Through the Night (15 page)

An adrenaline rush of excitement surged through Chase and kicked up the beat of his heart. “Anything else?” he asked anxiously.

The old man cut his gaze back to Chase. “I’m
thinking,
” he said, his tone cantankerous. “Are you always so gosh darn impatient?”

“He’s a little high-strung,” Valerie said, placating Stanley by gently patting his arm in a soothing gesture. “Take your time, Stanley.”

Stanley beamed a smile at Valerie. “Thank you, my dear.”

He did the deep-in-thought thing again, and this time Chase sat back in his chair and waited for Stanley to share any revelations that came to mind while Valerie attempted to read the man’s past memories. The older man’s face was a study in concentration, but out of the corner of Chase’s eye he saw Stanley’s hand slowly slide forward on the table and nudge one of his own checkers forward on the board, then another, when it wasn’t even his turn.

Chase opened his mouth to say something, and Valerie gave her head a quick shake, stopping him. She was also trying very hard not to laugh, and then it hit him. Jesus, the wily old man really
did
cheat. Chase didn’t say a word as he made his next play as if Stanley hadn’t just tried to dupe him.

Stanley scratched at the slight stubble on his cheek and finally looked back at Chase. “From what I can remember, when Al mentioned the cane, he also went on about a piece of it that belonged to a secretary in Florida, and he wanted me to go and get it for him because he was afraid someone else would find it.” He tipped his head, frowning thoughtfully. “Or maybe he said it’s with my secretary or something similar to that.”

Valerie gasped softly, her eyes widening as her fingers flexed on Stanley’s arm. “It’s
in
my secretary,” she said on a rush of breath.

“Yeah, that was it!” Stanley snapped his fingers and stared at Valerie in awe. “I remember thinking at the time that Al didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, because whatever this valuable piece was, it couldn’t possibly be
inside
his secretary. Unless the person swallowed it.”

Stanley chuckled at his own joke and made another on-the-sly play that put a few more of Chase’s checkers in jeopardy. “The man was a little cuckoo towards the end, and it was hard to make any sense of his blathering.”

This time, knowing what the old man was up to, Chase moved one of his checkers to give Stanley an even better advantage to win.

All the talk of Capone’s secretary didn’t make much sense to Chase. In all his Internet research on the gangster, he’d never come across any information on Capone having a personal secretary. He had bodyguards and many disposable thugs who executed all his dirty work for him, and even a few close advisers and a consigliere, but no one he specifically referred to as his secretary. So while the information Stanley had given them wasn’t anything concrete, it was more than Chase had before walking into the retirement home.

He was also hoping that Valerie had picked up on a lot more than just that one line of vague dialogue between Capone and Stanley. If not, then they were back to square one, and that wasn’t a place he wanted to be.

“Ha! Look at this,” Stanley said gleefully as he jumped over another three of Chase’s checkers, making it all the way across the board to the last row. “King me!”

Grinning, Chase crowned Stanley’s checker piece, resigned to the fact that he really was going to lose. They spent another forty minutes with Stanley, who regaled them with interesting tales of Alcatraz, the eccentricities of the inmates who’d been imprisoned at the Rock, and his experiences there as an orderly. He shared other stories about Capone, but nothing else pertaining to the cane.

After Stanley had won two games of checkers, Jeremy came back up to their table and announced that it was time for Stanley’s medication, and Chase decided that it was a good time for them to leave. He thanked Stanley for talking to them, and Valerie even gave the older man a hug good-bye.

“What a sweet guy,” Valerie said as they walked back toward the visitors’ lot.

“Sweet?” Chase injected an incredulous note into his voice. “Maybe to you he was all charm, but he was a little on the crusty side with me. And his buddy Tom was right: He does cheat at checkers.”

She laughed, the sound light and melodious, telling Chase she’d had a good time with Stanley—and there were no negative lingering effects after using her psychic gift on the older man. “I’ll admit he was a bit of a rascal, but he really did seem to enjoy talking to us about his time at Alcatraz.”

Chase waited until they were in the car and back on the road to San Francisco before he broached the subject of the cane. “So what do you make of Stanley’s recollections?” he asked. “Did you get any good impressions?”

“The visions I saw were definitely interesting,” she said, glancing at him. “When Stanley started focusing on the past and the conversation he had with Capone about the cane, I heard what Capone actually said and saw their interaction.”

Chase’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel in anticipation. “And?”

A smile tugged up the corners of her lips. “You really
are
impatient, aren’t you?”

“So sue me,” he said, and laughed. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for a break like this. I’m
finally
getting some kind of lead to the other cane pieces, and that’s huge. So tell me what you know already, and please give me something valuable that doesn’t lead to a dead end.”

“I’ll certainly try.” She turned in her seat toward him as much as her seat belt would allow. “I saw Stanley with Capone in the infirmary, and Capone was in a manic state and was carrying on about the staff part of his cane, and how he wanted Stanley to get it for him because he didn’t want anyone else to find it.”

“What was the whole secretary conversation about?” he asked curiously as he merged the car over a lane to catch the freeway leading back to the city. “Because Capone didn’t have a secretary. Just advisers and a consigliere. I can’t figure out that connection.”

“Capone’s exact words to Stanley were, ‘It’s
in
my secretary,’” she said, her voice ringing with absolute certainty. “Stanley kept asking him what his secretary’s name was, which just agitated Capone. He kept telling Stanley that his secretary didn’t have a name, which is kind of odd.”

Chase scrubbed a hand along his jaw, trying not to let his frustration get the best of him. “Yeah, I don’t get it, either. Do you have any idea what Capone meant?”

“Well, I could only tap into Stanley’s side of things, so it’s difficult to know what Capone was thinking at the time. But the one thing Capone said that I found very interesting was that he wanted the secretary’s
leg
before someone else realized what it was.”

“I don’t get it,” Chase said, totally confused.

“Me, neither,” she agreed. “The conversation was totally bizarre.”

Yet it had to mean something, Chase knew. They both grew silent as they each mulled over what she’d learned. From the corner of his eye he watched her quietly drum her fingers against her thigh, her brows furrowed in thought. Then she gasped and glanced at him again.

“What if Capone was talking about a secretary as a piece of
furniture,
and not a person?” she said, her eyes wide with excitement. “Do you think maybe the staff of the cane was designed into a secretary, which is a type of desk? The walking stick would be the perfect size and length for the leg of a secretary, or desk.”

Her suggestion made perfect sense, and tied in to other information he knew about Capone. “Oh, my God, Valerie. You’re brilliant!” If he didn’t need his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road, he would have kissed her senseless.

“I don’t know about brilliant,” she said, her tone wry. “It’s just an educated guess based on the words Capone used.”

“I think you might be right about the secretary’s leg being the staff to the cane.” Elation and the need to research her suggestion in more depth had him increasing his speed just over the limit to get back to the hotel as soon as possible. “For years, Capone used the cover of being a secondhand-furniture dealer as a guise for his mob dealings, and he no doubt had connections to people he could commission to build a custom-made secretary to store something so important until he needed it again?”

He watched her process his theory. “So you think he hid the walking stick in plain sight?”

“I think it’s a huge possibility.” He turned off the freeway and navigated the street traffic to the Four Seasons. “It was probably a piece of furniture that was kept in his house in Florida with his wife while he was in prison. Why not make something so valuable a common part of a desk so that no one knows what it is—unless they know exactly what they’re looking for?” And judging by Chase’s extensive research, few people, if any, knew what the ivory cane itself led to, and just believed it was one of many of Capone’s flamboyant and flashy purchases.

Chase’s intimate knowledge of the ivory piece came from his ability to read the decades-old cane top. Had he not flashed on the origin of the carved ivory and emerald object of art, and the priceless, historical artifact it concealed, he would have believed it was nothing more than an expensive knickknack and most likely never would have bought it.

As soon as they arrived back at their suite, Chase set up his laptop on the table in the living room and pulled out a file folder of research and notes he’d collected over time. While his computer booted up, he pulled out a grainy black-and-white photograph he’d printed off the Internet—Capone standing with two other men—and showed the picture to Valerie. The gangster was wearing a power suit, one of his trademark fedora hats, and his right hand clutched the ivory top piece of the cane he was using—not because he needed the support, but because Capone had been a pretentious bastard, and back in the day, his extravagant cane made a big statement about his wealth and power.

“Check this out,” he said, motioning Valerie to his side. “Look at the cane Capone is using in this photo. That’s the ivory topper I currently have in my possession, and this is what the staff part of the cane that I’m searching for looks like. It could definitely pass as a leg for a desk, or as Capone told Stanley, a
secretary’s
leg.”

He flipped to another picture, this one a zoomed-in shot he’d had made that showed the gorgeous, intricate inlaid design on the walking stick. The staff was made of a rich mahogany wood, embellished with carved ivory lilies of the valley and was accented with green emeralds to match the top piece. The vinelike pattern spiraled all the way up to the gold ring connecting the pieces.

“Wow, that’s quite an elaborate leg piece for any desk,” she said, scrutinizing the picture before looking at him, her bright eyes telling him that she was just as into solving this puzzle as he was.

“I know, but it makes sense, and I’m going with it,” he said, grinning. That, and it was the only viable lead he had, and he wasn’t going to dismiss it without thoroughly researching the possibility. “I’m thinking there were probably two of the staffs made, so the secretary desk had two identical matching legs facing outward. That’s what we need to look for.”

“How do you know where to even begin to look for the desk?”

“I have my ways,” he said, waggling his brows at her, which made her laugh. “Since Stanley told us that Capone said the secretary was in Florida, that leads me to believe it was stashed at his home there, which is where Capone retired when he finished serving his time in prison. His wife, Mae, died in 1986, and at that time everything in their Miami Beach home was auctioned off with the proceeds going to his son. I need to find the auction house that liquidated Capone’s estate, and they would have a record and photographs of everything sold, and to whom.”

She stared at him in fascination. “I have to say, I’m impressed.”

He flashed her a smile. “It’s what I do as a procurer of fine things.” He winked playfully at her, then sat down at the table, cracked his knuckles, and prepared to get to work.

They spent the rest of the afternoon working together, and Chase was grateful to have Valerie as an assistant, which made everything go at a faster pace. While he did all the computer work and research on the various pieces of furniture that were sold during the Capone estate sale to track the secretary desk, she made phone calls for him as he needed. She contacted the manager of the auction house that handled the sell-off of Capone’s furnishings, described the desk and what the leg pieces might look like, and from there it hadn’t taken long for the woman, Sylvia, to find the information that Chase needed.

Sylvia e-mailed him a picture of the desk, confirming that the two front legs were exact matches to the walking stick Chase had spent the past few months searching for, and he could barely contain his exhilaration. Sylvia even knew the person who’d purchased the secretary, a gentleman who sold and traded antique items, and she was gracious enough to pass on his contact information.

Another call to Jack Harrison, the wealthy owner of the upscale Harrison House Antique Gallery in Florida, revealed that he still had the desk. He kept it for himself all those years ago and had it displayed at his home in Boca Raton and was open to selling it for the right price.

At this point, Chase didn’t think money was an object to Steven, not when it meant restoring the cane to its original state. But first he needed to see the secretary in person, to touch the piece and see what his visions revealed, and make absolutely certain that one of the legs belonged to the ivory cane top.

Chase immediately got in touch with Steven’s curator, Tony, who was equally ecstatic over the find and promised to make all the necessary travel arrangements to Florida so they could leave San Francisco by private jet the following day to get them there as quickly as possible. Tony would e-mail him an itinerary and fax over a copy to the business office at the hotel for them to deliver to his room so Chase would have a hard copy of the trip details for his files.