“No, she didn’t,” answered Alyx.
I wondered why this woman was revealing Althea’s intimate secrets to Alyx, and at the same time, intrigued by what she was saying.
After several customers came in the store, looked in their direction, and impatiently waited for assistance, Alyx suggested to Carole that they move to the workroom for privacy.
Carole took a seat on the couch and Alyx joined her, with me tailing behind. “Why did she move from Umatilla? Althea never said.”
“When my uncle died,” explained Carole, “Aunt Althea packed up and moved away. I was okay with it until she told me about the desk in your store.”
“I don’t understand. What bothered you about the desk?”
Carole took a deep breath, looked around the room, spotted the coffee pot, and asked if she could have a cup. Alyx apologized for not asking her sooner, and quickly stepped to the credenza, filled a mug with black coffee as requested, brought the mug back to her seat, and handed it to Carole.
“Did she tell you about the one like it that she’d purchased in Africa?”
“She told me that her husband––your uncle––was an overseer in a counting house for a diamond mining company. She said she joined him in Sierra Leone shortly after they were married, and while on their honeymoon, they attended an auction where she saw a desk like the one here in our store, and fell in love with it.”
“Did she tell you about the diamond hidden in the desk?”
“Yes. Althea shared the story with me and Maggie more than once, and it never varied, which led me to believe that maybe some of it was true.”
I too had heard the story once or twice about a young man who worked in the diamond mines and who fell in love with the daughter of a rich diamond company executive. Her father forbade the relationship, and they decided to run away. The young man stole a diamond, the means to their happiness together, and brought it to her. She had the diamond in her hand when the company guards burst in and shot him. They said that she hid the diamond in the desk as a reminder of his love, and so no one could ever prove that he stole it. She didn’t want her unborn child’s father branded as a thief. She never married and kept the desk until she died.
“More than likely,” explained Carole, “the story was fabricated by the auctioneer in order to get more bidders. My uncle said that from the time Aunt Althea brought that desk home, she became obsessed with finding the hidden diamond. She was positive there was a secret compartment where the diamond was hidden.”
“I never would have thought wealth meant that much to her,” said Alyx.
“It didn’t. Finding the diamond did.”
“She told me the desk burned down with the house after they left Sierra Leone. Is that true?” asked Alyx.
“Yes,” replied Carole, “it’s true the desk burned, but it was my uncle who burned it. That’s when she really lost it and my uncle had to put her in a private institution.”
“Did your uncle blame her for what happened?”
“No, not her––the desk. You see, about a year after she acquired the desk, their two-month-old son disappeared from his room. Althea was home and said she didn’t hear anything; she was in the living room searching for the hidden diamond in the desk.”
Alyx’s hand flew to cover her gaping mouth.
“She never told you about it, did she?”
Alyx shook her head. “What happened to the baby?”
“My uncle paid the kidnappers the ransom they demanded––but they never saw their child again––dead or alive.”
Carole took several sips of coffee and Alyx waited for her to continue.
“When she saw the desk in your shop window, she called me. She was so excited, she could hardly speak.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Alyx interrupted, “She told me her original desk burned. She didn’t really think our desk was the same desk, did she?”
Carole shrugged and reached for the mug, and held it aloft for a few seconds before she took a sip and set it down again.
“I don’t know. She never said she did; but in her crazy, confused state of mind, who knows.” Carole stood and placed the coffee mug on the credenza. “Her will stipulates that everything is to go to me upon her death. I don’t want or need any of her things, and that’s why I’m here. Would you be interested in buying the contents of the condominium?”
“Well, maybe not everything. Some of the pieces for sure––if we can agree on a price.”
Carole opened her elegant Gucci purse and took out a key. “I would like for you to determine what it’s all worth and send me a check. In fact, keep the key until everything is gone and mail it back with the check. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d organize and box her papers and such, and leave those for me. Then all I have to worry about is selling her condominium. Detective Smarts said you were also interested in taking her cat. I didn’t know she had one.”
“She told me he appeared at her door at about the same time she first came into our shop.”
“Well, if you find him, he’s yours,” concluded Carole.
Two thoughts came to my mind upon hearing this conversation: Was Althea’s death somehow connected to the diamond stolen from Hall’s Jewelry? Or was it something else altogether? After hearing what Althea’s niece had to say, I now had my doubts. What if in her twisted thinking, Althea believed that the desk in our shop was the same desk that she’d had in Africa, and she’d told someone here in Beachside about the diamond in the desk story?
“If you want to know the character of a man, find out what his cat thinks of him.”
––Anonymous
CHAPTER TEN: Simon’s Nocturnal Visit
David Hunter rang the doorbell and stepped back. Alyx hurried to the foyer, peered in the mirror, fluffed her hair, and added color to her lips before she opened the door.
“Hi, David, come in. I wasn’t expecting you for another twenty minutes.”
“I can leave and come back later, if you’d like.”
“No––it’s fine. I’m ready to go, if you are.”
“Good. The restaurant is well known for fresh seafood and is usually crowded. I’m sure tonight will be no exception. They don’t take reservations, so I came a little early if you’d like to have a drink on the deck while we wait for a table.”
“Sitting outside on the deck with a glass of wine sounds wonderful, even if it’s too dark for an ocean view.”
“I’m glad to see you look much better than you sounded when I spoke to you the other day.”
“It was a shock finding Althea like that. She was murdered you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. How did you find that out?”
“Detective Smarts came to ask me more questions, and he told me.”
The lawyer in David prompted him to ask several questions of his own, I surmised from my perch on top of the sofa.
“I’ll be glad to go to the funeral with you, if you like.”
“There won’t be one. Her niece came to see me today and said Shady Rest will simply bury her at their convenience when her body is released.”
“That’s not very common, is it?”
Alyx shrugged, “No, not really. Carole––that’s her niece––told me some interesting things about Althea. I’ll tell you on the way. I’m ready for that glass of wine.”
On their way out, Hunter looked at me and asked what the girls and I had been up to, and Alyx told him about all of us cats accompanying her to the store every day.
“Maybe they know something about this case that no one else knows,” he said with what I thought was a serious face. Was that an invitation for us to get involved?
Alyx hesitated before she responded, “You may be right. Nothing Murfy does is a surprise to me anymore.”
Was she thinking the same thing?
Keeping track of all the goings-on at the store, plus dodging the reaching hands of those who wanted to hold, and in a few cases, pull our tails, made the day an exhausting one. It had been especially trying one for Pooky, who was still sprawled on her back in the middle of the living room where she’d tossed herself on our arrival home.