Gentlemen Prefer Nerds (4 page)

“He’s not a murderer—yet, at least,” Fabian said. “As for why he didn’t take up your offer to see the Rose now, perhaps he got cold feet. But he’s clever. He’ll form another plan.”

“I know why he didn’t,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Because he’s Dr. Rolf Hauzenegger, not a diamond thief. He’s expected at a party in his honor tonight, and tomorrow he’s going on a field trip with Professor Willa Kruger, a highly respected academic at Melbourne University. Case closed, Sherlock.”

“He’s lying. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Maddie scoffed. “Why should I?”

“Because believe it or not—”

“You have my best interests at heart. Yeah, right.”

“No, I’m afraid it’s not your interests I’m concerned about. Worthy though I’m sure you are.”

“Worthy. Thanks a lot. Some people think I’m lovely.”

“You could be if you didn’t dress like a television test pattern,” Fabian retorted. “Can’t you see what he’s trying to do?”

“Oh! You—!” She pushed on through the crowds, desperate to get away from this aggravating man. Spying a taxi at the curb she leaped in and slammed the door. “Go! Quickly!” she ordered the startled driver.

The taxi peeled away in a screech of rubber. Maddie craned her neck around, expecting to see Fabian running after them. Instead he was standing where she’d left him, a bemused smile on his face.

“Where to, miss?” The driver’s black eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “The police station? The airport? You in a hurry, miss, I get you there fast.”

“I, um, well…” Maddie turned her attention to the street and the familiar shop fronts. “Just here at the corner, actually.”

“Here! You crazy, miss?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Just stop, please.” This was all Fabian’s fault. If he hadn’t rattled her so much she would have remembered she was only a block away from Grace Jewelers.

The taxi driver braked sharply and swerved into a loading zone. Leaving the cab running, he leaned over the seat, scowling. “That’s twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars! That’s outrageous.”

The driver shrugged. “Twenty dollars.”

Maddie glanced out the back window. Hands in his pockets, Fabian was strolling toward the taxi. Hastily she dug in her purse for her wallet. “I don’t think I have twenty dollars.” She handed him a five then scooped out a handful of change. “Do you take credit cards?”

“No credit, miss. Not from you.”

An arm with a snowy cuff and a gold cufflink thrust through the open window, a twenty-dollar note held lightly between long fingers.

Maddie ignored it, counting out coins. “Twelve-fifty…”

The driver reached around and took the money from Fabian. “Thank you, sir.”

Fabian opened the taxi door. Maddie got out, nose in the air. “I suppose now you think I owe you.”

“Not at all. It was my pleasure.”

“Fine, then. Goodbye.” She marched into the jewelry shop, surprised but pleased to see Grace was still there, directing a pair of workmen in blue overalls wheeling in a dolly loaded with a polished marble column.

Ignoring both her emphatic farewell and the Closed sign on the double glass doors, Fabian followed her inside.

“Put it right over here,” Grace instructed the workmen. She waved Maddie over. “The display case arrived just as I was closing. Come have a look.”

Maddie spun around to Fabian and hissed, “She didn’t mean you. We’re closed.”

But Grace had hurried to greet them and was already offering Fabian her hand. “Dr. Hauzenegger, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Grace Abercrombie.”

“This isn’t Rolf Hauzenegger,” Maddie said quickly. “He’s—”

“Fabian Montgomery.” Fabian bowed over Grace’s hand and then glanced up, smiling into her eyes. “At your service.”

Grace visibly melted to a puddle of femininity. “Oh my!”

“For the love of God,” Maddie muttered.

Grace ruffled her fingers through her blond layers as she took in his expensive tailoring and athletic physique. “Are you a friend of Maddie’s?”

“Grace, he’s—”

“I am Maddie’s new best friend, though she doesn’t realize it yet,” Fabian said with a quelling glance her way. He nodded to the marble column topped by a glass case, aslant on the dolly. “Is that to display the Rose?”

“Yes, it is.” Grace beamed at him.

Fabian strolled over to where the workmen were waiting to be told where to deposit the column. Behind Fabian’s back, a wide-eyed Grace fanned herself and whispered to Maddie, “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“Grace—” Maddie began again.

“Where do you intend to place it?” Fabian circled the dolly, hands thrust casually into his pockets.

Grace abandoned Maddie to catch up to Fabian, smoothing down her sleek black dress and touching away any flecks of mascara beneath her eyes. “In the middle of this open area between the doors and the counter. What do you think?”

“Excellent location.” Fabian turned and surveyed the room. “Your visitors will be able to view the diamond from all sides.”

“Thanks for your opinion.” Maddie stepped between him and Grace. “Now get lost.”

His comment about looking like a TV test pattern still rankled. The man showed no appreciation for individuality. He probably came from a long line of financiers and wore a tie even on Sunday. Although she had to grudgingly admit there was nothing bland or boring about him. None of the potential suitors Grace lined up for her had an ounce of Fabian Montgomery’s personal style.

“Maddie,” Grace admonished her with a frown. “Be polite. He’s right. That’s exactly what I want.” She turned back to the workmen. “Please don’t just slide it off the dolly. Pick it up and place it down carefully so you don’t chip the marble.”

The workmen grunted in unison as they grasped the base of the pedestal and lifted it off the dolly, biceps bulging, faces red with the strain.

“A little to the right,” Grace said, waving them over. In Grace’s office, the telephone rang. She handed Maddie the tape measure. “Finish supervising while I get that. Remember, dead center of the open area.”

“Hang on,” Maddie said to the workmen. “I’d better measure.”

The men obligingly paused, knees bent under the strain of holding the heavy marble column, perspiration dotting their brows. One was older with a gray ponytail; the younger man had red hair and tattooed arms.

“The center point is right…here.” Fabian pointed the toe of a polished black shoe at a spot on the floor.

“Don’t listen to him.” Maddie glanced around for something to hook the measuring tape on.

“Good enough for me,” the older workman announced and with a nod at his young assistant, they eased it onto the spot Fabian had indicated.

“Wait! Don’t go till I check.” Maddie handed Fabian the end of the tape measure. “Since you won’t leave, you can make yourself useful. Go stand by the door.”

Fabian strolled back to the front door and leaned negligently against the frame, the tape held loosely between his fingers. “When did you arrange to meet the Chameleon next?”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call Dr. Hauzenegger that. Anyway, what makes you so sure I’m seeing him again?” Maddie reeled out the tape, her ballet flats tapping briskly on the tiled floor until she came to the pedestal. She made a mental note of the number then motioned Fabian over to the opposite wall.

“Because he wants to see the Rose,” Fabian said, strolling across the room. “And you want to see him.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, Maddie reeled out the tape measure again. Back at the pedestal she checked the measurement. “Aha! You were three millimeters out,” she crowed. At the workmen’s mutinous expressions she added hastily, “But I guess it’s close enough.”

The man with the gray ponytail pulled a folded work order out of his pocket and handed Maddie his pen. He jabbed the bottom line of the printed form with a calloused finger. “Sign here.”

Maddie dashed off her signature. The workmen took the dolly and left. She turned to Fabian and gave a little tug on the tape measure. “You can let go now.”

He held fast, his dark eyes gleaming. “Grace told you to be polite to me.”

Maddie gritted her teeth, in no mood to play games. And yet she was forced to walk toward him, reeled in like a fish on a hook. His smile accentuated the slight cleft in his chin and gave him a tiny dimple in his right cheek. Friendly like a shark. When she was a foot away from him she stopped and gave another sharp tug, bracing herself for the tape clattering into the metal casing when he let go.

Instead, he stepped toward her and the tape slid into place with a quiet zip. Still he didn’t let go, and his knuckles brushed hers, hot and electric. “When are you seeing the Chameleon again?”

Maddie’s fingers tightened on the tape measure, refusing to back up. His dark eyes held hers, turning her knees to jelly even as she wanted run as fast as she could in the opposite direction.

“Why do you need to ask?” She yanked the tape measure out of his grip. “You seem to know everything that happened.”

“I couldn’t hear that part of your conversation over the noise of the traffic. So, the Chameleon?”

“Will you stop calling him that? It’s ridiculous.” Where had he hidden while she and Rolf had been having coffee? Behind a newspaper at a nearby table? Lurking in the men’s shop across the alley?

“When?” Fabian repeated, focusing his considerable force of will on her.

“Tomorrow night.” The words were out before she could stop them. She thought fast, trying to rectify her bungle. If she told him the truth, he would come around here and spoil her evening. She and Rolf wouldn’t be able to talk diamonds or discuss his latest research or…anything. “We’re having dinner at the Cuckoo Restaurant in the Dandenongs at seven o’clock.” Although scrupulously honest in most respects, growing up in a household of thieves meant Maddie had of necessity become an accomplished liar. Only to protect her father and brothers, of course.

“The Dandenongs?” Fabian repeated suspiciously. “What are they?”

“Picturesque mountains about an hour and a half to the east of Melbourne.” Maddie kept her expression bland, her gaze steady. “Visitors to the state love them.”

Fabian searched her face carefully. “I’ll have to take them in while I’m here, then.”

“You do that.”

A three-hour return trip for Fabian should allow enough time for her and Rolf to have dinner and for Rolf to examine the stone. They’d be long gone from the jewelry store before Fabian figured out they hadn’t left the city.

“Will someone else be here while you show the diamond?” Fabian asked.

“Grace.” Maddie lied again without compunction.

“Good. Be on your guard at all times.” He handed her a card with his name and a phone number scribbled on it. “I’m sure you’ve thrown my note away. Call me if you need me.”

“Why would I need you?”

“Have I been talking to a brick wall?” He snapped his fingers. “The thief is planning to steal the diamond right from under your nose.”

“You’re just trying to scare me. Leave, or I’ll call the police.”

“No police.” Fabian backed away toward the door and slipped outside, melting into the stream of office workers, shoppers and tourists flowing past on the street.

Maddie’s fingers slowly unclenched on the tape measure. As her breath escaped, her shoulders finally relaxed. She glanced at the tempered glass casing that would hold the Rose and shivered. Despite everything she knew about Rolf, a seed of doubt came back.

What if Fabian was right?

Maddie opened the hinged glass door on the case. A lock, with two keys dangling from it, was built into the glass. She inspected the contoured oval column covered in black velvet and the fiber-optic light hanging from the top. Tiny motion sensors in all four corners would raise the alarm if the Rose moved even a hair’s breadth while on display. If the glass were to break, a signal would go directly through to the police station and to the alarm company.

Grace emerged from her office and came over to Maddie. “The security man is coming tomorrow to wire in the alarm for this. He checked the alley door while you were out, by the way. It’s perfectly okay. But he changed the digital code anyway.”

“Good.” Maddie closed the glass casing. If the lock was working properly, how had Fabian gotten in?

“So, tell me,” Grace said, giving her a nudge. “Who’s your gorgeous friend?”

“He’s not my friend. He’s the intruder who broke into the workshop yesterday.”

“No! He’s so well spoken, so handsome and charming.”

“It’s the charming ones you have to watch out for.”

Grace’s fingers found her opal brooch, twisting it until sparks of blue and red fired in its depths. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I tried to,” Maddie said. “You were too busy gushing all over him. He insists that Dr. Hauzenegger is a fake even though I just met him and I’m convinced he’s genuine.”

“I’m calling the police.” Grace walked swiftly back around the long jewelry cabinet and into her office.

“Wait.” Maddie ran after her and stopped her as she reached for the phone. “Don’t.”

Grace straightened away from her desk. “Why not?”

“Until he does something else illegal, the cops have nothing to go on. You know what happened to the boy who cried wolf.”

“Okay, but who is he?” Grace asked.

“That’s a very good question. He says he’s been hired by a private individual to protect the Rose.” Again, that nagging feeling that she should know who he was assailed her but she couldn’t pinpoint why. “There’s something familiar about him…”

“I know. We’ll look him up on Google.” Grace sat in front of her computer and typed
Fabian Montgomery
into the search engine. While she waited for the page to load, she said, “Before I forget, Willa Kruger called to invite you to a party tonight for Dr. Hauzenegger.”

If Maddie had needed further vindication, there it was.

“I can’t go but thanks.” She leaned closer as the results of the search came up. “There are 2,450 hits. How are we going to check all those?”

Grace clicked on link after link. On most websites there was an accompanying photo. None looked remotely like the man they were discussing. “Do you want to keep going?”

“I can’t see the point.” Maddie turned a troubled glance on her aunt. “There’s something I’m not remembering. I just wish I knew what it was.”

* * *

In the Presidential Suite at the Langham Hotel, Fabian paced, his phone pressed to his ear, waiting for his mother, Lady Isabella Montgomery, to pick up. The corner window of the suite overlooked the Yarra River and the glittering high-rises of the central business district. Eight p.m. in Melbourne was nine a.m. in England. She was probably pottering in her garden among her prize-winning roses, or walking the dogs, a pair of Irish wolfhounds the size of Shetland ponies.

He was just about to hang up when a breathless female voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello, Mother. Did I get you in from outside?”

“Yes—Teeny, Tiny, stop that! Sorry, darling,” she added to Fabian. “I left the French doors to the sitting room open and they’ve galloped in after me, tracking their muddy paws all over my Aubusson. Just a moment.”

Fabian waited again, listening to excited barks, stern commands, grunts and scuffling paws, and pictured his diminutive dark-haired mother manhandling the two giant dogs out of the elegant room. He poured himself a tumbler of whisky from the crystal decanter on the sideboard, no ice. He took a sip, rolling the smooth fiery liquid around his tongue. Single malt from Islay, if he wasn’t mistaken.

Finally his mother returned to the phone. “Those two are staring at me through the window with their big doggie eyes. I’m turning my back,” she called to them before saying to Fabian, “Where are you ringing from?”

Out of long habit Fabian declined to say anything that might identify his whereabouts, instead going straight to the point. “You were right—he’s at it again.”

Lady Isabella uttered an unladylike expletive that still managed to massively understate the magnitude of their problem. “Did you see him?”

“With my own eyes. He’s in disguise but there’s no mistaking him.” Fabian paused. “He saw me, too, unfortunately. I’ve lost an element of advantage.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve warned the gemologist but she doesn’t believe me. It’s hardly surprising, really. She doesn’t know me whereas she thinks she knows him.”

“When do you expect he’ll make his move?”

“Tomorrow night. The gemologist is supposedly taking him out of town for dinner but she’s lying. He’ll be pocketing that diamond before you can say cut, clarity, color and carat.”

“Tell him you know what he’s up to. If he doesn’t stay away, you’ll go to the police.”

“After we didn’t report the last incident, he knows damn well I won’t go to the police. Besides, I want to avoid a confrontation.” Fabian rubbed the scar between his lower ribs where the Chameleon had plunged a chef’s boning knife in a full two inches. “Next time we meet one of us might not survive, and I don’t mean me. Anyway, I don’t know where he’s staying. I’ve checked, naturally, but he’s not using any of the aliases we know about.”

“Didn’t you say you saw him?” Isabella said. “Why didn’t you follow him?”

“I followed the girl instead.”

“Girl?”

“Maddie Maloney, the gemologist. Not a girl, a woman, I suppose, although she’s quite young. And rather odd.” Fabian took another sip of whisky. Why had he followed her instead of the Chameleon? It was a tactical error on his part, unprofessional and uncharacteristically sloppy. For no reason he could fathom, the ridiculous image of Maddie brandishing that tiny hammer popped into his head. Fabian chuckled.