The Grift of the Magi Read online

  “I’m Elizabeth Evans,” the woman said. “The director of the Magi Miracle Network. It’s so nice to meet you. I wish… I wish it were under better circumstances.” She wore dark-rimmed glasses and slid them up her nose. Kat thought she might be about to wipe a tear from her eye, but none fell. “I can’t imagine what you think of me.”

  That was when she glanced past Hale, to the photos on the wall behind him.

  “I know this must be very hard for you, Mr. Hale,” she said. “Your grandmother was a wonderful woman, and she was always so supportive and involved, and… When I realized what had happened, I… I didn’t know what to do. It could ruin us. Not just the money—though it is a lot of money. This donation—the auction—they were going to bring an unprecedented amount of publicity to our cause.” For a second, the woman just studied the photograph. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “I suppose we should be careful what we wish for.”

  “I know what you mean,” Hale said and the director smiled.

  “I met her, you know? Not long before she…passed. I met her. And it was something I’ll never forget. She had a kind of light around her. It sounds silly, I know, but that was how it felt.”

  “No,” Hale said. “You’re right. Hazel glowed. She always did.”

  For a moment the woman smiled, happy in the memory, but then the sadness returned. “A part of me is happy that she’s gone—that she won’t see this. She’d be so ashamed of me. You should be ashamed of me.”

  Hale gave her his most charming smile. It wasn’t necessarily important for this woman to like him—trust him. But they did need her help, and women who are half in love with W. W. Hale V had a tendency to be very helpful indeed.

  Besides, Hazel must have liked her. And so Hale wanted to return the favor.

  “We’re just happy to be able to help.”

  When Ms. Evans heard the word “we” it was like she finally realized that Hale was not alone.

  “Hi,” Kat said.

  She could practically read the woman’s mind. Though it was quick, her eyes darted over Kat’s small body, her line-free skin. There had been many occasions when looking like the smaller-than-average teenage girl that she was had worked to Kat’s advantage.

  And then there were times like this.

  “You’re Amelia’s friend?”

  “Something like that,” Kat said, honestly not sure how else to answer.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said with a wave of her hand. Pink filled her cheeks, and Kat knew she was embarrassed. To have misjudged her friend’s friends. To need their help at all.

  “I’m sorry. When she said she knew someone outside of Interpol who specialized in this sort of thing I suppose I assumed it would be someone…”

  “Older?” Kat guessed.

  “Well. Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kat said, honestly unconcerned. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

  Ms. Evans smiled, but it didn’t find her eyes. “It’s just… This is a very important matter.” She turned to Hale. “I’m sure you understand. Perhaps I was wrong to have Amelia keep my call off the books. Perhaps—”

  “We can help you,” Kat said flatly.

  “I’m sure you mean very well.” Elizabeth smiled and tried to soften her voice, and Kat had no doubt the woman wasn’t being rude; she was simply being desperate. “Of course, Mr. Hale, you had every right to know that something was wrong, but the more I think about our situation, the more I realize… Yes. I have to call the police. I should have done it immediately. I should have—”

  “Did they get it in transit?” Kat asked, but it seemed to take a moment for the woman to hear her words.

  “I’m sorry?” she asked.

  “Was it in transit?” Kat asked again, but she didn’t really wait for a reply. “No. Of course it wasn’t. If the egg wasn’t in your possession when it was stolen, then you wouldn’t be so embarrassed. So it was on your watch which means… You wouldn’t keep it here,” Kat said, looking around the small lobby of the charity’s headquarters and pointing toward the door. “I could have picked that lock when I was four, and the surveillance cameras downstairs don’t even record, so I doubt you’d risk storing a ten million dollar egg here, which means you probably arranged to store it somewhere far more secure. Was it in a bank vault?” Kat asked.

  It was far too easy to read the answer in the woman’s eyes, and Kat couldn’t help but smile. “Of course it was. But the bank wasn’t hit. If the bank had been hit then the authorities would be all over this, not to mention every insurance investigator and bounty hunter in Europe, so that means…”

  Kat trailed off and studied the woman. Her dark suit and darker eyes. This woman wasn’t just angry or embarrassed or mad at herself and the world. This woman felt guilty, and in Kat’s experience that usually meant one thing.

  The Magi Miracle Network hadn’t been robbed. The Magi Miracle Network had been conned. And in Kat’s world that made all the difference.

  “You gave it to him, didn’t you? Did he say he was with an auction house?” Kat asked, then almost immediately shook her head. “No. I’m betting he said he was…an appraiser.”

  Kat saw the woman start to crumble. Tears didn’t fall and her lip didn’t tremble, but her walls started to come down just the same. And at that moment, the head of the Magi Miracle Network looked angry enough to commit murder.

  “How did you know?” the woman asked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be ashamed or impressed.

  “If it were me, I wouldn’t steal the egg. I’d just get you to hand me ten million dollars and then I’d walk right out the door.”

  Hale smiled like it was the punch line to his all-time favorite joke. “Of course.”

  Kat eyed him. “It’s a classic for a reason.”

  “Do you think there was a roper?”

  “I don’t know. If it was combined with the Cat in the Hat then it could be a one-man job.”

  In unison, the two of them turned to the charity’s director, as if expecting her to jump right in, but she just shook her head.

  “I know you people are speaking English, but it doesn’t feel that way.” She squinted, as if staring into a too-bright light. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the girl who knows how she would do it. Which means I have a better-than-average understanding of how someone else would do it. Don’t worry, Ms. Evans. Whoever did this was a professional. Of that much I am sure. I know it isn’t much consolation, but if a person is smart enough and if they want something badly enough then there’s not much that good people can do to stop them. You’re blaming yourself, I know. But you shouldn’t. It really isn’t your fault.”

  Then she looked like she really would cry. Kat could tell that she wouldn’t let herself believe Kat’s words—not really, not yet. But she looked like perhaps someday she might and just that potential far-off someday was enough to make the woman smile.

  “Thank you. For saying that. But I don’t feel like a good person at the moment. Ever since this happened I’ve just felt stupid. It’s humiliating. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’ve never been conned before.”

  “Oh.” Kat couldn’t help but think about a cursed emerald and an old woman and a lie that had changed her life forever. “You’d be surprised.” The woman looked skeptical, but Kat talked on. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Elizabeth led them down a nondescript hall of the nondescript office. The only décor was a long line of stockings and even more black and white photos of smiling children surrounding trees. Kat tried to focus on why she and Hale were there. It wasn’t hard to remember with Hazel looking out from those black and white photographs, surrounded by children who were laughing, smiling. Happy.

  This grifter didn’t just take an egg. He stole Christmas itself from who knows how many children, and Kat knew she wasn’t doing this for Amelia anymore. She wasn’t even doing it for Hazel or Hale. She was doing it so she could sle
ep at night.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” the director admitted as she served tea and they all settled into chairs around a conference table in a small, serviceable room.

  “Anything you have to say will help,” Hale told her. He took a steaming cup from her hands and let his fingers brush against hers, not flirting, but a comforting touch. “Just start at the beginning.”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. She couldn’t face him as she said, “The earl’s man of business—an attorney named Allaway—contacted me a few weeks ago. The earl’s health is failing, he said. They fear he won’t live long into next year and they’re preparing his estate. Many of his assets are entailed—attached to the title, you know. Technically, they belong to the earldom itself and not the earl, so they will pass automatically to the new earl and cannot be sold. But there is some art, some land.”

  The woman took a deep breath. Kat could tell this felt like confession. It was going to be good for her soul.

  “And the egg…The egg was one of his personal assets. According to Mr. Allaway, the earl and his heir are not on good terms. His Lordship wished to donate as many of his personal assets as possible to various charities before it was too late. We were an obvious fit for one of the Eggs of the Magi.”

  “So the old boy is disinheriting everyone?” Hale said with a wry smile in Kat’s direction.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth admitted.

  Hale shrugged. “Sounds familiar.”

  Elizabeth turned to Kat as if perhaps she’d missed something. And, perhaps, she had. But now wasn’t the time for Kat to relay the events that followed Hazel’s death and the toll that took on Hale and his family. So, instead, Kat asked, “This man of business—Allaway—was the one who told you the earl was going to donate the egg?”

  “Yes. We went through the lawyers. It took several weeks, but eventually we signed the forms. The earl’s only stipulation was that the egg be auctioned before the end of the year—preferably before Christmas. That didn’t leave us much time, of course, but…”

  Elizabeth Evans looked down at her hands, picked at a fingernail. “I knew that call would be the most important of my career. I just didn’t know how.”

  “Why the rush?” Kat asked. “Surely this kind of thing would be far more successful if you had some time?”

  The woman seemed to ponder this, as if she’d spent a lot of time asking herself that very question. “I’m not certain,” she said at last. “I assumed it had something to do with taxes and estate laws. Everyone seems to think the old earl won’t live much longer. My understanding was that it needed to be done before he passed.”

  “So the lawyers knew the charity would have the egg. Plus this Mr. Allaway, the man of business?” Kat asked, returning to the only things that mattered.

  “Yes.” The woman nodded. “I suppose so.”

  “What happened next?” Kat asked. “After the forms were signed and the legalities were taken care of?”

  “We arranged for an armored truck to pick the egg up at the earl’s country seat near the Scottish border. They brought it to London and put it in a bank vault, like you said. And then…”

  She kept her gaze on her hands, and Kat saw the tension in them. Her knuckles turned white and she started to shake, not with grief but with rage.

  “And then I met him.”

  Kat didn’t want to rush her. Some things can only be done in their own time. And so Kat sat patiently, waiting, until Ms. Edwards said, “Then I met Robert Knightly.”

  For a moment, Kat felt all the air leave the room. It was like the windows of the office began to frost over and her breath began to fog. It didn’t feel like Christmas, just the dead of winter, when Kat said, “He said his name was Robert Knightly?”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Hale ease forward, sit straighter.

  “Yes.” Elizabeth looked between the two of them, something like hope shining in her eyes. “Does that mean something? Does it help? I assumed it was an alias as soon as he… I mean as soon as I realized the egg was…” She trailed off, then looked away again. “He was very charming.”

  Kat turned to Hale who had already raised one eyebrow. In a way, things had just become a lot worse and a lot better, simpler and far more complicated.

  “He was so very charming,” Elizabeth said again as if replaying every moment in her mind.

  “Oh,” Kat said. “I don’t doubt it.”

  Kat turned to look at Hale, who looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to break things. Kat was leaning toward the latter. A whole conversation happened in that look and Elizabeth Evans couldn’t help but see it.

  “Do you think there’s any way that is his real name?” she asked.

  “No.” Kat quickly shook her head. “I’m definitely sure it isn’t.” She cut the woman a shy smile. “But every little bit helps.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth’s confidence faltered a bit, but then she seemed to remember something. Kat watched her reach for a notebook, then flip to a page. “I sketched him. I’ve a little talent. Really, it’s more of a hobby, but… I made this. It wasn’t so hard. He was the sort of man who leaves an impression.”

  As she turned the pad toward Kat, she admitted. “He was handsome.”

  “The best ones always are,” Kat said, taking the drawing and looking down at dark hair and a strong jaw, eyes that even in a pencil sketch seemed to draw a person in and reveal all their secrets.

  He wore a goatee and glasses, and looked like a wise, kind professor, but Kat just had to shake her head as she turned the sketch to Hale.

  “Yeah,” he told Elizabeth. “I think we can find him.”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Kat wasn’t certain what was colder, Hale’s voice or the wind blowing off the Thames.

  “Hale—” she started but there was no way he was going to listen to any Bishop family excuses.

  “I know he’s your father, Kat. But he’s a dead man.”

  Darkness comes early in London in the middle of December, and all around them, lights were growing brighter as the sky grew darker and Kat shivered in spite of herself.

  She was happier than she would admit when Hale slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight against him.

  “He knows I’ve always loved the Eggs of the Magi, Hale. After Mom died, I got obsessed with them for a little while, and he knows that. It’s not his—”

  “If you say ‘fault,’ Kat, then you and I are going to have a problem.”

  They stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, shoppers and commuters passing them by like a blur.

  Kat pulled away. She had to look him in the eye when she said, “Style, Hale. I was going to say it’s not his style. To steal from a charity?” Kat didn’t try to keep the dismay from her voice. “It’s against the rules, and he knows it.”

  “Yeah.” Hale’s voice was colder than the wind. “And Bobby Bishop has never broken the rules before.”

  “He doesn’t break these rules.”

  “You have to know the rules to break them; isn’t that what Uncle Eddie always says?”

  “Yes,” Kat admitted. “But this is a different kind of rule, Hale. It was Mom’s kind of rule,” Kat admitted. “And it just doesn’t feel like him.”

  Hale turned and looked out over the river.

  Big Ben stood tall in the distance. The London Eye was still turning. Life went on, time still passed. There were twinkle lights on trees and boughs of greenery strung across bridges, but somehow it no longer felt like Christmas.

  “Do you know another Robert Knightly who looks like this?” Hale asked, holding out the sketch that Kat had insisted they take from Elizabeth Evans, partly to keep the woman from growing suspicious. Partly to keep her from showing it to anyone else. Especially Amelia Bennett.

  “Let’s just find him,” Kat said. “Let’s just see what he has to say, and…”

  “Kill him?” Hale guessed.

  “And see,” Kat said.
r />   But Hale shook his head. For the first time in a long time, Kat remembered that even W. W. Hale V, the new head of Hale Industries and the most natural inside man that she had ever known, was human.

  He was a boy.

  And he was hurting. She heard it when he said, “You thought I did it.”

  “I never said—”

  “You did. You thought I’d steal from Hazel’s charity to help you complete your collection.” It sounded like an accusation. Like a threat. He sidled closer. “Now tell me the truth, Kitty Kat. Do you really think your father would be able to resist stealing the mate to your mother’s prized possession?”

  Kat stood silent in the cold wind, not wanting to think about the answer.

  Eight Days Before the Auction

  Sydney, Australia

  It’s not supposed to be sunny in December. People in tank tops and sundresses shouldn’t be carrying packages wrapped in big red bows and wishing people Merry Christmas.

  But Kat was no longer in the holiday spirit.

  Hale had traded a cashmere coat for a light suit and dark glasses. His dark hair was freshly cut and he had a whole new purpose—a new drive—as they followed the man through the park.

  Kat wanted to call out. Maybe in warning. Maybe in greeting. Or maybe she just wanted to stomp her feet and demand that everybody play nice, but she stayed quiet beside Hale, following his footsteps and his lead, until they turned a corner and ran—literally—into her dad.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, his voice deep and full of mischief.

  Kat wanted to run into his arms and have him swing her around like she was still a little girl. But Hale looked like he wanted to sucker punch him hard in the gut, so she put herself between them, just as Hale said, “Not for everyone.”

  Maybe Bobby knew Hale well enough to read his eyes or his tone. Maybe he knew this encounter was coming the moment he walked into the Magi Miracle Network and turned on his considerable charm.