The Color of Death

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Sam waited. He was good at it. As far as he was concerned, being a successful investigator was sixty percent patience, thirty percent luck, and ten percent brains.

  And if you were lucky, you could throw patience and brains out the window.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the manager said finally. “We don’t show anyone with that name registered here, either in the past few weeks or pre-registered for any of our conferences or conventions in the next month.”

  “Maybe she’s at another hotel.” Or more likely she lied to me. Either way, he wasn’t worried. Sometimes lies told him more than truth.

  “Another hotel.” The manager brightened at the idea that someone who was on the FBI’s scope wasn’t on her client list. “I’m sure that’s the case. Is there anything else?”

  “Gavin M. Greenfield. Normal spelling on both names. If that doesn’t work, get creative.”

  Her fingers skimmed over the keyboard. “Normal spelling works. He’s with the furniture convention. Room ten-thirty-three. Would you like me to ring the room?”

  “No, thanks. Could I talk to your day security chief?”

  “Of course.”

  Sam went to the security office, shook hands with the security man, flashed the badge a few times, watched another hour go down the drain, and finally came away with ten copies of a picture of “Natalie Cutter” taken from the lobby security tape. He went back to the manager’s office.

  “Thanks,” Sam said to her. “Could you ring ten-thirty-three for me? If Greenfield answers, just tell him someone from the front desk is bringing up an urgent fax for him.”

  “If he doesn’t answer?” the manager asked.

  “Hang up. I’ll try later.” And he’d do it in person.

  The manager rang the room. And rang it. And rang it.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said finally. “No one answers.”

  Sam thanked her and headed for the motor coach that was the task force’s home away from home. As he walked, he kept glancing at the photo, wondering if it was going to be more help than the name had been. The photo wasn’t a great likeness of “Natalie,” but Sam figured that a bald man who was hugging-close to the con artist would recognize her quick enough.

  As for Kennedy and Sizemore, they could use a magnifying glass on their copies of the photo and then shove the works up where the sun didn’t shine.

  Chapter 12

  Los Angeles

  Tuesday

  3:00 P.M.

  The headquarters of Hall Jewelry International was in an old building, where a four billion dollar boondoggle—also known as a subway four miles long—had been built to bring thousands of people to the aging central downtown area. But building a subway on top of the complex San Andreas fault system hadn’t been a good idea. Eventually politics gave way to reality and L.A. returned to buses and cars as usual, leaving the old downtown stranded well away from the wealth and new buildings of the Miracle Mile.

  From the outside, Hall Jewelry International was a modest six stories with a rooftop cornice and false columns that harkened back to slower, kinder times. Inside, it was modern hustle and security. Contrary to the usual practice of outsourcing everything to Asia or India, it was a point of pride with the company that some of Hall’s gemstones were cut and polished in the barnlike basement with open plumbing overhead and coded locks on the doors. The first floor was the flagship jewelry store. The second floor was taken up by offices and visiting salesmen hawking everything from synthetic turquoise to the latest patterns in ten-carat gold chains. The rest of the floors were given over to assembling jewelry from various international pieces—chains from Italy, gems from Thailand and Brazil, catches and pins from Mexico. The result was inexpensive jewelry for America’s endless malls, nearly all of which had a Hall Jewelry store somewhere in their air-conditioned expanse.

  Peyton Hall, the heir apparent to the whole operation, was doing an unannounced check of the cleanliness and appeal of the flagship store’s displays when the manager spotted him and rushed over.

  “Mr. Hall, how nice to see you,” she said. “If we’d expected you, I would have had coffee and pastries brought in.”

  “No need,” he said, shaking her hand. “I have to catch a plane soon. I just wanted a final look at our summer and fall offerings before I go to Scottsdale. Has my uncle arrived?”

  “Not yet. He—”

  “I’m right behind you,” a male voice cut in. Geraldo de Selva shared his sister’s dark coloring and confidence. “I was just going over the books with your mother.”

  The dark hair and confidence of the Selva family had been passed on to Peyton, with the addition of his father’s hazel eyes and relentless sex drive. The result was a shrewd businessman and married womanizer with two children. Though Peyton was impatient to run the family business, he was smart enough not to piss off his mother’s younger brother, who was in charge until his mother said otherwise.

  And that was the problem. Geraldo was only eight years older than Peyton. By the time his uncle was ready to retire as CEO, Peyton would be lucky to be alive. The Selva clan members routinely lived to be a hundred.

  Peyton’s daddy had checked out at fifty-three. Peyton didn’t figure he’d see seventy. As he was forty-nine now, that didn’t leave a whole lot of time to make his own personal fortune so that he could spend his last decadent decades chasing young foreign women and drinking expensive old booze.

  Geraldo gave his nephew a hard hug. “We’re proud of you, chico. You’re one shrewd buyer. Since you’ve taken over the estate gems and import end of the business, profits are up forty-seven percent.”

  Peyton grinned. He got half of all increased profits in the portions of the business he ran, which meant a nice bonus by the end of the year. About a million dollars, as a matter of fact.

  “Thanks,” Peyton said, returning the hug. He stepped back and smiled at the manager, who was still hovering. “I know how busy you are with the Mother’s Day promotions. Don’t waste time with us.”

  The woman smiled a bit uncertainly and withdrew.

  The two men began walking down a side aisle of the jewelry store. Geraldo glanced down at the “school sweethearts” display—delicate silver or ten-carat gold chains with two paper-thin hearts joined at the point and two tiny faceted stones, one for each heart. All for under twenty-five dollars.

  “We sell a buttload of that junk,” Geraldo said.

  “Sometimes I think every girl over five owns one or two of them,” Peyton agreed. “The real money is in replacing them,” he added. “Wear one a few times and wear it out. Costs more to repair than it’s worth, so you whine and pine until the parental units buy more jewelry for their precious kids.”

  “Cheaper to buy a good one in the first place.”

  “If you had the money, sure. They don’t. That’s why they buy cheap first, second, and third.”

  “At least we can offer pretty good value in the estate jewelry boutiques,” Geraldo said. “That was a great idea.”

  Peyton smiled. The best idea of all had been pulling out the real stones and putting in something less valuable. Zircon for diamond, spinel for ruby, synthetic for real, bad quality for good. No one noticed except the accountants, who approved of the fattened bottom line.

  Sometimes he wondered if his mother suspected, or if she really believed her son was a frigging business genius who still couldn’t be trusted to run the family stores without constant oversight. It really pissed him off that he wasn’t allowed to buy a pair of underwear without ten minutes of maternal advice.

  Relax, Peyton told himself. Don’t be like your old man and pop a vein in the middle of an argument. Just keep slamming away the money and in a year—three max—you’ll be toasting your butt in Rio de Janeiro with four underage sweeties to keep you happy.

  He took several relaxing breaths and concentrated on his own personal vision of Paradise: young women in his bed and his safe-deposit boxes brimming with the best of the gems that the South Ameri
can gangs brought to him.

  And if the gangs roughed up a few couriers along the way, hey, life was tough all over.

  Chapter 13

  Scottsdale

  Tuesday

  8:00 P.M.

  Sharon Sizemore shook back her artfully sun-streaked brown hair, adjusted a pair of thin-rimmed, rectangular black reading glasses, and skimmed the room-service menu. Nothing had changed since yesterday. She could have the scampi on fettuccine or she could just cut to the chase and order a cold pasta and shrimp salad.

  Because whatever she ordered, it would be cold by the time it got to her room.

  “Make mine rare,” Peyton Hall said from the suite’s bathroom.

  “Cabernet or zinfandel?” she asked, understanding his unspoken request for filet mignon, rare, with baked potato, double sour cream and chives, extra butter.

  “I’ll try the zin this time.” Smiling, dripping water from his shower, Peyton stood in the bathroom door and watched her order their dinner. This was as close as he would get to having a naked secretary, which had been a favorite fantasy since he’d gotten his first executive office. He’d tried it once with a call girl. It just wasn’t the same. “Tell them not to hurry.”

  “You do want dinner this month, don’t you?”

  “You’re too hard on the staff.”

  “Someone has to be,” she muttered. “Once, just once I’d like to lift the lid on a room-service dish and see steam rise. Maybe if I ordered shrimp on dry ice…?”

  Peyton tied the hotel robe around his thick middle and grabbed the TV remote. He and Sharon had been fairly regular lovers for six years, long enough for him to know that he wasn’t going to get lucky again before dinner.

  “Hey, they’re showing Blue Velvet,” he said.

  Sharon shrugged. “Just because it has dialogue doesn’t mean it isn’t a fuck flick.”

  He sighed. She really was out of the mood. “Maybe we should cancel room service and eat out.”

  She scrolled through the notes she’d been making on various items that should be called to her father’s attention. “Why? I thought you wanted to be alone.”

  “I did. I am.”

  She looked up, confused.

  “You barely stopped working long enough for a quickie,” he said.

  With a muffled sound of impatience, she set aside her tiny laptop. “Sorry, darling. The more Dad drinks, the more details I have to chase.”

  “I know. I’m buried too. We’re trying to outguess the economy and lock in Christmas gem orders for all the stores. Then the South Americans clobbered one of my couriers last week and my insurance rates are already so high I get a nosebleed just okaying the checks.” Not true—the courier’s company took the gaff—but Peyton was working on the sympathy vote.

  “Poor baby. Come here and let mama make it all go away.”

  She didn’t have to offer twice. Tugging at his bathrobe, he started toward her.

  The phone rang.

  “You better answer it,” she said. “Your calls are being forwarded to my room tonight. No one who calls me will be surprised to hear a man’s voice. I don’t think Marjorie would be happy to hear mine.”

  He swore and picked up the phone as his bathrobe hit the floor. “Yeah?” he said roughly.

  The change that came over him told Sharon that it was indeed Marjorie calling.

  “You got a note from Timmy’s teacher?” he asked.

  Without missing a beat Sharon picked up her computer and went to the bedroom. Experience told her that Peyton’s wife was about to unload a day of single parenthood on her husband’s head. No need for Sharon to hang around, listening to Timmy’s latest screwup and Tiffany’s endless need for expensive clothes, dance lessons, and the car she simply had to have for her upcoming sixteenth birthday. As Ted Sizemore had often pointed out to Sharon and her brother, Sonny, kids were an expensive pain in the ass.

  Even so, when she was younger, she’d wanted to have children. After forty set fire to her birthday cake a few years ago, she’d decided to forget it. Years of watching Peyton struggle with his demanding wife and spoiled children had made Sharon relatively happy about being the no-strings woman in his life.

  There was a lot to be said for consenting adults.

  She flipped open her computer and turned to the list of incoming couriers for the Scottsdale Gem Show. Not all of them came under Sizemore’s advance—and expensive—security arrangements, but many did. At this, the delivery end, the trick was to keep the shipment secure until a representative or the dealer himself signed for it. After that, it was somebody else’s problem.

  She began double-checking the arrangements for delivery. When she reached the Carter gems, she frowned.

  In the other room the telephone receiver hit the cradle with emphasis. A few seconds later Peyton appeared in the bedroom doorway.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, yanking on his robe.

  Sharon looked up, saw that his interest in sex had wilted, and said, “Simon Carter had a family emergency. He won’t arrive for two more days, but the courier arrives tomorrow with the best gemstones. I’ll have to sign for them.”

  “Carter, huh? Word is he has some choice black opals. The last of the really good stones from the glory days of Lightning Ridge.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You hear any prices?”

  “He wants a million for the opal that’s green-blue on one side and fiery red on the other. A guaranteed natural, not a doublet.”

  Peyton whistled. “Any collectors lining up?”

  “Not until they see for themselves that the stone is as advertised.”

  “You think he’ll get it?”

  “I think he likes the stone too well to sell it at any price.”

  “Bragging rights?”

  “Just one more way for the boys to play ‘my package is bigger than yours,’ ” Sharon agreed, scrolling down her screen.

  “Wonder how much the opal would bring if it was cut down into earrings and necklace?”

  “For your mall stores, it would be a waste of time, money, and material. The people who come to Hall Jewelry wouldn’t know a world-class gem if it jumped up and called them by their first and middle names.”

  “I was thinking of opening a handful of boutique stores,” Peyton said, “the kind that would go after Tiffany and Cartier customers. I could offer them more bang for their buck.”

  “The people who shop high-end stores don’t want bang. They want validation. Buying expensive stones from the biggest mall jeweler in the United States won’t make those buyers feel special.”

  “You don’t like the boutique idea?”

  Sharon rubbed the back of her neck and rolled her head from side to side. “You’d have to change the name, find a big celebrity to front for you, build up an expensive collection of important stones and designs, bid and win outstanding stones at public auctions, the whole enchilada. That’s a lot of cash out of your pocket, especially at a time when demand for luxury goods is thirteen percent less than it was last year.” She sighed and rolled her head again. “Everyone in the gem business is being squeezed, from wholesale to retail, miners to cutters. Even people who provide security have had to slash prices to stay afloat. In all, this is a bitch of a time to open a high-end jewelry chain.”

  “That’s what I told Marjorie,” Peyton said, lying easily because it came naturally to him. It had been his own idea, a way of justifying buying high-end stones to line his retirement accounts.

  Sharon dropped her hand. “Since when has your wife become interested in the business?”

  “Since she decided that mall jewelry was too downscale for her and the kids.”

  “Merde.”

  “I said the same thing in English. Reselling old estate jewelry is one thing. Making modern high-end stuff is another.” Which was true. It just wasn’t a truth he embraced.

  After a sigh and a roll of her head on her neck, Sharon went back to staring at the computer screen. Peyton
crossed the room and began rubbing her neck, looking over her shoulder at the computer screen as he dug at tense muscles.

  “What’s that?” he asked. “Captiva Island and sapphires?”

  “Dad has me keep track of all courier murders and/or gem heists. Technically, the Captiva one was a disappearance. Guy skipped with a blonde and at least a million, wholesale, in goods. At least, according to the insurance reports the goods were worth that much.” She shrugged. “You know how that goes. Anyway, some relative was trying to track him down.”

  Peyton’s fingers dug into tight shoulder muscles. “Why? Were the gems a family affair?”

  “No. Personally, I think the relative is a nutcase. Can’t believe her little half brother is a crook, yada yada yada. For a while she made a big enough stink that the FBI file was updated—new interviews, recent gossip, that sort of thing—pretty regularly. When it’s updated it shows on the screen.”

  “So what’s new?”

  “Nothing. My orders are to check every few days to see if the file pops up with new info.”

  “Old-boy network. Man, your father’s still really wired in to the Bureau, isn’t he?”

  “You better believe it. Sometimes I feel like I never left the FBI. The pay is the same and the hours are worse.” She rolled her head again, trying to release the same tension that Peyton’s fingers were working on. Then she sighed and went back to looking at the computer.

  Peyton kept reading over her shoulder while his hands slid farther down her collarbone. “I didn’t know you were doing off-site security for Branson and Sons.”

  “New client.” Her breath hitched as his fingers curled around her nipples. “This is our third run for them.”

  “Rough or polished goods?”

  “Both.”

  “Nice catch,” he said, tugging at her nipples and memorizing the courier’s arrival time.

  Smiling, Sharon closed the computer and set it aside. “Speaking of nice catch…”

  “Hmmm?” He nibbled at her neck.

  “You feeling like pitching?”

  He pulled her hand inside his robe. “What do you think?”