Her Special Charm

Honeyed words slowly poured over him, one following the other, giving him no opportunity to say anything beyond that.

“And you have my cameo. I can’t tell you how very relieved I am. I’d just about given up hope of ever seeing it again. It’s been missing for more than a year now. It was stolen—”

He thought he perceived her taking a breath. He took his opportunity where he could and jumped in with both feet before she got her second wind. “Well, before you get all relieved, Ms. Beaulieu—”

“Constance,” she corrected.

James suppressed a sigh. “Before you get all relieved, Ms. Beaulieu,” he repeated. He was aware of the old confidence trick aimed at disarming the would-be mark by creating a warm, friendly atmosphere. That wasn’t about to happen. Not if he was the so-called mark. “I’d like you to describe the cameo to me.”

He expected her to pause. Instead, she sounded pleased that he’d actually asked.

“Of course. It’s a profile of a lady. Her hair is all piled up on her head. She’s ivory colored and she’s up against a background of Wedgwood-blue. The same color of the original owner’s eyes,” she added just when he thought she was finished.

Nice touch, he thought. But the description just might have been a lucky guess. According to what Santini had told him, a lot of cameos had Wedgwood-blue backgrounds. She was going to have to do better than that if she wanted him to hand over the necklace to her. He turned it over in his hand, looking at the back.

“Tell me something that’s not in the ad,” he instructed tersely.

There was a pause on the other end. When it continued, he thought he had her. She was like the rest, an opportunist. Too bad. This one had imagination. And style. Not that he bought into the Southern accent, that was a little over the top, but—

“There’s an inscription on the back.”

Her soft voice, burrowing into his thoughts, caught him off guard. “What?”

“Well, not really an inscription,” she corrected herself. “More like initials. Faint ones. You might not even be able to make them out unless you hold them up to the light, just right. But if you do, you’ll see that it reads From W.S to A.D. The A.D. stands for Amanda Deveaux. She’s my great-times-seven grandmother,” she clarified.

He could have sworn he heard a smile in the woman’s voice. She had to be pulling his leg with this. But if so, how did she know about the initials? That wasn’t a lucky guess. “Excuse me?”

He heard a small chuckle. At his expense? “It’s easier saying great-times-seven than stretching it out and saying great-great-great-great—”

“I get the picture,” he told her gruffly. He looked at the cameo he’d placed on the coffee table. “I guess it’s yours, all right.”

He thought he heard a little squeal of joy, but that could have just been the phone line, crackling. Nonetheless, the sound zipped through him.

“I appreciate you taking such precautions, James. I can come over right now and pick it up. There’s a reward, of course. It’s not much, but—”

Again, he cut her short. “I don’t want any reward. I’m a cop.” Ironically, since he worked in R&B, robbery and burglary, this fit nicely into his job description. “This is all part of what I do.”

“A policeman.” This time, the little laugh that left her lips somehow managed to shimmy up his spine. And, much to his annoyance, move in for the duration of the phone call. “New York’s finest. I should have known.”

He frowned. She’d lost him. “Known what?”

“That if anyone would have reported finding it, it had to be someone honorable.”

He didn’t know how well that description fit him. There were times, when he and Santini were chasing down a so-called suspect, someone who took rather than earned and beat anyone who got in his way, that he found himself toying with the notion of taking the law into his own hands. Of going that extra step and making the felon pay for his crimes without dragging the court system and their endless delays into it.

At bottom, he knew that way was anarchy, so he had never acted upon his rare impulses. Still, it was exceedingly tempting to turn thought into reality….

“So,” the woman on the other end of his telephone was saying, “if you’ll just give me your address, I can be over within the hour, depending on where you live, if that’s all right with you.”

No, it wasn’t all right with him. It was so far from all right with him that there was no human way to chart it. Giving out his address was something he rarely did. The department knew where he lived. So did his ex-wife, although with her being in California, he doubted if that made a difference.

But aside from key members of the department, and Eli Levy, the old man who ran the mom-and-pop store he frequented, no one else knew where he lived. He was as private a man as possible in this age of information invasion. And it was going to remain that way.

“Why don’t you come down to the precinct tomorrow?” The suggestion was said in such a way that it clearly wasn’t a suggestion at all but an order. “I’ll have it for you then. Say nine o’clock?”

He heard a slight hesitation on the other end, as if she were torn over something. “I have to be in school at nine.”

“You’re a student?”

“No,” she laughed, ushering in another shiver. “I’m a teacher.”

He listened to his air-conditioning unit struggling. “But this is summer,” he pointed out.

“It’s an all-year school,” she told him. “Is four o’clock all right?”

Never would be better, he thought, but he’d gotten himself into this. The sooner it was over, the better everything would be. He and Santini had some canvassing to do involving the string of restaurant robberies they were investigating, but he could see to it that he was back at the precinct by four. Santini wouldn’t object.

“Four o’clock,” he echoed. “I’m at the fifty-first precinct.”

He began to give her the address but she stopped him. “I know where that is.”

He wondered if that meant she just passed it on a regular basis, or that she had firsthand dealings with one or more of the people there. Again, the thought of a confidence game came to mind. But if that was the case, she was one of the best scam artists he’d ever encountered. “Third floor. Ask for James Munro.”

“Like the president.”

Everyone said that. It took effort for him not to give in to irritation. Instead, he kept his temper in check. “Yeah, like the president. Except we spell the last name differently.”

She surprised him by apologizing. “Sorry, you must hear that all the time.”

There was that little laugh again. The one that sounded like bluebells ringing. The thought caught him up short. Since when did he wax poetic about anything, much less some stranger’s voice on the phone? He was getting punchy. That last outing with Stanley in this heat had done him in.

“It’s just that I’m so very excited.”

She obviously meant that by way of an explanation. Why the words would suddenly nudge things around in his mind, forming close to erotic thoughts about a woman he had never even laid eyes on, he had no idea.

Despite all logic, a feeling vaguely akin to arousal slipped through him.

Annoyed with himself and the caller, he banked his reaction down immediately. Maybe Santini with all his talk of available women and how he should be out there was seeping into his subconscious.

Whatever the cause, he didn’t like it. Didn’t like not having complete control over every part of himself. Especially his mind.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. He was about to hang up, then a thought occurred to him. He didn’t exactly have a nine-to-five job where he could be found in a given place at a given time. Circumstances did have a way of intervening. Because of that, though it was against his better judgment, he added, “Let me give you my cell number, just in case you get lost.”

“I won’t get lost, James,” she said with the kind of confidence that came from self-awareness rather than bravado. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Everything the woman said appealed to him. It took effort not to allow himself to be drawn in.

James fairly barked out the number at her, then quickly hung up before she could say anything further that would cause him to linger on the phone. He shook his head, not in disbelief but to get his bearings back.