The Wicked Wife (Murder in Marin Book 2) (12 page)

Tomorrow’s planned events, with LeBon present throughout the day, were likely to fall well short of her imagined scenario.
 

I need to reverse course, she thought.
 

Looking up in the dark at the room’s ornate ceiling, one that hinted at the splendor of the palace at Versailles, she realized she’d better devise a successful Plan B.
 

But what could that be?
 

Hopefully, it would come to her in her sleep. She had not come this far in her quest to replace fame with fortune to allow it all to unravel now.
 

The next morning at breakfast, William apologized for his exhaustion the night before.

Willow insisted that it was she who should apologize. “It was thoughtless of me to plan such a busy schedule after you’d had a sleepless night, on top of a twelve hour flight.”

“No, it wasn’t thoughtless of you. I’ve never slept well on planes, no matter how comfortable the seat. It’s the damn whining of those engines, I suppose.”

She feigned a Eureka moment. “I have an idea, darling. I’m free after today, and I don’t have any other commitments for a few days after that. Why don’t we take off and go anywhere in Europe you’d like—just the two of us.”

“Anywhere?” William said with an uncertain smile.

“Anywhere!”

“Okay. Let’s jump on the Eurostar and head up to Amsterdam.”

“Absolutely,” Willow said enthusiastically. “What made you think of Amsterdam?”

“When I finished at Berkeley, I wanted to just get away for awhile. So my dad said, ‘take off for a month or two and travel around Europe.’ I had been here with my parents, but never on my own. So I packed as little as I could get by with, and I took off. After a couple of lonely weeks in Madrid and London, I landed in Amsterdam, and fell in with a bunch of kids—all early twentysomethings, just like me. I spent four weeks there. In that month, I made up for all the partying I didn’t do in college. I got so plastered one night that I fell asleep with some of my pals in a plaza. I think it was near the Van Gogh Museum. I woke up the next morning as I was being poked by a police officer, who told me to get moving. Me, William Adams, sleeping in the street! It was just great.”

The very thought of it made Willow laugh as well. “Let’s do it. But if it’s okay with you, let’s get a room. I don’t think my being photographed sleeping in the streets of Amsterdam would help perfume sales.”

Willow spent a busy day and night completing her commitments to
Project Runway
. She also had a Willow Wisp perfume signing at Printemps, one of Europe’s oldest and grandest department stores.
 

Meanwhile, William made plans for their three-day getaway in Amsterdam. He left it to his travel person at the law firm to handle all the details.
 

Just the thought of this little adventure lifted his spirits. He could never recall a time that he felt a greater need to connect with memories of his youth. If Willow had not suggested that they change their plans, none of this would have happened.
 

He was equally relieved to not be spending another night with LeBon and Allard. He winced at the thought of what their clique would be like.
 

Amsterdam, on the other hand, was perfect. They enjoyed long walks along the canals and the magnificent museums, not to mention their suite at the Hotel Conservatoriu.
 

“I guess you decided against sleeping in the street,” Willow said with a knowing smile.

“I might feel twenty-two, but I’m a little too old to do without a bed and a pillow.”

Of course, their suite was much more than that.

For three days and two nights, William had a permanent smile on his face. He took Willow on a complete tour of his “Amsterdam misadventures,” and she snuggled in close to him as they sat at a coffee shop in a busy plaza and watched the world go by.

Their lovemaking was both tender and sweet.
 

As they headed to Schiphol Airport for the flight home, William was still reveling in their brief visit. He took one last look at Amsterdam as their limousine moved slowly through late morning traffic and concluded that all people are just as young as they think.
 

Willow’s constant love and affection would help make certain that he would never grow old.

CHAPTER TEN

The big question was popped in far less time than Willow had anticipated. And the ring was unexpectedly generous, which was particularly noteworthy, given Willow’s extraordinarily high expectations.
 

“Twelve carats!” she exclaimed. “This is insane!”

“Nothing is too wonderful when it comes to my perfect flower,” William replied, using an endearment that only recently had entered into their lovemaking.
 

Willow did not care for this pet name, but decided to keep mum about that for at least awhile longer.
 

They kissed passionately as they sat nestled close to each other, enjoying a warm fire on a chilly June evening at William’s Lake Tahoe home.

Willow jumped up and ran to the mirror to admire her new pink pear-cut diamond ring from a variety of angles. She placed her left hand on her right shoulder and struck a variety of poses. Later, she would do an online search in the hope of teasing out the approximate cost of this fabulous new bobble. She found a similar ring given by Enrique Inglesis to his tennis star bride to be, Anna Kournikova. That ring had a stated value of over 2.5 million dollars—approximately a fifth of Willow’s total worth, but a very tiny fraction of William Adams’ fortune.
 

Should she have expected something more? Perhaps, a few carats larger?
 

She banished the thought. This was very sweet of her future husband, and in time he would buy her so much more. As she learned in the growth of her career, practiced patience was essential to success.
 

Willow’s love affair with fine jewelry began two years earlier, when she attended the Bulgari exhibit at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum. She went back three times to visit the same exhibit, always cautious to disguise herself behind large glasses and various hats. She was not there to be disturbed by fans, but rather to enjoy the dazzling emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds in exquisite silver and gold settings.
 

Listening intently to the exhibit’s audio guide, Willow imagined the early history of Sotirio Bulgari, a Greek immigrant who opened his first shop in Rome in 1884, choosing to follow a different path than the Parisian school of jewelry design.
 

“Where the French followed a tradition of creating delicate pieces, Bulgari’s works were often massive and imposing by comparison,” her audio guide explained. “By the 1920s the house of Bulgari had become known for a distinct style that designers and customers recognized and valued. In the 1950s, when Italian design for everything from clothes, to furniture, to automobiles became popular around the globe, the unique approach of Bulgari to fine jewelry became an international sensation. Before long, stars like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor were all photographed wearing their finest Bulgari creations.”

The unquestioned highlight of the show was the Elizabeth Taylor collection. If Willow was to have any hope of accumulating nearly as impressive a collection of jewels at 21
^st
Century prices, being a mere millionaire would never make that possible. Several of the pieces on display were valued at well over a million dollars. In fact, nine months after Taylor’s death in March 2011, Taylor’s collection was auctioned off for one hundred and sixteen million dollars at Christie’s auction house in New York. Many of the pieces that brought winning bids of five-million dollars or more were gifts from Richard Burton to the woman he married once in 1964, divorced in 1974, then remarried in 1975, and then divorced again one year later.
 

In today’s economy, Willow recognized, it would take the wealth of a billionaire to drape her in these exquisite gems, which to her were the essence of pure beauty. A twelve carat diamond engagement ring was an excellent start, but what William might have thought would be Willow’s most prized possession was to her the first piece in what she hoped one day would be recognized as one of the world’s greatest collections of jewels.
 

Great beauty is ever fleeting. Magnificent jewels, however, will shine for thousands of years.

Sylvia Stokes worked diligently on her next column of the Belvedere Buzz for
The Peninsula Standard.
It was to feature a photograph from
People
magazine that captured William and Willow at play in Amsterdam. As she studied the photo, she paused at the thought of what exactly a billion dollars represented in today’s world. On the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest three hundred individuals, William Adams was listed as number twenty-five, with a fortune of twenty four billion dollars. Just above him was Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian cement and sugar king. Below him was Mukesh Ambani, the Indian oil and gas magnate.
 

This was truly rarefied air.