Diamonds and Blood (Chameleon Assassin Book 5)

by BR Kingsolver

I picked up my clothes, and some of his, from the floor and tossed them on the couch, then headed toward the washroom he pointed out.

  Closing the washroom door, I pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and checked out the pistol I lifted from his clothes. A Martin Mini-Stealth, thirty-two caliber, just like the one I carried as a backup and like the pistol I had given Nellie on her eighteenth birthday. Pau Ricard and Eileen Desroches had been killed with a thirty-two, and Teddy Smith was shot with a thirty-two.

  I finished stripping and opened the door to find David lying on the bed.

  “Come here and suck me off,” he ordered.

  I walked over and crawled onto the bed straddling him, ran my hand up his body and down onto his arm, then with my other hand pushed the muzzle of the pistol under his chin. His eyes widened, and he grabbed my hand. I pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.

  Pleased at how that worked out, I curled his fingers around the pistol and positioned his index finger on the trigger. By grabbing my hand, he had coated his hand with gunpowder residue just as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.

  I spent the next two hours searching the apartment. Wil had established that the plastic explosive used at Savatier’s apartment occasionally was used by the Capozzi’s construction company. So, I expected to find some in David’s apartment. I did, but it was only a piece the size of my thumb. I also found a bag of Morgan’s diamonds.

  It didn’t appear that David was particularly computer savvy, and he was lazy about his security. His computer had a file with Savatier’s, Ricard’s, Desroches’s, and Boulanger’s addresses. It also had a file listing names and contact information for people all over the continent. I recognized a member of the Donofrio crime family in Toronto and wondered if the list might be Benito’s list of buyers. The most valuable things I found were the keys and passwords to bank accounts in Switzerland. That brought a huge smile to my face.

  I wiped off the handle of the washroom door, took a quick shower, and then dressed. I waited until I was outside his building before removing the surgical gloves and throwing them in a waste bin on my way through the storm to the metro where Jasmine Keller caught a train back to the Queen Elizabeth hotel.

  Wil was waiting for me when I reached my room.

  “You look like a drowned…” Wil’s voice faded at the look I gave him.

  “Don’t say it, just cuddle me and warm me up,” I said. He did, and after a bit, I stopped shaking. “Want to take a bath with me?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “Go start it and I’ll order a bottle of wine and make some hot tea.”

  “I don’t care what all the other girls say about you; sometimes you are nearly perfect,” I said, giving him a kiss.

  I started the water running in the bathtub and shed my clothes, reveling in the steam and feeling my feet start to thaw out. The tub was about half full when Wil came in and handed me a cup of tea. When he came back next, he had a bottle of wine with two glasses on a tray, and not wearing a stitch of clothing. I approved of the entire presentation.

  As we sank into the deliciously hot water, I said, “David Capozzi carries a thirty-two-caliber pistol.”

  “Do say. I wonder if it matches the murder weapon.”

  “I think you should send someone over to his apartment in the morning. I wouldn’t trust the Capozzis to leave it lying around.”

  He gave me that raised-eyebrow look. “You think it’s just lying around?”

  “I think David had an attack of conscience. So sad. Some people just can’t live with the guilt of their nefarious deeds hanging over them.”

  The look he gave me was so priceless I burst out laughing.

  “Just call the Montreal police and tell them you got an anonymous tip that something is wrong at David’s apartment,” I said. “I think you’ll find everything you need to wrap up six of your murders.”

  “Only six?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think he was responsible for the deaths of Morgan and his chauffeur.”

  Chapter 30

  The news of David Capozzi’s suicide and Montreal police announcing that he was responsible for the murders of Morgan’s associates sent Sonia Morgan’s lawyers back to court, where the judge threw out the case filed by J. Morgan to block her inheritance. Sonia had the go-ahead to nail down her inheritance within the corporate guidelines involving Joseph’s death or disability.

  Still uneasy about pinning Morgan’s murder on Capozzi, I went to see my best source of information.

  “Did David Capozzi know Sabrina Kensington?” I asked Clarissa.

  She looked startled at the question, rousing from the depressed funk she’d been in since she was arrested. I hadn’t expected the fear in her face. It really was hard when she looked so much like a little girl. I had to glance down at her voluptuous body and remind myself that she was older than I was.

  “Why?”

  “No, Adrienne, you’re not the one asking questions here. Did David know her?”

  She shivered. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”

  She shrugged. “David could be cruel, but I was never really afraid of him.”

  So why the fear I saw? I hadn’t expected this interview to take so long, but obviously it wasn’t going to be easy. I took a sip of my coffee and noted again how much better the coffee was at Chamber facilities than in any police station I’d ever visited.

  After staring off into space for a couple of minutes, she turned back to me. “He knew her, but only because she’s my friend.”

  “Did he ever sell her a gun?”

  She visibly jerked, and the fear escalated.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “A thirty-two caliber Martin Mini-Stealth if my guess is correct.” She didn’t react, so I assumed I was on target. “Why did Sabrina want information on Joseph Morgan and Sonia Kensington?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying to me. You know that bad things happen when you lie to me.”

  “Do you have a sister?” she asked. “Any sisters or brothers? She was curious, I think. She wanted to know what hold Sonia had on Morgan.”

  “Hold?”

  “Why he paid her.”

  “Because they were married?” I ventured.

  She shook her head again. “She didn’t know about that at first. I found that out in a database in Prague.”

  My turn to stare. I had combed the computer systems in Europe looking for evidence of the marriage and came up empty. The marriage certificate Sonia showed us a copy of was a standard old European Union document without anything to identify where it was issued. “What database?”

  “An archive of old records. The Strasbourg city government computers had a catastrophic crash in 2190, and when they installed new systems, it would have cost too much to convert all the old data and keep it online. They archived it and rented storage from a company in Prague. Sonia and Joseph got married in 2182.”

  “And you told Sabrina this. When?”

  “A couple of days before Morgan was killed.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. She wouldn’t have done that. Why would she?”

  “Why would she want you to find information about him and Sonia?”

  “Sabrina thought Sonia was blackmailing him. She thought that if she could figure out what his secret was, she could demand money from him, too.”

  I had what I needed, but as I got up to go, I asked, “Why did you ask me about sisters?”

  “Because Sabrina and Sonia are twins. Isn’t that obvious?”

  “They weren’t even born in the same city.”

  The look she gave me was almost pitying, and I suddenly felt as dense as she thought I was. “The birth certificates are forged,” I said.

  Her lips curled in a semblance of a smile. “Forgery is so crude. When you have money, why would you pay for forged documents when you can buy the real thing?”
>
  Wil intercepted me when I came out of my session with Adrienne-Clarissa. “Did you find out anything?”

  “Yeah. A lot more than I thought I would. I think I understand what happened now. Can I borrow one of your cars?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Saguenay.”

  He shook his head. “Libby, that’s a five-hour drive. We’ll fly.”

  My favorite pastime. My stomach clenched, then flip-flopped, and I felt the beginnings of the terror that always hit me as I sat on a plane starting to take off.

  The weather looked ominous, and the forecast was worse. The flight to Saguenay bounced us around so badly that I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything. It didn’t seem to bother Wil, and I hated him a little bit.

  On the way north, I told him what I’d put together. Then I showed him wedding pictures of the Kensingtons in Saguenay and Montreal next to university pictures of Sonia and Sabrina.

  Wil shrugged. “If anyone looked at pictures of your parents, they’d never guess you were their daughter.”

  “I’m a mutant.”

  He started to say something, then hesitated. “You think those women are mutants?”

  “I don’t know. What I want to know is who their real parents were. Before we try to untangle the Sonia-Sabrina riddle, I’d like to know what I’m dealing with.”

  A lot of strange mutations had cropped up in humanity over the previous three hundred years, but there was also the issue of genetic manipulation. In some parts of the world, groups had created super soldiers. Other experiments led to enhancing natural mutations to create lycans and vampires, and snake people. The murders of Morgan and his chauffeur indicated a strong man, not a small woman. But depending on that small woman’s mutations, my calculations might change.

  Saguenay was a small city on a tributary of the St. Lawrence, and the valley between a large lake to the north and the large river to the south was filled with farms. Along with the wild forest to the north and a high-tech economy, it had weathered the Troubles far better than larger metropolitan areas in North America.

  We rented a car and drove to the address we had for Sonia Morgan’s parents. When we pulled up in front of the house on a quiet cul-de-sac, I thought back to Clarissa’s comments about money. The servant’s quarters in the back were larger than my townhouse.

  A maid—a human maid—answered the door. Wil showed his identification and asked to speak with either Mr. or Mrs. Kensington. We were shown into a parlor, and the maid went away.

  “What do you think?” Wil asked as he looked around at the paintings on the walls.

  “Pretty top of the heap for a small town,” I said. “VP-class wealth if they were in Montreal or Toronto, and I doubt their daughter ever worried about her next meal.”

  A woman in her seventies came in, dark-haired, short, and slightly plump. “I’m Monique Kensington. How may I help you?”

  Wil introduced us and said, “We need to ask you some questions about your daughter and her twin sister.”

  I would have approached the subject a little more subtly, but I had to admit his direct approach caused a reaction. The blood drained out of Monique’s face. She swayed, then half-stumbled to the nearest chair and sat down.

  Wil gave her a moment, then said, “We have information that the girls’ birth certificates were purchased and may not be accurate.” He leaned forward. “Mrs. Kensington, we’re not here to cause you any trouble, but the matter is of some urgency. We need to know who your daughter’s real parents are.”

  A carafe of water and some glasses sat on a low table. I got up and poured some, then approached Monique and handed her the glass. She looked up at me, a little startled, then accepted the glass and took a sip.

  “Thank you, my dear,” she said. Taking a deep breath, she turned to Wil. “I don’t know, I’m afraid. The mother was never known to us. But you could ask Doctor Meiners if it’s truly important.”

  “And you took one girl, and your husband’s brother took the other?” I asked.

  “Yes. Neither Irene or I were able to have children, you see. And Doctor Meiners knew a young girl in a family way. Such a delicate matter wasn’t anyone’s business, so we handled it quietly.”

  “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” Wil asked.

  “Oh, it’s been some time,” she said. “She lives in Europe, you know. She always calls at Christmas, but it must be twelve or thirteen years since her last visit.”

  “Do you have an address for Sabrina’s parents?” I asked. I had tried to find one and came up empty.

  “That’s not possible. Irene and Albert were killed in 2190, you see. A tree fell on their house in a storm.”

  She made a phone call, then gave us directions to Dr. Meiners’s home. We drove over there, and Meiners met us at the door of a far more modest house than the Kensingtons’ mansion.

  He was also in his seventies and welcomed us into his sitting room.

  “The weather is quite frightful, don’t you think?” he said. “Would you care for coffee or tea? It won’t take me a minute.”

  I didn’t care what Wil thought, but I was cold. “Either one would be great,” I said.

  Meiners disappeared into the kitchen and came back a minute later, handing each of us a mug of steaming coffee. He returned to the kitchen and came back with a third mug and a little pitcher of milk.

  “Monique told me that you’re interested in Sonia’s real parents,” Meiners said.

  “Yes. We understand that a young woman gave birth to twins, and you placed them privately,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Meiners said. He sighed. “There is some sensitivity surrounding this, but most of those involved are now dead, so I guess I can answer your questions. I take it that the matter is rather important for you to come from so far away.”

  “It’s a murder investigation,” Wil said, “and there is a lot of money involved.”

  Meiners nodded. “Well, the young lady was named Giselle Moreau. Her father was one of Kensington’s foremen at the lumber mill. She was only fourteen when she was raped by a security guard, an out-of-towner working for another corporation.”

  “Does Giselle still live here in town?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Unfortunately, she didn’t survive the girls’ birth. Such a waste.”

  “Does she have any living siblings? Are her parents still alive?”

  He shook his head again. “Her mother is, but she’s in frail health, and I would discourage you from seeing her.” Meiners took a deep breath. “When Giselle died, her father went a little crazy. He went after the man who raped her—his name was Kovachek—and killed him. Unfortunately, Gerome Moreau also died due to injuries he sustained in the incident.”

  “Was this Kovachek a mutant, or some sort of genetically modified soldier?” I asked.

  “Very possibly. I’ll show you.” He stood up and walked out of the room.

  He was gone about ten minutes, and when he came back, he had an ancient electronic tablet. He plugged it in and fiddled with it, then turned it so we could see the screen. A man lay on a mortuary slab. I was familiar with such platforms, and they were about eight feet long. The man in the pictures was maybe six feet tall and heavily muscled like a weight lifter. It appeared that he had five bullet wounds in his torso.

  I glanced up at Meiners. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to show me.”

  “Gustav Kovachek was five feet and ten inches tall. He weighed three hundred and twenty pounds.”

  I looked back at the picture. “But…”

  “You see? His bones were incredibly dense, as were his muscles. I’ve never seen another human being like him. Moreau shot him five times, any of which should have been fatal. Kovacheck still broke him in half before he died.”

  On our way back to the airport, Wil said, “You expected something like that.”

  “Yeah. Remember the intruder at Leslie Desroches’s studio? I asked what I’d been hit with, but the
bruise I had the next day was more consistent with a fist than an iron bar or a piece of lumber. Then there’s Morgan’s chauffeur’s broken neck. Did you ever wonder about whoever killed him? How they got out of the aircar before it went down in the river?”

  “I always assumed the murderer programmed the car to crash.”

  I shook my head. “Your tech boys said there wasn’t any program set. The autopilot was turned off. I think whoever killed him set the car down in the water and swam to shore. Then one night in Le Sommet, a guy tried to get physical with Sonia. Cute little puff muffin Sonia. She punched him in the chest, and they had to take him to the hospital.”

  Chapter 31

  “Is Mrs. Morgan in?” Wil asked at the Queen Elizabeth’s front desk.

  The desk clerk checked his computer and said, “No, she went out this morning.”

  We checked with the concierge, and she said Sonia took a limo. We tracked down the limo driver, who was out on another run, and he gave us the address of the restaurant where he dropped her off.

  I put on my bitchy-rich-lady persona, went into the restaurant, and asked for either Mrs. Morgan or Ms. Kensington. The host told me they had left an hour before.

  “I don’t understand. I thought we were supposed to meet for lunch at one o’clock,” I whined.

  “Ms. Kensington made reservations for eleven,” he said. “Another woman joined her, they had lunch and then they left.”

  “They were here, but they left about an hour ago,” I told Wil when I got back in the car.

  “She didn’t call the limo to pick her up,” Wil said. “The driver said he expected a call, because that’s what she usually does, unless she’s meeting a gentleman.”

  I snorted. “The men of Montreal are going to miss her when she’s gone.”

  Wil looked surprised. “You think she’ll leave?”

  “Oh, yeah. If she liked living in Montreal, she would already live here. With what Morgan was paying her, she could live anywhere in the world. I don’t think Sonia is stupid, but I can’t see her running a multi-billion-credit company. She’ll go back to Europe, but with a major escalation in her lifestyle.”