Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [80]
He barely looked up from where he was eating bacon and eggs. “You get it,” he replied.
The bell rang again, and as all the staff seemed to have vanished, I went to the door in my robe. The man in uniform said, “Barbara Sinatra?” and when I nodded, he waved forward a security guard from a Brinks truck parked in the drive.
“This is for you,” his colleague said, handing me a small package.
As I wandered back inside, I found George and Jolene grinning up at me, so I knew that they were in on the surprise. I opened the package to find a velvet Van Cleef & Arpels box with an enormous emerald nestling inside. Frank loved emeralds; they were his favorite stones, and he used to sit with Mr. Arpels in the back room of his store poring over the finest gems. My husband had once again chosen exceptionally well, and I was over the moon. I had the emerald set at the end of a diamond necklace, a piece I still proudly possess.
I was able to surprise him too every now and then, although that was never easy. I presented him once with a Bulgari gold signet ring with an Italian coin set into it. He slipped it on immediately, replacing the one with the family crest that he’d worn for years and that was later stolen from him. Typical of Frank, though, he then had a smaller copy of his crest ring made for me so that we had a matching pair. I could never match his thoughtfulness.
As if there wasn’t enough love in the house already, we decided to have babies—Cavalier King Charles spaniels. They were adorable, and Frank was the sweetest of all with them. Our friend Judy Green gave us our first, Miss Wiggles, but we soon acquired more, including another favorite, a ruby-colored spaniel named Caroline. At one time we had two litters of eight or nine pups. Frank liked the breed so much he sent a puppy to the financier and producer Armand Deutsch and his wife, Harriet, when they lost Beau, the yellow Labrador Frank had surprised them with fifteen years earlier. He often bought dogs for friends, but only if he was certain that they loved animals and could take good care of one.
Once we owned puppies, Frank began to draw little dogs on some of his notes to me. “Bow wow,” he wrote on one. “Happy Mother’s Day from Miss Wiggles and Caroline.” In another, he wrote: “Darling, I am so happy about our new baby. I love you, F.” He was as soft as butter when it came to animals. He always had been. He’d stop someone treading on a bug by telling them, “Hey, don’t kill the little fella. That’s a pal of mine.” He was upset when I had one of our houseboys kill a rattlesnake up at Pinyon Crest after I found it hissing at Miss Wiggles. When we visited a friend in Acapulco who had a pet shark, Frank persuaded him to release it into the ocean. He loved cats too, and would sit in his pajamas doing a crossword with a sleeping puss we had named Bozo purringly draped around his shoulders. When one of our King Charles spaniels named Melissa was run over by a hit-and-run driver outside our house, we were both terribly upset, but Frank placed an advertisement in the local newspaper appealing for witnesses. Luckily for that careless driver, no one ever came forward to identify him.
We had another dog, a stray Afghan hound we’d taken in. She had long eyelashes and silky hair and walked like a star, so I called her Miss Hollywood. Sadly, she ate one of our kittens. Not wanting a killer in the house, I reluctantly gave her away to a man who ran an ostrich farm. A few months later, someone called to tell me that Miss Hollywood was being kept in the same pen as the ostriches and was in terrible condition. Most of her fur had become so matted that it had been pulled away from her skin. Thinking back to poor old Boots in Las Vegas, I called the owner and told him, “I want you to sell Miss Hollywood back to me.” To my surprise, he didn’t want to give her up, no matter how much I offered. In desperation, I called the one person I knew could help.
“Jilly, I want you to kidnap Miss