The Heirloom Murders (19 page)

“Yeah? When?”

“Thursday.”

Roelke turned that factoid over in his mind.

“When’s your job interview?” Chloe asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“Oh! Wow. Well, good luck.”

The words were right. But the conversation still felt strained. Not what he needed the night before he sat down to face the three members of the Eagle Village Board’s Police Committee. “Thanks,” he said. “I better get back to prepping for it.”

As if there was something I
could
do to prep, he thought, as he hung up the phone. Finding the person who attacked Chloe—or discovering who had caused him to total his truck—would have looked good to the committee, but that hadn’t happened. Maybe the interviews with him and Skeet were just a formality, anyway. Maybe the Police Committee already knew who they wanted to hire.

Roelke picked up his knife and made a slice that left a gouge in the turtle’s shell. He glared at the botched carving before tossing it in the trashcan. All right, he told himself. Nothing on the job front was formalized yet. Maybe thinking about Bonnie Sabatola would keep him from freaking out about the coming interview.

He flipped the LP on his stereo, set the needle, and sat back down. One thing was clear: being married to rich, handsome Simon Sabatola wasn’t enough to keep Bonnie from calling the EPD and blowing her brains out that day. Maybe that was her husband’s fault. Maybe Bonnie and Simon were both to blame.

He mulled over what Chloe had said. Sabatola was already weeping over his anniversary, eh? His anniversary that happened to fall on a Thursday this year. The one day of the week he routinely got ripped at a blue-collar tavern. Now,
that
might just come in handy.

Roelke’s fingers curled into fists. He was pretty sure Sabatola
was behind the crash. The game had changed when Sabatola
decided to come after
him
. But Roelke knew he’d have to leave the EPD if he didn’t get the permanent job. That meant he was running out of time to figure out what was going on.

Chloe hated Monday morning
staff meetings at best, and today she simply couldn’t face the inevitable hashing and rehashing of Harriet Van Dyne’s murder. She dragged her butt out of bed at 6 AM and drove to the administration building.

She’d already written a note for Ralph Petty: “I am sorry to miss this morning’s staff meeting, but I’ll be in Madison to meet with Leila about the audit.” Leila, the division curator, didn’t know that yet. But Chloe planned to get to her before Ralph did. After tossing the note in Ralph’s mailbox, she fled the office and drove west.

Once at the state historical society building, Chloe tracked down Leila and had the obligatory conversation about the audit. “There’s really not much you can do to prepare,” Leila told her. She was a plump woman, friendly but efficient to the point of curtness. A result of having way too much to do, like most historical society employees. “They’ll probably want to see some accession records, stuff like that.”

“I’ll do my best.” Chloe said. It occurred to her that the damn audit might end up providing Ralph Petty more fodder for her permanent file.

“That’s all you can do. Listen, Chloe … ” For the first time Leila hesitated. She picked up a button hook and toyed with it. “I wanted to say how sorry I am about what happened Friday night. What a ghastly thing. You take care of yourself, OK?”

Chloe promised she would. The audit discussion duly complete, she headed to the archives to look up the Eagle Diamond.

It took ninety seconds to find the card catalog listing. She gave the work-study student the call number and waited while the material was retrieved from storage. The student handed over a single gray box, which held a single file. Geez, Chloe thought. Going through this hadn’t taken much time. Maybe she should look into
moonlighting as a freelancer herself. How much had Valerie earned
by writing her article?

Other than the photocopy of the receipt she’d seen at Dellyn’s house, the file held only news clippings. Chloe started with the latest, dated 1965, which summarized the tale.

Charles Wood found the diamond while digging a well in Eagle, and gave it to his wife Clarissa. Clarissa took the pretty yellow stone to a Milwaukee jeweler named Samuel Boynton. Boynton told Clarissa the stone was probably a topaz. Later Clarissa, now a widow struggling to make ends meet, accepted Boynton’s offer of a dollar for the “topaz.” Boynton then followed his unspoken hunch and took the stone to a gemologist, who declared it a yellow diamond of 15.375 carats, worth an estimated six hundred and ninety-nine dollars more
than Boynton had paid Clarissa.

Chloe frowned. What a prick.

Clarissa sued Boynton to recover the gem. She lost, and had to pay court costs. In 1893, Boynton sold the diamond to Tiffany & Company for eight hundred and fifty dollars. Tiffany sold the Eagle Diamond to J. P. Morgan. His collection was displayed at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889 before he donated it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Quite a donation. Chloe gave a grudging nod of approval to the long-dead financier.

Last year, the Eagle Diamond and two dozen other gems were stolen from the Museum. Three men, including Jack Murphy—dubbed “Murph the Surf” because he was a professional skin diver—were charged with the theft. Some of the gems were recovered, but not the Eagle Diamond. Museum officials still speculate about its fate.

Chloe exhaled slowly and picked up the next clipping. A brittle corner flaked off—this one dated back to 1885. She gave a guilty glance over her shoulder, put the article back on the table where it belonged, and leaned over to read. Two paragraphs in, she sat up straight again. “Shit!”

The researcher at the next table scowled. “Some of us are trying to work!”

“Sorry,” Chloe said in her best library whisper, with her best conciliatory smile. Then she hunched over the clipping again, as if wanting to protect it from prying eyes.

Shit indeed. Valerie Bing was either a pathetic researcher, or a liar.

_____

When Roelke’s interview with the Police Committee ended he drove home and changed into civvies. Then he headed back outside. He was too twitchy to sit at home. Too twitchy to work. Too twitchy to go to Libby’s place.

Twenty minutes later he pulled into Chloe’s driveway. No sign of Chloe’s car. Well, he’d wait a bit. He got out of his truck and sat on her front steps, carefully avoiding the bird’s nest she’d left beside the porch rail.

Another twenty minutes passed before he saw her old Pinto turn into the driveway. She gave him a startled look, parked behind his truck, and walked across the yard. She wore her long denim skirt and a pretty green blouse. Her blonde hair was twisted up behind her neck. He had no idea how women managed to do that with so much hair, but she looked so good that he felt a physical ache inside.

“Hey,” Chloe said, half surprised and half cautious. “You’ve got new wheels. I like the color.”

“Thanks.”

“So … whatcha doing here?”

“Feeling restless,” he said. His right knee was pumping like a piston.

She sat down beside him. “How’d the interview go?”

“OK, I guess.” Roelke spread his hands. “They asked questions. I answered.”

“When do you suppose you’ll hear?”

“Any time.” The knee pumped faster. He watched with an odd sense of detachment, as if it were a piece of runaway machinery
that had nothing to do with him. “If Skeet gets the job, I’ll have
to quit the EPD. I need a permanent position, and another one probably won’t open up in Eagle for years. Besides, I don’t think I could handle working with Skeet every day.” It sounded small, but there it was.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Would you go back to Milwaukee?”

“I’ve already applied for a job that’s opening up there. I’ve got a pretty good shot at that. “

“Oh.”

He stared over the field across the street, where her landlord was baling hay. “What are you going to do about Markus, Chloe?” He heard her sharp intake of breath and plunged on. “I need to know.”

After a moment she said, “I haven’t decided.”

“Jesus, Chloe!” he exploded. “How can you even
think
of going back to someone who treated you so badly?” He didn’t know all the details behind Chloe and Markus’s breakup. But he knew enough.

She rubbed her temples. “It’s complicated. We’ve got a lot of history.”

Another bale popped from the chute and landed on the hay wagon. One of the neighbor kids, riding in back, grabbed it and swung it into place with expert ease. Roelke clenched his teeth. He hadn’t planned to ask Chloe about Meili; the personal question had just burst out. He had no tidy place to put her answer, though. No one waiting to field it and reach for another.

His hands itched for his pocketknife, but he’d left it at home. He picked up the bird’s nest.

Chloe gave him a level stare. “Don’t start on that,” she warned him quietly. “I know you don’t like clutter, but this is
my
house. And just so you know, the cardinal feather is still in my kitchen. You don’t like that, arrest me.”

He put the nest down and jumped to his feet. “Will you come for a drive with me?”

“Um … where to?”

“I don’t know. I just want to get out of here.” He had more to discuss with Chloe. He wanted to do it without wondering if Alpine Boy might show up.

She hesitated, then nodded. “OK.”

Roelke felt a little better as soon as they were in his truck, leaving La Grange behind. “Listen, we’ve had trouble getting along lately,” he said. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“I’m sorry, too.” She twisted in the seat to face him. “And I’m glad you came by. There’s some stuff I want to tell you about the Eagle Diamond.”

Roelke stared at the road. Some asshole had run him off the road and totaled his truck. Some asshole had likely made Bonnie’s life so miserable that she’d killed herself. Skeet Deardorff might be accepting a permanent job offer from the Police Committee this very minute. He really wasn’t in the mood to talk about the Eagle Diamond.

“I did some research in Madison today,” Chloe was saying. “And guess what? Valerie Bing left one little detail out of her article. I confirmed today that a hired hand was working with Charles Wood—”

“Who’s Charles Wood?”

“The guy who originally found the Eagle Diamond. Years later, a reporter interviewed a German immigrant named Albrecht Bachmeier who’d been working as a hired hand when Charles found the Eagle Diamond. I found the article, and listen to this: Bachmeier found another gem!”

“Yeah?” Roelke said, because he knew some response was required. His brain felt like split-pea soup.

“Don’t you get it? There might be a second diamond!” Chloe’s voice was triumphant. “And a diamond like that would be valuable both in monetary and historical terms. Dellyn’s dad was writing a book about the Eagle Diamond. If he’d somehow found Diamond Number Two, with provenance info, it would be a big deal.”

“OK, I get that,” Roelke conceded. “But who would care enough to break into Dellyn’s barn, and maybe even her house, to look for it? Who’d care enough to maybe attack you that night?”

“Maybe Alex Padopolous? He grew up right next door. His mom and Dellyn’s mom were best friends. It’s not a stretch to assume he knew about the whole Eagle Diamond thing. And Dellyn said he wasn’t real bright. Maybe what sounds like a ridiculous scheme to you and me makes perfect sense to him.”

“You can’t teach stupid,” Roelke muttered.

“And here’s another candidate—oh, watch that guy!”

“That guy” was a squirrel which seemed bent on flinging itself beneath Roelke’s tires. He swerved, and watched the squirrel scamper merrily away. Thank God for that. Roelke suspected that Chloe would not react well to a rodent tragedy.

“OK.” Chloe exhaled with apparent relief, and picked up her tale. “This seems less likely, but I’ll just lay it out there. Valerie Bing told me she’d put everything that was known about the Eagle Diamond into her article. But she
didn’t
.”

“Maybe she thought the idea of a second diamond didn’t matter to the main story.”

“Even if she thought so when she was writing the article, I asked her
specifically
about what was in the research file,” Chloe said stubbornly. “And she lied about it.”

“Maybe she didn’t see that clipping you read.”

“She’d have to be a half-wit to have missed it. And Valerie Bing is sharp, I assure you. Although—” Chloe paused. “She also considered her article a puff piece. Nothing to take seriously.”

“You’ve met this lady, not me. Does she seem—hold on.” A dark sedan had zoomed up on Roelke’s ass. The last time someone had tried to kiss his bumper, he’d crashed. If this guy tried the same thing with Chloe in the truck …

The sedan swerved into the other lane, roared past, and disappeared. Roelke unclenched his fingers from the wheel. “Sorry.
Does Valerie Bing seem like the type who’d go crazy over a century-
old rumor of a second diamond?”

“No. But she is desperate for money. Six months ago she was living the high life in New York City. Now she’s living with her parents in Eagle. Libby found out that she got screwed in a nasty divorce.”

“Well, shame can be as much of a motivator as pure greed,” he admitted.

“I imagine so.”

Enough of the Eagle Diamond. “There’s something new about Sabatola,” Roelke said. “I think he was responsible for me getting run off the road that night.”

Chloe stared at him, wide-eyed. “Why would he do that?”

“I have no idea. But if I’m right, it means that Sabatola is trying to hide something big. I have no way to prove he may have been abusing his wife, so … there’s something else going on.”

_____

Chloe processed that news in stunned silence, her skin prickling. “Be careful, OK?
Please
.”

“I will. I’m still digging, though. I’ve learned a little about Sabatola’s childhood. His secretary’s, too.”

“That Guest guy? Dellyn pointed him out to me at the funeral.”

“They both had a rough time as kids. Guest is likely just as needy as Sabatola, but without the good looks and wealthy step-daddy. There’s the possibility of fierce motivation—shame with some greed mixed in.”

Chloe rubbed her arms to ward away shivers. Simon Sabatola, Edwin Guest, Valerie Bing. Could any of them have been the person who attacked her in the barn? It was pretty hard to imagine.

She considered telling Roelke about finding the second rose-carved cultivator in the Frietags’ barn … but she didn’t want to bring Markus back into the conversation. It was unsettling enough to know that Markus would be back at Old World the next day, touring with Dellyn. Chloe planned to lay low.

Besides, maybe the Frietags’ cultivator was just a bizarre coincidence. Maybe some prolific craftsman had made hundreds of them. Maybe rose-carved cultivators were hanging in barns and tool sheds all over southern Wisconsin.

There were more important issues to consider, anyway. The Eagle Diamond probably had nothing to do with Harriet Van Dyne’s murder … but everything revolved around Dellyn.