Chapter 6 - BLOOD AND GLASS
Z
The diamond looked disappointingly small for something capable of destroying so many lives.
Norah stood behind the police line in an underground parking garage beneath one of Salvatore DeLuca’s apartment buildings and stared through the windshield.
The Belladonna sat on the dashboard beneath fluorescent lights.
Pear-shaped.
Blue-white.
Beautiful.
And almost certainly a trap.
“You shouldn’t have brought me.”
Luca stood beside her.
“You insisted.”
“That does sound like me.”
His eyes remained fixed on the car.
Blood stained the cream leather driver’s seat.
Enough to be frightening.
Not enough to prove anyone had died.
The Chicago police had finally become officially involved, although the detective speaking with Luca seemed less surprised to find him at a crime scene than Norah would have preferred.
Detective Maya Alvarez approached them.
Forty-something, dark hair pulled into a severe ponytail, eyes that missed nothing.
“You’re Bennett?”
Norah nodded.
“The contractor from the gala?”
“Exhibition designer.”
Alvarez’s mouth moved.
“You’re particular.”
“I’ve had a long night.”
“Welcome to my profession.”
She turned toward Luca.
“And you.”
“Detective.”
“You planning to explain why your people found the vehicle twelve minutes before my officers received an anonymous tip?”
“No.”
“Thought so.”
Alvarez looked through the windshield.
“We haven’t confirmed the diamond is real.”
Norah frowned.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because nothing tonight has been simple.”
A forensic technician finally removed the jewel.
The appraiser arrived twenty minutes later.
He examined it under portable magnification.
Then looked up.
“It’s fake.”
Norah laughed once.
Of course it was.
Luca didn’t react.
Alvarez swore softly.
“How good?”
“Very. Lab-grown stone. Custom cut.”
“Value?”
“Maybe twelve thousand.”
“So the real Belladonna is still missing.”
Norah looked at the blood.
“And somebody wants us to think Salvatore stole it.”
Luca’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
His jaw tightened.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward her.
A bank notification.
Ten million dollars had been transferred twenty minutes earlier from a Vale foundation account into a shell corporation.
The listed beneficial owner was Salvatore DeLuca.
Norah stared.
“Does he own that company?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I know every legitimate company my uncle controls.”
“That leaves a disturbing amount of room around the word legitimate.”
“Norah.”
“Sorry.”
Alvarez approached.
“What happened?”
Luca showed her.
Her expression sharpened.
“Who knew about this foundation account?”
“Graham.”
“Elena?”
“Possibly.”
“And your uncle?”
“Apparently someone wants us to believe he did.”
Alvarez sighed.
“Everybody in this case seems to be framing everybody else.”
Norah stared at the fake diamond.
“No.”
They looked at her.
“It’s one frame.”
Alvarez narrowed her eyes.
“Explain.”
“The same person is creating multiple believable suspects.”
She counted them.
“Me. Ryan. Graham. Elena. Salvatore.”
Luca followed.
“Confusion as protection.”
“Exactly. Every time we get close to one answer, evidence points somewhere new.”
Alvarez looked thoughtful.
“So stop following the evidence?”
“No.”
Norah shook her head.
“Follow what doesn’t change.”
“What doesn’t change?”
“The display.”
She turned to Luca.
“Everything started with the pedestal.”
Back at the hotel, Norah demanded access to the exhibition workshop.
At three in the morning, wearing borrowed sweatpants and one of Luca’s black coats over her dress, she tore apart the replica pedestal.
He watched.
“You look happy.”
“I am.”
“You’re dismantling evidence.”
“I’m dismantling my own property.”
“Alvarez will appreciate the distinction.”
Norah removed the side panel.
“There.”
A manufacturer stamp.
She wiped dust away.
BMC Fabrication.
Her heart stopped.
“No.”
“What?”
Norah touched the letters.
“Bennett Manufacturing Company.”
“Your father?”
“My father closed it before he died.”
“Someone could have reused the name.”
“No.”
She found the serial number.
SB-1704.
Her father always used the same system.
Initials.
Project sequence.
Year.
“This internal frame is seventeen years old.”
Luca crouched beside her.
“But the outside structure was new.”
“Yes.”
Someone had taken part of Samuel Bennett’s original Belladonna pedestal and built it into the gala display.
Without Norah knowing.
“What does that mean?” Luca asked.
She sat back on her heels.
“It means whoever planned tonight didn’t just copy my father’s work.”
“They had the original.”
Norah nodded.
That realization hurt in a place she couldn’t name.
Her father had been gone fourteen years.
His workshop sold.
His tools divided.
His notebooks boxed in her mother’s basement.
Yet somehow a piece of his work had survived in secret.
Luca ran his hand along the frame.
“What was the second compartment?”
“What?”
“The invoice. Your father wrote that Graham wanted a second compartment.”
Norah looked at the metal.
She had been thinking of a compartment large enough for jewelry.
But Samuel Bennett hadn’t built jewelry boxes.
He had built security systems.
A hidden compartment might not be designed to hold valuables.
It could hold information.
She took out her flashlight.
The beam swept through the internal braces.
Then she saw it.
A tiny hexagonal bolt unlike the others.
Norah removed it.
Nothing happened.
She pressed the brace.
A steel strip released.
Behind it sat a narrow cavity.
Inside was an old microcassette.
Luca stared.
Norah’s hands began shaking.
Across the faded plastic label, written in her father’s handwriting, were four words.
IF I DIE, PLAY THIS.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
Then Luca closed the workshop door.
Norah found an old recorder through hotel engineering.
The tape hissed.
Her father’s voice filled the room.
Seventeen years disappeared.
“If someone is listening to this, Graham Vale did not keep his promise.”
Norah covered her mouth.
The recording continued.
“The Belladonna is not merely a diamond.”
Luca went rigid.
“It was purchased using money stolen from the Moretti and Bennett families through a network of charitable trusts.”
Norah turned toward Luca.
His face had gone white.
Then Samuel Bennett said the sentence that changed everything.
“Luca Moretti’s father found the accounts first.”
May you like
A pause.
“And that is why they killed him.”
