Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  current time

  Theresa was at the house when we returned. At first, I was surprised — surely we wanted to keep an eye on Glendower? — then I relaxed. Glendower wasn't going anywhere; he'd proven that. And as I'd told Sherlock, it was time to make a plan and take him down, and that was best accomplished with the presence of as many members of the team as possible.

  "What in the hell is that?" she asked me.

  We were gathered in the dining room, where Patricia and Lindsay had set out lunch. The stacks of copied deposit slips and itemized bank statements still sprawled across the bottom half of the table; Patricia's notes, the logs I had seen Caren and Sherlock reading, and the maroon leather address book were piled in the center. Theresa, however, pointed to my left hand, where Uncle Hubert's ring glittered against the bottle of Moosehead in my fist.

  "It's a ring," I said. "The damn thing isn't all that horrible, is it? You're the second person to comment on it in the past hour and I'm becoming as paranoid as you."

  She ignored my tirade and held out a hand. "Let me see that."

  Peace with Theresa was worth any price. I yanked it off, set it in her hand, and returned to the lager.

  I was unprepared for the intense way she scrutinized that ring. She brought it close to her eyes, held it back, turned it this way and that, peered at the inside of the band and, for the longest time, at the huge blue rectangle that shimmered and sparked at its heart.

  "Someone get my kit," she finally said.

  Lindsay rose. Sherlock gave her a look, she sat back down, and he gave another one to Bonnie, who rose and left the dining room. It was so like the way Aunt Edith used to manage me that I blinked. Bonnie trotted up the stairs, then a bedroom door opened on the second floor.

  "Theresa, what on earth is wrong? It's just a bit of jewelry we found in my aunt's wardrobe upstairs, along with a bunch of old shoes and clothing and stuff. It's nothing special."

  She stared at me and I was forcefully reminded of Sidnë's huge blue eyes, dominated by black pupils, staring at me in shock. My pulse picked up speed, a thrumming in my ears. I tried to remind myself that Theresa was certifiable. This time it didn't work.

  "What makes you think that?" she asked.

  I laughed. "You're joking, right? I mean, look at the size of that thing. If it's something special, then it must be—"

  "Exactly." She took the salesman's case from Bonnie. I hadn't even heard her return. "It must be priceless—"

  —the Suburban's windshield was starred. Another big hole was smashed into its radiator grille, which no longer resembled hungry teeth but a screaming mouth. But no water spewed. It was moving again. In reverse. It recoiled across the parking lot like a wounded animal retracting into its den. Between us lay Sherlock, stretched on the concrete, unmoving. The skid marks stopped—

  "You there, Robbie?"

  Sherlock's voice intruded on my waking nightmare. The bottle of Moosehead in my hand was cold, and wet, and the label was peeling at one corner where I'd fussed with it. I hoped the sensation would anchor me to reality, and pushed my plate aside.

  "Theresa, tell me you're wrong."

  She held a loupe in one hand, another odd-looking small device that I didn't recognize was on the table nearby, her case covered a stack of bank statements, and her entire attention was riveted to that big blue stone.

  Stone. Not paste. Not glass. Stone.

  No wonder someone had been trying to kill me.

  "Don't tell me that horrible thing's a real sapphire," Patricia said. "I've shuddered every time I've seen it on your hand; it's so gaudy."

  "A tourmaline?" Caren suggested. "Iolite?" Both, of course, being minor stones.

  "Cubic zirconia?" Sherlock didn't sound hopeful; we both knew Theresa better than that. Nuts she might be, but she manufactured jewelry as a hobby and had studied gemstones with the same intensity she brought to dynamite and anything else that struck her fancy.

  Lindsay grinned. "A blue diamond?"

  "Don't be ridiculous," I said, as calmly as I could manage with my pulse about to explode from my ears.

  Theresa looked up from the depths of the stone. The brilliance of her blue eyes, in the angle of the light, matched the sparkle in her palm. "She's not."

  What lunch I had been able to eat seemed to dangle in midair inside me and I was uncomfortably aware of it. I set the lager aside and rubbed my eyes. "All right, tell me."

  "I think it's the Waterford Blue diamond."

  I shuddered. Her tone was so calm, so matter-of-fact, as if she commented on nothing more sinister than the price of gasoline and the cost of filling the tank. There were days when I'd give everything Aunt Edith left me to be surrounded only by sane people — including myself.

  "I thought the Waterford Blue diamond was stolen," Patricia said. "Years ago," she added, as if that fact made all the difference in her argument.

  "About forty of them," Theresa said, "from the Marquis of Salisbury. It had been in his family since Elizabeth the First gave it to his great-great-grand-something for his role in destroying the Spanish Armada. Before that, Catherine brought it over from France when she married Henry the Fifth, and the French got it from some marriage way back ages before. No one remembers where it originally came from, but because the intensity of the color matches that of some Kashmir sapphires, people like to talk about middle Asia as if they know something."

  "I thought faceting stones was a recent invention," I said. "If this was the Waterford Blue, wouldn't it be rough cut, or tumbled smooth, or something medieval like that?"

  "Sure, if it hadn't been recut twice, the last time just before the First World War. Recutting knocked about forty carats off its size, but—" Theresa flashed the stone in the light of the dining room, and the blaze just about took my tired eyes out "—there were good reasons for it. And the Marquis did have it set in a gold ring with a mounting shaped like oak branches, and wore it during the end of Victoria's reign and the beginning of Edward's."

  "Then what happened?" Lindsay's eyes were wide.

  Theresa shrugged. "Then he died of consumption and the ring was put away in the family vaults. Until someone stole it."

  Sherlock rubbed his eyes and said one savage phrase; I was happy to hear that Lindsay's military education would be well-rounded. "And Robbie found it in the garret, and thought it was fake, and wore it over half the city. Until someone smarter than all of us combined spotted it, decided his law-abiding days were well over, and tried to run this dingbat over with a Suburban."

  Lindsay grinned again. "Right."

  I could have smacked her.

  Caren clasped her hands atop the table and leaned against Sherlock's shoulder. "What about the rest of the jewelry?"

  The look he gave me was not complimentary. "There's more of it? Where?"

  I glanced behind the coffeemaker and felt ice invade my stomach, just as uncomfortably as that lunch. The hat box was gone. Had Glendower actually gotten what he came for last night?

  We split up and ransacked the house, me in the garret, Caren in her favorite room, Lindsay and a grinning Bonnie in the bedrooms, Patricia in the kitchen and den. Sherlock stalked from room to room like something wicked, muttering imprecations under his breath and casting doubt on not only my sanity but also my ancestry. Father would not have been amused.

  "Found it!" It was Patricia's call.

  Giddy with relief, I galloped downstairs and was the last to arrive in the kitchen. "Where?"

  Caren's face was hidden in her hands. "I put it in the pantry when we cleaned up this morning and forgot all about it. If only Glendower knew how close he'd been—" She raised her face and met Sherlock's glare. Tears of mirth brightened her eyes. She looked gorgeous. "Still like the way my mind works?"

  He snorted. "Only if you quit hanging around this clown." He punched my arm, not gently. "Obviously his influence ain't good for you."

  Theresa opened the hat box and gently set the contents out
on the butcher block table. I recalled how I'd dumped them out onto that same space days ago, and shuddered at my sacrilege.

  "Wow," she said. Then, "Where'd I put that loupe?"

  Lindsay bolted from the room. Sherlock caught her around the waist and tumbled her back. She screamed with glee. Everyone but Sherlock and me, it seemed, was enjoying this immensely.

  "I told you to leave that case alone." He pushed her toward the table and returned to the dining room himself, glaring at Bonnie in passing as if she'd had something to do with it.

  "So did I." But Patricia's voice was light.

  "I didn't but I will," I said. "That stuff's nothing to mess with."

  "Nothing in there too wicked." Theresa's tone was somewhere between distracted and defensive.

  Sherlock eased the case onto the table at her elbow and planted his fists on his hips. "So what have we got?"

  "I don't recognize all of this." Theresa waved the loupe toward the pipe and scent flask, then poised it over the swan necklace. "But this one's definitely the Buckingham estate's property and that's the Montgomery Stone Waterfall." She pointed to the cascade of brilliant colors, green, blue, purple.

  My mind automatically changed that to emerald, sapphire, amethyst. I grabbed the butcher block with both hands and held on. I felt like such a fool. How could I have been so blind?

  "Montgomery?" Patricia said slowly.

  "I caught that, too," Bonnie said.

  They stared at each other like two soccer moms who'd just hit on the perfect carpooling solution. As one, they doubled back into the dining room. Patricia's voice trailed behind them: "At least we know where we left that."

  "What the hell are they on about?" I asked.

  "I think I know." Sherlock watched the door, not Theresa as she hunched further over the jewelry, and from the dining room came a crow of triumph. He muttered another rude word and started walking, but they beat him back.

  "I knew I'd heard that name recently," Patricia said.

  Bonnie held the maroon leather address book, open about halfway. "Lady Meara Montgomery," she read aloud, "address in Northamptonshire." She glanced up. "Buckingham and Salisbury are in here, too."

  Sherlock froze. "How many people are in that book, total?"

  "Ten," Lindsay said. When we all turned to stare at her, she shrugged. "I was curious. And they're all titled."

  "And there's ten pieces of jewelry," Theresa said, "including the ring. Bingo."

  "But if you count the pipe and the scent flask—"

  But she was shaking her head before I got even that much out. "Those are nice pieces, but they're not in the same category as the jewelry."

  Sherlock turned his glare on me. "So what does this mean? Did Edith Hunter intend to rob those people all over again?"

  "Just like you to assume the worst," Caren said. "Isn't it obvious? She meant to return them someday."

  "Aunt Edith return a trophy?" I shook my head. That bit of her personality I understood to my core. "Not ruddy likely."

  Sherlock scratched his head. "Humph."

  In the kitchen's sudden hush, a cell phone twaddled some stupid little ditty. Even though I knew it wasn't mine by the sound, like everyone else, I checked. Theresa snagged hers off her belt, yanked out an old-fashioned antenna with her teeth, and pushed a button. "Hello?" With her other hand, she held the loupe over the Montgomery Stone Waterfall and lowered her eye to meet it.

  Sherlock rolled his eyes and turned away, as if the sight was more than he could stand.

  "Hey, yeah, I was calling about your Suburban — I mean, the one you sold a few days ago. Would you mind telling me who you sold it to?"

  Revelations, it seemed, were coming thick and fast now. I held onto the butcher block and drew a deep breath.

  "Actually, it backed into my car in the parking lot. A witness got the temporary plate number and that's how I tracked it to you. Seems whoever you sold it to didn't transfer the title properly and my attorney says that makes you still liable . . . unless, of course, you have a bill of sale?"

  I could only admire the imagination that dreamed up that line. Judging by Sherlock's head shake, so did he.

  "Well, that lets you off the hook if I can track this tourist down — what was that?" Theresa set the loupe on the table and raised her eyes to stare into mine. "Jacob." She paused, and through the sudden slow pounding of blood in my soul, I could almost hear the poor sod on the call's other end spelling that name. "Jacob Ellandun. Great. Thanks." She rang off.

  "No." Patricia's voice was the barest of whispers. "Jacob. Oh, no."

  "Uncle Jacob?" Lindsay said. "Uncle Jacob is Mister Suburban?"

  The smiling face against the backdrop pastels of his mother's roses, the handclasp and the quick glance down at my diamond-bedecked hand; I'd been stalked, hunted, and hadn't even realized it.

  Bonnie wrapped an arm around Patricia's shoulders. "Damn, sometimes I hate family."

  Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. "Well, that explains why Mister Suburban wore a ski mask in July, doesn't it."

  "It also explains why Jacob hung around the gallery," I said. "He knew that, with Aunt Edith dead, I was in charge of the show and I'd have to stop by occasionally. He checked to make certain I wore the ring, then followed me when I left and tried to run me over at the first opportunity." And I'd planned to do the pub with the miscreant. I felt stupider than ever.

  "I'll kill him." Patricia's voice was stronger now and growing in volume.

  Sherlock pursed his lips. "Not sure there's any cause for that. We'd pretty much agreed Mister Suburban's an amateur, which means this is probably Jacob's first foray into crime."

  She grabbed the front of his fatigues, stood on her toes, and got in his face. "He's my brother and I will kill him if I want to."

  Sherlock froze, staring back like a hypnotized cobra. I wasn't in much better shape. The mouse roared. She'd manhandled my boss and I couldn't believe it. It wasn't only Lindsay who'd learned from us, it seemed, which meant I was in trouble all around.

  "And he's an appraiser." She released him and stepped back. "Of course he'd know a diamond when he saw one."

  "Particularly one that damned big." I rubbed my forehead and tried to think. Sorting out Jacob's crimes was one thing; dealing with him was quite another.

  "I'll kill him."

  "But what do we do about him?" Lindsay asked.

  Someone else looking ahead, thankfully. Lindsay and I tended to think alike; comforting in one way, scary in another. If this was a genetic pattern, would she be the next Ellandun family black sheep?

  Sherlock managed a laugh. "Well, we quit dangling the bait in front of him, to begin with." Again he ran a hand through his hair, which was already on end. When he continued, his voice was quiet, as if he spoke more to himself than any of us. "He's just an amateur. Letting him know we're onto him should be enough to scare him straight. After all, he hasn't tailed us since I shot at him."

  The kitchen phone rang and the cordless echoed it from the parlor.

  "I bet that's von Bisnon." Sherlock headed for the phone.

  "Salesman," I called out. "Time-share condos."

  "Refinancing," Bonnie said.

  "Sex ads," Lindsay said.

  "Shut up," Sherlock said, and picked up the receiver. "Yo, boss?" For a moment he listened. Then he grinned. "Somehow knew it was you. I'm gonna put you on speaker phone." Sherlock touched the button, waited for the crackle to fill the kitchen, then hung up the receiver. "You there?"

  "I'm here." It was indeed von Bisnon's elegant baritone.

  "Good afternoon, sir," I said.

  "Captain Ellandun, how are you?"

  "Middling, sir." To say the best.

  "Theresa and Bonnie are here," Sherlock said, "also Robbie's girlfriend Caren, cousin Patricia, and niece Lindsay. People, this is General Hugo, der Graf von Bisnon, head of NATO Intelligence and our preferred boss."

  There was a murmur of greetings. Lindsay stared round-eyed at me and mou
thed, Really?

  "Flattery will get you nowhere, Colonel. I have your laboratory results." Von Bisnon paused. "I'm afraid they're not pretty."

  But I already knew and no longer needed the lab results for confirmation. There was only one explanation for the photo we'd found in Glendower's lair.

  "Let me guess." I heard the tension in my own voice. "The fingerprints on that Browning belong to Edith Hunter and the blood on the grip is the same as that on the uniform jacket. Am I right so far?"

  Again he paused. "Yes. Yes, you are."

  "And the ballistics on the Browning match those from the murder of a security guard during a cat burglary about forty years ago somewhere in Britain."

  "Specifically the estate of the Earl of Bedford. The murderer was never caught and the stolen necklace never recovered."

  "Sir, Evans here," Theresa said. "Do you have a description of that necklace?"

  Paper crackled on the other end of the line. "It was reported as a series of sapphire teardrops of graduated sizes, mounted on a necklace of mixed sapphires and diamonds in gold mountings."

  For a moment there was quiet in the kitchen. Theresa arranged the big blue necklace, still encrusted with mud from the bungled burglary so long ago.

  "Do you have that, Major Evans?"

  I closed my eyes at his unintentional double meaning.

  "Yes, sir," Theresa said reverently. "I have it, all right."

  He paused, and I wondered if he could possibly have guessed. He was a genius, after all, and almost as intuitive as Caren. It wasn't a comforting thought.

  But all he said was, "The blood type on the woman's clothing matches that of the dead security guard, whose jacket, by the way," more paper rustled, "was removed, presumably by the murderer, before the police arrived on the scene. It was also never recovered."

  "Sir," Caren said, "this is Doctor Caren Gallardo."

  "Good afternoon, Doctor."