Mayor of the Universe by Lorna Landvik

Author:Lorna Landvik [Landvik, Lorna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
ISBN: 9781452943312
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2014-09-14T22:00:00+00:00

The vanity and armoires, dressers, and end tables had first been used by French royalty centuries past (carved on the inside of one drawer were the words Martine aime le roi) and among the portraits of ancestors were several small paintings—a Manet, a Monet, and one by the niece of the bedroom’s occupant. It was odd that this watercolor of limp daisies should engross Deke Drake, a connoisseur of fine art, but looking closely one would see that it wasn’t the artistry of the painting that intrigued him but its more utilitarian purpose. The painting served as a door opening to a safe, a safe that was being successfully cracked.

Party music from a small combo rhumbaed up the wide staircase and slunk under the bedroom door as he turned the lock.

He had decided he was not going to be a jewel thief to work by cover of darkness; at this moment light from a central chandelier and two bedside lamps lit his efforts. An invited guest of the party downstairs, he hadn’t yet announced his presence, instead slipping in through the servants’ entry and up the back staircase, walking softly to Marjorie Allen’s bedroom.

Ah, Marjorie, he thought, admiring the dowager’s taste as he took a string of pearls that had been scraped out of the shells of dozens of discriminating oysters and a cuff necklace containing eight rows of diamonds that seemed to sparkle and wink at Deke in conspiratorial delight. There was a ruby ring and emerald earrings, and the thief filled the false bottom of his doctor’s bag with all of them, and when his pillaging was through, he shut the safe door and closed the hinged painting of the flaccid daisies.

Not ready to have his relatively new career foiled by a moment’s carelessness, he looked around the room as he padded across the cushiony carpet, making certain no monogrammed handkerchief or cigarette lighter had fallen from his pocket. Passing an ornately framed mirror, he ignored his handsome, youthful reflection and slipped down the servant stairs and out the back door, walking to his car where he safely locked the doctor’s bag in the trunk of his Dusenberg.

Briskly he walked back to the mansion and into the party.

“Why, Deke, you’re late!” scolded Marjorie Allen, sidling up to him as soon as he reached for a flute of champagne from a passing waiter.

“Sorry, I had some last-minute business to attend to. A crisis in Cairo.”

“Oh, Deke, you work too hard.”

“And that’s why I play as hard as I do.”

The elder woman’s smile was filled with coquettishness and paper-white dentures. “Then I must invite you into my sandbox soon!”

Deke wiggled his eyebrows and they shared a laugh, and then Barbette Thigpin of the Thigpin Box and Crates fortune asked Marjorie if she’d pretty-please sacrifice Mr. Drake for one moment so that she might dance with him. She spilled a little of her champagne on Deke’s dinner jacket but made up for it by pressing her breasts, sheathed in baby blue

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