Do You Promise Not to Tell? (17 page)

“I said I’d take care of it,” he said curtly. Clifford then made a deliberate effort to soften his tone. “Meryl, dear, please don’t worry. You aren’t in
the middle of this at all. Churchill’s guaranteed confidentiality to the buyer and seller, and the entire sale rests on our ability to keep that promise. You will be perfectly safe—as long as you keep out of it.”

Third Sunday of Lent

The sound of Olga’s breathing beneath her oxygen mask echoed through the silent hospital room as Farrell and Pat sat quietly next to her bed.

“I try to get here every day,” Pat whispered. “I like to think she knows I’m here.”

“They say that a coma victim is aware on some level of what is going on around her.” Farrell tried to reassure her friend. “I’m sure having your energy here, caring about her, helps Olga.”

The two women stared at the frail figure lost in the vastness of the hospital bed. They kept their worried thoughts to themselves as the nurse’s aide rustled in to check Olga’s vitals and register them in her medical chart.

Pat broke the silence again. “It’s so good of you, Farrell, to come out here like this. You’ve been a real friend.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“You don’t even know Olga.”

Farrell wanted to spill out her worries, tell Pat the truth about the Moon Egg and how she had come out and taped it just before the fire. Instead, she honored her promise to Peter. He would have to tell his mother himself.

When they rose to leave, Farrell asked if Pat wanted to go out and grab a bite to eat.

“That would be fun,” Pat replied. “But I have a business call I have to make.”

“On Sunday?”

“Yep. I’m at the Consignment Depot the rest of the week and on Saturdays. So I have to do my other business at night or on Sundays.”

“Well, how about if I come with you and we can get some supper after that? Then I’ll take the bus back to Manhattan.”

As they walked down the corridor, they met up with Charlie Ferrino. Pat introduced the deli owner to Farrell.

“It’s really good of you to come and visit Olga, Charlie,” Pat said, reaching out to touch his arm.

“I have a soft spot for the old gal. I’m really pulling for her, but it’s not looking so good, is it?”

“Not really.” Pat shook her head and smiled weakly.

Farrell and Pat continued down the hallway.

“Did you see the way that guy looked at you, Pat?” Farrell whispered. “He’s got it bad.”

“Charlie?” Pat laughed incredulously. “He’s just the sweet guy at the deli—we’ve known each other for years.”

“I’m telling you, he’s crazy about you,” Farrell insisted.

Pat’s Volvo pulled out of the hospital parking lot onto Old Hook Road, and headed through Westwood, up the steep Washington Avenue hill toward Saddle River. Farrell watched as the more modest houses on
small lots gradually led to larger and larger homes on acres of wooded property. When their car pulled into the circular driveway in front of the Tudor mansion, Farrell let out a soft whistle.

“Who lives here?”

“Nadine Paradise.”

‘The ballerina?”

“Yes. The legend. And the mother of one Victor Paradise, who came to the Consignment Depot with Stacey Spinner and so charmingly demanded that I tell him where the crescent brooch that his mother bought at Churchill’s came from.”

Farrell stared at Pat. “It came from Olga, didn’t it?”

Pat nodded silently. “So now Nadine Paradise is going to try to convince me to tell her the pin’s provenance. She just about begged me to come to the house today.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“I’m not sure.”

Leading them just past the small library into the conservatory, Nadine waved Pat and Farrell beyond the baby grand piano, toward two Burmese rattan armchairs with brightly flowered cushions that sat at angles to a matching loveseat. In the center of the triangle was an oblong table with brass finishings on which a porcelain tea service took up almost all of the space.

The room was not unoccupied. Farrell observed that Victor Paradise looked distinctly awkward in a room filled with delicate plants and fine china. He stood up and moved toward his mother and the two visitors.

Nadine made the introductions. “You remember my son, Mrs. Devereaux. Victor, this is Miss Slater, a friend of Mrs. Devereaux’s.” As the women took their seats, Nadine looked in her son’s direction and said, “Victor, dear, would you be kind enough to get us some napkins? If there aren’t any on the wet bar in the library, you may have to look in the dining room.”

Victor knew he was being dismissed. He walked out of the room as his mother began to pour out her story. Although Mrs. Paradise directed most of it to Pat, Farrell listened intently to the aged ballerina’s
recollections and watched her with a television producer’s eye for detail.

“So you see,” Nadine finished, “I have to know who you sold the crescent brooch for. I’m convinced that that person has some sort of connection to me. My father, a father I never met and longed for all my life, made that pin for my mother.”

Farrell studied the old woman’s face, still beautiful in the late-winter sun streaming through the conservatory window. In passing, one would see very little resemblance between the face of this wealthy, artfully made-up legend, and the wrinkled old lady who slept in a hospital bed a few miles away. But as she watched Nadine’s expressive hands, they looked familiar, like the delicate ones that lay folded on the blue cotton hospital blanket. Artful hands, hands that could have been part of the genetic code of a work-master in the Fabergé studio.

Farrell looked over at Pat, who was considering Nadine’s appeal. What would it hurt to tell her that the crescent pin was Olga’s? Since Olga lay dying, this could be Nadine Paradise’s last chance to make peace with her past.

The same thought must have been running through Pat’s mind.

“Mrs. Paradise,” said Pat gently, “a very sick woman is lying near death at Pascack Valley Hospital right now. The crescent brooch was hers. Her father made it.”

Nadine listened silently but wide-eyed as Pat told her what she knew of Olga’s history. The early years in St. Petersburg, defined by the revolution and the
death of her mother. Her proud father, once a Fabergé workmaster, left brokenhearted and unable to leave his mother country. Olga’s ultimate escape from the Soviet Union and emigration to the United States, her quiet life in Westwood financed by slowly selling off pieces of her father’s artistry.

“It’s all falling into place. Olga may be my half-sister.” Nadine’s eyes glistened with tears. “I need some time to take this in.”

“Of course.”

Victor cleared his throat as he entered the conservatory with three white linen cocktail napkins in his hand. “You were right, Mother,” he lied. “I had to look for them in the dining room. I hope I haven’t kept you from your tea.”

“We were just leaving,” said Pat. “We need to get going.” She and Farrell rose, and Mrs. Paradise escorted them past her son and out to the foyer.

“What a beautiful scarf.” Pat admired a luxurious turquoise scarf left casually on the hallway table. Nadine picked it up and pressed it into Pat’s hands.

“Please take it, my dear,” she urged.

“But I couldn’t,” Pat protested.

“Please, I insist. Keep it as a reminder of a day you made an old woman deeply happy.”

Monday

Days had gone by since she’d made the call to Jack McCord and still she hadn’t heard back from him. First thing Monday morning, Farrell resolved to call him again. She waited until Dean was out of their office.

“Thanks for the call back,” Farrell sniffed sarcastically. “I really feel that my country’s security is in capable and efficient hands.”

“I did call you back,” McCord protested. “Your colleague told me he would give you the message that I returned your call. It sounds to me like KEY News is the inefficient organization here.”

“I didn’t get your message. Did you get the name of the person with whom you left it?”

“Some guy with initials for a name.” Jack shuffled through some papers on his desk.

“B. J.?”

“Yeah. That’s it. B. J. D’Elia. I have it right here in my notes. He said he was working the Fabergé story with you.”

It’s not like B. J. to neglect giving a message,
Farrell thought.
And he’s not usually in my office when I’m not there.
She’d have to ask him about it later.

“Well, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Agent McCord asked.

Without naming names, Farrell told him about her suspicions regarding the fire at Olga’s.

“So, let me get this straight. You harass some old lady and get her to let you take pictures of her illegal property and she ends up in a coma somewhere after her apartment catches fire.”

Farrell winced. “Yeah. That’s about it. That, and the fact that the woman lived in fear and, at the same time, her apartment door was unlocked at the time of the fire.”

“Don’t you think it’s about time you gave me her name and address?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Farrell thought quickly. Without too much trouble, Jack could have the FBI computers check every reported fire that had occurred in the country during any given period. As he checked further, eventually he would end up with the Westwood fire chief, who would willingly give up Olga’s identity to the mighty feds.

Maybe, by giving McCord the information he asked for, Farrell could buy a little allegiance from the guy. When the time came he had something to share about his Fauxbergé investigation with the public, maybe he’d choose Farrell to share with, seeing as she had helped him out along the way.

She told him.

“Thanks,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“Your gratitude is overwhelming,” Farrell remarked dryly. “At least you can help me with this: What are the possible legal ramifications for Olga
once it becomes public that she has the real Moon Egg?”

“Well. . .” Jack considered. “This isn’t a ‘spoils of war’ issue. The Russian Revolution was a civil war, not a war between two sovereign countries. But if the Russians find out that Olga has an Imperial Easter Egg looted from the St. Petersburg Fabergé studios back in 1917, they could put a claim in United States Federal Court. A judge would decide its ownership.”

“How likely is that scenario?”

“Remote. Plus, from what you tell me, that’s the least of the old gal’s problems.”

Robbie Slater sat with his sister in a corner booth at the Station Break.

“Man, I can’t believe how hard it is for a guy to have lunch with his sister.” His cardboard lunch tray held a fat roast-beef sandwich, a package of Fritos, an orange soda, and three packs of Oreos.

“Nice, healthy lunch there, Rob.” Farrell nodded as she poked at her plastic salad bowl full of lettuce, tuna salad, and carrot sticks. Farrell noticed with a twinge that his hairline had receded a little more from the last time she saw him. His exposed forehead looked so vulnerable to Farrell.

“You’re just jealous. Watching your girlish figure, huh? Somebody new in your life? Is that what’s keeping you from returning my calls? Come to think of it, you look especially good today.”

“Nah. Same old, same old, but I
have
been busy.” Farrell did not want to talk about Jack McCord or fill Robbie in on Olga’s fire and the Moon Egg. She especially did not want to tell him yet that she was being let go from KEY News. She did not want him to worry.

“What are you so busy with?” Robbie asked, taking another large bite from his sandwich.

“A story on art forgery. I’d like to develop it into a ‘KEYhole to America’ piece.”

Farrell wanted to change the subject. “How’s it going for you, Robbie?”

“Pretty well. I like my job at the tape library. I can’t believe all the material that comes in. It’s amazing to me how much is shot on each story and how comparatively little makes air. It’s fun to look at the outtakes, too. Plus, no one really bugs me over there. I work at my own pace and that seems to be fine with my boss.”

“That’s because you’re so smart and do a great job, and he knows he’s lucky to have you.” Farrell always tried to boost Robbie’s shaky self-esteem.

“Spoken like my big sister.”

“It’s true,” Farrell protested.

“I think it’s more like my boss realizes that for the modest salary they’re paying, they can’t expect too much, or complain too much.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Robbie, please,” Farrell pleaded. “I hate when you do that.”

Robbie glanced at the large white clock and piled his sandwich wrapper and empty soda can on his tray. He slid the remaining uneaten package of Oreos into his shirt pocket.

“Gotta get back,” he said, reaching out to squeeze Farrell’s shoulder. “And do me a favor, will you? Stop worrying about me.”

“I was wondering if I could possibly come in for a tour. I’ve been to the public rooms of Churchill’s so many times for exhibitions and auctions, but I’m curious to see what goes on behind the scenes.”