Blood Rubies (12 page)

“So Ana told me. Heather described the house as a fortress.”

“The family home … that sure points to Ana, Stefan, or Peter.”

“Or any visitor who might have an opportunity to snatch it. Just 'cause you build a fortress doesn't mean it can't be breached. Maybe Stefan is as loosey-goosey in allowing access to his house as Ana is to her cottage. Whoever took it wouldn't need it for long. A day maybe, just enough time to allow a craftsman to take measurements and photographs. I'm guessing here, but I bet that when Heather was dating Peter, she visited his dad's home.”

“Do you think Heather killed Jason?”

I'm sorry,
she kept saying.
Sorry for what?
“No. Do you?”

“We're looking into all possibilities.”

Another evasion, no surprise. “You're so forthcoming.”

“It occurs to me that since we're going public about the snow globe, we should go all the way,” he said, ignoring my comment. “Tips from the community can be very helpful.”

“Are you going to release it to the media?”

“Not me. Too official. Some people get spooked when it's a police matter.”

“Especially people who might have contacts in the black market.”

“Especially those people.”

“Those people won't talk to me either.”

“They might. They might want to get their side of the story out there. Maybe whoever took it doesn't think they did anything wrong. It's possible they think it's unfair that the egg has been passed down from mother to daughter.”

I understood his point. Sibling rivalry was part and parcel of my business. “Peter.”

“Will you tell Wes?”

This wasn't the first time Ellis had drafted me as his amanuensis, and I was glad to do it. Telling Wes what was going on would go a long way toward satisfying his quid pro quo demands. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks, Josie. I'll call you when I know about meeting at the Pelican.”

I placed the receiver in the cradle and turned to Hank. He was purring in his sleep, his front paws twitching. He was dreaming, perhaps, of chasing a mouse.

“You're so beautiful, Hank,” I whispered, not wanting to disturb him.

I posted notices of the missing egg on all three of the proprietary industry Web sites we subscribed to, one of which fed directly into a lost-art database maintained by Interpol, then called Nate.

“Tell me it ain't so,” he said after I explained why I was calling.

“Isn't it awful to think about?” I sighed.

“Give me the list.”

I rattled off jewel type, cut, karat, and all the other details the appraisal specified and gave him Ellis's number for the law enforcement contact. He agreed to send me the links once he'd uploaded the reports, and we promised to stay in touch.

I squared up the Polaroids. The images were so faded, they weren't useful for identifying anything, but I wondered if an artisan could bring the colors back. Anyone can learn to use Photoshop and insert colors where none existed or change colors or textures at will, but it took a master craftsman to understand how colors changed over time and re-create a true rendition of the original. I called down to Gretchen.

“Who are we using for photo retouching these days?”

“Matthew Hughes.”

“I'm going to scan in some old shots. He needs to repair the coloration. It's crucial he gets as close to the original as possible. Ask him to rush it, all right?”

Ten minutes later, she IM'd me that Matthew would have them back to me by ten Monday morning, the fastest he could manage. I okayed it, then called Wes and got him.

“You're a hot potato, Josie!” he said after I filled him in. “Fantastic.”

“You said you wanted some quid for your pro quo. I'd say that after this exclusive, I've got a nice little credit balance going.”

“I don't know about that.”

Give a reporter a few bars and he wants a symphony.

*   *   *

I stood up and stretched, then went and sat cross-legged on the floor near Hank's basket watching him sleep. I stroked his tummy, down, then up. Down, then up. Down, then up. Still asleep, he rolled over, ready for me to rub his side.

I couldn't see how the counterfeit Fabergé Spring Egg snow globe could have led to Jason's murder, which meant either it hadn't or I lacked information.

I gave Hank a little kiss, pausing midsmooch, as a research idea came to me.

“Let's do it.”

I told Hank he was a very good boy, then hurried upstairs to my private office. If my idea worked, I was about to learn more about the shattered snow globe.

 

CHAPTER TEN

I typed “snow globe” into our database and learned that we had twelve in stock. I wasn't surprised we had that many since they were steady sellers at our weekly tag sale.

Ellis called at five to ask me to meet him in the Pelican coffee shop at six. I agreed and called Ty to tell him I'd be home late. I got his voice mail and left a message. I glanced at the clock on my monitor. I had forty-five minutes before I'd need to leave.

Unless there's a good business reason to do otherwise, like covering the phones, or meeting with a client, or making a scheduled delivery, I let my staff set their own hours. Fred was a night owl, often coming into work around noon and staying late into the evening. Since he'd begun dating Suzanne, he joined her for an early dinner at the Blue Dolphin two or three times a week, arriving around four, before the after-work crowd flooded the lounge for drinks and the early-bird diners descended on the dining room for dinner. If today was one of those days, he wouldn't be in. I picked up the phone and dialed his extension.

He was in. I asked him to meet me at the worktable.

*   *   *

I held up the plastic bag of glass shards so Fred could see it. “I have a crazy idea, and I need your input. I want to figure out how large a snow dome this glass would make. If I take an existing dome and weigh it and then weigh this Baggie, am I comparing apples to apples?”

He stared at the bag. I could almost see the wheels in his brain turning. He raised his eyes to mine. “It depends on the thickness of the glass.”

“Which we can measure. I've already measured several pieces in the bag and tagged them. They're uniform in thickness.”

“Really?” Fred pushed up his glasses. “That's not good.”

Given that antique glass was handblown, it was subject to vagaries of breath and heat and humidity and craftsmanship. It was never uniform.

“I know. I have so much evidence that both the egg and the snow globe—if that's what these are—are modern reproductions, I can't even tell you. And not very good repros, either.”

He shook his head, commiserating at the loss.

“These have glycerin on them,” I added. “We need to compensate for that, too.”

“If you can live with a ballpark estimate, your idea should work. Shall I check if we have any cheap, modern snow globes in stock?”

“I already have.” I explained what I'd found in the database, and he set off to gather a few samples, starting with the least expensive.

Removing a snow globe dome was a risk; we might be able to put it back into salable condition, but we might not. I got a plastic tub and canvas aprons from the supply cabinet. I was tying the apron when Fred came back with a souvenir snow globe from Tampa dated 1953. We'd priced it at twelve dollars. He put his apron on.

“All right, then,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”

I placed the snow globe in a tub, slid my fingers into plastic gloves, and eased a hard plastic chisel under the glass lip. I tapped it with a rubber mallet, one gentle tap. Nothing. I tapped a few more times, without loosening it at all.

“I think you'll need to use a metal one,” Fred said.

“I agree.” Wedging the metal tip under the glass overhang, I tapped the handle with the mallet, then switched to the flat end of a claw hammer, and the seal broke. Fred lifted the dome. Mineral oil poured into the tub. The innards—miniature palm trees, carefully arranged and glued-down sand, and stacked crates of oranges—were undamaged. All the plastic snowy bits were intact, floating in the oil. Fred laid the dome on a piece of wax paper and measured the thickness of the glass. It was about a sixty-fourth of an inch thicker than my shards.

“We can use it for reference, at least,” I said.

“True.” Fred placed it on the digital scale. “Just over six ounces.”

I placed the plastic bag on the scale. “This is so inexact. Between the thickness of the glass, the glycerin coating some pieces, and the weight of the plastic bag, to say nothing of my certainty that there are plenty of pieces missing—” I broke off, my eyes on the scale's display. “Am I reading this right? Fourteen and a half ounces?”

“Yes … so the snow dome was, theoretically at least, more than twice as big as this little guy from Tampa.”

“Which is consistent with the size required to cover an Imperial egg. Those were the big ones. Go get the largest snow globe we have.”

While Fred went to the shelves, I retrieved a second plastic tub and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

“This one has some heft to it,” he said, cupping the snow globe, a 1970s Christmas scene showing Santa Claus in his sleigh flying high above a nameless city's rooftops.

It was huge, about the size of a honeydew melon, but inexpertly made and painted. Santa's features were crudely rendered, and the paint was sloppily applied. We'd priced it at fifteen dollars, less than a third of what it would have fetched had it been more expertly crafted. I used the same tools and had the same happy result. Nothing broke. All the mineral oil and white flecks were salvaged.

Fred slid the dome onto the scale. “Twelve and a quarter ounces.”

“So the broken one is even bigger than this.”

“Right.”

“Good. This is helpful. Let's weigh the oil, then I've got to scoot. Sorry to leave you to put the two Humpty Dumptys back together again.”

“No problem.”

We weighed an empty tub, then the two that contained varying amounts of oil and “snow,” and deducted the tub's weight to learn the difference. The smaller one, from Tampa, weighed just over two ounces; Santa Claus came in at a full eight ounces.

“That's a lot of goo,” Fred remarked.

I stared at the viscous liquid, implications sparking through my brain like live wires.

Fred said something else, but I didn't hear him.

“Josie?”

I peeled off the gloves, untied my apron, and dropped everything on the floor. “Sorry … I need to go.”

I grabbed my tote bag and ran for the door.

*   *   *

I peeked through a plastic palm tree in the entryway to see into the Pelican's coffee shop. Ana, Stefan, and Peter sat next to one another along one side of a round table set for six, each in his or her own world. Ana, frowning, slid her knife closer to her teaspoon, lining them up, then moved them apart, aligning the tops, then the bottoms, as if she were working a geometry challenge. Stefan stared into the middle distance, a million miles away. His lips were puckered, the corners of his mouth pointed to the floor. Peter looked at nothing, then scanned the room. He crossed his arms over his chest and screwed his lips into a cynical smirk. He kept scanning the room, left to right, looking for I didn't know what.

Ellis wasn't at the table, a good thing. I needed to talk to him privately, urgently, before he confronted the Yartsins.

I backed out of the palm tree and returned to the lobby, texting Ellis as I walked. “In lobby by front door. I have news.”

His reply came within seconds: “2 min.”

While I was waiting, Wes called. I let it go to voice mail, then listened to his message. “Heather's mom won't talk to reporters, but maybe she'll talk to you. What do you think? Give me a call.”

Ellis pushed through a revolving door, spotted me, and headed my way.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. I snuck a look in the dining room. The Yartsins are at a table already.”

Heather and one of the older women I'd seen at the police station crossed the lobby from the elevator to the revolving door without seeing us.
Her mom,
I thought. Heather's eyes were red and puffy. Her mom cast worried looks at her. I toyed with saying hello to Heather, getting an introduction to her mother, but decided to skip it. I didn't know whether she'd told her mom about talking to me.

I looked up at Ellis. He was waiting for me to continue, as patient as ever.

“Stefan lied,” I said.

Ellis cocked his head, surprised. “Stefan?”

“It may be nothing.”

“What did he lie about?”

“Flying here with the snow globe. He couldn't have. It's too big.” I described how Fred and I estimated its size, then added, “Only snow globes the size of tennis balls or smaller—deemed to contain less than three point four ounces of liquid—are allowed in carry-on luggage. Unless he took a private plane, Stefan didn't fly here from Detroit.”

“How do you know he didn't check a bag?”

“He said he was a ‘travel-light sort of guy,' so I assumed it. Maybe I'm wrong and he did.” I shook my head. “No way. It would be foolhardy to send a Fabergé egg in checked luggage.”

“What else?” Ellis asked.

“Nothing. But if you lie about one thing…”

“Anything more about the snow globe?”

“No.”

He didn't speak for several seconds. “Wait here, will you? I need to make a call.”

“Sure.”

He pushed through the revolving door and disappeared to the left. I wondered who he was calling. Detective Brownley, I guessed, to get the investigation into how Stefan traveled to Rocky Point under way.

I people-watched while I waited. Most people seemed happy. A little girl about seven in a dark pink satin dress giggled and played with her long pink sash, holding the ends out like wands and twirling like a ballerina. A woman about my age, maybe her mom, wearing a glove-fit navy blue sheath, looked on, proud and pleased. Two men in suits joined them, and, chatting, they headed out. One man was about the woman's age, her husband, I figured. The other was older, her dad. A wedding. They were on their way to a wedding, and the little girl was a junior bridesmaid. One wedding canceled. Another on schedule. Two older women sat on club chairs, their heads close together, laughing so hard one of them was wiping her eyes. A middle-aged couple strolled from the coffee shop toward the elevator, holding hands. Chuck and Sara each wheeled a suitcase to the front desk. They'd planned to stay over one more night, I guessed, but changed their minds. Time to go home.