‘You forgot something,’ Tracy said.
They turned to look at her, startled. The younger man frowned. ‘What are you doing here? A car from the Bureau was supposed to have been at the station to pick you up.’ His southern accent was gone.
‘Then why don’t we go back and find it?’ Tracy suggested.
‘Can’t. We’re on another case,’ Trevor explained. ‘We have to catch this plane.’
‘Give me back the jewellery, first,’ Tracy demanded.
‘I’m afraid we can’t do that,’ Thomas Bowers told her. ‘It’s evidence. We’ll send you a receipt for it.’
‘No. I don’t want a receipt. I want the jewellery.’
‘Sorry,’ said Trevor. ‘We can’t let it out of our possession.’
They had reached the gate. Trevor handed his boarding pass to the attendant. Tracy looked around, desperate, and saw an airport policeman standing nearby. She called out, ‘Officer! Officer!’
The two men looked at each other, startled.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Trevor hissed. ‘Do you want to get us all arrested?’
The policeman was moving towards them. ‘Yes, miss? Any problem?’
‘Oh, no problem,’ Tracy said gaily. ‘These two wonderful gentlemen found some valuable jewellery I lost, and they’re returning it to me. I was afraid I was going to have to go to the FBI about it.’
The two men exchanged a frantic look.
‘They suggested that perhaps you wouldn’t mind escorting me to a taxi.’
‘Certainly. Be happy to.’
Tracy turned towards the men. ‘It’s safe to give the jewels to me now. This nice officer will take care of me.’
‘No, really,’ Tom Bowers objected. ‘It would be much better if we –’
‘Oh, no, I insist,’ Tracy urged. ‘I know how important it is for you to catch your plane.’
The two men looked at the policeman, and then at each other, helpless. There was nothing they could do. Reluctantly, Tom Bowers pulled out the chamois bag from his pocket.
‘That’s it!’ Tracy said. She took the bag from his hand, opened it, and looked inside. ‘Thank goodness. It’s all here.’
Tom Bowers made one last-ditch try. ‘Why don’t we keep it safe for you until –’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Tracy said cheerfully. She opened her handbag, put the jewellery inside, and took out two $5.00 bills. She handed one to each of the men. ‘Here’s a little token of my appreciation for what you’ve done.’
The other passengers had all departed through the gate. The airline attendant said, ‘That was the last call. You’ll have to board now, gentlemen.’
‘Thank you again,’ Tracy beamed as she walked away with the policeman at her side. ‘It’s so rare to find an honest person these days.’
Thomas Bowers – née Jeff Stevens – sat at the plane window looking out as the aircraft took off. He raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and his shoulders heaved up and down.
Dennis Taylor – a.k.a. Brandon Higgins – seated next to him, looked at him in surprise. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it’s only money. It’s nothing to cry about.’
Jeff Stevens turned to him with tears streaming down his face, and Higgins, to his astonishment, saw that Jeff was convulsed with laughter.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Higgins demanded. ‘It’s nothing to laugh about, either.’
To Jeff, it was. The manner in which Tracy Whitney had outwitted them at the airport was the most ingenious con he had ever witnessed. A scam on top of a scam. Conrad Morgan had told them the woman was an amateur. My God, Jeff thought, what would she be like if she were a professional? Tracy Whitney was without doubt the most beautiful woman Jeff Stevens had ever seen. And clever. Jeff prided himself on being the best confidence artist in the business, and she had outsmarted him. Uncle Willie would have loved her, Jeff thought.
It was Uncle Willie who had educated Jeff. Jeff’s mother was the trusting heiress to a farm-equipment fortune, married to an improvident schemer filled with get-rich-quick projects that never quite worked out. Jeff’s father was a charmer, darkly handsome and persuasively glib, and in the first five years of marriage he had managed to run through his wife’s inheritance. Jeff’s earliest memories were of his mother and father quarrelling about money and his father’s extramarital affairs. It was a bitter marriage, and the young boy had resolved, I’m never going to get married. Never.
His father’s brother, Uncle Willie, owned a small travelling carnival, and whenever he was near Marion, Ohio, where the Stevenses lived, he came to visit them. He was the most cheerful man Jeff had ever known, filled with optimism and promises of a rosy tomorrow. He always managed to bring the boy exciting gifts, and he taught Jeff wonderful magic tricks. Uncle Willie had started out as a magician at a carnival and had taken it over when it went broke.
When Jeff was fourteen, his mother died in an car accident. Two months later Jeff’s father married a nineteen-year-old cocktail waitress. ‘It isn’t natural for a man to live by himself,’ his father had explained. But the boy was filled with a deep resentment, feeling betrayed by his father’s callousness.
Jeff’s father had been hired as a siding salesman and was on the road three days a week. One night when Jeff was alone in the house with his stepmother, he was awakened by the sound of his bedroom door opening. Moments later he felt a soft, naked body next to his. Jeff sat up in alarm.
‘Hold me, Jeffie,’ his stepmother whispered. ‘I’m afraid of thunder.’
‘It – it isn’t thundering,’ Jeff stammered.
‘But it could be. The paper said rain.’ She pressed her body close to his. ‘Make love to me, baby.’
The boy was in a panic. ‘Sure. Can we do it in Dad’s bed?’
‘Okay.’ She laughed. ‘Kinky, huh?’
‘I’ll be right there,’ Jeff promised.
She slid out of bed and went into the other bedroom. Jeff had never dressed faster in his life. He went out the window and headed for Cimarron, Kansas, where Uncle Willie’s carnival was playing. He never looked back.
When Uncle Willie asked Jeff why he had run away from home all he would say was, ‘I don’t get along with my stepmother.’
Uncle Willie telephoned Jeff’s father, and after a long conversation, it was decided that the boy should remain with the carnival. ‘He’ll get a better education here than any school could ever give him,’ Uncle Willie promised.
The carnival was a world unto itself. ‘We don’t run a Sunday school show,’ Uncle Willie explained to Jeff. ‘We’re flimflam artists. But remember, sonny, you can’t con people unless they’re greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can’t cheat an honest man.’
The carnies became Jeff’s