But He Was Already Dead When I Got There

by Barbara Paul

  He’d found Dorrie Murdoch on one of the “consulting” levels—no jewelry on display, just a table and two chairs. Dorrie herself was as carefully made up as a model, Toomey noted. She was wearing a soft green pantsuit made of some rich material he couldn’t identify. Her hair was an unusual shade of blond, carefully coiffed. All in all, the female partner of Ellandy Jewels looked every bit as expensive as her surroundings.

  “A great deal of our business is for custom-designed pieces,” Dorrie explained when asked about her work. “Perhaps someday that’s all we’ll do. A man who just left—he wanted something special to give his wife for their anniversary.” Dorrie gave Toomey a satisfied smile. “He decided on diamond earrings. His wife has a round face and a rather short neck, so I’ll take that into consideration in my design.”

  “So it helps to know what the wearer looks like?”

  “It’s essential. I’ve never met this woman, so when her husband phoned for an appointment I asked him to bring in a photo. But every piece here is unique, custom-designed or not. Owning the only one of something appeals to a lot of people. It’s a status thing, Lieutenant. The man who ordered the diamond earrings—he was determined to have something especially designed for his wife, even though I can’t have it in three days as he wanted. Heavens, it takes longer than that just to cut the stones!”

  “Really?” Toomey said. “It takes three days to pick up a mallet and tap a wedge or whatever it is?”

  “You’re thinking of cleaving. Most diamonds are sawed these days instead of cleaved—we don’t even employ a diamond cleaver. When we have a stone that needs to be cleaved, we contract the job out.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Cleaving works with the grain, sawing goes against the grain. Sawing takes more time. You can also cut diamonds with a laser beam. But that’s a rather more expensive operation, and we haven’t decided whether to invest in the necessary equipment yet or not.”

  “How much did Vincent Farwell lend Ellandy Jewels?” the Lieutenant asked suddenly.

  “A million and a half. Why?”

  “And you can’t pay it back?”

  “We can, but it would put us back so far it would pretty much wipe out the benefit of getting the loan in the first place. We were prepared to make a partial payment—look, Lieutenant, why don’t you talk to Lionel Knox about this? He handles the business end of Ellandy’s.”

  Toomey asked her about the preceding night. Dorrie said they were all at Uncle Vincent’s house by a few minutes after eight, they talked business for the better part of an hour, Uncle Vincent said he’d let them know about extending the loan, and they all left around nine, except Gretchen Knox who stayed over. No, no one left the room or used the elevator. And she was sorry, but she didn’t remember whether the fire was burning when they left or not.

  “Where did you go after the meeting?” Toomey asked.

  “Well, Nicole Lattimer and Lionel and I came in here to do some work, and Simon and Malcolm just went on home.”

  “Simon Murdoch—your husband? And Malcolm Conner is your brother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How late did you and Ms. Lattimer and Mr. Knox stay here last night?”

  “Oh, it was after midnight when we left. I don’t know the exact time.”

  Toomey asked for Simon’s and Malcolm’s business addresses, warned her to expect a fingerprint man, and then said he wanted to talk to Nicole Lattimer. “I understand there’s some chance she might be made a partner in Ellandy Jewels?”

  “It’s almost a certainty,” Dorrie said emphatically. “Lionel just wants to get this loan paid off first. If Nicole had the money to buy in, there wouldn’t be any problem. As it is, her contribution would be her designs—the same arrangement I have with Lionel.”

  “And you don’t object?”

  “Object? Certainly not, Lieutenant—I’m one hundred percent in favor of it! We might lose Nicole if we don’t make her a partner, and she’s far too talented to let get away.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I think she’s back in the workshop,” Dorrie said. “Nicole’s come up with a new diamond cut and she wants to see it through the process herself. This way.” She got up and walked through a curtained-off alcove, identifying Toomey to a discreet-looking guard on the way.

  The workshop was a surprise. Toomey had expected to find a roomful of little old men hunched over their workbenches, grinding away at whatever precious gems had been entrusted to their personal touch. There were a few craftsmen at work (none of them old), but the first thing that caught Toomey’s eye was the long row of high-tech machines busily humming away.

  “Here she is,” Dorrie said, and made the introductions.

  When Toomey had been looking over the jewelry on display, he’d noticed two distinct styles. One might have been called “traditional”. Traditional for kings and queens, that is—elegant ornamental pieces that made one think of castles and courtiers and royal balls. The other style was boldly modern, its pieces strong accents to be worn with today’s clothing. Toomey had tentatively pegged Dorrie as the designer of the traditional jewelry—or perhaps “classical” was the preferred word. When he met Nicole Lattimer, he knew he was right.

  Nicole, for some reason, was dressed as a gypsy. A rich gypsy. Her dark hair was partially covered by a brightly colored designer scarf tied at the nape of her neck, and ruby-studded geometric shapes dangled from her ear lobes. An off-white linen shirt that would have shocked Toomey if he’d known the price, a heavy wine-colored skirt, and wine-colored boots completed the ensemble. Toomey couldn’t decide whether the clothing complemented Nicole’s dark eyes and prominent cheek bones or if it worked the other way around. Either way, Nicole Lattimer was A Presence.

  “How’s the new cut going?” Dorrie asked.

  “It’s in the Piermatic,” Nicole smiled and held up crossed fingers. “We’ll know soon.”

  “I can’t wait to see it. But for now I’ll leave you to Lieutenant Toomey.” Dorrie touched Nicole lightly on the shoulder and was gone.

  “What’s a Piermatic?” Toomey asked.

  “It’s the last step in the cutting process,” Nicole said. “Here, I’ll show you.” She led him to six machines equipped with sawwheels; all were in use. “The rough diamond is first cut here, creating the uppermost facet of the finished stone—it’s called the table facet.”

  “Are those ordinary metal saws?” Toomey asked. “I thought only diamond could cut diamond.”

  “That’s true. The cutting edge of the saw is coated with diamond dust. It’s the dust that does the actual cutting, by abrasion—the sawwheel just provides the movement. From here the stone goes to a bruting machine,” she pointed, “where the girdle is applied. That’s like an equator circling the stone, separating the crown from the bottom part. This machine is a fairly new development and it can’t handle all the stones we feed it. We still employ a human brutter to do the jobs the machine can’t.”

  “That’s nice,” said Toomey.

  “Next the stone has to be faceted. Say you’re cutting a brilliant—that’s the most popular diamond cut. Normally it would take four men to do the job. The top blocker would apply the eight basic facets on the crown, and then the bottom blocker would take care of the eight below the girdle. For a small stone, that would be the end of it—it’d be sold as an eight-cut. But a larger stone would go on to the top brillianteer, who’d add twenty-four more facets to the crown. Then the bottom brillianteer would add another sixteen. That’s the old way of doing it,” Nicole smiled.

  “And the new way?” Toomey asked, recognizing a cue when he heard one.

  Nicole patted the machine she was standing next to. “The Piermatic. Does the work of all four faceters. You set a diamond into a holder and its profile is projected onto a graph, which tells you what angles to program the Piermatic to cut. The machine does the rest.”

  It suddenly hit Toomey what she was talking about. “The auto
mated manufacture of diamonds?”

  “That’s exactly what it is. A lot of cutting and polishing operations still do it the old way, but the machines are gaining ground.”

  “I’m amazed,” Toomey said. “I had no idea all this went on behind jewelry stores!”

  “Oh, it doesn’t, usually—very few retailers have their own manufacturing operation. This is a big venture for us. It’s what we needed the loan for.”

  Toomey noted the proprietorial “we”.

  Just then a red light on the Piermatic went on; Nicole removed a finished diamond from the machine. She placed the stone on a small table covered with black velvet and switched on a strong light. “Color is good,” she said, “but it’s not very brilliant. That’s always the problem, trying to balance color and brilliance—you usually end up sacrificing one for the other. I was trying an extreme angle on a cut-corner triangle shape, and I lost something. Damn.”

  “A failure?”

  “No, it’s still a perfectly good diamond—we’ll have no trouble selling it. It’s just not the roaring success I was looking for. All right, I’m finished here, Lieutenant. You want to ask me questions? Let’s go to my office.”

  As he followed her out of the workshop, Toomey spotted a small room that had been built into the corner of the main room, barely larger than a closet. He asked Nicole about it.

  “That’s the X-ray room, for testing pearls,” she said in a dismissive manner. “I don’t do pearls.”

  Nicole’s office was as dramatic as a stage set. The rug was black, the walls were white, and the furniture was all black-and-white—a marked contrast to the colorful figure who inhabited the room. Drawing board, workbench, desk, open-faced supply cabinet, three chairs—all were white with black trim, or vice versa. The tilted drawing board held a sketch of a brooch, with the exact dimensions carefully written in. The walls displayed colored photographs of finished jewelry. Toomey started off by complimenting her on her designs.

  Nicole murmured an automatic thank-you. “I try for a realistic look in my designs,” she said, “something more in touch with life as it is lived today. A piece of jewelry must make a statement, or else it’s failed in its primary function.”

  Realistic jewelry? Toomey thought. He asked for her home address and led the talk to the meeting at Vincent Farwell’s house. Nicole told the same story as Dorrie, but added that she thought the fire had gone out by the time they left.

  “What were you and Mr. Knox and Mrs. Murdoch working on so late here?”

  She hesitated a second and then said, “We wanted to bring our gem inventory up to date. In case Uncle Vincent decided not to renew the loan and we might have to sell, you understand.”

  “Did he give you some reason to think he wouldn’t renew?”

  “Oh, not really,” she said in an overcasual manner. “But with Uncle Vincent, you never could tell what he might do next. We expected an answer last night, you see. When he didn’t give us one—well, I guess we started worrying a little.”

  The story she told was plausible enough, but Toomey felt certain he still didn’t have the full dope on the loan. He asked Nicole if she thought she’d leave Ellandy’s if Dorrie and Lionel failed to make her a partner.

  “How did you know about that?” she asked in surprise. “I honestly don’t know whether I’d leave or not, Lieutenant. This is a good place to work. I have complete freedom to do what I want, good facilities—but when I see how much my designs sell for and how much money I take home … I just don’t know. It’s complicated by the fact that I’ve grown fond of Dorrie and Lionel.”

  “Speaking of, when do you expect Lionel Knox in?”

  “I can’t say—I thought he’d be here by now.”

  Toomey asked to use her phone and called Rizzuto with instructions to meet him at the station house. Then he thanked Nicole for her help and left, stopping off at Dorrie’s office on the way out—ostensibly to tell her he was leaving but in fact to get a look at the office itself. Like Nicole’s office, the walls were covered with colored photographs of finished pieces. But there the similarity ended. Dorrie’s office was all soft pastels and flowering plants, an extension of the woman who worked there rather than a contrasting background to play against.

  “I’ll be on my way,” Toomey told Dorrie. “Excuse me—may I look at that necklace?”

  Dorrie dimpled prettily. “It’s a belt.” She held up a length of delicate gold filigree with pearl pendants attached along the bottom edge. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s beautiful!”

  “Thank you! But I’m wondering now if the pendants aren’t too close together. The balance isn’t right.”

  Toomey left her to her problem and decided to take one more look at Nicole’s “realistic” jewelry. In the showroom he examined her display of gold rings, each set with a different single gem and designed to be worn in groups. In the next case was a pin in the shape of a stylized cornucopia that spilled out emeralds of various sizes.

  Toomey was particularly taken with a—well, it couldn’t be called a necklace; it was too oversized. A collar, then. Nicole’s collar somehow managed to combine high tech with a hint of paganism. It was made of sapphires set in geometrically shaped silver mountings and trimmed with … snakeskin? Unusual, to say the least.

  A clerk approached, although he probably wasn’t called a clerk, Toomey thought—an assistant or some such, a silver-haired man who looked like a Supreme Court judge. Toomey asked the price of the collar.

  “One sixty,” was the answer.

  Toomey did a double take. “Thousand?”

  “One hundred sixty thousand,” the assistant nodded.

  Toomey fled.

  “It’ll be a couple of weeks before Uncle Vincent’s will goes into probate,” Malcolm told the others. “All that means is that the will must be proved valid and all possible heirs notified. Since Gretchen is the only heir, that part will be automatic.”

  They were in Lionel’s office at Ellandy Jewels. Lionel, Dorrie, and Nicole were waiting to find out the legal status of their debt to Uncle Vincent.

  “Uncle Vincent appointed Richard Dann his executor,” Malcolm went on. “Dann was his attorney, as you may or may not know. Once the will is probated, Dann will place notices in the newspapers for all claims against the estate to come to him. He’ll also collect any money owed the estate—and that’s the time your loan will be called in.”

  Lionel groaned. “So we haven’t gained much time after all.”

  “Not a whole lot. But Dann might be willing to accept a partial payment. He has no personal grievance to settle the way Uncle Vincent did—or claimed he did.”

  “That’s up to the executor?” Nicole asked. “Not the heir?”

  “Technically, yes—since the loan will come due during the period Dann is going to be settling the estate. But executors generally defer to an heir’s wishes in such matters, unless there is some legal reason why they should not. If Gretchen insists on the full amount being paid, I’m afraid Dann will honor her decision.”

  “Be nice to Gretchen,” Dorrie cooed.

  Lionel groaned again.

  Malcolm cleared his throat. “How big a partial payment did you have in mind?”

  “Four hundred thousand,” Lionel said.

  “A goodly sum,” Malcolm nodded. “If we can deal exclusively with Dann, I think we’ll be all right. He’s not going to turn down four hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Lionel,” said Dorrie, “wouldn’t this be a good time to take Gretchen on a nice long trip somewhere? Like to China?”

  “Don’t you think she might be just a touch suspicious?” Lionel said sarcastically. “Right during the time the estate is being settled? Bad idea, Dorrie.”

  “The less said to Gretchen at this point the better,” Nicole agreed. “She’ll more than likely leave everything up to Mr. Dann. Gretchen doesn’t go in for making big decisions—not her thing.”

  “That goddamned loan!” Lionel e
xploded. “We should never, never, never have borrowed from Uncle Vincent!”

  “Nobody else would let us have that much money,” Dorrie said pragmatically. “Malcolm, if the promissory note doesn’t turn up among Uncle Vincent’s papers, are you going to blow the whistle on us?”

  “Ah … why shouldn’t the note turn up?” Malcolm temporized.

  Dorrie fluttered her hands in the air. “Stranger things have happened. Maybe the burglar took it.”

  “If there was a burglar,” Malcolm said. The atmosphere instantly grew tense; they were on shaky ground. There was no need for anyone to put words to the obvious: that if there were no burglar, then Uncle Vincent had been murdered for the promissory note. Dorrie found herself looking suspiciously at Lionel, but he didn’t notice because he was busy looking at Nicole the same way. Nicole, oddly, was looking at Dorrie. Nobody looked at Malcolm.

  Then Lionel gave himself a little shake and said, “We’re imagining things. Gretchen just told me Uncle Vincent had a wall safe in his bedroom. The promissory note’s probably right there.”

  “A wall safe!” the other three exclaimed.

  “In his bedroom,” Lionel nodded.

  The office door opened. “Ah, there you are!” said Simon Murdoch, striding into the room. “Huddled together like conspirators—I’m interrupting something, I hope? What nefarious intrigue are you plotting? Hello, darling,” kissing Dorrie, “I was hoping we could lunch.”

  “Oh, what a lovely idea,” Dorrie beamed. “Malcolm, are we finished?”

  “We are,” he said, standing up. “I have to be getting back to my office anyway.”

  “How is everyone holding up?” Simon asked the room at large. “Terrible about Uncle Vincent.”

  Lionel muttered something intelligible and bent down to rub his ankle; it was still hurting from the off-balance landing he’d made in his flying leap from Uncle Vincent’s terrace wall. Nicole said, “The police were here. Was here—one man, a rotund, droopy-eyed little fellow named Toomey.”