Diamond Eyes (Alo Nudger Book 7)
Page 20
He knew he didn’t want to see the skeleton use the diamonds to finance comfortable declining months bought with other lives.
Didn’t want to see Stockton get the diamonds. His company, Sloan Trust, must have okayed his deal with known thieves and killers so the insurance loss would be halved. Better to be partners in crime than to look at a drastically reduced bottom line. So much for business ethics.
The merchants who were victims of the theft should have the diamonds back, but they’d be just as well off with the insurance settlement from Sloan Trust. Probably better. And it gave Nudger perverse satisfaction to know Sloan Trust would have to pay full coverage.
The river rolled with his thoughts. The steady vibration of the boat’s engines throbbed through his body like temptation itself. There’s no such thing as innocence where money’s concerned. fust people who haven’t had the opportunity. Diamonds cause people to compromise. He’d spent almost the entire thousand dollars Vanita had paid him as a retainer. Wasn’t he owed something for his time and trouble? For risking his neck? No doubt that was what Marlou had in mind when she’d slipped him the diamond. She wanted him to have it. And she had to trust him to be silent, not to reveal what she’d done. She’d taken a chance on him. One she hadn’t had to take. Gutsy move by a gutsy lady who paid her debts.
Debts.
A waitress wandered over to where Nudger was sitting near the rail. She had blond hair. Pale blue eyes exactly the color of the center of the stone in Nudger’s hand.
She smiled at him. He ordered a scotch and water.
The murky water burbled past the hull, and stars began to sparkle in the darkening sky, like diamonds.
33
It was very dark when the boat docked in Hannibal. Bobinet’s body had been discovered in the parked car. Between black shapes of buildings Nudger could see red lights flashing, intermittent silhouettes of a crowd.
The passengers disembarked in an orderly fashion, but fast. Maybe to see about the commotion up the bank toward town. Nudger didn’t see Marlou, Stockton, or the skeleton in the crowd spilling down the gangplank, and he didn’t look for them.
He played it straight. He walked slowly to the murder scene and to a heavyset man in jeans and a white shirt with a badge that said he was chief of police. Nudger explained more or less what had happened. What Marlou had done with the diamonds would be in Stockton’s report anyway, a matter of record. Marlou hadn’t been in on the original theft. She’d be in some trouble, but not much. Concealing evidence, and whatever charge might be attached to hurling the diamonds overboard—some—thing she’d had to do to save her life. He figured her for probation.
More questions.
A signed statement.
Nudger went through the routine with a kind of weary patience. The Hannibal police and the Highway Patrol were looking for the skeleton, but Nudger was sure they wouldn’t find him. It didn’t matter much. The skeleton would die poor and in the not very distant future.
Stockton they’d locate. Or he’d come to them with his story. He’d keep himself on the right side of the law and complete his job so he could write his report for Sloan Trust.
Nudger left a few things out of his statement. He didn’t mention that Marlou still had the diamonds.
Or that one of them was wrapped in a Kleenex deep in his pocket.
A month later he sold the diamond out of town to a legitimate jeweler for five thousand dollars. Since it wasn’t mounted, there was no way it could be linked to the theft in New York; it might have been from his mother’s wedding ring.
Nudger used the money to pay the back alimony he owed, which should keep Eileen and Henry Mercato at bay for at least six months. Eileen couldn’t believe it at first. She seemed resentful that she couldn’t haul him back into court. When he was finished paying off the rest of his debts, he still had a thousand dollars.
He used that and some of his Visa credit to buy a headstone for Vanita’s grave. The one he chose from the mortuary’s slick catalog wasn’t his style, but it was a fancy one he was sure she would have liked. Italian red marble.
It was supposed to be an angel in flight, but when Nudger drove to the cemetery and saw it, he thought it looked more like an airplane.