The Apple Orchard

Fifteen



Each day on his way to work, Dominic drove past the airpark where people kept their private jets and airplanes. Sometimes he dreamed about flying, soaring on his memories of the speed and power of flight. The aircraft here were a far cry from the high-tech Prowlers he used to pilot in the navy, but even the little Cessnas and Otters at the airpark caught at him. A couple of clients sometimes let him use their birds for the price of fuel. Just the sensation of leaving the earth, even for a little while, reminded him of who he used to be and the dreams he used to dream.

That had been a different life, and it had happened to a different person. And then, in an instant, everything had imploded—the house of cards that had been his navy career had come crashing down, both literally and figuratively, taking his marriage as collateral damage.

He didn’t miss that life, though, and had no regrets about relegating it to the past, closing it like a novel he’d finished and left behind in an airport lounge. His rebuilt life was designed to keep him close to his kids. Close, and out of harm’s way.

So if he felt a twinge when he pulled into the bank parking lot each day, and stepped through the doors of his glass-walled office, he had only to remember how much his son and daughter needed him to be this person, this rock of stability and predictability.

He missed the flying, though. Man, did he like flying a plane.

Taking out his phone, he scowled at the latest text message from his ex-wife. It had been sitting on his phone screen like a dormant virus, waiting for a response. Can you stay for dinner when you pick up the kids tonight?

This was her latest thing. Apparently Lourdes had dumped yet another boyfriend and was back to trying to reconcile with Dominic. She did this periodically. For the sake of the kids, he handled the situation with as much compassion as he could muster, knowing his ex-wife’s attention would wander away soon enough. He just wished she would stop planting seeds of false hope in the children, particularly Trini. They were already scarred by the divorce, and Lourdes’s manipulation simply reopened old wounds.

He sent her a simple No, thanks and scrolled through his agenda for the day. Underwriters and regulators didn’t amount to a lot of excitement, but he reminded himself that mortgage lending had its upside. A guy could do worse than help people buy their homes. Some days, when he enabled a hardworking couple to qualify for their first mortgage, when he saw the look on their faces as they signed the papers, he felt like a latter-day George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, dispensing dreams to deserving people.

Other days, he thought, as the Bella Vista white SUV swung into the space beside him, he felt like Mr. Potter from the same movie, crushing hopes like a bug under a boot heel.

Tess Delaney got out of the car with her characteristic ball-of-energy movements—thumb skimming over her phone screen, the other hand jamming a sheaf of papers into her oversize handbag. To Dominic, it seemed the woman was never still. Which was probably a good thing for him, because if she slowed down for about two seconds, she might figure out that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Her appeal went deeper than looks, though her long red hair and that pale, expressive face were enough to stop any guy in his tracks. There was something else about her. There were things about her that he couldn’t stop thinking about. Lots of things.

Don’t go there, he told himself. That way lies madness. He’d been the walking dead after his divorce. He’d tried to connect with other women since, and God knew, women had tried to connect with him. Nothing ever came of it, though.

He did want to be in love again—but on his terms, with someone who made sense in his life, not with someone like Tess Delaney. She was an unlikely candidate, anyway, given that he was in charge of foreclosure proceedings on her grandfather’s place, and she was pursuing some supercharged career in the city. But damn.

She woke him up in ways he hadn’t anticipated. It was no surprise that she turned him on, not with those looks and that attitude. The surprise was that she lit him up, made his heart remember what it was like to love someone.

He wasn’t about to try explaining that to her, though. She wasn’t ready to hear it. Yet he found himself intrigued by that busy restless energy and the way it concealed a side of her that was soulful and soft, something he’d only glimpsed a time or two. He’d seen that side of her when she’d visited Magnus. She’d seemed as if she was in another realm for a moment. Not this moment, though. Right now, she looked as if she’d eaten roofing nails for breakfast.

“I don’t have an appointment,” she said, barely looking at him as she headed for the door. “So you’re going to have to make time for me right away.”

Maybe the appeal was in her personal charm, he thought, holding open the door for her. Yeah, right. “Good morning to you, too,” he said.

She paused for half a second. “I think it might be. Maybe.”

“Tea?” he offered. “There’s a selection of herbal—”

“Coffee,” she insisted. “Black, with sugar. Refined sugar, or is that against the law in this town?”

His assistant, Azar, gave a nod and headed to the staff room. Dominic gestured toward his office. “Have a seat.”

She glanced around. “Wow, how do you get any work done in this space?”

His workspace was as neat as hers was messy. He liked to think he wasn’t freaky about it. Just practical. Life was too short to spend his time trying to find stuff.

“Believe me, work is all I do in this space.” There had been a time when work had consumed his life, with no boundaries between duty and personal hours. These days he was strict about keeping bankers’ hours. The rest of his time was taken up by kids and grapes.

“It makes it easier to find what you’re looking for. Plus, when you work in a glass office where the whole world can see you, it’s best not to look like a slob.”

“Better to look OCD?”

“Ha, ha.”

“There is not a single personal item in this space. Hey, maybe you’re sick in the head, like me.”

“My personal stuff doesn’t belong at work.”

“Seriously, not even a photo of your kids?”

“I know what they look like.” There was more to it than that. He had strong reasons not to put his daughter and son on display, but he would not go into it with Tess. He hit the power button on his computer. “Now, besides admitting to my undiagnosed mental illness, what can I do for you?”

Her expression lit up, and for a second, the breath left him. That inner fire of passion, burning so close to the surface, completely entranced him.

“I’ve found something,” she said. “Isabel and I—we’ve found something. It could turn this whole situation around.”

Dominic tried not to allow his inner skeptic to kick in. He didn’t point out that he’d been trying to turn the Bella Vista situation around for years, literally. “I’m all ears,” he said.

Tess studied him. There was a world of knowledge in the look she gave him. He wasn’t fooling her for a second. “Right,” she said; then her gaze shifted to the ceiling. “This bank is filled with cameras.”

“It’s a bank.”

“Can we go outside? Maybe take a walk?”

He glanced at the clock. He usually spent his first hour at the office dealing with email and reports, research and market studies. Tess Delaney was a lot more interesting than email and reports.

“Let’s go,” he said and held the door for her.

The bank was situated at one end of the town’s main street, which bore the overly auspicious name of The Grand Promenade. It was a boulevard with a park in the center, shaded by plane trees and lined with benches for whiling the day away. The rich smells of autumn spiced the air—drying leaves and flowers going to seed, wood smoke from someone’s chimney.

“What do you know about Magnus’s past?” she asked him suddenly.

“Why do you ask?”

“Humor me. I might be onto something.”

“What you heard at the gathering at Bella Vista just about sums it up. Magnus isn’t the kind of guy to dwell on the past. And he seems more focused on putting things behind him rather than putting up a struggle. The health insurance dispute’s a perfect example. He focused on his wife’s treatment, and after she was gone, he didn’t have any fight left in him.”

“I don’t get it at all,” said Tess. “Why not fight back when his entire life’s work is at stake?”

“That kind of struggle can wear a guy down.” Dominic had developed an intimate understanding of this as he’d dragged himself through his divorce. Lourdes was a lawyer who knew everyone in the local legal community, and she’d brought up every possible dispute. He’d reached a point where he wanted it to be over rather than fairly settled. Letting himself dwell on the inequitable settlement would only keep him shackled to the past, to the failed marriage and to mistakes he couldn’t change. Such things could eat you alive from the inside out if you let them. Ultimately, you had to let go.

They reached the town plaza, where the center strip of the boulevard widened into the big sculpture park in the middle of town. There were a few people around at this hour, but for the most part, the park was deserted.

She gestured at a concrete table in the shade. Some impulse of chivalry made him stand aside, placing his hand lightly on her waist as she took a seat. The casual touch startled the hell out of him. That subtle feminine curve, the light flowery scent of her hair, reminded him of just how agonizingly long it had been since he’d been close to a woman.

“Are you all right?” asked Tess.

“Fine. Why?”

“You look like you’re in pain.”

He cleared his throat. “So, what is it you don’t want the bank cameras to record?”

She leaned toward him, and the breeze played with her hair. “There’s news. We found something.” Her eyes caught the light through the canopy of leaves overhead. He watched the glint of shifting sunlight in her red-gold locks. There was nothing sexier than red hair on a woman, he thought. He was fascinated by her energy, the passion that lit her face as she opened a folder on the table in front of him—copies of an old photograph, a yellowed letter in a foreign language and a diagram showing what appeared to be a family tree. Excitement transformed her from a harried, impatient woman into someone he found more captivating than ever. Not to mention the way her sweater fit. It was hard not to just sit there and stare at her...assets.

“Hey,” she said, “I need you to pay attention.”

“I am,” he protested.

“To what I’m showing you, not to my boobs.”

“I wasn’t—” He stopped himself. He was a lousy liar. Guilty as charged.

Her eyes narrowed, and she straightened her top. “I mean it.”

“Sorry. I’m listening,” he assured her. And this time, he wasn’t kidding. If she had a solution to the dilemma, he sure as hell wanted to hear it.

“Does—did—Magnus have a safe deposit box at the bank?”

“No. Not at my bank, anyway. Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Treasure,” she said simply, as if it were the most common thing in the world. In her world, maybe it was. “That’s what I want to show you. This old photo is from 1940, taken in Copenhagen. It’s a shot of Magnus and his grandfather, Christian Johansen. Isabel and I found it in a box of old photos and memorabilia.”

He studied the smiling boy in the picture, then looked up at Tess. “The family resemblance is pretty incredible. He looks like he could be your brother, and the grandfather is a twin of Magnus in his later years.”

“Really?” For a moment, unguarded pleasure lit her eyes, and a blush stained her cheeks. Dominic was kind of crazy about the way she blushed so much. He liked that it made her seem a little vulnerable. Or open, maybe.

“I’m happy for you, Tess,” Dominic said. “Finding a treasure is all in a day’s work for you. It’s not every day you find yourself a family.”

At that, she bridled, narrowing her eyes and folding her arms in a self-protective gesture.

Oops, thought Dominic. Way to put your foot in it.

“That’s not what I need you to focus on,” she said. “It’s this.” She pointed to an object in the photograph, then took out a digital enlargement showing it bigger. “I enhanced the image so we could see more detail.”

“Looks like some kind of knickknack or figurine.” If anyone besides Tess were showing it to him, he would dismiss what she was saying. But Tess was in the business of finding treasure. “Judging by the expression on your face, I’m thinking it’s something more than that,” he added. Thinking about Magnus and Eva, about Isabel, and all that had happened, he wanted it to be. “Please tell me this is like one of those rare baseball cards and it’s going to save the day.”

“I don’t deal with baseball cards. That’s my colleague Jude’s department.” She tapped her hand on the enhanced photo. “This is more like a deck of rare baseball cards. A million decks.”

“Now you’re talking.”

She took another document from her seemingly bottomless handbag. “It’s a Fabergé egg,” she said. “You’ve heard of them, right?”

“Sure. Tell me more.”

“The House of Fabergé was founded by Gustav Fabergé in Russia in the 1800s. He married a Danish woman, and their son Carl’s work caught the attention of the Tsar, who commissioned an Easter egg from him each year to present as a gift to the Empress, or to commemorate an event—like marriages, coronations, births, that sort of thing. The artist had complete creative freedom. The only stipulation was that the egg contain a surprise inside.” She took out a small figurine. “So far, we have this.”

He studied the small angel. “This is the surprise?”

“I believe so, yes. The eggs were made of solid gold and precious stones. This is alabaster. We found it among Magnus’s things.” She showed him some printouts of more recent photos of insanely elaborate eggs. They looked like clocks, like Cinderella’s coach, like the Kremlin itself. They looked like stuff old ladies ordered from the back of Parade Magazine.

“I have to admit, I’m not an aficionado.”

“The originals are rare and worth a fortune,” Tess said. “The rarest of all are the Imperial Eggs, created for the Romanovs—the Russian Imperial family. Only fifty-four were ever produced, and of those, only forty-two have survived. After the 1917 revolution, a lot of the treasures were confiscated and stored in the Hermitage. Some of them went missing from there. An undiscovered Imperial Egg is like the Holy Grail to collectors.”

“What do you mean, undiscovered? Were they stolen or hidden?”

“During the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, most of the Imperial Eggs were confiscated and moved to the Kremlin Armory to be cataloged and stored. By the time Joseph Stalin began selling them in 1927, some had disappeared from the inventory. Others were sold to private collectors, who usually insisted upon anonymity. In all, eight of the Imperial Eggs are currently considered lost.”

She regarded him with those fiery eyes and smiled briefly. “Sorry. I get wonky about this stuff.”

“Go on. I’m intrigued.”

“If this is what I think it is, it’s known as the Angel.” She indicated the figurine, small and smooth and exquisite as he held it in his hand. “It was designed to commemorate the birth of a daughter of Nikolai and Maria Romanov. Since she was their only child, born when her mother was forty, the assumption is that her birth was considered something of a miracle.”

“No kidding.” Every birth was a miracle, thought Dominic. He still remembered the incredible feeling of holding a newborn in his arms, studying the tiny limbs and features. He’d wanted more than two kids, but Lourdes, perhaps with a prescience he didn’t possess, had her tubes tied after Trini. “So how did it end up with Magnus and his grandfather?”

She handed him another piece of paper, this one a color copy of what appeared to be a receipt of some sort. “This letter—it’s in Russian—explains it. Magnus’s grandfather was a physician. Nikolai was living in exile in Copenhagen, and his daughter was ill. According to this letter, Dr. Johansen saved her life, and Nikolai gave him the egg as a token of gratitude, and because he lacked the cash to pay him. I need for you to understand what this means. Ninety percent of my job involves tracing the provenance of an object. In this case, I have the clear chain of ownership right in front of me. This almost never happens. There are no ambiguities in its lineage. None. Curators would kill for this kind of provenance. It’s perfect. You almost never get such a concise letter and a receipt, so obviously Nikolai knew what he was doing. He gave Dr. Johansen proof that the egg wasn’t stolen or transferred illegally. A find like this...it could be exactly what’s needed to bail out Magnus and Isabel.”

He noticed she didn’t include herself in the bailout plan.

“So what’s the value of this egg?” He couldn’t imagine how a knickknack could cover Magnus’s debts.

“At this point I can only estimate. Just for a point of reference, in 2007, a Fabergé egg once owned by the Rothschilds sold for £8.9 million. There was another, called the Winter Egg, which sold for $9.6 million. And these two eggs hadn’t been missing for ninety years. The publicity alone for finding one of the lost Imperial Eggs would elevate the final price to...an impressive level. To say the least. The record amount paid for an egg—and it wasn’t even an Imperial Egg—was $17.7 million, by a Russian collector named Ivanov.”

He stared at her. “You’re kidding. You’re not kidding.”

“It’s my job to know these things.”

“That’s crazy.”

“To most people, yes. But based on a piece’s uniqueness and rarity, the value can go off the charts. This particular piece has something more. It’s been lost for generations. A new discovery can amp up the excitement that builds around an item. There was a lost van Gogh that resurfaced in Amsterdam last year that went for a hundred million.”

“You’re throwing a lot of numbers around,” Dominic pointed out. “Best guess.”

She eyed him with something like admiration. “Twenty million. Just remember, this isn’t an exact science.”

He said nothing but felt an inner leap of hope. He couldn’t show this to her, though. Not yet.

His silence must have made her nervous. She placed a hand on his arm. “It’s not a lie. I’m not saying this to get you to put a stop to the foreclosure.”

He liked the feel of her hand resting on his arm. He liked her. She was a prickly, impatient woman, still a relative stranger, but there was something about her that completely challenged and intrigued him.

As if sensing his thoughts, she took her hand away.

“Why wouldn’t Magnus have told me about this?” Dominic asked.

A shadow flickered across her face. “Maybe he didn’t understand its value.”

Sensing the deeper meaning of her remark, he wished he knew of a way to comfort her. There were some things, he reminded himself, that hurt more than financial distress.

“How soon can you come up with the money?” he asked. “Because, believe me, that’s the first thing I’m going to be asked.”

“Okay, yes. That.” She clasped her hands around one knee and drew it up to her chest. “It might take some time. That’s why I came to you. Because we need more time.”

Great, he thought, remembering how hard he’d already pushed, going on years now, to protect Magnus from the proceedings. With the new bank in place, being put off was no longer an option.

“How long?” he asked again.

“I can’t give you an exact date. But look, this is worth taking our time with. It’s real, it’s a fortune, and it could change everything.”

“Excellent,” Dominic said.

“There’s only one issue,” she added.

“What’s that?”

“It’s kind of major. See, this piece—the egg—is missing. No one knows where it is.”