Diamond Deception

by F P Adriani

  My throat moved wordlessly at first. Then: “You know what? Right now I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world—that I have such a wonderful friend.”

  Her cheeks flushed into a deeper warm-brown color, and she grabbed me into one of her hugs. “Me too!”

  “Hey,” I heard Derek say as he and Tan walked in. “We feel left out here. Girls have all the fun.”

  Nell pulled back and flashed him an overly arched black eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you heard our depressing conversation before.”

  Tan flashed me a look.

  And Derek’s blond brow wrinkled. “What conversation?”

  “Never mind for now,” said Nell, and Derek took her in his arms. “Oooo, not too hard, Derek. I’m sore….”

  “Where?” he asked, gently pulling back.

  Nell just looked at him; then she looked at me and Tan; then, finally, she looked down at and began talking about herself, only this time she apparently didn’t care that Tan could hear. “I’m going to make the world’s record soon for biggest-breasted breastfeeder. That’s what I feel like lately: a set of boobs. Just walking-talking boobs. I’m all boobs. I’m going to name them.”

  We all laughed. She grinned at me suddenly, then rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Okay, now THAT was a weird conversation to have in a kitchen. And so is this statement on the heels of that: dinner’s ready—so let’s eat!”

  The four of us were laughing as we began moving the different dishes of food from the kitchen onto the dining-room table. Nell finally placed a baby monitor on top, and throughout the meal, she and Derek periodically bounced down the hall to check on Annie.

  Holding a spoonful of Nell’s delicious coconut curry near my mouth, I smiled at her and Derek and said, “I think you both check on her so much just to get your fix of looking at her beautiful face.”

  Nell and Derek laughed. And Tan belched. Then Nell and Derek continued laughing.

  “Oh Christ, Tan. Your timing,” I said, joining in with their laughter.

  *

  When we had finished the meal, Derek brought Annie out, and Tan finally got to hold her, which he did while the rest of us cleared the table and set up coffee, herb tea, fruit and a store-bought cake on the living-room coffee table—a mini dessert-feast.

  Tan passed Annie to me, and my eyes automatically closed as my nose pleasantly tingled at the sweet-strawberry shampoo scent coming from her curls. She gurgled a laugh against my shoulder. And with her warm, soft baby-weight against me, I gently rocked her from side-to-side while she kept laughing—and then biting at my sweater. “Is she hungry?”

  “Probably,” Nell said, walking toward her favorite red armchair in the living room. She stopped and held out her arms to me. “I’ll feed her a bit, then I’ll put her in the pen. She loves playing with the fat cushion in there.”

  Nell leaned back in her chair as she held Annie to her breast beside some cover from her dark shirt. From on the big couch, I watched her hand stroke Annie’s curls.

  Derek plopped down onto the loveseat next to her and said, “I ran into Roberto before in the supermarket. We weren’t talking even two minutes and he mentioned Lori.”

  Roberto and Lori had connected during the Castano case I’d been involved in last year, but the two of them had broken up recently. Roberto hadn’t been taking it well; he talked about it to anyone who would or wouldn’t listen. In other words, he talked about it a lot.

  “He can’t help himself, it seems,” I said, pouring myself some herb tea.

  “Actually, he didn’t mention it before at the house,” Tan said from beside me.

  I looked at him. “Yeah—that was surprising. But maybe he was too distracted.”

  “By what?” Nell asked.

  I didn’t answer her question because, not for the first time, this strange idea came into my head: Nell was still nursing Annie, and I didn’t want to bring up anything bad in that context. Like maybe that could somehow flow into Annie’s mind not only from my words but from Nell’s thoughts flowing through her breast. Basically, I never talked about anything bad when Annie was in the room. I wasn’t sure if Nell knew this, and I didn’t want to explain my superstitiousness to her.

  But, as if Tan knew what I was doing (and I’d never told him about my superstition, so if he did know, he must have sensed it), he changed the subject. “Hey, there’s cake! Can I cut some of the cake?”

  “Of course!” Nell said as Annie suddenly stopped nursing. Nell shifted the baby in her arms, then began patting her back. “Oooo, baby. You weren’t that hungry after all. You had enough before, huh?” She threw a look over at Derek, and he looked back at her, almost a leer. Nell laughed and shook her head, and my cheeks warmed at the private moment that had just passed between them in a public way.

  Tan didn’t seem to notice their exchange; he was busy stuffing his face with the cake. The inside contained sweetened strawberries, and Tan had been going through an I-Love-Strawberries phase lately.

  “Okay, baby, time to rest,” Nell suddenly said as she got up from her chair and walked over to the pen in the dining room. She moved the pen closer to the living room and placed Annie inside. Nell’s back faced us, but I could tell from the position of her elbows that she was closing her shirt.

  From the dining-room table she grabbed a big-and-squeaky bear-ball and gave it a light squeeze for Annie, who gurgle-laughed and pushed at the ball, and then wet-laughed even harder when the ball wheezed.

  “Mommy’s going to have some cake—be extra good!” Nell said. As soon as she came back into the room, she plopped down hard onto the loveseat. Derek gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, and she smiled as she began pouring herself some coffee from the silver coffee dispenser. “How are the drinks and dessert?”

  My voice was light and happy: “Divine, Nell! I should have said that sooner.”

  She laughed in my direction. “You did—about dinner.”

  “Oh yeah, you’re right.” I smiled back at her.

  Then there was a silence, the kind of restful living-room silence that always makes me not want to speak.

  I listened to the scrape of Tan’s fork against his dessert plate, the swish-plop of liquid as Nell poured more coffee….

  Then, finally, Derek spoke: “So, what’s been going on? Nell said something bad happened.”

  My hand shook and I almost spilled my tea. I laid my cup onto the low glass-top table in front of me; then I waved a fast hand at the air. “Oh—I really don’t think we should discuss that. It would just ruin the night.”

  “The night’s ruined anyway if you’re sitting here worried and feeling alone with your problems!” Nell said. “I can tell by your face: you keep forcing yourself to smile.”

  She was right. And I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  Derek sat forward more on the loveseat’s edge. “Pia, if you’re worried about us, don’t. I’ve just had the security system here upgraded, and you should know by now that Nell can handle herself.”

  I looked at his face, at his striking blue eyes, which were wide open now, waiting. “I know that,” I finally said. “But she hasn’t dealt with all the stuff I have—and I’m really glad she hasn’t!” He nodded, and Nell frowned. “I’m sorry, Nell,” I added quickly. “I don’t mean that as an insult to you, but I can’t even get Tan to understand this sometimes.” I turned to him; he was also frowning, but down at his plate. “I’ve seen so many terribly ugly things and terribly ugly people. I know how life can turn ugly on a dime.”

  “So then what are you saying?” Nell asked, and she sounded worried now, the same way I’d sounded in the kitchen when she’d asked me to look out for Annie.

  My head spun back to Nell. “I’m saying that you probably won’t be seeing me for a while. I’ll need to take care of some things, alone—”

  “No way,” Tan cut in, his voice an angry admonition, which tension was precisely what I didn’t want present in any of our conversations
tonight.

  “All right, all right,” I said fast on a half-sigh, half-groan. “You can come sometimes.” At least I was agreeing at that moment to his coming with me, and I was agreeing because of the anger in his voice. But when the time would come for me to act, I had no intention of taking him with me anywhere.

  “What exactly happened?” Derek asked now. His blue eyes and Nell’s brown ones curiously probed my face.

  “She got a letter. A death threat,” Tan said in a not-low voice.

  “Shh!” I hissed at him. “The baby!”

  “She doesn’t know what’s going on,” Derek said. He pointed at me. “You got the letter with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Show us, Pia,” said Nell.

  I was sighing as I walked into the hall where my case was and opened it. A moment later in the living room again, I handed the plastic bag to Nell.

  “Christ,” she said as she read the letter beneath there. “Ugh.”

  “Yeah: ugh.” I watched her face both fall and pale.

  Derek’s head was tilted toward her, and his eyes were on the letter in her hand. “It looks childish or something.”

  “No it doesn’t!” said Nell. Her head shifted toward the dining room, and then she handed the bag to Derek, got up and went to check on Annie.

  I got up too—and took the plastic bag from Derek. “I’ve got to apologize—I shouldn’t have brought this here.”

  “Yes, you should have!” Nell called over at us. “I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t upset me. But I thought I heard Annie cry out. She does sometimes in her sleep. Or she might need a diaper-change….” Nell must have seen me grab the letter. “But don’t put it away—I’m coming back!”

  She did an instant later—to pull me into one of her hugs. “You poor thing.” Her hand rubbed my back and I squeezed her tighter.

  Then she took the bag from me, turning it over and over till she’d seen all the writings, including the words on the outer envelope. “So this went through the mail.”

  I nodded, falling back onto the couch.

  “Pia,” she said then, looking down at me as she gave the bag to Derek again, “maybe you should take this to the police.”

  I shook my head fast. “I can’t do that.”

  She sat down beside Derek. Tan looked at me, and both he and Nell said, “Why?” at the exact same time.

  “Just trust me that I can’t.” I turned my head to encompass both my friend and my boyfriend.

  “But what if it doesn’t have something to do with you from years ago?” Tan asked, and his left hand grabbed my right and pulled it into his lap.

  Nell pointed an excited forefinger at me. “Yes! That’s what I thought. There’s that case about six-months ago—remember that guy? The one who got busted for smuggling altered human DNA across planets?”

  “Yeah,” I said. The guy’s rich parents had hired me to do a security job at their real-estate business, and the son’s ultimately getting busted was an unplanned side effect of another scenario. But…. “Nell, I’ve made a list of possibilities. And he’s on the list. But the thing is: I didn’t bust him. That just came out as a consequence from the other hospital guard-supply job.” Two totally-unrelated-at-first jobs wound up having a tangential connection—that was the way it went sometimes. “He never even met me. His parents did, but this letter thing really doesn’t seem like their style.”

  “Oh Pia, I just don’t know….” She was eyeing the letter in Derek’s hand. “Even if it’s someone’s sick joke, it makes me mad—that someone could think to send this to you and destroy your day. Such creeps out there.”

  “I wish it was just a joke,” I said.

  “But you don’t think it is.”

  With my eyes fixed in her direction, I indicated I was pretty sure the threat was no joke.

  Nell kind of shuddered, and her head turned toward the dining room again. Clearly, she was thinking of Annie. So was I.

  Now, in my stomach, I felt a tight ball of regret over my having come there that night. And I wondered if Nell was thinking the same thing….

  “She’s moving awkwardly,” she said now. “I’ve got to go change her—I’ll be right back.”

  As she walked away, I could feel how flushed my face was.

  “Damn, Pia, you look upset,” said Derek then.

  The words “Wouldn’t you be?” were on the tip of my tended-to-be-too-automatic-lately tongue, but then I realized how terrible that would sound when directed toward my friend. Now I said, “I just really need to get moving on this soon.”

  Tan’s hand pulled mine more until my upper arm was pressed against his, till my brown sweater-sleeve was pressed against his black one. His face nuzzled the side of my face, my jaw, my hair; I heard his soft sigh, and my heart did a small sad hop.

  We remained like that for a few moments, just still and peaceful, while Derek leaned back into the couch and stared up at the ceiling….

  But he finally began talking again. “Hey, Pia, have you examined the letter at all—like the paper?” His eyes fell down on the plastic bag, which he had laid onto the glass tabletop between us.

  “Mm-hm,” I said. “There are prints on the outside. And…”

  My voice faded as Nell walked back into the dining room. She grabbed the baby monitor. “I put her in her crib—what did I miss in here?!?”

  Derek looked up at her. “We were just talking about the fingerprints on the envelope.”

  “Talking what—what happened?” Nell asked from the loveseat now.

  I pulled away from Tan slightly, and his hand finally let my arm go. “Well,” I said, “my scanner said there’s a high probability that all the unknown prints on the outside are from one person.”

  A small silence.

  Then Nell frowned. “That’s strange, Pia.”

  “What’s strange?”

  Her hand pointed at the tabletop, and then her eyes lifted to the ceiling as if she were carefully thinking. “Well, if it went through the mail, why only one set of prints?” I looked at her. And she continued talking: “Either someone at the other end’s post-office removed any prints from the outside, or prevented them. Or someone removed them on this end and unintentionally added new ones. Or even intentionally.”

  I sat up straighter. “You’re right, Nell. You’re right.”

  “That’s my Nell,” Derek said, pulling her closer to kiss her.

  But she laughed and sort of pushed him away. “Whew—you stink of garlic!”

  “Don’t blame me. You did the cooking.” He kissed her again, and she kissed him back this time.

  Then she sighed. Then she turned back to me. “There’s another possibility, Pia: the letter didn’t go through the post-office.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did assume the prints were from my end-destination post-office. Without my code-key, someone could only get in through the back part of the box.”

  “The part the employees have access to,” said Tan.

  “Yeah,” I said again, shaking my head this time. “What the hell is going on?”

  “That’s what you need to determine,” said Nell.

  *

  Tan and I left about an hour later. I was sorry to go, but I also thought I’d stayed too long.

  However, on the way back home in the car, I did feel better. My friends had been right: I didn’t have to deal with everything on my own. I had friends who could help me, and that made me lucky in that one way at least. I needed to remember my good fortune in my friends and use that option when I needed to use it.

  Tan drove us home pretty slowly; there were almost no streetlights, and the night around the car seemed so thick, I wondered if I could reach out the window and smear the black on my fingers. The dense night helped me imagine that this day hadn’t gone the way it actually had, that the letter had never come, that I’d only experienced positive things today.

  Why couldn’t life be like that? Why couldn’t your mind just wipe away everythin
g unpleasant and make it all disappear outside your mind too?

  *

  When we finally got home and found nothing out of the ordinary (I made us check around the house, both inside and out), I went into our bedroom, pulled off my clothes and jumped into the shower, hoping a healthy spray of hot water on my skin would clear my mind of all the things I didn’t want to think about….

  It didn’t work. I came out of the shower and towel-dried myself off, but by the time I was finished, my face was flushed from more than the water’s heat.

  The next day would be another unpleasant one for me, even if the threat-letter hadn’t come….

  …Just then I wondered if the timing was indeed suspicious—was it a threat to make me rethink my testimony in court? It was a possibility I hadn’t considered till now.

  But, I couldn’t see how threatening me over that would be worth the trouble: Ronin had already pled guilty, and that had nothing to do with me because I hadn’t even been involved in the court case yet.

  I was sighing as I walked into the bedroom—to find Tan lying back on the bed, his lean fit body clad in only his skimpy sea-blue underwear. His face turned to me. “Why did you shower? Didn’t you shower before you got dressed earlier?”

  “I just needed some heat now to make me feel better.”

  “I can give you some heat,” he said.

  I laughed, softly. “Mm-hm. I’m sure you could.” My eyes were on the enticing bulge of his prick and balls beneath the thin fabric. But I hesitated near the bed, thinking of the front door….

  He rose up and back onto his elbows now. “I double-checked everything. And your case is on the floor over there. Come to bed.”

  I flushed because he’d guessed correctly about what had been bothering me. Then I flushed more because my eyes were on his crotch again, which was moving as he moved up even more, to sit back against the black headboard. He raised his arms to me, and then I finally slid into them.

  “Christ, this day,” I said, leaning my head forward and sighing against his neck, which I imagined smelled like the strawberries he’d eaten earlier.