The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [208]
“You made the switch?” Dan asked Annie.
She smiled. “Yep.”
“Damn, you’re quick.” He hugged her affectionately. “I should take you to Las Vegas.”
“That’s what my dad used to say. I took the negative. But Fred Owen’s got an eight-by-ten print of the photo of us in The Breakers. There were also two emeralds, three rubies, six sapphires, two diamonds. The rubies are about the size and shape of tiny eggs, but there was nothing anywhere near a 135-carat star ruby in there. And if there were supposed to be seven emeralds in the crown? There are three in the queen now and those two in the pouch makes only five. Where are the other two?”
Dan said he suspected that Jack and Raffy planned to hold back an emerald each. “Finders’ fees. Well, look’s like poor old Willie’s out of the loop on this deal. I’m going to take him out for a drink when we get back to Miami and tell him to watch his step on those big fat flat feet of his.”
Somehow, strangely, Annie knew that she would see the beautiful coppery-haired woman in the café, just at the table where she was sitting. There was a row of tiny bamboo café tables next to a row of little orange trees in wooden boxes, next to the open square. The woman wore large elegant sunglasses and thin brown linen clothes. On the pavement at her feet was a small soft brown leather suitcase and a shopping bag that looked very much like the one in which Annie now carried the Queen.
Dan kissed Annie. “I’ll be down the block.” He pointed in the direction of the Ramirez Gold and Silver shop and kept walking without looking back as Annie headed toward Helen Clark.
Taking a chair at the table next to the woman, Annie quietly studied the crowd of shoppers and tourists milling about in the Plaza. A waiter moved nearby and she used her little bit of Spanish to him. “Camarero. Una botella de agua, por favor. Gracias.” After he left, she said to the woman, “You’re Helen Clark.”
The woman nodded yes without looking at her.
Annie set down the old shopping bag between their tables. “But your real name is Ruthie Nickerson. You’re Georgette’s aunt, aren’t you? I met you in Emerald once. Did you pick the name Clark from Clark Goode?”
The woman’s head lifted in surprise. Now she looked over at Annie, who couldn’t see her expression because of her sunglasses. Then she took the glasses off and Annie saw that her eyes were as blue as the sea. She had the lovely low voice of the woman who had made the phone call warning Annie to stay away from her father’s criminal pursuits.
“Hello. It’s been a long time.”
Annie looked from the woman’s face to her hand, which was suntanned and freckled. The hand rested on the table near the small white cup of Cuban coffee. Ruthie’s fingers closed around the cup. She wore no jewelry.
“You helped me with my algebra,” Annie said.
A long silence. Finally the woman spoke again. “How are Sam and Clark?” Her voice was measured. “Good friends to me.”
Annie told her they were both fine. “And you were a friend of my father’s?”
“I suppose friend’s a word.” She sipped at the dark coffee.
“I really think all he wanted to do was sell Feliz Diaz that stupid statue and leave me a lot of money. Kind of sweet and silly.”
“All he wants to do is make life exciting. He almost got himself killed, not to mention me. Or you.” Ruthie glanced down at Annie’s shopping bag. “The statue didn’t belong to him. So, that’s the Queen of the Sea in there?”
Annie said that it was.
Ruthie told Annie what was in the other shopping bag and that Jack had arranged for it. “The art of the con,” she smiled.
“Did you know Dad’s dying?”
“Did he think he wouldn’t?” Ruthie drank