Snake in the Glass

by Sarah Atwell

“But you didn’t ask Em about using her equipment until after Cam had started working on your project,” Matt said. “When exactly did you make the connection?”

  “I didn’t, not really. I needed something that produced certain temperatures, and I couldn’t use the university equipment. I thought a glassblower would have what I needed, and Em’s the only glassblower in town who rents studio time, so I ended up here. It still took me a couple of days before I put her and Cam together, and even then I wasn’t sure. I asked her about it yesterday. Right, Em?” He turned to me.

  He was right—up to a point. “You didn’t ask about Cam until yesterday,” I agreed. I had no way of knowing when he had connected us.

  “Anyway,” Denis continued, “when it turned out that he was moving to Tucson anyway, it seemed like a stroke of luck. Alex outlined the project, and Cam spent some time reviewing the procedures, what kind of data he would need. He got back to us and said he’d be willing, and he’d need some time on site to collect hard data from that specific site. He sounded pretty sure he could wrap it up pretty fast.”

  That certainly sounded like Cam. I turned to Matt. “Right before he left, Cam said he had a short-term project he was working on. This must have been it. He never gave me any of the details.” I shifted back to Denis. “Did you ever actually meet Cam?”

  “No. Alex set it all up. I couldn’t have contributed much anyway—I’m not into that side of things. Alex didn’t even tell me exactly when Cam would be working.”

  “Cam was supposed to give his results to Alex?”

  “That was the plan. Like I said, Alex handled it. I think Alex was getting kind of bent out of shape about all of this—he couldn’t stand the idea of losing money on this whole real estate deal, and that’s why he went off on a tangent with this whole gem thing. Hell, he didn’t even have a family to consider. I don’t know how to tell my wife about any of this.”

  Things still weren’t adding up. “Let me get this straight. You two owned the land. You had a legitimate right to whatever minerals were on it. You were investigating a perfectly legal way to improve the value of the stones you found. So why is one man dead and one missing? And why are you in such a hurry to crank out the stones?”

  “I told you,” Denis protested. “There are loans coming due, and if we default, then the bank takes the land back and we lose the whole bundle. We thought we had it all figured out, with these dealers in town for the Gem Show, but not that many people were interested, and our buyer said he’d walk if we didn’t get the stones to him. We were running out of time.”

  My questions were multiplying like rabbits, but Matt interrupted. “Do you hold title jointly or through the partnership? Was there any provision made in the event one of you died?”

  I caught a flash of the whites of Denis’s eyes as he rushed to answer. “Of course. We set up everything by the book. And, yes, the whole thing reverts to me now—including all the obligations. But before you even wonder if I might have had something to do with Alex’s death, tell me just how I benefit, huh? I’m worse off now than before.”

  He had a point. “Is there anything that Cam might have found that would make a difference?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He told Alex that he couldn’t give us much time, because he was starting a new job, right? But his main contact was Alex. I don’t even know if he knows how to reach me, although I suppose he could ask around at the university—if he even knows my name.”

  Knowing my methodical brother, I was sure that he would have checked out the bona fides of Alex, Denis, and their little corporation before committing to anything—and probably demanded to be paid up front. I wondered if there was any way to look at his recent bank deposits. Even so, it sounded as though this was a project that he would have enjoyed, and one he’d clearly thought he could finish quickly. I looked at Matt. “But Alex has been dead for at least a week now, right? Denis, you weren’t concerned?”

  “I didn’t even know Alex was missing, and it’s not like we talked every day. In fact, recently we haven’t talked much at all, since usually all we had to share was bad news. The last time we talked was when he told me he’d hired Cam and told me how much he was paying him, since that came out of the corporate account—which was getting pretty close to rock bottom.”

  Denis turned back to Matt. “Alex and I had talked about what we were doing with the stones we did have. He’s the one who collected them, and he gave them to me. I’ve been working out the details of procedures, timing, temperatures—you’ve seen that, Em. Maybe I’m just slow, but I really didn’t get any significant results until a couple of days ago. When things started working with the stones, I called and left Alex a voice message, and he didn’t get back to me, but I had no reason to believe there was anything wrong.”

  Frank broke in. “You know who the buyer is?”

  Denis shook his head. “Alex didn’t tell me much—I think he had a phone number somewhere. But I know that this guy wants the stones next week, or the deal’s off. He really wanted them a week ago. He’s willing to take the chance that the stones are what we told him they are. It’s all a gamble, isn’t it?”

  I tried to suppress my budding panic. “Denis, do you know where Cam was staying? Is there a place to stay on this property of yours?”

  “Maybe.” Denis shrugged. “I’ve driven through that area, mostly on the way to the casino, but I don’t really remember. Truth is, I’ve never even seen most of those sites myself. I told you, Alex took care of all that.”

  “Matt?” I appealed to him.

  “Em, that missing persons report gives the police the authority to check Cam’s phone records and credit card charges and maybe even his computer access, but it’s not instantaneous. If he’s holed up in a motel out there, the charges might not even have showed up on his account yet. Or he might have paid cash.”

  “I would have said he’d go into withdrawal if he couldn’t get online for more than a day, but maybe he really did want to get away from everything.” Including me. “What do we do now?”

  Denis stood up abruptly. “Are you charging me with anything, or am I free to go?”

  Matt couldn’t ask the obvious question, but I could. “Where are you in such a hurry to go?”

  “I’ve still got to finish up with the supply of stones on hand, and if Alex isn’t going to be bringing me any more now, I better hope like hell that I can figure out who the buyer is. And I need the stones downstairs back. If you won’t let me use your studio, I’ll have to find some other way.”

  I looked at Matt, who shrugged imperceptibly before answering Denis. “You’re free to go. But I’d suggest staying around town for the foreseeable future. And I’ll give the ME’s office Alex’s name—and your contact information. If Alex has no family around here, you might need to identify the body.”

  “Great,” Denis muttered under his breath. Then he straightened. “Sorry, you’re right. I owe Alex that much. I’ll give the ME’s office a call.”

  “Thank you for answering our questions. I’ll get back to you if we need anything else.”

  Denis summoned up a weak smile. “Thank you for treating me politely. I was expecting maybe rubber hoses.” When nobody laughed, he held up both his hands. “Joke, joke. Em, can you let me in downstairs so I can collect the other stones? Please?”

  I had no reason other than petulance to deny him, and I wasn’t about to stoop that low. “Sure. Follow me.”

  I lead him back down the stairs and around to the back door. Inside, I retrieved the stones from where I’d put them, decanted them into a glass jar with a screw top, and handed them to Denis.

  After safely stowing the jar in his pack, he looked at me. “I’m sorry about your brother, Em. I really didn’t know he was missing. I wish I could help, but I left all the geology stuff to Alex, and he was the one who dealt with your brother. I’m sure Cam’s all right, wherever he is.”

  “I hope so. Good-bye, Denis.” I ushered him out the back door an
d shut it firmly behind him. Now at least I knew how Denis was linked with Cam, but the story seemed kind of thin. If he was a smart college professor, why did he let his friend and partner handle all the business details? I had to wonder just how much money was involved here. Something didn’t smell right.

  I turned and realized that Nessa and Allison were standing in the doorway that led to the shop, staring at me expectantly.

  “Em, I think we deserve some explanation,” Nessa said. “What was Matt doing here this morning, and whatever did he say to Denis?”

  Nessa was right—I owed her at least the bare outline, which was just about all I knew. I took a deep breath. “This might take a while. Can we sit in the studio here?” There wasn’t a customer in sight. Blast the Gem Show.

  “Of course, dear,” Nessa said. She locked the register, and they settled themselves on stools in the studio, while I leaned against the marver facing them. “Okay, here’s the deal. You know that Denis has been heat-treating stones, and he seems to have some kind of deadline? When he asked me last night about giving him more time in the studio, I told him I wanted to cut him off—he’s been making me nervous. And then he said something odd.” I swallowed and glanced at Allison. “He asked me about Cam.”

  Allison gasped. “Does he know him?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But it bothered me that he knew Cam existed, and that he chose that particular moment to bring him up. So last night I decided to tell Matt about what had been going on, and he agreed to look into it. The problem is, there wasn’t any crime—that we knew of.” Yet. I thought of the grainy picture of dead Alex. “Which means that Matt had no reason to launch an investigation, officially. He was just doing me a favor.” I stopped, unsure of how to go on.

  Nessa knew me well. “But that’s not all, is it?” she prompted quietly.

  “No.” I swallowed again. “Matt had asked the medical examiner to see if there were any unidentified bodies that had come in recently. Only one had, last Sunday, and he wasn’t Cam. But . . . well, he had some pebbles in his pocket, and nothing else, and the ME mentioned it in passing when he talked to Matt. Then Matt put two and two together, and got hold of a few of the pebbles, which turned out to be rough peridot. So Matt got a picture of the dead guy and when he showed it to Denis, Denis fell apart. Seems that the dead guy was a colleague of his at the university, and apparently they had some shared real estate investments and were working on this gem deal together.”

  We all fell silent for a moment. Nessa looked thoughtful, and I thought I saw a glint of tears in Allison’s eyes. “Did he know anything about Cam?” she said in little more than a whisper.

  “Sort of. He said Cam was doing some kind of computer consulting work for them, but that he, Denis, had never met Cam—his partner Alex handled all that, and now Alex is dead.” That didn’t sound good even to me.

  “Isn’t there someone else involved—a buyer or a dealer?” Nessa asked.

  “Yes, but Denis claims that Alex handled all of that too.” Denis sounded like a real idiot, didn’t he? He’d put up money, and then let his partner handle everything else. And now he was stuck with the whole mess, and a dead partner.

  I needed to get back upstairs and see what Matt and Frank had made of the interview. “Look, let me find out what happens next, and I’ll call down, okay? Right now I want to see what Matt thinks he can do.”

  When I entered my place, Matt was talking on his cell phone. He looked up when I came in, his eyes dark. More bad news? I was staring out the window over the sink at the darkness beyond when Frank joined me.

  “Something’s rotten there,” Frank said in a low voice.

  “You think so too? Denis is either lying or covering up something, but I have no idea what. Are these stones worth it, Frank?”

  “Who’s to say? They’re worth what somebody’ll pay for them.”

  Not worth a life. Had Alex really died for a bunch of pretty green gravel?

  Matt finally snapped his phone shut and announced, “We’ve got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “That was the ME’s office. You remember I asked the ME to take a closer look? He sent one of his assistants in, as a favor to me, and he just gave me the results. Alex didn’t die of exposure. His skull was fractured—a blow to the back of the head, but it didn’t show up until somebody took some X-rays.”

  Well, well. Frank was right: something here was rotten. “Was it an accident? Maybe he fell off something out there and hit his head?”

  “Not where he was found, out in the open, on flat ground.”

  “So it’s murder?”

  “I’m afraid so. Damn! The guys who collected the body sure as hell weren’t looking for evidence, and I doubt there’s anything there now.”

  I sat down heavily on the couch. “What happens now?”

  Matt crossed the room and sat next to me, watching my face. “I need to have another talk with Denis. I’m not sure he’s told us everything.”

  “I thought he looked pretty surprised when he found out about his colleague, but does he have any idea why Alex is dead?”

  “Maybe Alex didn’t tell him everything. It sounds like Denis still hopes to pull off this gem deal; maybe he doesn’t want us to spook the buyer. Right now we don’t have a lot of facts. But we’ve got more latitude to look into things, now that we’ve got a suspicious death. You let me do my job, not that it’s going to be easy—this mess involves more than one jurisdiction. The Pima County sheriff takes the lead, but they’re keeping me in on it. At least we know there’s a crime now, but we’re a long way from connecting it with Cam or the stones.”

  “What—you don’t think all this is connected? That the guy who hired Cam is found dead in the desert with peridot in his pocket, and Cam just happens to disappear at the same time?”

  “Em, I’m not downplaying your concerns. I’m doing what I can.”

  I leaned against him. “I know. I just feel so helpless, and I hate that.”

  “I know you do.” He put his arm around me and kissed my forehead.

  “Hey, lovebirds, I’m still in the room, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Frank.” I almost had forgotten he was here. “So what’s your take on all this?”

  “I think Alex had the right idea—scope out how big the deposit might be before getting too excited. By hiring Cam, an outsider, he was keeping it quiet. I can see why he started tinkering with the stones. Of course, maybe he didn’t know what could be done with them, when he hired your brother.”

  It took me a second to make the next logical conclusion. “So Alex might have had a reason to shut Cam up, if he realized the stones could be more valuable than he thought?”

  “I didn’t say that. Besides, they might have signed some sort of confidentiality agreement—not uncommon where gems are concerned. And Cam would have stood by that.”

  “But how would Alex know that about Cam? Still, it’s Alex who’s dead, not Cam.” I hoped. And no way could I see my brother killing anyone—besides, if he had, he would have turned himself in to the closest authorities immediately, not tried to cover things up. Cam’s like that.

  “Em,” Matt interrupted, “you’re getting ahead of your facts. Let’s take this one step at a time. The ME will report the homicide to the sheriff, and I’ll tell him that we know who it is, and why. The sheriff will investigate. I will contribute what I know to the investigation, and hope that the sheriff will share what he finds. And that’s as far as I’m willing to speculate at this time. Let’s find out who killed Alex, and then maybe we’ll have more to go on.”

  “Easy for you to say—Cam’s not your brother,” I muttered.

  “I’m sorry, Em. I know this is hard. Right now I’m going to head for Denis’s place and let him know that Alex’s death is officially being considered a murder.”

  I felt a sense of relief, reluctantly. I needed a little time to mull over what we had just learned.

  “Em, I’ll keep you i
nformed, I promise. And, Frank, can you do something for me? Sniff around the Gem Show and see if there’s any buyer who’s said anything about fancy new stones?”

  “Already on it, Matt.” Frank looked pleased to have been included. “I talked to a couple of mates this morning, and they’ll get back to me. Could be the buyer made promises to others that he can’t keep thanks to Denis and Alex, and now he’s pissed.”

  “Thanks. Em, walk me out, will you?”

  Matt stood up. It took a major effort to get myself off the couch, but Matt lent a hand. I followed him toward the door; the dogs followed both of us, hopeful. At the door he turned and said, “It may not feel like it, but we have made some progress.”

  “I suppose I should be glad that my instincts about Denis were right, but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding Cam.”

  “Actually it does. We know more than we did. I’ll contact you if I hear anything new.” Frank’s presence did not deter Matt from bidding me a proper farewell.

  Chapter 18

  Peridot set in gold may protect its owner from night terrors.

  I called Nessa and Allison, giving them permission to shut down the still-empty shop for lunch, and they arrived in less than three minutes. Poor dogs: Fred and Gloria had seldom seen so much company in the space of a few hours, and they were beside themselves with excitement. They were particularly fond of the latest arrivals, so the exchange of greetings took another few minutes. Finally we all found seats for ourselves (dogs included).

  “All right, let me give you the condensed version.” I outlined what Matt had heard from the ME’s office as well as our mutual speculation about Denis, with a few small corrections from Frank. The women didn’t interrupt until I had run out of steam.

  Nessa was the first to respond. “So, in a nutshell: Denis Ryerson and Alex Gutierrez were business partners. Alex is dead, murdered by an unknown person. Alex hired Cam to do some work for them; Denis did not know Cam but knew of Cam. Everything we know that Denis has done has been legal, but he’s acting very nervous. Matt agrees that there’s something going on, and he shares your concern about Denis. Do I have it right so far?”