Do You Promise Not to Tell? (4 page)

But Range could never blame himself. He was going to blame
her
.

Misha answered the knock at the door of his small, hidden workshop in Brighton Beach, leaving his half-eaten sausage sandwich on his worktable.

“Don’t you know you should ask who’s there before opening the door? I could be anyone—the police, the Russian mafia . . . anyone.”

Misha smiled wryly. “Yes, but I knew it be you. No one else ever comes here.”

That’s fortunate for me, unfortunate for you
, thought the visitor.

Misha turned and gestured to his workbench, cleared of all but the sandwich, his jeweler’s tools carefully hung on the wall rack above.

“As you can see, I am having some trouble starting on something new.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I tell you before, I want bigger piece of profits. You making fortune while Misha does all work,” Misha said resentfully, staring at the jeweler’s tools. “I only ask what fair.”

“I know you do. Your work on the Moon Egg was perfection. So perfect that neither one of us should ever have to work on anything else. Six million dollars is a lot of money.”

Misha turned to look at his visitor, a relieved smile on his face.

“So. You share with me?”

The hammer came down right in the middle of Misha’s forehead. He never knew what hit him. Methodically each limb was hacked off, each fingertip removed, and his head cut off with the double-edged ax.

If she were mine, I’d never let her go
, Charlie Ferrino thought, as he smeared a fresh raisin bagel with cream cheese. Instead he said, “I’ve never understood how you can make a living selling other people’s old junk.”

Pat smiled and pulled a crisp
New York Times
from beneath the counter at Choo-Choo Charlie’s Coffee Shop. Eagerly she noted the story about the auction was featured on the front page.

“Charlie, Charlie,” chided Pat, her green eyes playful as she and her friend began their familiar morning dance. “It’s not old junk! You know our slogan: ‘The Consignment Depot—Everything of Quality and Character.’ ”

“Then why don’t you just call it an antique shop?”

“Because our merchandise isn’t necessarily antique. I’ve explained it before: I don’t own the furniture, crystal, silver, or whatever else we have on sale. I’m selling it for the owners. They bring me their things, I display them in the shop, and when something sells, the owner and I split the purchase price . . . fifty-fifty.”

Charlie filled a paper cup with steaming, fresh-brewed coffee, sprinkled the contents from a pink package of Sweet’n Low, and added some milk. He was wearing a blue baseball cap to cover his balding
head, which was shaking from side to side.

“I don’t know, Pat. I hear some of your prices are pretty steep. Why would anyone want to pay good money for secondhand stuff when they could afford to buy it new?”

Pat grinned. They both knew that Charlie understood the concept of fine things and antiques quite well. He just liked to tease her. Feigning exasperation, she tugged her auburn hair out from the sides of her head.

“Charlie, it’s a good thing I’m crazy about you, because sometimes I just want to grab your shoulders and shake you.”

Charlie carefully packed the wrapped bagel, coffee, and a napkin into a small brown paper bag.

I wish you would
, he thought, admiring her as she walked away.

Peter didn’t know what to do.

He lay on his single bed in Boland Hall, the large Seton Hall University freshman dormitory, staring at the ceiling, his arms crossed behind his head. The gray, rainy day outside the metal-rimmed window matched the college freshman’s mood. He was deeply troubled.

Since the auction yesterday, something had been eating at him. The Moon Egg.

It sure was beautiful. The enamel work and all the jewels were awesome. And when it sold for six million dollars, Peter heard the man sitting in the row behind him comment, “Well worth it.”

It would have been. Except that it was a fake.

Peter was sure of it.

He rolled over and, closing his eyes, buried his face in his pillow. God, what should he do?

He didn’t want to tell Olga. She was so old, and she had already been through so much in her life. Peter didn’t want the old lady to have any more problems in her remaining days.

And she had made him swear that he wouldn’t tell.

He remembered the afternoon clearly. Olga had set out tea and her homemade eggplant caviar as she did whenever he came to visit. But from the moment Peter
entered her little apartment that day, he sensed that something was different.

Olga’s eyes had shone brightly as the two of them sat in her small living room, Olga reminiscing about the old days. She told him about her family, now long dead, and about how it had been growing up as a young girl in St. Petersburg after the Communists had taken over. She talked about her father’s resigned acceptance of how their comfortable world had changed forever.

Gone was their spacious apartment in St. Petersburg and their charming
dacha
in the countryside. Gone was the well-stocked kitchen with its ample supply of good wine and vodka in the pantry. Gone were the fine dresses and well-tailored suits and the many fur coats in the hall closet.

Then, in the bitterness of another unforgiving Russian winter, her mother died.

A tear had come to Olga’s eye as she spoke of her father. She had watched her father eaten away more by the inability to use his gift than by the loss of material wealth. In the Russia of the Communists, there had been no place for the “frivolous” creation of beautiful things.

Then she pulled herself from her chair and slowly walked toward her bedroom.

“Come with me.”

Peter followed the old lady as she headed to the closet. She opened the door and gestured.

Peter got down on his knees and reached toward the back of the closet. Beneath a wool blanket, he felt something soft and plush. He pulled the box free,
rose, and handed the yellow velvet container to Olga.

“You promise not to tell what I show you? My father make this, but he also take from studio when Communists come.”

Peter nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

Olga’s hands shook as she opened the golden box, and Peter gasped at its contents.

“Imperial Easter Egg. Czar have it made for present for Czarina Alexandra.”

Olga held out the box toward Peter. Peter carefully lifted the blue-and-white egg from its yellow nest.

Slowly he turned the egg over in his hands, his breath taken away by its cool beauty.

“Open it.”

Peter studied the egg, trying to figure out how it opened. He looked up at Olga, a quizzical expression on his face.

“Here, I do for you.”

Olga took the egg from him. She pressed on a gold bead that was part of the design, and the egg split open.

A shower of delicately connected diamonds quivered inside.

“Is made after Halley’s comet. Comet appear in Europe before czar overthrown. Was sign—telegram from God.”

The Consignment Depot opened at ten, but Pat liked to get there at least an hour earlier to get organized. Once she opened the doors for customers, she often didn’t have a minute to herself until she locked up at six o’clock. Still, she just barely paid her bills each month. She’d never been able to get ahead.

Pat stood, breakfast and
New York Times
in hand, on the wooden porch that rimmed the charming Victorian frame house that was home to the consignment shop. Fifteen years ago she had gone way out on a financial limb to buy the old, run-down house in suburban Westwood, New Jersey. But as always, when she looked at it, now so lovingly restored, she was glad she had taken the chance.

After Allan had died, Pat had missed him so much there were times she didn’t think she could keep going. But she had put all of her energy and the proceeds from a small insurance policy into fixing up the old house and starting her own business, and somehow, to her amazement, she’d gotten through the worst. She’d always love this old place. It had saved her. Barely.

The house, the business—but more importantly, Peter—had kept Pat going. Now he was a freshman in college; but then he’d been just four years old . . . a little boy facing childhood and the complicated
growth to manhood without a father to stand by him. It was so unfair.

Uneasily, Pat inspected the paint job. The body of the house was a pale apple green, with elaborate gingerbread trim done in an unexpected shade of raspberry. Before selecting the paint, Pat had researched carefully, wanting to be true to the colors used at the time the house was built. She had been surprised to learn that people had been painting their houses whimsical colors at the end of the nineteenth century.

She sighed. The house needed another painting. And that would be costly. All the scrollwork and tiny patterned shingles had to be colored carefully by hand. What a miserable drag it was, worrying about money all these years.

Letting herself in through the beveled glass-paneled front door, Pat knew who would be waiting for her on the other side.

“Emily!” she cried, as she knelt and buried her forehead into the collie’s long, honey-colored fur. “Good girl! Good girl! I can see you are taking good care of everything for me. I know I can count on you. Come on, Em. I’ll let you out.”

The collie followed her mistress to the tiny kitchen at the rear of the house and eagerly made her way through the door that led to the backyard. Insurance regulations called for the Consignment Depot to be electrically alarmed, but Pat always had trouble with the damned thing. Emily was the safety backup and Pat had the feeling the dog liked doing her part.

Pat walked back to the living room and surveyed her shop with pride. The plum-colored walls were a
good foil for just about anything she hung on them . . . paintings, etchings, mirrors, sconces and, sometimes, just empty frames, if they were interesting enough on their own.

Mirrors
.
We’re down on mirrors, and they’re always good sellers
. She hoped someone would bring one in today.

She switched on all the lamps, both upstairs and down, plumped a needlepoint pillow on a tufted settee that sat beside the fireplace, and straightened a vanilla candle that tilted in the silver candelabra on the mantel. Smoothing the corner of a beautifully woven kilim that Emily had accidentally flipped back from the aged oak floor, Pat was satisfied the shop looked in order.

Back in the kitchen, Pat unwrapped her breakfast and opened up the newspaper. She relished the headline, remembering the excitement at Churchill’s salesroom.

MOON EGG FETCHES SIX MILLION DOLLARS
.

As she read the article, Pat’s thoughts turned to Farrell Slater. How weird to meet again at an auction gallery after all these years.

They’d been grammar-school classmates and had been, at one time, inseparable. But Farrell had gone to parochial high school, while Pat had gone to West-wood High. When Farrell went away to college, Pat married Allan just after graduation.

Too young, too young to get married, everyone had clucked.

She considered that Peter was, today, older than she had been when she’d married his father. Pat admitted
that they’d been young. But she didn’t regret her decision. Not one single day of their too-short time together.

Her friend Farrell had gone on to the big leagues. A producer at KEY News! What an exciting life Farrell must be leading.

And yet, Farrell hadn’t looked very happy at Churchill’s yesterday. She’d been friendly enough when introduced to Tim Kavanagh, and seemed genuinely pleased to see Pat and Peter, exclaiming her amazement that the little baby she had known had grown into such a handsome young man. But Pat sensed a troubled air about her.

When Pat had suggested that Farrell drive out sometime to see the Consignment Depot, Pat had been surprised by Farrell’s enthusiasm at her invitation. With a job that took her all around the world, that opened doors to interviews with some of the most fascinating people of our time, Pat couldn’t imagine why in the world her old friend would be so interested in coming out to visit a consignment shop.

Peter lingered after his Russian Studies lecture in Fahy Hall. He wanted to talk to Professor Kavanagh.

He hadn’t come to his decision lightly. He wanted to tell his mother about his fears about the Moon Egg. He’d often gone to her when things bothered him and she was never too busy to listen. Together they’d always been able to figure things out.

But this was different. This wasn’t about a Spanish progress report or being caught smoking with his buddies in the fifth grade. Those things, which had loomed large at the time, were so trivial now.

A six-million-dollar art forgery—that was in a whole other league. And Peter knew this was way beyond his or his mother’s depth.

That, and the fact she had enough to worry about. He knew it hadn’t been easy for her, raising him alone and always anxious about money. Though she’d tried to keep it from him, many nights when his mother had thought he was asleep, Peter had quietly gotten out of bed and checked on her as she sat at the kitchen table, engrossed in paying bills and going over the Consignment Depot ledger. She’d been unaware as he’d watched her sigh deeply, running her fingers through her hair, her brow knitted with worry.