Sweet Revenge

back. “That is British.”
    “We are what we are. There are assorted cousins, of course, some of them very grand, and a few sinister types. Then, there’s Great-Grandmama; she was a bit of a strumpet who married into the family despite heated objections, then proceeded to rule with an iron hand.”
    “You missed having a big family.”
    “Perhaps I did. In any case, they fill out the gallery nicely. The parlor opens up into the garden. Since it suited the house, I went with very formal, very neat arrangements.Hoses, rhododendron, lilacs, lilies. There are hedges of yews and a grove of ash to the west, where a little stream rims. There’s wild thyme there, and wood violets that get as big around as my thumb.”
    She could almost smell it. “Why did you buy it? You don’t seem like the sort of man to go in for quiet evenings by the fire or walks through the woods.”
    “There’s a time for everything. I bought it so I’d be ready when I decided to settle down and become a pillar of the community.”
    “Is that your goal?”
    “My goal’s always been comfort.” He shrugged and drained his bottle. “I learned young that to find comfort on the streets of London, you had to take what you could take, and be quicker about it than the next.” He settled the bottle on the sand beside him. “I was quicker.”
    “You were a legend. No, don’t grin at me, you were. Every time something spectacular was stolen, the rumors started that it was a EC. job. The de Marco collection, for instance.”
    He grinned, watching the spray rise up at her back. “Are you fishing?”
    “Did you take it?” She straightened when he only smiled and reached for a cigarette. “Well, did you?”
    “The de Marco collection,” he mused. “One of the finest examples of diamonds and precious stones in Milan, or anywhere, for that matter.”
    “I know what it was! Did you take it?”
    He settled back as a storyteller might in front of a roaring fire. “The museum had the best security available on that exhibit. Light sensors, heat sensors, a weight-sensitive alarm. The floor was wired for twenty feet around the exhibit. The exhibit itself was in a glass dome that was considered virtually impenetrable.”
    “I know all that.” Spray flew up and dashed her hair. “How did you do it? I heard dozens of conflicting reports.”
    “Did you ever see
Royal Wedding
, the one where Astaire dances on the ceiling?”
    “Yes, but that was movie magic through trick camera work. I’ll concede that you’re clever, but not that clever.”
    “Getting in was just a matter of having the right uniformand forging the right identification. Once in, I had two hours before the guard made rounds. It took me a quarter of that just to crawl up the wall and over the ceiling.”
    “If you don’t want to tell me how you did it, just say so.”
    “I am telling you. You finished with that?” He took the bottle from her and drank. “Suction cups. Not quite the hardware store variety, but the same concept. It gives you insight into how a fly feels.”
    “You stuck yourself to the ceiling?”
    “More or less. They wouldn’t hold, of course, for the whole job. I rigged a trapeze into the ceiling with toggle bolts. I remember hanging by my knees over all those shiny rocks. I couldn’t even afford to sweat. I had a carbide bit drill packed in Styrofoam to muffle the noise. When I got through the glass, the real work started. I had stones in my pouch the exact weight of the various pieces in the collection. Piece by piece, I switched. You had to be fast and very sure. More than a fraction of a second without the right weight, and the alarm would go. It took almost an hour, with the blood rushing to my head and my lingers going numb. Then I swung out on the trapeze and landed outside the alarm field. I remember that it felt as though someone were shooting arrows into my legs when I landed. I could barely crawl. That was the worst part and one I’d failed to calculate.” He could laugh now, looking back. “I sat there in a heap, beating on my legs to get the circulation going again and visualizing myself caught, not because I wasn’t good enough, but because my bloody legs had gone to sleep.”
    With her head pillowed on sea grass, Adrianne laughed with him. “What did you do?”
    “I pictured myself in a cell, then made a very fast and very inelegant exit, mostly on my hands and knees. By the time the alarm was given, I was soaking in the tub at my