by Sandra Hill
“You’ll get the story before anyone else—if or when there is a story.” That was all Frank would say to Porter for the moment.
In the meantime, while everyone continued to shout and make threats and while crowds began to gather, Steve, Tony, and Rosa had driven off with the safe in a van; the vehicle had appeared magically on the dock upon their arrival, thanks to the Mafia good-wish fairies, no doubt. Famosa, Peach, and LeDeux, fully armed, were in the back of the van, making sure there was no shady business from the Menottis or anyone else. Later they would all meet at a designated hideout to open the safe.
Flossie had gone back to the house, at Frank’s insistence. Brenda, Ronnie, and Tante Lulu were still on the deck of Sweet Jinx, along with Jake. They would oversee the inevitable search of his vessel, which had by now been swept clean of any evidence, including computers, which were in the van with the safe.
Just then, though, Ronnie jumped off the boat onto the wharf. “Gentlemen,” she said in an authoritative voice, “I am Mr. Jinkowsky’s attorney. Anything you have to say to him can be said through me.”
Frank’s jaw dropped. Ronnie defending me? I better pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming. What was most amazing was that Ronnie pulled off her professionalism, despite her windblown hair tucked under a baseball cap, an “I Got Stung” T-shirt, very short denim shorts (think Daisy Duke), and flip-flops.
“I’m George Wright with the U.S. Coast Guard.” Frank could tell that George was trying his best not to ask Ronnie what kind of law she practiced, dressed like she was. Today, a guy could be accused of sexual harassment for lots less. “Your client is in a pigload of trouble, Ms. . . . ?”
“Jensen,” she finished for Wright; Frank’s jaw remained open.
Ronnie using Jake’s name? Wonders never cease! He glanced up at Jake on the deck of his boat, watching them worriedly. He gave Jake an A-OK sign, although Jake wouldn’t know for what.
“Is Mr. Jinkowsky really in trouble? Exactly what are the charges against him?” Ronnie asked Wright in a voice dripping with steely politeness.
Wright’s face pinkened, and he blustered, “Well, there are no charges yet, but there for damn sure will be an investigation.”
“To investigate what? Mr. Jinkowsky has a permit to salvage . . . a certain site.”
“He does?” Wright turned to scowl at Ettinger, who must have been the one who tattled. Ettinger was too busy ogling Ronnie’s legs to notice that the Coast Guard was now going to be on his case. Then George directed his gaze at Frank again and said, “I’d like to see that paperwork.”
“We’ll have it in your office tomorrow morning,” Ronnie answered for him.
“About that story?” Porter reminded Frank.
“You’ll hear from me,” Frank replied without turning to the reporter.
Ettinger clenched his fists and told Frank, “You will not get away with this.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Exactly what did you find out there?”
“As if I would tell the likes of you.”
“Don’t think I won’t be tailing you. You breathe the wrong way, and I’ll be on you like a fly on a dung heap.”
“You sweet-talker you!”
All conversation was stopped by a loud bang, followed by the splintering of a nearby piling. A gunshot, for chrissake! Everyone dropped to the ground. Frank made sure Ronnie was safe beside him. In the silence that followed, all heads turned toward the boat.
“Oh, my God!” was the most succinct response anyone could come up with, and that was from Ronnie.
Tante Lulu stood on the deck of his boat holding a pistol. She was in the police firing position—or at least the police firing position depicted on TV cop shows—with her legs spread, knees bent to a crouch, and both hands aiming the weapon. To complete the picture, she was wearing the treasure-hunting costume she’d worn the day she arrived—a safari-type suit and hat, with a cross-belt of ammunition. Her hair was a mass of black curls today. “Step back, Frank. I’ll take care of these varmints.”
Jake and Brenda were stunned, too, staring at the shooter as if she was two bricks short of a full load, which she was.
Frank slowly rose, his knees creaking in the process. “Put down the gun, Tante Lulu,” he yelled. “Everything’s okay here.”
“You sure? I smell pirates.”
“Really. I can handle this,” Frank assured her.
Jake and Brenda were arguing with Tante Lulu, who appeared reluctant to relinquish her firearm. Finally, the old lady lowered her pistol and put it in a hip holster.
To the men still on the ground, except for Porter, who was taking photos of the dingy desperado, Frank said, “You can get up. She’s harmless.”
“Harmless,” George sputtered as he straightened. “Did you see the damage she did to that pole?”
“Is she a midget?” one of the other Coast Guard officers asked as a group of them rushed up. “Is she as old as she looks?”
“Ooooh, she probably doesn’t have a permit. And she’s on Jinkowsky’s boat. You’ll have to arrest the whole lot of them now,” Ettinger predicted. “Maybe we should call the police.”
“I’m not arresting anyone till I get all the facts. And we’re not drawing local law into this until I deem it necessary,” George told Ettinger. To Frank, in an undertone, he added, “You are making it damn hard for me to ignore all this crap. Can’t you control your people?”
“Hah! Wait till you meet Louise. Her name is Louise Rivard, but she likes to be called Tante Lulu. You try to control her.”
George was soon given that opportunity as they all went aboard Sweet Jinx. While some of the Coast Guard officers examined every inch of the boat, with Jake and Brenda and Ronnie showing them around and Ettinger and Porter observing, Frank and George went down in the galley to talk with Tante Lulu. It didn’t surprise him that he and George found themselves eating gumbo and drinking iced sweet tea before Tante Lulu gave them a chance to question her.
“Just between you and me, Frank, where’s your computers, video players, TV screen, the normal items on a diving project?”
“Fell overboard.”
“Bullshit!”
“I’ll tell you this. We were outside state waters. It wasn’t a registered cargo. We did nothing illegal. Give me a few weeks, then we’ll talk in more detail.”
“Ummmm,” George said then, not convinced but willing to wait. “This is really good, Ms. Rivard. My grandmother used to make gumbo.”
“Jist call me Tante Lulu. Ever’one does. Was yer grandma Cajun?”
“No, she was Scottish, but she had a thing about Emeril—you know, that guy on the cooking channel.”
“He’s hot, all right.”
Frank and George looked at each other in amazement.
“Hot is the not the word I would have chosen to describe the guy,” George remarked while he scarfed up the gumbo with slices of crusty French bread.
“Hey, you’re talking to a lady who drools over Richard Simmons,” Frank informed George.
George’s spoon was midway to his mouth. “You’re kidding?”
Frank shook his head.
“Richard is soooo dreamy,” Tante Lulu said. “An’ I doan wanna hear any smarty-ass remarks about him, either.”
A few moments later, at George’s persistence, Tante Lulu sat down at the table and began to empty her purse, which was more like a fabric suitcase, searching for her gun permit.
There was makeup; hair dye; curlers; a romance novel—THE RED-HOT CAJUN—a small accordion-style photo album; a porno videotape entitled Romancing the Bone, which he wouldn’t in a million years ask her about; two cell phones; a tape recorder she said she was using to take notes for her book; a thick wallet overflowing with cash, credit cards, and coupons; a long pointy thing that he was pretty sure was a vibrator but was afraid to know for sure; a dog-eared journal of her herbal remedies along with tiny ziplock packets of the herbs themselves; and, finally, a document folder from which she pull
ed a photo of herself taken in 1942 (man, she really had been a looker back then) and the gun permit.
“Ma’am,” George said with a sigh. “This permit is a hunting license.”
“What did you need a hunting license for?” Frank asked her.
“Gators,” she replied matter-of-factly. “They kept eatin’ the okra in my garden. I lives by the bayou.”
“And it was issued in 1985,” George added.
“So?”
“So, you were carrying a handgun, not a rifle.”
“I upgraded.”
George groaned. “And hunting licenses have to be renewed each year.”
Tante Lulu threw her hands in the air. “How was I to know that?”
George stood.
“Well, ya gonna cuff me? I needs to go to the bathroom first. And put on some makeup. I doan wanna go to the big house lookin’ like I jist woke up.”
“You’re not being arrested,” George said.
Tante Lulu’s shoulders slumped. Apparently, she had been looking forward to incarceration.
“But I do have to report this to local authorities. And you will be given a warning, at the least.”
“Thass okay. My nephew is a lawyer.”
She probably gave her nephew lots of business. Frank patted Tante Lulu on the shoulder as they all walked up the galley steps. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.”
“Take care of what?” Brenda asked.
“A firearms warning Tante Lulu is going to get,” Frank answered.
Brenda rolled her eyes.
Jake and Ronnie were on the other side of the deck, looking moon-eyed at each other. Ettinger and Porter must have left.
A short time later, after Brenda drove Tante Lulu back to the hotel where she and John were staying and after Jake went to get his SUV, Frank took Ronnie’s arm, stopping her in the parking lot where they would wait for Jake. For once, she was docile and followed his lead, staring at him in question.
“I was really proud of you back there . . . well, proud of the way you’ve handled being on the boat, too.”
He thought she was going to give him a verbal tongue-lashing for embroiling her in his troubles, but instead she grinned and give him a playful shove on the chest. “Way to go, Grandpa!”
Frank was too stunned to react . . . at first.
Ronnie isn’t mad at me. And she called me Grandpa. Something important just happened here. Frank wasn’t much for examining things to death, though. So, he did what came naturally to him. He pulled his granddaughter into his arms and enveloped her in a bear hug, one of those big jobbies that pulled her up on her tiptoes and her face into his neck, and knocked off her cap. She smelled of salt air and sweat and some soft floral fragrance. It had to be the first time in forever that he’d hugged his granddaughter. How had that happened? How had he let that happen? Most amazing of all, she was hugging him back.
Finally, when he got his emotions under control enough to release her, he didn’t even bother to swipe the tears that welled in his eyes. Because she had tears in her eyes, too.
Neither of them said a word as she got into Jake’s SUV, and Frank drove his Mustang home. He might just have gained a granddaughter today.
I love you, girl, he wanted to say. I always have. But it was too soon for those words. Someday, though, he intended to say them out loud, and he hoped to God it wouldn’t be too late.
Chapter
24
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend . . . and a guy’s, too. . . .
They were all assembled in the basement of Adam’s home in New Brunswick, staring at the safe, which was about to be opened. Caleb had already used a blowtorch and some tools to pry the lock. The excitement in the room was so thick you could practically see it.
Veronica looked at Jake, who was standing next to her. He winked and took her hand in his, kissing the wrist. A promise kiss . . . for later. She could see that he was just as excited as she was.
“This is fun,” she said to him.
“Yeah. The adrenaline high is similar to poker. Now, don’t be raisin’ your eyebrows at me. Gambling is exciting, no matter what you think.”
She conceded that point with a shrug. And, actually, she could see similarities. The risks. The high stakes. Even danger, at times. For just a blip of a second, she wondered if Jake might really enjoy treasure hunting. She even wondered if she might like it as a career. Impossible! she told herself, although the notion did linger in the back of her mind.
The first thing Caleb took out of the safe, which emitted a musty smell after being closed for so long, was a once-blue, flat, molded velvet box, worn through with age in spots. Because the box, and other items inside the safe, had been kept in the airtight container, they got moldy but were mostly intact, except for the paper, which disintegrated when it contacted the air. The box appeared custom-made. Caleb handed it to Rosa, who set it on the card table next to the safe.
Rosa opened the case slowly, then gasped. “The Pink Teardrop Necklace.”
It was spectacular. Even though the gold was tarnished, the pink diamonds sparkled. The necklace was made of a heavy gold choker from which was suspended a large center diamond, with increasingly smaller diamonds traveling all the way to the clasp. Each of the pink diamonds was in a gold mounting, surrounded by tiny white diamonds. The necklace must have weighed a pound. And, in Veronica’s opinion, it was probably worth the five million dollars Rosa had originally estimated as its value, especially with its historical provenance. In fact, it was priceless, Veronica decided.
“Put it on,” Brenda encouraged Rosa, who was weeping unabashedly. Once it was on, Rosa preened for all of them. Her scooped-neck, red jersey shirt and black slacks were inappropriate for such adornment—a sleek ball gown would be more suitable—but it was beautiful just the same.
“What will you do with it?” Veronica asked her. “Sell it?”
“Never!” Rosa said, shaking her head emphatically. “Into my safe it will go, to be taken out on special occasions. Then, I expect to bequeath it to my granddaughter . . . if I ever get one.” She locked her gaze pointedly on her two sons, Anthony and Stefano, as she spoke the latter.
“Maaaa!” the big bad Tony complained, his face red with embarrassment.
“Give it up!” Steve added, also blushing.
Amazing! The federal organized crime unit would not believe this.
Tante Lulu piped in. “I kin help you find them wives. Cupid is practic’ly my middle name.”
Tony and Steve rolled their eyes.
“You should be worried,” John told them. “When she sets you in her matchmaking crosshairs, you are dead ducks.”
“Yep, I’m gonna get them good Eye-tal-yan girls. I might even know some Cajun Eye-tal-yan girls. But, first, I gotta make Jake his hope chest.”
“No!” Jake stiffened at Veronica’s side. “No, no, that’s not necessary.”
“It’s necessary, all right. And doan be arguin’ with yer elders.”
Veronica couldn’t help but grin.
“It’s not funny,” Jake said, squeezing her hand.
“Yes, it is.” She was laughing out loud now.
Caleb took another item from the safe. It, too, had a special molded case, but it was square. When he opened it, they saw what was probably a genuine Fabergé egg, with its own gold pedestal, nestled on a satin lining. There were soon four more lined up for their perusal.
They were all silent as they admired the still brightly colored enamel of the eggs, which were once made for the Russian royalty.
“I saw a special on PBS last year, where one of these things sold at Sotheby’s for a million dollars,” Adam told them.
“These might be worth more since Rosa probably knows where they came from,” Frank speculated. “In any case, they’ll be sold, and the proceeds divided among the crew.”
Each of them nodded at that. Rosa didn’t seem to mind. She was still fingering the necklace she wore, staring down at it with pleasure
.
Next came an antique snuffbox collection, which was probably valuable, though no one knew anything about them, and some clips that might have once held paper money that had long since disintegrated.
The total value of this treasure so far began to stun all of them.
Finally came a leather pouch, which Caleb emptied onto the table. Out came dozens of white diamonds of varying sizes and colors. Veronica knew nothing about diamond quality and ratings, but she assumed these were special.
After that, they began to look at each other, too dazed to speak.
“Holy Jehosephat!” Tante Lulu broke the silence. “This is jist like that King Solomon’s Mine. Or Indiana Jones.”
They all laughed and relaxed, then began to speak all at once.
“How are we going to sell these things without alerting the authorities?” Jake asked.
“I know someone who’ll sell the diamonds discreetly,” Steve said.
“More like fence them,” Jake whispered to her.
“And there’s this guy in Switzerland who buys this kind of egg and snuffbox crap,” Tony added. “You don’t need to use any fancy auction house. And, by the way, old lady, don’t you dare be fixing me up with some redneck Southern Italian belle. I’m from New York City, not some freakin’ bayou.”
“Who you callin’ old lady?” Tante Lulu demanded.
“Who you callin’ redneck?” John demanded.
“Tsk-tsk-tsk! I taught you better language than that,” Rosa admonished Tony.
Everyone grinned at Tony for his stupidity in arguing with the old lady.
“What are you gonna do with your share?” Brenda asked them all. “I’m going to buy a house for me and my mother and my daughter. And put some money away for Patti’s college. Maybe I’ll buy an expensive car, too, just to annoy my ex-husband.”
“I’m thinkin’ ’bout buildin’ a cottage on that property next to yours on Bayou Black,” John told his great-aunt, who stared at him with weepy-eyed adoration. “After I go to the police academy and become a cop. We already have a lawyer, a pilot, a teacher, and a hairdresser in the family.”
