by Cassie Page
The end.
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Book 3 of the Darling Valley Cozy Mystery Series
Dedication
To Rita Jennings, with love.
An absolute jewel of a sister
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Day One
Chapter One: Cocoon Your Life
Chapter Two: The Remodel
Chapter Three: The Big Reveal
Chapter Four: Dying For Diamonds
Chapter Five: Awful Arlo
Chapter Six: Let’s Do Lunch
Chapter Seven: Ready For My Close-up
Chapter Eight: Film At Eleven
Chapter Nine: The Interrogation
Chapter Ten: Just The Facts, Ma’am
Chapter Eleven: Special Delivery
Chapter Twelve: Gather ‘Round, Pardner
Part Two: Day Two
Chapter Thirteen: Damage Control
Chapter Fourteen: Thanks But No Thanks
Chapter Fifteen: Lemons and Lemonade
Chapter Sixteen: A Girl’s Best Friend
Chapter Seventeen: One Good Turn
Chapter Eighteen: Tour de Darling Valley
Chapter Nineteen: A Rumble In The Jungle
Chapter Twenty: A Snake In The Grass, er, Teacup
Chapter Twenty-One: Messages From The Underground
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Likely Suspects
Chapter Twenty-Three: Follow That Car
Chapter Twenty-Four: Breaking And Entering
Chapter Twenty-Five: A Room Full Of Roses
Chapter Twenty-Six: I Just Came To Say I’m Sorry
Chapter Twenty-Seven: You Should Have Seen The Other Guy
Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Family Affair
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Rocky Course of True Love
Part Three: Day Three
Chapter Thirty: Couples Counseling
Chapter Thirty-One: Open Sesame
Chapter Thirty-Two: A Line In The Sand
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Friends and Family Rate
Chapter Thirty-Four: Ready For My Close-Up
Chapter Thirty-Five: Coming Clean
Chapter Thirty-Six: Hello Kitty
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Dance of Life
Part Four: Day Four
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Palace of Love
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Radio Silence
Chapter Forty: Cheek To Cheek
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Acknowledgements
Prologue
The fun’s over? This was supposed to be a lark. Then she saw the small, plastic bag waving in front of her nose.
Her eyes grew wide with terror. She pleaded, “No.” She knew what was in it. What it could do to her.
“You like diamonds?” The laugh, shrill and cruel, echoed through the cavernous space. When had it changed? Now there was a tray over her head.
She struggled, but she couldn’t get away.
The gems spilled over her head, rings, bracelets, necklaces. A cascade of glittering ice catching the soft light, flashing rainbows around the room.
“There. All the diamonds you will ever need.”
They stung like needles as they hit her bare, wet skin.
“Put them on.”
She turned away, but she was trapped against the wall.
“I said, put them on.”
How odd that her hands shook, handling these, her favorite things. Clipping diamonds onto her ears, wrists and around her neck; affixing brooches to her dress; jamming rings onto her fingers.
“Say it.”
“No. Please.”
“SAY IT I SAID!”
She stuttered, gagged on the words. “I . . . I’d die for more diamonds.”
That laugh again.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. You asked for it.”
The hand reached into the bag . . .
Part One: Day One
Chapter One: Cocoon Your Life
“How would your life change if you had a billion dollars?”
Olivia finished her coffee while she waited for Detective Matt Richard’s answer, the noise of the other diners buzzing around them.
Matt laughed and pulled out his wallet. It was his turn to pay for their standing Friday breakfast date. They were an acknowledged couple now, but no PDAs. Public demonstrations of affection. Some foolishness about it diminishing their professional image in the community. This morning they were trying out the new café in town, Good Eats, an upscale take on the bikers’ joint out by the lake that her assistant, Cody, frequented. Both eateries served standard breakfast fare: scrambled eggs, omelets. But at Good Eats they came with a sprinkling of crème fraîche and caviar.
At the register Matt checked the bill and signed his credit card receipt. He snickered, “They should call this place Good,” and wrote out Eat$ on his copy.
Olivia grinned, not because what he said was particularly funny, but because she was just happy to be with him. She twisted her scarf around her neck and buttoned her white quilted jacket, a bit impractical for someone who poked around building sites for a living.
“Back to billionaires,” she said. “What would it be like for you to have Charles’s luck?”
A George Clooney lookalike until he opened his mouth, Charles Bacon, Olivia’s client and now friend, had won almost a billion dollars eighteen months ago in two New Jersey Powerball lotteries. Up until then, he and his late wife had lived happily on his weekly paycheck as a transit dispatcher. The haul allowed him to move to Billionaire Hollow, as the Wall Street journal dubbed Darling Valley, an exclusive Marin County community nestled in the hills between the Pacific Coast and San Francisco Bay.
Olivia, architect and interior designer, was the chief cook and bottle washer for the museum Charles was building to house his growing collection of classic cars. The enormous project was his way of sublimating the loss of his beloved Ellie years before the riches arrived. He was on a winning streak. The Bacon-Paatz Classic Car and Fine Art Museum of Darling Valley introduced him to his new fiancée, his now beloved Francesca. Olivia had told him his jackpots came in pairs. Two Powerballs. Two great loves.
Matt smiled down at Olivia. “What would I do with Charles’s money? How much time do I have to think about it? Let’s see, I’d have a lot of decisions to make. What size yacht do I want? What desert island to buy for my own private use?” He paused, sticking the receipt in his wallet. “Excuse me, our private use.”
“No, seriously.” Olivia held the door for him before they strolled out onto Darling Boulevard. “We live among all these fabulously wealthy people. Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like?”
Matt steered her around two thirtyish mothers coming towards them pushing lavish strollers. Olivia pointed to the casually dressed but stylish moms.
“See? With money, you could have the most costly baby carriage on planet earth and all the cashmere baby blankets you wanted. If they spit up on them you could throw them away and get new ones.”
Matt frowned playfully. “Oh, are babies on our agenda?”
Olivia nudged him in the ribs. “Not unless your mother has been talking to you again.”
It was a running thread in their conversations. Matt’s mother wanted grandchildren. Preferably with a Punjabi daughter-in-law. But if Matt was insistent on having as his plus-one the backsliding WASP Olivia, then so be it. But get married, she kept emailing him, for heaven’s sake, and make me some grandbabies.
Ma
tt’s parents had emigrated to Lake Forest by way of London where his father completed his degree at the London School of Economics, by way of India where Matt’s grandparents still lived. His last name, Richards, came from his British engineer grandfather who married his father’s beautiful Punjabi mother. His given name, Gurmeet, honored his mother’s father. He picked up the nickname Matt at Harvard.
After eighteen months of an up and down relationship, each of them wanting the other, but neither of them able to define the terms, Matt and Olivia had reached a stress-free point. They simply swept the word marriage under the carpet and tried to just be as happy with each other as life and its slings and arrows would allow.
Tuesday, Olivia’s beloved best friend and favorite tea leaf reader, called it their if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it stage. Recently, she warned Olivia, “Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddies, because all kinds of clocks are ticking.”
Olivia had never met Matt’s parents nor visited his Lake Forest childhood home, which sounded like one of Darling Valley’s mansions. The picture he and his sister, Tazmania, had painted of their stern mother dissuaded Olivia from accepting his invitation to go to Illinois with him recently for a family celebration.
They stopped at the corner for the light. Olivia pressed her point. “No, I’m not talking about kids. It could be anything. These days I have to look at the price tags when I buy something for myself. I’m not complaining, but wouldn’t it be nice not to have to?”
Since leaving LA and a fat paycheck, she had to engage in some serious belt-tightening to make a go of her solo business.
Matt turned serious. “I didn’t realize you envied your neighbors.”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t. Not really. But how can you not think these thoughts when we live and work in the most luxurious town on earth.”
“San Tropez has Darling Valley beat.”
Defending her relatively new hometown, she came back with, “Yeah, but not by much. Just the location on the Mediterranean, really.”
Matt laughed. “And that’s nothing? Olivia, in my experience people pay a high price for being rich.”
Matt was the chief detective in the Darling Valley Police Department and had worked in Chicago before that. He often told Olivia that his job gave him no illusions about life or what people were capable of.
“Speaking of San Tropez,” Olivia asked, “is Taz over her jetlag? She stood me up for lunch the other day.”
“Beats me. She met some guy on the plane coming back from France. You know how that goes. I won’t hear from her until they break up, and then she’ll park on my couch for a weekend telling me what slugs men are.”
Olivia glared at him. “You mean she’s holding out on me? How dare she snag a new man and not tell me?”
“Better you than me,” he said.
Olivia knew that wasn’t true. Matt doted on his sister. Taz was half the reason he moved to Darling Valley in the first place. The pull of family, at least one who wouldn’t nag him about getting married.
“To go back to a more interesting subject,” he said, “I may have a little more disposable income if a new investment pays off.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
This was a surprise. Matt rarely discussed his financial affairs with her, other than to assure her the one time they talked marriage, hypothetically, of course, that she could count on him to provide if she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
Typical of spring in Darling Valley, a stiff breeze off the Pacific side of Marin County swept down Darling Boulevard, tossing Olivia’s blond curls around. Matt brushed a stray eyelash from her cheek before answering. “Have you heard of Cocoon Your Life?”
She nodded. “It’s that tech company that promises to put your life on your cell phone.”
She reached up and adjusted the collar of his leather jacket, the battle scarred one he’d had since college. She wished he would toss it and wear the Rag & Bone number she gave him for his birthday. He only accepted the luxury gift when she told him how deeply Neiman’s had marked it down.
“One of my clients installed Cocoon Your Life as part of a remodel I did for her.”
“Right,” he said. “It’s part of the new Internet of Things. Putting control of your entire house online. Lots of companies let you regulate heating systems and the like on remote control. But Cocoon has everything covered. It will turn on your coffee maker from your phone, toast your toast and have it hot when you get out of the shower. But the really cool thing? Don’t ask me how, but it can sense a dying battery and recharge it so you never have a dead cell phone again. Your camera batteries are always ready to go, your laptop, flashlights, whatever. But the security system is revolutionary. Bullet proof, in fact. Literally. Most systems can get a first responder out in minutes if they detect a break-in. But with Cocoon? No way a bad man can steal passcodes or physically disable locks. Pretty amazing. A virtual Fort Knox. So I bought a few shares.”
Olivia teased, “I can see that will change your life. I know how hard it is to manage all the appliances you have in your studio apartment. I’m concerned though, is there room for your new Cocoon system as well as your sofa bed?”
Olivia had learned to penetrate the British reserve Matt had inherited from his grandfather. She got away with jibes his coworkers wouldn’t dare try. He winked at her.
“Okay, enough about my minimalist life style. And I only bought stock, not the system. My investment would have to go through the roof before I could afford the product.”
Olivia’s hair was askew again and he fixed it for her. At Olivia’s loft, where they spent most of their down time, they’d stand hip-to-hip at the sink or the kitchen island detailing their day while she prepared a meal or Matt opened stuck jars or wine bottles. Watching TV on the couch, Olivia always hung her legs over his lap or Matt stretched out with his head in hers. Always a kiss when one of them would leave to empty the garbage or Olivia ran down to the laundry room.
But they had decided that smooching in public was off limits. Instead they constantly groomed each other, casually straightening ties, adjusting scarves or wayward locks of hair. They thought they were putting something over on the clients and coworkers who might run into them on the street.
“Oh, look.” Olivia said. “We’re at Xavier’s.”
“Big surprise,” Matt teased. But the truth was they were so lost in each other, chatting and laughing, that they had walked farther up Darling Boulevard than they intended, past Matt’s car.
Xavier’s Gems, Darling Valley’s premier jeweler. Olivia had bought a few inexpensive pieces from him during the almost two years she’d lived in Darling Valley. But she could only gawk with envy at the huge gems he featured in his shop and luxury magazine ads.
Chapter Two: The Remodel
“I know one thing,” Matt said. “If I had a billion dollars I’d probably be giving a lot of it to this guy.”
Olivia batted her eyes in fun. “And what would be wrong with that?”
Matt groaned and opened his jacket, pretending to speak to a wallet in his breast pocket. “Sorry, dude, I tried to find a girl with simple tastes, but they were all taken.”
It was not quite nine and Xavier didn’t open until eleven. Nevertheless, they stopped to peer through the security gate covering the front of the shop. Except for a large jade plant Olivia hadn’t seen before with some gold bangles draped over the branches to lure customers, the display windows were empty, the expensive jewels still in the safe. Two safes, actually, that Olivia and her crew had to work around. Like Charles, Xavier was a friend and client, doing a major remodel for his shop.
Just then, Xavier came to the front door and began unlocking bolts and keypads. When he saw them, his face lit up. He opened the security gate as well, greeting them effusively.
“Olivia, Matt. How good to see you. Can I show you something special today?”
He was always teasing Matt that he had the perfect ring for Olivia. “Whenever you’re ready, bro,”
he would say, rolling his Argentinian Rs.
“Come in,” he said warmly. “Have a coffee with me while I set up the displays. I just got a new espresso machine. Champagne for most people, coffee for the teecarriers. What do you say?”
Olivia cocked an eyebrow. “I think you mean teetotalers."
Xavier had emigrated to San Francisco from Buenos Aires when he was nineteen, on his own and without much of an education. By now, his English was almost perfect, except for the occasional mangled phrase.
He had started out sweeping floors for a jeweler on Lombard Street in San Francisco that sold cheap estate pieces. The owner treated Xavier like a son and paid for some classes. In time, Xavier became both a citizen and an expert at designing and repairing diamond rings, bracelets and necklaces. The old man died without an heir, and left the store to Xavier. It wasn’t worth much at the time, but he built up the business and fifteen years later opened his flagship store on pricey Darling Boulevard, the Rodeo Drive of the north.
Matt refused the coffee. “Thanks, Xavier, but we just came from Good Eats.”
Xavier rolled his eyes. “If you go there too much you won’t be able to afford my little trinkets.”
Matt laughed. “Tell me about it.”
Xavier wore his usual outfit, shirt and slacks from his tailor in Italy, soft leather loafers handmade in England, a cashmere sweater thrown carelessly over his shoulders. His casual look commanded as much respect on his fit, lithe frame as did the Armani suits worn by his famed competitors on Park Avenue and Place Vendome in Paris.
Something grazed Olivia’s foot. Startled, she jumped back. “Xavier, where did the beast come from?” Out of nowhere, a brown tabby appeared and was doing figure eights between her ankles.
The jeweler picked up the cat and nuzzled it. “She was crying at the back door the other day and I couldn’t resist.” He scratched the kitty’s neck and nuzzled her fur, all the while making baby noises.
Olivia stared at her friend in disbelief. “I didn’t know you were a cat man. If that gets out, you’ll have every single female in the Bay Area lining up at your door.”