Armed (29 page)

“No. But we can give you a ninety-day, money-back guarantee.”

I looked at the price. “Well, this is reasonable, but tell me, there’s one right when I walked in that costs three times as much. So if I buy this one, am I getting a worthless piece of junk? Why such a huge difference in price?”

Jeff walked toward the front of the store while I grabbed my shoes and hurried after him. “This one’s got a lot more foam and the quality…”

I didn’t pay any more attention. Joanne Reed, burdened by lots of packages, walked quickly by the front of the store. I dropped my purse and coat, and managed to pull my shoes back on. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to run. How long does the sale last?” I asked as I headed for the door.

“Till tomorrow night but we can deliver on day of purchase,” Jeff yelled out after me.

*****

I heard the phone ringing from the garage. I dropped my few packages and ran through to the living room. “Hello,” I said, out of breath as I tried to shrug out of my coat and take off a glove.

“Alex, it’s John. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

John? I still had a hard time relating to Detective Van der Burg as John. “Oh, John. No. I just walked in. Hold on a second.” I put the phone down and removed my other burgundy glove, pulled the matching scarf from around my neck, and picked up the phone again. “Okay. I’m back. I just wanted to get my coat off.”

“Well, put it back on and meet me at The Bread Basket. Do you know it?”

“Yes, I know it. What’s going on? Would you rather come here?” Silence on the other end. “John?”

“No. I’d better not. The Bread Basket is midway between your house and the station, and I’ll need to come back. Can you be there in about twenty minutes?”

“I’m leaving right now.”

The Bread Basket wouldn’t be very busy on this Friday before Christmas. It would probably pick up in about an when cold shoppers needed an afternoon break. The weather turned sunny and cold, but the weatherman on CNN forecast snow for Christmas Eve. I hoped so. I loved white Christmases and besides, we had new sleds for Henry and Kendall and needed the good stuff, not the icy snow currently covering everything. I found a table by the large picture window and hung my coat on a rack at the back of the bakery.

“I really shouldn’t, but okay, yes, I’ll take a slice of your three-layered chocolate cake and a cup of your Christmas tea,” I responded to the young waitress who probably heard these guilty protests a hundred times a day. What the heck. In the last week I lost a few pounds due to poor eating, lack of sleep, and stress. Finding a body will do that to you.

I took a sip of the tea as John pulled into the space next to mine. Dressed casually today in a pair of jeans and a pale blue oxford cloth shirt, I could see what a good-looking man he was but more importantly he seemed like a good guy. Before I got in too deep, I wanted Meme to meet him. Hopefully, she would give me the thumbs-up sign when they met on Christmas night. He took a giant step over a puddle of slush and came inside.

“Sorry I’m late. Good, you’ve ordered.” He took off his jacket and draped it over his chair. A few people looked over at him with startled expression at the sight of the gun.

He glanced at the menu and decided on a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of fresh cherry pie. His choice of food always surprised me. I didn’t think of this tall, rather well built man as the hot chocolate type, though the cherry pie was exactly what my father would have ordered. And Grandpa. Yikes. I hoped John had nothing more in common with my au naturale grandfather.

“Your phone call sounded ominous. Is something wrong? Oh, my!” I gasped. I put down my fork and looked seriously at him. “You’re going to tell me Richard Sheridan killed Mrs. Scott. That’s it, isn’t it?” My hand went up to my chest and I held my breath while I waited for John to confirm my suspicions. “Well?”

“Let me tell you what I’ve been up to since last night.”

“Is this allowed? I mean sharing evidence with me?”

“Probably not.” He shrugged. “I picked Richard Sheridan up last night. He wanted his lawyer so we had to wait almost two hours for the lawyer to show.” The waitress arrived and asked if I wanted more hot water. When she left John continued. “I knew someone else had to be involved other than Emmanuelle.”

“You mean she admitted to diamond smuggling?”

“No. But I’ll get to that. We know smuggled diamonds don’t come from some little town in Iowa. Hiding diamonds in the eyes was brilliant. Who would look at a box of doll eyes headed for a mannequin factory? Sounds innocent enough to me.”

I nodded my agreement and he continued with his story. A little too slow for me, but I needed to work on my patience skills.

“Tuesday night, after we found the diamonds, I did some digging. I called a good friend of mine, Ken Clark, up in Boston, and asked him to do some checking. He’s pretty high up on the ladder in Boston, but more importantly, I remembered him speaking about a man who works for the Police Judiciarie in Brussels. Ken lived in Belgium for a year in high school with a family and has maintained a friendship with the son all these years. I’m getting off the track. Anyway, the eyes came from a factory just outside Brussels. In case you didn’t know, Antwerp is the diamond capital of the world.”

I interrupted. “Couldn’t the diamonds have been placed in the eyes after they arrived at the factory here?”

“Yeah, except the diamonds had to come from somewhere. So whether they’re put into the eyes in Brussels or here, my guess is they’re still coming from Europe, maybe Russia or even Sierra Leone, for that matter.”

“So the most logical step was to try the Belgian route first.”

“Exactly. So Ken calls his friend, Gerard Willix and asks him what he knows about the factory. Gerard emails Ken back saying as far as his contacts could tell, nothing unusual is happening at the eye factory.”

“So you were wrong. Do you have another theory?”

Little lines formed at the corners of his eyes and his mouth spread into a smile. “Not so fast. There’s nothing strange about the factory, but there is an interesting tidbit concerning an employee. Seems there’s a very tenacious police detective in Brussels who’s been following a certain man for two years. This man regularly gets packages from a questionable source. He’s also a petty criminal so the police keep an eye on him.”

“Diamonds!”

“Diamonds.”

“This is ironic,” I said, “because I talked with one of the designers and he said working at a mannequin factory wasn’t the sort of stuff you read about in spy novels, but here we have a police detective in Europe following some diamond smuggler around for years and it all leads back to the factory in little old Indian Cove. I’d say it sounds just like a dark spy novel.”

John smiled. “It does at that.”

“So why didn’t they arrest him? The man in the café, I mean.”

“Well, like with drugs, they’re not interested in the little guy, they want the big fish. You figured that out very nicely the other day. They’re being sent to Murray Schwartz at Schwartz & Co. What he’s doing with them, we don’t know, but that’ll be for the Cincinnati police along with the FBI to figure out.”

I had another thought. “What’s the reason for smuggling diamonds?”

“The reason?”

“Yes. Money?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. What are you getting at?” John asked.

I pushed my plate aside—hoping John didn’t notice that I ate the entire piece of cake—and leaned forward on the table. “Nothing maybe, but what if there are a whole lot more people at Poupée involved than just Richard and Emmanuelle?”

“Like who?”

“Like Joanne and Mitch. Those two are up to something. I saw her at the mall this morning, and let me tell you, she does not have a bad back. She was carrying a ton of shopping bags. I followed her for a bit and she went in to one of those high-priced sporting good stores that sell lots of equipment and I saw her lifting weights! She’s greedy and wants money so she and Mitch can start a business of their own. And as much as she wants Mrs. Scott’s job, the extra money is nothing compared to what she’ll need to get her own business off the ground. Trust me, I know. So what are her options?”

“Again you amaze me. I never figured any of this out. It would make sense, though.”

“What better and faster way to get some quick cash than being in on a diamond deal?”

“You may have something there.” John finished the last bite of pie and signaled for the waitress to bring another hot chocolate.

“Getting back to Richard. He goes to Europe on a vacation and hooks up with these eye factory people and then what—someone approaches him to be a courier?” I asked.

“That’s the story he’s sticking to at the moment. We’re working on the assumption Murray Schwartz came to Richard first. He needed a way to get the diamonds here. He’d figured out a way to use mannequin eyes and arranged for Richard to go and work something out with the people in Brussels.”

“So Mrs. Scott figured this out, probably from being suspicious of Emmanuelle to begin with, and then found out about the diamonds and they killed her. That’s probably why the printout goes back two years because that’s when Richard started the
Eyes Have It
model. That poor woman.”

John touched my hand. For a moment our eyes locked and I forgot all about diamonds and murder and European eye factories.

“Here’s your hot chocolate. Can I get you anything else?”

John broke off first and looked up at an amused waitress. “No. This is fine. Thanks.”

My thoughts came back to the present. “Sooner or later one of them—my money’s on Richard—will confess to murder.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to end like that.” John sat back and ran his hands through his thick, short hair. He sighed and looked back at me. “It doesn’t appear as though Emmanuelle had anything to do with the diamonds.”

“How can you be so sure? She’s certainly not going to admit it up front,” I reflected. “But then again, if not her, maybe Joanne.”

“I’m sure it’s not Emmanuelle. She’s totally mystified. And petrified.” I started to protest but John put up his hand. “Richard says she had no part of it.”

“Oh.” I thought a minute. “So he’s admitting to diamond smuggling?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised he would. Who else is he taking down—Joanne or Mitch?”

“No. But those two warrant another talking to in any case. But you’ll be happy to know Jerry had a piece of it. Had to. Richard needed someone in the factory to oversee everything.”

“I knew it!” My yelp drew the attention of several of the patrons at the bakery.

“When Richard figured out we wanted to stick him with murder as well, he came clean on the diamonds. Much to the chagrin of his lawyer.” John raised his eyebrows in amusement. “Once Richard started talking, he wouldn’t shut up. I guess the thought of a murder charge scared him to death. So maybe with a bit more prodding, he’ll give up Joanne and Mitch. Or maybe they’re not involved at all, which is my guess at this point. Richard had no qualms about giving up Jerry, so I don’t see him being benevolent toward Mitch and Joanne. If they had anything to do with the diamonds, Richard would share the information.”

“Emmanuelle still could have killed Mrs. Scott because she found out about Emmanuelle’s past and threatened to expose her. Or Joanne could have killed her because she wanted Mrs. Scott’s job.”

“Sorry, but you’re wrong—at least where Emmanuelle is concerned. Richard may be a smuggler, but both Richard and Emmanuelle have airtight alibis for the time of the murder.”

“How can you say that? Even I can see their alibis don’t hold water.”

“Stop. Alex, we’ve checked it out.”

I folded my arms and glared at him waiting for an explanation on how on earth the police managed to find the thousands of people at the mall on Tuesday night let alone question all of them. “Well? Do I have to drag it out of you?” I asked a bit peevishly.

“They were together.”

The sun had disappeared for the day and I turned on the heater in my car. Air blew from the vents warming me. The beautiful white powder that covered everything just a few days ago transforming even the dreariest of scenery into something almost magical, turned into slush and the snow piled up along the roads by the plows looked like a dirty, mushy mass.

After stopping off at a friend’s to drop off a Christmas gift, I pulled onto the turnpike relieved to see light traffic. I lowered the setting on the heater thinking back to my discussion with John a few hours earlier.

“What do you mean they were together?” I asked not getting the full impact of his words. It’s amazing how naïve I can be.

“
Together
.”

I still didn’t understand.

“At a motel down at the beach in Guilford.”

“They’re having an affair?” I asked, not believing this latest turn events. Seeing them at the coffee shop, I never concluded it could be anything other than two colleagues eating lunch together. Then I remembered something Meme said the night I took her to bingo.
Cherchez la femme
. I should have seen it. Though I still couldn’t figure out how it all fit into the murder of Mrs. Scott. “Well, that’s just great! We’re no closer to solving this thing than before.”

“If it’s any consolation, Brussels is happy we could help with their investigation.”

I didn’t give a damn about the police goings-on three thousand miles and an ocean away. “There’s no mistake?” I asked holding onto one last bit of hope.

“None. The clerk recognized their pictures from the new Poupée marketing literature. They went there many times. He says they checked in at five-fifteen. The place isn’t exactly the Ritz Carlton.”

I exited the turnpike and drove through the quiet streets. More and more it looked like Jerry Gagliano murdered Mrs. Scott in a fit of jealous rage over Mr. Absher. She probably also figured out he had his hand in the diamond pot. John requested a search warrant for Jerry’s home.