The Gems of Vice and Greed (Contemporary Gothic Romance Book 3)

by Colleen Gleason

  “Not at all.” The writer directed a smile at the table in general as they chose two of the three open seats. “John Fischer,” he said, shaking everyone’s hand in turn just before taking his seat.

  Until now, Leslie had no idea what the author Jeremy Fischer looked like—his photo didn’t appear on any of his book covers, or even on his website. She guessed it was because of privacy, rather than because of his looks—for the good-looking man who sat down across from her had no reason to be shy in that area. He had soft gray eyes, a broad jaw, and a slender nose. His thick coffee-colored hair was worn short and brushed forward on top, as if to hide a receding hairline. It was threaded with gray, especially at the sideburns, and sported a bit of curl at the ends. His beard and mustache were neatly trimmed, and rather than looking like an unkempt vagabond, he simply looked collegiate. The round glasses perched on his nose gave him an air of absentmindedness and studiousness—as if he were mentally focused on whatever book he might be writing, despite sitting in a crowded restaurant.

  “John’s in town working on a project,” said Underwhite with a barely concealed sense of pride. “He needed a quiet place to hole himself up.”

  Jeremy—or John, as he was calling himself—made no comment. Instead, he gave a brief smile then turned to pore over the menu, leaving his companions to wonder about his “project” and whether the rumors were true.

  “Where’s Regina?” asked Orbra. “Should we pull up a chair for her too?”

  “She’ll be here in a few,” replied the mayor. He was about the same age as Fischer and Trib, and he had very short hair that was thinning on top. Underwhite wore a smartly cut, very expensive suit that seemed like overkill in a small town like Sematauk, especially after business hours. He was short and stocky, with ruddy cheeks and soft hands, and exuded an underlying air of importance laced with gregariousness.

  As soon as he ordered a beer, Underwhite turned his attention to Leslie. He flashed perfect white teeth and said, “Pleasure to finally meet you, young lady. Sorry I haven’t been by to give you an official welcome—been very busy with all the big Fall Colors tours. Want to keep those seniors and lovebirds coming back every fall, so I have to be as visible as possible. Very pleased to hear things are coming along so well at Shenstone House. Nice article in the Gazette yesterday—Brad Beatty always does a good job.”

  Young lady? Leslie hadn’t been called “young lady” since she was just out of college. She was barely twenty years younger than the mayor, if that, and she’d dealt with men his age and older for years in the corporate world. She was just about to make a cool retort that might have included the words “older man” when Cherry moved next to her, and there was an instant, sharp pain in her ankle.

  “Oh, did I kick you?” her aunt asked innocently—but there was a flash of warning in her eyes. Be nice.

  Whatever. “Brad spent a lot of time at the house, looking at all the things I’ve been having done,” Leslie replied briskly. “He took a lot of photos too; said he was going to write an article and submit it to Midwest Living, as well as the Grand Rapids and Chicago papers. Some sort of pre-publicity press.”

  “That’s excellent news,” Underwhite said with a smile. “Beatty knows what he’s doing when it comes to publicity—look at what he’s done with B-Cubed.”

  “B-Cubed?”

  “Brad Beatty Brews—B-Cubed Beer. His IPA is our most popular local beer, and it’s made right here in Sematauk. Anything that helps a local business, like yours or his, helps Sematauk—and vice versa.”

  It was on the tip of Leslie’s tongue to tell Cherry and Orbra that she and Declan had discovered a hidden speakeasy when a waiter arrived with their beer—including one of B-Cubed’s.

  Conversation turned, not so accidentally, to books—with Cherry and Orbra doing their best to draw John Fischer into conversation about his suspected contemporaries.

  Cherry started it by mentioning that she’d just picked up the latest J. D. Robb from the library. Orbra latched on, and was off and running.

  “T. J. Mack is one of my favorites, of course, being as the author’s pretty close to being a Sematauk native,” she said, looking around the table—but pitching her words to make certain Fischer could hear. “I have all the Sargent Blue books on my shelf. They’re just so funny, but they’re suspenseful, too—grab you by the throat and don’t let go the minute you start reading. I also love the Jack Reachers, and those other ones by Harlan Coben—but the Bruno Tablenture books—those are definite auto-buys for me. In print.”

  Wow. Orbra was really buttering up Fischer if she was buying his books in print. Or at least claiming to. Leslie hid a smile as she glanced at the writer. To her surprise, he caught her gaze with his. Humor flashed therein as he winked, then tilted his head to sip from his B-Cubed longneck.

  “So guess what I found,” Leslie said in a low voice to Cherry as the books conversation trundled to a halt. “Or, I should say, we found, today.”

  “What?” Her aunt, more slender and toned at sixty than most women were at thirty, had settled in her seat and was eyeing John Fischer speculatively from across the table. “He might be able to keep up with me,” she muttered. “And I’ve never minded a guy with a beard. Not at all. William Reckless had a very sexy one.” She sighed with what sounded like regret. “Too bad he ran off to the monks in Tibet.”

  Leslie shook her head. Cherry had never been married, but she’d had her share of boyfriends over the years—and a wide variety of them. Since she’d grown up during the days of Woodstock, free love, and communes, it was to be expected she’d known men with beards and long hair. “And you’ve never dated a novelist, have you?” she asked in an undertone. “A guitar player—two of them, right? A chef, a baseball player, a poli-sci professor—and God knows who else.”

  Cherry grinned and ran a hand through her short, sassy-looking hair. “I’ve done a poet and a self-help author, so I think it’s about time I tried out a fiction writer, don’t you? Unless you’re interested—and he does seem to be checking you out. Although, if you are, then you have to back off on Declan. No fair for you to be hoarding all the foxy men.”

  Leslie’s eyes widened and her cheeks warmed. “Keep your voice down,” she muttered, looking around to make sure no one had heard. “And don’t you want to hear what I found?”

  “Oh, right. Do tell! Orbry, lean in—Leslie’s got news.”

  But before she could begin to tell her tale, a smartly dressed woman approached the table.

  “Ah, Regina’s here,” said Underwhite, standing to greet his wife—at least, Leslie assumed Regina was his wife.

  If she was, the two made an unusual couple—at least visually. Though they both seemed to be the same age, Mrs. Underwhite was much more slender than he—just as toned and fit as Cherry, but taller. Almost six feet, Leslie guessed, which put her five or six inches above her husband. She dressed as expensively as he did, however, in a tailored shift of Kelly green trimmed with black embroidery at the hem and ends of its long sleeves. Her hair was an unnatural blue-black without a hint of gray, and she looked as if she’d just left the salon.

  As it turned out, she had. “So sorry I’m late,” she said, glancing around the table. “Emily was running behind, and I was her last cut tonight. But I don’t trust my hair to anyone else, you know.” She turned to Leslie. “Emily Danube, at the Beau Monde Salon—best stylist and colorist in the county, if you’re looking for someone. Worth waiting for, even if she’s running late. You’re Leslie van Dorn, aren’t you? The new owner at Shenstone? I’m so sorry we haven’t met before now—but better late than never. Regina Underwhite.” She smiled pleasantly, her teeth as perfect as her husband’s, which caused Leslie to wonder if they’d used the same orthodontist.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” she said, shaking Regina’s offered hand. “Thanks for the recommendation—I do need to find a new salon and stylist now that I’ve moved to the area, so I’ll give them a call.”

  “Emily books up
months in advance, but if you tell them I sent you, I’m sure they’ll fit you in. She always keeps a bit of padding for emergencies.” Regina looked around the table and laughed lightly. “Well, now that we’ve got that settled—I’m sorry I’m late, darling,” she said again. This time, she leaned toward her husband, who’d risen to pull out her chair, and gave him a warm kiss on the lips.

  He smiled, moving a hand affectionately across her shoulder, then sat back down next to her. “We waited for you to order. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “How sweet of you. Thank you, Aaron. I was hoping to have some news for you about the salon’s expansion plans, but all Emily Danube wanted to talk about was Declan Zyler.”

  “Declan Zyler? What about?” Orbra demanded, flickering a glance across the table, and all of a sudden, Leslie felt a sudden sense of disquiet…and, strangely, it grew into a sense of disappointment at Regina’s next words.

  “Oh yes, she was going on and on about how she’d been going to the football games with him to watch their daughters on the pom squad, and how he had her over the other night for a beer. The man is nice enough, I suppose, but he doesn’t really do a thing for me,” Regina said, sliding a sidewise look at her husband and smiling.

  He beamed and patted her hand. “You’re a brains over brawn kind of woman, I know.”

  “Well, he sure as hell does a thing for me,” Trib said as he placed a new beer in front of Fischer, and another in front of Underwhite. “Too bad I’m almost twenty years too old for him.”

  “Not to mention the fact that he goes the other way,” Orbra said dryly.

  Trib sighed. “A man can dream, can’t he? I keep trying to think of excuses to stop by and see him working at that forge of his.” He looked up and around the restaurant. “Been thinking about adding some wrought iron accents to the place, you know. Lots of ’em.”

  They all laughed, and Cherry said, “You let us know how that works out, Trib.”

  Regina looked up. “Hello, Trib. I’ll have my usual, if you don’t mind.” Then she spoke to the table at large. “I suppose you’ve all been discussing business before I got here? Or plans for the class reunion?” She turned back to Leslie, who was beginning to wonder if she’d ever be able to tell Cherry about the speakeasy. “Aaron is the mayor, but of course he ropes me in to a lot of special projects.” Her eyes danced, indicating that she didn’t mind it one bit. “I have an interior design practice, but I’m very involved in anything related to the town or special events here. Including the big, multiyear reunion.”

  “No, no, we weren’t actually talking business at all, Reggie,” Underwhite said. “You didn’t miss a thing.”

  “Would you all like to order, now that Madam Underwhite is here?” Trib asked, nudging her playfully from behind.

  The consensus was for the pizza with the “crack” sauce, and they ordered a vegetarian one for Cherry and Regina, and another two with a variety of toppings, and then, finally, Leslie was able to tell her story.

  “There’s a hidden room in the cellar.” She was mainly speaking to her aunt and Orbra, but the others could hear as well. “I think it was a speakeasy.”

  “A speakeasy?” Iva fairly squealed. She looked as if she were about to erupt from her chair and run to Shenstone House to see for herself. “Where? How big was it? Was there anything in it?”

  The Underwhites and Trib were listening too. (Hollis Nath had left the table to take a phone call.)

  Leslie was only too happy to fill in the details about where the entrance was and what she and Declan had found when they pulled off the patched-up piece of plasterboard. “There are bottles and glasses all over the place, and the furniture is in bad shape. But there are two oil paintings that are absolutely stunning—each of a woman wearing amazing jewelry. Though they’re portraits, the gemstones are really the focus of the picture, and as soon as I saw them, I couldn’t help but wonder whether they were paintings of the missing legendary jewels of Red Eye Sal. If they even exist.”

  “Oh, they exist all right,” Trib said. He’d pulled up a chair and spun it around, straddling it so he could rest his hands on the top of its back. “Well, at least one piece does—or did.” Regina, Underwhite, and Trib exchanged glances. “No one’s sure about whether there was a whole cache of jewels like the legend says, or just the one necklace.”

  “What did the jewels look like?” asked Orbra just as a waiter delivered two of the three pizzas they’d ordered. “The ones in the paintings, I mean.”

  “One was all sapphires. It was as if the woman was wearing a collar just dripping with them—of all different shades of blue, too, so some might have been blue topazes. They covered the top of her chest like this.” Leslie used her hands to demonstrate. “And she had matching earrings and a bracelet. It was a ridiculous number of gemstones, all set in silver—or maybe platinum. And at the bottom of the necklace, the part hanging the lowest, was—”

  “A star-shaped stone,” Cherry said. Her eyes were sparkling, just like the sapphires. “Those are definitely Red Eye Sal’s missing jewels. The star is the giveaway.”

  “That’s right. The jewelry was all made by the same designer—supposedly a woman whom Red Eye Sal loved but couldn’t have because she was married to another man. Apparently the fact that he himself was married wasn’t a factor,” Aaron Underwhite said dryly. “But the jeweler—I forget her name?” He looked at his wife.

  “Margarita, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that was it. Margarita’s trademark was having the gemstones cut into a star shape—or she set them so closely and perfectly that they looked like one stone, as if a single jewel had been cut into a star.”

  “Either way, each piece she designed always had a six-pointed star with a sort of fat center on it. Very distinctive,” Trib said. “You said one set in the paintings was sapphires…so the other painting was of the gold topazes?”

  “No…it was garnets and rubies. What do you mean the gold topazes? It sounds as if you know about these jewels,” said Leslie.

  “Well, we all know about the topazes, that’s for sure,” Cherry said. “But I don’t know if anyone ever believed there was anything else in the so-called jewelry cache of Red Eye Sal other than the topazes, and maybe some pearls.”

  “I feel as if I’m missing half of some story that you all know. Would someone please fill me in?” Leslie asked, reaching for a piece of pizza. It was covered with fresh tomatoes, torn basil, plots of house-made mozzarella, and roasted peppers—and it smelled divine.

  The others looked at each other, and Mayor Underwhite was the one who spoke. “Since I probably know as much as anyone about it,” he said, sliding his own piece of pizza onto his plate. He served Regina as well, then settled back in his seat, preparing to tell a story.

  “The topazes were—are—the only pieces of this so-called collection that anyone ever remembers seeing. That’s why most everyone believes it was nothing more than a legend that Red Eye Sal had other pieces in his cache. There was a set of earrings—both star-shaped and gold—and a necklace, though it was much less grand than the one you described, Leslie. And there were some pearls, with mother of pearl star shapes as well—which is probably what launched the idea of the legend, even though no one that I know of has ever seen any others. But two sets of jewelry, both with stars…you can see where the romantic idea came from.” He paused as if to collect his thoughts, using a knife and fork to cut a generous piece from the point of his pizza. “And, if those paintings you say you saw are accurate, then it seems as if it might not just be a legend after all.”

  “The topazes and pearls were owned by the van Gerste family, who I think were distant relatives of Sal,” Regina said. “Or somehow had a connection; I’m not sure, because they never owned Shenstone House. We knew their daughter, Kristen.” Her voice had become sober. “We were in the same year at school.”

  “Is she the one who… Oh, I’d forgotten about that,” Iva said in an almost whisper. “That was…what…1985? Just
a year after I moved to Philadelphia.”

  Trib was nodding. “Yes. 1985. The year we graduated.” He glanced at Leslie. “Kristen was in our class. She was a beautiful young woman, with dark hair and amber-colored eyes. Smart, too—not valedictorian smart; that was Aaron here—but she had a respectable grade point. Very popular with her classmates—pretty much all of us liked her. Homecoming queen, cheerleader, class president—you know the drill.” He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts.

  “Kristen got permission from her parents to wear the Red Eye Sal topazes to our senior prom,” Regina said. “It was a big deal—her parents were wealthy, and she always had nice clothes and expensive shoes, but the fact that she was going to wear these heirloom jewels to the prom was a really big deal.” Her voice trailed off. “I knew Kristen quite well. We weren’t absolute BFFs or anything like that, but we were in the same group of friends. I played basketball and ran track, she played tennis and was a cheerleader. And we lived near each other—Kristen, Aaron, Trib, and I. Though the van Gerstes’ house—and Aaron’s too—was a lot larger and fancier than mine or Trib’s.” She smiled fondly at her husband.

  “Kristen was dating the captain of the football team,” Aaron said, taking up the story. “Marcus Levin. That’s only relevant because of how the night played out. Prom night, I mean.”

  “The night she was wearing the topazes,” Leslie said.

  “Right. Kristen was a trendsetter,” Trib said. “So when she got permission to wear the jewels, she decided to go all the way and do a vintage look. Vintage clothing was just becoming the thing in the eighties, and she found this gorgeous beaded flapper dress at an antiques market. I still remember it…she looked like an angel in that sparkling gown. It was pearlescent, iridescent, all shimmery gold and pink and peach…” He sighed, his eyes going dreamy and faraway.

  “Anyway,” Underwhite said, drawing the conversation back to him, “she wore the dress and topazes to the prom, with Marcus Levin as her date. But they had a huge blowout fight near the end of the night—it was a complete spectacle, right in the middle of the dance floor.