An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (10 page)

Of course, I keep reminding her that my brother is older than I am, still not married, and has no children. That doesn’t seem to count because he’s a boy and not expected to produce for her.

“Thanks, hon. I swear, I’m going to have your babies some day.”

“Yeah, right. When you’re finished saving the city Super Girl.”

He hung up and I smiled to myself, lost in the warm fuzzy feelings I always get from my husband. That was until I realized that there was someone standing behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder and a woman who looked vaguely familiar, smiled at me with a smug, shit-eater smile.

“What are you looking at?” I turned to face her.

“Hello, Officer O’Brien.”

I recognized the voice.

“I’m Jane Katts. You know the bimbo who’s sleeping with someone in the mayor’s office.”

My heart dropped to my feet. Could this day get any worse?

“Of course you are.” I turned and walked away from her.

“You know, you’re really difficult to get in touch with.” She followed. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning.”

“Yes, I know.”

I stopped short of telling her I’d been deleting her messages
all morning
. That nugget of information would only prolong our conversation, and I was already finished with Miss Jane Katts.

“Is now a good time for our interview?”

“No. I’m not sure when I’ll have time to speak with you, Miss Katts.”

“I can understand that you’re a little upset about the article in this morning’s paper.”

“No.” I whirled around to face her. “I’m pissed as hell about your article. There’s a big fucking difference.”

“I’m a journalist, Officer O’Brien.”

“Forgive me but you’re a fiction writer, Miss Katts. If you were a journalist you’d have your facts straight. I’m
Detective
O’Brien, not officer.”

We faced off like two boxers on the
Caesar’s Palace
marquee. Had someone wrung a bell one of us would have thrown a punch.

“Okay look,” she held up her hands in surrender. “You’re going to have to give me the interview, so you might as well just get over yourself.”

This girl had a lot to learn about poking the bear. Especially when the bear hadn’t had enough coffee yet today.

“Miss Katts –”

“Jane.”

“Jane.” I smiled like a patient schoolteacher. “I will
get over myself
exactly three seconds after you print a front page retraction telling your readers what a liar you are.”

Jane stepped back as if I had physically slapped her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You just don’t know how hard it is to build a reputation in my business.”

“And I don’t care. You didn’t give a shit about destroying my reputation, so why should I give a shit about helping you build yours.”

I marched to the entrance of the café and yanked the door open.

“You’ll have your interview when I say.”

Louise waited for me just inside the entry of the café with eyebrows raised. “Everything okay?”

“I could use a cup of coffee.” I faked a smile. “And a gigantic cheese burger.”

“That bad, huh?”

I waved off her concern.

One of the waitresses directed us to a booth near the window. Jane Katts stood outside talking to someone on her cell phone.

“That seemed to be a pretty heated discussion.” Louise slid into the booth across from me. “Anything I should know about? Who is that?”

She jerked her head toward the window.

“That is Jane Katts.” I held my coffee cup up to a passing waitress. She nodded her understanding. “She was asking if I’m ready for our interview. I told her not yet.”

Louise looked out the window, and then back at me. “You’re sure that’s all you said.”

The waitress brought the pot of coffee to our table, poured me a cup, and asked Louise if she wanted any. Louise turned her cup right side up on its saucer, and slid it to the edge for her to fill, all the while not taking her doubting eyes from me.

I thanked the waitress and turned back to Louise.

“That’s not exactly what was said, but I think Miss Katts understood that’s what I meant.”

Louise took a sip of her coffee. “You know, Catherine, I saw a help wanted sign on the door on my way in.”

I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling.

“Just something to keep in mind,” she said.

By the time we finished eating lunch, Jane Katts had disappeared from the sidewalk, which was just as well. The last thing I needed was another acid producing moment to ruin a perfectly good cheeseburger, French fry, and coleslaw lunch.

Louise informed me, after she was convinced that I didn’t need to begin my food service career early, that Digs wanted to see us as soon as we were finished eating. He wouldn’t tell her what he had, but he never did. Digs liked the dramatic reveal. That, and if he gave us information over the phone, he wouldn’t be able to get his daily dose of Louise time.

Normally when we went to see Digs, we found him hunched over his desk or a microscope, or some other bit of evidence. Today he was waiting for us. We had just stepped inside the door when Digs unloaded his big news without preamble.

“The medical examiner found a diamond inside the Dad.”

“You mean like a gem of a clue?” I asked.

“No, I mean a one and a half carat chunk of rock.” He held up a clear plastic baggie with the diamond inside. “Your killer was very weird. He loaded his own shotgun pellets, with the standard lead and one nice sized diamond.”

Louise took the baggie, held it up to the light, and shook the stone.

“Nice cut and quality,” she said. “I’d say VVS1.”

“Close.” Digs slid his Coke-bottle glasses up on his nose. “It’s not quite perfect.”

Part of me wanted to pretend that I knew what they were talking about; the other part thought that whatever code they were speaking, might be important to this investigation, and I’d eventually need to show my stupidity and ask.

“Okay, De Beers gemologists, what the heck are you two talking about?”

They exchanged glances as if they couldn’t believe I needed this explained. The part of me that wanted to pretend to understand flushed with embarrassment.

“There’s a diamond rating system,” Digs explained. “The letters indicate the quality of the cut, color, and clarity.”

Louise handed me the bag so I could get a better look at the diamond. The light blazed through the stone and flashed a rainbow of colors. In the center was a small spec of dark.

“It looks like there’s a piece of dirt or something in it,” I said.

“Good eyes.” Digs nodded. “There’s a small inclusion in the stone. You could see that with your naked eye? I couldn’t see that until I had the stone under a microscope.”

I pointed at his thick cheaters. “No offense Digs, but I’m not surprised.”

He touched the edge of his glasses. “Yeah, I guess I forget about these sometimes. Thanks for reminding me, O’Brien.”

“Any time.”

“So the killer shot our victim with a diamond?” Louise asked. “Why?”

“Not just shot him,” Digs said. “Killed him with a diamond. The diamond pierced Jonathan Luther’s heart, and liquefied it.”

“Now we just have to figure out the meaning.” I handed the stone to Louise who held it aloft and studied the stone.

“There’s more.” Digs leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. He grinned up at us.

This was the dramatic reveal I’d expected when we arrived. Digs was just dragging out the moment for his own sick and twisted pleasure.

“We give up.” I shrugged. “Do tell. What’s the rest of the story, Paul Harvey?”

Digs opened the tiny plastic zippered bag and dropped the diamond into a shallow glass dish. He used a tweezers to deposit the diamond under his microscope.

Louise moved closer to him. Digs began to sweat. He adjusted the magnification, with a lot of fumbling until the magnification was where he wanted it, and then he clicked a few icons on his computer’s desktop. The super magnified image of the diamond filled the screen.

“We can’t be that lucky.” Louise whispered so close to Digs’ ear that he shuttered. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yep.” Digs could barely choke the word out. “The diamond is engraved.”

“So what?” I held my hands out, palms up. I still wasn’t following. “They engrave diamonds with a serial number just like a VCR?”

“Not like a VCR,” Digs said and shook his head as if I were the stupidest person on the planet.

Louise straightened and picked up where Digs left off, instructing me on the merits of diamonds. “Diamonds of a certain quality are sometimes engraved with a jeweler’s mark and or the certificate number on the girdle to certify the quality.”

“Then we can track down the jeweler who engraved this stone, and get a list of all the people he sold a stone of this size and this quality?” I asked.

“It’s even better,” Digs said. “The jeweler should have a record of a stone of this size, quality, and a notation of the exact quadrant of the inclusion.”

I was beginning to share their excitement. “And that will narrow our search down to how many people?”

Digs and Louise both held up their index finger.

I grasped Dig’s face between my hands, pulled him forward, and kissed him on the lips. He looked stunned for half a second before realizing who had kissed him. When he recovered, he wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

“You are the best, Digs.” I patted his cheek. “So when will we know?”

Digs’ shoulders slumped. “That’s the tricky part. We don’t know where the stone came from, so we’ll have to do a broad search. If we can’t locate the jeweler in Minnesota we’ll have to branch out from there. Many stones of this quality come from off shore. We could be looking at a few weeks.”

So we weren’t that lucky. Damn, it would have been sweet to have the killer in the next few hours. Then I could make Jane Katts eat crow in the morning edition of the newspaper. I should have known better than to be an optimist. Optimism was a small luxury I couldn’t afford these days.

“I guess it’s back to the streets for you and me, my friend.”

Louise nodded. “Afraid so.”

“Look at it this way,” Digs forced his voice to sound chipper. “The diamond will be the nail in the killer’s coffin when he does go to court.”

“Great,” I said. “We just have to catch him first.”

I turned to leave.

“Hey, O’Brien,” Digs said. “I almost forgot. I bought you a gift.”

If my overweening curiosity hadn’t gotten the best of me, I would never have turned around, but I was like the proverbial Catherine, I needed satisfaction.

“What?”

He tossed a brown paper sack to me. I snagged it in midair before Digs’ pathetic throw could go wide and hit the doorjamb next to me. The bag’s contents squished and made a squeaking sound. I drew my brows together and looked at him.

“It’s just a little something I saw and thought of you.”

I unrolled the top of the bag and reached inside. My fingertips brushed something furry. I pinched a bunch of the fuzz between my fingers and withdrew the contents.

There was no mistaking the orange beak and the scrawny neck of the toy. Digs had found a stuffed vulture.

“I couldn’t pass it up,” he said. “That was classic, O’Brien.”

I crumpled the brown bag and whipped it at Digs’ head as hard as I could. The paper ball bounced off his head, the computer monitor, the edge of his desk, and then dropped into the wastepaper basket on the floor.

“Two points!”

I raised the stuffed vulture over my head like a trophy and victory-danced my way out of the lab.

The elevator door closed behind us. I pushed the button for the records floor and assumed the elevator wait stance, hands folded politely around my vulture, head tilted upward to watch the floor numbers on the digital display change.

“You read my mind,” Louise said, assuming her own waiting stance; head bent over phone checking email. “We should be able to find Jonathan Luther’s court records easy enough, and then we can swing by and talk to this Walter Wren person. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out he’s a diamond broker.”

The elevator stopped on a floor that wasn’t ours and a man with his arms full of electronics pushed in. He managed to press the button for two floors up without spilling his armload and littering the elevator floor with busted components.

I inched over to Louise so I could whisper to her without breaking elevator etiquette for the volume of speech.

“I was going to ask records to find information regarding the Grandmother’s murder.”

The man with the electronics whiplashed his head toward me at the word murder.

I smiled and resumed staring at the numbers on the display over the door.