Blood Rubies

by Jane K. Cleland

  “I know … you are such a good boy.”

  Google led me directly to George McArthur’s company. McArthur was the founder and majority owner of McArthur Evergreen Technologies based in Birmingham, New York. The photo that accompanied his welcome-to-our-Web-site letter showed a man of about fifty with a professional grin and short brown hair. He was wearing a blue collared shirt, open at the neck. The letter was standard issue, saying everything that potential customers and investors wanted to hear. Business was booming. Patents were pending. The future was in sight and looking good.

  McArthur Evergreen Technologies manufactured small cuplike vessels that captured wind, efficiently converting it to energy. The cups could be attached to any tall structure, like a cell tower or a roof. It was, according to the company’s “about” page, the first time wind power didn’t require a windmill. I was impressed. So were technology reviewers from major newspapers and magazines. One article in a 2008 Technology Today magazine roundup of up-and-coming firms to watch quoted McArthur Evergreen Technologies’ director of marketing, Ana Yartsin.

  * * *

  I called Ellis and got him on his cell phone.

  “I was just about to call you and pass along a little good news,” he said, “but you go first.”

  “Ana got an MBA and worked in business for seven years before going back to culinary school. For five of them, she was the director of marketing for McArthur Evergreen Technologies.”

  “As in George McArthur.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we now have two breaks. The techs found the flash drive.”

  “That’s great. Where?”

  “Under one of the seats. They said it could have been in his shirt pocket, that as water rose, it got swept away. When the car pitched, it followed the tide, sliding under a mat.”

  “Can they read anything on it?”

  “Not yet. It has to dry out. For days, probably. They talked about using a blow dryer, but they were afraid the extreme heat might fry it.”

  “Oh, God, Ellis. What a mess. The data’s there, but we can’t get to it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I hope you’re right.” I patted Hank’s bottom, and he settled in tighter. “What should we do about Ana?”

  “You should do nothing. I’ll check it out.”

  I stroked Hank’s chin, and he raised his head a little to offer better access.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He told me he’d let me know when the data on the drive was available for me to look at, and I wished him luck. We hung up. I was tired of sitting and tired of thinking. I wanted to go dancing.

  I texted Ty. “Dancing tonight?”

  He replied right away. “I just made the rez.”

  I smiled. What a guy.

  “I’ve got to go, Hank.” I slid him down onto the floor. He meowed his objection and ambled away. “Sorry, baby.”

  I went to close the folder, then stopped. I cut-and-pasted the old magazine article, then printed it out. I had a feeling I’d want to consult it again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Most Sundays while Ty is working, I putter. I cook. I organize photos in albums. I polish silver. Today, I sat at my home computer researching everything I could think of that might possibly be related to Ana’s relationship with McArthur Evergreen Technologies.

  I read magazine articles, various interviews Ana conducted with the press, investor reports, annual reports, and archived internal company newsletters. At noon, I stood up and stretched. I knew a lot about the company, but if anything I’d learned was relevant, the link was beyond me.

  “Time to cook,” I said. I made my mother’s recipe for Dijon chicken, letting the maple-syrup-infused sauce simmer as I made a tuna salad sandwich for my lunch.

  The sun was veiled with a thin layer of wispy gray clouds. The temperature hovered in the high forties. A dreary day, a lonely day. I wished I had a hobby like whittling or knitting or jewelry making. A girl I’d known in college who’d majored in premed had made metal sculptures to relax. Her dad was a welder, and she’d learned to use a blowtorch in high school. I looked out over the meadow. A metal worker, I thought. My mouth opened. I ran for my computer.

  Within ten minutes, I’d located four free ways to solicit metal workers for day work: a discussion forum, a free jobs-available site, an industry association job board, and a nationally organized, community-based job posting system for tradesmen. I called Ellis.

  “We’ve been working to identify who brought the genuine Fabergé Spring Egg snow globe to Drake Milner. Maybe we can work it backward. Instead of issuing a call-for-sightings, what would you think of my issuing a statement saying, ‘I’ve seen your work and I have a job for you’?”

  “So he’ll contact you,” Ellis said, thinking aloud.

  “Exactly.”

  “I like it. How would you work it?”

  “I’d post an ad.” I told him about the sites I’d found.

  “You get any nibbles, you call me before you reply.”

  I promised I would. I wrote an ad, then revised it, trying to sound complimentary but not over the top, since a craftsman had to know the Fabergé Spring Egg snow globe replica was not, by any stretch of the imagination, stellar work.

  The heading read: You created a Fabergé egg snow globe replica.

  The text read: I’ve seen it, and I want one, too! Will pay top dollar.

  I created a dedicated e-mail account on a free service and added response instructions to my ad: E-mail with a time I can call you. Don’t forget to include your phone number. I listed the e-mail address, reread it carefully, and said, “Okay, then.”

  Twenty minutes later, all four ads were uploaded, and I went back to the kitchen to finish my sandwich.

  * * *

  At two, I called Wes.

  “Do you know anything more?” I asked. “About anything?”

  “Yup. I’m just heading out to Locke Pond. Meet me there in ten.”

  Before I could ask him why, he’d hung up.

  * * *

  Locke Pond looked as dark and dangerous as it had the day I’d discovered Drake Milner’s car submerged in the water.

  I rolled to a stop at a police barricade a hundred yards from where I’d parked before. Another barricade was positioned several hundred yards down the road. Officer F. Meade was standing with her back to me, watching for oncoming vehicles.

  Wes’s shiny red car was next to two marked police cars and an unmarked white van. The van’s sliding side door was open. Inside, all the seats had been removed. A bench ran the length of the cargo hold. Blue mesh gear bags were scattered throughout.

  Wes was standing at the barricade arguing with Griff.

  “What’s so secret?” Wes asked, sounding outraged.

  “Nothing is secret, Wes,” Griff replied, smiling tolerantly. “You can’t make a conspiracy out of this, no matter how hard you try. A crime scene is what we have here, nothing more.”

  “And I’m the voice of the people demanding information.”

  “You’re not allowed to traipse through an active crime scene. You know that, Wes.”

  “Hi, Wes,” I said, joining him. “Hi, Griff.”

  “Josie.” Griff touched his cap, old school. “You all right?”

  “I’d be doing better if the temperature would catch up with the season, but I’m fine.”

  “It’s cold, all right.”

  Wes, agitated, moved away, standing on tiptoes, trying to see through the trees.

  “What’s Wes trying to see?”

  “Divers.”

  “Are they dredging the pond?” I asked, surprised. I couldn’t imagine what they were looking for. “Is it confidential? Can you tell me what they’re doing?”

  Griff thought about it for half a minute, then shrugged. “They’re not dredging. The medical examiner issued a statement to the press, which is why he’s here.” Griff nodded toward Wes. “So I guess I can fill you in.” Wes saw Griff’s motion towar
d him, and he hurried back to join us. “She’s ruled Drake Milner’s death a homicide. He was hit on the head with a rock. I guess she found some bits of mica embedded in his skull. Those divers, they’re looking for the rock.”

  “How horrible,” I said, wincing. “Gruesome.” I paused. “Do they really think they can locate one rock in particular? The pond is huge!”

  “They used this new imaging software and added animation and color enhancement and I don’t know what-all else, so they have a picture of the rock they’re looking for, or at least the part of it that did the damage. Then they calculated trajectory. It’s amazing what they can calculate nowadays.”

  Wes rejoined us and listened in.

  “From the angle of the blow,” Griff continued, “they figured the killer hit Milner while he was behind the wheel, then chucked the stone into the water, lowered the windows a couple of inches so the water could get in, put the car in neutral, hit the auto-lock button, closed the door, and pushed the car in. Since they know where the car entered the pond from the tire tracks, they can approximate where the killer would have been standing when he threw the rock. It’s like a slice of pizza with the killer at the pointy end. The arc of the wide end is the farthest a large, athletic man could reach. If the killer threw the stone like they think he did, it can’t be outside that arc. That’s the only area they need to search.”

  “Can I get copies of the animation?” Wes asked, making a note.

  “Not from me.”

  Wes started arguing with him, moaning about freedom of the press and the public’s right to know, like always, and I walked away.

  The wooden sawhorse barricades ended about ten feet into the woods. While Griff was engaged with Wes, I sidestepped to the end, moving slowly, then trotted deeper into the woods toward the pond. When I reached the trees that lined the pond, I looked back. I couldn’t see the street, which meant Griff couldn’t see me.

  It was hard going. The woods were thick and dark, with giant conifers creating a solid ceiling overhead and tangled vines and unseen roots underfoot. I pushed aside a low-hanging branch, ducked under another, stepped around a spiky bush, and crawled over an ancient tree trunk that had fallen diagonally across my path. I began to hear voices and speeded up.

  “Whadja think?” a man asked. His accent was solidly Downeast, filled with the twang of upstate Maine.

  “Who knows?” a woman said. “Just bag it.” She sounded young.

  “One more sector,” the man said. “I’ll go left.”

  A twig scraped my cheek about two inches below my right eye. I stopped and pressed my fingers against it, whispering, “Ouch.” My fingers came away bloody. I wished I had a tissue, but I’d locked my tote bag in my car. All I was carrying was my key ring. I used a Boston fern frond to wipe my fingers and another as a makeshift gauze pad, and continued walking.

  A minute later I had a view of the divers’ launching vehicle, a kind of floating raft attached by long braces to a Jeep that had backed down the steep incline to the water’s edge. Two pieces of what looked like nylon filament were attached to a four-foot-high stake someone had driven into the ground about five feet to the left of the Jeep. Each length of filament stretched out into the pond, one angling left, the other right, defining the search area, a pie shaped wedge, just like Griff described, a hundred feet across at its widest spot, about two hundred feet straight out. Neon orange plastic flags were tied onto the lines every yard or so.

  A woman in her early twenties stood on the grassy shore holding a handful of plastic evidence bags. Her dark red-brown hair was cut as short as a man’s. She wore hip-high gray rubber gaiters and an all-weather anorak. A clear deep plastic tub was half filled, not much output for an all-day dive.

  A diver popped up out of the water, yanked off his mask and breathing apparatus, and held a rough roundish rock the size of a grapefruit high above his head, waving it like a trophy. Even from a distance and in gloomy light, I could see silvery specks glimmer as he moved the rock to and fro. Mica, I thought.

  “Hey, Lottie,” he called. “I got it! Mark the bag ‘Marty’s pick.’”

  She shook open one of the evidence bags and waded into the water to meet him. He sidestroked toward her holding the rock about a foot above the waterline.

  “It looks like all the others. What makes you think this is the one, Marty?”

  “’Cause I’m all-seeing and all-knowing and I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive, sugar pie.”

  She giggled as she slogged farther in, pausing when the water was thigh-high and waiting for him to reach her. He tread water while she held the bag open, spreading her fingers to make the gap as large as possible. Marty dropped the stone in. She sealed it and headed for land.

  “One more pass should do it,” Marty said.

  “Okay.”

  Marty grinned like he’d just won the lottery. “Don’t forget—label it ‘Marty’s pick.’”

  “Will do,” she said, chuckling.

  I watched him put his gear back on with unconscious confidence, check his gauges, and slide underwater with such effortless precision, the water barely rippled.

  I sat on a boulder just behind the tree line and continued to watch. The scratch on my cheek had stopped bleeding, but it hurt, a kind of dull throbbing. Twenty minutes later, neither diver had resurfaced. Wet cold, the coldest kind, leached through my boots, turning my feet into frozen ice cubes and setting my teeth rattling. Five minutes later, I was shivering nonstop and I was tired of looking at nothing.

  I headed back, veering inland as I walked. It was harder going up than down, not just because of the incline but because I was colder and it was darker. I stumbled on a rock, a big one, and fell, sprawling. I landed cheek down, and the scratch started bleeding again. I tore off another fern frond and held it tight against my cheek.

  “Okay, then,” I whispered after half a minute. “Let’s not do that again.”

  I stood up and continued on, moving slowly now, testing the ground before carefully placing each foot. I made it up to more level ground without incident, then passed through a narrow passage with twigs snapping at my arms and face. As I neared the summit, I tripped over a slick patch of moss and fell again. I stayed down on all fours and negotiated a tricky pass. Finally, I popped out about ten feet beyond my car. Perfect, I thought.

  Wes was standing at the end of the last barricade peering through binoculars. To the naked eye, all that was visible were trees. I wondered what he saw. Griff was tapping something into his smart phone.

  I joined Wes, calling to him as I walked. “Hey, Wes. What do you say we get a cup of something warm?”

  He lowered his binoculars and spun toward me. “What happened to your cheek?”

  I touched the scratch. “A twig got me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Where have you been?”

  “Around. Want a cup of coffee?”

  He glanced at Griff. “I’m not done here.” He lowered his voice. “I’m about to slip into the woods without him noticing.”

  “Griff has eyes in the back of his head where you’re concerned.” Griff had put his phone away and was watching us. “Let’s go to Sweet Treats,” I said, adding in a whisper, “I’ll tell you what I saw.”

  Wes grinned. “Coffee would be good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I waved my hands over the steaming mug of tea, glad for the warmth. Wes was drinking coffee. We were sitting at a small table at the newly renovated Sweet Treats Bakery & Tea Shoppe enveloped in the aroma of cinnamon and vanilla. After my time navigating the rugged outside, I was thankful to be inside and warm.

  After eliciting a promise not to quote me, I reported what I’d seen. “I can’t believe Marty was certain he found the weapon.”

  “I can’t believe you snuck down there and back without me or Griff spotting you.”

  “You had him occupied. He isn’t suspicious of me like he is of you.”

  “He doesn’t know you like I do
. Very slick move, Joz.”

  I bowed, a mini-thank-you, then recupped my mug. “What do you know about Marty?”

  “Martin Oilu. He’s the lead diver on the cold-water rescue team. I researched them last year for a story. Those guys are pros, specially trained for cold-water searches. Mostly rescues, you know, when someone falls through the ice or there’s a boat wreck or something, but they’re the bomb when it comes to underwater anything.”

  “There’s so much we don’t know. Did you get any further with unraveling Jason’s finances?”

  “No, and the police are pretty pissed about it. His executor—some lawyer at a hula-hula Boston law firm—won’t even officially acknowledge Jason had any trusts.”

  “I’m surprised a judge won’t compel him to talk.”

  “Judges don’t like to compel testimony about a victim. It doesn’t look good. So first the police tried reasoning with the executor, requesting answers to certain specific questions, you know, limited scope, whatever. Then they gave up and filed the paperwork. So far, the judge says no. The judge says they know who inherits—his parents—and that’s enough info, unless they can show that Jason was somehow involved in something illegal or related to a crime.” Wes drank some coffee. “According to my police source, you asked them to check if Milner called anyone right after you left your meeting with him. How come?”

  “I thought there was a chance I spooked him about the Fabergé egg. If so, he might well have called his client to warn him—or her.”

  “You were right. He called a 617 number, a disposable phone, you know the kind you buy at any big-box or electronics store. You can refill it anytime you want or throw it away. Untraceable. They spoke for fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s long enough to plan a cover-up.” I refilled my mug. “Can’t they tell where and when that phone was sold by matching its serial number to the transaction? Everything is tracked electronically these days. That would let them examine security cameras.”

  “They tried. The unit was activated on February eighteenth at a mom-and-pop discount shop called Lucky Electronics, in Boston’s Chinatown.” Wes’s tone changed from all-business to pals. “Have you ever been there—to Chinatown?”