“You haven’t answered my question-”
She spun on him, her brandy-colored eyes blazing. “Cosmo’s lied to me, cheated on my mother and now you’re telling me he’s stolen. A man like that doesn’t deserve filial duty, he deserves what he gets. Now, what do you want?”
She’d still avoided the question, but he’d allow it. The non-answer was answer enough for him. He held her drink out, until she slowly stepped forward and accepted it as she sat. She donned that controlled façade of hers while she sipped, ice tinkling like a wind chime before a storm.
He wished he could tell her the truth about his ruse. But then, she hadn’t been very forthcoming with Hunter. He frowned. Telling her he was a cop might not get him anywhere, and it would be a stupid risk to give her that kind of ammunition.
Best to play it out as Mickey the hood. “I need to know what I’m dealing with, searching for. What does ten million dollars in gems look like?”
She snorted. “It could look like anything, depending on what type of gem. The problem is you’re talking about a lot of stones for that kind of money.”
Mickey massaged the back of his neck, where the first trace of a headache always started. “No, the package was something Cosmo could easily carry and conceal. Wouldn’t diamonds be worth that much?”
Iris leaned over, showing a length of supple spine, as she rooted on a shelf beneath the coffee table’s glass top. Her hands tugged an oversized book into view, and she flipped through the pages, before laying it on the table before them.
Mickey liked that she sat much closer to him now that her attention was captured by their topic. The headache receded, and he leaned forward to peruse the book.
“In today’s market, diamonds are more plentiful, therefore, their price isn’t as high. Now, there are still special finds, large uncut stones that could fetch that sort of price, but there’s been no publicity of a find like that for years. The largest diamonds mostly belong to Britain’s royal family and are held in state at the Tower of London.”
Her pink manicured nail traced from photo to photo as she named them. “There’s the Koh-i-Noor that belonged to the Queen Mother, and the Cullinan Two found in the Imperial State Crown. The Cullinan One, or First Star of Africa, in the royal scepter is the second-largest cut diamond in the world. Its estimated value is around four hundred million dollars.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s 530 carats.”
“Say it so I can understand it.”
“It’s roughly the size of a large pear.” She held her hand up, her thumb and fingers curved open to form a large open C. “Like this.”
“So, ten million dollars’ worth of diamonds should be much smaller.”
“It’s not that simple.” Iris riffled the pages for another picture. “You could have an uncut diamond that same size that wouldn’t be worth even one million dollars.”
“How’s that?”
“Until a gem is cut, it’s just another rock. Many have imperfections that will prevent them from ever becoming valuable gems. Some can be cut and polished, but if they don’t have exquisite clarity, then they’ll have a lower value. Each finished gem is judged on its carat weight, cut, clarity and color.”
Mickey scrubbed his face with his hands. The headache was definitely returning. “What color? Diamonds are all clear, aren’t they?”
Iris laughed, this time amused by him. He found he liked the idea of making those lips twist into an unplanned smile. “Diamonds can be classified as white, yellow, blue or pink. When you look closely at them, they have fire inside.”
He scanned the open pages as he reviewed what she’d said. Something needed to add up better than all this. “Why would anyone involve Cosmo in stealing diamonds?”
She shrugged. “Are you sure they’re diamonds?”
“They’re the most valuable gems, right?”
As Iris shook her head, her bronze curls cast a riot of fiery light. “Too plentiful, over-mined. The real money is in rare colors of emeralds or sapphires or…” Her voice trailed off and she tapped her lower lip with her index finger.
Now there was a look he liked. Then he noted her furrowed brow. She retrieved the book and flipped some more pages before setting it back down again. “Or, if you’re looking for a reason to tie in Cosmo, there’s always alexandrite.”
“Alexandrite? What’s that?”
She pointed to two pictures showing a green rock and a red rock. “That’s alexandrite. It’s arguably the highest priced gemstone on earth. Well-cut gems of the highest quality could sell for as much as a million dollars per carat.”
Mickey studied the pictures. “It comes in red or green?”
“The stones are red and green. Alexandrite has an interesting property. The stones look green by daylight, but if you put them under incandescent lighting, they turn red. Those pictures are of the same stone.”
“Now there’s a trick I’d like to see.”
“It’s not a trick of the eye. It’s a property inherent to the chemical makeup of the stone.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of alexandrite before?”
“It’s very rare. The initial find was in the Ural Mountains of Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. A selection of the stones was presented to the Romanov family and named for their son Alexander.”
“Romanov, as in-”
“The Russian czars, until Nicholas II and his family were put to death by the Bolsheviks. Alexandrite, once prized in Russia, went out of fashion.” Iris shrugged. “This wasn’t that big a deal, since after the initial expedition, there was precious little of it ever found. Some alexandrite was mined in Brazil back in the 1980s, but nowhere near the quality of the original Russian stones.”
“So, ten million in alexandrite would be very easy to carry or conceal.”
Iris nodded.
“And Cosmo knew all this history?”
She nodded again. “Because of my mother’s Russian heritage, Czarist alexandrite was a bedtime story for me. Mom told me over and over about how one set of ten jewels were all cut from a single alexandrite stone by one of our ancestors. The jewels were given to Alexander II and placed into a new crown, but the crown was never used. I guess it was a myth.”
“Myth?” Mickey pierced her with his gaze.
“There’s never been any proof the story is true, but Mom always believed in it.”
Mickey downed his drink, conscious that his headache was gone. At last things were beginning to fall into place. Of course, if he hadn’t been so interested in Iris, he might have seen the problem from this angle long before now. The magician hadn’t been some happenchance choice-Cosmo’s bosses had a motive in hiring him to move the gems.
Cosmo knew about alexandrite from his Russian wife; he possibly had connections over there. And Mickey knew the magician had flown back from St. Petersburg three nights before.
Mickey started to rise when he heard a telephone trill. Iris lurched to her feet, reaching up to touch her hair as if to be sure everything was as it should be. She faltered a moment when she realized her pins were gone and her hair down.
“Excuse me,” she said before hurrying toward the kitchen. He waited, and his silence was soon rewarded. “Hi…No, I’m here and everything is fine…What?”
During the lengthy pause, Mickey had to force himself to remain seated.
“I just found out today…Well, shocked, really…Oh, now he didn’t kill anyone-even the police said they didn’t think he was responsible. It’s just that the body was in his car, so naturally they want to question him, only he seems to have disappeared.”
The ragged breath she drew told him in an instant she needed someone on her side. “And there’s something else you should know, something I just learned. Cosmo committed bigamy, and he had two other families…Yes, I have two younger half sisters.”
The tone of defeat in her voice tugged at him. Mickey rose, ill at ease with eavesdropping on even half her conversation with the noble if clueless David. Still, he crept toward the doorway to watch her. Why did she always sound like she was apologizing to the guy?