The Jewelry Case Read online

  "Back to an employer/employee relationship now, are we?" He pushed away his empty breakfast plate, his brows lowering until they met above the bridge of his nose. "Well, I'm not concerned about your ability to pay for my work. Believe it or not, I don't depend on your measly paychecks. I'm on full scholarship, and I've been offered a paid position as a teaching assistant next year. However," he added, standing up, "you're right. It's none of my business." He stomped toward the door.

  She was caught off guard by his reaction. It was their first real fight, and it was all her fault. Had she been looking for some excuse to push him back, uncomfortable with how rapidly their relationship, however it might be defined, was developing?

  Paisley didn't waste time analyzing the situation. Instead, she hurried after him. "I'm sorry, I was out of line. By the way, where's your work crew? I didn't see Alix, Quinn, or Rusty."

  He wheeled, and she saw with relief that the flush of anger was already leaving his cheeks. "It's Saturday, silly. We don't work weekends."

  Saturday? In the excitement of the burglary, she had lost track of what day it was. "Then why are you here?" she wondered.

  "I forgot. I came to give you this." He pulled from his pocket two pieces of paper, which had been folded together. The top one was the blue aerogramme from Esther's childhood treasure box. Paper-clipped to it was a piece of lined notebook paper, the kind used by students. It was covered with unfamiliar, slanted handwriting, in English.

  "You got Adelajda's letter translated!" She grabbed the papers, forgetting their argument.

  "Sure did." Ian watched as she unfolded them. "One of my friends is a foreign language major with a specialty in eastern-European dialects. I'm pretty sure the translation is accurate."

  "Have you read it?"

  He looked down his nose at her in an exasperated glare. "I learned that you're not the kind who shares. Of course I read it. Go ahead."

  She promptly returned to the couch and devoured the letter's contents. When finished, she looked up, disappointed. "It doesn't reveal much, does it?"

  He crossed his loafers on the coffee table. Now that they had cleared the air, it was clear that he intended to stay a while longer, and although she wasn't sure why, she was glad. Ian annoyed her, and yet his goading made her feel more awake and alert, less ready to feel sorry for herself.

  "It's no more or less than what I expected," he said, gesturing toward the letter. "Aunt Adelajda was writing to alleviate her young niece's fears. That's all it is: a note of comfort, reminding young Esther that her loved ones in the old country had not forgotten her. Nothing about any jewels," he added.

  Paisley re-read the passage, sensing the fear Esther's aunt must have concealed in her carefully selected words.

  "Don't worry, my little darling, all's well here in Warsaw. Don't let the stories in the newspapers frighten you. Had a fabulous dinner party at Babka's yesterday—the golabki were as delicious as ever. The only thing that diminished our pleasure was your absence. Take care not to lose the coat grand-mama sewed especially just for you, and remember to be a good girl for your Auntie Henka and Uncle Borys. Don't forget how kind they are to take you in...."

  "How stupid," Paisley said soberly, "that we've been sitting here worrying about what young Esther did with a bunch of hypothetical jewels, when something much more profound was going on in her life. I wonder if she knew she'd never see her family again?"

  "Esther wasn't entirely alone," he reminded her gently. "She had Aunt Henka and her American relatives."

  "Yes." Paisley looked down at the letter again through stinging eyes. Then she blinked away the tears and held the aerogramme closer, rereading one of the sentences.

  "What is it?" Ian asked.

  "Listen to this." She read aloud the line: "'Take care not to lose the coat that Babka sewed especially just for you.'"

  He nodded. "My friend told me Babka is a Polish word for grandmother. Of course Esther's grandmother wouldn't send her on a long trip to a new country in the middle of winter without bundling her up."

  She looked up at him, eyes big. "True. But it could be more than that. What if it's a clue that the jewels really did exist?"

  He shook his head. "Esther denied it, remember?"

  "Maybe she just didn't want anyone to know." She clasped the letter, thinking out loud, like Ian often did. She was picking up several of his habits. "Let's just accept the premise for a moment that the jewels existed. If so, her family might want to smuggle them out of Poland, to a place where they would be safe. Anyone at the time could see that conditions in Europe were deteriorating. The Nazis were looting anything they could get, stealing artworks and property from Jews."

  "Well, yes." He put his feet off the table and leaned forward, listening. "That's the basis of the legend, isn't it? That the jewels ended up here."

  "Well, how would the jewels have been smuggled out? Couldn't they have been sewn into the lining of her coat? That would explain why her aunt made a point of asking about it."

  "Possibly," he admitted. "That was a common practice. But the reference might just as easily mean nothing at all. It's hardly proof."

  Setting down the letter, she lifted her hands and let them drop in frustration. "You're right. We've been going about all this backward. Somehow, we need to establish if they were real or not. If they did, there must be some solid evidence, somewhere. Then we'd know there was a point to going forward."

  "What kind of evidence?"

  "Something more tangible than rumors, anyway." She looked up as an idea occurred to her. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. "A photograph, maybe. Back then, people dressed up in their best clothes for portraits. Surely she would have wanted to display her best adornments, wouldn't she?"

  He shook his head. "There's no pictures of her on the Internet, I've already looked. Maybe the Nazis destroyed what they could find, since she was Jewish. A lot of records are missing that way."

  For a moment she felt discouraged. But something pressed her onward. "Maybe through secondary sources, we can find something that remained: a reference to an old newspaper, or an out-of-print biography, or something." She frowned. "It's too bad Henka and Borys Perelman didn't keep a scrapbook, or a photo album from the old country."

  "How do you know they didn't?" he asked, cocking his head like a bright-eyed robin.

  She sighed. "I've been through the entire house. Nothing. The Perlemans must not have been very sentimental. They didn't keep any mementos except for those family photos hanging in the hallway. But surely someone in the fifty years before the Second World War must have seen Ruth's jewelry, if the rubies were as spectacular as they were rumored to be. Admirers would have commented on them in ... in letters, or diaries, or something."

  Ian looked doubtful, but at least he was listening to her arguments, taking them seriously, something that Jonathan rarely did.

  "Without traveling to Poland, I don't know how you'd start finding those kind of documents," he said. "Even so, it would be like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack, only worse, since as you said, most of the records would have been destroyed during the Holocaust."

  "But has anyone really looked? For proof of their existence, I mean? Aunt Henka never needed proof; she already believed in the jewels, enough to dedicate her life to searching for them."

  Ian tapped his fingers on his thigh thoughtfully. "I suppose it's worth a try. You said you've already looked on the internet, right?"

  She nodded. "All I found was a paragraph in Wikipedia on Ruth's brief career as a singer. Nothing about a famous set of rubies and diamonds, a Russian count, or anything that we're interested in. I guess she was pretty much forgotten after she retired. That was before recordings, and she never achieved the status of a Jenny Lind or Caruso."

  He ran a hand through his sand-colored hair until it stood on end like that of a scientist who had been experimenting with electricity. "Maybe I can help. I'm driving back to Berkeley this afternoon to see some other
friends. Maybe I can spend some time at the historical library, if I can get there before it closes. They'll have stuff that isn't posted on the internet. Most of the documents deal with early California, but they might have some information relating to 20th century Europe, too. Who knows? Something useful may turn up." He paused. "Want to come along?"

  "No thanks. I have a date." Tonight was her long-awaited dinner with Steve. But Ian's offer had reminded her of what Shirley had said several days ago, and she asked him about it.

  "That old car? The VW has been in the garage since I was in high school, but sure, you can have it if you want. It ran okay the last time I took it out." He grinned, making his face look like that of an overgrown leprechaun. "Now that I know you're broke, I'll sell it cheap. We paupers have to stick together."

  She fought down a retort—she must remember that Ian was an ally now—and they agreed on terms.

  "I'll drop it off tomorrow, when I get back," he promised. "You can use it the rest of your stay, and if you want to sell it back to me when you leave, we'll talk about it then." Ian looked at his watch and his face mimed shock. "Wow, where did the time go? I'd better get going or I won't make it to the historical library before my rendezvous with my friends." He headed for the door once more.

  She padded after him, oddly reluctant for him to go. "Thanks for looking up the information for me," she said, as he fumbled his car keys out of his pocket. There was something reassuring about having a big, strong man present, after last night's burglary. The incident had reminded her all-too-vividly of the down side of living alone.

  For a moment, she was tempted to take up his invitation to go with him to Berkeley. It might be fun. But it was too late to cancel dinner with Steve.

  To make Ian feel better, she added, "It was nice of you to go to the trouble of getting the letter translated."

  "I was just as curious about it as you were," he admitted as he walked down the path and opened the door to the truck. "It's not every day that I find a mysterious eighty-year-old message hidden inside wall paneling. I feel like a character in an Agatha Christie novel."

  "The message wasn't mysterious," she corrected him. "Just a loving letter from an aunt to her niece. I only wonder why Esther didn't keep her diary with her other treasures."

  "Diary?" He dropped the keys, and spent the next few minutes scrabbling for them in the dirt. "Did you say there's a diary too?"

  She was taken aback by the strength of his reaction. "Didn't I tell you?"

  "Tell me what, woman? You're so tight-lipped, you'd make one heck of a CIA agent." He stared accusingly.

  "While I was at the bank yesterday, they gave me the key to Esther's safety deposit box. There was nothing in it but a passport and an old diary, the kind little girls write in. I thought I'd read it one of these nights when I didn't have anything else to do."

  He stared at her for a moment, and then laughed. "For a treasure hunter, you must be the least curious person I've ever met. I wish I had your sangfroid."

  "But I thought we'd established that there probably isn't any treasure. So there didn't seem to be any urgency."

  "We haven't established anything," he said, getting into the truck and slamming the recalcitrant door. "Happy reading. See you tomorrow afternoon. With luck, maybe you'll even tell me what the diary says."

  Chapter Nine

  She spent the next hour trying to ignore Ian's parting jab. What right did he have to try to make her feel guilty? she thought angrily. She was under no obligation to share any information, even if he had volunteered to help with the research. And had been helpful in getting the letter from Auntie Adelajda translated.

  Okay, the guy had been helpful. So what?

  She tried to remember why she had welcomed Ian into her confidence in the first place. After all, he was just some guy she had hired to fix up the house, based on a mistaken call out of an out-of-date phone book. Her quest had nothing to do with him.

  And yet she knew that at some point in time, their relationship had subtly changed. She had come to think of Ian as more than as a mere employee. His friendship had been offered generously and had proved valuable. And Ian took her concerns seriously, even if he did needle her at times.

  How different from Jonathan, she thought, who had hardly taken her seriously at all, and who used to mock her weaknesses until she had learned to toughen up and fight back as best as she could. She forced her thoughts away from that dangerous topic. There was still too much unexplored pain there.

  Even so, deep inside she felt something was healing.

  Turning her mind back to her last conversation with Ian, she wondered about his extensive knowledge of the Perleman family history. While Esther was plying the teenaged Ian with muffins and stories, he had obviously listened attentively and forgotten nothing.

  Paisley abruptly reached for her cell phone and punched in a pre-programmed number. She'd had enough of thinking about Ian, Esther, and the jewels. It had been a busy week, and she planned to make the most of the weekend doing what she had so far failed to do: relaxing.

  "Hello, Shirley?" she asked. "Want to go shopping?"

  #

  It ended up mostly window shopping. The quaint stores along the main street were full of appealing merchandise, but her budget didn't stretch to more than a hand-tied hammock that would fit perfectly between two of the big trees in the back yard, and some pretty costume jewelry. Nothing like Ruth Perleman's legendary treasure, she thought, holding the dangling painted beads by her ears and turning her head this way and that in front of the mirror on the boutique wall, but who cared?

  Shirley snapped up some sort of "wearable art" frock in patchwork velvet that made her look like a lumpy hausfrau gypsy, and sighed longingly at an overpriced ostrich-feathered hat with an enormous brim that looked like something British royalty would wear at a wedding.

  As they sifted through the merchandise, Shirley asked supposedly discreet questions about Paisley's romantic life "now that you're free." It was clear that she considered both Ian and Steve to be appropriate suitors. Shirley obviously preferred Ian, although she was not immune to Steve's considerable charms. Or Kevin's. "Too bad that handsome kid from New Jersey is too young for me," she sighed, "I don't know, honey. Can you see me as a cougar?" She posed like a celebrity on the red carpet, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other holding the oversized shopping basket that Paisley privately thought made her look like a bag lady.

  Paisley laughed and tucked her arm through the older woman's bent elbow. "Sure," she said. "Why not?"

  #

  The afternoon of female bonding, capped with tea at the café on Main Street Paisley had been longing to visit, was just what she needed. These past few weeks had been too caught up in repairing the house, working on the community theater play, and doing amateur sleuthing with Ian. Maybe it was time to resume a more normal life, she thought, one that involved friends and social events. As her external scars were growing less noticeable, perhaps the inner ones were too.

  At home after shopping, she took a long, refreshing nap, finished the last chapter of her latest suspense novel, and dug out Esther's old cookbook to make a batch of homemade gingersnaps, a far cry, she thought, biting into one of the soft, fragrant brown discs, from the cardboard-tasting store-bought version. With the house smelling like Christmas, she marveled at how different this day had been from the fast-paced life she had led for the past few years. She could learn to like this.

  Her memories of life with Jonathan was a blur of contests, vocal training, and airports. Paisley was surprised how quickly she was adapting to the slower pace of life in River Bend. Maybe she wasn't really cut out to be the ambitious diva she had been rapidly becoming. The thought of her old life, singing in front of appreciative audiences, still caused a pang, however.

  After polishing off more gingersnaps that could have possibly been good for her, she finally could not put off reading Esther's diary any longer. She fetched it and went to lie down on the cou
ch, bare feet propped on the armrest. If she was going to read it, she had better do it now. On Monday, Ian and his crew would be back to fill the air with noise, dust, and commotion, and all peace would vanish.

  Opening the worn green cover, Paisley again felt grateful that young Esther had written in English. The girl had obviously adapted quickly to life in America. Nowhere in the diary's pages did she describe the details of her traumatic separation from her parents or the long journey to America. Instead, Esther wrote of the trivial details of daily life as if she had always lived in River Bend: going to the local elementary school, playing kickball with her best friend, Georgiana, and rejoicing in the gift of a gray kitten for her ninth birthday.

  After a while Paisley closed the cover and wondered again if that cat seven decades ago was an ancestor of the one that hung around the kitchen door and left the food bowl empty each evening. What had Ray said, long ago? The Perlemans always had cats.

  Something else rang a bell. Esther's childhood friend, Georgiana. Why did that name sound familiar? She couldn't remember why.

  After a moment, she opened the diary again. Surprisingly, its pages contained few references to the members of Esther's American family. There was Aunt Henka, of course (Jonathan's grandmother); Uncle Borys (his grandfather), and their two children, one of whom, David, grew up to become Jonathan's father. What had happened to their other child, David's sister?

  Paisley closed the book, trying hard to remember what Jonathan had said. His aunt had moved away somewhere on the east coast, where she had married and had a daughter—Jonathan's only cousin. What was the cousin's name? Paisley was pretty sure Jonathan had never mentioned it to her. The family had fallen out of touch with their eastern relatives.

  As Paisley lazily pushed the porch swing with one foot, she thought it was almost as if Esther had left her American relatives out of the diary on purpose. On impulse, she re-opened the book and scanned a troubling passage that had caught her eye: "Auntie Henka asked me again today. Then she slapped me and took my coat away. I hope she will give the coat back." After that entry, the writing became more sparse as young Esther's interest in her journal seemed to fizzle out. After listing her favorite Hanukkah gifts that year, Esther had left the rest of the pages blank.