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“No,” said Cleve. “We had eyes there too.” A separate team, unknown to these men. Men who he suddenly didn’t trust. “Somewhere between the Sweet Celestia arriving at Greville’s and being placed in my hand, the stone was switched.”
“Not by us,” said Ajax. “Boss, why would we do that?”
Cleve stalked to the wide terrace and looked out over the lush green rice paddies. Why would they? No one got a payday for snatching a fake stone. “It has to be someone on the photo shoot crew. Someone we haven’t vetted. A last-minute addition.”
“There’s no one, boss,” said Ajax.
Except the girl. She was a replacement, but they’d had time to do a detailed background search on her. She’d checked out. But she was an awkward model, a disaster, clearly uncomfortable with the tight dress and the sky-high shoes.
Heavily jeweled shoes.
Which she’d left Greville’s with.
“It’s the fucking girl.” She wasn’t comic relief—she was a thieving virtuoso. Who the fuck was she? Because she wasn’t Melody Solo, model.
“We checked her out, boss. Plus, she didn’t have much going on up top,” Gus said, tapping the side of his head.
“Find her,” he said, and went to his office, sat at his desk and opened the file from the photo shoot.
He watched the girl enter the room, suffer her arms and legs being manipulated into position on the lounge. He watched her take the stone in her hands with none of the awkwardness of everything else she did. She handled the Sweet Celestia like a pro. He hadn’t noticed that before, like he hadn’t noticed that the main jewel in the arrangement on the toes of her shoes was the exact size and color of Celestia.
He was an idiot. It was bait and fucking switch, the oldest con in the books. He moved the recording to the moment of her fall, and sat forward. That’s when she’d done it. Her knees folded, one hand went to the ground, the one holding Celestia went to her shoe, and in a rapid sleight of hand as she went sprawling, she swapped the stones over, dropping the fake to make sure everyone focused on the stone and not on her.
He sat back, shocked, impressed. It was genius. She’d simply walked out of Greville’s with the diamond in her carry bag.
He framed a close-up of her face and filled his screen with it. She might not be a real blonde. She was so thin, she was all sharp cheekbones, nose and chin. Melody Solo, was that her real name? Her eyes were a violet blue color, but they were clearly contacts now that he studied them.
She’d laughed like Aria. But Aria had disappeared, dropped out. He’d tried for years to find her. She was probably married and fat with a dozen kids in the suburbs, embarrassed about her background, inventing a new life
for herself far from trouble.
She’d laughed like Aria, but she couldn’t be Aria. The last time he’d seen Aria she’d had her septum pierced and an angel stud in her cheekbone. She’d had a plug in one ear and two snakebites on her bottom lip. Was this woman’s skin beneath the makeup flawless, or would he find the tiny indentations left from abandoned piercings?
“We’ve found her, boss. She boarded a British Airways flight to London under the name Archie Peggio and checked in to a hotel off Oxford Street, but using the name Beat Cornet. She’s still there.”
Melody Solo, Archie Peggio, Beat Cornet. The one thing Donald Harp had allowed his daughter to learn about his side business was identity forgery. That’s why he hadn’t been able to find Aria. She didn’t want to be found.
“Santino, did she have any scars—top lip, ear, cheekbone?”
“Yes, boss.” He touched his cheekbone. “Tiny. She’s had a piercing, but long ago.”
“She’s not a real blonde?”
Gus made a face and shrugged. “I’m not a real hairdresser.”
“Any other AKAs? Any of them made up from musical terms?”
“Think she might also use the name Belle Canto and Allegro Bass,” said Ajax. “What are you thinking, boss?”
That he needed to be in London. That Melody Solo, Archie Peggio, Beat Cornet, Belle Canto and Allegro Bass had stolen something more precious than the Sweet Celestia from him.
That when he’d long stopped looking, hoping, Aria Viola Harp had found him.
Chapter Five
What was it about a career making score that turned a girl to mush? Weeping alone in bed, thinking she’d trade that success for one kiss from the bastard Shadow’s lips. Insanity. In the cold light of what was supposed to be a London summer day but was wet and cold, Aria felt ashamed of herself for thinking like that for even one second.
Cleve’s kisses had never been that good anyway. He’d only been enthusiastic because she was forbidden fruit and he liked her tongue stud. She’d had better. Not that she could remember when or who right now, but it would come to her. Just like her own hair color came to her in an expensive Knightsbridge salon, with a sense of relief.
