by Nic Saint
“Fido is losing customers?”
“In droves, Max. The talk in town is that you can’t get a haircut without having Fido trying to fill your head with all kinds of nonsense, and who needs that?”
I certainly didn’t. Then again, I’m not the kind of cat who likes to go to the hair salon, so I can’t really speak from experience. But the Pooles are all very fond of Fido, especially the ladies. Odelia visits him once a month, her mom Marge twice a month and Gran even schedules weekly visits to make sure her little white curls are always in tip-top shape. The men are a different story. Uncle Alec never goes, since one of the requirements of going to a hair salon is that you actually have hair on top of your head, which I’m sorry to say is not so much the case anymore for Odelia’s uncle. His girlfriend Charlene Butterwick, our local mayor, doesn’t seem to mind, though. She herself is an avid Fido fan, and then there are Odelia’s dad Tex, who’s a lukewarm salon goer, as is Chase.
Chase is a cop, you see, and cops, since they are in constant contact with the members of the public, need to look presentable to some extent, so as not to scare them off too much. And Tex Poole is a doctor, and no sick person likes to visit a doctor who looks like a hell’s angel.
“So maybe we’ll drop by the hair salon later,” I told my friend. In spite of myself, this whole Flat Earth Society business had piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to see firsthand what effect Fido’s affiliation was having on the man’s state of mind. If he was scaring off his clientele, maybe Dooley and Buster were right, and something needed to be done. Hair hygiene is a serious business, and if Fido scared away all of his customers, soon Hampton Cove would turn into a hippie town, where the greasy mane ruled supreme.
Though to be perfectly honest I didn’t see how three cats could possibly be instrumental in rectifying this situation. It’s hard to make humans change their minds about something once an idea has taken root in those big noggins they precariously balance on their necks. And I may be a lot of things but I’m not a shrink, so I wouldn’t know how to treat delusional behavior even if I tried.
Still, Buster was our good friend, and so it behooved us to try and find a way to help him in his hour of need.
Chapter Two
Odelia Poole sat hunched over her small desk, frowning at the screen of her laptop computer. From time to time she glanced up to look out the window, which offered a view of the backyard of her own house and that of the neighboring houses. It had been Chase’s idea to install this modest office for her, so she could work from home when she wanted to. And it certainly was a very pleasant little space, located in the bedroom. Before it had been turned into an office it had been a spacious closet, but since Odelia wasn’t a beauty queen or felt the need to spend her hard-earned cash on fancy outfits, she’d used it as storage space, and a place to store her ironing board. On Chase’s instigation they’d relegated most of the stuff to the attic or Goodwill, and while Chase and Tex put up some shelves, Odelia and her mom had gone shopping for a nice desk, a decent office chair and even an armchair where she could think and thresh out ideas—if her cats allowed her to use it, of course, since they’d discovered the space, too—and loved it!
“Diamonds, diamonds, diamonds…” she murmured as she intently gazed at her screen. “Bring me your diamonds, good sir or madam, whether they be white, pink, yellow, orange or black.”
Lately a peculiar story had developed right in the heart of Hampton Cove. A little girl collecting seashells on the beach had picked up what looked like a sparkling piece of glass, and had excitedly handed it to her mommy, who was reading a book nearby. The piece of glass had looked too polished to be part of a broken bottle, and when the woman had studied the item more closely, she’d discovered that it was very nicely cut like a gemstone of some kind.
So she’d taken it into town to a local jeweler to have it looked at, and the jeweler’s jaw had practically dropped to the floor when he indulgently studied what he figured was a piece of colored glass with his loupe, and had discovered that it was a flawless pink diamond of exquisite cut, and probably worth a small fortune.
Of course the news had traveled fast, and plenty of people had soon taken up vigil on the beach, looking for more diamonds where that first one had come from.
The police had gotten involved when the jeweler had declared the stone to be of extreme value, and the hunt was on to find its owner. Oddly enough, no one came forward to claim the stone.
Odelia’s editor, who smelled a great article, had put his star reporter on the story. And since it wasn’t inconceivable that the stone had been accidentally dropped there by thieves, Odelia had been scouring the web in search of stories of people having been robbed of such a valuable gem. She leaned back when she realized that she was suffering from that typical malady of your intrepid journo: she didn’t have enough information to write a decent piece. Yet. An omission that could easily be remedied by going into town and finding out what she needed to know.
And it was with the kind of swiftness and alacrity typical of the dynamic young woman that she was, that she rose from her chair, closed her laptop, tucked it into her shoulder bag, then lightly darted down the stairs and out the door. She paused on the threshold, though, and smiled as she retraced her steps.
Crossing over to the sliding glass door, she opened it and called out, “Max, Dooley—I’m hunting down a story. Wanna join me?”
And it was a testament to her two cats’ spirit of adventure that they didn’t need to be told twice.
Immediately both cats came tripping up to her, looking eager to partake in her latest adventure.
“What is it?” asked Dooley excitedly. “Are you going to try to prove that the earth is round?”
She laughed at that. “Now why would I want to prove something that’s a known fact, honey? No, I want to talk to a jeweler.”
“A jeweler?” asked the small gray cat. “Are you going to buy a ring?”
“Not exactly,” she said as she headed out the door, her two cats in tow. “I need to ask him a couple of questions about a diamond that was found on the beach yesterday.”
“Diamonds!” said Dooley, his eyes shining as brightly as she imagined that diamond had shone.
“Diamond, singular,” she said as she held open the door of her aged pickup truck, to allow both cats to hop up onto the backseat. She closed the door, and assumed her position behind the wheel. ”Though of course where there’s one diamond, there may be others.”
“Cool!” said Dooley, who never stinted for pretty excitement and youthful zeal.
Max, more laidback and assuming the attitude of an elder statesman, said, “Is this the diamond nobody knows the origin of?”
“Yep. They call it the Pink Lady.”
She started up her engine, and soon was tootling along the road into town.
“Why do they call it that, Odelia?” asked Dooley.
“Well, mainly because it’s pink, I guess,” she said, “and also because it looks exactly like a famous diamond called the Pink Lady.”
It had actually been Dolores Peltz, the police station dispatcher, who thought she recognized the gem when Dan had published a picture on the Gazette website. This particular diamond had been set in an engagement ring, offered by Sheikh Bab El Ehr, ruler of Khemed, to his betrothed on the occasion of their marriage. The gem had gone missing thirty-something years ago, never to be found.
“Did the Pink Lady belong to a real pink lady?” asked Dooley.
“I doubt it, Dooley. Besides, chances that this diamond is the actual Pink Lady are very slim.”
“So it could be a pink lady, but not the Pink Lady?”
“Exactly,” she said with a smile as she parked her car in front of Gems World, the jeweler on whose shoulders now rested the responsibility of finding out where this diamond came from.
Chapter Three
Thormond Linoski, owner and proprietor of Gems World (‘A World of Gems at Your Fingertips’), was a smallish man, with a ring of fr
izzy hair crowning a large dome, which was attached to a reedy frame. He looked as if he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders for far too many years, and the slightly bewildered look in his eyes confirmed this view. When we walked in, he plastered a thin-lipped but pleasant smile on his careworn face, and greeted us with the kind of professional warmth and friendliness your small shopkeeper learns to master over a long and checkered career.
“Hello there,” he said the moment he recognized our human, and there was a slight diminution of warmth as he eyed her expectantly. Instinctively the man knew that Odelia hadn’t come to the shop to sample his wares, or spend lavishly on a gem, and his next words confirmed this. “You’re here for that diamond, I presume? Has your uncle found the owner yet?” A flicker of hope shone in his pale blue eyes , but when Odelia shook her head, the flicker was replaced by a look of annoyance. “I was really hoping to get quick service from our local police department, Miss Poole.”
“Mrs. Poole,” I corrected the man from my position on the floor. Not that he seemed to notice. He directed a disinterested glance in my direction, then up at Odelia again.
“I don’t feel entirely safe keeping that precious stone in my shop, you know. It’s been one person after another who wants to take a look at it. The sooner you find the owner the better.”
“Maybe you should close up the shop for now?” Odelia suggested, her voice laced with concern. That’s my human for you: always concerned with the wellbeing of her fellow man, even when that fellow man doesn’t show her the courtesy to remember that she’s recently plighted her troth to another fellow man, and is now Mrs. Poole and no longer Miss Poole. Though of course one could argue that she’s actually Mrs. Kingsley, but then Odelia had grown attached to the name her parents christened her with—she has, after all, been carrying that name for the past twenty-four years. One would get attached to something in less time, wouldn’t you agree?
“Close my shop? I can’t close my shop. I have a living to make, you know.” He sighed as he drew a hand across his brow. “Though if that stone really is the famous Pink Lady, maybe I should close my doors for now. And upgrade my security system. I’m really not equipped to deal with the kind of attention a stone of that notoriety will no doubt garner.”
“Do you think it’s the actual Pink Lady?”
Mr. Linoski wavered. “It certainly looks like the genuine article. It has all the hallmarks—it even has very faint markings where you can see it was set.”
“Set in a ring, you mean?”
The jeweler nodded. “Do you want to take a look?”
Odelia’s face lit up with excitement. “Oh, can I?”
“Only because it’s you,” said Thormond, who looked old enough to have dandled Odelia on his knee when she was little. He disappeared through a small door, only to return promptly, carrying a small red velvet box in his hands. He was holding it reverently, as one would hold the hand of the Queen, when granted the rare privilege of an audience with that formidable lady. “Here she is,” he said in hushed tones, betraying his reverence. He placed the box on the glass counter and opened it. Odelia bent over the item, and from her quick intake of breath I imagined this Pink Lady was a real sight to behold.
Odelia gestured to me and Dooley and asked, “Can I…”
The jeweler’s face took on a stern expression, not unlike the wandmaker in the Harry Potter stories if a pimple-faced wizard had wandered into his store and declared that he didn’t like the wand he bought and could he exchange it for one with more bells and whistles.
“I don’t know…” said the jeweler hesitantly as Odelia first picked up Dooley, then me, and ever so carefully placed us on top of the glass counter.
It was a very nice glass counter, as glass counters go, and filled with the kind of stuff that makes people’s heads spin: rings and bracelets and earrings and the like. It all glittered invitingly, and I could see why Mr. Linoski would be reluctant to allow two cats to prance around there: the counter’s main purpose was to display the jeweler’s wares, not as a runway for two cats to strut their stuff, especially since one of those cats was on the heavy side.
But then I caught sight of the Pink Lady—if indeed it was that fabled gem—and I stopped worrying about Thormond Linoski. The diamond was indeed a sight to behold. It was small and shiny and sparkly and, most assuredly, very pink!
“It’s gorgeous, Max,” said Dooley next to me. “But it’s very small, isn’t it?”
“It is very small,” I said. “Although for a diamond I think it’s plenty big.”
“How much do you think it’s worth?”
Odelia smiled and voiced that same question to the jeweler now. Thormond pursed his thin lips and glanced up at the ceiling, as if hoping to draw inspiration from the bright lights that shone down on the counter, and made his gem collection sparkle like a Christmas tree. “Well,” he said after long and careful deliberation, “a diamond of this superb clarity, 24.78 carat in weight, pink coloring, cut to perfection by an expert cutter, would normally fetch seven figures at least.”
“Seven figures?” asked Dooley, who’d been listening with rapt attention.
“Millions,” said Odelia.
The jeweler nodded. “But if it is the Pink Lady, you have to add the history, and if my research is correct that would make this diamond, well, priceless.”
“Priceless?” asked Odelia, as she glanced down at the gem, her eyes sparkling almost as fervently as the diamond itself.
“Priceless,” said Thormond Linoski.
“I don’t understand, Max,” said Dooley. “How can a diamond have no price?”
“He means it’s so expensive it’s impossible to put a price on it,” I explained.
“So… is it worth a lot, or nothing at all?” asked my friend, still confused.
“It’s worth a lot,” I said. “A whole lot.”
“If you had to put a price on it,” said Odelia. “How much…”
The jeweler shrugged helplessly. “Depends on the buyer. Stones like this are put up for auction, not sold in jewelry stores. We’re talking many, many millions. Though, of course,” he was quick to add, “the point of pricing is moot, since the stone will return to its rightful owner, and won’t enter the market at any point.”
“If it is the Pink Lady…”
The jeweler smiled now—a rare sight, and it caused his leathery face to stretch at the seams. “There’s every chance that it is. But how it ended up on that beach? Now that is a complete mystery.”
“And to think it might have stayed on that beach, and probably would have been swept away by the waves.”
A look of constipation came over the scrawny gem specialist. “I’d rather prefer not to think about that. Imagine a precious and priceless gem like this, perfect in every respect, to be lost forever.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It doesn’t bear thinking. It simply doesn’t.”
“How do you think it ended up on the beach?”
“I can only imagine that whoever was in possession of the stone over the past thirty-odd years must have lost it somehow.”
“The thief, you think?”
“Most assuredly. Are you familiar with the history of the Pink Lady?”
“Only what I’ve read on Wikipedia.”
An expression of distaste flashed across the man’s face, as if to convey the notion that your serious gem dealer doesn’t consider Wikipedia a valuable source of information. “Well, the stone of course belonged to Sheikh Bab El Ehr, ruler of Khemed.”
“Who gave it as a gift to his wife, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” said Mr. Linoski with an indulgent smile. Even Wikipedia gets it right sometimes, that smile seemed to say. “The original stone was found in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1967. At the time it was the largest stone ever retrieved in that particular mine. It was cut by an expert cutter in Antwerp, Belgium, heart of the international diamond industry, where the most renowned cutters are located,
and then transferred to Khemed to become part of that country’s collection of royal jewels. In 1985 it was set in an engagement ring and offered to the Sheikh’s ninety-ninth wife, the lovely Laura Burns, who was only nineteen at the time of her wedding. She was, according to local lore, supposed to be the Sheikh’s final wife, as he’d decided to stop short of reaching a full hundred, and he was rumored to be so enamored with the young lady that he wanted to gift her the most precious and expensive diamond in the world, the only thing that could possibly compete with his bride’s radiant beauty. She wore the ring at their lavish wedding, and it’s at that point that the story gets a little sketchy. The Sheikh’s wife died at the one-year anniversary of her wedding, and the Pink Lady seems to have vanished without a trace after that.”
“Poor Sheikh,” said Odelia with feeling. “Losing his beloved wife like that must have been a terrible blow.”
“At least he had his ninety-eight other wives to console him,” Dooley pointed out.
“Did they ever find out what happened to the ring?” asked Odelia.
“No, like I said, things are a little sketchy, and no one seems to know what happened to the diamond after the Sheikh’s wife died. But if you look closely at the stone, you can see very faint markings, where the stone was set in a ring.” He offered Odelia his loupe to support his discovery.
She looked through the magnifying glass and said, “I see it. It’s very faint, but those markings are definitely there.”
“Which is why I’m almost certain that this is the fabled Pink Lady,” said the jeweler with a smile of satisfaction. “Which of course will have to be confirmed.”
“Who’s going to have to confirm it?” asked Odelia as she put down the loupe.
“The insurance company contracted to insure the original ring would be my best bet,” said Mr. Linoski. “Which is why your uncle needs to get in touch with the owners of this diamond as soon as possible—Sheikh Bab El Ehr’s heirs. I believe that would be his son, who took over when his father died. Sheikh Bab El Ghat.” He gave Odelia a look of concern. “I really don’t feel safe keeping the stone here any longer than strictly necessary, you know.”