by Cassie Page
The doctor turned and gestured for JR to approach the microphones. Olivia couldn’t believe it. Her carefully plotted plan had come to naught. She reached inside her purse for her truck keys and turned to Tuesday. “Nothing to see here folks. Move along.”
Tuesday said, “Let’s at least wait and see what the guy has to say.”
So Olivia dropped her keys back in her purse and watched the media circus. A reporter stuck a microphone in JR’s face and asked how he was feeling.
“A bit weak,” he said, playing up his frailty, “but look at this. They carried me into the hospital, but I can walk out.” He chuckled. “Barely.”
With that, he stood up and turned to the attendant who handed him a cane, a plastic bag of medications and from behind the wheelchair where it had been concealed, his briefcase.
Olivia almost whooped with joy.
“Yes,” whispered Cody, fist pumping. “Ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin.” The reporter next to him turned and stared.
JR was posing for photo ops and did not notice Olivia and Tuesday. He wouldn’t have recognized Cody even if he had caught sight of him.
Tuesday whispered, “Strut your stuff, girlfriend. Time for your close-up.”
Olivia whispered, “Are you ready?”
Tuesday beamed. “Never readier.”
Olivia stepped out from behind a tall photographer and called out, “Mr. Payne. Can you tell us how you got Cat Scratch Fever? Are you a cat lover?”
JR searched for the voice, giving Olivia a menacing look when he recognized her.
“What are you doing here?”
He glared into the nearest camera. “Where are the police? I demand this woman be arrested. She is responsible for my stepmother’s death and my father’s heart attack. She is here just to further torment me. I’m going to sue you for harassment, Miss Granville.”
Cody whispered, “At least he’s not pinning his sister’s overdose on you.”
“Sue me? Is that so,” Olivia said. She continued walking until she was directly in front of him.
It only took a few seconds until a strong hand from behind shoved her forcefully into JR. Olivia almost lost her balance, but managed to land on target.
JR staggered backwards, his arms grabbing at air. His briefcase went flying out of his hand and landed at the feet of a photographer.
His doctor caught him before he fell over the wheelchair.
By then Matt was doing zero to sixty across the walkway and retrieved the briefcase before JR could regain his balance. Two members of hospital security were charging toward her. As Olivia had hoped, the lock on the case once again popped open. The briefcase lay on the ground, an object caught in the accordion folds at the bottom of the open case sparkling in the sunshine. The burly hospital police grabbed Olivia and were trying to hustle her into the lobby away from the patient.
Matt took his pen out of his pocket and lifted the opal and diamond earring, the mate to the one found on Jocelyn’s body. By now, Johnson, wearing surgical gloves, had caught up with him and was holding open an evidence bag. Matt dropped the earring into it as Johnson pulled the atomizer out of the briefcase and bagged it as well.
JR’s eyes frantically searched the parking lot looking for a way to bolt, but Matt pulled out his handcuffs and pulled his arms behind his back.
“Arthur Payne, I am arresting you for the murder of Jocelyn Payne.”
Matt read him his rights and Olivia leaned into the nearest microphone and said, “So sue me, JR,” and gave up resisting the security guards. Johnson caught up with them and had a word. They protested at first, then Johnson convinced them of his jurisdiction and they released Olivia.
The three friends shared a group hug as they watched Matt escort JR to the car. Johnson opened the door and guided his head into the back seat. The doctor raced behind him protesting that they couldn’t treat his patient that way.
Johnson said, “We got doctors down at the jail.”
The reporters were undecided about whether they should follow the detectives and the celebrity perp or Olivia and her two crimebusting friends climbing back into her truck.
Olivia grinned at Tuesday, sitting on Cody’s lap. “Well, we got the Payne gang, pardners. What should we have for dinner?”
Tuesday answered first. “Anything you want, girlfriend.”
Cody rested his head against the side window and said, “A pain pill first?”
Olivia said, “You got it, pardner,” and barreled out of the hospital parking lot.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Coming Clean
“Xavier, why didn’t you tell me?”
Olivia sat in the jeweler’s office, talking over the cacophony of her crew back at work on the second floor. They were pounding nails, hauling equipment over the wooden flooring, drilling holes and sawing cuts in the newly arrived floor tiles. Olivia kept her eye out for Lola, prepared to jump on a chair if the frisky feline came out of hiding and lunged at her.
Xavier leaned back in his swivel desk chair and stared at the ceiling, the beleaguered jade plant dismembered on his desk. “I couldn’t. If word got out it would ruin everything.”
The plant needed repotting and some water, but Olivia thought that maybe discarding it would be best. Get rid of its terrifying associations so Xavier could heal from his trauma. She looked at him with hurt and disappointment in her eyes. “I thought we were friends. Didn’t you think I could keep a secret?”
Xavier still couldn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to put the responsibility on your head and shoulders.
“That’s a shampoo, Xavier. It would have been just on my shoulders. I thought you knew me well enough that you could tell me anything.”
It was obvious he’d hidden something in the plant, but so far he refused to say what it was. He folded his hands on his desk and directed a sad gaze at Olivia. “Why should I tell you? It was my business.”
“Fair enough, but Mrs. Harmon is my tenant.”
Xavier had torn the succulent apart when he returned from his excursion to the Peninsula’s southern latitudes. Olivia absently stacked opposing pairs of thick, smooth leaves that had broken off, and swept the spilled potting soil into a neat pile with her hand. “But you have to tell me this. Why did you give the jade plant to Mrs. Harmon in the first place?”
“I was trying to fix finances.”
That got Olivia’s attention. “What do you mean? Do you owe her money or something?”
A look of horror spread across Xavier’s face. “I don’t owe anyone any money, Olivia. You know that. Except the bank for the remodel.”
Then it dawned on her. “Oh, you mean you were trying to mend fences. What happened between you and Mrs. Harmon?”
Xavier glanced away, a blush coloring his cheeks. “Has she said anything to you?”
Olivia recounted the conversation she’d had with Mrs. Harmon.
“She didn’t give me any details, but she said you groped her. I didn’t believe it. I thought she was getting senile. What happened?”
Xavier hung his head in his hands. “It’s why I gave her the plant. To make her believe that I have good faith for her. She came to the shop with some jewelry. She asked me to give her a price.”
“You mean appraise it?”
“Jes. Zactly.”
Olivia noticed that as his agitation increased, so did his accent. “Didn’t she like the quote you gave her?”
“No, no, no. That wasn’t it. We didn’t get as far as the worth of her jewelry. She was wearing a necklace she wanted me to examine, but she needed help getting it off. You know, the clasp. So she turned around and lifted her hair. I undid the clasp and then the necklace slipped out of my hand. I tried to . . .”
Olivia finished his sentence. “You mean you reached around the front to catch it.”
“Jes,” he said, dropping his head.
“Oh, Xavier. And you caught more than the necklace.”
The windowless office was close, but Vittorio, Olivia�
��s electrician, had disconnected the air conditioning to work on the wiring. She unzipped her jacket as Xavier pleaded with her to understand.
“It was an accident, Olivia, I swear to you. I apologized to her but she wouldn’t listen. I have such respect for her. For all women. You know me. I never talk bad about women the way some men do. So when I needed to hide something in the plant, I thought I would give it to her. To make her see I was sorry.”
Olivia let out a long breath. “That explains why she wouldn’t accept it. She was too offended by what had happened.”
“I thought it would make her happy. See that I am a good person. She came over after we found Jocelyn to give me more of her brain.”
“You mean a piece of her mind. I knew I heard her. You lied to me.”
He just shrugged. “I was too embarrassed.”
They heard noise in the kitchen next door. Xavier said, “It’s Martin. ‘Scuse me please.”
He left the office to speak to his cousin. Olivia welcomed the burst of fresh air, but when he returned he closed the door again so the workers wouldn’t overhear their conversation. Olivia picked up where they left off.
“You have to understand that Mrs. Harmon is from a different generation. If that had happened to me, I would have laughed it off. I would have understood that it was an accident. But even though she is a hipster compared to many women her age--you should see her yoga poses--Mrs. Harmon lived through a time when women were fair game for men in the work place. Groping behind the file cabinets and rude comments and the like. They were supposed to be good sports about it. Times have changed, but Mrs. Harmon is still suspicious. I bet she’s had a bad experience or two. She was just hypersensitive that day.”
Xavier nodded. “Jes. Too much sensitive. But you will talk to her Olivia? Make her see I’m not one of those men? Then she will change and be a nicer person.”
Olivia thought for a moment. “I’m afraid you’re the one who has to talk to her. You must show her that you are really sorry and maybe she’ll see it was an accident. But don’t expect her to change, Xavier. On the outside Mrs. Harmon looks very elegant, very composed. Very tough. But she has had many hard things to deal with. Her husband was cheated out of his fortune and then murdered. She has no family and not much money.”
Xavier nodded. “So that is why she wants to sell her jewelry.”
“Perhaps. But it isn’t easy for a woman her age to face her future alone. She has learned that life is hard and people are not always trustworthy. She probably doesn’t trust us. Mrs. Harmon has a shield around her, and it makes her hard to get close to. We can’t change that. The best we can do is understand her and love her the way she is.”
The flow of insights and feelings about Mrs. Harmon surprised her. Olivia had always known these facts about the elderly woman’s life, but now they moved from her head into her heart. She was seeing her with new understanding. But it wasn’t just her tenant she was talking about. Didn’t she need to accept all the people in her life the way they were? Matt for example? Let him have his burst of anger at Brooks. If she needed a perfect man, she was in for a long wait.
And what about Brooks? Could she accept him the way he is? Have a friendship with him, as he seemed to want? Like a knife cut when she was cooking, she recoiled from that thought. Brooks? No way. She’d have to do a boatload of meditating before she’d think kindly about that guy again.
She leaned into Xavier with a sudden insight. “It’s the De Beers, isn’t it?”
She could see him trying to hide his shock. “What do you mean?” he said, too casually.
“Xavier, I asked you why you called out ‘the De Beers’ after Jocelyn fell. I went searching on the Internet. I found two references to De Beers. One is the company. But that’s not what you meant, is it? You meant the De Beers. The one and only. The stone.”
He started to deny it, then pleaded, “Please, Olivia you must not say a word.”
Olivia’s hands flew to her face. “Xavier. Please tell me you didn’t put a multi-million dollar gem in a Costco jade plant.”
“Olivia, it was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I panicked. I still can’t believe I thought it was a good idea. The sheik who is coming to the opening wants to buy it. But no one must know. If word got out that he was interested in the stone he would cancel the deal. Or worse. In this business, people get killed for less.”
Xavier pushed his chair back from the desk to end the discussion. “No more, Olivia. I can’t say anymore about this. I have the plant; your customers are happy. We will forget this.”
Olivia cocked her head “Oh, really? We can forget this? What were we saying about Mrs. Harmon and what happens when you don’t trust your friends? If you won’t let me be your true friend, then I can’t come to you when I need a friend.”
He gave her a long look, then nodded. “Yes, I see. Like with Matt. Believe me, Olivia, I do everything I can to get him to buy you a ring and make the engagement. I even tell him I’ll give him a discount, but he just waves me off.”
Olivia gasped in horror. “No, please. That’s not what I’m talking about. Don’t do that. I know you mean well, but that’s what his mother does. She badgers him about getting married and it makes him even more resistant. If that ever happens for us, and I’m not sure it will, it must be his idea. I don’t want him to propose because people are nagging him. Okay?”
Xavier remained silent.
“Promise!”
He relented. “I promise. But he is a fool.”
She chuckled, “I’m down with that,” then went silent, realizing that she had just admitted that yes, she wanted to marry Matt, even though she knew better than to open the door to that disappointment. She’d have more luck with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow scenario, than with a proposal from her indecisive detective. It’s why they had gotten along so well for the last months. She’d let go of the idea.
But what she couldn’t let go of was the stone. “Is it really the De Beers? How did you get it?”
She realized Xavier would rather talk about her complicated affair with Matt, but slowly he reeled out his story, with an expression that Olivia could not read. Noncommittal with a touch of fear.
“I can’t tell you how I found it. People have been looking for it for decades. I can only tell you that it is legally mine. The seller is an amateur. He did not know what he had. I didn’t either, until I became curious and began investigating. I paid a lot of money for it, but not what it’s worth. When I realized what it was, I could not live with myself. I called the seller back and made the agreement. I would sell it and split the profit with him.”
“That’s generous of you. You didn’t need to do that, did you?”
“I like to sleep at night without my conscience poking me. Anyway, I put it in a special safe that you don’t even know about.”
He got up from his chair and threw back a small Persian rug behind his desk. Olivia had to look closely to find the seam in the floorboards, under which Xavier had installed a small safe. He sat down again and continued.
“I should have kept it there, left it alone. It was in a safe place. But after the murder, when I saw that someone had broken into my other safe, I panicked. I thought it was the seller coming to steal it back from me. I almost cried I was so relieved the killer hadn’t found it. It is not insured. No one knew I possessed it, except for the seller. I had to take measures. I was desperate. I had to get it out of my shop in case someone else tried to find it.”
Olivia said, “The jade plant.”
“Jes. You admired the plant so much it gave me an idea. I buried it in the bottom of the plant and gave it to Mrs. Harmon. Who would look for it in the home of an old lady, I thought. And maybe she would forgive me and I could kill all the birds.”
“You mean, kill two birds with one stone. A very expensive one.” Olivia had to laugh at her pun.
“Zactly.”
“But what were you going to do with it? How do you find a
buyer for something when you don’t want people to know you have it?”
He shrugged. “That’s easy. I have friends. There is a network in the jewelry business. I put the word out and a buyer came to me. I didn’t say I had the De Beers, but a very special stone. I sent him a picture. He has spent most of his life looking for this stone and has been disappointed many times. Someone claims to have it, but then he sees it is a fake, or a different stone. He is a very rich, very powerful man. He could buy all of Darling Valley. So you see why I was so upset. Suppose that whoever did that terrible thing to Jocelyn Payne stumbled on the real treasure. If they could get past the Cocoon Your Life security system, I knew my safes were not safe enough.”
Olivia had to agree with that.
“So I had the crazy thought of burying it in the plant and giving it to someone no one could suspect of having it. I sent it to Mrs. Harmon with a nice note. Then I woke up in the middle of the night terrified. What had I done? How stupid of me to let it out of my sight. I panicked again. I had to get it back from her. I tried to get into Mrs. Harmon’s apartment to take it back. I thought it would be easy to pay her a visit, stick my hand in the pot and get the gem. She’d never know. But you know what happened. She saw me trying to break in.”
Olivia looked at him sadly. The blunders we make trying to do the right thing. “No, that wasn’t very smart, Xavier. Mrs. Harmon would have been within her rights to call the police. And you could have put her life in danger if someone found out she had it.”
“I know, I know.” He winced. “I’m going to have to take a bath with her.”
Olivia jerked upright. “Xavier! You’ll do no such thing.”
“Why? Now I must tell her everything.”