Chapter 2

Helena rebelled. "No. I refuse, you're mad. Call the police, see if I care!"

"Do you know what happens with a pretty thing like you at our police districts? You will be held without bail and without a lawyer and our valorous law defendants will have a ball with your nice body until you confess the murder of your parents."

"I am not afraid!" The girl was plucky enough. Gilberto sighed. He touched a button on his KS. "Joanna, please call delegado Silveira from the sixth precinct and ask him to send two men here to arrest a thief."

He reclined his swiveling chair. "It's out of my hands now... But you can be sure that as soon they arrive you'll have to strip with a considerably larger audience. And then it will be too late to negotiate."

Helena was sweating. Her cool air was evidently being replaced by a look of a cornered prey. "OK! I'll do it, but you will regret it. Just call off your dogs."

Gilberto pressed the button and said, Joana, cancel the call please." He looked at the beautiful woman. "And? We are all waiting."

Trying to maintain as much dignity as possible under the circumstances Helena turned her back to Tina and asked her to open the buttons. Once the upper part of the black dress was loose she wriggled it down her hips and stepped out of it.

"Give it to me," said Gilberto. He examined the dress inside out. Of course there was nothing unusual in tight fitting garment. Helena stood motionless in a beige delicately embroiled chemise covering her from the tips of her proudly erected breasts down to middle thighs.

"The chemise, please." Without a word Helene gathered the hem of the silky underwear with crossed arms and in a smooth movement took it off over her head. There was no possibility for that thin garment concealing even a leaf of paper, much less a necklace. Even so Gilberto asked for it. Helena crossed one of her arms over her bra and posted the other covering the front of her panties.

"The bra," he ordered.

"But you can see that I couldn't possibly be hiding something inside the bra," protested the beauty lamely. The man was implacable. "The bra," he repeated.

Helena opened the catch of her black bra and gave it to her tormentor. She crossed both arms over her breasts which were proving easily that the bra did absolutely nothing to support them.

After a cursory examination Gilberto threw the bra on the desk and gave her the final order. "The panties." This time Helena didn't hesitate. She was wearing the panties over her suspenders, so it was simply a matter of one smooth movement and she was almost completely nude, if you didn't count the garter belt, the stockings and the pumps.

Gilberto didn't even pretend to examine the sheer French cut panties. He was really busy drinking the sight of the naked beauty that was certainly well inside her first one quarter of century in age. José was staring as enthralled as his boss. Even Tina was mesmerized by the beautiful woman.

"Can I dress now?"

"Of course," conceded Gilberto. Helena didn't loose time and under a minute she was back into the chair holding her purse over the primly closed knees.

"Please give me your purse." Helena was beyond protesting and simply gave the purse to Tina, who following her boss's order turned it upside down spreading the contents over the desktop. A wallet, a lipstick, a cigarette case and a lighter, a few other feminine things, the normal trinkets that fill any girl's purse, but no necklace. Tina was flabbergasted but her boss didn't seem too bothered by that fact. He browsed through the wallet checking carefully each compartment.

"What is your name?" He asked Helena.

"Can't you read?" Hissed the beauty. "Are you satisfied? Give me back my purse and prepare yourself because I'll sue your ass to hell and back for this outrage."

"All in good time, my pretty. Helena de Souza, the Arts dealer you aren't. I took the liberty to call her studio and chatted with the charming lady for a few minutes while you were waiting in the private room. I knew you were a fraud the moment I saw your pearl necklaces. No real pearls are so round or perfectly matched as yours. A nice job, particularly with this tricky lock, it probably set you back for 500, or even a whole grand." He held the depopulated collar which was miraculously whole again and flipping a tiny lever before opening the main lock demonstrated how the strings escaped from the hold.

"And real pearls would be locked safely on the collar each one separated and independent from others, so an accidental spillage couldn't be as disastrous as what happened with yours." He picked a string of real pearls and used a knife in the middle. Only one pearl fell down in his waiting palm.

"So, I was watching you." Gilberto pushed a button and a curtain slide apart silently discovering a large window that took most of one of the office walls. The window opened on the main selling room and three small private rooms all of them clearly displayed. An 8 mm movie camera was standing on a tripod and focused on one of the rooms, exactly the one where a quarter of an hour ago Helena's collar melted under Tina's touch.

"In fact, I should thank you for your performance. If you hadn't produced this trick, I would have to do something to give you the chance to lift a necklace and still had the impression of an easy getaway. But you executed your part to perfection. Of course I have all of this on the film. The cartridge is in my drawer and will be delivered to the police with you if we don't reach an agreement."

Helena seemed to deflate. She tried her only remaining gambit, "but you didn't find the necklace... you have no proof..."

"Oh, that," he gesticulated pushing aside her argument like one does with an annoying fly. "I have seen this kind of purses before you were even born, young lady."

He took a few moments to examine the purse, a click was heard in the silent office and the necklace fell down on the desktop. "As a matter of record, in front of witnesses I found a secret compartment in the suspect's purse and inside this compartment we found the missing necklace."