Dana to learn that Horace Blair was the multimillionaire head of a conglomerate with tentacles in shipping, scrap metal, real estate, and other lucrative enterprises, but nothing she learned helped her understand why Margo Laurent, or whoever she was, had sent her across a continent in search of a golden scepter.
Was the scepter even real? Dana hadn’t questioned its existence until now. It didn’t take her long to confirm a part of the story Margo Laurent had told her. Mehmet II had given a gold, jewel-encrusted scepter to Gennadius after bringing him to Constantinople on a horse from the imperial stable that was outfitted with a silver saddle. But she could find no further reference to the scepter.
Dana looked up to make sure the countess and her bodyguard weren’t leaving the tavern. After watching the door for a few minutes, Dana got another idea. She typed in Isla de Muerta and brought up a website run by the island’s chamber of commerce. The Stanton’s B&B was recommended as a place for tourists to stay and she learned that sport fishing trips and nature hikes were among the island’s draws.
Dana clicked on a section that gave a history of the island and learned that it had indeed gotten its name from the men who’d died on the ships that had wrecked on the rocks surrounding it. She was about to leave the history section, but she paused when she saw a paragraph mentioning famous people who had vacationed on Isla de Muerta. Horace Blair owned one of the summer homes on the island. Dana bet she knew which one. This was the second time Horace Blair’s name had come up. What did he have to do with a golden scepter?
Dana was about to research the millionaire in more depth when Otto Pickering walked into the tavern. Pickering had told her that he didn’t know who owned the scepter, so this was either an amazing coincidence or Pickering had lied to her.
Dana got out of her car and headed for the tavern. When she walked inside she saw the bodyguard and the countess seated at a table talking to Professor Pickering and Rene Marchand. The bodyguard said something that made the others laugh. Dana was willing to bet that the joke involved her.
“Hey, guys,” Dana said as she walked toward them, “I’m looking for the Maltese Falcon and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Do any of you know where I can find them?”
Heads swung toward her, and Rene Marchand said, “Uh-oh.”
Dana pulled a chair over to the table and sat down.
“So, who are you really?”
They looked at one another, unsure of what to do. Then the bodyguard shrugged.
“I guess the cat is out of the bag.”
Dana heard a bit of the South where his Teutonic accent had been.
Otto Pickering held out a handbill that announced that the Queen Anne Players appeared Fridays and Sundays in LaRosa Restaurant’s Interactive Comedy Mystery Dinner Theater.
“You’re actors?” Dana said, not really surprised.
“Part time,” Pickering said.
“Am I safe in guessing that none of you are who you said you were?”
The professor held out his hand. “Ralph Finegold, at your