by Dale Mayer
The cop asked her several questions, and she finally raised both hands in surrender. “Do you want to talk to the detective who’s on the case? Please do. I believe his name is Sarsen.” She dug in her purse for his card, handing it over.
The cop looked at the card and dialed the number. He moved a few steps away, so she couldn’t hear the conversation. When he came back, he nodded. “The patient is not awake. But, as long as the nurse says it’s okay, you can go in for a few minutes.”
Diamond looked at the nurse and asked, “May I?”
The nurse said, “The minute he wakes up, you’re not allowed to ask any questions, and you have to let us know immediately.”
Not liking the stipulations but needing to see Sammy for herself, she nodded and walked around the curtain and up to Sammy’s bed. She sat on the single chair beside it. “Well, Sammy, we’re in a hell of a pickle here, buddy. What the heck happened to you?”
But Sammy didn’t answer. It was eerie watching him. He lay here, his face flaxen, not even a twitch in his body, as if he were one step away from death. She had no idea what to do or say. She gently picked up his hand and held it in hers.
“Come on. Get better, Sammy. You need to wake up. That head injury is darn scary,” she whispered.
She searched his face, looking for signs of awareness, but there weren’t any. Beside him was a steady beep of machines with IVs going in both his arms. That made him look like he was one step away from death as well.
Suddenly the curtain shifted, and Dezi stepped in. She gave him a big smile in relief. “You didn’t get the third degree out there?” When he raised an eyebrow in question, she said, “The nurse and the cop didn’t want to let me in. I had to give him the detective’s name.”
Dezi shrugged. “Nobody asked me anything,” he said. He stepped behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders, gently massaging the nape of her neck with his thumb. “Sammy doesn’t look very awake to me.”
“No, he doesn’t, does he?” she said with a heavy sigh. “It’s like he’s not even in there.”
“He is,” Dezi said. “I checked with the nurse at the reception area. There’s been no other visitors or phone calls asking about him.”
“That’s so sad,” she said. “I’m sure somebody else is in his life.”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to discuss with you. Do you know anything about Sammy’s personal life, other than his recent boyfriend Tony? I really would like to go back to Sammy’s house and turn his life upside down. But now that the police are involved, that’s not so easy to do.”
“They won’t let you back in there,” she stated firmly. “They have investigators on it already. However, I doubt you’d find much. I’ve known him for years. He’s a wonderful artist and friend and there’s been no sign of anything ugly in his past that I know of. Of course you could turn his online life upside down. Maybe you’ll find something there but again I doubt it.”
He chuckled. “Already in progress,” he said. “Remember? I’m part of a team. Once they heard the news, they started in. And you’re right, so far nada.”
“That’s just as sad,” she said. “I know we’re helping him, but we’re looking for evidence to nail his ass.”
“Only if he did something wrong,” Dezi said. “Otherwise there’s nothing to nail.”
Her shoulders slumped as she relaxed in her chair. “It’s just so very suspicious, isn’t it?”
“It is.” He squeezed her shoulders gently before releasing them. “There’s no real evidence either way yet. Remember? He could be as much of a victim as you are.”
“Still doesn’t explain how any of this is related to the forgery.”
“Yes, it does,” he said. “As soon as they have copies of all your hand-drawn design ideas, they can get them reproduced. Even more forgeries in the making.”
“But they won’t have the originals to replace them though. Of course, if the break-in of the store vault had been successful, they would have had a lot of my originals.” She gave a heavy sigh, then straightened. “We have to contact the courier company. They can’t deliver that necklace to the store today.”
“Call them,” he said. “We can pick it up from them instead.”
Afraid she’d already missed the delivery, she called the courier company, and, sure enough, they had tried to deliver it. They’d left a slip behind when she wasn’t at the store. She stood, gave Sammy a kiss on the cheek and said quietly to Dezi, “Let’s go get it.” With one final look at her friend’s pale, comatose body, she stepped out, brushing away the tears so nobody would see them.
As they left, they weren’t stopped. Nobody even questioned them.
“Makes no sense how I got the third degree to get in,” she muttered, “but you didn’t.”
“If the cop has already checked with the detective because of you, it makes perfect sense. I should have been cleared at the same time.”
Outside they got into his vehicle and headed back in the direction of her shop. “Do you have the address for the courier?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He punched into the GPS the address she gave him and found the courier office was just a few blocks away. He pulled the vehicle into the parking lot. She got out and walked in. “Hey, Sarah. Do you have my package?” she asked.
“The parcel was already picked up,” the clerk said in confusion as she eyed the slip in Diamond’s hand.
“What do you mean it was picked up?” Dezi said. “How could it have been picked up without the slip?”
“He had all the numbers and said he left the slip at home. We didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”
Just then the store manager came out—her name tag declared her to be Tanya—and asked, “What’s the problem?”
Dezi’s voice was hard and biting as he explained.
The manager’s hand wafted in front of her. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Tanya turned to Sarah. “We can’t hand out any parcels if we don’t have the proper ID.”
“But he had proper ID,” the clerk said. “It was Sammy, the manager at the store. He’s on our approved list. I had no reason to question him when the numbers were correct.”
Diamond could hear Dezi swearing underneath his breath. She leaned over the counter and said quietly, “Sammy is in the hospital. He was attacked in his home. Obviously his ID was stolen. And I have the damn slip right here in my hand, which means you owe me a parcel. And you need to understand a very expensive necklace is inside that package, which I paid extra insurance for.”
Both women stumbled over each other trying to help, but there wasn’t anything they could do.
Dezi asked in a firm voice over the din, “Did you get a good look at the guy?”
The clerk, pinned on the spot, had a helpless doe-caught-in-the-headlights look as she tried to remember.
In the meantime, Dezi looked around. He nudged Di’s shoulder and pointed up to a camera.
“Yes,” Diamond cried out. She turned to the manager. “Do you have access to that feed?”
The two employees both turned to look up at the camera, and the manager nodded. “Yes, I do.” She headed into the back room and came out five minutes later. “You can come back here and take a look. I don’t know how to do anything with this, but you can see him getting the package.”
The three crowded around her behind the camera feed. They watched somebody come in, seemingly unconcerned about cameras, step up to the front counter and talk to the clerk, Sarah. She asked for his ID, listened to his story and wrote down the delivery routing numbers, which were supposedly a match to her slip. The clerk then headed into the back, probably into the manager’s office for permission. Sarah came back out into the line of sight of the camera again and handed “Sammy” the box. He signed for it and left with a smile.
“Sammy does have signing authority for the store,” Diamond said to Dezi. “And the thief must have known that.”
“That would explain the need to hav
e Sammy as a part of this. Even unwillingly.”
“Yes,” she muttered, rubbing her face. “How do we get the necklace back though?”
Dezi looked at the manager. “Do you mind if I sit down here for a moment?”
She nodded, rose and moved away.
He sat down, backed up the feed to a photo of the imposter’s face and took a screenshot of the image, sending it to Levi. “That’s about the best we can get out of it.”
“Is it?” Diamond said. “Can you make it any larger?”
The feed was grainy once Dezi enlarged it. He took it down as much as he could for clarity and again took a screenshot and sent it off. Then he backed it up slightly to see if anything else could help identify the man. He took a picture of the vehicles outside. As they watched, the imposter got into a white pickup truck. They couldn’t catch the license plate, but at least they had an idea of what it looked like.
“Now we can track him from this parking lot to where he went,” Dezi said. He smiled at the manager. “That might’ve just saved your bacon.”
She looked deathly afraid that it wouldn’t be enough.
Dezi wrote down both employee names and their contact information. “Now we’ll hunt down that person who stole a very expensive necklace worth $147,000.” He looked back at the clerk. “From now on, don’t hand out any parcels without the appropriate slip.”
She nodded, still in a panic.
Outside the courier’s office, Diamond rubbed her temples. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It will,” Dezi said. “It will. We just have to find all the assholes and figure it out.”
“You realize that attempted delivery slip could have been left there yesterday evening,” she said. “Put into the mailbox.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And maybe they couldn’t get Sammy to pick it up. Or maybe they decided he was a loose end. Maybe their plans changed, and they didn’t want him to know about their next step.”
She shook her head. “How did they know to do all this?”
He gave a bark of bitter laughter. “The criminal element is always evolving,” he said with a half smile. “I wish they weren’t. It would be a lot easier to capture them. But instead these assholes are getting smarter day by day. And, as we develop new electronic security systems, the bad guys are developing even better tools to break into them.”
*
As far as he was concerned, this was way-too-well orchestrated to be random. Somebody had to have known who had signing authority, who was part of Di’s company, where she lived, what designs she had coming back and forth. “When you think about it,” he said as he drove back to her store, “they knew an awful lot about your place and your operation.”
“So, in other words, an inside job is what you’re saying—as you thought from the beginning,” she said.
He shot a glance her way, but she stared out the window, her fists clenched in her lap. “It’ll be somebody who’s done a lot of research,” he clarified. “That could be an inside job, or it could also be a family job. It doesn’t take much to bribe somebody. Ten thousand dollars is something a lot of people can’t get their hands on, so, when it’s waved in front of them for a little bit of information, most of them grab it.”
“So my heart and soul were destroyed for ten grand?”
“Chances are good they had to pay ten grand many times over,” he said. “But, yeah, when you think about the value of that one necklace, they probably thought that was a cheap investment.”
She gave a strangled sound, but thankfully the tears weren’t coming.
He could handle a lot of things, but a woman’s tears undid him every time.
“Where are we going now?”
“Back to the store.”
“I’d rather go home,” she said faintly. “I might need a nap too. It’s a little hard to think straight right now.”
He pulled up to the next corner and took a right. “Whatever you need to do is what we’ll do,” he said. “I’m waiting on information from all the searches. But we’ve cleared most of the names on the extended list including the other stores that have anything to do with the sisters. Still haven’t cleared Ronnie. Given his position in the family and access to other stores, suppliers, jewelers we are going deep on his background check. Your housekeeper and gardener have also been cleared. The old kidnapping case is not a factor, as you said, but I’ll need to have a powwow with Levi and Vince, so your place is as good as the store. Maybe even better, if I can get some privacy. I want to make sure nobody’s listening in but you.”
“Agreed,” she said, “but I don’t know how the hell to do that anymore. I mean, if they were in my house, and if it’s such a sophisticated operation, is there any chance they bugged my place? Or put in video cameras?”
“It’s one of the reasons Vince went back to the compound,” he said easily. “He’s picking up more equipment. We need to check and double-check both premises to make sure nothing is there that shouldn’t be.”
She looked at him. “I was joking.”
“I’m not,” he said firmly. “We can’t take that chance. And it’s way too easy for other people to see what you’re doing and what you’re working on, not to mention checking your passwords with nicely angled cameras.”
She groaned and sank against the seat. “Good thing I have wine at home,” she said faintly. “I might need a bottle all to myself.”
He chuckled. “That’s fine. You can have a whole bottle to yourself. I’m looking for coffee.”
Her eyes flipped open. “That’s a very good idea. I might be better off with a shot of caffeine instead of a nap.”
He took the last couple corners, deliberately driving past where the kidnappers’ van had been and where she had escaped from them.
She straightened in the seat beside him, her heart and breath catching in the back of her throat. “Such a small, unassuming street,” she whispered. “When you think of so much violence here …”
“You can’t blame the street,” he said in a low tone. “It’s not the street’s fault. It is and always will be some human’s fault.”
He pulled up in her driveway and parked in the front.
She got out, looked around and asked, “Do you think we’re being watched even now?”
He stopped to consider it, using all his instinctive feelers he’d honed over the years, and said, “I wouldn’t doubt it, but I don’t sense anything right now.”
She gave a hard and broken laugh at that, led the way to the front door, unlocked it and stepped inside.
He put a hand on her shoulder and said in a low voice, “Let me go first.”
Chapter 12
Diamond didn’t argue. Her voice was low and full of pain. “I’m not sure I can keep this up much longer.”
“We’re working on it, sweetie,” he said. “As soon as we can, we’ll shut down the entire criminal enterprise focused on you. What we don’t want is to have anybody else hurt.” With her in tow, he moved through her house room by room to make sure the place was empty. When he got upstairs, he checked under the beds and inside the closets. When he was satisfied nobody was here, he headed toward the kitchen.
“Did you lock the front door?” she asked.
He nodded. “I did. And the back.”
She looked out at the pool. “I was hoping to go out there and sit.”
“I’m not saying we can’t,” he said.
She made them some coffee, when Dezi’s phone rang.
“It’s Vince,” he said to her before speaking into his phone. “Where are you?”
“About ten minutes away,” Vince said with a bit of laughter in his voice. “So this is a warning call. You’re about to get company.” He hung up.
Dezi chuckled.
“Well, I’m glad somebody’s got something to laugh about,” Diamond muttered.
“Vince was letting us know he’s on the way and will be here soon. So, if we were in the middle of something, we should wrap it up quickly.
”
Her eyes wide, she figured out his meaning and giggled. “I guess it makes sense he called.”
“Absolutely,” Dezi said. “But I should have asked him for a few more changes of clothes.”
“Right. You’re still in the same clothes from yesterday, aren’t you?” She glanced down at her jeans and long brightly covered shift. “It seems like such a minor issue right now.”
“Clothing for me is always a minor issue,” he said. “I wear them when I’m in public. Otherwise I really don’t give a damn.”
She chuckled, slid him a sideways glance and teased, “I noticed.”
He turned her around, hit the coffeemaker’s Start button, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her hard. “Don’t you forget it.”
*
Vince arrived within ten minutes. The coffeemaker beeped to say it was ready when he walked up the driveway. Dezi let him in.
Vince handed over a large bag to Dezi. “I brought you some clothes.”
“Ha,” Dezi said with a big grin. “I was pissed I hadn’t asked you to do that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vince said. “I got your back.” He held up a second bag. “This bag is next. We need to make sure this place is clean.”
“And the store,” Dezi added. “I don’t know if she’ll go for it or not, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a sweep of Sammy’s place done too. Might help us decide if he’s a victim or part of this.”
“But he’s in the hospital and can’t give his permission,” Diamond said, her arms across her chest, her fingers tapping on her arm.
“Quite true,” Dezi said easily. “The police aren’t likely to let us in either.”
She frowned, her bottom lip trembling. Then she turned to Vince and gave him a big hug. “I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Under better circumstances would be nice, but still, considering you’re helping us, I’m very happy to have you here.”
