Sidney Sheldon - Chasing Tomorrow

“Your wife has great taste. That necklace is the most stunning piece I’ve ever seen.”

“Ah, well, that was my taste,” Alan Brookstein boasted. “I’m the one who picked it for her. You wanna see the safe?”

Tracy smiled warmly. “That’s why I’m here.”

Nicholas was in surf camp for the day out in Malibu. Tracy didn’t have to pick him up for hours, but she was still eager to get this done and get out of here sooner rather than later. She had nightmares of a genuine agent from Christie’s bespoke insurers telephoning or stopping by out of the blue and spectacularly blowing her cover. It’s not going to happen, Tracy told herself firmly. But her adrenal glands didn’t seem to be listening. The stakes were very high.

“This way, Theresa. Watch your step, now.”

Alan Brookstein led her through a baffling series of hallways, each one smothered in thick, beige carpet like marzipan frosting. Saccharine impressionist paintings in a riot of pinks and blues and greens hung on walls papered with busy floral prints that would have made Liberace wince. Two maids in full uniform flattened themselves against the wall as Tracy and the director passed. Tracy clocked the fear in their faces. Evidently the rumors she’d heard of both the Brooksteins’ bullying and unpleasantness toward their staff were true.

The safe—or rather safes—were in the master suite, behind a panel in Sheila’s dressing room.

“You have three?”

“Four.” Alan Brookstein’s chest puffed out with pride, making him look more like a toad than ever. “These three are all decoys. I put a few, less valuable pieces in each one, just enough to make a thief think he’s hit pay dirt. The third one has a perfect replica of the Iran piece. Real rubies, artificially produced. You can’t tell the difference with the naked eye. Wanna see?”

Unlocking the safe, he pulled out the necklace Tracy had seen at Cecconi’s and draped it over her hands. The stones were heavy and glowed like coal embers between her fingers.

“This is a fake?”

“That’s a fake.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you, Theresa.” Alan Brookstein’s eyes seemed to have developed a magnetic attraction to Tracy’s nipples.

“Does your wife wear this out?”

“Sometimes.” Brookstein replaced the necklace. “She wears both. The fake and the real one. If it’s something really big, like the gala at LACMA on Saturday night, she’ll wear the real deal. I’m being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award,” he couldn’t resist adding.

“Congratulations! Your wife must be thrilled for you.”

Alan Brookstein frowned. “I don’t know. She’s thrilled to have a chance to flash those rubies, make all her girlfriends feel like crap, you know what I mean?” He laughed mirthlessly. “The truth is, Sheila can’t tell the difference any more than the rest of ’em. If it’s big and red and sparkly, she likes it. Kind of like the gnomes.”

Tracy followed the director through to his dressing room. A false panel at the back of a closet pulled aside to reveal a fourth safe.

“The code is changed every day.”

“For all the safes, or just this one?”

“For all of them.”

“Who changes the codes?”

“Me. Only me. Nobody knows what I come up with each day, not even Sheila. I appreciate your company’s concern, Theresa, but between this and our guards and the alarm system, I truly don’t think we could be better protected.”

Tracy nodded. “Mind if I look around a little?”

“Be my guest.”

Removing her shoes, Tracy flitted from room to room. She stepped inside closets and began climbing shelves, rifling through the Brooksteins’ suits and shirts and dresses and shoes. From her capacious Prada purse, she pulled out a variety of equipment, much of which looked like electronic monitors of some sort, which made an ominous, static-y, crackling sound when run along the edges of mirrors.

“Okay.” From her position at the top of a wooden stepladder, where she’d been examining the safety of a ceiling panel, Tracy suddenly spun around.

Standing at the foot of the ladder, Alan Brookstein, who’d been within inches of getting a clear view of her underwear, jumped a mile.

“What? Is there a problem?”

“Happily, no.” Tracy smiled. “No cameras or devices of any kind. I agree, you’re sufficiently protected. Although I would be careful which staff members you allow access to this room. We have had cases of maids installing pinhole cameras close to known safes, capturing the lock and unlock codes, and passing them on to boyfriends who then raid the houses in question.”

“Not our maids,” Alan Brookstein joked. “Trust me, those cholas don’t have a whole brain cell between them. You’d get more ingenuity out of an ape.”

Still, he thought, it was a good observation. The last schmuck from the insurance agency never gave me any practical advice like that.

“You’re a smart girl, Theresa. Thorough, too. I like that. You got any other tips for me?”

Tracy paused for a beat, then smiled slowly.

“As a matter of fact, Alan, I do.”

ELIZABETH KENNEDY HAD NO time for stupid, rich women. Unfortunately, in her line of work, she dealt with a great many of them. Although few were quite as stupid as Sheila Brookstein.

“I honestly don’t think I can stand it much longer,” Elizabeth told her partner. “The woman’s a card-carrying moron.”

“Focus on the money,” Elizabeth’s partner reminded her curtly.

“I’m trying.”

Elizabeth Kennedy usually had no problem keeping her mind on the silver lining—or in this case, ruby lining—of being forced to spend so much time with rich, stupid women like Sheila Brookstein. Elizabeth had grown up poor and had no intention of ever, ever going back there. But playing the role of British actress Liza Cunningham, Sheila’s new best friend, was really beginning to grate. It was like making small talk to a lobotomized cabbage. On a really off day.

“WHICH ONE, LIZA? THE Alaïa or the Balenciaga?”

“Liza” was in Sheila Brookstein’s dressing room, helping her friend get dressed for tonight’s ceremony at LACMA. Alan Brookstein, Sheila’s fat, self-important husband, was being given some award.

“Try the Balenciaga first,” she called into the bedroom.

While Sheila swathed her bony frame in complicated layers of black silk, Elizabeth pulled the fake necklace that her partner had commissioned out of her purse. It was the work of a moment to exchange it for the real one, which Alan had removed from the safe in his dressing room earlier and laid out helpfully on his wife’s dresser.

“Should I bring the necklace through?”

“Would you? You’re an angel, Liza,” Sheila gushed.

Elizabeth fastened the fake rubies around Sheila Brookstein’s scraggy throat. She felt a moment’s anxiety as the older woman frowned into the mirror. Surely she can’t tell the difference? But the frown soon vanished, replaced by Sheila’s usual vacuous, smug, self-satisfied smile.

“How do I look?”

Like a wrinkled old turkey with a string of worthless red rocks around its neck.

“Ravishing. Alan’s going to die of pride.”

“And all the other directors’ wives are going to choke with envy. Bitches.” Sheila cackled nastily.

IT WAS ALMOST ANOTHER hour before Sheila finally left in the back of her chauffeur-driven Bentley Continental. In that time “Liza” had styled and sprayed her thinning hair three different ways and helped the makeup artist apply the thick layers of foundation that Sheila felt made her seem younger, but that actually gave her skin the look of hardened clay. And all the while Sheila had talked and talked and talked.