Death by Diamonds

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Death by Diamonds Page 14

by Annette Blair


  He led the way to his car. “You should see the other guy.”

  “Not Nick?”

  “No, it’s from kissing the floor with my face. You gave me the black eye. I call it Mad Taser blue.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He opened his trunk and put my bag inside, then he took a bottle of Dos Equis out of each pocket and gave one to me before he urged me to a nearby bench.

  I sat in the cold winter sunshine watching people board the train, Werner beside me, my brain stuck on the fuzzy memory of a dream kiss.

  Werner cleared his throat. “Nick is in DC until tomorrow, but he stopped by to apologize for his green routine before he left.”

  “Green as in jealous, you mean?”

  “That would be correct.”

  Knowing Nick had been honorable made me miss him more. “He was a jerk yesterday.”

  Werner shrugged. “He was protecting something he holds dear.”

  “Aren’t you the forgiving soul?” I said. “Didn’t you kinda wanna hit him? I did.”

  Werner chuckled. “Are you going to tell him that we don’t totally remember what happened the night we spent together. I mean, I had some thermonuclear dreams that night.”

  I came up coughing. He shouldn’t have said that while I was drinking.

  When Werner stopped slapping my back and I could breathe again, I was practically speechless. “I’m . . . honored?” It was the best I could manage considering my own sizzling dreams.

  “Mad? Suppose you are, you know?”

  “Obviously I’m not or I wouldn’t be drinking this beer.”

  He chuckled. “Good try.”

  “I’m hardly the immaculate conception type and that’s what it would have to have been. Let it go, Lytton.”

  “But suppose what I dreamed did happen and bears results.”

  Hot face. Hot face. “Lytton, we weren’t that concussed.”

  “You mean,” Werner said, speaking carefully, “you couldn’t have been so concussed—read, stupid—that you might have been attracted to me?”

  “I mean, so concussed that we forgot we had sex, which we didn’t, because I would remember. Stop putting yourself down. You’re something of a hunk, Detective, but if you tell Jaconetti I said so, I’ll deny it.”

  Werner really looked at me then. “Tell Jaconetti? I’m taking out an ad in the program for our next class reunion.”

  I barked a laugh. “We slept. That’s it. You know that right?”

  “I can dream.”

  “Obviously quite well. Just as long as you know a dream is what it was.”

  “Didn’t you dream?”

  “A kiss. I dreamed a hot and excellent kiss.”

  “Yeah, that was a stunner, wasn’t it?”

  I elbowed him. “Stop trying to embarrass me. Your body spoke volumes when we were hiding in Pierpont’s top-floor closet.”

  Werner ran a slow hand down his face. “Gee, thanks. I nearly managed to forget about that.”

  I stood and threw my empty bottle in the recycle bin while Werner downed the last of his Dos Equis and did the same.

  A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of my father’s house. Werner got out and came around to open my door.

  “Nick and I decided that since you’re determined to find Dominique’s killer, and we were both with you to observe the funeral and theater at different times, we should get together to compare clues and suspects tomorrow night at his place. Are you up for that?”

  “I am. What time?”

  “Seven. I’ll bring Dos Equis.”

  “I’ll bring a margarita pie.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Think key lime pie but made with tequila and triple sec. Yum.”

  “Dos Equis and tequila pie sounds like the perfect way to mellow us out and even the playing field, after, you know.”

  “A kiss,” I said. “It was only a kiss.”

  “Yeah, like Noah’s ark was only a boat.”

  My father came out and welcomed me with a big bear hug. Dad’s arms were where I could forget death threats and thermonuclear kisses.

  “It’s sure good to be home,” I said. “Not that my work for Dom is finished.”

  My father kissed my brow. “Why isn’t it?”

  “I have a fashion show of her vintage clothes collection to put on for charity, and—hold on to your mortar board—I’m the executor of her will.”

  Werner opened his trunk as my father and I talked. “Ms. DeLong really trusted you.”

  “Heck, she practically dared me to try and find her killer, like it’s a game or something.”

  “Sleuthing again, eh?” my dad said, accepting my bags from Werner. “You approve of this, Detective?”

  “I must. I chased her to New York so I wouldn’t miss anything.”

  “Is that what you did?” I asked.

  “And to see if I could find out who tried to break into Nick’s house, presumably for Ms. DeLong’s gown.”

  “Did you find anybody who might have done that?” my father asked.

  Werner scratched his nose. “So many, you can’t imagine. Second to finding Ms. DeLong’s killer, the attempted break-ins are another reason Nick, Mad, and I need to compare notes. See you then, kid,” Werner said with a wave.

  Dad and I watched him drive away.

  My father carried my bags inside. “Are you hungry? Fiona came over and made dinner. She left a plate in the oven for you.”

  “Did she already go home?”

  “Yes. She’s working tomorrow. She has fewer bad nights these days, which doesn’t mean she hasn’t called in panic in the middle of a few.”

  I smiled. “Not hungry,” I said. “I just want a bath and my own bed.”

  The minute my father set down my bags in my room and left, I called Nick.

  “Ladybug,” he said answering. “This is an unexpected surprise. I didn’t think you were talking to me.”

  “I’m not. This is business.” I missed him something fierce and I wished I wasn’t so stubborn. Then again, he’d been a Neanderthal, and I find it hard to be treated like a possession.

  I sighed. “I have psychometric readings to discuss with you before we meet with Werner tomorrow night. I’ll have to be careful not to mix up fact with visions, so I need to get you up to speed with my visions.”

  Nick’s silence spoke volumes.

  “I guess we should decide how to present any nebulous but crucial clues to Werner.”

  “Why present them at all?” Nick asked. “He’s not working the case.”

  “Because somebody sent him to New York and he got involved. Not my fault.”

  “Okay, so I may have hinted that he might find the answer to the attempted break- ins at my place if he stuck by you in New York.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was worried about you. With good cause, it turns out. Somebody threatened your life, ladybug.” Silent pause.

  “Nick? You’re being eaten up with guilt, I hope.”

  “It’s envy. That Werner was there that night and not me.”

  “You sent him.”

  “More or less. He wanted to go or he wouldn’t have taken my subtle hint. Headquarters couldn’t do a trace on your phone, by the way. Whoever threatened you used one of those disposable phones.”

  “Scrap.”

  “You didn’t get a vision as to where the diamonds might be, did you?”

  “No, but Dom did a pretty good job of playing musical gems.”

  “You mean, Dominique was suspicious?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Are you home by the way? Safe?”

  “Safe in my father’s house.”

  “Good. Mad, why didn’t Dominique go to the police?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  Nick sighed. “I’ll be back from DC around eleven tomorrow morning. I’ll bring Chinese takeout to Vintage Magic, and maybe you can close the shop for lunch and a talk.”

  I didn’t normally c
lose for lunch, but I had a “be back at” clock, so I could get away with it. “Make it Thai food and you’re on.”

  “Deal. Mad, I’m really sorry about my petty jealousy the other night.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My personal guilt—over the kiss, and nothing more, had put as much of a kink in our relationship as Nick’s suspicions, and frankly, I didn’t know what to do about it. “Yeah, me, too, Jaconetti.”

  Thirty-seven

  Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

  —CECIL BEATON

  Over our unopened Thai and Chinese food, Nick looked at me across the table as if I should be lunch.

  For my part, I tried to keep my yearning to myself. I had a right to be angry. But at whom? Myself or him? Perhaps both.

  Meanwhile, we had to stop drooling, start eating, and start talking about our reason for being here: my most recent visions and how they might relate to Dominique DeLong’s death.

  I opened the boxes and served myself. “Okay,” I said to reestablish our purpose as I got up to pace, mostly so I could sit another chair length away, where his pheromones couldn’t get me. “We agree that Dom was acting suspicious.”

  “Well,” Nick said. “Suspicious of everyone around her.”

  “Check. And the substance that killed her might have been in her makeup, specifically in one of those small glass jars of something that might be clear skin tightening or hair gel, that she switched in one of my visions.”

  “The one in which you wore the trench coat.”

  “The black Armani trench. Yes.”

  “A man or a woman’s coat?”

  “A man’s, but I found it in Dom’s dressing room, so door-peeker guy must have left it there by accident.”

  “He might still not know where it is. Where is it?”

  “I left it in Dom’s vintage clothes collection closet off her bedroom.”

  Nick picked up his cell phone. “Brad,” he said, “I got a lead on an Armani trench coat in Dominique DeLong’s house, stored with her vintage clothes. Want to pick it up there and get some forensics done on it?”

  Nick listened for a minute, his face pensive. “Anonymous tip. Sorry.” He listened again. “Okay, good.”

  Nick clapped his phone shut. “A friend on the NYPD is sending a man for it right now.”

  I called Kyle to let him know the police were coming for the trench coat.

  “Good, we can tell Werner that I saw the man’s coat at Dom’s, and by the size of it, I knew it didn’t belong to her publicized lover, Gregor Zukovski.”

  Nick filled himself a plate and came to sit beside me on the fainting couch.

  “You should have asked Brad if they had any leads or prime suspects, or even if they’ve made an arrest.”

  “Their prime suspects are obvious and weak: the chef, the understudy, and the ex-husband.”

  “I suspected them, too,” I admitted. “But Werner agrees with you. They’re weak. That’s why I like having him to bounce ideas off of.”

  Nick wiped a bit of sauce off my chin and licked it off his finger.

  Oy, I needed to get away from this man.

  “Don’t eat so fast,” Nick said. “You’ll get indigestion.”

  I’d always been a nervous eater.

  “Try this.” He fed me a forkful of lemon chicken.

  It was like Chinese foreplay.

  “So,” he said, “Dominique suspected the diamonds would be stolen because she’d been approached by Deep Throat to steal them, which is probably why you saw her using decoy gems in another vision. Is that right?”

  “Right. And you’re going to call the New York police and the FBI to see what they know before we get together with Werner, tonight, right?”

  “I hate it when you’re all business, ladybug.”

  I stood. “You’d better be civil tonight, though Werner told me that you apologized.”

  “You just got home last night. How did you know?”

  “You’re giving me the third degree, again.”

  Nick put down his plate. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not the jealous type.”

  “It’s like the frickin’ pheromone wars,” I said not quite beneath my breath. “And I’m caught in the crossfire.”

  “What?” Nick looked up, his hand combed halfway through his hair, his mind miles away.

  “Nothing.” I had just figured out that Werner had a dangerous set of those sexy little pheromone suckers himself.

  Thirty-eight

  I can’t afford a whole new set of enemies.

  —CECIL BEATON

  “When Werner picked me up at the train station last night, he told me that you apologized,” I said. “I’m glad. No need to pout.”

  “I am not pouting.”

  I laughed. “You’re hard to frazzle,” I paraphrased from the Grinch, “but I did my best, and that’s your problem.”

  Nick’s eyes twinkled. “It’s because I’m green, isn’t it?”

  And with that perfectly executed Grinch quote, the angst between us eased.

  “I’m glad your safe room stayed safe. Maybe Phoebe and the guys were right. Somebody thinks the diamonds are in the dress box or on the dress. Somebody besides Phoebe, Lance, or Zachary. They were in Mystick Falls the day the dress arrived at my store, but somebody else must have followed me and saw that I left the box at your house.” I shivered.

  “Who are Phoebe, Lance, and Zachary?”

  “Phoebe was Dom’s girl Friday. Zach is Kyle’s friend. Lance is Zach’s brother and was Dom’s leading man. They got Dom’s dress to me that morning. At the cemetery, after Dom’s service, I figured out that they were my delivery man and customers in disguise.”

  “Any of their voices fit the phone threat?”

  “No, the caller used a voice modulator.”

  “I’m sorry, but you did need a bodyguard in New York. Sending Werner was a good idea.”

  “Don’t go there. He told me why you sent him.”

  “To keep you out of harm’s way, as well as out of trouble, I swear.”

  “Don’t perjure yourself.” I took another helping of pad Thai noodles, pure comfort food. “My dad told me that somebody actually succeeded in breaking into your house but that the gown I made for Dominique is still in your safe room, but what about your things? Did anything of yours get stolen?”

  “Between the police watching the place and the silent alarm, the guy barely got in before he was getting out. My neighbors saw an older guy in the area, red plaid flannel shirt, navy thermal vest, salt-and-pepper hair.”

  “I’m so sorry that storing my dress at your place got you into trouble. It’s time to stand on my own. I’ll have a cold storage room put in upstairs as soon as possible, with an alarm of its own.”

  “Mad, I like you keeping your stuff at my place.”

  When had he gotten this close?

  “Not a good idea,” I said, “especially since we’re off again.” I put my empty plate down and went to look beneath my counter for my chocolate stash. The bowl was empty.

  Problem was, with me behind my counter, Nick had followed and boxed me in. And he kept coming closer.

  Where was a cold shower when you needed one?

  My doorbell rang.

  “Oops. Lunch hour’s over. Customers!” I pushed my way around him and unlocked the door to Dolly and Ethel Sweet. This required hugs all around. I’d never been so happy to see them.

  Nick said hello to them and good-bye to me.

  “We didn’t mean to interrupt anything, cupcake,” Dolly said with a giggle and a wink.

  Ethel, the younger Sweet, at eighty, started cleaning up the remains of lunch. Dolly, her centenarian mother-in-law, looked around, gave a cheeky grin, and followed Dante, the ghost, a man that only she and I could see, down the rows of nooks until she disappeared behind
him in Vive La Paris, the fashion nook farthest from us.

  Later, after Ethel had refolded my shelf stock, and Dolly returned giddy and pink-cheeked from her assignation with the ghost she’d had an affair with last century, I asked her to make a margarita pie for me to bring to Nick’s that night.

  “I don’t know, cupcake,” Dolly said, “that pie’s a lot of work.”

  “Mama, it is not,” Ethel said, scandalized. Dolly made a habit of scandalizing her daughter- in-law. It was one of her favorite sports.

  “I’ll pay you,” I said.

  “What do I care? I’m rich and too old to spend what I’ve got.”

  “Watch it,” Dante warned me, chuckling. “She wants something.”

  Didn’t I know it. “If not money, what do you want to trade for the pie?”

  “I want to model one of Dominique DeLong’s vintage dresses during the fashion show you’re giving for her charities. And if George Clooney is there, I want an introduction . . . and a kiss.”

  “Whoa,” Dante said.

  “Hey,” the plucky centenarian said. “I’m still alive.”

  Dante winked. “You certainly are.”

  Thirty-nine

  Fashion design is a functional art. It’s an art you can actually touch and feel and interact with and not be afraid to wear.

  —REBECCA TURBOW

  That night, Werner showed up at Nick’s with three six-packs of Dos Equis, and I was happy to tempt the two pheromone spritzers with margarita pie.

  Things were strained, at first, because of that show-down in Dom’s bedroom, Nick versus Werner, but the beer, and the extra dose of tequila in the pie, chilled us out by the time we took out our notes.

  The two men agreed that I should go first, and since they agreed, I did, too.

  “I’m not going to bore you by repeating what we all saw together,” I said, “but I will share a few of my personal observations and deductions, if you don’t mind.”

  Nick tilted his head and Werner remained poker-faced.

  “First of all, Kyle told me a little while ago that Zander Pollock, Dominique’s personal chef, showed up to pack his bags and move out of his apartment there. He’d been a prime suspect but when the medical examiner’s official report came in, it proved that no peanuts were found in Dom’s stomach, so we can cross Pollock off our lists.

 

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