The Color of Death

by Elizabeth Lowell

  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 interviewed 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.

  “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.”

  By slow, painful degrees, Sam turned until he could see both men from the corner of his eyes. They looked like everyone else in the room—American or European, dressed well yet casually, intent on making a profit. The one who knew about the Seven Sins was dark haired and had the kind of tan that suggested he lived in the south of Florida or spent his life on Arizona golf courses. The other man was bald, plump, and had shrewd eyes.

  “Arthur McCloud?” the bald man asked.

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Hell, yes. He outbid me for a piece of ruby rough I’d have given anything except too much money to own.”

  Teeth flashed in a rueful smile as the dark-haired man shook his head. “That’s McCloud. He outbid me for some fabulous blue sapphire rough, the kind people once cut into gems and then worshiped along with the idol.”

  “He has the last bid and the best collection of finished goods outside of the biggest museums,” the plump man said emphatically. “But last I heard he was buying emerald rough from sunken Spanish ships. Just a rumor, mind you. There aren’t any legal shipwreck explorations that I know of right now.”

  “I heard the same thing.” The dark-haired man shrugged. “I’m not into emeralds. But around Thanksgiving of last year, McCloud called me up and crowed about the Seven Sins he’d stolen out from under my nose. That rough I wanted had been turned into seven untreated ultra-fine blue sapphires of different weight and cut, with a perfect color match across the stones. Biggest one was just under one hundred carats.”

  The bald man’s jaw sagged. “Untreated? Ultra-fine color? My God. You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I should have bid higher. I didn’t think a cutter could get that much from the rough. I fi
gured six big stones, tops, and nothing over fifty carats.”

  “Who did the cutting?”

  “A woman, if you can believe it.”

  The bald man grinned. “I believe it. You ever see my wife’s work?”

  “No, but I sure wanted to see the Seven Sins.”

  “Bet you left drool marks all over them.”

  “Never got that close.”

  “What happened? You piss off McCloud?”

  The dark-haired man shook his head. “He called me a few weeks later and said that for insurance reasons, he’s not letting anyone look at any part of his collection for a while.”

  “Odd.”

  “Collectors are odd. That’s why we’re collectors.”

  Sam drifted over toward the door, Colton, and the guest list.

  “Dark-haired guy with the tan,” Sam said quietly.

  “The one standing next to the short bald man?”

  “Yeah. Who is it?”

  Colton looked like he wanted to refuse, but didn’t. He scanned the guest list and said, “Jeremy Baxter, no company affiliation. Room eight-eighteen.”

  “Thanks.” Sam turned away.

  “Wait,” Colton said. “What’d he do?”

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I know.”

  Sam crossed the room to Kate. “How much longer you need here?”

  She looked up. “You heard them too.”

  “You’re so quick it’s scaring me. Yeah, I heard them.”

  “Wonder how many other people McCloud called.”

  “That’s just one of the things I’m going to ask him.”

  “While you’re at it,” Kate said, “ask CGSI who the other losing bidders on that batch of rough were. One of them might have been mad enough to kill.”

  Sam smiled slowly. “I like the way you think.”

  “Now I’m scared.”

  Chapter 40

  Scottsdale

  Friday

  5:40 P.M.

  Kirby drove his rental car into the Royale employee parking lot a few moments after the courier did. He stayed back several car lengths, saw where the courier parked, and drove on by without so much as looking in the courier’s direction. The usual order of the day would be for the courier to go inside and check in with Sizemore Security Consulting while leaving the goods securely locked in the trunk of the car. Then, depending on the wishes of the consignee, the courier could sign over the package to Sizemore’s company and get an escort for the walk from the parking lot to Branson and Sons’ suite, or the courier would get an escort for the walk from the parking lot to the hotel safe.