There was complete and total silence for around thirty seconds while all four thieves looked at each other. Everyone seemed to look extra hard at Kevin. Finally, the man sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll stay. You’re right. Four heads are better than one. I’d rather have a quarter of something than all of nothing.”
“Good,” Jack said. “And this time around, I’m the boss.”
Kevin paused for a minute, then nodded his head once. “You got it. I should have never let Jeremy hold on to the diamond in the first place. I brought him into this job. I knew he was arrogant, but I didn’t think he’d steal from his crew. The man knew the code.”
“I thought you’d worked with him before,” Andrew said, and Kevin nodded.
“Yeah. I did. We worked together in London a few years back. Some high profile hits, we managed to take a couple major jewellery stores over three days for hundreds of millions worth of diamonds. The man was a genius at prosthetics and makeup. He’d held the bag then, and never ran off with it. That was why I trusted him now. But I guess the allure was too strong.”
“Well, the traitor paid for it in the end,” Claire muttered. “Although I’m not sure I like the idea of being in the room with a murderer.”
“We don’t have any other choice,” Kevin said. “Whoever killed Jeremy isn’t going to own up to it. Besides, it’s not like any of us disagree that he didn’t have it coming.”
“Exactly. Now, we move on. We have to find that diamond.”
“It’s one thing to keep saying it, how do we figure it out?” Andrew asked.
“Well I’ve been subtly asking around,” Claire offered. “Haven’t really gotten any good information from anyone here. Nothing that would help us. And it’s not exactly like I can go around asking anyone if they know a good spot to hide a giant diamond.”
“Look on the bright side; he could have decided to hide it in Seattle. Then we’d be completely out of luck,” Andrew said with a wry smile.
“That was probably where he was headed; it was a good thing Jack managed to follow him here and mess with his rental car at the gas station,” Jack said.
“Still, none of this gets us any closer to the diamond.”
“I might have an idea,” Jack said slowly, “but it will take a few days to sort out for sure. I vote we reconvene here on Wednesday, same time. I’ll know by then if my plan to find the diamond will work or not. In the meantime, in case it doesn’t, I want everyone to come up with a plan themselves. We discuss on Wednesday. By this time next week, we will have our diamond back. We’re not going to leave it in this random hick town for someone who thinks California is exotic to find.”
I was more than just a little bit insulted at the insult toward Willow Bay and its residents, but obviously didn’t say anything. I briefly considered “haunting” Jack for the comment, but since I’d get in major trouble for doing it, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Are you sure you’re up for this, Jack?” Claire asked. “I mean, we’re already on tenterhooks around each other. I don’t think anyone in this room trusts anyone else anymore. Should we really be getting together again to do this?”
“If you want out, say it now.”
“I’m not saying I want out. I’m saying maybe this is a bad idea to begin with.”
“If you think it’s a bad idea, leave.”
“If I had any idea where that diamond was, I would.”
Jack glared at Claire. “I could kick you out of the group just for those comments. After all, you’re the one with the diamond connection. You could run off with it and have the diamond be in 50 different pieces for resale in less than a day.”
“Yeah, I could. So doesn’t it say something that I’m actually here?” she replied, folding her arms.
“Just that you can’t figure out where the diamond is on your own and you need our help,” Jack replied. Suddenly, Kevin broke in.
“Stop it. Both of you. Claire’s right, there’s not a lot of trust in this room right now. It’s not going to get helped with arguments like this. Claire, are you in?”
Claire nodded. “Fine. Then act like it.” She scowled, but stayed silent, shooting daggers at Jack. As the meeting broke up, I could tell this was definitely not a group of people who were comfortable with one another.
I slipped out of the library behind the others and thought about what I’d learned. It seemed that none of them actually had any idea where the diamond was. If they did, they would have left and gone off with it, or shared the information with the others. I was certain now: Jeremy Wallace had died with his secret.
It was obvious from the infighting within the group that there wasn’t very much trust there, and that they were getting pretty frustrated with not having the diamond. I wondered what Jack’s plan was to find it. I supposed on Wednesday I would know. I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of me being at that meeting again.
12
As I continued to walk through the main part of town, thinking about everything I’d learned, I realized that by leaving my invisibility spell on I didn’t have to stop and talk to anyone about what had happened at my vet clinic earlier that day. I made my way toward the building, which was still cordoned off with yellow police tape. Someone had put a large piece of plywood up to cover the hole in the front window, and with a bit of debris still lying on the sidewalk around it, the whole place looked, frankly, pretty depressing.
I sighed to myself as I made my way toward the police station; I was going to have to ask Chief Gary about when I could re-open the clinic—hopefully tomorrow!—and that sort of thing.
But before that, I sat down on one of the benches lining Main Street, and looked around. If I was a jewel thief, someone who was new to the town, and I had to find somewhere to hide a diamond at three in the morning, where would I do it?
I started thinking about the skills of everyone involved. Andrew was the tech guy, by the sounds of things. Jack was good with cars, probably the getaway driver. Jeremy was the makeup and prosthetics guy. That fact didn’t really help me very much. What was he going to do, make the diamond look like some random rock and hide it in the forest? And even if he did do that, which I highly doubted, that just meant that the diamond could be literally anywhere on the ground within probably a five mile or so radius from the hotel.
I looked around. There was one thing I could rule out: businesses. Everywhere in Willow Bay was closed by three in the morning. Last call was at two thirty. So that left the outdoors.
I sighed. Suddenly, I thought of something: what if he had decided to hide the diamond indoors? He would have had to break into somewhere, though. I got up from my spot on the bench, then hid in the corner of a doorway and reversed my spell, making myself visible again. I now had two things to ask Chief Gary.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in his office, in one of the chairs across from the man himself. He was on the phone, and motioned for me to sit down while he finished up his call.
“Hi, Angela,” he told me when he finally hung up. “Sorry, I was just about to call you.”
“No problem, I was just in the area and I saw the front of the clinic and thought I’d come in and ask you when I can re-open again.”
“Of course. Tomorrow is fine, if you don’t want to miss a day. I’ll have an officer come by and take the yellow tape off early in the morning. You’ll have to organize the glass repair, of course. There’s no one here in Willow Bay who does glass, but I can recommend someone in Portland if you’d like.”
“Thanks, that would be great,” I replied. Chief Gary rustled through his desk drawer and finally pulled out a business card for a glassworks shop on the outskirts of Portland. It was a miracle he could find anything inside his desk if the top was any indication of his organizational skills. I tucked it away in my pocket for safekeeping.