Dashing Through the Snow (23 page)

Smith looked over her shoulder. He whistled.
The chart looked quite complicated. “Boy, that’s something -- all
those numbers, arrows and colors and things. I’m impressed,” he
said and bent to kiss her neck.

Saying nothing, Lily hunched her shoulder to
avoid him. Smith shook his head and moved away, thinking that some
things never changed. “I’m sorry, damn it. What more do you
want?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the screen of
her laptop. “You’re not and that’s the problem. You shut me out and
treated me like a child. I don’t appreciate it and I don’t accept
it, just like you wouldn’t if I tried to do the same thing to
you.”

Smith had opened his mouth to release a
comeback that never came. “Shit,” he said reluctantly. “You’re
right. I’m sorry, and this time I really mean it. Forgive me?”

She looked askance at him. “I don’t know;
I’ll think about it. Let’s get back to the case for now. What did
you learn this evening?”

Smith smiled knowingly and sat in an easy
chair to face her. “Well for starters, she says they’re still
having an affair. I tend to believe her because although she’s
living in what would be considered a working class area, her
clothing and furnishings are nothing but high end. She works as a
hostess. Now I don’t know what they make, especially in your
fancier restaurants and she works in one of those, but whichever
restaurant she’s working in, I doubt she’s making enough to cover
the cost of those huge diamonds she was wearing in her ears.”

“Did she tell you Landry bought them?”

“Yes, but that’s not even the best part.
Here’s the kicker: she says that Mrs. Landry knows about her and
has for quite some time.”

Lily turned to look at him. “Really? How does
she know that?”

He shrugged. “She says Charlie-poo—yes, in
addition to a
bear
, he is also a
poo
—told her and
that he says Mrs. Landry is secretly grateful that he’s fooling
around with her because then she doesn’t have to be bothered with
his advances in the bedroom. So in essence, he told his mistress
that his wife is a cold fish.”

Unimpressed, Lily twisted her mouth. “But
isn’t that par for the course when a man wants to have sex with a
woman other than his wife? It seems to me that they would come up
with all kinds of excuses.”

Smith nodded. “True, true, but I don’t have
any reason to doubt Ms. Pfister, and she believes him. The last
thing I found out is that he’s not there. There’s no sign of a man
in the apartment, and besides that, it’s too small to hide much of
anything and doesn’t seem like it would be to his tastes. She says
she hasn’t heard from him since last Tuesday.”

Lily went back to her laptop. “Did you
believe her?”

Smith nodded. “Yeah, I did. My instinct tells
me that she’s not a liar. She’s a cheater, but not a liar.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you
find in Landry’s locker at the club in Sheffield-Chatham?”

“There wasn’t much,” Smith said. “Just a
jacket and a deck of cards. He rose to answer a knock on the door.
“That’ll be my food.”

He came back with a tray and placed it on the
table. Sitting next to her, he lifted the cover from a plate. He
smacked his lips hungrily. “Hmm, boy! That’s a good-lookin’ steak!”
He picked up a fork and after smothering the accompanying baked
potato with butter and sour cream, attacked it with gusto. “So,” he
began after a couple of bites of steak, “did you look up the club
motto or the seal or whatever it is?”

“It’s
Solus homo infirmus petit
, and
yes, I sure did,” Lily said and looked up from her screen. “You
ordered a baked potato
and
French fries?”

In answer, Smith slid the plate of fries
towards her. “Thought you might be a little hungry after your
workout on the rink.”

Lily smiled and took a fry. “Thanks, cowboy;
that was sweet.”

“Nah,” he said as he cut more steak, “my
thinking was more along the lines of I’d better get her something
or she’ll want some of mine. Got you a cup of chocolate, too.” He
looked up to find that she was already drinking from the mug and
lifted a brow.

She grinned and licked whipped cream from her
lip. “What? It was process of elimination. There’s only one cup of
the stuff and you’ve never liked whipped cream on yours, whereas
you know I adore it. Besides, you’ve got a beer.”

Smith leaned in for a brief kiss and smiled
when she accommodated him. “Forgiven?” he whispered.

“Sure,” she said with a nod. “Can I have some
steak?”

Laughing, he fed her a piece. “So, what does
the motto mean?” he asked.

“As near as I can tell, loosely translated,
it means: Only a weak man asks.”

“Can’t get any plainer than that, can
you?”

“Exactly,” Lily agreed. “And think about the
picture that goes with it -- the lion standing victoriously over
its kill. The strong over the weak, taking what it wants.”

“Yes, but I’m just trying to figure out if it
has any connection to our client,” Smith murmured. “It’s the clubs’
motto, but do they actively encourage its practice among
members?”

“Daddy’s a member,” Lily reminded him. “I
could ask him. It’s too late to call him right now, but I’ll take
care of it tomorrow. But so what if they do? Encourage the
practice, I mean.”

Smith shook himself from his reverie and
looked at her. “Think about it, if the club does, then there could
be some sanctioned if not illegal, at least unethical, things going
on. That’s why I don’t think your dad will know anything. ”

Lily appeared to think about it for a moment.
“I guess you’re right. Think there’s like a theft ring or
something?”

“Could be, but I don’t know. I mean, it could
just be their motto to attract businessmen who think of themselves
as strong and ruthless and want to be among like-minded
individuals. They could just like the idea. But if it is
encouraged, is our client a lion or a gazelle? Just about everyone
we talked to about him described him as harmless; the gazelle.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Lily cautioned with excitement in
her tone. “Everyone except Mr. Anders. Remember what he called our
client? He said, and I quote, ‘Charlie’s the guy with the big
ideas, the one who thinks outside the box.’ And isn’t it funny that
when asked for an example of this, Mr. Anders came up with the
theft
at MSI and how big-idea Charlie-bear felt as if the
guard was a schmuck who basically screwed himself out of a perfect
opportunity?”

Smith stared at her tensely, feeling as if
they were right on the verge of something. “Yeah, Anders said
something about Landry feeling like museums were good marks because
of lack of staff, right? And Landry is known as a collector. If he
were to steal something, it would probably be…what? I’m guessing
it’s at the Field Museum, whatever it is.”

Lily’s smile was huge and knowing. “Oh, I
know exactly what it is.” She went back to typing on her laptop.
“Feast your eyes,” she said as she turned the laptop towards him,
“on the Golddigger’s Folly, one of the most notorious and rarest
gems on the face of the earth.”

Smith looked from her triumphant gaze to the
screen and felt his eyes widen.

Chapter Twenty

“Well, you’re a pretty little fucker, aren’t
you?” Smith murmured as he stared at the large pink diamond.”

“The color is what’s known as raspberry
pink.”

Smith studied the rich, deep color. Even
looking at it through a bunch of pixels, he could tell the diamond
was something special. “What did you say it’s called?”

“Golddigger’s Folly. Such a ridiculous name.
”

“And why do you think it has anything to do
with our case?”

“I’m not saying for sure that it does,” Lily
explained as Smith finally tore his gaze away from the screen to
look at her. “But do you remember when we were talking to Mr.
Anders and he said something about tuning Landry out when he’d talk
about ‘that greedy lady foolishness’? When he said that, something
clicked in my brain but then I was distracted by something else he
said. Anyway, you probably thought he was using the term to
describe Mr. Landry’s mistress. I know that’s how it played in my
distracted brain at the time, but then it came to me when I was
skating. What if he meant Golddigger’s Folly?”

“If he did, why didn’t he just say that?”

Lily shrugged. “Maybe Mr. Anders couldn’t
remember the exact name, or maybe he just didn’t know. As he said
himself, he wasn’t paying close attention to Landry.”

Smith still felt skeptical. “And you got all
of this just from the turn of a phrase?”

“It wasn’t just the phrase. We’d been talking
about museum thefts and of course the big kicker is the map of the
Field that we found in Landry’s locker. Remember?”

“That’s right, the map. We’ll have to look at
it again, but I don’t remember anything special about it. You?”

“No. There were no notes on it, nor was there
anything circled. But still, it’s a pretty big clue.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. It won’t hurt to go to
the Field and see what we can find. So tell me more about this
Golddigger’s Folly. I don’t have to ask how you know so much about
it. The one time the families visited the Field, you had to be
promised two extra scoops of ice cream just so you’d leave the gem
exhibition hall.”

Lily chuckled. “I was only seven, but even
then I recognized the pretty and I was such a brat. Ah, good
times,” she teased. “But anyway, Grandma Carstairs and Aunt Amelia
are the ones who nurtured my interest in gems. Every time Gran
would bring me to the city to visit Aunt Amelia, we invariably
found a way to squeeze the Field’s gem hall into the itinerary.
Which reminds me; I should call Gran and ask if she or Aunt Amelia
have connections that could get us a meeting.”

“With whom? The curator?”

“Yes, or a content specialist.” She looked at
her watch. “Let’s see, they’re in Brisbane right now and there’s a
sixteen hour time difference, so it’s about one fifteen tomorrow
there. I’ll call them once we finish up here. I don’t know if they
can help, but they’re both members of the museum and I know Aunt
Amelia served on the board at one time.”

“All right. So, give me the history of the
diamond. I’m sure I can guess how it got its name, but give me
specifics.”

Surprised, Lily looked at him. “You really
want to know? Seriously?”

She looked so eager that Smith laughed out
loud. She always did love telling a good story. It gave her an
opportunity to perform. He pulled on a lock of her hair. “Go on.
You know you want to. Besides, if it’s connected to the case in any
way, I need to hear the diamond’s history.”

Lily settled back in her chair and folded her
legs under her. “I know the diamond first showed up in L.A. in the
early sixties. Juan Chambliss, who ran Chambliss Studios -- which
used to be almost as big and powerful as MGM -- was sixty, married
and with adult children when nineteen-year old Chrissie Tawnee blew
into town. She looked just as you’d imagine her to look with a name
like that: all legs, boobs, wide eyes, pouty lips and big hair. Oh,
and she loved pink.”

“Ooh, sounds good,” Smith said with a huge,
expectant grin. “Pull up her picture. I wanna see.”

Chuckling, Lily shook her head, but
complied.

“Oh, yeah,” Smith said enthusiastically in a
low voice as he took in the oversized breasts, narrow waist and
dumb-bunny look in the eyes. Her black hair was held up in a pink
bow, which matched the pink fur bikini and go-go boots she wore.
“That’s a Chrissie Tawnee, all right,” he whispered and licked his
lips.

“Perv!” Lily accused laughingly and playfully
pushed his head away from the screen. She laughed harder when he
shook his head quickly as if the slap had brought him out of a
daze.

“
Anyway
,” she said as she exited the
screen, “Juan reportedly knew she would be trouble for him the
moment he saw her, but he just had to have her, so he did. Over and
over again. He eventually put her in apartment a couple of miles
from the studio. In the meantime, Chrissie wanted what every
ingénue who found their way to Hollywood back in those days wanted:
to be famous. Juan got her bit parts in some movies, but she simply
couldn’t act, and whatever his weaknesses, he was very
conscientious about the bottom line when it came to his studio and
he knew giving Chrissie a starring role would only lose him
money.

“At first he was able to keep her satisfied
with the bit parts, but then she started saying that she wanted to
co-star with some of the studio’s biggest male actors. Juan
couldn’t do that, so he began to appease her with gifts and they
got grander and grander: shopping trips to Paris; skiing in
Switzerland; a pink convertible and the penthouse suite decorated
all in pink.”

“That only worked for so long, right?”

“Right. Chrissie wanted what she wanted and
one day she told him that if he didn’t put her in a starring role,
she’d not only go to his wife about their affair, but she’d also
give her story to Hedda Hopper, a big Hollywood gossip columnist at
the time. Well, Juan couldn’t have that, could he? The rumor is
that he could have easily gotten rid of her if he’d really wanted
to, but he didn’t. She was like a drug to him and that’s when the
Golddigger’s Folly came into play. He presented it to Chrissie on
her twenty-first birthday. It’s so very rare and expensive that he
had a safe installed and made her promise to keep it inside at all
times. It has forty-four carats and one of the deepest raspberry
pinks any jeweler or gemologist has ever seen. And of course, it’s
a princess cut.”

Smith waved his hand in a dismissive,
impatient gesture. “Yeah, yeah. Tell me what happened.”

“Okay, so Chrissie loved the diamond, and
begged Juan to have it mounted so she could wear it. Juan refused.
It’s believed he was afraid to have it worn in public because of
the possibility of theft. Some believe that his wife was aware of
the affair and he didn’t want her to see Chrissie wearing it at a
premiere or just out and about. Whatever his reason, it proved to
be useless because Chrissie died within a week of getting the
diamond, which she was clutching in her cold, dead fist when she
was thrown over the balcony of that penthouse suite.”