“Yes, but they also had a Chubb Sovereign, the safest safe in the world. Why did they need insurance?”
“I see what you mean. You know when I asked Lesley Swan why they insured the store for so much, she basically said the same thing.”
“Exactly. So, what if the store wasn’t switching out real gems for fakes? What if every time they had expensive pieces come in for overnight work, say a cleaning or adjustment or something, they popped the stone, photographed it and then sent it off to Lloyd Stephens for appraisal?”
“Oh, I see. Then they would replace the stone for the client and have an exact duplicate of it made in cubic zirconia.”
“Yes, all along building an inventory of fakes with certified appraisals done by an Independent Certified Gem Appraiser.”
Dominic clapped his hands and threw them in the air. “Man, it’s both perfect and ironic.”
“Ironic?”
“Yes, don’t you see? If the store’s owners were doing that, then they obviously planned to fake a jewelry heist to claim the insurance.”
“Then comes Lesley Swan,” I said. “She probably saw what a cakewalk the job would be, with its out of date security system and all. So what does she do? She steals the diamonds before the owners had the chance to pull off the fraud.”
“Yeah, but she couldn’t have even considered it until she learned that Allen Brinkman had the key and combo to the safe,” said Carlos. “Once the pieces fell into place, all she had to do was turn on the charm and convince Brinkman to help her pull it off.”
“No, I don’t think so.” I shook my head and pointed, though at nothing in particular. “Swan’s too clever to rely on an accomplice. Now, Brinkman told us he had the key and combination in his filing cabinet, which he kept unlocked during business hours. I’m willing to bet that Swan did turn on the charm for Brinkman, probably even slept with him, and likely came to his office regularly, probably to meet him for lunch or whatever.”
“Maybe a little afternoon delight,” said Carlos.
“Maybe. The point is that she wouldn’t need more than a minute alone in his office to look in his filing cabinet and take the envelope containing the key and combination.”
“And that’s where the irony comes in,” said Dominic, “because she goes ahead and steals the diamonds, only to discover the next morning that they’re all fakes.”
I agreed, adding, “That’s why she couldn’t skip town after the heist. The poor girl still needed a job. So, what does she do? She sets out to steer us to the next likely perpetrators, her own clients. If we could pin the theft of the diamonds on them, her company wouldn’t have to make the claims payout.”
“It’s all too perfect,” said Carlos, “except for one thing. Why didn’t she get rid of the propane tanks and heaters?”
“Why would she?” I said. “She didn’t know about the rust circles. Without those, Dominic would never have come up with the heater theory. In her mind, she left nothing for us to trace back to her.”
Carlos said, “So, what do we do now? Can we arrest her for stealing the fake diamonds?”
I laughed. “Not unless Marx, Feldon and Shaul want to admit they kept fakes in their safe, and I don’t see that happening. They stand to collect twenty million dollars from the Royal Hall Insurance Group if they just keep their mouths shut.”
“Can’t we get a warrant to look in Brinkman’s filing cabinet, see if the key and combo are still there.”
“They are,” I said. “Trust me. That Melrose Light we saw in his ashtray the day after the burglary was Swans. First chance she got, she would have gone back to see him. Then she’d have thought up some excuse to get him out of his office for a minute while she returned the key and combo to the drawer. If not, I’m sure we would have heard from Brinkman by now.”
“So that’s it?” asked Dominic. “We don’t do anything else?”
“What else do you want us to do?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“All right, then, when you think of something, let me know and we’ll do it. In the meantime,” I stood up and headed for the door. “I’m going home.”
Chapter 26
I went home and found Lilith in the back yard, sitting on a lounge chair by a blazing campfire. It wasn’t quite dark, but twilight had settled in, brushing the sky in wisps of charcoal grays. The trees looked cold and empty. The air had grown chilly enough to see your breath, but the wind remained calm and the first stars were already visible in the eastern sky.
I came up behind her, wrapped my arms around her neck, bent down and kissed her softly on the cheek. She leaned her head back and to the side, closing her eyes and opening a path for me to drop a line of kisses from her cheek, down her neck and all the way to her shoulder.
“Emm,” she cooed, “I missed you.”
I came around and sat down in the chair she previously had readied next to hers. “Nice fire.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, Jerome and I would sit around a fire like this all the time. We’d just stare into the flames for hours. I’d be thinking of home, and he’d be thinking of… Well, to tell the truth, I never knew what he was thinking. His brain works completely different from yours and mine.”
“He is his own, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah.”
I felt a chill work its way up the small of my back. I pulled on my coattail and flipped the collar up around my neck.
“You really like him, don’t you?” she asked.
“Jerome?”
“Ah-huh.”
“Well sure, I mean what can I say? The little shit’s a part of me now.”
As soon as I said that, I knew it sounded wrong. I think I meant to say he was a part of my life, but even that didn’t seem quite right. I let it go, eventually realizing that both were a little wrong and a little right.
After a couple of quiet minutes, Lilith lifted her feet off a cooler, which doubled as her footrest. “Hey, would you like a cold beer?”
“Beer? Don’t mind if I do.”
I reached over, opened the cooler and grabbed two bottles. She rocked the lid down with her foot and reclaimed it. Mine found a cozy spot next to hers, and together we kicked back, stretched our legs out and settled into our chairs.
I twisted the tops off the beers and handed her one. She took a long, hard swig bordering on a guzzle. Not to be out done, I did the same. The damn things were cold and good
“This is different,” I said. “I hardly ever see you drink alcohol.”
She smiled. “It’s a special occasion.”
“Oh?”
She lifted her bottle to toast. I lifted mine. They clinked at the necks. I thought she would announce what the special occasion was. Instead, she just kept smiling. Her lips smiled. Her eyes smiled. The air around her seemed to smile. I realized then, that was the special occasion, that singular moment in time where just she and I mattered.
I leaned in and kissed her. “You’re beautiful,” I told her. “You know that?”
“Yes,” she answered, her expression never changing, “but only because that’s how you see me.”
“Of course, because you are beautiful. You’ll always be beautiful to me.”
“That’s my point.” I felt her hand slide across the top of mine, but I didn’t look. I didn’t want to surrender the moment. “I am what I am in your eyes, Tony, because that’s what your heart sees.”
She turned her gaze toward the fire. I know she wanted me to look with her, but I couldn’t. I could only stare at her face in profile, her perfectly sculptured nose, her exquisitely chiseled chin, her eye, blinking to the crackling fire.
“A few weeks ago,” she said, “in this very spot, I built a different kind of fire, a bonfire.” She shook her head softly, as if denying the memory. It came anyway. “I threw everything into it, everything I could haul from the house: furniture, clothes…” She turned to me again, unfazed that I had never taken my eyes off her. “Your picture.�
��
“My picture?”
Her eyes were glossy now, pooling with tears that had not yet found life. Somewhere in the minutes past, the sun had given up its fight. I saw in her face the struggle I had known, the dark side, shaded, but ever peaceful, and the light side, warmed by a fire as constant as time, both undeniably beautiful.
“I cast a spell that night,” she said, returning her gaze to the flames. This time I followed her, my sights fixed on a nervous sputter of fire clinging to the edge of a log. “I called on the coven to hear my plea.” Her voice softened. “I asked that I might see you again. And you know? I did.”
“I remember,” I said. “I thought it was a dream.”
“It wasn’t. A dream is something you never want to wake from. Everything else is a nightmare. That night, I was living a nightmare. Oh, I was so angry. I told myself that if I woke up, I’d never fall asleep again.”
“And?” A little knot in the fire popped. “Did you wake up?”
Through my periphery, I saw her turn and look at me, and so I looked at her. Her fire-lit eyes cooled in the shade, filling the whites with huge black pupils. “I did.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“And what did you find?”
She blinked, and a parade of tears began a silent march down her cheeks. “I found you, Tony.” She bit her lower lip to stop the quiver. “I found you.”
I heard her bottle clang against the aluminum chair rail and thud to the ground. A gurgle of beer and suds moistened the dried dead grass. Her hands came up and captured my face, each palm cradling one side of my jaw, her thumbs pinning the corners of my mouth shut.
“I don’t want to go back there, Tony. Don’t send me back to that nightmare.”
She came up out of her seat and kissed me. I dropped my bottle and wrapped my arms around her so tight I thought she might break. My bear hug only made her stronger. She tried to kneel on her chair, but managed only to push me out of mine. Still, I wouldn’t let her go. We hugged and rolled and kissed in the dirt in front of that fire as though our passion fueled its flames and vice versa.
How long we kissed, it’s hard to say, dreams being what they are. But a kiss led to more and more led to an evening under the stars that I will never forget.
By morning, the flames had died. Warm ashes and smoldering bits of charred wood were all that remained in the pit. Lilith was still there with me, sleeping under the quilt she had snuck in the house to get between the breaks we took to catch our breaths. And yes, she still looked as beautiful to me as ever, even with her tangled hair and smudged eyeliner.
I slipped out from the covers and went into the house to brew some coffee. While there, my phone rang. It was Dominic. Seven-thirty and he was at work worrying about a case that I had all but closed.
“Dominic? What are you doing?”
“I’m at work.”
“I can see that. You’re calling from a desk phone. Why are you at work so early, and more importantly, why are you calling me this early?”
“Tony, there’s something strange going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean like, calls came in yesterday. They didn’t filter upstairs until this morning because they were categorized as non-emergency.”
“Okay, that’s not so strange.”
“I know that. The strange thing is that these calls are all about the jewelry store.”
“Our jewelry store?”
“Yes, it seems that some people who had taken their jewelry to Marx, are now taking them to other professionals for cleaning, resizing or whatever.”
“Okay, what’s so strange about that? I’d probably do the same thing, thinking my jewelry wasn’t safe at Marx’s.”
“Well, now they’re finding out that the stones they thought were real are not. Even Allen Brinkman filed a complaint.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You know what I’m thinking.”
“Yeah I do. You’re thinking Marx and her partners had been switching out diamonds, keeping the real ones and replacing them with fakes.”
“You got it.”
“But Dominic, where are those diamonds now. We know the ones Swan has aren’t real.”
“Do we?”
“Sure. Bishop confirmed that much.”
“Yeah? Well listen to this. I did some checking. I can’t find anything anywhere mentioning Mister Lloyd Bishop Stephens as a Certified Gem Appraiser.”
“No? Isn’t there a web site or something referencing members of the American Gem Society?”
“Yes, and he’s not on that list. In fact, he isn’t anywhere. I can’t find a drivers’ license for him, no address, no credit reports. This guy doesn’t exist on paper. Oh, and remember he said that he and Daniel Cohen used to attend the annual Jewelers’ Convention in Atlanta every year?”
“Yes.”
“There is no such convention. Tony, we’ve been scammed. Those diamonds were real, and we let Swan just waltz right out of here with them.”
“Damnit! Okay, first thing. Call Warwick police, tell them what’s going on and ask them to pick up Lesley Swan on our arrest warrant. Then, call Carlos. Tell him to meet me at Stephens’ office in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes. Got it.”
“Wait. Make it thirty. I gotta shower and change.”
“Thirty minutes. Anything else?”
“Yes. Dispatch three black and whites to pick up Marx, Feldon and Shaul. If they don’t come voluntarily, arrest them.”
“I’m on it.”
I put the coffee on, grabbed a quick shower, left a quick note for Lilith, fixed a cup and flew out the door.
At two minutes to eight, I was pulling up in front of Lloyd Stephens’ office from one end of the street as Carlos pulled up from the other.
I hopped out, jumped the curb and ran to Carlos’ door just as he was opening it.
“Carlos, did Dominic fill you in on everything?”
“Yeah, man, I can’t believe we let twenty million dollars slip right through our hands.”
“We’ll get`em back,” I said. “But first, let’s go get this scumbag.”
Stephens’ office was in a single-story multi-store-front strip mall. His was the end unit on the left. Carlos and I ran to the door and yanked on the pull handle at the same time.
“It’s locked,” he said.
“Yeah, no kidding. What was your first clue?”
“That it didn’t open.”
I ignored him. We both checked our watches. It was just past eight. Business hours posted on the door said eight-to-five. I cupped my hands to the glass and peeked in the window.
“Oh, no. This doesn’t look good.”
Carlos did the same. “The place is cleaned out. He’s gone.”
“Damn it!”
A voice behind us said, “Can I help you?”
We both turned. An elderly looking man dressed in maintenance type work clothes and carrying a metal tool box smiled up at us.
“Hi, we’re looking for the guy that works out of this unit.” I showed him my badge and ID. “We’re police officers.”
“Cops, eh? Well you’re too late. He’s gone.”
“When did he leave?”
“He packed up and moved out in the middle of the night, the sonofabitch. He left owing me four hundred dollars.”
“Sorry to hear that. I don’t suppose you know where Mister Stephens might have moved to, do you?”
“Who?”
“Stephens, Lloyd Bishop. That’s who rented this unit.”
The old man shook his head. “That’s not the name he gave me.”
“Oh?”
He dropped his gaze and shook his head dismissively. “I shoulda never accepted a cash deal.
“Listen, if you don’t know him as Lloyd Bishop Stephens, What name did he give yo
u?”
“Swan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stephen Swan. He showed me his driver’s license and everything. Seemed like a real nice fella. From Connecticut, I think.”
“Connecticut? Sure it wasn’t Rhode Island?”
“Wait.” He pointed at me and shook his finger. “It was, now that I think of it. He was from Rhode Island.”
I looked at Carlos. “Does it get any stranger than this?”
He rocked his head back and shook it. “Not even if you tried.”
We thanked the man and headed back to our cars when Dominic called. I almost didn’t want to answer because I knew whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Dominic. Speak to me.”
“You sitting down?” he asked.
“No, not yet, but Carlos is here to catch me. Wait a sec. I’ll put you on speaker.”
Carlos said, “Who’s going to catch me?”
“Dominic, go.”
“Alright, first the big news. I just found out that the Royal Hall Insurance Company of Warwick, Rhode Island just settled their insurance claim with Marx Jewelers, L.L.C., for twenty million, one hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars.”
“What!”
“Oh, and ten cents. The transaction completed wirelessly at one minute past midnight this morning, sent to a routing address in the Grand Caymans.”
“You have to be kidding me.”
“Wait. It gets better. Warwick police just got back to me. At first, they had a hard time identifying a Lesley Swan working at Royal Hall Insurance, because corporate still has her records under her maiden name. Warwick police faxed her photo to them and they made the connection.”
“Her maiden name?”
“Yes, and, Tony, your jaw will drop when I tell you what it is.”
“Oh, no, then don’t tell me.”
“It’s Marx.”
“Damnit, Dominic! I told you not to tell me. See, I knew she looked familiar. She’s Rachel Marx’s daughter, isn’t she?”
“Yup.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” I looked at Carlos, who was shaking his head in denial.
“Dominic, didn’t you notice the resemblance when you showed that kid Rachel’s business card at the propane exchange place? You said it was a twenty-year-old photo.”
BURY THE WITCH: Book 10 (Detective Marcella Witch's Series) Page 27