Sharp said, “Now we are going to unwrap the object in question to verify Dr. Alexander Delaware’s perception.”
—
She pulled out the lamp, used a penknife to deftly snip the tape, took her time unwrapping as Milo held the base for stability.
Perception verified.
Noreen Sharp put the camera down. “Obviously some defense attorney can always say one of your guys or one of our guys stole it. I think we’re looking pretty solid, that’s why I always play it by the books. But you know how it is post-O.J.”
“One way to avoid that bullshit, Noreen, is for me to find the damn ruby and solve the damn case. So let’s keep this quiet.”
“Something like that missing?” she said. “I need to file papers.”
“I know that but keep them in your desk until I tell you.”
“For how long?”
“Wish I knew.”
“Hmm.”
“Please, Noreen.”
She took in the room, shook her head. “I’ll do what I can. And both of you will need to fill out incident reports, plus we’ve still got the other problem: What if I need the bay for an actual car?”
“Can you find another place for the stuff?”
“Probably, but it might have to be divided up. And given what’s happened, we’re adding another layer of complication.”
“Let the chips fall, Noreen. I’ll make sure it’s my problem, not yours.”
“Appreciate the sentiment, Milo, but it’s not always up to people at our salary grade. Meanwhile, I’m changing the code to the bay. Going to find my deputy and have him witness it and video that, too.”
She phoned an extension. “Bay Three, Arnie, A-sap.” Unflappable blue eyes scanned the space again, settled on the bubble-glass lamp. “We need some idea about what we’re dealing with in terms of value, so if you could get an appraisal? I realize it would be without an in-person inspection and less than sterling, but it’s important to document on at least a theoretical level.”
“You read my mind, Noreen.”
“A clairvoyant?” she said. “We haven’t established that division, yet.”
—
Reports written and signed, we got in the car and headed back to the freeway.
Milo said, “She’s right, we could use an appraisal.” Looking at his Timex. “Not exactly my field of expertise.”
I said, “I know a guy.”
He looked at me. “You always do.”
—
Elie Aronson sold high-quality diamonds and custom jewelry from a vault-like office in a building on Hill Street, downtown. A judge who loved his wife had referred me to Elie as a source for “When you really mean it, or have to atone.”
I’d bought a few pieces from him for Robin. Last year, we’d done an insurance appraisal. Everything from Elie had appreciated.
We were approaching downtown when I reached his cellphone. He said, “What are you looking for?”
“Information.” I explained.
“I’m having lunch, when do you want to come?”
“I can be there in ten.”
“Fifteen, I’ll be finished with my shawarma, drive slow. Then we need to go fast, in twenty-five I got an appointment. I wait for you out front, okay, and we do it chick-chock.”
—
He stood to the right of the building’s guarded brass doors, wearing a white shirt, pressed jeans, and red calfskin loafers. Muscular Israeli in his fifties with an unlined face, a luxuriant mass of wavy gray hair, and piercing black eyes. No trace of bling on him, not even a digital watch.
Milo pulled to the curb and I stuck my head out the passenger window. Elie looked around and got into the backseat of the unmarked.
“A police car,” he said. “Looks like I’m being arrested. How you doing, Doctor?”
“Good. You?”
“Can’t complain. Wouldn’t help anyway.”
He looked at Milo. Traffic zipped by as I made the introductions.
Milo said, “Appreciate the consult, sir.”
“Hey,” said Elie, “you guys protect me, I shouldn’t help you? Okay, show me the picture of this thing.”
I handed him the black-and-white from the museum show.
He glanced at it briefly, handed it back. “Can’t tell from that.”
Milo said, “Can you give a general idea?”
“I give you something but I don’t promise, too many iffies. First thing, is it genuine? Second, is it Burmese? Was it heat-treated? Do you got serious inclusions? Even with that it’s a tough thing. Something that size, it gets complicated. But…real, Burmese, no problems…it’s millions. How many?” He shrugged. “Could be two, could be eight, could be ten, could be twenty, if the color and clarity are super-good. But then there’s the market, another complication.”
“The market’s unstable?” said Milo.
“There’s fluctuations,” said Elie. “Also the larger the stone, the pool of customers gets small, there’s no standard, everything’s negotiable. Top of that, if it’s stolen, it’s gonna go cheap, like ten percent of value. But still, this size, a real Burmese…I don’t see it not being millions.”
I said, “What about the provenance?”
“Some guy showed it at a museum a hundred years ago? Big deal. Unless you get a collector of historicals who also has the big money. No one cares about a hundred years, these things are billions of years old.”
Milo said, “Any guess where it might end up?”
“If I’m betting, I’m putting my money on Asia, number one, an oil state, number two, Russia, number three. Maybe Russia is even two, they got oligarchs, want everything big and flashy for the twelve girlfriends.”
Milo said, “No buyers in the States?”
“I’m not saying no, Lieutenant, but that wouldn’t be my bet. Someone buys a stone this big and hot and wants to keep it here, they going to have to hide it. No way the girlfriend can go to the party with it dangling from a chain. Asia, Abu Dhabi, Russia, they don’t care.”
“Meaning it could already be gone.”
“I wish I could give you good news but that’s my other bet. Who belonged to it?”
“An old lady who got murdered.”
“Oh.” Elie shook his head. “That’s terrible, I’m sorry for her. You want, I can ask around but I don’t think I’m gonna learn anything.”
Milo said, “We’d sure appreciate anything you can do.”
“You bet.” He reached for the door handle. “Murdered for a piece of carbon. Same old story.”
CHAPTER
32
As we approached West L.A., Milo said, “Millions of bucks at stake makes me jumpy. Ergo hungry. Feel like pizza?”
“Whatever you want.”
“How do you do it? Control the appetite.”
For most of the ride, I’d been thinking about Thalia being snuffed out. Visualizing the details. An excellent suppressant.
I said, “I’ll eat, I just don’t care what.”
A mile later, he said, “Forget pizza, too festive. Something Irish would be appropriately morose—soda bread and boy-yald poday-dos, ey? Then again, that’s why my ancestors left the old sod, so how ’bout Mexican for a compromise?”
I said, “Olé.”
—
He sped past the Overland exit for the station, got off two ramps later in Santa Monica, and pulled into the parking lot of a fake-hacienda called El Matador. Big, mostly empty room, warm air ripe with cheese and beans and corn chips. Heavy fixtures of not-quite wrought iron, tile floor, clumsy Tijuana furniture. Bullfight posters on the walls—there’s a shock, for you.
We settled in a corner booth. Milo said, “We were right near Boyle Heights, coulda had something authentic, my timing’s off.”
A sweet-faced waitress took our order. Bottle of Tecate and the combo special for him, iced tea and beef fajitas for me.
She said, “With fajitas the pan’s super-hot—legally, we have to warn you.”
/> I said, “Skillet-chasing lawyers.”
That confused her.
Milo said, “At least someone’s looking out for us.”
She flashed a puzzled smile and left.
He said, “I need to regroup, let’s lay it out. Hoke left Thalia the ruby and maybe other stuff from the heist and she got killed for it decades later.”
“Maybe there wasn’t other stuff,” I said. “The only item noted on Demarest’s report was the ruby. The fact that it was scrawled on the back might mean it wasn’t discovered until after the report was written. Hiding one stone would’ve been easy. Conceal too much of the take and they’d have come looking for it.”
“You’re being therapeutic, right? Telling me there’s only one blingo-o to worry about.”
“No, I mean it.”
“Fine…so the feds got most of the haul and Thalia got to keep the ruby. So, what, she hid it in plain sight, all these years?”
“My guess is she stashed it away, brought it out years later when she felt safe.”
“Something to remind her of Lover Boy.”
“She was a woman with a sense of humor.” Then I thought of something. “Either that or she viewed the ruby as something special. We know she was in charge of Hoke’s burial. On top of his gravestone is a red marble crown. Kind of jewel-like, I saw nothing like it on any other marker. Hoke was a redhead but I’ll bet she was commemorating something else.”
Our drinks came. He drained half his beer. “Goddamn finial on top of a goddamn lamp.”
I said, “Screwed into the fixture. A custom job that someone had to fashion and install.”
He put his glass down. “So, what, I ask around for a hundred-year-old felonious craftsman?”
I fished out my phone, switched to speaker.
Tatiana at Belinda Wojik’s number said, “Doctor’s office.”
“This is Alex Delaware, I was there with Lieutenant Sturgis—”
“Doctor’s busy.”
“Put her on, anyway.”
“She’s busy—”
“We can come down or she can answer a quick question over the phone.”
“Hmnh.”
Moments later, a flat voice: “Hello, this is Belinda.”
One advantage of her personality quirks: no need for small talk. “It’s Alex Delaware, again. Did your grandfather have any hobbies?”
“You think he did something wrong,” she said. “I guess it would bother me if he did. Or maybe not. He was always wonderful to me.”
I said, “Not at all. Did he have any hobbies?”
“Like stamp collecting or pinning butterflies.” A beat. “I used to catch bugs and pin them on a corkboard. Grampa told me it was cruel so I stopped.”
I said, “So no outside interests.”
“No collections,” she said. “He tinkered with antiques, does that count?”
“What kind of antiques?”
“His father was a furniture refinisher so he knew how to fix up furniture. Does that qualify?”
“Sure. Anything else?”
“Grampa was very handy,” she said. “He could cane a chair, put patina on metal, fix handles. He had a shop out back. Am I allowed to ask why you’re inquiring?”
“Just what I said, rounding—”
“Things out. I guess that means something to you, it doesn’t to me.”
“Sorry, but until we learn who killed Thalia—”
“You must be careful. Now that I’m remembering, Grampa also worked with leather. He made me a nice belt. A leather hat for himself and he used to bind his own books in leather. He kept pots of glue and hides in his shop, they smelled. Father wasn’t handy at all.”
I thanked her and hung up.
Milo said, “What made you think of Wojik?”
“I figured it would have to be someone Hoke and Thalia trusted. Jack McCandless was an equally good choice but what’s the chance Ricki Sylvester would talk to us?”
“You knew Wojik would.”
“She’s artless and pretty much a pure soul,” I said. “Honest because she doesn’t know any other way. What she said doesn’t help much but it does firm up the picture.”
“Thelma and the others plotting in Hoke’s best interest,” he said. “There’s a charge for you: aiding and abetting, by way of tinkering.”
He pulled out the British Museum photo. “In this it’s a blob. What’s it like in real life?”
“Big, red, shiny. I assumed it was glass so I didn’t pay attention. No one did until recently.”
“Fifty-seven carats in plain sight. So how would the bad guys know where to find it?”
“Knowing what it looked like would’ve made it easier. An inside person would’ve made it a cinch.”
The food arrived. He ate fast, without obvious pleasure, finished his beer, wiped his mouth hard enough to redden his lips, looked at the photo again. “Some Drancy spawn goes looking for revenge plus a mega-payoff, locates Thalia, verifies this thing is in her room through an inside person.”
“Theoretically,” I said, “it could be anyone who’d been in the bungalow.”
“Any hotel staffer but probably DeGraw,” he said. “Bastard verifies the location of the ruby, walks over to Cinco, tips off the bad guys, and gives them a key. They spend a day or two watching Thalia, knowing her schedule. Come back after dark, snuff her, unscrew the damn thing, and check out.”
“Without paying their bill.”
“DeGraw was full of outrage about that. Duplicitous asshole.”
“All that planning,” I said. “If they’d just settled up with DeGraw, they would have attracted less attention. Same for the show they put on in Creech’s car. But that’s psychopathy. Low impulse control and thrill-seeking.”
I took a few bites of hazardous fajita. “DeGraw would’ve been a good source for the key but I’m thinking someone with deeper knowledge from her grandfather. Who got real defensive after you brought him up.”
“Sylvester. Still got my guys on her, nothing.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s got a safe in her office.”
“The ruby’s with her? Good luck getting access to that.”
Several bites later, he said, “The same itch is still bugging me. If we are talking long-standing family lore and mega-bucks, why take so long to act?”
“Could be changing life circumstances,” I said. “Someone got poor. Or was released from prison and decided to go hunting. Lockup can lead you to all sorts of research. The Internet raped privacy a long time ago.”
“Idle hands,” he said. “So who’s the avenging devil, Waters or Bakstrom?”
“Could be either,” I said. “Or neither and the Drancy descendant is someone who knew a con comfortable with violence about to be released.”
“Blondie and Bakstrom,” he said. “Bonded to Bakstrom more than Waters because ol’ Henry’s better-looking and still alive.”
I put my fork down. “Another changing circumstance would be the arrival of a family member actually willing to do something about it. It’s like terrorism. An entire village might nurse a grudge but not everyone’s ready to wear a suicide vest.”
“Blondie, again,” he said. “What I need to do is find an actual connection between her and either of the cons. Problem is our federal pals in Colorado. The latest is there is no visitors list anymore. Nothing goes back further than a month, ye olde computer glitch.”
He finished his beer, called for another. “You know what really bothers me? Thalia, so helpless, thinking all her needs are being taken care of. It’s like the damn hotel is an accomplice.”
We finished, paid, walked back to the unmarked. As he slid behind the wheel, his phone jangled a text.
He shrugged. “Well, this is possibly not futile.” His arm swung, showing me the screen: Could maybe have something on the h.c. Mel.
“Mel Howe,” he said. “She’s one of our sex crimes D’s.”
I said, “H.c.? Your hard case?”
He
laughed. “Good guess. Hot chick. That’s what I’ve been calling Blondie when I asked them to check.”
“Possibly not futile” was enough to get him speeding back to the station.
—
Detective II Melanie-Anne Howe worked in the big room where every D but Milo operated. Her desk was in the center, neatly organized, as was she: a medium-sized brunette around forty with a round, freckled face, Cupid’s-bow lips, and brown eyes slightly blurred by black-rimmed hipster eyeglasses.
She said, “Sorry for not getting back sooner, I was on vacation, just caught up with my messages.”
“Have fun?”
“Disney cruise with Bob and three kids? Entire week, I got to have two Margaritas and one I couldn’t finish because the baby started throwing up right after she went to bed.”
She wrinkled her nose, picked up a blue folder lying next to her computer.
Thin file; too bad. Milo frowned.
Howe said, “Yup, not much unfortunately—it’s too loud in here, let’s find a place.”
—
A place was out on the sidewalk where Howe lit up a cigarette. “Basically, I quit. Basically, I cheat. As in three puffs and you’re out, Mr. Winston.”
She demonstrated, dropping the smoke on the sidewalk and grinding it dead with the toe of a medium-heeled pump. “When I got back I found your note and thought maybe. Even though my case never went anywhere and we’re talking two months ago.”
Her hands flexed. “My victim’s memory was hazy in the first place and she was no angel. Officially that doesn’t matter but yadda yadda, we know how it really is, try finding a D.A. wanting to put a stripper on the stand in a he-said-she-said. Top of that, the second time I talked to her, she’d changed her tune completely, shut down and refused to cooperate. I tried a third time and she went AWOL, dead phone, not at her home address or at work.”
I said, “Voluntarily?”
Howe’s eyebrows rose. “Yes, she’s alive and kicking. Literally. Switched from a club in Commerce to one near the airport but I’m not pursuing it.”
Milo said, “New job, new phone. Think she shut down ’cause she’s scared?”
“She is scared, Milo, but not the way you might think. I was gentle with her, woman-to-woman, she was totally into filing charges if it got that far. Then, no dice and she told me why. Something she’d neglected to mention at the beginning: She has a rich boyfriend, some computer geek she gave a lap-dance to, knows nothing about it. In between interviews, she moved in with him, is petrified he’ll find out.”
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