Let Me Call You Sweetheart

57

Jason Arnott could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. He had spent the day in New York with fifty-two-year-old Vera Shelby Todd, trailing after her as she took him on her endless hunt for Persian carpets.

Vera had phoned him that morning and asked if he could be available for the day. A Rhode Island Shelby, she lived in one of the handsome manor houses in Tuxedo Park and was used to getting her way. After her first husband died, she had married Stuart Todd but decided to keep the Tuxedo Park place. Now, using Todd’s seemingly unlimited checkbook, Vera frequently availed herself of Jason’s infallible eye for rare finds and bargains.

Jason had first met Vera not in New Jersey, but at a gala the Shelbys gave in Newport. Her cousins had introduced them, and when Vera realized how relatively close he lived to her Tuxedo Park home, she had begun inviting him to her parties and eagerly accepting invitations to his gatherings as well.

It always amused Jason that Vera had told him every detail of the police investigation into the Newport robbery he had committed years ago.

“My cousin Judith was so upset,” she had confided. “She couldn’t understand why someone would take the Picasso and the Gainsborough and pass up the Van Eyck. So she brought in some art expert, and he said that she had a discriminating criminal:

The Van Eyck is a fake. Judith was furious, but for the rest of us who had had to listen to her bragging about her peerless knowledge of the great masters, it’s become a family joke.”

Today, after having exhaustively examined ludicrously expensive rugs ranging from Turkomans to Safavids, with Vera finding none of them to be exactly what she had in mind, Jason was wild to get home and away from her.

But first, at her insistence they had a late lunch at The Four Seasons, and that pleasant interlude perked Jason up considerably. At least until, as she finished her espresso, Vera had said, “Oh, did I forget to tell you? You remember how five years ago my cousin Judith’s place in Rhode Island was burglarized?”

Jason had pursed his lips. “Yes, of course I do. Terrible experience.”

Vera nodded. “I should say. But yesterday Judith got a photograph from the FBI. There was a recent burglary in Chevy Chase, and a hidden camera caught the robber. The FBI thinks it may be the same person who broke into Judith’s house and dozens of others.”

Jason had felt every nerve in his body tingle. He had only met Judith Shelby a few times and hadn’t seen her at all in almost five years. Obviously she hadn’t recognized him. Yet.

“Was it a clear picture?” he asked casually.

Vera laughed. “No, not at all. I mean from what Judith says, it’s in profile and the lighting is bad and a stocking mask was pushed up on the guy’s forehead but was still covering his head. She said she could just about make out something of the nose and mouth. She threw it out.”

Jason stifled a spontaneous sigh of relief, although he knew he had nothing to celebrate. If the photo went out to the Shelbys, it probably also went out to dozens of others whose homes he had broken into.

“But I think Judith is finally over her Van Eyck incident,” Vera continued. “According to the information with the photograph, that man is considered dangerous. He’s wanted for questioning in the murder of Congressman Peale’s mother. She apparently stumbled in on him during a robbery at her house. Judith almost went home early the night her place was burglarized. Just think what might have happened if she’d found him there.”

Nervously, Jason pursed his lips. They had tied him to the Peale death!

When they left The Four Seasons, they shared a taxi to the garage on West Fifty-seventh Street where both had parked. After an effusive good-bye and Vera’s strident promise, “We’ll just keep looking. The perfect rug for me is out there somewhere,” Jason was at last on his way home to Alpine.

How indistinct was the picture the hidden camera had taken of him? he wondered as he drove in the steadily moving afternoon traffic up the Henry Hudson Parkway. Would someone look at it and find that it reminded him, or her, of Jason Arnott?

Should he cut and run? he asked himself as he crossed the George Washington Bridge and turned onto the Palisades Parkway. No one knew about the place in the Catskills. He owned it under an assumed name. Under other alternate identities, he had plenty of money in negotiable securities. He even had a fake passport. Maybe he should leave the country immediately.

On the other hand, if the picture was as indistinguishable as Judith Shelby found it, even if some people saw a resemblance to him, they would find it patently absurd to tie him to a theft.

By the time Jason exited onto the road into Alpine, he had made up his mind. With the exception of this photograph, he was almost sure he had left no tracks, no fingerprints. He had been extremely careful, and his caution had paid off. He simply couldn’t give up his wonderful lifestyle just because of what might happen. He had never been a fearful man. If he had been, he certainly wouldn’t have lived this life for so many years.

No, he would not panic. He would just sit tight. But no more jobs for a long time, he promised himself. He didn’t need the money, and this was a warning.

He got home at quarter of four and went through the mail. One envelope caught his eye and he slit it open, pulled out the contents-a single sheet of paper-studied it, and burst out laughing.

Surely no one would link him to that vaguely comical figure with the stocking mask pushed up and the grainy caricature of a profile literally inches away from the copy of the Rodin figurine.

“Vive le junk,” Jason exclaimed. He settled in the den for a nap. Vera’s constant stream of talk had exhausted him. When he awoke, it was just time for the six o’clock news. He reached for the remote control and turned on the set.

The lead story was that Jimmy Weeks’ codefendant, Barney Haskell, was rumored to be cutting a deal with the attorney general.

Nothing like the deal I could cut, Jason thought. It was a comforting reminder. But of course it would never happen.