Carter was about two inches behind her.
“Cash, please,” Kate said, holding out her hand.
Sam pulled out the wallet he’d filled with cash. Getting the money had damn near wiped out her bank accounts and his own, because he hadn’t dared to put in a request for FBI undercover funds to establish his confidential informant’s stature on the buying and selling circuit.
And Kate had made it painfully clear that credit cards and checks weren’t welcome. Cash and carry. Period.
He handed the wallet over to her without a flicker, as though he didn’t have any money at stake. But while he was doing it, he made sure that Carter got a good look at the weapon harness Kate’s “bodyguard” wore. Maybe seeing the gun would take some of the zip out of the jerk’s joystick.
With no expression, Sam watched Kate count out bills. When she handed the wallet back to him, he put it away. Two minutes later the rough was wrapped up and stashed in her bag.
Without saying a word, she went back to the table that held a rough rainbow of colors.
Sam followed, crowding out Carter just for the pleasure of it. The TV in the corner was running a banner across the bottom: Live from the Scottsdale Royale. Sam gave up on Carter for the moment and eased closer to the TV. There was a medium close-up of an earnest blonde holding her exaggerated lips close to a microphone. He couldn’t hear all of what Tawny Dawn said, but he heard enough.
“Sources close to the investigation…the Purcells were involved with the South American gangs…plaguing the jewelry trade.” Tawny turned aside. The camera shifted. “FBI Special Agent Mario Hernandez, could you tell us…”
Sam bit back a curse. Kennedy must have his balls in a twist if he was playing the old “try the victims if you can’t try the crime” game for the news vultures.
At least now Sam didn’t have to call Mario or Doug. Not much doubt about what they were going to tell him.
He still didn’t want to hear it.
Sorry you got the short straw, Mario. But look at it this way — you’re learning how to handle TV reporters.
Carter made his move on Kate, closing the last two inches of space between them. About three seconds later Sam stepped hard all over Carter’s loafers.
“Watch it!” Carter said angrily.
“Stop crowding her,” Sam said in a voice only Carter could hear.
The man might have been pretty, but he wasn’t stupid. He took one look at Sam’s eyes and backed off all the way to the other side of the room.
Sam resumed watching and listening to the men milling around while Kate looked at a piece of deep blue rough. She went through four different loupes from her bag, examining the rough as thoroughly as she could without a microscope. Then she put the rough down and shook her head.
“I asked to see only natural rough,” she said distinctly.
The sound level in the room dropped.
“I’m sorry, Ms….?” the Butterworth employee said.
“Collins,” Kate supplied.
“Ms. Collins, you’re mistaken. This is a fine Burmese blue, untreated. I have the certificate to prove it.”
The employee reached into a drawer beneath the case. A moment later he pulled out a piece of paper with a Swiss lab certification of 43.7 carats of blue sapphire from Burma. He slapped it down in front of Kate.
She read it with the kind of speed that said she’d seen a lot of gem certifications.
“Very nice,” she said evenly. “There’s just one problem.”
“Really. What would that be?” the employee asked. His voice said he didn’t believe her.
Though no one moved closer, everyone was quiet, listening. It wasn’t uncommon for a stone to be questioned, but it was always interesting when it happened.
“Untreated Burmese blue with origins as described in that certificate would have pyrrhotite inclusions,” Kate said evenly. “I haven’t found any hint of them with even my 40x loupe. Perhaps you could point them out to me?”
The employee’s mouth opened, closed, and stayed that way. He picked up the disputed piece of rough. “Excuse me.”
He headed in the direction of the room that held equipment for close examination of merchandise.
Conversation around the room picked up again, but there was a hushed expectancy that hadn’t been there before.
Sam looked at Kate. She was looking at another piece of sapphire rough — orange this time. He hoped that she wasn’t planning on buying it. Their joint bank accounts really couldn’t afford this kind of high-stakes poker.
“Another purchase?” he asked in a low voice.
“No.”
The room went quiet again.
“Looks pretty to me,” Sam said in a normal voice, glancing at the radiant orange rough in her hand. “Isn’t it natural?”
“It’s natural. As a specimen, it’s very nice.”
“But?” Sam prodded. Money was one way of establishing credentials. Knowledge was another. He figured they had a hell of a lot more knowledge than money. Might as well underline it for the peanut gallery.
“With rough, I’m looking for a profit after cutting,” Kate said in a voice that carried just enough to reach everyone in the room. “The zircon inclusions in this rough show the classic halo with a dark center, proving that the color is natural, not heat-treated. But the way the inclusions are placed…” She shrugged. “The inclusions were radioactive, which stressed the surrounding sapphire. Bottom line is I don’t see a reasonably safe way to cut this rough that would yield a profit.”
“Would another cutter?”
“Not so far,” she said dryly. “This is the seventh show I’ve seen the rough in. Like I said, great color for a natural specimen, about the best I’ve ever seen. But it’s priced like Butterworth expects whoever buys it to end up with a fifty-carat cut-and-polished gem or at worst three ten- to twelve-carat stones. In my opinion, whoever cuts this will be lucky to end up with two five-carat stones. They’ll be very nice stones, mind you, but they won’t cover the cost of the rough.”
More than one head around the room nodded.
The employee came out of the other room. The look on his face said the verdict had gone to Kate.
“Ms. Collins,” the employee said, “thank you for calling our attention to a potential difficulty with this rough. We will recertify before we offer it for sale again.”
“Wise choice,” she murmured. “Do you have any other excellent quality natural Burmese blue?”
“I was just bringing some out,” he said, leading Kate toward a table at the edge of the room. “Our buyer was quite pleased with these.”
Conversation around the room resumed. Most of it centered around the sharp-eyed redhead who had a gift for sapphires. Gradually, the chatter returned to normal.
“…told me that his wife told him that Johnny boy got caught in the wrong sheets.”
“That explains it.”
“What?”
“He’s in a real trading mood. Divorce lawyers are expensive. Same thing happened to…”
Quietly, Sam checked his cell phone. Three calls. Doug, Mario, and someone from the Miami office. He looked at his watch. Florida was getting ready to close up the office and head home.
Sam hit the callback feature. After a few rings the phone was picked up.
“Special Agent Mecklin.”
Sam said, “You called me about an hour ago, regarding some interviews I asked you to make.”
“What’s your name?”
“Where’s your head,” Sam said in a low, deadly voice.
“Oh. Can’t talk, huh? Sorry. I was getting ready to leave and was thinking about my kid’s birthday party. Don’t make me late, huh? The old lady would have my balls for breakfast.”
“Tell me something I care about.”
The man at the other end of the line put out his cigarette and flipped through a notebook. “Okay. Are you Special Agent Groves?”
“Yes.”
“Right. We interviewe
d every pawnshop employee and owner in Little Miami. Only one gave a flicker. Name of Jimenez, street name Seguro. Said some killer blonde with rocket ship tits tried to sell him a stone that matched the sapphire you’re looking for.”
“And?”
“He declined. Said he was afraid it was hot and sent her on her way. Since we had to threaten to report Seguro and his sixteen cousins to the local Homeland Security guys to get that much out of him, we weren’t in a position to push him any more. Want us to go back?”
Sam thought fast and remembered Kate’s professional website. “There’s a photo on the web. You have a printer?”
“I’ll just put it on my handheld data log.”
While Sam gave Mecklin the URL, he looked over at Kate. Nobody was crowding her. “Soon as you get the info, go back to Little Miami and get a sketch of the person who sold it to Seguro.”
The other agent hooted. “I don’t think this asshole’s eyes ever got above her tits.”
“Try anyway. Sweat him if you have to. I want a description. And I want his full background and anything you have on his cousins. Connections past, present, and assumed. Rap sheets. Everything. Got it?”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Day before would have been better. Or do you want to hear it from my SSA and SAC?”
“Shit. There goes the party.”
“Is your house on the way to Little Miami?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“So you have to change clothes and pick your toes or whatever. Show up at the party long enough to keep your balls and make your kid smile. Then download that photo and get your ass back to work. I want to have breakfast with that sketch.”
Sam punched out. He looked at the remaining two messages. He’d already figured out why Mario had called, and whatever Doug had to say, Sam still didn’t want to hear it.
Expressionless, Sam let the gossip drift around him and wished he was in Miami, questioning Seguro Jimenez about the blonde with rocket-ship tits.
Chapter 39
Scottsdale
Friday
5:20 P.M.
“Are you sure you can stand another one?” Kate asked Sam. “We could wait and be the first on the floor tomorrow when the whole show opens.”
He shrugged and drank some more bad hotel coffee. “I’ll survive another one. At least the word got out real quick that you have a good eye for sapphires.”
“Nobody gossips like folks in the gem business.” Kate looked at her list and stuffed it back in her purse. “Branson will have to wait for tomorrow, assuming his courier finally arrives. I’ve saved the best sapphire dealer for last. Colored Gem Specialties International. They cater to the collector market rather than the investor. They’re the ones whose A-list has every collector in the world who can drop a million on a nice piece of goods. The rough for the Seven Sins probably came from them. If the stones had been finished when they hit the market, CGSI would have been the most likely to buy and sell them.”
“Saved it for last, huh?” Sam said. “Did you want to give the gossips enough time to make the grapevine hum?”
“Yes.”
He leaned closer and said too softly for anyone to overhear, “Always thinking. You’d make a good agent.”
“I make a better cutter. No committees, no meetings, no nastygrams. I just put a piece of rough on a dop and set up the angle that meets the lap. Repeat until stone is finished.”
“If it was that easy, everyone would do it.”
“Everyone does. Especially the retired grandparents.”
“Yeah? How can you make a living then?”
“I didn’t say everyone did it well.”
Grinning, Sam left his coffee and a tip on the hotel café table and followed Kate to the elevator. He was getting good at that — following her. Any man who wanted a female to walk one step behind him wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes with Kate Chandler.
Just one more of the things he really liked about her.
Another was remembering her in the elevator, the way the top of his head came off with a simple kiss, the way she wrapped around him like he was the only thing in the world worth having.
Deep-six that memory. File it under Mistake — Big and Stupid. Forget it.
Yeah, right. Just like he’d forget the sideways, remembering kind of glance Kate gave him the second time today that they’d found themselves alone in an elevator. Their eyes had only met for an instant, but it had been enough. Too much. Working with a woody was distracting.
Work. Yeah. Work. That’s what he should be thinking about. For instance, as her bodyguard for the day, he should be the first one through doors.
The doors to the elevator closed.
They were alone again.
“Much as I like following you —” he said.
“This damn wig —” she said.
They both stopped.
Kate wondered if Sam was as desperate to find a sexually neutral topic as she was.
“— as your ‘bodyguard’ for the previews,” he said, “I should be checking out places before I let you through the door.”
“Oh. Right.” Hurriedly, she tried to think of something else to say. Something impersonal.
“What makes you think Colored Gem Specialists International handled the rough for the Seven Sins?” Sam asked quickly.
“Um.” She scratched carefully beneath the back part of the wig, trying not to dislodge it.
He didn’t look at her. He told himself he couldn’t smell her elusive, maddening perfume. He told himself he couldn’t still taste her. He told himself a lot of lies while he watched the floor numbers crawl by as though they held the secret to winning the next big lottery and weren’t going to give it up anytime soon.
“There are a lot of gem traders,” she said finally, prodding another part of the wig, “but only a handful that would be able to purchase and resell world-class rough and finished goods.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“I didn’t think it mattered. The rough wasn’t stolen from CGSI. They don’t make regular deliveries in any sense of the word, so they haven’t suffered the losses bigger, less specialized traders have.”
“Did you approach CGSI at any other show since Lee went missing?”
“They weren’t showing anywhere. The Scottsdale event is new to the high-end circuit. CGSI wants to show the flag in case there’s a rich collector out here who’s been living under a cactus and hasn’t heard of them. Then there are the German collectors and cutters. They turn out for anything that’s within driving distance of red-rock country, which means that Arizona is a big favorite with them.”
“So no one here is likely to recognize you?”
“No. I’ve never bought anything from CGSI. Couldn’t afford it.”
“You still can’t. Keep it in mind.”
“Don’t look so worried. Bodyguards are supposed to be calm yet alert.”
He said something under his breath and rapped on the closed door of room 1516. The door opened just enough to show a two-inch slice of someone who had all the welcoming qualities of a junk-yard dog.
“Ms. Collins and bodyguard,” Sam said, and hoped the man wasn’t as familiar as he looked.
The guard closed the door to a slit, flipped through a list, and opened the door. He was wearing a weapon harness and the attitude of a man who was used to being armed.
It was Bill Colton.
Neither man showed any recognition of the other, but Colton looked at Kate like he was memorizing her.
Sam had no doubt that he was.
Kate gave the guard a glance and nothing more. She headed straight for the table that had every color in the rainbow except red. Unlike other dealers, CGSI didn’t divide rough and finished goods. Rather they left them together to reinforce and enhance each other. If the buzz in the room was any example, it worked.
Wondering how to warn her about Colton, Sam stood near Kate when she bent over the sapphire display.<
br />
“Who was that?” she asked quietly.
Once again, Sam was grateful that Kate was smart rather than slow. “My roomie.”
“Your…” She remembered his earlier sardonic summary of Colton. “Oh, shit.”
“Something like that.”
“Want to leave?”
“The damage is done. Let’s see if something good can come out of it.”
“Some gorgeous stones would come if we could afford the rough,” Kate said wistfully.
Sam looked at the display. Even to his untrained eye, the gems seemed brighter, cleaner, more colorful than anything he’d seen before. He whistled softly.
“Yes,” Kate said, running a fingertip lightly over a deep blue gem that exactly matched the color of Sam’s eyes. “This is like going to the Smithsonian and lusting after their gems.”
“Good thing I have control of the wallet.”
Kate rolled her eyes.
The table just beyond Sam held rubies in every shade, tint, and tone of the color called red. Two men were standing close to it. One man was looking. The other was talking.
“It’s the gem of the future, I tell you,” the man said emphatically, pointing to the ruby display. “Emeralds are tainted by politics, sapphires are just too common, and diamonds aren’t worth investing in because DeBeers isn’t propping up the market anymore what with all the new synthetics. That leaves rubies. And these, my friend, are rubies.”
“Salesman?” Sam murmured against Kate’s hair.
Her breath caught at the stir of warmth. “Not unless it’s used cars. I’m betting the silent one is an investor and the noisy one is a trader who has an ‘understanding’ with CGSI.”
“He brings a live one to the cash register, he gets part of the kill?”
Kate laughed softly. “Bingo.”
As they had in the last five private showings, Kate studied the stones and Sam studied the people. There was no one who was wrong for the time or place. No one who spent too much time studying the security arrangements. No one who —
“Seven Sins?” asked a man behind Sam. “Never heard of them.”
“Not many people have,” another male voice answered. “The only one who ever saw them was the cutter. And McCloud, of course.”
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