Blood Stone (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 2)

by Michael Allegretto

  Carr looked me up and down and tried to figure out how much I cleared last year.

  “What exactly was stolen, Mr. Lomax?” he asked.

  “Several million dollars in gems. Plus a necklace on loan from the state historical museum. All taken from Lochemont Jewelers twenty years ago.”

  His eyebrows pushed up, wrinkling his brow. “Lochemont Jewelers?”

  “Right. I’d like to confirm what reward, if any, is being offered for the return of the jewels.” As if I gave a damn about the reward.

  “I’ll get the file,” he said without hesitation. Now that I was talking about money, we could get down to business. He stood, then remembered to suck in his gut after searching several drawers in his cabinets, he pulled a folder and brought it back to his desk. He sighed when he sat down, glad to relax those tummy muscles.

  “I worked on this account,” he said, leafing through copies of forms and reports. “I was a sales rep back then, a pretty darn good one, too, and …” He stopped and read for a moment. “Yes, I remember now. Just before the robbery Lochemont Jewelers had purchased a special policy to cover the necklace you mentioned. It was all a bit unusual.” He flipped the page. “The necklace had once belonged to the Tabors, which, of course, had something to do with it. God, can you imagine the good times they must have had? Of course, with all those gold mines, who wouldn’t?”

  “Silver mines,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Carr, I understand Lloyd Fontaine was involved in the investigation.”

  Carr made a face as if he’d just bitten down on a piece of tinfoil.

  “Yes, Mr. Fontaine conducted the investigation. With dismal results, I might add.”

  “You say that as if it were his fault.”

  “Well, the jewels were never recovered,” he said.

  “Yes, but surely you can’t blame Fontaine for—”

  “I didn’t blame him, Mr. Lomax,” he said. “Our corporate office in New York held him responsible. They brought pressure to bear upon him and forced him into early retirement.”

  “I see.” And I did. Fontaine had gotten caught in the middle. No wonder he’d felt bitter toward National.

  “Mr. Carr, you said the policy on this necklace was unusual. How so?”

  “Oh, well, you see the piece was already insured for three hundred thousand, the policy being in effect only while the necklace remained in the museum. Lochemont Jewelers was given the option of paying for a special rider to the museum’s policy or of taking out a new policy. Mr. Lochemont chose the latter, a short-term policy to cover the necklace while it remained in his store.”

  “What’s unusual about that?”

  “Nothing. But what was odd, and what after the robbery became a point of concern for all involved, was that Lochemont reappraised the Baby Doe Tabor necklace for six hundred thousand.”

  “National Insurance went along with this?”

  “Of course. It was all quite legal and aboveboard. The controversy began after the robbery. National paid Lochemont six hundred thousand, and Lochemont paid the museum three hundred thousand, claiming that was the value the museum had placed on the piece.”

  “And Lochemont pocketed the difference?”

  Carr nodded, then shook his head. “There was a lot of hollering, I can tell you, but that’s the way it ended up. And really it was a small matter compared with the entire settlement—two million, seven hundred thousand. Of course, the reward for any items returned would be based on today’s market, which—”

  “Whose idea was it to put the necklace on display at Lochemont Jewelers?”

  “Trenton Lochemont, Sr.,” he said. “He thought it would be a good way to bring in business. As large as it was, the store was struggling, along with a lot of other downtown interests. Suburban malls and so forth. It took a bit of wrangling with the people at the museum, but Lochemont finally convinced them it would be beneficial for everyone involved.”

  “Particularly for Lochemont Jewelers, as it turned out.”

  Carr frowned. “Indeed. Before they paid the claim National investigated all this quite thoroughly and found nothing amiss. But getting back to the reward—”

  “First, tell me: Did you work with Fontaine when he was here?”

  Carr gave me a brief frown before he answered.

  “Not really, no.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “Hardly. In fact, I don’t think he had many friends.” Carr smirked. “He probably still doesn’t.”

  “You’re right about that. He’s dead. He was murdered Monday night or—”

  “Jesus God.” Carr sat back and looked at me as if I were the killer.

  “—or early Tuesday morning.”

  “Murdered … why?” Carr’s eyes were bouncing back and forth between me and the phone.

  “The police are investigating,” I said, before he could call in the SWAT team. “Mr. Carr, did Fontaine ever use a code in his work here?”

  “What?” Carr was still trying to decide if it was safe to be in the same room with me.

  “A code,” I said. “Perhaps for security reasons.”

  “Code? I … I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”

  “Is there anyone here who might know?”

  He frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, I’m about the only one left from those days. Does this have anything to do with the return of the jewels?”

  “It might,” I said.

  Carr nodded, back in business. “Speaking of which,” he said, “National will pay as reward, with no questions asked, ten percent of the appraised value of any and all pieces returned. Employees of the company or Lochemont Jewelers or their relatives are not eligible. You’re not a relative, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then there should be no problem with the reward.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “if I stumble over any of the gems.”

  “If? But I thought—”

  “I haven’t uncovered the gems yet, but I’m working on it”

  Carr’s eyes narrowed and his chest swelled. By God, this was his office and he was in charge.

  “If you have any information concerning the Lochemont robbery, you’d better tell me now,” he demanded in his sternest middle-management voice.

  “When I learn anything,” I said, trying not to tremble, “I’ll be sure to tell you.”

  He gave me an approving nod. Whew.

  “In return,” I said, “I wonder if you’d check your file there for any information on Charles Soames?”

  “Such as?”

  “Where I might find him. I understand he was recently released from prison.”

  “You don’t say?” Carr’s interest was definitely piqued. “Then I’d ask Trenton Lochemont, Jr.,” he said.

  “Junior?”

  “Yes, he’s been running Lochemont Jewelers for several years, ever since his father passed away.”

  “And you think he’d know about Soames?”

  “He should. He’s married to Soames’s daughter.”

  A few years ago Lochemont Jewelers had moved in with the shops at the Tabor Center, a several-block-long, multilevel, steel-and-glass structure laid out along the Sixteenth Street Mall and housing dozens of places for the chic and pseudochic to spend their bucks. Horace Tabor would have been proud. The jewelry store stood between Brooks Brothers and Pappagallo and featured a sparkling fortune under glass. Customers and sales reps spoke in hushed, reverent tones, as if they were in church, which in a way they were. I asked for Trenton Lochemont, Jr., and soon was approached by a tall, skinny character with the clothes of a mortician and the pallor of a corpse. His nose was so long you could hang your hat on it. I introduced myself and asked if we could talk in private.

  “Concerning what?” Lochemont looked at me over his beak, like a squid.

  “Concerning your father-in-law, Charles Soames.”

  He breathed in so hard that I hoped my collar buttons weren’t loo
se, lest they get sucked away.

  “I have nothing whatever to do with that man,” Lochemont said. “And I will ask you to kindly leave the premises.”

  “This may also concern your father.”

  “My father is dead.”

  “But his reputation lives.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Don’t you think we should get off the floor? The customers are being distracted.”

  Without a word Lochemont turned his back and walked through the store. I followed in his cold wake. He used a key to get behind the counter, then another key to get through a door to the back, and still another to open his office. He sat behind his desk, elbows spread, fingers peaked, nose erect.

  “What is this about my father’s reputation?”

  “I’m conducting an independent investigation for National Insurance,” I said, bending the truth until the paint cracked. “We’ve reopened the case of the Lochemont robbery.”

  “The robbery? After all these years?”

  “Time means little to us at National,” I said. “Where can I find Charles Soames?”

  “In Canon City, where he belongs.”

  “I heard he was released weeks ago.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Lochemont’s voice was as cold as a diamond.

  “He is your father-in-law, isn’t he?”

  “More’s the pity,” Lochemont said. “He committed a despicable act for which he is paying heavily and for which Janet and I will never forgive him.”

  “Janet being his loving daughter?”

  Lochemont twitched his beak at me. “What exactly has this to do with my father?”

  “He worked pretty hard to get Baby Doe Tabor’s necklace on display in your old store, didn’t he?”

  “I suppose he did.”

  “And the same day it was brought there, the store was robbed.”

  Lochemont stared icicles at me.

  “What are you getting at?” he demanded.

  “The fortunate timing. I understand Lochemont Jewelers was struggling before the robbery, but with the help of the insurance settlement, your father was able to—”

  “Are you implying that my father was party to the robbery?”

  “I’m simply speculating.”

  “You may leave now,” he said, but I wasn’t ready. My head was still throbbing from last night’s beating and booze, and I wanted to share it with someone.

  “Was your father pals with the insurance investigator, Lloyd Fontaine? Or, for that matter, were you?”

  “Get out.”

  “You probably already know this, but Fontaine’s been murdered. I think it had something to do with the stolen jewels, which means it probably had something to do with your father and your father-in-law, and, therefore, with you.”

  “Get out!”

  I stood. “When I see Soames, I’ll tell him you said ‘hi.’”

  “Out!” he yelled, rustling his nasal hairs.

  Out front, the stone-worshipers haggled in whispers.

  5

  I CALLED THE STATE penitentiary in Canon City, but all they’d tell me over the phone was that Charles Soames had been released six weeks ago.

  Which meant if I wanted more, I’d have to drive down there. A minor expense, but still an expense, with more to come and no client to pay the bills. And even if I managed to find Fontaine’s killer, I wouldn’t earn a dime. Of course, if I found the jewels …

  Canon City is a quiet, pretty little town about two hours south of Denver. I drove past its frame houses and trimmed lawns and around a gently curving asphalt road, then parked near a fence topped with coils of razor-sharp wire. Beyond the fence were more fences, plus guard towers and a complex of buildings. And hundreds of sociopaths. Watching over it all was Albert Worthy, a beefy, red-faced, middle-aged man with piercing blue eyes and a no-nonsense attitude. He’d been the warden for twelve years.

  “Sure, I remember Charles Soames,” he said. “A real nice guy”

  “Did he get many visitors?”

  “Just one,” Worthy said. “His granddaughter, Caroline Lochemont. She came here every Sunday for the last two years of his term. Less often before then.”

  “Was he ever visited by his daughter or her husband?”

  “Not since I’ve been here.”

  “Do you know where Soames is living now?”

  “With his granddaughter, I believe.” Worthy checked his file and gave me an address in Lakewood.

  “Was Soames violent when he was here?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” Worthy said.

  “Did he ever swear vengeance on anyone responsible for putting him away?” I was thinking about Lloyd Fontaine.

  “No, he was a quiet man. Besides, he always claimed he was an innocent victim, not a criminal.”

  “That’s what they all say, right?”

  “Most do,” Worthy said. “But Soames I believed.”

  It was late afternoon by the time I got back to Denver. That is, close to Denver. Eight miles south of the city the office parks of Inverness and the Tech Center and Greenwood Village were releasing thousands of cars onto I-25 for the mad rush home. I crawled north with the white-collar work force toward the city suburbs and tightly clustered spires of downtown Denver, small and hazy in the distance, while the September sun baked my brains and cooked exhaust fumes into a more lethal concoction.

  Twenty years ago this area had been scrubby, flat land fronting the mountains under clear air and populated only by hawks, jackrabbits, and prairie dogs. Then came high tech and high oil prices—lots of people with lots of money to spend. They covered the perfect, useless, wonderful wilderness with sprawling, ultramodern steel-stone-and-glass structures, chemically treated grass, and absolutely flat black asphalt. So much for wilderness. Although occasionally you can still see a prairie dog—usually in a parking lot and generally with a confused look on his face.

  I got off the freeway near the heart of the metro area and took Sixth Avenue toward the mountains, then turned south on Wadsworth Boulevard into the heart of Lakewood, a rambling suburb hugging Denver to the west and featuring a mixture of houses, apartments, shopping centers, and pastures with grazing horses.

  Caroline Lochemont’s house was a yellow frame trimmed in white. It stood in a row of a dozen others just like it across the street from a small park.

  I stopped at the end of the block and watched a brown-skinned, seedy-looking character with dark glasses and a scraggly goatee come out of the Lochemont house and climb into a beat-up green Chevy. He rattled away in a blue-black cloud of smoke. I sat in the Olds with the motor idling and wondered which course of action to take with Soames—tail or talk. Lloyd Fontaine had hung back and shadowed the ex-con and look what it got him.

  I went up the walk and rang the bell.

  The woman who answered was in her early twenties and could have starred in breakfast commercials. She was five and a half feet tall with an even tan, sparkling blue eyes, and semishort dark blond hair brushed back over her ears. Her jeans were faded and her yellow T-shirt sported a stylized bicycle racer stuck in the valley between her small, firm breasts. Her mother must be pretty, because she sure as hell didn’t resemble her father, Trenton, Jr.

  “Are you Caroline Lochemont?”

  “Who wants to know?” There was tough tomboy in her voice.

  “Jacob Lomax.” I held out a card and she looked at it through the screen door. “If your grandfather is here, I’d like to talk to him.”

  “What about?”

  “The death of Lloyd Fontaine.”

  She cocked her head and put her fist on one round, solid hip.

  “The police have already been here asking him about that. My grandfather told them he’d never heard of that man.”

  “That’s not what Fontaine told me.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “Just a minute,” and shut the door in my face.

  I stood in the dying sunlight on the tiny, tidy front porch and shuffled
my feet like a dumb gumshoe and marveled at how quickly Lieutenant Dalrymple had found Soames. Maybe he was smarter than I was. Or maybe he just had more resources. Yeah, that must be it.

  Caroline opened the door and told me to come in.

  “It’s his idea, not mine,” she said.

  I followed her through the living room. The furniture was secondhand and the carpet was a bargain-basement shag, but everything was dusted and swept and there were enough plants to give the place life. A faint scent trailed behind Caroline—difficult to identify, but it reminded me of long walks through aspen and pine.

  “Here he is, Grandpa.”

  Charles Soames turned off the black-and-white TV on the kitchen table and looked up at me as if I were another boring rerun. His face was pale and framed with iron-gray hair cropped close at the sides. He wore a blue denim shirt, gray cotton pants, a black belt, white socks, and thick-soled black shoes—prison clothes. Fashion habits are hard to break.

  “My name is—”

  “She already told me your name,” he said. His voice was as low and hard as the floor of a cell. “Just what the hell do you want here?”

  “I want to know about you and Lloyd Fontaine.”

  “There’s nothing to know.”

  “Not according to Fontaine.”

  “Let me tell you something, Lomax. Before today I never heard of Lloyd Fontaine, and I don’t give a damn what you or the cops say.”

  “He worked for National Insurance, the company that—”

  “I know who they are,” he said, looking up at me but managing somehow to look down at me.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” I asked.

  “You won’t be staying that long.”

  I pulled out a chair from the table and sat.

  “He don’t listen so good,” he said to Caroline.

  “Fontaine told me he interviewed you after your trial.”

  “A lot of people interviewed me. Doesn’t mean I know them.”

  “He asked you about the Lochemont jewels.”

  “Everybody asked me about that.”

  “He also told me he’d been following you since the day you got out of the joint.”