Armed

by Elaine Macko

  “So where does Cathy Lyon come in?”

  “Mike and Jane settle into marital bliss. He’s some hot shot corporate lawyer and Jane fills her days with the country club and various classes at the community college, one of which is a pottery class.”

  A cheesecake-bearing waitress interrupted Mary-Beth mid-story. As soon as the young woman left, Mary-Beth continued.

  “So, one day Jane leaves class early with her latest creation. No one knows why she left early, probably some sort of premonition. She drives home and sees Mike’s Lexus in the drive thrilled to have him home early for once. She walks in with a big smile on her face all the while thinking about some pretty lace number she never got to wear on her honeymoon. She walks in calling his name. It’s a very big house, from what I hear, so I guess Mike and Cathy never heard her.”

  “Poor Jane!”

  “Poor Mike. Had to get ten stitches after Jane flung her glazed fruit bowl at him. Dear, sweet Cathy grabbed a bath towel and drove home with nothing else on. A very cold day with icy roads. A ten-car pileup stopped traffic for hours.”

  I choked on a piece of cherry topping and Mary-Beth had to jump up and hit me on the back.

  “Are you okay?” she asked back in her seat.

  I laughed so hard I used my napkin to wipe the tears from my eyes, which, yes, once again looked like a raccoon.

  “How do you manage to hear all this stuff? I never hear anything good.”

  “I don’t know. People just tell me things.” Mary-Beth smiled sweetly and popped the last piece of cheesecake into her mouth.

  *****

  An hour later, back in Indian Cove, Sam and Millie joined me for an evening of joyriding.

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Sam yawned from the back seat.

  “Because I just had dinner with Mary-Beth and she said something that got me thinking.” I turned left at an intersection. “She bookmarks Web pages throughout the year with stuff she might want to buy for Christmas. So maybe Mrs. Scott bookmarked stuff on her computer. It might tell us something.”

  Sam stifled another yawn while she hugged her jacket tight around her. “You need us because?”

  I looked sternly into the rearview mirror. “Because, thanks to our escapades the other night, the three of us make quite the little felonious threesome,” I turned to glare at Millie, who had pulled on sweat pants but still had her red flannel pajama top on, “and I’m afraid to be in there alone at night.”

  “You need to work on your phobias, Alex.”

  “Hey, watch it or next time I’ll bring a chicken along,” I said to my sister, who had a life-long fear of chickens. “Cluck cluck cluck.”

  “Well, we better find something cuz you ruined my plans. My Good Housekeeping arrived today. Damn.”

  “I just started a new book when you called. I snuck out so I wouldn’t wake my mom and gram. I haven’t done that since…well, I’m not sure I ever snuck out,” Millie said.

  “You never snuck out?” Sam asked with awe.

  I looked at Sam again in the rearview mirror again. “When did you ever sneak out?”

  My sister stuck out her jaw. “You don’t know everything about me. I may have done it once or twice.”

  I laughed. “Yeah right. Okay. We’re here. Millie, you don’t have to be a lookout. If security comes by, they’ll recognize my car and we should be okay.”

  Five minutes later I had the computer turned on. I peered into the screen, the glow illuminating my face. “I don’t know what caused her to look for diamonds in the first place, but she’s got a lot of Web sites flagged about diamond smuggling.”

  “Do any of them mention Emmanuelle?” Sam asked, her eyes closed and her arms folded across her chest.

  “Look at this. She’s got online phone directories marked for a bunch of cities in northern California, I think. That’s kind of odd.”

  Sam groaned. “Maybe they do a lot of diamond smuggling in northern California.”

  Millie grabbed a chair and pulled it up next to the computer. I eyed her pajama top enviously. It sported a red and black Scottish plaid style. I started to ask where she got it when I remembered I needed to make a stop at Victoria’s Secret. I wondered if they had anything in red and black plaid.

  I turned my attention back to the computer screen. “And look here,” I said in much too cheery a voice for so late in the evening. “Here’s a junior college’s Web site in some town called Santa Rosa. What the heck?”

  “Maybe she had a reunion coming up and wanted to locate some classmates?” Millie speculated. “You said she came from California, right?”

  “Yeah. Diamond smuggling and school sites and just a bunch of work related stuff. Jeez.” I powered down the computer as the faint crunch of tires on snow echoed through the lobby. The computer turned off and plunged us into darkness.

  The three of us hit the floor and, with the help of the faint light coming from the reception area, crawled down the hall as a set of taillights exited the parking lot.

  “Probably just the guard,” Sam said.

  “Probably,” I echoed back.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The following morning, working on the job of finding a replacement for Mrs. Scott, I left Sam and Millie to the task of gearing up for the ad agency staffing. Millie already contacted several people with copy-writing experience and a few with art degrees. She had deftly arranged for all of them to come in after Christmas, juggling times and days and coordinating it all with my schedule. Appointments filled the first three weeks of January. Samantha had also lined up another large job through a lead she received from a friend of a friend. It felt good to be busy again. Meme was right. Everything goes in cycles. Up and down.

  I leaned back in the chair, glad to give my fingers a rest from the keyboard. Outside my office window the sky looked like the color of cement. Large flakes of snow, the size of the granola clusters I’d had for breakfast, fell silently to the ground. I reached down and picked up the newspaper and checked the front page, and then the next and the next. I wanted to see if Emmanuelle had been ensconced behind a door reinforced with metal bars—hopefully with Jerry in the next cell—but found nothing. I mentally kicked myself for never having gotten around to questioning him, but the few times I tried, he deftly avoided me.

  “Alex? It’s Detective Van der Burg,” Millie announced over the phone.

  “Well, hello,” I gushed a second later, hoping he couldn’t hear the excitement in my voice. “I’m dying to know what’s going on. There’s nothing in the paper.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but we still haven’t made an arrest.”

  I sat up. “What do you mean? How can that be? Isn’t Emmanuelle halfway to Sing Sing by now?”

  “Unfortunately we don’t have anything on her. We searched her apartment while we had her at the station and found nothing. No bloody rag, no reference to diamonds, nothing. We’re checking into her bank accounts but I don’t think we’ll get much there either.”

  “What does she say?” I asked, not able to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  “Demanded to have a lawyer present, everything you see on TV. Once she calmed down, she managed to clear up a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “She verified she’d been terminated from her previous position because of suspicion of embezzlement. She didn’t admit it; just said she had been terminated. Blamed the incident as a set-up by a colleague but swears nothing like that happened at Poupée—at least not to her knowledge.”

  “Is she still at the station?”

  “No, we let her go.”

  “What!”

  “Alex, we have nothing on her. She may be an alleged embezzler but that’s not against the law. Personally I think she had nothing to do with it other than a bad choice in a romantic partner. We found nothing at her apartment, or anywhere else for that matter, to link her to the murder or diamonds.”

  I heard the weariness in John’s voice and tried
to keep my words calm. “Well, did she say why she and Mrs. Scott fought?”

  “Yeah, she said Mrs. Scott knew about her past termination, threatened to tell Mr. Poupée if she didn’t quit and get out. She said she loved the job and refused to leave. She also says Mrs. Scott never accused her of anything to do with diamonds.”

  “Oh.”

  “And as far as Emmanuelle’s alibi goes, we have someone who remembers seeing her at her apartment, well, in her car anyway, at around five.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” I said. “Mrs. Scott was alive then. Emmanuelle certainly could have gone to the factory at five-thirty.”

  “Yeah, but why would she? How would she have known Mrs. Scott had a late meeting with Mr. Poupée?”

  “Maybe she overheard them talking,” I suggested half-heartedly.

  “We checked that out. Mr. Poupée said they didn’t plan their meeting until early that morning and he’s almost certain Emmanuelle wasn’t in yet.” John let out a huge sigh.

  “Can’t you hold her on suspicion of diamond smuggling?”

  “Not right now. We’re still searching for the source and when we find it, it might very well lead back to her. But until then, we just have to wait.”

  “What if she leaves town?”

  “We’ve suggested she doesn’t for the time being. What are your plans for Christmas day?”

  “What? Oh sorry. Something keeps pulling at my subconscious. I wish I could focus on it. Christmas? I’ll be spending the day, actually Christmas Eve as well, over at my parents. How about you?”

  “Pretty much the same. I always spend it with my family. Could we get together some time on Christmas, maybe in the evening?”

  “Well, I’ll be with my family—wait, how about if you come by my parents’ house sometime in the evening for eggnog and dessert. We usually have several neighbors stopping by.”

  “That sounds nice. I enjoyed talking with them the other day.”

  I gave him the address and said I would see him then.

  “See who when?” Sam asked as she walked into my office and plopped herself down in the chair.

  “John. He wanted to fill me in on the latest developments, of which there are none.” I threw down my pencil in disgust. “And he wants to get together Christmas night. I invited him over for some eggnog in the evening.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

  “Oh, I am. I just thought by now Emmanuelle would have been arrested, confessed to the whole thing, dragged Jerry in with her, and we could lock them up and throw away the key.”

  “I take it that hasn’t happened.”

  “No. Okay.” I tried to sound more festive. “Enough. I am kind of excited about John coming over on Christmas.”

  “Mom and Dad liked him. They’ll be thrilled he’s joining us. So, not to change the subject, but when are we going to give Millie her gift?” Sam asked. “I think she’s dying to exchange presents.”

  “I can’t believe Christmas is Monday. Why don’t we order out for some sandwiches and have a little party in here?”

  “I’m glad we’re giving Millie the trip to Vermont. You should see the box! It’s about the size of a TV and inside are smaller boxes until you get down to a teeny tiny one. I put a certificate inside saying ‘good for one week in Vermont.’ The kids worked on it last night. They designed the certificate with little skiers going down a mountain. Henry said it looked two-hundred percent.”

  “Two-hundred percent what?”

  “Who knows. He’s just happy if he can add a percent onto everything. Anyway, it’s really quite clever if you’ll allow me to brag about my children.”

  “My niece and nephew,” I beamed.

  “Okay, Millie, you go first,” I said a while later.

  Millie kept her eye on the large box all through lunch and wanted to be the first. She licked mayonnaise from her fingers and pulled the box closer.

  Millie was what my mother would call cute as a button, and a good person as well. Her father had died when she was a baby, and her mother and grandmother on her father’s side raised her. Efficient at her job Millie put everyone at ease the minute they walked in the door. She possessed a heart of gold and would do anything for anyone, especially Sam and me.

  “How did you ever get this box in here without my seeing it?” she asked of no one in particular.

  “I handed it to Alex through my office window when I went to get the sandwiches.”

  “Sneaky. You two are definitely sneaky.”

  “Well, open it!”

  Millie made a great, slow, ceremony of unwrapping each box until Sam could stand it no longer. “Millie Chapman, if you don’t get to it, I’m going to take it away from you.”

  Millie finally arrived at the last package. She opened it and unfolded the certificate inside. She didn’t say anything for so long I thought for sure we made a mistake in our choice of gift. When she finally looked up, she had misty eyes.

  “I don’t know what to say. I really wanted to go on the trip, but we’re so busy and…I don’t have any time left. This is the nicest thing.” She jumped up and hugged us; all three of us reached for a tissue.

  “Okay, Alex. Sam. Merry Christmas.” She handed Sam and me each a beautifully wrapped package.

  “Millie, did you make this?” I lifted the delicately crocheted tablecloth with little pineapple designs out of the box.

  “No. I asked my grandmother to make it for you. She’s been working on it for almost a year. I did the edging. Thank God your dining table isn’t very big. Old Granny’s eyes were starting to cross.”

  I fingered the delicate stitches. I loved to crochet but this tiny stitch defied my capabilities. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

  Sam opened her package. “A desk blotter! Thanks.”

  “A desk just isn’t complete without one.” Millie had chosen a lovely one, with burgundy leather pockets along the edges.

  We finished our sandwiches and thanked each other again. We worked hard and continuously the rest of the afternoon.

  Finally, about six-thirty Sam looked at her watch. “I say we call it quits for today. It is Christmas eve eve eve eve after all.” Sam put all the wrappings in a big bag she would take to our mother the recycler. “But before we leave, can you guys help me take out all these things for Henry and Kendall? I’m tempted to leave everything in my van until Christmas morning far away from prying eyes and little fingers.”

  We hauled out the gifts hidden in Sam’s closet and the one in the hall since the first weeks of December.

  “That about does it. No, wait, I think I’m missing one. Now where the heck is that box?”

  “That’s it!” I shouted, scaring the daylights out of Millie and Sam.

  “What’s it?” Millie asked.

  “Jeez, Alex, you scared me half to death,” Sam chided.

  “The missing package! That’s what I’ve been trying to remember.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “When Sam lost one of her boxes, it all fell into place,” I gushed, feeling enormously pleased with myself though somewhat out of breath.

  John sat next to Sam. “Now tell me exactly what you told the dispatcher. She said you got pretty excited and she couldn’t understand you.”

  I took a deep breath, brought my voice down an octave and explained. “Something’s been nagging at my subconscious ever since Mr. Absher brought that box back to Poupée. Tonight, when Sam couldn’t find one of her gifts, it just all clicked.”

  “What about the box? Did Emmanuelle say something to you when you spoke with her?” Sam asked.

  “No. I went looking for Richard Sheridan one morning and just as I arrived at his office I heard his voice talking on the phone, so I eavesdropped. I heard him say something about a shipment that never arrived at the customer’s destination.”

  “So what does that have to do with a box of eyes?” Sam asked, sounding a bit confused.

  “It wasn’t the whole shipment, just
a portion and, judging by what Richard said and how worried he sounded, the person on the other end must have been furious. After the phone call, he flew out of his office and went to the factory. A short time later he came back and called the same person saying he looked all over and couldn’t find it. The next day, I saw him out in the factory arguing with Jerry Gagliano so I don’t think it had been found by then. The irony of it all is that I asked everyone if they’d given Mrs. Scott a package to mail because she gave Andy five packages. I never asked Richard. But it must have been his package Mrs. Scott gave to Andy. This whole thing would have been figured out if I had only asked him about the extra package. Damn!”

  “Or you could have been killed,” John said solemnly.

  I became very still. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “This is why it might be best to leave the detecting to the police.”

  I wanted to tell him I figured it all out—well, most of it—but changed my mind. Instead, I added, “Oh, I forgot. Richard made a reference to a telephone conversation on Tuesday night. So he must have come to the office then.”

  “Not necessarily. He could have made his call from home or his cell. But what makes you think his missing box and the one with the diamonds are one in the same?” John asked.

  I leaned back in my chair and ran my hands through my hair before continuing. “Let’s say it’s a normal box of eyes. Okay, it’s inconvenient but you just fax the factory in Europe and get another one sent by Fed-Ex. That’s how it’s done. Sandy Knap explained it to me. No big deal, right? You’re a week, two at the most, off schedule. But now let’s say the box contained something a little more valuable than some plastic orbs.”

  “Right. Diamonds. Can’t exactly rustle some up on the spur of the moment and send them out,” Sam said.