A Will to Survive (9 page)

“We keep forgetting about Parent,” Callie said. “But I have a feeling he's at the heart of this
mystery. Why did he make that weird threat about the center failing?”

“The one with a deadline that's coming up?” Frank replied. “Because he was afraid it wouldn't turn out the way he wanted.”

Callie shook her head impatiently. “Okay, okay. But what
did
he want the center to be?”

Joe gave a short laugh. “Whatever he wanted, he sure didn't leave it the money to carry out his wishes. If he had, the issue of selling the bay frontage wouldn't even come up.”

“Well, what did he do with his money?” Callie asked. “The center inherited everything, didn't it?”

“That's a really good question,” Frank said. “We've been a little slow to take it seriously. I wonder if Tanya's in her office.”

Tanya was in. Frank brought her up-to-date, then asked, “Do you have any idea what Parent did with the bulk of his fortune?”

“Dissipated it somehow,” Tanya replied. She sounded bitter. “Starting three years before he died, he repeatedly took large sums of cash from his account. As much as forty or fifty thousand dollars a week. Occasionally even more.”

Joe whistled. Then he asked, “Was he gambling heavily? Paying blackmail?”

“No sign of either,” Tanya said wearily. “The only clue I have is that in his financial log, next to each cash withdrawal, he wrote the number forty-seven.”

Joe and Frank borrowed the log and Parent's appointment books for his last three years of life. With Callie's help, they set out to trace any link between the dates of the withdrawals and the people he was seeing around those dates.

After half an hour, Callie said, “I think I've got something. ‘AB.' It always shows up a day or two after a withdrawal.”

Joe and Frank each dipped into a different appointment book. “You're right!” Frank said, with mounting excitement. “Who or what is ‘AB,' though?”

They checked the A and B sections of Parent's address book. Nothing jumped out at them.

“We can come back to that,” Frank said. “Let's see when AB first turns up. Maybe that will give us a clue to what it means.”

They scoured the earliest appointment book, page by page. They had reached the middle of May when Joe said, “There, look! Written very small, ‘AB,' followed by some numbers.”

Frank put his face close to the book. “It reads ‘seventeen W forty-seven.' Hey, wait . . .
forty-seven,
the same as in the log!”

“But what is it? A compass bearing? The number of a safe-deposit box? Was Parent taking all that cash and stashing it someplace?”

Frank shook his head. “Safe-deposit box numbers don't usually have letters,” he mused. “And if that
W
means west, the numbers are much too small to
be compass bearings. West is two hundred seventy degrees.”

“Wait, I'm sure I've written numbers that way myself,” Joe said. “What if it's an address! Number seventeen on West Forty-seventh Road, or Drive, or whatever.”

“Try West Forty-seventh Street in New York City,” Callie said, with a note of triumph in her voice. “You guys know what that is, don't you? It's one of the biggest concentrations of diamond dealers in the whole world!”

Joe skillfully steered the van through the morning commuter traffic. In the distance, the twin towers of the World Trade Center punctuated the hazy horizon.

“I'm glad we had a peaceful night,” he remarked. “Maybe the prankster has had second thoughts and called off the harassment. That last booby trap did almost kill somebody.”

“I hope you're right,” Frank replied. He took a sip of coffee from his stainless-steel travel mug. His dad had given it to him. It was supposed to be insulated and spillproof. It wasn't. Luckily, the big green leaf emblem on his Shorewood T-shirt hid the traces of a minor spill. “There's another possibility, though. Maybe what he's up to now is so drastic that he needs extra time to set it up.”

“The eternal optimist!” Joe joked. “Well, at least Tanya could call off today's visit from that TV reporter. There's nothing like having a news helicopter land in the bay to make the problems of Shorewood look less exciting.” He braked to a stop and joined the long line of cars waiting to pay the tunnel toll.

Frank grabbed a cassette at random and stuck it in the van's music system. It turned out to be a tape of Japanese flute music Joe's girlfriend, Iola, had given them. The gentle sounds blocked out the rumble of engines and the blare of horns outside.

Soothed by the music, Frank let his thoughts wander. Where was this case going? He replayed the evening before in his mind. He was sitting with Joe and Callie. They had been studying a table that listed all the different incidents across the top and everyone at Shorewood along the side.

“We don't have everything we need to know,” Joe had said, looking at the blanks in the table.

“That's not surprising,” Frank had replied. “We can't grill people about their movements without breaking our cover. We know a lot, though.”

Callie had studied the table, then scratched her head. “I don't get it,” she'd said. “According to this, nobody has an alibi for all the incidents. But
everyone
seems to be in the clear for at least one of them.”

“A conspiracy?” Joe had suggested. Only half-serious, he'd added, “Maybe Sal and Jack are really
working together. The feud between them could be a put-on.”

“Yeah, right,” Callie had said. “Or maybe Wendy and Dylan are business partners, not romantic partners.”

“That reminds me,” Frank had said. “What's up with that guy? I mean, he's here practically all the time. What's the deal?”

“He's on summer vacation, and he wants to be around Wendy,” Callie had said. “I think it's kind of sweet. I know Wendy cleared it. As long as he doesn't get in the way of Wendy's work as an intern, I guess it's okay with Tanya for him to hang around.”

“Does he pay for his meals?” Joe had wondered. “Maybe Maureen's cooking is the real reason he stays. That chicken with mushrooms and sour cream last night was primo.”

Callie had grabbed a pillow from the couch and threatened Joe with it. “Keep your mind on the subject,” she'd said before tossing the pillow at him.

• • •

Joe's voice broke into Frank's thoughts. “About time,” Joe growled. He pulled up to the tollbooth and handed money to the attendant. Minutes later the van was threading its way through the streets of Manhattan.

The Hardys knew better than to take a car into the center of midtown Manhattan. They parked in a
lot near the Hudson River and caught a crosstown bus on Forty-second Street. The sidewalks in the Times Square area were jammed with people. Many of them stopped to stare up at the huge electronic billboards on the sides of the buildings.

A block farther east, Bryant Park offered a welcome glimpse of green in the middle of so much stone and concrete. Frank noticed hundreds of green metal folding chairs scattered throughout the park. They reminded him of the parks in Paris.

“If we're still stuck in town at lunchtime,” Frank said, “we should bring sandwiches here.”

“Great idea,” Joe replied. He pressed the tape to signal the driver that they wanted to get off at the next stop, Fifth Avenue.

Frank and Joe walked uptown to Forty-seventh Street. The moment they turned the corner, they were in a fantasy world. Every shop window, on both sides of the street, glittered with trays of diamond rings, bracelets, and necklaces.

The address they were looking for turned out to be an office building. What looked like a single store on the ground floor turned out to be divided up among a dozen or more diamond merchants. None of them looked thrilled to see two teens come in.

The Hardys approached the first counter. A uniformed guard ambled over and stood nearby. Frank had a photo of Walter Parent in his pocket. When he reached for it, the guard casually rested his hand on the butt of his holstered automatic.

Frank explained what he wanted and showed the photo. The jeweler glanced at it and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I can't help you.” He walked away.

One merchant after another brushed them off the same way. Frank and Joe became more and more discouraged. Were they following a false trail? They reached the last stall in the shop. An elderly man with a white beard and friendly wrinkles around his eyes was behind the counter. He listened to them and studied the photo of Parent.

“No one I know,” he said with a shrug. “Mostly I sell engagement rings to young couples. Did you try any of the firms upstairs?”

“Upstairs?” Joe repeated. “You mean there's more?”

“Is there more!” the man said with a laugh. “This building has diamond merchants like rice has white! Upstairs is more wholesale. If your man was buying in quantity, that is where he would go.”

Checking out the offices on the upper floors was a nightmare. The Hardys had to convince a guard at the elevators to let them go up at all. They started at the top floor and worked their way down. The jewelers protected themselves and their treasures with locked steel-plated doors and TV-equipped intercoms. Some simply turned Frank and Joe away. Others let them in but barely long enough to say they had nothing to say.

“We should have worn disguises,” Joe grumbled, after another dealer refused to open his door to
them. “Santa Claus masks, maybe. The reaction couldn't be any worse than we're getting now.”

“Hang tough,” Frank advised. He rang the bell at the next door. “Above all, look honest.”

Joe must have succeeded. The door latch buzzed them in. Inside, the office was dominated by an old but very efficient looking safe. A man in his thirties got up from a brightly lit work table and came to the counter that divided the room.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Frank launched into his story. The man glanced at Parent's photo. Then he took a closer look.

“I know that face,” he announced, interrupting Frank. “He used to buy from my partner.”

“Is your partner in?” Joe asked eagerly. “Can we speak to him?”

“Arnold? He retired almost a year ago,” the man replied. The Hardys' disappointment must have shown. He added, “Tell you what. I'll give him a call. Maybe he'll see you.”

When he got off the phone, the jeweler handed Frank a slip of paper. “He says he can spare a few minutes. Here's the address. It's Arnold Borglund.”

Borglund's apartment was a ten-minute walk away. Frank and Joe made it in less than seven minutes.

“Come in,” Borglund said. With his foot, he nudged a tricycle out of the way. “My granddaughter is visiting,” he explained.

Frank guessed that Borglund was in his sixties. He had closely cropped gray hair and blue eyes
that twinkled behind rimless glasses. He led the Hardys into the living room, moved a box of brightly colored plastic blocks off the sofa, and said, “Have a seat. What's this all about?”

Frank explained.

“He's dead, is he?” he said when he saw the photo. “I thought he must be. I'm sorry to hear it. Olden was always pleasant to do business with.”

“Who?” Joe asked.

“Walter Olden,” Borglund replied. He tapped the photo. “Him. Oh, I see . . . that was not his real name, is that it?”

“You don't seem surprised,” Frank observed.

Borglund shrugged. “In my trade, we have many customers who prefer to keep their private affairs private. Not many who buy on Olden's scale, though. He had excellent taste and
very
deep pockets. What is your interest in this, by the way?”

Frank told him about Parent's bequest to the Shorewood Nature Center and showed him a letter of authorization signed by Tanya.

“And now this nature center needs to convert the gems to cash, I suppose,” Borglund said. “I would love to help, but I'm retired.”

“It's not that,” Joe said. “We don't know where the diamonds are. Until we spoke to you, we didn't even know for sure they existed.”

Borglund's jaw dropped. “Is this a joke?” he demanded. “You do realize we're talking about a collection of hundreds of stones of the very highest
quality. Why, for one of them alone I could pick up that phone right now and get a quarter of a million for it. And there are dozens more nearly as valuable.”

Frank took a deep breath. “What would the diamonds Parent bought from you be worth today?”

Borglund stroked his chin. “I'd be astonished if it came to less than fifteen million dollars.”

• • •

“Fifteen million dollars!” Tanya stared at Frank and Joe. “Impossible!”

The Hardys had rushed back from New York and were now telling Tanya about the amazing discovery they had made during their morning in the diamond district.

“Borglund seemed sure of his facts,” Frank told her. “Parent spent a fortune putting together a collection of fine diamonds. The puzzle is, what did he do with his collection?”

“Puzzles!” Tanya said bitterly. “How that man loved puzzles . . . especially when he could use them to stump other people. And here he is, doing it to us, almost two years after his death!”

“Two years!” Joe exclaimed. He slapped his palm on his knee. “Parent said the center would have all the resources it needed if it followed his principles. But if not, it would fail in two years.”

“And the two years are up on Monday, his birthday,” Frank said grimly. “That's it, Joe! He
must have meant that something will happen to the diamonds—unless we solve his last puzzle in time.”

“Will you do it?” Tanya pleaded.
“Can
you? The work we are doing here is so vital!”

“We'll do our best,” Joe assured her. He turned to Frank. “The person who's been searching the house—could he have been looking for the diamonds?”