To Have and to Heist(93)
Sunlight sparkled on the water and danced over the freshly mowed grass. The string quartet played the wedding march and Bella’s father nodded curtly as he walked his daughter down the aisle.
“Why is the elephant standing behind the arch?” Jack whispered. “And what’s with all the head-patting?”
“She bonded with Gage,” I said. “Now she won’t leave him alone. She wasn’t happy when Chloe helped him change out of his leather jacket into a suit. Chloe got a trunk swat to the head.”
“He can’t perform a wedding ceremony with an elephant patting his hair.”
“Tell that to the elephant.”
“What happened to the handler?” Jack asked.
“He’s inside having a snooze. He said the elephant doesn’t want him there and that his presence would agitate her. Apparently, you don’t want to get on an elephant’s bad side.”
To his credit, Gage didn’t seem perturbed by the amorous elephant behind him during the ceremony. He followed the script I’d printed for him off the Internet without even a hitch in his voice, seemingly unaffected by the elephant stroking his hair. The bride and groom exchanged vows, rings, and a perfunctory kiss. I called it a win.
Emma took the bridal party for pictures. The guests drank champagne and ate chocolate-covered strawberries to the dulcet tones of the string quartet. The elephant became a TikTok sensation. I left discreet piles of business cards on every table.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
?When dinner was finally served, I put my heist crew into play. Chloe hid in the bathroom with her laptop, ready to jam the system if we tripped any alarms. Anil hovered in the bushes near the office window, pretending to be on an important call. Jack joined me in the office hallway with a bunch of helium balloons.
“I’ve put balloons in front of the back entrance camera and at various places around the house, so the placement doesn’t look deliberate,” he said, tying five pink and white balloons to the small table under the hallway camera. “If anyone is checking the cameras, they won’t see anything.”
With Rose keeping a lookout at the entrance near the kitchen, Jack picked the office lock with some nifty gadgets in a black leather case. Once inside, we closed the door, leaving Rose to stand guard. Jack had no trouble finding the catch for the hidden bookcase. Moments later, it swung forward to reveal the safe.
“It’s definitely the same safe as upstairs,” I said. “I was worried I’d misremembered.”
“Maybe they got a two-for-one discount.”
I left Jack to his safecracking work, and crossed the room to open the window for Anil, letting the fresh air in and the tobacco-infused air out. I’d been too terrified to look around the last time I’d been here, but I hadn’t missed much. Mafia bosses, it seemed, had a fondness for dark wood furnishings, boring paintings, stone figurines, and marble statues.
“If I were rich, I wouldn’t buy a painting of a bowl of fruit,” I said, studying one of the pictures on the wall. “I’d go for bright colors, bold designs, or something that makes you think.”
“That’s Monet’s Prunes et abricots, painted between 1882 and 1885,” Jack said without even turning his head. “The waterside scene on the other wall is also by Monet. Gla?ons, environs de Bennecourt depicts the Seine in the winter. Together they’re worth over fifteen million dollars.”
Gah. Cringe. No wonder I’d only scored 52 percent on my final art history exam in college. But what did the teacher expect when he scheduled the class for Friday nights? Fridays were for partying, not sitting in a stuffy classroom looking at pictures of fruit.
“The statues are more interesting.” He pressed his stethoscope against the metal door. “The basalt falcon is from Thirtieth-Dynasty Egypt during the reign of Nectanebo the Second to the Ptolemaic period. It’s worth about five million and subject to a claim for repatriation by the Egyptian government.”
“And the statue of the naked woman?”
“That naked woman is Venus, carved in the Medici style. It’s a second century AD Roman copy of a Hellenistic original from the second century BC worth around eight million. It belongs in the National Archaeological Museum in Greece.”
“I never imagined a Mafia boss would be an art collector.” Or that Jack would be so knowledgeable about art. I’d thought his expertise was limited to jewelry of the stolen kind.
“He had to do something with all the money he stole through his loan sharking, money laundering, and illegal real estate transactions.” He turned the dial, then opened the safe with a flourish.
“You got it.”
“Anil was right,” he said. “It was the same combination. I’ll need to spend more time on YouTube.” He handed me the jewelry box and then turned back to rifle through the safe.
“What are you doing? This is just about the necklace.”
“Just curious,” he said, pulling out a brown manila envelope. “Do the switch so we can get out of here.”
I opened the box and stared at an empty sea of blue velvet. My heart sank and a wave of despair washed over me, making my knees buckle.
Jack looked up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s empty.” I felt like a black hole had swallowed me up. How could two heists fail?