"What did she admit to you that she took with her?"

Logan's fingers tapped on the desktop. "I don't remember, exactly." He seemed to recognize that he was displaying Queenie in a negative way.

"I'm sure you can give me a general idea." I needed to get those interview audiotapes before he altered or destroyed them. "We're beyond the statute of limitations for theft, Mr. Logan," I said, smiling at him. "It's quite fascinating."

"I'm not the only one who knows," he said, as if he were justifying his reasons for telling me. "Some jewelry. I mean, Farouk actually gave her stuff during the time they were together. But I guess, in the end, she got her hands on some uncut gems he had stashed away. Sold 'em off or pawned them from time to time over the years. Farouk also collected rare stamps and valuable coins, odd things that she really didn't know the value of," Spike said.

Then he looked at me, as if to gauge my reaction before going on. I didn't display any.

"Queenie was able to survive for about ten years on one of the treasures she scored."

My raised eyebrows gave away my interest. Spike went on. "You know what a Fabergé egg is, Ms. Cooper?"

The brilliantly jeweled objects had been made by Carl Fabergé for the Russian czars, and the ones that survived the revolution had been collected and traded by the richest men in the world. "Sure I do. Farouk had those, too? Queenie took a Fabergé egg? My admiration for her taste keeps growing."

Spike Logan didn't care whether I approved of Queenie's methods or not. "Some antiques dealer in London bought it from her. I looked him up on the Internet but couldn't find any recent trace of him. She joked that Farouk was better than the goose that laid the golden egg-he mislaid it and she took it. That single egg kept her and Fabian going for the next ten years, till the boy died. Queenie realized she got stiffed when she sold some of these objects 'cause she didn't have any proof of ownership. The dealers knew she had stolen goods, otherwise she would have made enough money to live in style the rest of a very long life."

"Didn't Farouk miss any of these things? Didn't he send people out to the States to try to find her and get them back?"

"You speak any French?" Spike asked.

I nodded my head.

" Touche pas!Know what that means?"

"Don't touch," I answered.

He leaned forward and lowered his voice for dramatic effect. "When the king wanted to play with his toys, he'd go into the rooms in his palace where everything was stored, taking Queenie with him. I'm talking dozens of enormous rooms. They'd sit on silk cushions, laid out on the floor, for hours and hours. He'd let her try on tiaras and necklaces, run gold pieces through her fingers, and place Fabergé goblets in her hands. But when it came to the pieces he prized dearly, the things that were most rare, most valuable, he'd scream at her, 'Touche pas! Touche pas!' She wasn't even allowed to hold them. Fabergé goblets, yes, but the jeweled eggs-no."

"So it was easy for her to tell what the best treasures were, I guess."

"That's what she thought. Queenie told me that when she was packing her bags to leave the palace, she made one last sweep of the joint. She figured Farouk had so many collections, so many toys, that if she was careful, he wouldn't begin to know what was missing. She headed right for the things that she had never been allowed to touch. Instead of taking all his precious eggs, she just took one. Same for the gemstones and the other valuables. When he opened his closets and vaults, he'd still see dozens of sparkling objects-he'd never stop to count. The most obscene thing is that he probably never knew any of the things she took was even missing."

"She had no trouble smuggling these things out of Egypt?"

"Farouk had turned his sights to a younger girl, the war was over, and everyone around the king was delighted to get Queenie out of the palace. She put her finest prizes right in her handbag, took her chances with what she'd concealed in the luggage, and got on the next plane to Portugal, then home."

"What became of all the other valuables?" I asked.

"She spent some of the money she raised by selling them. But after Fabian's death, and because Farouk had never responded to the boy's photographs, she went into a profound depression. Spent five years institutionalized in a private sanitarium-mental hospital in Connecticut. That chewed up most of what she was able to hock."

"And the rest?"

"She didn't have legitimate title to these things, so she found herself selling to some pretty shady characters. There was no way to prove-what do you call it?"

"Provenance," I said.

"Yeah. She had some rare stamps that don't go for much on the open market. And some foreign coins that might have been worth something as part of a larger collection, but she never got more than face value. And then she just ran out of juice, Ms. Cooper."

Why, I wondered, did Spike Logan ask us about what had become of McQueen Ransome's possessions? Why had he let himself into the empty apartment, and had he been looking for anything in particular when the police arrived?

"Do you think, Spike, that she still had any of Farouk's valuables that she kept in the apartment? Objects she had mentioned to you? Or possibly something that she didn't even know had current worth?"

He stretched his legs again and crossed his arms. "I think she would have told me. Queenie trusted me, Ms. Cooper. I think this watch was about all she had left to give."

She may have trusted him, but could we?

"Did you ever see a fur coat?" I asked.

He shook his head. "In her crib? Nope. But I never had reason to look in her closets, and we never went outside together in the winter. We could look through the old photographs and I'm sure they would tell the story. It wouldn't surprise me at all. Queenie would have liked a nice fur coat in her prime."

Mike Chapman came back into the room with lunch for Spike Logan. "Would you excuse us for a few minutes?" I said, walking out with Mike before going upstairs to my office.

I filled Mike in on what Logan had told me. "The uniformed guys give you any sense of what Logan was doing in the apartment when they arrived?" I asked, opening the lid and sipping the hot coffee Mike had brought me.

"Sniffing around pretty good. You believe he didn't know Queenie was dead when he got there?"

"All I have to go on is what he says. We'll see if phone records tell a different story."

"You gonna honor your word?" Mike asked. "Let him go home?"

"All we got is a trespass. No judge is going to hold him on that. Might as well get the goodwill by showing we trust him."

"You got enough Vineyard contacts to get the local police to keep an eye on him."

"I'm not as worried about Logan as I am about getting my hands on the tapes that he's got stored in the bank before he does anything to them. Queenie may have said things that would have no significance to him, but would give us some direction. I gotta get started on that. Would you be sure to get all his contact information before you let him go? And the key to the apartment."

"You wanna hold on to that gold watch from the Duke of Windsor, too?"

"Absolutely," I said.

Sarah Brenner offered to work on the interstate subpoena, since she would be handling the grand jury investigation of the Ransome homicide. I went to my desk to phone the Oak Bluffs Police Department, to give them a heads-up on Spike Logan.

As I hung up the phone, I noticed Laura standing at the doorway between her desk and the hall. A man was speaking to her, and she was keeping him out of my way until she determined whether I wanted to see him, guiding him to the conference room.

"It's one of those days," she said, coming back to tell me about it. "Doesn't anybody call for an appointment anymore? It's Peter Robelon-and actually, he's with that other lawyer, Mr. Hoyt. They were in the building and wanted to know whether you had a few minutes for them."