The Color of Death

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Seguro grinned and nodded quickly, accepting her explanation. Most of the contacts a man needed to succeed in life were already in his extended family. The rest he could make in the joint. “Sí. I know. I meet some people that way.”

  “Damn useful,” she agreed. With both hands she lifted her big canvas tote and smacked it onto the counter. “I got some shit you’ll like.”

  He made an all-purpose sound and idly wondered if she was really a he. No sign of a beard shadow, but it was hard to be sure underneath all that makeup. In any case, many of los maricones had their beards permanently removed.

  She pawed through the tote and pulled out an antacid bottle. Before Seguro took the plastic antacid container, he spread a worn piece of dark cloth on the countertop. Then he uncapped the bottle and poured the contents out on the cloth. Instead of the rush of small stones he had expected, a big, thumb-sized rectangle of deep blue bounced out onto the counter. He grabbed the gem and centered it on the dark cloth. His breath came in.

  And stayed.

  “I want fifty thousand,” she said.

  His head snapped up. The blue eyes looking across the counter at him were lighter than the big stone but just as hard.

  “We see” was all Seguro said.

  “The sapphire is worth a lot more than fifty grand.”

  “To someone, yes. To me? I no think so.” He shrugged fluidly. “I see.”

  She tapped long, stoplight-red acrylic fingernails on the counter. “Fine. You see. But hurry it up. I got a plane to catch. Big vacation in Aruba with my boyfriend.”

  “Ah, I hear it is pretty there.”

  “I’ll send you a card.”

  Seguro pulled out a jeweler’s loupe and began looking at the large blue stone. Except for the occasional impatient tap of fake fingernails on the counter, it was quiet in the shop.

  “Well?” she said when he finally looked up.

  “I need a friend to look at it.”

  She put her hands on her narrow hips in what could have been impatience or challenge. “Like I said, I’m in a hurry.”

  “I regret, but…” He shrugged again.

  “What can you give me now?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Two thousand, one hundred.”

  “This is bullshit. The stone’s worth two hundred thousand, easy.”

  “Then take it and sell it for that sum.”

  “Fifteen thousand.”

  “Two thousand, one hundred and fifty,” he said patiently. “I am sorry, Señor—er, Señorita—but I am no expert. I already say double what I should because you are a fine person that knows the cousin of my cousin from the joint. I can do no more. I am very sorry.”

  “Well, fuck! I want it in cash. Right now.”

  “But of course. Wait here for me, yes?”

  “Just hurry up. You aren’t the only pawnshop in Little Miami.”

  Seguro went to the small room in the back of the pawnshop, locked the door behind him, and went to the safe. Hurriedly he counted hundreds into a pile, then added a fifty-dollar bill. When he reopened the door to the shop, the woman was still there.

  She held out her hand, palm up.

  He counted the money into her blunt palm, then waited while she counted it again for herself.

  “You made yourself a hell of a buy,” she said bitterly. “A real steal.”

  Seguro grinned. “I never doubt it. Buena suerte.”

  No sooner had the front door shut behind the blonde than he rushed over and locked it. He flipped the sign to CLOSED and pulled down the blinds behind the wrought-iron bars that covered the windows.

  Then he stood and shook. He had little doubt that the sapphire was real.

  As real as death.

  He would have to be very, very careful what he did next or he would be as dead as the previous owner no doubt was.

  ¡Dios!

  He needed connections for this one. The kind of connections people whispered about because to speak the names aloud was to get your throat slit. He mentally went through a list of names and rejected them. Then he came to one that made him pause.

  Eduardo.

  The brother-in-law of his wife’s cousin lived in L.A. He worked in the jewelry trade. He would help. He had the connections no one spoke of aloud. He could sell the gem without getting caught.

  Without getting killed.

  Chapter 3

  Glendale, Arizona

  Five days later

  Kate Chandler couldn’t concentrate. With a muttered curse she looked away from the microscope that held a nice piece of tsavorite rough. She’d been studying the deep green specimen, trying to decide how to cut it in a way that would maximize both size and brilliance in the final stone.

  Usually, she loved holding all that potential in her hand, making the decisions that would transform rather ordinary-looking rough into dazzling gems. But right now she was having a hard time caring about anything but the phone that didn’t ring.

  “Damn it, Lee,” she said. “Call.”

  She checked the window of the cell phone that lay within reach on her worktable. The cell hadn’t been out of her sight for days, no matter where she went in her house.

  No new calls. No missed calls. Nothing but silence and a fear that grew deeper with every passing second.

  Impatiently, she punched in Norm Gallagher’s number.

  Norm picked it up instantly. “Lee?”

  Kate’s stomach clenched. “No. Just me, Kate. I was hoping…”

  “He hasn’t called.” Norm’s voice was bleak, hoarse, like he had a cold or had been crying. “What are we going to do?”

  “I…” She took a breath. “I haven’t told Mom and Dad, but I called the FBI and told them Lee had been kidnapped. They didn’t want to listen to me. They gave me a verbal pat on the head and told me to leave it all to the Florida authorities. I told them the Florida cops were idiots who were more interested in smearing Lee than in finding him.”

  “Lee’s right,” Norm said. “You’re a pistol. I can’t wait to meet you and the family.”

  “One big happy reunion,” Kate said, forcing herself to sound cheerful instead of bone-deep worried.

  Afraid for Lee.

  Cold right to her soul.

  “Norm…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m scared. I didn’t tell you before and Dad would have a cow if he knew I was telling you now, but Lee’s rental car was turned in a day late and the package he was carrying never arrived.”

  There was a long silence followed by the sounds of a man swallowing hard not to show emotion. “No sign of…foul play?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t sound happy about that.”

  “I’m not. I’m scared and mad and…scared.” Kate closed her eyes, yanked her hair clip out of her dark hair, and massaged her scalp. Lee, where the hell are you?

  “I’m scared too,” Norm said. “I got past mad after the first twenty-four hours.”

  “This is so unlike Lee,” she whispered. “Even if he forgot to call me after he delivered the Seven Sins, he’s just plain nuts for you. He’d call you, no matter what.”

  Norm gave up swallowing and let the tears clog his throat. “Thanks, Katie.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Do you suppose he had some kind of accident and doesn’t remember his name?”

  Kate leaned against her worktable, hearing the same fear in Norm’s voice that was twisting through her, the words neither one of them wanted to say aloud: What if Lee is dead?

  “I’ve called every hospital between Fort Myers, where he picked up the rental car, and Captiva Island, where he was supposed to make the delivery,” Kate said. “No one has admitted an amnesia patient in the past five days, or any John Doe patient that doesn’t know his own name.”

  “They’re sure?”

  Kate didn’t answer. Norm’s words had been more a cry for hope than a real question.

  �
��Call me the instant you hear anything,” she said.

  “You too.”

  She cut the connection and let her own tears come, grief and fear mixed together, shaking her.

  Chapter 4

  Scottsdale, Arizona

  Five months later

  Tuesday morning

  9:30 A.M.

  Heart pounding, Kate looked over the crowded conference. She tried not to think about the eerie mechanical voice on her answering machine, telling her that she would die if she didn’t stop asking questions and trying to find out what had happened to Lee Mandel, why no one had seen him, why he hadn’t called anyone, even the older sister who had always loved him no matter what a handful he was.

  But she’d kept asking anyway. Just more carefully. She’d focused on the missing gems rather than on the brother she was afraid she’d never see again.

  She watched the room with dark eyes that had seen a lot of people yearning over a lot of gems. No one glanced back at her, not even the man leaning against the far wall, a heavy show catalogue in his hands and a shuttered expression on his face. Except for him, everyone was poring over the gleaming wealth laid out beneath glass.

  The real show wouldn’t open for days, but some nice goods were already on public display. The preshow booths were a kind of dress rehearsal featuring the dealers who couldn’t, wouldn’t, or hadn’t been invited to pay the stiff stall rentals for the main show. A handful of these excluded merchants had pooled their money to rent a large conference room off the lobby of the hotel for the week before the main show. Purcell Colored Gems was one of the second-tier merchants that had set up a booth.

  Yesterday Kate had seen one of the Seven Sins on display there.

  The Purcells hadn’t been helpful when she’d asked where the gem came from, but she’d found a way around them. Now all she had to do was make sure they didn’t find out.

  Breathe slow and deep, like you’re making the first cut on a piece of really good rough.

  The silent advice didn’t slow Kate’s heartbeat, but the thought of shaping colorful rough material into brilliant, eternally dreaming gems did the trick. Working with rough stone always calmed her. She didn’t know why. She just knew it did.

  That’s the way, she told herself. Slow and steady. This is the easy part.

  She had good hands. She’d always had them, even when she was only eleven and entertaining neighborhood kids by pulling pennies out of their ears.

  Breathe slow and move fast and be grateful the emerald-cut Sin didn’t turn up in one of the private showings in a dealer’s room. That would have been much harder to pull off.

  Quietly, Kate let out another long breath and stepped into the conference room. The booths spread out in front of her belonged to the second- and third-tier gem dealers and jewelers. Even so, the booths were a universe away from the crowds of bead and gimcrack sellers haggling and sweating on the clogged public parking lots where temporary open-air booths had been set up beneath the desert’s blazing April sun.

  Inside Phoenix’s newest, most luxurious hotel-spa, all was tranquil, cool, and lightly scented with flowers. If Kate’s sensitive nostrils also picked up the oily, pervasive smell of greed wafting through the conference area, it didn’t offend her. Shortly after she’d had her first period, she’d realized that the presence of gems made some humans sweat. The fact that she could look at gorgeous jewels without thinking in dollar signs gave her an edge over a lot of people in the trade.

  She shook down the long sleeves of her raspberry silk jacket, felt the small weight poised just above the edge of her left palm, and took a last slow breath.

  I’ll make those FBI bastards listen, Lee.

  I swear it.

  Chapter 5

  Scottsdale

  Tuesday

  9:32 A.M.

  Sam Groves leaned against the Scottsdale Royale’s expensively papered wall and thumbed through a catalogue of upcoming attractions that would appear when the real gem show got under way. The catalogue was thick enough to take several days to read, but long before that he would have moved on, changed his clothes, put on a hat, and altered his profile. Simple enough disguises, because most people were simple. Especially with all the colored pretties scattered around. Like big tits, big gems often had a negative effect on the IQ of the men looking at them.

  Sam enjoyed tits and gems as much as any man, but he managed to keep his mind on his job. He was sixteen years into the FBI and hoped to make twenty before someone added up the “doesn’t play well with others” and “colors outside the lines” flags in his file, and then kicked his “runs with scissors” ass out of the Bureau.

  No matter how hard Sam tried, when someone asked his opinion, he gave it. All of it, no matter how disagreeable it might be to the people who asked.

  Good thing you’re bright, boy, ’cuz you sure ain’t politic.

  That’s what his first SAC—special agent in charge—had told Sam fifteen years ago. Nothing had changed since then. The Bureau got even with him by delaying his promotions and assigning him to low-profile jobs. So instead of tracking international and domestic terrorists with the other Bureau hotshots, he was part of a special task force trying to break a ring of jewel hijackers that had plagued the gem trade in the past five years.

  But even on what should have been a straightforward assignment, Sam’s offbeat way of looking at the world had gotten him into trouble.

  Tough titty. Sam flipped another page and scanned another breathless advertisement describing rubies as the colored gem investment of the century. I’ve weathered worse than Mr. “Legend in His Own Mind” Sizemore. In less than five years I’ll have my pension and my own business, and the politically correct assholes who can’t see beyond their own brown noses can take a flying leap.

  Silently, Sam repeated his personal mantra while he handled an assignment any schoolboy could have covered.

  A shimmer of raspberry silk caught his eye. He glanced across the room. Though not beautiful, the woman held his attention. Black hair ruthlessly pulled back from her face. Medium height. Nicely curved—not showgirl nice, but the kind of real flesh that men liked to hold close. Expensive-looking suit and low heels with matching leather handbag. No obvious jewelry.

  She moved confidently, yet his investigator’s gut told him that she was on edge.

  Intrigued, he drifted closer without ever looking directly at her. When he saw that she was heading for the Purcell booth, his interest sharpened. If someone offered them quality goods, Mike and Lois had a reputation for not asking embarrassing questions about previous owners and bills of sale. Naturally, the price they paid for the goods reflected their tight lips. In all, the Purcells were just the kind of folks a gem hijacker might be looking for.

  After all, there wasn’t much point in clouting a gem shipment if you couldn’t turn the tiny pretties into big mounds of anonymous green cash.

  Chapter 6

  Scottsdale

  Tuesday

  9:33 A.M.

  Kate was so relieved to find Mike Purcell alone in the booth that she gave him a radiant smile. He responded with a leer. When his wife, Lois, wasn’t around, Purcell had the reputation of being a real hound. Until yesterday, Kate hadn’t thought much about the gossip. Then she’d learned firsthand just how true the gossip was, and she’d chosen her outfit for today accordingly.

  She braced her smile to keep it from slipping, eased her right hand down her blouse to undo a few buttons, and told herself that it was all for a good cause. Apparently unaware of the gap in her clothing, she stepped closer to the case and bent over it.

  “Come back to look at the blue sapphire?” Purcell asked slyly, leaning forward over the display case, close enough to sense her body heat. “Or maybe you have something else in mind.”

  Her smile stiffened, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were on the cleavage she’d so generously displayed. She swallowed hard and settled into the odious business of flirting with a man she’d rather have scraped o
ff her shoes.

  “Well, you never know.” Kate stroked the hollow of her throat lightly, hoping to distract him from her breasts. It worked for about two seconds. “That is one mighty fine gemstone,” she said in a carefully breathless voice.

  The sapphire was indeed unusual, but not quite to the point of being a showstopper. At least, good old Purcell must have thought so or he wouldn’t have displayed it so openly.

  Kate thought Purcell was wrong. That was a gem guaranteed to raise the heart rate of any dealer who saw it.

  Maybe Purcell just couldn’t resist strutting the stone in front of the other second-tier dealers, she thought, gritting her teeth against her sudden distaste for the man who was older than her father. Or maybe he knows that McCloud wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the Seven Sins, so he thinks it’s safe. Either way, Purcell is slime.

  But all she said aloud was, “Emerald-cut sapphires of that size and quality don’t come on the market every day.”

  “Day?” Purcell straightened and reached into the case without looking away from the smooth, firm tits he’d love to squeeze. “Honeypot, sapphires like this are rarer than a faithful woman. I ought to know. I’ve helped more than one of the little darlings do the adultery dance. And unlike this sapphire, I gave those gals a real thorough deep-heat treatment, if you get my meaning.”

  Kate’s smile became all teeth. She made a sound like a terrier sinking canines into a rat. “I still can’t believe that the gem hasn’t ever been heated. May I look at it again?”

  “What are you offering?”

  Same as last time, you jackal. A cheap peep show. “I won’t be able to say until I look at it again. Reassurance, you know?” Kate said. “I just can’t believe it’s worth more than twenty-five thousand a carat. Before my client starts rounding up that kind of money, I have to be sure. I mean, this is only the preshow, after all. Lots of world-class gems haven’t even been put out yet. Surely you understand?”

  The husky hesitation in her voice made Purcell’s palms hot. He’d seen bigger tits, but hers were here, now, and he wanted to see more of them.