* * *
Diamond raised her coffee to her lips and drank a long, satisfying sip. She opened her netbook and logged into the local newspaper, scrolled down through the headlines. One in particular caught her eye.
RARE SAPPHIRE MISSING FROM MUSEUM, it read.
Her phone rang.
“Diamond,” she said, and a familiar voice chuckled on the other end.
“You just got up, didn’t you?” Charming Guy said. “You sound all bleary.”
“Mmhmm,” Diamond mumbled. On the screen there was a photo of a large blue gem, about the size of a golf ball, sitting on white velvet in a museum case.
“Well,” Guy continued, “I have a name for the apartment you mentioned yesterday.”
Diamond yawned.
“Let’s have it,” she said. “Who lives there?”
“It’s registered to one Gerhard Littlefork,” Charming Guy said. “No records on the name at all—it is likely to be a pseudonym.”
Diamond took another sip of coffee.
“I’m going over there later today,” she said. “I can see if I can get a photo. Guy seemed familiar.”
Charming Guy grunted assent. Both of them knew Diamond’s instincts were usually pretty good.
“How’s the cat?”
Diamond groaned.
“Tinkles is the spawn of Satan,” she replied. “I’ll be lucky to escape alive.”
Guy chuckled.
“Talk to you later, then,” he said. “Call me if you need help with the spawn.”
Diamond shrugged.
“It’s just a cat,” she said, and hung up the phone.
She looked back at her newspaper article, which described how a rare sapphire from Morocco had been stolen several nights ago from a local museum, where it had been on display. There were apparently few leads in the case, and local authorities were still investigating.
She frowned.
“Curious,” she said, and buttered her toast.
The Case of the Missing Sapphire Page 2