“Grandma, what’s a canapé?” Arabella asked.
Grandma Frida landed in her chair and wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t it an Italian desert with cream in it?”
“That’s cannoli,” Mom said.
“Just google it,” Leon said.
Arabella growled under her breath. “Every time I shrink their order window, it resets, and my phone is dead.”
I passed her mine.
“How is it going?” Mom asked.
“If I eliminate everyone under the age of ten and everyone Rogan has vouched for, it leaves me with 12 primary suspects,” I said.
“An adult could get a kid to do their dirty deed,” Grandma Frida said.
“Yes, but anyone under the age of ten would tell,” I said.
“These kids run around the house in packs, unsupervised,” Arabella said. “They would blab. Also, Bern was right. Canapé is a bread thing.”
I studied my list of suspects. I had them organized room by room in the west wing, going north to south. The Spanish names were terribly confusing and some of them were very long, so for the sake of clarity, I culled them down to one given name and one married name. The main last name in the family was Ramírez. Mrs. Rogan had three siblings housed in the west wing, her two half brothers, Markel and Zorion, and her half sister, Ane.
First, there was Markel, Mrs. Rogan’s oldest half brother, and his second wife, Isabella. Markel didn’t seem to be employed. He lived off the proceeds from the family’s investments. A search of Isabella’s Facebook revealed a lavish house and nice cars. However, Rogan’s files noted that Markel repeatedly complained in private that his stipend wasn’t large enough. None of this stipend seemed to have made it to his son and daughter.
The next room held Mikel Ramírez, Markel’s son, and his wife Maria. Mikel managed Ramírez Capital, a venture capital firm owned by the family, with focus on telecommunications and internet companies. He was a tall, pale, dark-haired man with a prematurely greying beard and sad eyes. His wife was a thin, overly tan woman with bleached blond hair, who liked designer clothes, usually in white, and chunky gold jewelry. I had seen her twice. Both times she had a wineglass in her hand and both times she asked if I had seen her husband. They had four children, three under the age of twelve.
Next were Lucian and June de Baldivia. June was Markel’s daughter, a plump woman with olive skin and a wealth of dark curly hair. Her husband was tall, athletic, and handsome, with dark hair and narrow, startlingly blue eyes. He jogged around the estate every morning. Lucian worked for a computer firm specializing in cyber security, while June was heavily involved in a start-up trying to clean up plastic from the oceans. They had two daughters, who looked exactly like their mom.
Then, there was Zorion and Teresa Rosa del Monte, the parents of bedazzler girl. Zorion, Mrs. Rogan’s youngest half brother, was forty years old, trim, athletic, and handsome. He lived off the family proceeds and seemed to have two interests: soccer and cars. Teresa was a housewife with an edgy pixie cut. She took care of their two children and was trying to write a novel. A search of her online activity showed heavy Twitter usage where she stalked a number of romance writers and literary agents, both in and outside of Spain. They weren’t in great financial distress.
The next room over was occupied by Ane, Mrs. Rogan’s half sister, who had arrived with a boy toy, as Arabella put it. The boy toy was in his late twenties, blond, blue-eyed, pretty, and went by Paul Sarmiento. Ane didn’t work, relying on her portion from the family investments as income. Paul didn’t have a criminal record and Rogan’s people couldn’t find his fingerprints in any of the databases, but it wasn’t clear what he actually did for a living. I put a check mark by his name.
Finally, in the far south, we had Iker and Eva Ramírez. Iker, Ane’s only child, had olive skin and dark blond hair and was an architect. He’d been working at his firm for the last four years. His wife was petite and delicate. She had started her career as an actress, but that went out the window when she married Iker. They had only one child, Xavier.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Leon said, sliding one gun part into another. He did this without looking down, as if his hands were on autopilot. “Why did they steal the Sealight? They’re all rich.”
“Let me see a picture of it again,” Grandma Frida asked.
I pulled up an image of the Sealight and showed it to her.
Grandma Frida squinted and tapped the aquamarine. “There’s your answer.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s about money. The Sealight is appraised and insured for two hundred and fifty thousand, mostly because of its age and the small diamonds framing the aquamarine. The aquamarine heart is worth probably seventy-five thousand by itself. The three black sheep siblings each receive over a million dollars annually from the family’s investments. For doing nothing.”
“Must be nice,” Mom said.
Arabella frowned. “So if they’re caught stealing the tiara, they will almost certainly be cut off. Would you risk an easy million to steal something worth a quarter of that?”
Bern clapped his hands. “You did the math in your head, I’m so proud.”
Arabella flipped him off.
“I saw that,” Mom snapped.
“Sorry.” My sister didn’t sound sorry.
“Even if they did steal it,” I said, “what would they do with it? None of them have been in the US in the past five years. They don’t know any fences and no legitimate jeweler would touch it. If you google it, the picture of it comes up as ‘The Sealight Crown, heirloom of House Rogan.’ Nobody in Texas would touch something stolen from Mad Rogan. They couldn’t give it away.”
“Maybe they’re planning to take it home,” Arabella said.
“They would have to declare it at the airport,” Leon said.
“How do you know that?” Mom asked.
“He checked into transporting guns by air,” Arabella said.
Mom stopped filling the dishwasher and gave Leon a hard stare.
“Just trying to be prepared, that’s all,” he said.
I leaned back and sighed. “They can’t sell it and they can’t take it home. So, it’s not about the money.”
“Well, what is it about then?” Grandma Frida asked.
“It’s about Mrs. Rogan, Connor, or Nevada,” I said. “Either they hate Mrs. Rogan or Connor, and they want to embarrass them, or they hate Nevada and they don’t want her to have it. Which is why she can’t know, and we have to handle it and never tell her.”
“Agreed,” Bern said.
“So, basically, you have to figure out who hates Rogan and Nevada the most,” Arabella said. “Is Xavier a suspect?”
Die.
Grandma Frida came to life like a shark smelling a drop of blood in the water. “Who is Xavier?”
“Nobody.” What a brilliant response I came up with. That will throw them off the scent. Not.
“Xavier is Rogan’s cute cousin, aaannd he likes her,” The Evil Hellspawn Sister said.
“If you think he’s cute, then you should talk to him,” I said.
Arabella made big eyes at me. “She told him her name and he said, ‘I know.’”
Grandma Frida and Leon made woo woo noises at me.
My cheeks were getting warm. I hated when my cheeks got warm.
“You should go for it,” Grandma Frida said.
That was about enough. “Mom.”
“What happened to that handsome Italian boy?” Grandma Frida asked.
“She ran him off,” Leon said. “She told him to get off our land or she would call the law.” He had growled “the law” like he had a mouth full of gravel.
They were talking about me as if I wasn’t even there. “Mom!”
“Let her be,” Mom said. “She’s trying to do a job.”
“Maybe you should give it a try,” Grandma Frida said. “You’ve been doing good with your magic.”
“Yeah,” Leon said. “And if things don’t work
out, I can always shoot him, and nobody will ever find the body.”
I took my tablet and files and went to my room.
I stood next to the ladder in Iker and Eva’s room and watched Rivera install a tiny camera into the smoke detector. Rivera was one of Rogan’s top guys. Normally he was trim and clean-cut, but today he was wearing a wig under a grimy baseball cap and his jaw sported a dark two-day stubble. He looked ridiculous.
Each of the guest couples had a suite and we were bugging the living rooms. Outside, Simone, one of Rogan’s surveillance specialists, was installing hummingbird cameras in the bushes.
“Hey,” Xavier said behind me.
I managed to not jump and turned around. He leaned casually against the door frame. Right. It was his room too.
“Hi,” I managed.
“Hi,” he said.
I’d spent a long time on the drive over to Mountain Rose thinking about what to do if I saw Xavier. I had promised Arabella I would talk to him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at talking to people, especially people my age. In the end, I decided I had to talk to Xavier. Not just because he was cute and seemed to want to talk to me, but also because he was a potential lead. He was a teenager and a member of Rogan’s extended family. Adults generally viewed us as children, whether they were willing to admit it or not, and they often said things around us without thinking.
Once I decided that Xavier was work, things became a lot easier. I just had to get him to like me without using my magic.
“Do you need something from the room? We’re almost done.”
“No, I just saw you through the window and wondered what you were doing in my suite. What are you doing?”
He sounded like he suspected we had gone through his underwear drawer. Rivera rolled his eyes.
“We’re checking all the smoke detectors and replacing the batteries,” I lied.
“Why?”
“Mrs. Rogan is worried that if a fire breaks out, some people might not get out.”
“Each room in this wing has French doors that open to the garden,” Xavier said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit extra? We’re not likely to get trapped and most of us are telekinetics.”
He seemed like the poster boy for the “adults are unreasonable and lame” crowd. I went through that phase too. When I was twelve. “True. But, she’s paranoid and I have to do this. You know how it is.” I shrugged. “Old people.”
Xavier grinned and glanced at Rivera, then back at me. “Do you have to supervise, or can I steal you away for a little bit? I need your help with something.”
Rivera’s eyes got a dangerous glint. I had to get Xavier out of here before he asked too many questions or said something Rivera would make him regret.
“You got this?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rivera said.
“Please let me know when you’re finished.” I turned to Xavier. “Okay.”
We walked out into the hallway. Xavier turned left, and we kept going, through a long hallway to the north end of the house, through the French doors and into the other side of the garden. A path of decomposed granite started at the door and veered right, running through the orchard to the northeast side of the hill bordering the cliff.
Xavier started on the path, turned, graceful, and smiled at me. He really was very handsome. Almost as handsome as Alessandro Sagredo, but it was a different kind of beauty. Xavier looked like he would be perfect for the lead role in some angsty show about rich teenagers in a prep school. There was something sophisticated but nonchalant about him. Alessandro looked like he needed a sword and a hat with feathers.
Xavier was cute, but I had really liked Alessandro. I had liked him the first time I saw his picture. I had sat there for several minutes staring at it, not really thinking about anything at all. It was as if my brain had gone quiet. That almost never happened. And then I met him, and I knew there was no way.
“What did you need help with?” I asked.
“I need help with being beyond bored. You’re the only interesting person I’ve met. Let’s do something fun. You do have that here, don’t you?”
“I have to work.” You don’t know what you’re asking. If I have fun with you, it won’t end well for either of us.
“What will happen if you stop working for just a little while?” He shrugged. “Will the house fall down? Will Arrosa fire you? She can’t fire you—you’re the bride’s sister. Come on, at least walk with me. Am I really worse than working?”
No, he wasn’t worse than working; he was work. He was a potential source of information, one I had to explore. Or was it exploit?
“One second,” I said. I opened the chat window on my tablet and sent Rivera a quick text. Please change camera placement in Xavier’s suite. Rogan’s files pegged Xavier as a low-level Significant, which meant that when properly motivated, he could likely remove the smoke detector off the twelve-foot ceiling with his magic and examine it. I didn’t want to take a chance of him finding the camera.
The tablet pinged back. Got it.
“Okay.” I walked down the steps to the path. “I’m ready. But only until two o’clock.”
“What happens at two?” He asked.
“My sister will be presenting the catering menu to Mrs. Rogan and she might need backup.” Arabella did not need backup. Most of the time she was the backup, the field artillery, and the air support, but Nevada taught me to always have an exit strategy. I smiled at Xavier, trying to look enthusiastic. “Lead the way.”
We strolled down the path.
“Are you worried that guy is going to steal something?”
What? “No, all of the people I hired have been vetted.”
“You hired?” He let it hang.
“Yes, well, Arabella and I hired them. We ran an extensive background check, employment history, arrest history, and credit checks. Everyone on the grounds right now has references.”
Xavier’s nonchalant mask slid off for a second and he stared at me. “How do you know how to do this?”
“It’s my job. I work for our family business.”
“Yeah, I know. But I thought your family owned the business. I mean, you’re a kid like me. Why do they make you work? Are you that . . . poor?” He said the word like it was something dirty or shameful.
I hid a sigh. It wasn’t Xavier’s fault. He grew up with different standards. It didn’t make him better or worse than me, just different. “Nobody makes me work. I like it. Everybody in my family works for the agency. Even my grandmother, who has her own business, sometimes moonlights for us. It’s interesting. Sometimes I get to help people. And I never have to ask my mom for money. I get a paycheck, and nobody tells me what to do with it. How does it work for you?”
“We just always have money. If I need something or want something I use my allowance, if I don’t have enough, I ask my mom.”
“What do you do for your allowance?”
“What?”
“What do you do? Do you get good grades, do chores? Do you help around the house? Mow the lawn?” I winked at him.
“You’re teasing me,” he said, sounding slightly injured.
“Maybe a little. But seriously, how does it work in your family? I know that Rogan used telekinesis for a lot of military contracts his House has. Are your parents expecting you to use your magic for family business or are they harping about college at you too?”
Xavier shrugged. “I don’t think they care. My mother has been making University noises, but it’s like she does it because she thinks she has to. My father gets his money from family investments. I don’t remember them ever having jobs. Not the kind where they must be there all day. I wish they had jobs. It would get them out of the house.”
When I was in middle school, high school scared me to death. I had been homeschooled. So, I researched, and I stumbled onto How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I took two things away from that book: people liked to talk about themselves and people liked you whe
n you agreed with them.
“Your parents hover, don’t they? I hate when adults do that.”
“Yes.” He snapped his fingers. “They hover. They don’t actually care, they just hang about. They only notice me, so they can drag me to some family bore-fest.”
“You didn’t want to come to the wedding?” I opened my eyes wide in mock surprise.
“No, I wanted to have the house to myself.”
“Yes, I get it. To be honest, I don’t feel comfortable here, but then I am a poster girl for monachopsis.”
“What?”
“Monachopsis. It means a subtle but nagging feeling of not fitting in and knowing that you don’t belong in the place you are. This house is too much. Too big, too many rooms. I didn’t grow up wealthy.”
“My family has money, but I don’t feel comfortable here either.” His eyes sparked. His face turned animated, like he was about to ride a roller coaster. “There is wealth. This is Wealth. Capital w . Do you know, Rogan is worth $1.27 billion? And there’s no prenup. Your sister is going to get half of that. If he dies, she gets all of that.”
Well, that got morbid fast.
Xavier smiled. “Good time to suck up, huh?”
I thought of telling him how Nevada was paying for her own wedding dress, but he wouldn’t get it.
“You’re right. Better be nice.”
So far nothing about this conversation made Xavier appealing. He might have been simply uncomfortable talking to me and was trying to say things to impress me, but it was coming out wrong. I had been there.
“Is it true your sister is a Truthseeker Prime?” he asked.
“Yes.” Unlike my and Arabella’s powers, Nevada’s was now public record. Both Arabella and I were registered as Primes, but our records were sealed.
“So, you can’t lie to her. Like at all?”
“You can but she’ll know.” Now was a good time. “Is your family nervous that she’s marrying Rogan? Not a lot of families would welcome a Truthseeker.”
“She’s making them squirm.” He grinned. “Your sister walks into the room, and everyone shuts up. Every time Grandma Ane sees her, her face turns green. Cousin Mikel just runs away. I love it.”
Diamond Fire: A Hidden Legacy Novella Page 5
