* * * * *
Calum was sitting on the doorstep of the crypt. Monica hovered over him while above their heads, the ladies in the stone relief wept into their hankies. The big man was holding his head and keening—or swearing.
“He knocked himself out running into the marble cornice,” Monica explained wryly.
“Ouch,” Grace sympathized. There didn’t seem to be much blood, though it was difficult to tell from the way Calum carried on.
“He’s very upset at missing all the action.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Peter remarked. He opened the ball of linen-wrapped cameos that they had retrieved from the stone urn. The stones twinkled in the moonlight like tiny fallen stars.
Staring up at them, Calum swore more loudly. “D’you mean to tell me she had them all the time?”
“A precaution,” Grace said apologetically.
Peter handed the jewels her way with such alacrity that Grace wondered if he was tempted to keep them. He grinned a little, meeting her gaze.
“Wow,” Monica said. “I don’t know if I’m relieved you had them safe or hurt that you apparently didn’t trust us.”
“It was kind of a last-minute impulse,” Grace explained.
“I know something about those.”
Grace’s eyes fell on Sid’s sprawled form, which was artistically draped at Calum’s feet. “Is he…dead?” The Penwith estate seemed littered with dead or unconscious bodies.
“Not that I can tell,” Monica said. She held up her cell phone. “The cops are on the way.”
“That’s the first time I recall thinking that was good news,” Peter remarked.
Epilogue
High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Page 48