The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  “Wait…, wait a minute. Let me get it.” George cracked the slightest hint of a smile. I knew I was on track, so I asked a question. “What kind of stereo are we talking about here? I mean what name brand?”

  His smile cracked a bit further. Referring to his notes, he replied, “That would be… yes, Bang & Olufsen.”

  The dim light in my mind got a little brighter. “Danish! Ok, so it doesn’t even look like a sound system, unless you know what to look for. It’s more like a futuristic answering machine than anything else. So you don’t get the usual visual clues that tell you ‘hey, the stereo’s on’. But that leaves sound. It would have been obvious if they could have heard it, so the sound was turned all the way down. Right?”

  He smiled all the way now, and then just said “Not bad, not bad at all. Shall I continue now?”

  I gave in and sat back again, throwing both hands in the air. “Tell away, maestro.” At least I had proved that I could catch the tricky part. I still couldn’t figure why this was such a focal point though, so I listened.

  “You’re right in one respect, two actually. It doesn’t look like a stereo, and there was no sound. It wasn’t turned down though it was on ‘Mute’. Now you’re thinking, ‘What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?’ right? Well, what caught my attention was the comments that Craine entered in his report, referring to the stereo. The B&O system at Dawson’s’ place is one of those ‘Total Concept Sound Design’ things. You get it installed by the dealer you buy it from, because it’s not a ‘plug & play’ kind of machine. The entire house gets wired for sound. The various components get tucked away wherever you choose to hide them, and the only part of the system, besides the speakers in every room of your home, which also don’t look like normal speakers, that you get to see is the ‘Control Unit’. And it operates on a hand held remote. Only. Now you can have as many ‘remotes’ as you like, but you have to use a remote. It was looked for, and found by, Constable Craine, on a small table in the foyer. Right next to the door.”

  I jumped in again. “I get it, why take the trouble to use the remote just before you leave the apartment, and only put it on mute? Unless maybe you were coming right back? Which nobody did.”

  George nodded and said, “I thought that at first myself. When the third day rolled around and we still had no sign of Miss Sauvé, I went over the report again, and another thought struck me. What if you didn’t care? What if it wasn’t your house, and you just didn’t care one way or the other. I called in the forensics lads to do the apartment, just because we didn’t have much else to do right about then anyway. Fergie, down at the lab was a bit miffed at having to send out a team with no actual instructions except ‘See what you can uncover’, but they were effective nonetheless. Their report was a better read than our Constable Craine’s.”

  By now I was about to fidget myself to death. “George, I implore you, please just tell me.”

  The smile was gone now, and he was all business. “The place had been tossed by a professional. Spell that with a capital ‘P’. The only fingerprints found on the remote control for the stereo were Constable Craine’s. In addition, any place in the apartment that might have held something of interest to a person doing a thorough search, had no fingerprints at all. Which is the only reason we know the place had been searched. There should have been ‘prints all over the place. Dawson’s’ for one. His girlfriend’s for another, but there weren’t, so they had to have been wiped clean, and your basic housecleaning isn’t very effective in that way. There were no other indications, period.”

  He had been tapping his knee with the notebook, and now he put it down. “We’re treating the fiancée Therese Sauvé as a missing person at this time. If Dawson’s brother had a residence in our fair city, I’d be inclined to include him too. Or maybe he flew in from Brazil, knocked off his brother and ran away with the girl.” He looked me in the eye. “You think maybe?” His gaze was pretty direct, and there was a hint of a smile, but I could tell when George was kidding me. Which was a good thing because I wasn’t too sure about the rest of it just yet. I cued up my mind and tried a bank shot to the corner pocket.

  “You mean to tell me that his brother was flying for the Brazilian Government… in particular, the Ministry of Industry and Natural Resources? While John is sitting pretty back home working out the financing for Citebank’s involvement in a massive deal set up by the Crassberg Group, for the Brazilians, relating directly to the creation of a new steel empire in the middle of the bloody Amazon? And then… he gets killed by a poison parrot, or fish, whatever, while both his fiancée and his brother go missing at approximately the same time. On two different continents.” My head was spinning with the inter-relationships that had been put forward in the last half hour. Or maybe it was just the lack of dinner. I thought ‘screw it’, and picked up the tray Sarah had brought. I figured I might as well eat something. Maybe if I raised the glucose levels in my blood I would be able to think straight. Healthy body, healthy mind, etc. I unrolled the silverware while I balanced the tray on my knee, and tucked in. Incredibly, it was still warm. It must have been awfully hot when she brought it up. Damn good too. I took a swallow of beer to wash the first bite down. George was just shaking his head.

  “You know what bothers me the most Jeff?”

  I mumbled something like “Mwuff?” around a mouthful of Sarah’s Shepard’s pie. I didn’t stop eating, but George took that as my response and carried along as if I was talking to him. I was thinking to myself at the moment that the whole thing was ridiculous. It had started out quite strange, and gone downhill from there.

  “Why would someone who happened to be in Rio De Janeiro, want to go to Amsterdam for the weekend. It certainly wouldn’t be for a good time. Amsterdam’s fun, but let’s face it, Rio. No, it’s not something that makes any sense unless it was for business. BUT…” George was pointing his finger at me, obviously trying to make a point, so I slowed down a bit to be polite. “Mmfff.” I nodded encouragingly.

  “BUT,” he continued, “his business was flying survey flights for the Brazilian Government. His contract had another four months to run. So, it wasn’t likely to be business. Unless it was shady business.” He added the last bit in a smug tone and sat back looking pleased with himself.

  I shook my head and wiped up the last of the mashed potatoes with a piece of French bread. Carbohydrate Heaven. The meal felt like I’d eaten part of Chicago. Pretty heavy, but it felt good. For the first time in over a week though, I was having a nicotine craving. I tried to put it out of my mind. It was time to get down to the heart of the matter. There was a lot more on George’s mind than we’d discussed so far tonight. I also had a feeling that Sarah had something to do with it. Her mood had been too far off normal when she’d brought in the tray of dinner for me. I went straight at it.

  “OK then. I think we’ve established that this is the one of the more complex cases to come down the old turnpike in quite some time. As far as my investigative career is concerned, I’d have to admit that it’s the most complex ever. I believe I know what you’re leading up to.” I held up my hand as George started to interrupt. “Give me a minute, OK?” He cut off whatever he’d been about to say and lapsed into obedient silence. “Right, now… the link between Crassberg, with the Brazilian deal, and the murder of John Dawson, the disappearance of his fiancée and his brother, which, as you pointed out, was on two different continents, and the missing files relating to the Crassberg deal, and the fact that his brother was working for the Brazilians flying geo-survey flights… all of this must be related. For it to be coincidental would be as fantastical as meeting a real live leprechaun the next time you went on a family picnic. That means that the case I took on for Marsh is directly related to murder. And if our reasoning can be accepted as even moderately stable, then there’s an international conspiracy of some kind threaded into this as well.” I could see that George was being very quiet, which meant that I was on the right track. My stomac
h sank as what I was thinking came out into spoken words. Heavy flat words that hung in the air between us. “Sarah wants me out of it, and so do you.” I stated it as a fact, not a question.

  George came back at me right away. “You know the deal Jeff, the Department does the homicides, you get to do the corporate investigations, and never the twain shall meet. As for Sarah, she hears everything about my work. She always has. When she saw the tie-in, I was putting together, well… she kind of went off the deep end. The treatment you got tonight was like a Walton Family reunion compared to what I’ve had to put up with. She didn’t warn me about the plate being hot when I sat down to dinner.”

  If I hadn’t been so twisted up with conflicting emotions, I would have laughed. My response came out a bit surly instead of joking. “I’m sure you’re living in fear of your life.”

  “Aw, shit. Jeff, gimme a break here, OK? The chief calls me into his office at about three o’clock this afternoon, and says he’s just read my report and have I called the RCMP yet? They’ll deal with Interpol, and I’m to give any assistance that may be requested of me. It’s being taken out of my control Jeff. The chief doesn’t want the heat, and he sees a way to move it out from over his head, and onto the Feds. That means I get to have peripheral involvement, if at all. Are you starting to get it now? I’m off the case, basically. Our deal has always been to work together if we landed a big one. Now I’m taking orders from a suit by the name of Wilson Lapierre, Chief Inspector, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, International Bigwig Division.” He turned away from my stare and slumped back in his seat. George’s feeling of betrayal by his own was showing through. It wasn’t just me that had gotten the call on this. I felt a dropping away of pressure, and my mind slipped into a more logical mode. There had to be a way to do this so that I didn’t get the short end of the stick. This was the biggest chance I’d had yet to prove that my business could prosper, with the kind of clientele that made a reputation for success. George had been my ace card, but I could still play the hand I had. Now I definitely needed a cigarette.

  I got up and walked over to the window, rubbing my face with both hands. George followed me out of the corner of his eye. I knew that he didn’t like what was happening any more than I did, and there was going to be a way to get around it, I just had to think of one. I put my hands in my back pockets and stared out of the window. The rain had started to drizzle again, and it was running down the window in jagged little rivulets. The street was shiny and wet, reflecting the light from the streetlamp right outside the house. It was so quiet in the room we could hear each other breathing. A couple of moments passed like that before I turned around and looked at him again. He was avoiding my eyes, and I guess he knew what I felt. I said it out loud anyway.

  “I’ll take care of Sarah. I’ll make it all better, and there’ll be no repercussions on you for it. I can’t quit. It’s the best job I’ve been given since I started this business. It’s what I’ve been working for, and now that I’ve got it, I’m not giving it up just because it looks like the water is too deep. I can swim, even in deep water.” George wasn’t saying much at this point. The stumbling block now was Sarah. I was all the family she had outside of this house, and despite her seeming acquiescence to the way I led my life, she still wielded an undue amount of influence for a younger sister. From my side of the equation, she was all the blood family I had. Aside from the little princess, of course. That counted for a lot. It was time to have a serious talk. I walked over to the side table by my chair and picked up the tray with the remains of the meal I had eaten, and walked out of the office. George prudently stayed where he was. I went downstairs to the kitchen, and Sarah was sitting there, at the table. Her kitchen was large, the way they used to be in most homes once upon a time. It was the kind of room that could be a social gathering place for the family. She’d had the whole thing redone just the year before. The wall to the adjoining dining room had been taken out, and the space incorporated into a totally new floorplan for the kitchen. The result was striking. You could put a family of six down to eat at the table, and still have plenty of room for two cooks to do their thing without crowding each other or the diners. The sink and cupboard area was separated from the table space by an island with second sink, and a chopping block top, with a small counter extension on one end. Sarah kept a couple of stools next to the counter end of the island, for taking a break from the chores with a quick coffee, and like that. She was sitting there now, kind of sullen, elbows on the counter and her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of what looked to be hot chocolate. She was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a white V-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed up. Her hair was loose and falling down across her shoulders. It made it hard to see her face, but I could tell she was pouting. Her lips gave her away. She sighed a long slow sigh as I walked across the floor and put the tray down next to the sink. I took my time about it, then walked over to the island and pulled up a stool and sat down.

  Sarah put her mug down and reached up to the hanging rack overhead and pulled down another mug, setting it in front of me. She held her hand palm up, gesturing towards the thermal carafe on the countertop in front of us, so I picked it up and poured myself a cup. It was hot chocolate. It was still steaming, so I blew across the top of the mug before taking a sip. It still burned going down. She had set the lighting on low with the variable control, and it was kind of cozy, just sitting there, not talking and all. It was a tough situation, but I felt really close to her just then. It’s funny how that works. I thought about the way to approach it, and gave up right away. There was no ‘right’ way to talk about this, it could only be broached the old-fashioned way. Directly. I used a soft voice.

  “George told me that we were going to shut down the investigation.” I let that hang between us for a moment, to see if she wanted to comment or elaborate on it. The only thing she said was, “Umhmm.” It seemed I was going to have to take the initiative in this dialog.

  “I guess I have a pretty good idea about how you feel sugar, but…” She turned to face me in a flash. We were sitting side by side and her hair swished across my shoulder as she turned.

  “Don’t call me sweet names when I’m mad at you, I don’t like it, alright?” Her voice was very calm and her tone was quite adult. It took me back a step mentally. I sometimes have a hard time adapting to her when she shows me how grown up she really is. I guess it’s silly to think of her as a kid, her being a married woman, mother of a child and all, but old attitudes die as hard as old habits. I nodded agreement.

  “Alright, I apologize. Sarah, I’m not going to beat around the bush here, I can’t do it. I can’t just back off. This is the kind of case that I’ve been dreaming about. It stretches all the boundaries of my operation the way it’s been so far. It takes me into the region I want to work in, but haven’t been able to reach. The very reasons that you want me out of this are the reasons that I want in. I believe that George is right, it’s connected to the murder, and the apparent disappearance of Dawson’s brother, and his fiancée. It covers big business, international finance, potential conspiracy, and I won’t give it up. I can understand why you might be worried about me. You always did that. What I don’t understand is why you seem to be so angry.”

  Her pout deepened, and she said, “I knew you wouldn’t stop, that’s why. Nothing I could say would ever make you change your mind on something once you’d decided to do it. It’s bad enough I have my husband going off to work in a job where a bulletproof vest is part of the dress code, I just don’t need it from you too.” The pout was starting to fade now, and the voice was fading with it. She was talking in a low quavering tone, and her eyes were filling with tears as she spoke. One little tear broke away from her lashes and trickled down her cheek. “I keep thinking he’s almost ready to retire, you know, take the golden handshake before he takes the lead shot. He makes more money in the market than he does in the job, so why not, right? He’s got a happy home, and a beautiful baby daughter to raise,
why not? They can’t keep him if he doesn’t want to stay, so why the hell not? Because he loves the job, that’s why not.”

  Now the tears were more than a trickle, and I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just sat there, listening to my sister talk and watching her cry. “So, I live with it. It’s not like he’s working a patrol, at least he’s the boss, right? Well they still shoot you if you’re the one in charge, don’t they? The bad guys don’t give anybody a break, that’s what makes them the bad guys. I just get frightened sometimes. I feel the pressure just like anybody else, and it’s hard, that’s all, it’s just hard sometimes. Then you go and get into it. And now it’s getting as serious as what he does.” She reached up and took my face in her hands, and we were just inches apart. Now the tears were falling off of her cheeks and I didn’t know how much more I could take. “Could you imagine what it’s like for me, to think now that maybe one day you both don’t come home from work?” She stared straight into my eyes, and I could see the need. The need for reassurance, the need to know that wouldn’t happen, and it wasn’t something that could be given, because it couldn’t be known. Not by me, not by anyone. I reached out and put my arms around her, pulling her in close. Her head rested on my shoulder and she sighed deeply. I stroked her hair and whispered in her ear. “Don’t think for a minute that I won’t always be there when you want me Sarah. I always have and I always will. Nothing can change that. Nothing. I love you and Katy more than anything in this life, and nothing will ever come between us. You have to have faith in what God has given you sugar, faith that he won’t take it away. That’s the only way we can live our lives, with faith. If we start to doubt, then everything is questionable, and pretty soon life becomes unbearable. George is the smartest cop in the city, and the city knows it. He gets the manpower he needs to solve the problems he deals with every day, he’s not the one who’s on the firing line sugar, his people are. He’s the general who plans the strategy, and issues the orders to the troops. He doesn’t lead anyone into battle. You’re safe with him Sarah. You’re safe, and Katy’s safe. I’ve slept well at night ever since you married him. There’ll never be a time when I would change my mind about that. He knows what he has at home. He’s the luckiest man in the world, and he knows it. The only battles he wages are ones of wit and politics.” While I was talking, the crying had subsided, and I gently pulled her away from me so I could look her in the eyes. I smiled. “Mind you, those can be scary enough.” She finally seemed to have broken out of the lock the fear had gotten on her, and she gave a little smile back at me.