by Nic Saint
Unfortunately we couldn’t hear what was being said, but we could of course follow the conversation by listening to Odelia’s side of it, which spoke volumes. “Yes, I personally delivered the Pink Lady into the hands of Oscar Godish and Dwayne Late,” she said, then listened for a moment, before saying, “They were at the house maybe an hour ago—two hours, tops.” More talk was going on at the other end of the conversation, then Odelia cried, “Are you serious?!” and turned to face me in the rearview mirror.
“Looks like something’s wrong,” I told Dooley.
“Probably Johnny and Jerry. Have you noticed, Max, that often when something goes wrong, those two are involved?”
“I’m not so sure it’s them this time.”
“Of course,” said Odelia. “No, I understand, Mr. Maroun. Absolutely.” When she finally disconnected, she just stared before her for a few moments, then said, “The Pink Lady’s gone missing again.”
“What do you mean? Did those two guys lose it?”
“No, looks like they’re the ones that took it. That was Sharif Maroun on the phone, the Sheikh’s right-hand man. Late and Godish were supposed to deliver the diamond to the hotel half an hour ago but they never showed up. They’ve tried calling but they’ve gone off the grid. So they called Milestone Partners and turns out Godish sent in his resignation this morning. He no longer works for them. And as far as Dwayne Late is concerned, far from being the world’s foremost diamond expert, he’s one of Godish’s contacts—an ordinary jeweler from Queens.” She sighed. “Looks like we’ve been had, boys. Played for suckers.”
“But why? Why would they take a million-dollar diamond?” asked Dooley. Odelia actually turned her head to give him a look, and so did I. After a few moments, the penny dropped. “Oh.”
“So what’s going to happen now?” I asked.
She shrugged. “They’re not blaming me. I did the right thing. They should have been more careful—or Milestone Partners. Anyway, they’ve called my uncle, and the police are looking into it.”
“No scoops, no snoops,” I said, reiterating the words of the insurance guy. “Looks like he really played us.”
Odelia looked distinctly unhappy, but since there wasn’t anything she could do right now, she pressed on in the direction of the house where Craig Bantam’s daughter lived, and five minutes later was ringing that lady’s bell, Dooley and I at her feet as usual, willing to lend any assistance we could. We were, after all, unbadged consultant’s consultants and we took our jobs seriously.
“Mrs. Bantam?” asked Odelia the moment the door swung open.
“Bantam is my maiden name,” said the woman. “These days I go by my married name—Fossard.”
“My name is Odelia Poole, and I’m a civilian consultant with the local police department. We’re investigating the Pink Lady diamond. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”
The woman who stood before us was of the slightly rumpled kind, with a thick crop of dark hair, a round face, and dressed in a sweater and jogging pants. She looked as if we had caught her engaged in some sort of strenuous activity, since her cheeks were flushed, and a sheen of sweat covered her brow.
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” she said cheerfully. “It’s all people are talking about. Come in.” And as she led us inside, she continued, “I was just doing my workout routine, so you came at the right time.” She grinned. “Any excuse to take a break from that torture machine is fine with me.”
We found ourselves in a cozy living room, with plenty of throw pillows covering several couches placed strategically in front of a large-screen television. Posters of ABBA bedecked the walls, and framed pictures of the four members of the group covered every available surface, from the display cabinet to the sideboard.
“I’m a big ABBA fan,” she explained when she followed Odelia’s look. “I think they’re just great. I keep hoping they’ll get back together and play a concert.” She gestured to the white leather couch. “Take a seat. Can I offer you anything? I have ABBA tea, ABBA coffee, ABBA lemonade, ABBA cookies…”
“ABBA coffee will be fine,” said Odelia, who’s a big coffee drinker. “And maybe water for my cats. It doesn’t have to be ABBA water,” she quipped.
“Oh, but I have ABBA water,” said Mrs. Fossard. “It’s more bubbly than regular water and tastes sweeter.”
“Thanks,” I said gratefully when moments later a dish of water was placed on the floor for my and Dooley’s enjoyment. She was right, by the way. It was sweeter.
“So what’s this all about?” she asked as she sank into an armchair with visible relish. The music blasting from the speakers was of course ABBA, and she now turned down the volume.
“So you know all about the Pink Lady turning up on the beach the day before yesterday, right?” asked Odelia, scooting forward on the couch and causing it to make squeaky noises.
“Absolutely. Imagine looking for seashells and finding a precious diamond instead. Oh, the joy that little girl must have felt!”
“So I take it you don’t know about the safe?”
“Safe?” asked the woman. She took a nibble from one of her ABBA cookies, then seemed to think better of it and ate it whole. In other words a lady after my own heart.
“I like a woman with an appetite, Max,” said Dooley, who’d noticed the same thing.
“Me, too,” I said. I’d taken a great liking to Caroline Fossard, though the fact that she’d placed a small dish with liver pâté next to the water might have had something to do with that.
“Well, the Pink Lady was stolen from the Capital First Bank last year, and according to the information from the bank manager it was actually stolen from your safe.”
The woman gawked at Odelia. “My safe? What do you mean?”
“I mean the safe the Pink Lady was stolen from is registered in your name, Mrs. Fossard.”
“Oh, dear. You mean there was something of actual value in that safe? I thought it was just a pile of old junk!”
“I’m sorry—I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you what happened. My dad took that safe, but he put it in my name for some reason. But so eighteen years ago he died, and as far as he’d told Mom the only thing he kept in that safe were some old work documents and unimportant stuff. She still wanted to take a look, of course, after he died, but discovered that Dad hadn’t left her the key to the safe—he’d died unexpectedly, you see—or the combination. So she went to the bank to ask them to open it and they said that since it was in my name she had to have the key. Otherwise they’d have to drill out the lock and replace it, and that would set her back three hundred bucks. So she never bothered, and then more or less forgot all about it.”
“But you kept on paying for that safe. That must have cost you a lot of money over the years.”
“Oh, no. You see, it was all paid in advance. Dad had arranged all that, and so Mom figured that when the money ran out, the bank would open the safe and that would be that.”
“So the years passed and…”
“And some idiots burgled the bank, and stole everything they could lay their grubby little hands on. So I thought, tough luck, but I wasn’t going to weep over a bunch of old documents.”
“Only it wasn’t some old documents. It was a precious diamond that’s been missing for years,” said Odelia.
“But… how in the world did my dad get a hold of a diamond?”
“What line of work was he in?”
“He was an engineer. He worked for Spark, a company that designs and builds hydroelectric power plants.”
“Hydroelectric power plants,” said Odelia, musing on this for a moment.
“Yeah, he traveled all over the world to build those plants. He built them on every continent, and was very proud of what he did. When I was little me and my mom would travel with him to the most exotic places. But then when I got older they decided it was best for me to stay put and go to school. So Dad just came and went, sometimes staying away for weeks at a t
ime. Though he tried to make sure to be home for all the important stuff.”
“How did he die?”
“Trouble with his ticker. He’d had a cardiac arrest on one of his trips, and hadn’t been the same since. Doctors told us that if it happened again, it might be fatal, and so he decided to take early retirement, and spend whatever time he had left with his family. And he did. He lived another ten years. But then he had another episode. It all went really quickly so he didn’t suffer.”
“Did he ever spend time in Khemed?” I asked.
Caroline Fossard smiled down at me. “Oh, how cute is that? It’s almost as if he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Yeah, cats are amazing creatures,” Odelia agreed. “So what I wanted to ask you: did your father ever spend time in Khemed?”
Caroline drew her brows up into a frown, and thought for a moment. “I’m not sure…” She swiftly got up and disappeared into the next room. We heard a drawer open and close, and moments later she returned with what looked like a large ledger and sat down next to Odelia, placing the book on the coffee table, which also held an ABBA coffee-table book. “Mom kept this,” she explained. “She wrote down the dates and destinations of every place Dad ever visited, and when he came home, he pasted pictures in here for me. It was like our family album, so we always knew where dad was when he wasn’t here.” She popped a pair of reading glasses on her nose and opened the book in the middle. “When did you say the Pink Lady disappeared?”
“Well, nobody seems to know for sure, but Laura Burns, the woman whom it was given to died in 1986, and as far as I can tell the diamond hasn’t surfaced since.”
“1986…” said Caroline, leafing through thick pages, festooned with pictures and airplane tickets and other memories of her dad’s travels. “Here we are,” she said. “In 1986 my dad was in Sweden to oversee work on a new power plant, and then later in the year he was sent to…” Her jaw dropped as she turned the page and stared at the inscription. “Khemed,” she said. “September to October 1986. He even took pictures.” Odelia scooted over to take a look. “See? He kept his hotel bill. The International Royal in Wadesdah, which is the capital of Khemed.”
Odelia held up her phone. “Can I…”
“Sure, go ahead,” said Caroline, who’d put a hand to her face and was shaking her head.
Odelia took a couple of pictures of the pages where Caroline’s father had documented his stay.
“I don’t get this. So my dad took a diamond that didn’t belong to him, and then kept it in a safe at the bank all these years and never told us? But why? Why would he do a thing like that?”
“Maybe he needed money?”
“So why didn’t he sell it? Why steal it and then keep it?”
“Maybe because he discovered he couldn’t sell it? It is a pretty famous diamond. Stones like that are very hard to sell. Nobody wants to touch them.”
But Caroline shook her head decidedly. “My dad wasn’t a thief. He just wasn’t. If he took that stone, there must have been a good reason, cause he sure as heck wouldn’t have stolen it.”
“Who’s that?” asked Odelia, as she pointed to a particular picture in the album.
“Oh, that’s Ken. Kenneth Cesseki. He was my dad’s go-to guy—an assistant of sorts. Real jack-of-all-trades. Ken always traveled with my dad. He was a company man. Not an engineer like my dad, but more like a fixer. He arranged the visas, and made sure the paperwork was in order and liaised with local authorities, that kind of thing.”
“Is he still…”
“Alive? Oh, yes. Though I’m not sure where he hangs out these days. Back when Dad was still with us, they used to meet up all the time, to talk about the good old days. I think Dad once told us he lived in Boston.” She tapped her lower lip. “I could always call Spark’s HR department. He might even still be on the payroll. Guys like Ken never retire. They just keep on going, like the Energizer Bunny.”
“Oh, please do,” said Odelia. “I just discovered that the diamond was stolen a second time—and I really need to find out what’s going on, and the best way is to dig into its past.”
“I’ll call them right away,” said Caroline, and got up to retrieve her phone. She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and we heard her talking to someone.
“Maybe her dad was a crook?” Dooley suggested. “And he simply never told his family. Just like Tex never told his family that he doesn’t want to be a doctor anymore.”
Odelia winced. “Wait till Mom hears about this.”
“Oh, but it’s a secret, Odelia,” said Dooley. “So you can’t tell your mom.”
“I’ll tell her to keep it a secret,” she said.
“Well, then I guess it’s all right,” said my friend after giving this some thought. “As long as it’s a secret, it’s fine.”
Caroline had returned and handed a piece of paper which held the pictures of the four members of ABBA to Odelia. “This is his number. As it turns out he retired last year, though he still does odd jobs for the company from time to time as a freelancer.” She smiled. “Like I said, guys like Ken never retire.”
Odelia thanked Caroline profusely, and the latter made her promise to let her know if she found out what had happened to that diamond.
“Even if it means that my dad committed a crime,” she said as we were standing in the door. “I mean, I like to think he was an honest man, and I really hope that he was, but how well do you really know a person, right? And this is too much of a coincidence to be ignored.”
“As soon as I find out what happened, I’ll come and tell you personally,” said Odelia, pressing the woman’s hand warmly.
Caroline looked a little discombobulated, which wasn’t surprising. She’d just discovered that her dad, whom she obviously had loved and admired, might have been involved in the theft and smuggle of an extremely precious stone. You’d be discombobulated for less!
24
“I don’t understand what she sees in that guy,” said Harriet as she directed a look of annoyance in the direction of the canoodling couple.
“Like you said, he’s butch and built like a bull,” said Brutus.
They’d been taking a stroll around the neighborhood, wondering where Max and Dooley had gone off to this time, and had ended up taking a breather in a small patch of greenery the town had provided for the weary wanderer on the corner of a nearby street. Only they hadn’t had the piece of downtown greenery to themselves, but rather had discovered they were sharing it with none other than Scarlett Canyon and… Johnny.
The couple—for that was what they apparently had become in the short space of time since their first meeting—were kissing up a storm, and it seemed obvious that they really liked each other. No, make that really, really liked each other.
“He’s big and strong but he’s also a crook, Brutus,” Harriet reminded her mate. “And as far as I know Scarlett is no gangster’s moll.”
“But he’s not a gangster anymore, is he? He’s reformed now.”
“Yeah, that’s why he broke into our house last night, because he’s reformed. No, Brutus, the man is a crook, and all I can think is that this is a way for him to get his hands on that stone.”
“The diamond? But Scarlett doesn’t have it, does she?”
“No, she doesn’t, but she might possess information about how he can get it.”
“Oh, Johnny,” said Scarlett in a soft purr. “You’re such a great kisser.”
“No, you’re the good kisser, Scarlett,” said Johnny.
“So maybe we can take this inside?”
“I wish I could, but me and Jer are staying in a real dump. Not the kind of place I could take a lady like yourself.”
“So maybe we can go to my place?”
“Do you really think we should?” asked Johnny, suddenly reluctant.
“Why, don’t you want to see where I live?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said the former crook. He gazed at her reverently. “This is like a drea
m come true, Scarlett. It’s just that…”
“Just what, Johnny?” said Scarlett, that purr in her voice having much the same effect on Johnny as Harriet’s purr had had on Dooley. The prissy Persian recognized the technique, and for some reason resented Scarlett for employing it to such great effect.
“I promised Jerry I’d help him find this rock, see, and he’s probably waiting for me.”
“You mean the Pink Lady?”
“Yeah. Marge wants us to find out how it ended up in that safe we burgled a couple of months ago.”
“Oh, Johnny, you lead such a fascinating life,” Scarlett cooed.
“I can promise you right here and right now, Scarlett, that this is all behind me now. I’m done with the life of crime. It’s the straight and narrow for me, I swear.”
“I think it’s kinda sexy to date a gangster,” said Scarlett, eyeing her new conquest from beneath lowered lashes.
“Date?” said Johnny huskily. “Did you say date?” He seemed to have grown a few inches, which made him even bigger than the man mountain he already was.
“Well, do you want to date me, Johnny? Cause you just have to say the word and this girl is yours for the keeping.”
“Oh, Scarlett,” Johnny rasped. “Oh, Scarlett, Scarlett,” he added, in case she hadn’t heard him the first time. “Oh, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett,” he croaked, this time clasping her hands in his. And then he was wrapping her into his arms and more kissing ensued.
“Yuck,” said Harriet. “I think it’s time we left these two lovebirds to themselves, don’t you?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Moving on, they happened to pass by the park, and decided to take a breather there. Harriet hoped they wouldn’t bump into more loved-up couples. She might be a true romantic at heart, but the last thing she needed right now were kissing couples. After the spectacle they’d just witnessed, the thought of humans kissing made her sick.
“I really don’t understand what the big deal is with kissing,” she said. “Personally I think it’s gross. Putting your tongue against the tongue of another person. Yuck.”