“Anyway,” Sterling added, “we were doing a pretty good job of hiding until I stepped on your mother’s toe, and she shouted that I’m a klutz. Of course, the minute he heard her shrieking, he knew Caesar wasn’t alone.”
The old woman mouthed, “Sorry.”
“But she made up for it when he told her to tie me up. That old girl used the Knot of Deception, you know, the one your Dad invented. Anyway, he didn’t suspect a thing and as soon as he left the room, I was able to wiggle out of the rope and untie Flossie. Then we—”
“Sterling…Flossie. There is time for that later.” Caesar sounded miffed, as if he felt they were stealing his thunder. “Here’s the important part. After the Dumkovskys broke in, and saw the other guy here, one of them starts to strangle him. That was some fight! Two against one, but that Rimsky was not one to tangle with. I tell you, what he lacks in size, he makes up for in nastiness.”
Everyone in the room waited for the chef to continue his story. Caesar walked over to the window and started pacing, clearly struggling to remember the events of the evening. Finally he tapped his finger against his chin. “All of a sudden one of the Dumkovskys spots a leather bag hanging around that other guy’s neck.” Caesar grabbed at the air. “He lets out a roar and yanks it off.”
“A leather bag?”
“Yeah, it was a little tiny bag, like one of those Indian medicine bags or something. He spits in Rimsky’s face and shouts in English, ‘Traitor!’ Then he tosses it to the other Dumkovsky who yells something back in Russian. That one takes a little tin out of his pocket, opens it up, and stuffs the bag inside.”
Flossie wiggled around like a kid who needed a bathroom break. Without her glasses, she was squinting so much that her eyes were nearly closed. “Don’t forget my part.” She turned in the direction of the twins. “I tell you girls, I was just like Wonder Woman, wasn’t I, Caesar?”
“I’m getting to that, Flossie. Calm down.” He stopped pacing and sat down on the sofa again. “The second Dumkovsky is standing there looking at the box in his hand when your mother comes out of the dining room swinging a big brass candlestick and whacks him right in the face.”
Flossie clapped her hands and chuckled with delight. “Yep, I ended up ass over teakettle there on the couch. Good thing I had my new Lollypops underwear on!”
“You should have seen your mother. She really gave him a good one. Blood’s dripping everywhere; he’s holding his nose and cursing in Russian. That’s when those motorcycle maniacs busted in whooping and hollering while more of them were out in the courtyard making a god-awful racket with their engines. We thought it was an earthquake. Not far behind them were the cops.” He took a deep breath. “You know the rest of the story.”
Nellie spoke up from her chair by the fireplace. “I’m just glad everyone is okay. Sounds like the Riders had fun, too. They love a good fight. I’m glad my husband called them.”
“Yeah. So am I.” Goldie looked lovingly at her mother and shook her head. “Mom, I can’t believe you did that. You really whacked him?”
She nodded, holding up her right fist like a champ. “To tell you the truth, it’s a wonder I hit anything. I lost my glasses when that creep hit me so I just came out swinging. I figured I’d hit someone. I was praying it wouldn’t be you, Caesar.”
Everyone sank back into their seats looking exhausted. The policemen began to wrap things up. Nellie said, “Well, Flossie and Sterling, you’ve had quite a night. We should be getting you home, don’t you think?”
“What should I do about the broken window in my front door?” Caesar threw his hands in the air, looking helpless. “I’ll never get anyone out to fix it this late.”
“Calm down. Surely you have a hammer and a few nails around here somewhere,” Goldie said. “Maybe there’s a piece of wood in your garage we can nail over the opening.”
He shrugged. “I guess I can find something. But who can we get to put it up?”
She patted him on the arm. “No big deal. I can do it for you.” One of the cops stifled a chuckle and Godiva received the message from her sister loud and clear:
He’s useless.
Caesar stalked off to the garage and came back with a hammer and nails and a piece of wood from an old packing crate. He insisted he could do it himself, but after hitting his thumb twice and bellowing in pain, he surrendered the hammer to Goldie. She finished the job in less than five minutes, put the hammer on the hall table. “Okay, let’s get going.”
“My car’s got the bumper in the back seat,” Godiva said, “so I think I’ll leave it here at Caesar’s and ask the dealership to pick it up tomorrow. I suppose Sterling’s old Caddy can hold all of us.”
Sterling’s shoulders sagged. He looked down at his feet and sighed, “I’m sorry girls; I’m just too tired to drive it home.”
Goldie got up and put her arm around her uncle’s shoulder. “No problem, Unk. I drive Red’s truck all the time. Your Cadillac should be a piece of cake. We’ll put two of us in the front, and three in the back. What do you say?”
He put down the ice pack and nodded.
Godiva turned to Caesar and said in a flat tone, “I’ll call the dealership tomorrow morning to pick up my Town Car. We’ll come back over in the roadster to meet them and sign whatever paperwork they need to haul it away.”
Caesar reminded Godiva that he had to be at the studio early in the morning to make preparations for his show. He tried to put his arm around her waist, but she threw it off, still angry. “Godiva, I’m sorry. Flossie and Sterling said they had such a good idea, and I never even got to hear it.”
She snapped, “And you won’t…”
He reached in his pocket and then pressed a house key in her hand. “Here,
Cara Mia
, just use this tomorrow. That way you can wait for the driver inside.”
THIRTY SIX
On the way back to Godiva’s estate Flossie tried to convince her daughter not to be too hard on Caesar. In the back seat of the behemoth Caddy, Sterling rested his wounded head on Nellie’s shoulder, snoring in alternating tones of high C and F flat.
“Godiva, darling, pay attention. This is your mother speaking. After all, it was my idea that got your uncle and me into such hot water. Think about what a fantastic chef your Caesar is. And such a handsome, cultured gentleman to boot. With the way he cooks, and the way you love food, it’s a match made in heaven.”
Shaking her head as though her mind was made up, Godiva answered, “Yeah, Mom, if tonight’s episode was all, I could look the other way. But there’s more to it that I don’t want to go into right now. It might be a long time before I forgive him—if I ever do.”
Driving at exactly the speed limit, Goldie chimed in. “It looks like Godiva’s love life will have to take a back seat, Mom. We have so many other things to do. Tonight I have to call Perry Pinkwater and tell him the L.A. cops have the bad guys. He’ll get hold of Ollie first thing in the morning and do whatever’s necessary to get Taku out of jail. Godiva needs to take care of the Town Car in the morning and there are a million other things—”
Nellie broke in from the back seat. “And the big question is, where
are
the rest of those gems? Not that it’s really my business, but you know what they say about curiosity.”
Flossie squinted, trying to clear up the fuzzy images that surrounded her. “And
my
big question is, where are my glasses? When you go back to Caesar’s place to meet that car guy tomorrow, be sure to scout around for them because I can’t see a darn thing. They have to be somewhere in his dining room.” She made a big show of crossing her fingers and saying a little prayer. “With any luck, they won’t be broken.”
Goldie steered though the imposing gates and dropped Flossie and Sterling at their cottages. Back at the main house, Nellie gave each sister a hug as she was bidding them good night. “This is more excitement than I’ve had in a long time. I have to remember to thank Belle for giving you my number. Let me know what happens.”
The twins each hugged her back. “We have you to thank for the Ghost Riders,” Goldie said. “Bet Ricky didn’t expect that kind of backup. I’d love to tell Red about them, but that’s probably not a good idea. My husband always worries when I’m in L.A. In fact, it would be a big favor to me if you tone down what happened when you talk to Belle. I just know she’ll get Red all riled up.”
Early the next morning, after giving Angel her marching orders for the day and scribbling answers to a few of the letters, Godiva pulled the silver Mercedes roadster into the driveway and waited while Goldie went back to the family room to retrieve her yellow pad.
As she slid into the passenger seat, Goldie said, “I don’t know, Sis. There are still too many loose ends here. Like Nellie said last night, where are those gems? Maybe when Mom conked Boris or Igor—whichever one it was—on the noggin he dropped that sack or tin that Caesar mentioned. I’ll betcha anything when we locate that little tin all those beautiful alexandrites will be in it.”
“Or maybe they’re hidden somewhere else, or the police found them in one of their pockets.”
They pulled into Caesar’s driveway a little after ten. When Godiva called the dealership on her cell, she was told it would take between forty-five minutes and an hour for their man to get there. She winked at her sister as she placed Caesar’s spare key in the lock. When the door swung open, she extended her arm. “Shall we?”
The minute they were in the house, Godiva made a beeline for Caesar’s office and started riffling through the papers on his desk, mumbling to herself. Goldie grabbed her arm and tried to pull her out of the room. “How dare you, Godiva? Those are his personal things. You have no right to spy on him.”
“Him, who? Caesar Romano or Benito Burrito?” She dug in her heels. “Come on, after the way he lied to me I have the right. Well, maybe not the right to dig through his papers, but I do have the right to find out what else he’s hiding.”
Goldie grabbed a sheaf of papers out of her hand and plunked them back on the desk. “Sorry, but this is where I draw the line. You’ll have to find out his secrets in some other way. Come on, we have to look for Mom’s glasses and that little leather sack.”
First they went into the dining room where they found Flossie’s missing glasses among the fronds of a potted palm in the corner of the room. Godiva said, “This is the last place I would have looked. Bless your attention to small details, Sis.” Close inspection showed that they were as good as new. Goldie wrapped them in a green linen napkin from the sideboard and placed them in her tote bag. Then they both made their way to the living room.
Their ample derrieres bobbed up and down as the twins crawled around on their hands and knees at opposite sides of the room, feeling around under every piece of furniture in hopes of finding the bag or the tin. It was beginning to seem like a lost cause when Godiva felt a round metal box under one of the skirted sofas. She fished it out and held it close to get a better look.
Goldie called across the room, “What did you find?”
“Yahoo! It’s a Russian tobacco tin, like the one we found in Rosita’s samovar.” Godiva’s hands trembled as she twisted the lid and then let out another whoop. Nestled inside she saw a small brown leather pouch on a thong. “I think we hit the jackpot.” She set the tin holding the pouch on the seat of the sofa, and struggled to her feet.
She was about to take the little leather bag out and open it when two things happened simultaneously. The man from the dealership rang from the front gate and Godiva’s cell phone belted out a jazzy tune. A glance at the display showed that Angel was calling. She reeled off instructions to Goldie about what to do to let the man in, and flipped open the phone. Without so much as a hello, Angel spoke so fast everything ran together. “Slow down, Angel, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
There was a deep inhale on the other end. Then, “Well, boss, we got a very interesting call after you left. You’re gonna love this. Your Russian caper made the
LA Times
this morning, but that’s not all. Apparently the story was also spread across the whole front page of the
Juneau Fishwrapper
. With all the tie-ins to local folks like Goldie and the Rimsky guy and that poor sucker, Taku. By the way, it says they’re letting him out of jail today.”
She took a breath. “The story plays up the fact that the Dumkovskys and Rimsky are the real crooks. Anyway, it went on and on. They quoted that Police Chief Oliver who made it sound like he was the one who cracked the case. You should have heard him.” She adopted a deep-throated voice, “‘Oh, I suspected all along that the Mendoza murder had something to do with the Russian samovars.’ But the reporter wasn’t fooled, because the story said it was Goldie who helped catch the criminals.”
Godiva said, “So Goldie got the ink. Did it say anything about me, by chance?”
“Yeah. It did mention you and the name of your column at the end. Said you helped your sister.” She waited for the predictable explosion on the other end.
“Hmmmph. Helped? Okay, Angel, what were you going to tell me about the interesting call we got?” Then she heard Goldie calling to her and said, “Wait a minute…I have to help Goldie. They’re here to pick up the car and need me to sign the release. Tell you what, I’ll call back in a minute.” She snatched the tin from the sofa, replaced the lid and put it in her pocket.
After the man drove off with her bumperless Town Car, she said, “I’d better call Angel back. She said the story about Rimsky and the Dumkovskys is all over your little rinky-dink paper in Juneau and she’s all wound up about some kind of phone call that came in after we left.”
When she called back, Angel answered immediately, continuing where she left off. “Here’s what I was trying to say—”
“Just a minute,” Godiva broke in. “I’m putting this on speaker.” She pushed the button and held the cell phone between them. “Tell her what you told me.”
“Hi, Angel,” Goldie said. “Go ahead, I can’t wait to hear this.”
Angel chattered about the newspaper articles for a couple of minutes and then she said, “Apparently as a result of the investigation of Minsky and Pinsky, a couple of Russian antiquity officials tracked the Seven Stars to Juneau and for the last few days they have been questioning everyone they could find who came in contact with the samovars.”