Death, Diamonds, and Deception
Page 27
“Giving his fiancée one of the Marie Antoinette diamonds was more than a misstep,” Prudence said. “It was stupid.”
“Greedy,” Josiah concurred.
“It’s always something simple that brings them down,” Geoffrey said. “There’s no way to prove it now, but I think he probably had James Carpenter create Lorinda’s engagement ring. He’s smart enough not to risk the stone being identified by a legitimate jeweler, but too arrogant to believe anyone would recognize it out of the context of the necklace from which he took it. And he must have known that Lorinda and her parents would expect solid proof of considerable wealth. As I said, something simple.”
“It’s a broad leap from embezzlement to murder,” Prudence said.
“But in Everett’s case, the potential rewards were dazzling. Think about it for a moment. He has a good, solid Knickerbocker name, but no money to speak of. He’s raised in a small town by a widowed mother while other young men of less substantial background but more wealth lead a life that he can only envy among the cream of the New York elite.”
“Jealousy must have eaten away at his soul every time he read one of the society columns,” Josiah contributed.
“And then, seemingly out of the blue, his enormously wealthy uncle invites him into his business and his home.”
“Two things had to happen to make that possible,” Prudence speculated. “Morgan, the heir apparent, had to so profoundly disappoint his stepfather that William gave up on him. For Lena’s sake, he might have pretended to believe that Morgan could reform, but he was already looking for a replacement. Then Everett’s mother died; his filial responsibilities ended. William might never have reached out to his nephew while Everett played the dutiful son, but as soon as he was free, his uncle saw him as a possible surrogate for the stepson who had so grievously shattered his illusions.”
“You don’t suppose . . . ?” Josiah began.
“He might have begun to wish for his mother’s death,” Prudence said, “but I can’t believe he would have hastened it. Not then. It wasn’t until the floodgates of opportunity opened that he realized how simple it was to remove the obstacles that threatened his success. The first being James Carpenter.”
“That may have been a crime of opportunity,” Geoffrey said. “Unpremeditated, unplanned. Setting off an inevitable chain reaction once he’d gotten away with the first killing.”
“How so?” asked Prudence.
“James Carpenter was a skilled jeweler, but he wasn’t as good a businessman. We know from his accounts book that he was having trouble making the rental payments on his shop. So when Everett showed up with his stolen diamonds, it must have seemed the perfect answer to Carpenter’s dilemma.”
“Meaning that Aubrey and Morgan had nothing to do with the theft?”
“I think it was all Everett. Aubrey and Morgan were foils. Their obvious weaknesses made them natural suspects. We all bought into the deception Everett did everything in his power to concoct. I don’t doubt that Aubrey and the footman were attracted to one another and perhaps were even planning a future together, but Leonard’s suicide had everything to do with love gone wrong and nothing to do with Lena’s diamonds.”
“Then how did Mr. Canfield and Mr. Whitley manage to pay off their gambling debts?” Josiah asked.
“The way chronic gamblers always do,” Geoffrey answered. “They went back to the tables over and over again, and sometimes, inevitably, they won. They would have paid off some of what they owed, but kept enough for another stake. It’s a pattern of winning and losing that repeats until the gambler quits the game or dies, and it can play itself out at a fancy roulette table or over loaded dice in a back alley. The only thing that’s sure and certain is that the gambler who can’t walk away is as doomed as the drunkard who pours himself another whiskey.”
“Back to James Carpenter’s death,” Prudence said.
“I think he got greedy after he made Lorinda’s ring and realized how much more he could squeeze out of Everett. Carpenter was a small man who looked like he’d spent years hunched over a jeweler’s bench.”
“While Everett is well over six feet tall,” Prudence said. “He likely played tennis and football at Harvard, and we know he sails whenever he has the opportunity. He’s also much younger than Carpenter was.”
“Carpenter probably locked the shop door and drew down the shades as soon as Everett walked in that final time,” Geoffrey continued. “The last thing either of them wanted was to be interrupted by a casual customer. Carpenter may have threatened Everett with exposure if he didn’t get a larger cut of the profits. We don’t know whether Everett has an explosive temper when he’s crossed or if he’s simply a coldly calculating individual who makes quick decisions and acts on them immediately. In the end, it didn’t matter for James Carpenter. He was a dead man as soon as he threatened his killer.”
“Why cut his throat?” Josiah asked.
“To make it look like the type of violence that might have made its way up to Fifth Avenue from the Five Points,” Geoffrey said. “A rogue criminal ignoring the police lines drawn around the Ladies’ Mile. That’s also why the shop was trashed. A professional thief would have emptied out the premises at night. Neatly and very quietly. Everything we saw was a distraction, leading the investigation away from the direction in which it should have gone.”
“And Carpenter’s assistant?”
“Another obstacle to be removed. A link that had to be severed so nothing could be traced back to Everett. Aubrey was killed because we would have discovered eventually that his only connection to the De Vries home was his unfortunate flirtation with the footman who had the misfortune to fall in love with him. Morgan was a lucky accident for Everett, although we ought to assume that he was constantly and subtly poisoning William against his wife’s son. As angry and disappointed as he was, I don’t think William would have ordered his home locked against Morgan unless someone had pushed him beyond tolerance and forgiveness into implacability.”
The door to the outer office opened and closed, letting in a draft of cold air from the hallway. Amos Lang had a newspaper in his hand and a triumphant look on his face.
“Here it is,” he said, unfolding the paper so they could read the headline. “Special edition. I guess they figured the story was too big to wait for the regular afternoon print run. Russell Coughlin has his byline on it, and he hasn’t pulled any punches.”
“He names names?” Geoffrey asked.
“And openly asks how the Marie Antoinette stone in Lorinda Bouwmeester’s engagement ring came into her possession.”
“Does he mention Everett?”
“He identifies him as Miss Bouwmeester’s fiancé, but stops short of accusing him of knowingly acquiring a stolen stone. The really scandalous part of the story is the hypothesis that William De Vries knew about the theft of the diamonds and conspired to keep that information from the police, thereby impeding the investigations of two murders.”
“Only two?” Josiah asked. By his count Everett was guilty of four killings, five if you counted his role in hardening William’s heart against his stepson.
“Leonard Abbott’s death is on the books as a suicide, and Aubrey Canfield’s swim in the East River is officially an accident,” Amos explained.
“I doubt we’ll ever be able to prove any differently,” Geoffrey said. He’d known from the beginning that even the intrepidly daring Russell Coughlin wouldn’t go too far out on the limb of speculation. His reading public didn’t want to hear about the heartaches of a man who loved other men and preferred to think that the shortening of Aubrey’s life was probably a blessing in disguise for the young man and his family. Best leave those two stories in the dark where they belonged. Geoffrey had reluctantly agreed, well aware that Coughlin kept painstakingly accurate records of stories he or his editor considered too hot to print. Many a reporter planned to come out with a tell-all book once his newsprint days were over.
“What’s not in any
of the newspapers is that some of the De Vries clients have begun to pull their investments out of the company. And their cash funds out of the bank,” Amos continued. “It’s only a trickle as yet, but the flood is coming.”
“It’s what William feared from the beginning,” Prudence recalled. “I remember him saying that a client had to trust the man and the institution that controlled his finances. And how could you be expected to trust someone who couldn’t keep his own house in order?”
“He was right,” Josiah said.
“Everett will have to make his move soon,” Amos predicted. “If the rest of the investment moguls turn on him, he won’t be able to escape financial ruin.”
“He has to pull his assets together and get out of New York before anyone thinks to stop him,” Geoffrey mused, reaching for one of the train schedules he kept in an upper desk drawer. “North to Canada or west to Chicago or California. There’s no quick money to be made in the states of the former Confederacy right now and Florida is still a wilderness. Everett is a schemer. He’ll want to be where the action is.”
“And if he’s smart, out of reach of the American authorities.”
“Canada?” questioned Amos. “He could still reach California or Chicago eventually, if that’s where he wants to end up, but he’d be a lot safer making the journey on the Canadian side of the border.”
“His investors will likely send Pinkertons after him,” Geoffrey said.
“That depends on how badly he’s fleeced them,” Amos said. “Pinkertons don’t come cheap nowadays.”
Geoffrey rose from behind his desk and removed the Colt. 45 revolver and shoulder holster from the locked drawer to which he had the only key. He spun the cylinder and grinned at Prudence, who had also gotten to her feet and was checking the derringer in her reticule.
She fully intended to come with him, which meant there was an argument in the offing that he would probably lose.
But with Prudence, winning wasn’t always the point.
CHAPTER 29
Everett Rinehart entered his late uncle’s office and locked the door behind him.
He hadn’t liked the chary looks cast in his direction as he crossed the bank lobby and made his way past tellers’ cages and loan officers’ desks. Everywhere he glanced he’d seen small groups of employees huddled together, reluctant to meet his gaze as they hastily whisked out of sight the newspapers over which they’d been clucking. Newsboys on Broadway had sold out of the special edition within minutes of its hitting the street, but that hadn’t stopped them from shouting the headline and promising more papers as soon as the presses stopped rolling and the ink dried.
Damn the woman! He knew without a shadow of a doubt that the busybody Lady Rotherton, who should have stayed in London and out of his business, was responsible for what was happening. He could feel her coldly appraising look washing over him, finding him wanting, judging him inadequate. It had always been like that. Even before he’d managed to escape to Harvard he’d had to endure snide references to his father’s failures that no amount of family influence had been able to hide. After Conrad Rinehart’s death by his own hand, his mother’s clinging dependence had chained Everett to her side and away from the vibrant New York City life he deserved to live. Those years had been the worst, so close to and yet so far from a world he could only read about in newspaper accounts.
Uncle William’s summons had freed him. Within days of receiving the letter that changed his destiny, Everett had sold the miserable family home that had needed costly repairs for years. Then he paid a final, gloating visit to the graves of the parents who had nearly robbed him of a decent future, and left Wickelton forever, determined never to look back.
He hadn’t counted on the fear that began to stalk him as soon as he was plunged into the world of investments whose worth rose and fell with dizzying, incomprehensible rapidity. Everett was handsome, intelligent, well-educated, and by birth a member of the Knickerbocker segment of New York society, but he had been marked from childhood by the specter of a spineless suicide father and a weeping, washed-out excuse for a mother.
Unable to believe that his struggles might really be over, he saw threats, competition, and conspiracy everywhere he looked. His uncle’s stepson was a pitiful drunkard who blithely gambled away a fortune larger than anything Everett had ever possessed. Everett’s facial muscles ached from the effort of smiling all the time and his jaws pained him every morning from the hours of frustrating grinding that made sleep an ordeal.
The possibility of failure haunted his every waking hour, never more so than when his uncle entrusted him with the investment portfolios of some of the firm’s oldest clients.
“You can cut your teeth on these,” William De Vries had said, depositing a stack of fat folders on Everett’s desk. “I put them in safe securities years ago. Nothing glamorous or daring, but the returns are steady and the risk is minimal. As long as they can continue to live the way they always have, these clients will leave everything in your capable hands.”
And so they had.
If Everett had been content with monitoring his uncle’s successes and learning from them, all might have been well. But he was ambitious and impatient, two qualities that warred against steadiness of purpose and maintaining the status quo. He dipped into the portfolios with greedy fingers that swiftly became adept at hiding what he was doing. A stock sold here and there, inflated or entirely falsified figures on a balance sheet, funds shifted from one account into another when a payment had to be made. He became expert at satisfying the unsuspecting clientele whose wealth he was gradually depleting. William, concentrating for Lena’s sake on the worthless and unreformable Morgan, became blind to what was going on. For the first time in his business life he let down his guard and trusted someone absolutely. Everett was his deceased sister’s only child and the closest he’d ever come to having a son of his own.
William’s office boasted a concealed safe that was nearly as secure as the bank vaults in which coffers of cash and client records were kept. The first thing Everett had done on taking over the day-to-day management of the business had been to move the diamonds he’d pried out of Lena’s necklace from their vulnerable hiding places into the safe to which no one but he had access. Many of the stones had been recut and readied for resale by James Carpenter before Everett had had to eliminate him. Everett had nevertheless held on to as many of them as he could, unwilling to part with the stones for far less than what he knew Tiffany and other society jewelers charged their customers. There had to be a way of maximizing his profit, given the risks he’d run to acquire the diamonds in the first place.
Things changed again when William died. Lena stubbornly refused to sign the papers Everett put in front of her, but he’d steeled himself to remain even-tempered and imperturbable. He saw to the smooth running of the household and the continued efficiency of the businesses. His transition from second-in-command to unquestioned successor to his uncle seemed assured. It was just a matter of time, he reminded himself. And meanwhile, there was the immensely wealthy heiress Lorinda Bouwmeester to ensnare securely in the web he was weaving.
It had been almost too easy. Everett was bored with the conquest even before she consented to marry him. The timing might have been thrown off by his uncle’s death, but he hadn’t allowed it to postpone the wedding plans. They were simply scaled back from grand social event to a suitably intimate family occasion. Which was actually something of a relief to the publicity shy Bouwmeester parents. They might have been richer than Croesus, but they were Knickerbocker enough to instinctively dislike and distrust any vulgar flaunting of wealth.
The single concession Everett made to an almost insane desire to shout his new prospects to the world was the engagement ring he placed on Lorinda’s finger. He’d gloried in the shock on her face when she saw it, and the way her hand trembled at its weight. Whatever else he’d been, James Carpenter had known how to show off a stone to its best advantage. He’d wanted to recut
it, but Everett had vetoed that suggestion. Every time he looked at the fourth finger of his wife-to-be’s left hand, he wanted to see a stone that had been meant for a queen. And know that he was the only person in the world who recognized the truth of it.
And that was what brought him down. Not having grown up among people who were almost as expert as professional jewelers in the consideration and evaluation of the stones with which they bedecked themselves, he didn’t recognize the subtle ways one diamond differed from another, how a cut defined the era, the country, and even the master craftsman who had effected it. Lady Rotherton had known what she was looking at within moments of Lorinda’s taking off her glove at that damned dinner celebrating the engagement. He remembered the way the viscountess’s fingers had caressed the stone, rubbing against the facets as though reacquainting themselves with a long lost friend.
Damn the woman!
Everett spun the combination lock of his uncle’s safe with a steady hand. All his life he’d planned and schemed, instinctively preparing escape routes from even the safest, most perfectly executed stratagem. His present life was no exception.
The Marie Antoinette diamonds went into a banker’s briefcase, along with bundles of cash and bags of gold coins he’d been accumulating for months. An untraceable fortune no one would know was missing until the next time an investment client had to be paid his quarterly dividends and an accountant discovered the portfolio had been looted. By then Everett Rinehart would have become someone else. Someplace far away from New York City. He’d miss the adulation he’d come to enjoy here, but he had no doubt that he’d find it again. Under a different name and with facial hair to disguise his features.
The secretary sitting outside his office heard Mr. Rinehart laugh aloud and wondered what a man on the brink of ruin could find to rejoice over.
* * *
“We have to catch him with the diamonds,” Geoffrey insisted, “otherwise we have no case against him.”