Diamonds Aren't Forever

by Connie Shelton

  Penelope smiled and wished they would hurry and sit down.

  Sandy spoke up. “Obviously, Pen, you need no introduction. This is my friend, Gracie Nelson.”

  Pen extended her hand and Gracie looked a tiny bit flustered as she shook it. They weren’t going to get far in a working relationship if the young woman kept up this star-struck business, Pen thought.

  “Let’s just sit and relax,” she suggested, noticing Gracie had brought one of her books.

  An autograph seeker, to boot. Suddenly, a glass of wine with lunch sounded appealing. But she’d gotten herself wrapped up in Sandy’s enthusiasm for stealing the necklace, all because of a bottle of wine last night. Better to keep a clear head and tread slowly here. She ordered iced tea from the server who approached their table.

  They spent the next twenty minutes on their sandwiches—hers an excellent chicken salad, Pen noted—and getting to know each other.

  Gracie was a suburban wife and mother of two (“Scott is a dear and he totally won’t mind shuttling the kids around if I have to be somewhere else.”). She pulled out her wallet and showed pictures. The husband’s good looks went right along with his wife’s. School photos showed a girl of eight with awkward teeth in need of braces and a teenage boy who, judging by the outfit he’d chosen for picture day, was somewhat on the nerdy side.

  “So, what makes you want to get involved with my situation?” Penelope finally asked. So far, Gracie’s main contribution seemed her claim to bake the most fabulous brownies on the planet.

  “Sandy told me a little about what happened. No details, really, just that you’d been taken in by a con man who’d stolen something valuable and you two have decided to catch him and get it back.”

  She glanced back and forth between Sandy and Pen. “Frankly, I want to learn how to do it. My sister was swindled out of her entire life savings—this was about a year ago. She probably won’t ever recover financially. Well, Sandy’s heard this story before, but what I want to do is learn how to go about catching these types of bad people. Once I know what to do, I’m going to help my sis get her money back. That’s all.”

  Penelope felt as if she were walking through the plot of one of her own books—romantic notions like saving the family fortune were easy enough to come up with on paper, but how well would they succeed when the whole thing was for real? She merely smiled and turned to Sandy.

  “Have you any idea how we might accomplish this?”

  “Actually, I do.” The banker reached into her wide shoulder bag, which she’d set on the floor near her feet, and pulled out a notebook. “I’ve outlined a starter plan.”

  A starter plan. Pen felt her eyebrows arch upward.

  “Item one: Identify and locate the man who presented himself as Richard Stone, private investigator.”

  Since Detective Caplin had already verified that the man who’d come to Pen’s house was not the same man he’d recommended, this seemed only logical. They had to know what audacious soul had come around pretending to be friendly with the chief of detectives and had pulled off the charade.

  “Item two: Find out what he did with the real necklace. Item three: Steal the real necklace.” Sandy set the notebook down on the table.

  “Um, that’s as far as you’ve gotten?”

  “So far. Well, those are the basics. I’ve got more ideas.”

  Gracie spoke up. “As I see it, the easiest way to find anything these days is on the Internet, right? We’ll probably need access to records that aren’t entirely public, if you know what I mean.” She turned to Penelope. “You had a scene like that in For Love Or Money, right? So you know how to hack into police files and stuff.”

  “Oh—well, I have no idea how to actually do it. I wrote the scene the way I thought it might happen, but my editors called some experts and added things to make the whole thing plausible. I mean, who among my readers is going to actually know how to do what Brett did in that story?”

  Gracie got quiet. Had Pen just burst her bubble about the invincibility of fiction writers?

  “Gracie, you told me you knew someone?”

  “Oh. Well, yeah. I think she could help us out.” Gracie leaned forward in her chair. “She’s twenty-one years old, so bright she dropped out of college because she was smarter than half the professors and more energetic than the other half. When my sister’s, um, situation came up, Amber’s the one who helped me get a look at the bank records proving the money really was gone.”

  “Bank records? At Desert Trust?” Sandy’s face registered shock.

  “Yeaaahhh. It was.” Gracie realized what she’d just admitted to the bank’s branch manager.

  “I’ll need to talk to her about that later,” Sandy said. “We would insist on interviewing the young woman anyway, and we should also do a background check. You know, seeing as how …” She didn’t say it but the idea was clear—one crook had already worked his way into Penelope’s confidence.

  Chapter 13

  Todd Wainwright fidgeted beside his mother. While “Onward Christian Soldiers” poured from the big pipe organ and from the vocal cords of the congregation, he groused inwardly about his lot in life. He had felt like that cartoon character with the black cloud over his head ever since Thursday night when Dick Stone never showed up.

  I’m not a bad person. It’s this damn city—no, the whole damn world—everything just wants to crap on me. Nothing ever goes my way.

  Aggie Wainwright glanced up from her hymnal as the song went into a second verse, her eyes edging toward Todd’s face. He automatically picked up the words and threw his voice into the hymn.

  “Marching as to war …”

  She smiled and turned her eyes forward again.

  The song ended, replaced by the rustle and groans of a hundred people taking their seats. Todd leaned back and heard the crackle of paper in his suit jacket.

  Dunning notices on those dumb student loans, barely making the rent. God, don’t make me move back in with Mom. She’s the one who pushed me back to college, that useless degree in history.

  The other voice took over, his argumentative side: You love history. You chose your major.

  Yeah, but who knew they’d already filled all the archaeology spots.

  And now he had no better prospects than Assistant to the Assistant Director at the Philpont Museum. To move much higher, or to teach, he’d have to go back to school—again—and get his master’s. And what school would accept him, seeing he’d been six months delinquent on his last loan?

  At the front of the sanctuary, the pastor thanked the choir director and adjusted the microphone at the podium to his own lanky height. The man took a long, deep breath and the congregation tensed in preparation.

  “ ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ sayeth the Lord!” The words thundered forth. This guy began every sermon with a bang.

  “My friends, ye lambs of God …” His voice became ominously quiet now. “Take heed of Exodus 20, verse 15, for to ignore these words of Truth is to assure yourself of the peril of eternal damnation.”

  Todd tuned out everything after that. The archaic language was more than he could handle right now. Today was his first time in church in months. He always forgot what a downer it was, listening to this guy promise eternity in flames. It didn’t matter whether you actually committed the sin of the day or only thought about it—you were doomed either way. He’d created his own mini-hell by coming, lured by the free lunch afterward. Aggie couldn’t get him there any other way but to treat him to his favorite, the all-you-can-eat extravaganza at Big Country Buffet.

  He glanced around the congregation. A pretty blonde sat across the aisle to his right, two pews ahead. Her pert nose faced directly toward the preacher, giving Todd a nice view of her attractive profile. She was probably close to his age, and there wasn’t a man with her.

  He created a little fantasy where she would leave the church slightly behind him and see him get into his red Corvette out in the parking lot. Aside from approaching mi
ddle age—with the fear he would die in his fifties, as his father had—the whole reason for the flashy car had been to attract women. Certainly, he hadn’t needed to attract the hefty payments.

  Once he had her attention, he could suggest the blonde join them for lunch. Maybe even upgrade the restaurant a bit, say, Red Lobster instead of the buffet? The vision began to dim a little when he remembered his mother. They’d have to take two cars, and no doubt Aggie would make a show of paying the bill. She always did. Couldn’t give a guy a little shred of dignity, could she? He’d have to think of a different approach.

  The blonde turned her head his direction, a warm smile playing over her lips. He started to smile back but a moment later he saw her reason. Two little identical blonde heads popped up, looking sleepy. Her smile conveyed all the love in the world. Only not for him. Todd’s little vision-bubble burst.

  He had to stop thinking about women. It was Dick Stone’s promise of a date with his extremely attractive sister that roped Todd in the first place, made him agree to switching the documents. The photo Dick showed him was—wow. She would be easy to seduce; her brother said she’d just endured a breakup. Then the sister just happened to be away for three weeks? And now Dick was unreachable. Todd wondered now whether a sister even existed.

  So, forget women. There was still the money. His thirty-percent take would have completely paid off the damn loans. Why couldn’t he catch a break these days?

  “Thief! Larcenous villain!” came the preacher’s loud voice again. “Do not let the Lord greet you at the gates of heaven with that stain on your soul. Shall we pray?”

  Todd felt his face redden. Thief. It hadn’t started out that way. He only had to get into the Director’s files and switch one piece of paper for another—that was it. No one would ever know and the cash Dick Stone gave him was enough to get him off the hundred-twenty-days past due list. That’s all he meant for it to be.

  Before things changed. Before the money became irresistible.

  Suddenly he felt glad everyone else in the room had their eyes closed.

  Chapter 14

  Sunday afternoon, Penelope approached Sandy Werner’s house with a little trepidation. She wanted her heirloom necklace back—no doubt about that—but what sort of plan was she getting herself into with these women? She knew Sandy on a professional level; the others were complete strangers. But then, what was it her mother used to say? A stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet. Mum and her outgoing ways.

  She parked her Mercedes at the curb in front of a tract home in a tract neighborhood. Most of the Phoenix suburbs were built this way, she’d noticed. Developers with four or five floorplans and two exterior themes—entire neighborhoods existed in tones of beige-on-brown or brown-on-beige. Tiled pitched roofs, aluminum window frames, heavy screens over the glass to ward off the intense heat of summer. An air conditioning unit that ran eight months of the year.

  Sandy’s neighborhood was probably twenty years old. Acacia and palo verde trees had grown well above the rooftops, and most of the standard stucco colors had been repainted to suit individual tastes. Sandy’s home, in shades of coral and peach, had a brilliant blue front door and a seating arrangement of wicker chairs under a covered front porch. Beside the door sat a painted flowerpot with a small signpost “Welcome” that bordered on being way too cutesy.

  Pen reached for the doorbell but the door opened before she could press the button. Gracie Nelson smiled, her dark hair up in a long ponytail today. She wore black capris and a magenta T-shirt, with dangling beaded earrings in pink and purple hues.

  “Come in, come in!” She waved an arm toward a mauve-carpeted living room where white sateen-upholstered chairs testified to the fact that Sandy had no children. “I just got here about a minute ago myself. Sandy’s making tea.”

  Gracie seemed a little out of place as she considered the white chairs and took a seat on a deep rose-colored couch instead, dropping a three-ring binder on an end table next to her. Before Pen could sit, the doorbell rang again.

  Sandy’s voice came from another room, presumably the kitchen. “Can someone answer that? I’m almost ready.”

  Pen complied, opening the door to a tiny waif of a girl wearing black skinny jeans and a turquoise halter top. A tiny purse hung by a thin strap running diagonally across her torso. She stood barely over five feet tall, with springy curls to her jawline, dark chocolate eyes, and skin the color of milky cocoa. She couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. She clutched a small computer in one arm.

  When Penelope said hello, the girl smiled with perfectly even, perfectly white teeth.

  “Hi, I’m Amber,” she said. “You must be Penelope.”

  Without waiting for an answer Amber stepped inside, edging past Pen, greeting Gracie with a happy shriek. Gracie had already crossed the living room and the two quickly embraced.

  “How are Dylan and Kylie?” Amber asked.

  Gracie made little head-wag gestures that must have meant something like, You know—kids will be kids.

  Pen sensed motion behind her.

  “Tea is served,” announced Sandy, coming forward with a huge tray bearing an ornate china teapot and matching sugar bowl and cream pitcher. Two slender black cats followed, tails pertly in the air, obviously knowing they were invited to the party.

  The others cleared a path and Sandy set the tray on the table in front of the sofa.

  “I hope I did this right,” she said with a glance at Pen. “I’m sure you learned the art of making tea the proper way. I had to read about it in an article I found online.”

  Pen felt honored Sandy would go to so much trouble. Truthfully, at home she usually just dunked a tea bag in boiling water, American style.

  “You went to a lot of trouble, Sandy. This is beautiful.”

  The table already held four delicate china cups and saucers and two tiered serving plates, one with tiny sandwiches and the other with sweets.

  “Let’s have our tea while it’s hot. We can talk as we nibble. Take a plate and get started,” Sandy told them.

  The cats settled into curled bundles, both on the back of the upholstered chair where Sandy sat. Penelope remembered her calling them Heckle and Jeckle, apt names, since both were black as crows. She noticed Sandy breaking off tiny bits of her sandwiches, feeding morsels to each of the pets in turn.

  Sandy spoke up, filling in Amber on what had been discussed over lunch with Gracie two days earlier. “Each of us has specific skills we bring to the table and each element will be crucial if we hope to succeed in getting the real necklace back,” she said.

  “I have financial expertise and know how the banking system works, Amber is our computer whiz, Gracie is a fantastic organizer, and Penelope has the social connections.”

  Amber had already opened the lid of the small laptop and was tapping keys while the others sipped tea and ate sandwiches.

  No wonder she’s a size zero, Pen thought. She hasn’t eaten a thing.

  “First task on our list is to identify the criminal,” Gracie said, consulting the notebook she’d now picked up.

  “I spent all yesterday afternoon at the police station,” Pen said. “I’m afraid it was a daunting task. Even with computerized mug shots to look at, all the faces begin to blur after awhile. I pointed out one that seemed familiar, but I felt so uncertain. I’m worried that we can’t really move forward as a group until we know who it is we’re chasing.”

  “Too much data,” Amber mumbled. “Let me see if I can narrow it down.” She kept typing.

  “Meanwhile,” said Gracie, “I’ve created some lists.”

  Sandy turned to Pen. “Gracie and her lists.”

  “Hey, if I can keep a husband, two kids, three pets, and the PTA going, I can create schedules and calendars to keep this group on track.”

  “True,” Sandy said with a chuckle. She accepted the stapled pages Gracie handed her. There were four sheets, one set per team member. She took one and passed the rest alo
ng.

  Pen found herself impressed with the notes Gracie had already made. She looked around at the group.

  “Is it permissible to make a toast with tea cups?” Pen asked. “Because I would like to toast all of you for volunteering to help with our little caper. It’s a mission which serves none of you and yet you are willing to pitch in.”

  “You betcha. We’ll heist that little gem right back for you,” Amber said.

  Pen raised her cup. “All right, then. Here’s to the Heist Ladies!”

  Chapter 15

  Gracie’s handouts were amazingly detailed, considering their initial meeting had lasted only an hour. She began by listing of the facts as they knew them. Necklace taken from the Philpont Museum; Police have no luck recovering stolen items; Private detective named Richard Stone returns necklace; Returned necklace is spotted as a fake by Sandy Werner, verified by Regis Potts, certified gemologist; “Richard Stone” revealed as a fake, as well.

  “Add to that, I’ve had no luck recognizing the man from mug shots,” Pen said, her voice sounding discouraged.

  Sandy and Gracie seemed at a loss. Amber was still typing.

  “Okay, I’m into the bank’s security camera footage,” Amber said without looking up.

  “You what—?” Sandy sputtered.

  “Don’t ask. If you can take a look, Penelope?” Amber turned the screen to face the older woman. “This shows customers who entered the front door from the time this man was at your house until you called the bank and learned your check had been cashed.”

  Pen looked at the screen. “Not that one.”

  Amber ran her finger over the pad to forward the tape. A woman’s figure appeared. She went past it.

  “Not that one, not that one,” Pen said, skipping through them quickly.

  “Remember, he may have changed some item of clothing or added a cap or something to disguise himself.”

  “Go through them a little slower.” Pen watched, studying the faces more carefully. “That one. That’s definitely him, although I’m certain he didn’t have that scar on his nose. He’s wearing the same suit, though.”