The Good Die Twice (22 page)

“Yes.” Sheila smiled, her fingers fidgeting
with the neckline of her sailor collar. “Fashion show brunch.” She
checked her watch and stood. “I’ll let you get back to your family
duties.” She turned back when she reached the door. “And Worm, the
telephone is a wonderful invention. Use it.”

CHAPTER 35

“Remember me?” Dagger lifted his sunglasses
and looked at Pete Foster, who was hosing down a forty-two-foot
Bayliner.

“Digger?”

“No, Dagger.” He placed his sunglasses back
on the bridge of his nose. “I need to show you a couple of
pictures.”

Pete turned the water off and dried his hands
on his cutoffs. He followed Dagger to a shady spot by Salty’s
office. “It was time for a break anyway.” Pete nodded toward the
houseboat. “Want something to drink?” Dagger declined. Several
minutes later Pete returned with a can of lemonade.

“Is this Rachel Tyler?” Dagger showed him
Rachel’s picture with her blue eyes sultry and blonde hair
flowing.

“I thought I confirmed this last time you
were here.”

“Look again.” Dagger handed him a picture of
Edie, her hair blonde, contacts blue.

Pete looked at the picture and grinned his
surfer boy grin. “Is this some test?”

“They look alike to you?”

Puzzled, Pete looked at the pictures again.
“They aren’t the same woman?”

“Nope. The only difference is the mole. Did
the Rachel you bumped pelvises with have a mole?”

Pete held up both pictures, searching first
one face then the other. “No, come to think of it, she didn’t.” He
handed the pictures back. “All you really had to do was check for
my skin under her nails.” The surfer boy grinned again.

“Of course,” Dagger smiled back. But he
wasn’t smiling at what Pete said. He remembered that Edie had those
long, art deco nails. Rachel didn’t like sculptured nails and never
wore anything but clear polish on her short nails.

Edie pushed her way into Luke’s room, tugging
at her sunglasses and shoving them in her purse.

“What? No hello?” He closed the door, folded
his arms across his chest just below the bright yellow word Aruba
on his shirt.

“Where is it?” She found the black earring on
the coffee table. Taking off her shoe, she brought the heel down on
the earring, shattering the plastic into bits and pieces.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“No wonder Dagger didn’t follow you after you
took the earring,” Edie said. “It’s just costume jewelry, for
crissake. Rachel was wearing the real ones.” Edie smiled slowly.
“She was clever enough to camouflage the damn things.”

“She had them all along?” He scraped the
black fragments into his hand and dumped them in an ashtray.

Edie dragged one lacquered nail across her
lower lip. “I don’t lie about diamonds.” Edie told Luke about
Dagger’s visit.

“Well, he obviously knew we’d be after it so
he made a fake one. I told you before, he isn’t anyone you should
take lightly.”

“We need the mate to the earring, Luke. And
what about the body? Someone is going to stumble on it.” She paced
in a tight circle, pulled her hat off her head and flung it on the
couch. Her nondescript navy suit was toned down so as not to draw
attention. She had left the expensive pearls at home and the hat
was an attempt to somewhat conceal her identity. When you’re one of
the Tyler brood, you are easily recognized.

“Where are your goons hiding the body?”

“Just calm down.” Luke stopped her in
mid-stride, placed his large hands on her back and massaged her
neck. “I’ll get both earrings. It’s your job to find the
necklace.”

She pulled away and continued pacing. There
was a time when they would have left a trail of clothes to the
bedroom or not even made it to the bedroom. But when it came to
money, neither one wanted to be sidetracked.

Edie said, “I tore that damn house apart five
years ago. And I questioned her family and friends til I was blue
in the face.”

“Well, search the house again.”

“Like I haven’t? Our chances of finding it
are…” Edie glanced toward the opened patio door. “What on earth is
that?” The gray hawk stared back at her and ruffled its
feathers.

“It’s a fuckin’ bird. Now pay attention.”

The gray hawk leaped from the railing and
flew off.

“Just do your part, Edie. Dagger would be
stupid to keep the diamond at his house. But we’ve been following
him. I think I might know who he gave it to.”

CHAPTER 36

“What a bloody long plane ride.” J.C.
Kinnecutt gulped the glass of water Dagger offered him and settled
back against the cool leather. His pale blue eyes took in the
chrome and black décor and airiness of the house. “Nice digs.”

J.C. had called Dagger from the airport, got
directions to Sara’s house, and rented a car. He had yet to check
into his hotel because his priority was to see the diamond earring.
His white shirt was soaked. J.C. pinched the fabric between two
fingers and fanned it away from his body.

The curator was younger than Dagger
anticipated. The picture he had formulated in his mind of a
gray-haired gent with bushy eyebrows couldn’t have been farther
from the truth. J.C. was tall and slender with a head of thick
blonde hair. He guessed him to be in his early forties only because
of the crinkles around his eyes and the hint of gray at his
temples. No wedding ring but a nice Rolex watch. He even had great
taste in cars since J.C. had rented a Porsche.

“What on earth do you have in there?” J.C.
walked over and stood in front of the closed Plexiglas door.
Einstein was on one of the high tree branches napping. “A lovely
bird. You just have one macaw in that big room?”

“Yes. Einstein and I both like to have a lot
of space.”

Rubbing his hands together, J.C. returned to
the sofa saying, “Let’s have a look at the darling.”

When Dagger removed the lid to the box and
pulled out the earrings, J.C. gasped and quickly pulled a narrow
black box from his pocket.

“You have both earrings now?”

“Yes.” Dagger sat on the leather love seat.
He watched J.C. pull a cap off the pointed end of his instrument. A
red Ready light was flashing. “What are you doing?”

“This is a thermal tester. There are some new
fakes going around called moissanite. Can fool some of the best
experts. Only one problem. Moissanite conducts electricity whereas
diamonds don’t.” The Ready light stopped flashing and J.C. pressed
the pencil-thin point to the diamond earring. The word Diamond lit
up. He spent several minutes studying each earring, then peered
through a loupe for the final examination. He groaned like a man in
his last seconds of orgasm. “I can’t believe it.”

“They’re real?”

“My god.” He set the loupe down.
“Absolutely.”

Dagger picked up the black box which could be
mistaken for a beeper had it been three inches shorter. He
scratched a finger across his jaw bone and eyed his visitor. “I can
only assume you already tested the set you have back at the
museum.”

“Practically had a coronary when I saw the
results. But it still didn’t tell me if what you had was
genuine.”

“What if someone didn’t have one of these
nifty things?” Dagger asked, holding the box up. “How would he be
sure?”

Smiling, J.C. opened a small case. It was the
size of a shaving kit. He retrieved a stone and a pair of tweezers.
“Do you have matches?”

Dagger walked over to the wall of bookcases
where Sara kept a long butane lighter for lighting candles. He
stood in front of J.C. and pressed the button, sending a flame out
the tip.

“Good, now if you could hold the flame under
this stone.” J.C. held the tweezers over the flame. “Not too close
or we’ll have soot on the bottom.”

“What does this do?”

“This particular stone I brought is a
moissanite. When it comes in contact with a flame that is at least
two-hundred-and-fifty degrees centigrade, it changes color to a
bright yellow.” Within twenty seconds, the colorless diamond
changed color. Next, he held the flame under the earring. It didn’t
change color.

Dagger turned the flame off and set the
lighter on the coffee table. He settled into the leather love seat,
crossing one ankle over his knee, right elbow on the armrest. “Tell
me, J.C., how does someone get valuables out of your country
without Customs noticing?”

J.C. stared longingly at the earrings. “All
anyone has to do is fill out a declaration form listing what they
are taking out of the country.” He chuckled, adding, “And lie a
little.”

“What about airport searches?”

“They only do them randomly,” J.C.
replied.

“Perfect for a model. They have suitcases of
costume jewelry.”

“Absolutely. And Customs will just rely on
the declaration. That and a pretty smile from a gorgeous filly will
get her through Customs quicker than you can say,” J.C. admired the
earrings again, “diamonds.”

“You can come out now.” Dagger announced.
Sara slowly made her way down the stairs from her bedroom. “I
thought you might be slinking around somewhere. You didn’t want to
meet J.C.?”

“He seems to know his diamonds.”

“Yes, he does. He’s going to stick around
town for a few days in the hopes that we find the necklace.”

“He was pretty adamant about taking the
earrings with him.”

“Guess he was afraid of letting them out of
his sight. I really should give them to Padre to put in the police
department vault but for some reason, even I don’t trust them out
of my sight.”

Sara crossed her legs and sat on the floor,
elbows on the coffee table. “Was that Worm who called?”

“Yes. He checked records from Rachel’s
college days and did find an Edie Winthrop listed. And Pete
remembered that the woman on the yacht that night did not have a
beauty mark.”

“So you think Edie wore a wig?”

“Probably.” Dagger carried the earrings to
his concealed room for safekeeping. He returned and sifted through
papers on his desk, sat down and switched on his computer. As it
hummed, clicked, and did all its other computer machinations, he
watched Sara play with her hair, grabbing narrow clumps and
braiding them. “And besides,” Dagger added, “Edie was the only one
who went tearing out of the house after my visit this morning.”

The gray hawk had waited up in the trees to
follow the first Tyler who left the house. Edie had gone straight
to Luke’s hotel. Eric and Robert, on the other hand, kept their
golf date.

“Are you going to tell Nick about Edie? She
obviously is the one who convinced Nick he killed Rachel. And where
do you think Eric was when all this was going on?”

“Lot of questions, young lady.” He looked
over at her, the intensity in her eyes as she busied her fingers.
It was a welcome alternative to her chewing on her knuckles. “I
already know Eric was at the office the evening Rachel disappeared.
He worked late trying to catch up on paperwork. And I don’t think
we should break it to Nick just yet. I can’t predict what his
reaction might be, and there’s a good chance he could screw up the
entire investigation.”

“But Edie would have needed help getting
Rachel to a hospital and then to The Carmelite Retreat.”

“That’s her buddy, Luke, I presume.”

“Hmm.” She busied her fingers some more until
she had ten thin long braids on each side of her head.

Dagger shoved a fist under his chin and
stared at the young woman, the fingers working over, under, over,
under. Her bright eyes staring vacantly. He finally asked, “What’s
happening in that head of yours?”

Sara shrugged. “I just remember the report
Skizzy ran of the phone calls made from the Tyler house before and
after Rachel’s disappearance. Some were to Australia.”

“Luke helped to steal the diamonds so he was
probably still in Australia.”

Over, under, over, under. Sara’s fingers
worked faster. “Maybe.”

Edie pushed open the door to Robert’s bedroom
and slid in, closing the door softly behind her. Through the opened
patio doors she could smell a variety of perennials from the
gardens below. She went directly to a large cherry wood armoire in
the corner.

When Rachel first disappeared, Edie had
searched through every box of jewelry Rachel owned, every secret
hiding place Edie knew of, and every wall safe. It wasn’t difficult
to discover the combination. Robert uses his wedding anniversary, a
major mistake most people make. They either use a birth date of a
family member or some other significant date.

Edie had made one major blunder. When Rachel
returned from her photo shoot in Australia five years ago, Edie had
called her in the limo five times, insisting that she come right
home, hysterical that she not let her suitcase out of her sight.
She had under-estimated Rachel’s intelligence. But more seriously,
she under-estimated her integrity. Edie could never keep a cool
head when that much money was involved.

Being a Tyler had its advantages: prestige,
name recognition, an enviable mansion to live in, access to a
resort in just about any country. Unfortunately, Edie’s pre-nuptial
entitles her to only the money her husband earns, not what was held
under corporate purse strings. And with the way she and Eric spent
money, there wouldn’t be enough to keep her in pearls let alone
diamonds.

“Dammit, Rachel. Where did you hide it?”

Edie pulled out a stack of sweaters and set
them on the bed. Then she started to press on the back wall. Most
custom-made armoires were designed to specific recommendations. By
using her best bedroom techniques, Edie had the cabinetmaker
spilling every secret known to man and then some. She found out
Rachel had requested a secret door in the back wall.

Suddenly, a door sprung open. Excited, Edie
shoved her hand inside the compartment but felt empty space.
“Damn!”