Snake in the Glass (17 page)

Nessa knew me well. “But that’s not all, is it?” she prompted quietly.

“No.” I swallowed again. “Matt had asked the medical examiner to see if there were any unidentified bodies that had come in recently. Only one had, last Sunday, and he wasn’t Cam. But . . . well, he had some pebbles in his pocket, and nothing else, and the ME mentioned it in passing when he talked to Matt. Then Matt put two and two together, and got hold of a few of the pebbles, which turned out to be rough peridot. So Matt got a picture of the dead guy and when he showed it to Denis, Denis fell apart. Seems that the dead guy was a colleague of his at the university, and apparently they had some shared real estate investments and were working on this gem deal together.”

We all fell silent for a moment. Nessa looked thoughtful, and I thought I saw a glint of tears in Allison’s eyes. “Did he know anything about Cam?” she said in little more than a whisper.

“Sort of. He said Cam was doing some kind of computer consulting work for them, but that he, Denis, had never met Cam—his partner Alex handled all that, and now Alex is dead.” That didn’t sound good even to me.

“Isn’t there someone else involved—a buyer or a dealer?” Nessa asked.

“Yes, but Denis claims that Alex handled all of that too.” Denis sounded like a real idiot, didn’t he? He’d put up money, and then let his partner handle everything else. And now he was stuck with the whole mess, and a dead partner.

I needed to get back upstairs and see what Matt and Frank had made of the interview. “Look, let me find out what happens next, and I’ll call down, okay? Right now I want to see what Matt thinks he can do.”

When I entered my place, Matt was talking on his cell phone. He looked up when I came in, his eyes dark. More bad news? I was staring out the window over the sink at the darkness beyond when Frank joined me.

“Something’s rotten there,” Frank said in a low voice.

“You think so too? Denis is either lying or covering up something, but I have no idea what. Are these stones worth it, Frank?”

“Who’s to say? They’re worth what somebody’ll pay for them.”

Not worth a life. Had Alex really died for a bunch of pretty green gravel?

Matt finally snapped his phone shut and announced, “We’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

“That was the ME’s office. You remember I asked the ME to take a closer look? He sent one of his assistants in, as a favor to me, and he just gave me the results. Alex didn’t die of exposure. His skull was fractured—a blow to the back of the head, but it didn’t show up until somebody took some X-rays.”

Well, well. Frank was right: something here was rotten. “Was it an accident? Maybe he fell off something out there and hit his head?”

“Not where he was found, out in the open, on flat ground.”

“So it’s murder?”

“I’m afraid so. Damn! The guys who collected the body sure as hell weren’t looking for evidence, and I doubt there’s anything there now.”

I sat down heavily on the couch. “What happens now?”

Matt crossed the room and sat next to me, watching my face. “I need to have another talk with Denis. I’m not sure he’s told us everything.”

“I thought he looked pretty surprised when he found out about his colleague, but does he have any idea why Alex is dead?”

“Maybe Alex didn’t tell him everything. It sounds like Denis still hopes to pull off this gem deal; maybe he doesn’t want us to spook the buyer. Right now we don’t have a lot of facts. But we’ve got more latitude to look into things, now that we’ve got a suspicious death. You let me do my job, not that it’s going to be easy—this mess involves more than one jurisdiction. The Pima County sheriff takes the lead, but they’re keeping me in on it. At least we know there’s a crime now, but we’re a long way from connecting it with Cam or the stones.”

“What—you don’t think all this is connected? That the guy who hired Cam is found dead in the desert with peridot in his pocket, and Cam just happens to disappear at the same time?”

“Em, I’m not downplaying your concerns. I’m doing what I can.”

I leaned against him. “I know. I just feel so helpless, and I hate that.”

“I know you do.” He put his arm around me and kissed my forehead.

“Hey, lovebirds, I’m still in the room, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Frank.” I almost
had
forgotten he was here. “So what’s your take on all this?”

“I think Alex had the right idea—scope out how big the deposit might be before getting too excited. By hiring Cam, an outsider, he was keeping it quiet. I can see why he started tinkering with the stones. Of course, maybe he didn’t know what could be done with them, when he hired your brother.”

It took me a second to make the next logical conclusion. “So Alex might have had a reason to shut Cam up, if he realized the stones could be more valuable than he thought?”

“I didn’t say that. Besides, they might have signed some sort of confidentiality agreement—not uncommon where gems are concerned. And Cam would have stood by that.”

“But how would Alex know that about Cam? Still, it’s Alex who’s dead, not Cam.” I hoped. And no way could I see my brother killing anyone—besides, if he had, he would have turned himself in to the closest authorities immediately, not tried to cover things up. Cam’s like that.

“Em,” Matt interrupted, “you’re getting ahead of your facts. Let’s take this one step at a time. The ME will report the homicide to the sheriff, and I’ll tell him that we know who it is, and why. The sheriff will investigate. I will contribute what I know to the investigation, and hope that the sheriff will share what he finds. And that’s as far as I’m willing to speculate at this time. Let’s find out who killed Alex, and then maybe we’ll have more to go on.”

“Easy for you to say—Cam’s not your brother,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, Em. I know this is hard. Right now I’m going to head for Denis’s place and let him know that Alex’s death is officially being considered a murder.”

I felt a sense of relief, reluctantly. I needed a little time to mull over what we had just learned.

“Em, I’ll keep you informed, I promise. And, Frank, can you do something for me? Sniff around the Gem Show and see if there’s any buyer who’s said anything about fancy new stones?”

“Already on it, Matt.” Frank looked pleased to have been included. “I talked to a couple of mates this morning, and they’ll get back to me. Could be the buyer made promises to others that he can’t keep thanks to Denis and Alex, and now he’s pissed.”

“Thanks. Em, walk me out, will you?”

Matt stood up. It took a major effort to get myself off the couch, but Matt lent a hand. I followed him toward the door; the dogs followed both of us, hopeful. At the door he turned and said, “It may not feel like it, but we have made some progress.”

“I suppose I should be glad that my instincts about Denis were right, but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding Cam.”

“Actually it does. We know more than we did. I’ll contact you if I hear anything new.” Frank’s presence did not deter Matt from bidding me a proper farewell.

I called Nessa and Allison, giving them permission
to shut down the still-empty shop for lunch, and they arrived in less than three minutes. Poor dogs: Fred and Gloria had seldom seen so much company in the space of a few hours, and they were beside themselves with excitement. They were particularly fond of the latest arrivals, so the exchange of greetings took another few minutes. Finally we all found seats for ourselves (dogs included).

“All right, let me give you the condensed version.” I outlined what Matt had heard from the ME’s office as well as our mutual speculation about Denis, with a few small corrections from Frank. The women didn’t interrupt until I had run out of steam.

Nessa was the first to respond. “So, in a nutshell: Denis Ryerson and Alex Gutierrez were business partners. Alex is dead, murdered by an unknown person. Alex hired Cam to do some work for them; Denis did not know Cam but knew
of
Cam. Everything we know that Denis has done has been legal, but he’s acting very nervous. Matt agrees that there’s something going on, and he shares your concern about Denis. Do I have it right so far?”

“You’ve got it, Nessa. And don’t forget that there’s someone else involved—this mystery buyer. That does explain why Denis is so eager to produce the stones he’s been working on: he needs the buyer’s money to pay off his debts, or at least part of them, or the bank may seize the property. And that buyer may not want to wait around after the Gem Show is over. What do you think, Frank?”

Nessa nudged Frank gently, and Frank awoke with a start from what looked suspiciously like a nap. “What? Oh, right, love. Makes sense. Denis needs him—he can’t wing it because he doesn’t know the market or the players. On his own he’d get bottom dollar, and I doubt he’s got enough stones yet to cover whatever he owes. Since it sounds like Alex had the head for business, he probably checked out the buyer. I’d like to know who this guy is.”

“So would I. You think you can find him, Frank?”

“If he’s here, I’ll smoke him out. If he thinks he has something hot coming, he’d be spreading the word, with or without the product to show. He could stir up a bit of excitement in advance, like. Besides, the good stuff doesn’t necessarily show up on the convention floor—there are deals going on all the time.”

“Maybe Mr. Whoever took out his frustrations on Alex, or was trying to send a message, because they didn’t deliver when promised,” I suggested.

“Maybe but not likely.” Frank didn’t sound convinced. “Like you said, why kill the source? Not worth it.”

I knew I was grasping at straws, but I really didn’t like what I was hearing. Apparently I’d had the right idea all along: stay as far away as possible from the whole gem trade. “Frank, is this really what your business is like? I mean, would somebody kill for something new and different?”

“Ah, Em, that’s a hard one. On the one hand, it’s a big business, big dollars—look at the international diamond trade. At the other end of the scale, there are a lot of people out there on their own, following leads, sinking their own money into exploration, hoping to make that one big find. Even if they do, things don’t always work out—they can be pressured by the big guys to sell out or else risk being shut out of the market. It happens, and I wouldn’t rule it out in this case.”

Not what I wanted to hear. “If Denis doesn’t make his deadline, what’s going to happen?”

“The buyer will most likely go on about his business and leave town. It means more to Denis than to him.”

“I know that makes sense, but Alex is dead. Why? Are the stones that important, or is there something else going on that we don’t know about?” Another thought slammed me from the side where I wasn’t looking. “Damn!”

“What?” Nessa and Allison said in unison.

“Maybe it’s farfetched, but what if this buyer
is
the one who went after Alex, and he still wants something from Denis? How would he pressure him?” Before anyone else could speak, I answered my own question. “Denis has a wife—Elizabeth. If the partner’s dead, she’s the closest person to him, so if this unknown of ours wants to lean on Denis, he could go after her next.” How were we to know how desperate this silent partner was? “If I was Denis, I would have gone straight home, collected her, and headed to parts unknown. He’s in way over his head, and he was pretty rattled even before he found out that Alex was dead, let alone murdered.”

I found my cell phone and punched in Matt’s number. He answered on the fifth ring. “Em, I don’t—”

“I know. Where are you?”

He sighed. “In front of Denis Ryerson’s house.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “And?”

“He’s gone. His wife is gone. His car is gone. They’ve flown the coop.”

“Any signs of violence?”

“Nope. Neighbor said he and his wife came out of the house with suitcases and drove away.”

“Are you going to go looking for him?”

“I can’t—it’s the sheriff’s case, and technically Denis isn’t even a suspect. I’ll tell him what I know, and it certainly looks suspicious. But that’s all I can do.”

I could think of several things that would be satisfying but unquestionably illegal to do to Denis—if only we could find him. “Well, thanks for trying.”

“Right. And Em? Keep your eyes open, will you? Maybe your feeling is contagious, because this just keeps getting weirder to me.”

“Will do. And I’ve got Frank to protect me.” I looked over at him, and Frank winked. “I’ll talk with you tomorrow.”

I shut the phone and tried to figure out what I felt. The good news was Denis and his wife were alive and traveling under their own power at the moment, according to a witness. The bad news was Denis was our only real source of information, and now he was in the wind.

“They’re gone?” Nessa asked.

“They are. They must have moved fast, since Matt wasn’t far behind them.”

“Well, it looks as though Denis is either guilty of something or afraid of someone.”

“I don’t know which I prefer.”

“But what about Cam?” Allison chimed in. “We still don’t know where he is.”

When Frank spoke, we all turned to him. “We may yet have a lead, Em. The stones are local, and Denis said Alex found them on a piece of land they’d bought together. We locate their properties, we can make a good guess. And I can probably eliminate a lot of places where that kind of stone just couldn’t be, based on rock formations or lack of ’em.”

I could have kissed him. “Frank, you’re a genius. I knew we were keeping you around for a reason. If we find where the stones come from, maybe we find Cam’s trail. How do we find out where the properties are?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“On how fast your local government records property transfers—purchases and sales. Know any local real estate agents?”