The Fighter's Block (46 page)

“Did you
put it in a safe deposit box?”

“
No
,
I was
in Italy
. I was there again
three
year
s ago
and
that’s when
he gave them to me. That’s when
I brought them back with me.”

“A million dollars in jewelry?”

She smiled. “Pretty much. I wore
half
of it—people are hardly aware of what’s real and what’s fake—
and
my sister wore
the other half
.”

“
Your sister Jaime
?”

She eyed him for a second. “You ask questions like an investigator,” she teased.

He tried not to seem
guilty
. “Sorry. This is just fascinating, I guess.”

She shrugged. “
My other sister,
Fontaine. She and I did a shoot together—one last hurrah f
or me with my sister, I guess. M
y parents didn’t know about it because I didn’t want them to know. They found out about it later on, but only Fontaine got the backlash from it
since I wasn’t speaking to them
.”

“How come they were so upset? Because you kept it from them?”

She shrugged again. “We didn’t get along.
I had quit the industry because of them and told them I didn’t want anything to do with it. I guess I didn’t want them to know about the shoot because it was like…letting them win a tiny battle in a war.
But they found out about it from one contact or another.”

“So what of the jewelry? How would Quincy have it?”

She sighed. “I don’t know for sure.”

“Well just...tell me what you think.”

“Okay, well first of all,
t
he jewelry
was
missing when I
moved
out of Brian’s apartment.
The box it
was in
wasn’t where it should have been
when I looked for it later
.”

“Did Brian know you had it?”

She sighed again. “Yes. Unfortunately. I didn’t mean for him to come across it, even though he knew I had a lot of high dollar things. But I kept it in a
handbag that I pretty much just hung up to look pretty. He had tossed it to me one night when I was trying to decide on an accessory and the box kind of dumped out.”

“The jewelry did
,
too
?”

“Yeah, just a bracelet.
Javier had given me a bracelet, a necklace, a ring, and two sets of earrings.
I put it away, letting
Brian
think it was just the one piece. That was the night we broke up. I didn’t think anything about it until I went through all my things after moving out. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I just assumed that he’d found them and pawned it all. I was hea
rtbroken but… What could I say?” Her face darkened when she added, “
He had the nerve to ask me
about it later on.”

“He did? When?”

She swallowed, caught in her own summation. “Um… Well…”

Cole could only assume. But if he didn’t ask about it, wouldn’t she be suspicious?

He didn’t have to because she quietly said, “When he raped me.”

Just hearing her say the words was like a punch to the stomach. He knew the entire story already, so why was he feeling like it was the first time he’d heard it?

Because it was.
Studying
case files was one thing; sharing intimate secrets with a friend was something entirely different.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

She took a deep breath, obviously still affected by it. “Anyway, he paid Quincy to get me there, but I didn’t know that at the time. Brian asked me where the jewelry was and when I said I didn’t have it, he got all upset. Apparently it’s what he’d been scheming for.
I think that’s why he was so crazy about getting back together with me.
”

Cole had to slow his mind down. It was like seeing half of the puzzle with various pieces scattered around, but it still wasn’t enough to tell what it was. “And he only knew about it since the night you guys broke up?”

“I think so. He looked surprised when he saw it
because I’d had to sell a lot of items to take care of my financial situation.
When I first started dating Brian, I had already used up most of my savings to help my brother out. I knew he would pay me back eventually when he could, but there were more and more things that just added up and… Brian was really sweet to me. It makes me sick to say that, but he was. And he even helped me out quite a bit when I didn’t have money for this or that. He paid for a lot of things without ever expecting anything in return.

“Or so I thought at the time,
”
she frowned. “I wasn’t in love with him, but living with him made things so much easier. He even asked me to marry him and I said I would think about it. But my life seemed so much better because I had a place to live rent-free and someone that treated me well. I said yes, eventually. I guess I felt like I owed him that, but maybe I was using him because it was convenient? It’s probably why I deserve all of this,” she sighed.

“Jesus, Dani. You don’t deserve any of this.”

“Well eventually his true colors started to come out. Thank God I started to see it before I really did marry him.”

“He became abusive?”

“No, not physically right away. But stupid little things, like questioning what I was wearing that night, or how I did my hair. He started to make me feel really self-conscious. And then he moved on to bigger comments about my friends or where I
went or what I did.”

“The subtle signs of an abuser,” Cole nodded knowingly.

“Yeah. But then it became not so subtle, you know? When he hit me at the club that night…”

“He hit you?”

“Yes. And once was one time too many.”

“Good for you.”

“That’s when I met Van. He saw me a few minutes after it happened.”

Cole forced himself to smile. God, why couldn’t
he
have been there that night? “And Van made an instant enemy, huh?”

“Yes,” she frowned. With a sigh she added, “Sometimes I wish things had happened differently but… Who knows if things would have turned out different or not. Sorry for the pity party. I guess I just wanted you to see why I was with that creep. Maybe I feel like people are judging me, and now Van is in this big mess because of it…”

“I don’t judge you. And if other people do, they can kiss off. We live and we learn. If it
wasn’t
that then it would have been something else. We all have shit that we have to struggle through. Nobody’s exempt from it.”

Hearing that made Dani feel a lot better. It didn’t fix the mess she was in, but at least she felt comfortable talking to Cole about it. He had a way of making her feel at ease.

“But anyways,” she sighed. “Back to the jewelry.”

Cole nodded. “So did Brian ask
about
the bracelet
when he saw it
?”

“Yeah, he said something like, ‘Nice, was that a gift?’ So I told him yes, and told him about Javier’s daughter.”

“And that was it? He didn’t ask anything else?”

“No. He knew I had things like that
before, but
I’d been gradually selling
them
to help my brother after a car accident
.
Those
weren’t
going to
be sold
, though.
They
were
too sentimental.
”

Cole was silent again as he thought. “Okay, so how does Quincy come into all this?”

She took her time answering as she tucked her legs up under her. “Van broke his nose when he found out about what happened. Um, what Brian did to me
and how Quincy was
involved
.
A few days later Q came back to the apartment building to move his stuff out. I was the first one to see him
t
here because I was finishing up in
the laundry room.”

Cole nodded. The laundry room was right by the stairwell.

“He saw me and we just kind of…had an awkward moment. I was…so hurt about what he’d done and… Anyway, I loaded up my laundry really fast and headed back to Van’s apartment before he found out Quincy was there, but Eddie
had already
called up to warn
Van that Q was in the building. Van
bolted out the door to find him. Thank God Cody was there to stop anything from happening but…” She sighed and looked Cole in the eye. “I saw the box.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. “The jewelry box? Are you sure?”

“Not positive, but it
was a silver
case
that looked just like it. It was in a cardboard box that Q was moving his things out in, just right
there
on top, stuck in a pair of shoes.”

Cole settle
d
back against the couch after he realized how into her information he was. It blew his mind, but he had no idea if it had anything to do with Van’s case or
could set
him free. “So how do you think Quincy got the jewelry?”

“I don’t know if he has it.”

“Well you didn’t assume? How come you didn’t say anything? I mean right then would have been the perfect time.”

“
There was too much going on.
But he did set the cardboard box down when he thought he was going to be defending himself
against
Van, and when no one was looking, I opened the silver case. There was nothing in it. Then Quincy told everyone to fuck off, picked up his stuff,
and left
for his car
.”

“So what makes you think he’s got them?
Maybe he pawned them
?”

“I had pictures of the items. I took them to all the
pawnshops
in the area.
I didn’t get anywhere. No one had come across anything like it. I’m not sure if I’m glad about that or not.”

“
So how do you think
Quincy
got
the diamonds?
If he even did.
”

“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.
He had the case, but that doesn’t mean he had the jewelry.
”

“So you want to break into his place—wherever it is he’s living—and just…look for them?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe Brian
had misplaced the jewelry and then
ended up finding
it
again. Maybe
that’s how he paid Quincy or Quincy stole it from him.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t do anything with them except hang the purse b
ack up
on
the closet
door
when
we left
that night
.
If he went to take them from the handbag and discovered them missing, d
id he think I somehow
took them with me
?”

That was a good question, Cole thought, and another puzzle piece was reappearing right in his mind but he couldn’t tell her about it
yet
.

“Who helped you move?”

“Van. And Cody and Paul met us there. That was the first time I met them.” When he didn’t say anything she
defensively
added, “I didn’t know them then, but I know them now. Neither one of them would steal something like that.”

“I didn’t say they would.”

“Well you looked like you were considering it.”

“I was only thinking to myself.”

“Fine, but I love those two like brothers. They would never do something like that.
And all they did was carry the big stuff and the things that were already bagged or boxed up.
”

“Have you mentioned this to either one of them?”

“The jewelry? No.”

“And you didn’t even tell Van?”

“No. Well not in so many words. I’ve said things in general like how Brian had gotten rid of a lot of my things. Van didn’t really know at the time that I owned so many things of value. He didn’t really know the extent of my career.”

“You kept it from him on purpose.”

She didn’t answer right away. But it was the truth so she said, “Yes. I really just wanted to move on from all of that. When I met Van it was like the
real
part of my life was just beginning. Whatever it was about him…I just felt like it was where I was meant to be. I didn’t care about my past or anything else. It didn’t mean anything to me.”