Thieves Like Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

make the same mistake she had with Banner.
    “I really would like to hear what you know about the necklace.”
    “It’ll be best if I can use the Internet.”
    That meant letting him in her house. “Okay,” she agreed, telling herself it was for educational purposes only.
    The laptop was where she’d left it on the coffee table. Beside it, her large black-and-white cat sprawled in a pool of sunlight. She shooed him away while Rocky stripped off his suit coat and adjusted his vest before sitting down and tapping at the keys. For a moment she let her mind go fuzzy. He did the corporate look so well, it was hard to picture him in his stupid Hawaiian shirts. The man was a chameleon. Probably a good quality in a thief, but not in a . . . whatever he was to her. Acquaintance.
    After only ten seconds of searching, he turned the screen toward her. “There’s your necklace.”
    She sat beside him, studying the picture on the screen. The ugly necklace was laid out on black velvet, twinkling from every gold link that showed between the small pearls. The pendant glowed with rich red tones.
    “How can there be a picture of it if it disappeared before the invention of the camera?”
    “It’s a copy.” He stroked the cat, who had settled on the couch beside him. “Most famous jewels and jewelry are copied. Now look at this.”
    He reached across her and clicked open another window. Now the necklace was the central piece in an arrangement of matching jewels—two earrings, a ring, and a brooch. Red stones shone on all the pearl-encrusted gold pieces, but none as large as the one in the necklace. “Have you ever seen any of those?”
    She shook her head. “Were those stolen, too?”
    “Yes, all at the same time. And they most likely went to the same collector.”
    “So where are they now?”
    “No one knows. They could have been passed down through generations, but it’s more likely that whoever stole them cared more for money than gems and sold them through underground connections. They could have traveled the world several times since their theft as they changed hands. How they popped up now is the million-dollar question. Or, I should say, millions of dollars.”
    He had to be kidding. “For those ugly things?”
    “For the
Pellinni Jewels.
What’s this guy’s name?” He scratched a furry cheek in what the cat obviously thought was just the right spot.
    “Jingles,” she told him absently, looking at the computer screen.
    He winced. “Sorry, man,” he commiserated, scratching Jingles’s other cheek. The cat purred while Janet hunched forward to examine the earrings. Passably pretty, she decided. The ring and brooch were downright ugly.
    “Why is it so valuable?”
    “Large spinels are rare. The Pellinni is thought to be forty-two carats, but it’s only an estimate because accurate measurements weren’t available until the early twentieth century, and by that time it was long gone.”
    She stared at the necklace that she’d shoved in the back of her lingerie drawer a year ago, not even bothering to put it in the safe as Banner had instructed. Millions of dollars? She turned to cast a curious look over her shoulder. “How do you know about some Italian jewelry collection that’s a few hundred years old?”
    “Over six hundred years. And it started out Italian, but it’s actually considered German.”
    Janet sat back, waiting for the explanation.
    Bending toward Jingles’s furry head, he said, “He’s pretending not to be impressed with my wealth of knowledge.”
    She tried not to smile, which was difficult while he massaged her cat into a purring, drooling state of bliss. Not that she’d let it influence her, but the cat had disliked Banner, with what she suspected was good reason.
    Jingles flopped over, shamelessly begging for more attention as Rocky talked. “A rich Florentine bride, Giovanna Pellinni, brought it with her as part of her dowry when she married a German nobleman, Franz Konig. That was