“Exactly,” she said with a smile as she parked her car in front of Gems World, the jeweler on whose shoulders now rested the responsibility of finding out where this diamond came from.
3
Thormond Linoski, owner and proprietor of Gems World (‘A World of Gems at Your Fingertips’), was a smallish man, with a ring of frizzy hair crowning a large dome, which was attached to a reedy frame. He looked as if he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders for far too many years, and the slightly bewildered look in his eyes confirmed this view. When we walked in, he plastered a thin-lipped but pleasant smile on his careworn face, and greeted us with the kind of professional warmth and friendliness your small shopkeeper learns to master over a long and checkered career.
“Hello there,” he said the moment he recognized our human, and there was a slight diminution of warmth as he eyed her expectantly. Instinctively the man knew that Odelia hadn’t come to the shop to sample his wares, or spend lavishly on a gem, and his next words confirmed this. “You’re here for that diamond, I presume? Has your uncle found the owner yet?” A flicker of hope shone in his pale blue eyes , but when Odelia shook her head, the flicker was replaced by a look of annoyance. “I was really hoping to get quick service from our local police department, Miss Poole.”
“Mrs. Poole,” I corrected the man from my position on the floor. Not that he seemed to notice. He directed a disinterested glance in my direction, then up at Odelia again.
“I don’t feel entirely safe keeping that precious stone in my shop, you know. It’s been one person after another who wants to take a look at it. The sooner you find the owner the better.”
“Maybe you should close up the shop for now?” Odelia suggested, her voice laced with concern. That’s my human for you: always concerned with the wellbeing of her fellow man, even when that fellow man doesn’t show her the courtesy to remember that she’s recently plighted her troth to another fellow man, and is now Mrs. Poole and no longer Miss Poole. Though of course one could argue that she’s actually Mrs. Kingsley, but then Odelia had grown attached to the name her parents christened her with—she has, after all, been carrying that name for the past twenty-four years. One would get attached to something in less time, wouldn’t you agree?
“Close my shop? I can’t close my shop. I have a living to make, you know.” He sighed as he drew a hand across his brow. “Though if that stone really is the famous Pink Lady, maybe I should close my doors for now. And upgrade my security system. I’m really not equipped to deal with the kind of attention a stone of that notoriety will no doubt garner.”
“Do you think it’s the actual Pink Lady?”
Mr. Linoski wavered.“It certainly looks like the genuine article. It has all the hallmarks—it even has very faint markings where you can see it was set.”
“Set in a ring, you mean?”
The jeweler nodded.“Do you want to take a look?”
Odelia’s face lit up with excitement. “Oh, can I?”
“Only because it’s you,” said Thormond, who looked old enough to have dandled Odelia on his knee when she was little. He disappeared through a small door, only to return promptly, carrying a small red velvet box in his hands. He was holding it reverently, as one would hold the hand of the Queen, when granted the rare privilege of an audience with that formidable lady. “Here she is,” he said in hushed tones, betraying his reverence. He placed the box on the glass counter and opened it. Odelia bent over the item, and from her quick intake of breath I imagined this Pink Lady was a realsight to behold.
Odelia gestured to me and Dooley and asked,“Can I…”
The jeweler’s face took on a stern expression, not unlike the wandmaker in the Harry Potter stories if a pimple-faced wizard had wandered into his store and declared that he didn’t like the wand he bought and could he exchange it for one with more bells and whistles.
“I don’t know…” said the jeweler hesitantly as Odelia first picked up Dooley, then me, and ever so carefully placed us on top of the glass counter.
It was a very nice glass counter, as glass counters go, and filled with the kind of stuff that makes people’s heads spin: rings and bracelets and earrings and the like. It all glittered invitingly, and I could see why Mr. Linoski would be reluctant to allow two cats to prance around there: the counter’s main purpose was to display the jeweler’s wares, not as a runway for two cats to strut their stuff, especially since one of those cats was on the heavy side.
But then I caught sight of the Pink Lady—if indeed it was that fabled gem—and I stopped worrying about Thormond Linoski. The diamond was indeed a sight to behold. It was small and shiny and sparkly and, most assuredly, very pink!
“It’s gorgeous, Max,” said Dooley next to me. “But it’s very small, isn’t it?”
“It is very small,” I said. “Although for a diamond I think it’s plenty big.”
“How much do you think it’s worth?”
Odelia smiled and voiced that same question to the jeweler now. Thormond pursed his thin lips and glanced up at the ceiling, as if hoping to draw inspiration from the bright lights that shone down on the counter, and made his gem collection sparkle like a Christmas tree.“Well,” he said after long and careful deliberation, “a diamond of this superb clarity, 24.78 carat in weight, pink coloring, cut to perfection by an expert cutter, would normally fetch seven figures at least.”
“Seven figures?” asked Dooley, who’d been listening with rapt attention.
“Millions,” said Odelia.
The jeweler nodded.“But if it is the Pink Lady, you have to add the history, and if my research is correct that would make this diamond, well, priceless.”
“Priceless?” asked Odelia, as she glanced down at the gem, her eyes sparkling almost as fervently as the diamond itself.
“Priceless,” said Thormond Linoski.
“I don’t understand, Max,” said Dooley. “How can a diamond have no price?”
“He means it’s so expensive it’s impossible to put a price on it,” I explained.
“So… is it worth a lot, or nothing at all?” asked my friend, still confused.
“It’s worth a lot,” I said. “A whole lot.”
“If youhad to put a price on it,” said Odelia. “How much…”
The jeweler shrugged helplessly.“Depends on the buyer. Stones like this are put up for auction, not sold in jewelry stores. We’re talking many, many millions. Though, of course,” he was quick to add, “the point of pricing is moot, since the stone will return to its rightful owner, and won’t enter the market at any point.”
“If it is the Pink Lady…”
The jeweler smiled now—a rare sight, and it caused his leathery face to stretch at the seams. “There’s every chance that it is. But how it ended up on that beach? Now that is a complete mystery.”
“And to think it might have stayed on that beach, and probably would have been swept away by the waves.”
A look of constipation came over the scrawny gem specialist.“I’d rather prefer not to think about that. Imagine a precious and priceless gem like this, perfect in every respect, to be lost forever.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It doesn’t bear thinking. It simply doesn’t.”
“How do you think it ended up on the beach?”
“I can only imagine that whoever was in possession of the stone over the past thirty-odd years must have lost it somehow.”
“The thief, you think?”
“Most assuredly. Are you familiar with the history of the Pink Lady?”
“Only what I’ve read on Wikipedia.”
An expression of distaste flashed across the man’s face, as if to convey the notion that your serious gem dealer doesn’t consider Wikipedia a valuable source of information. “Well, the stone of course belonged to Sheikh Bab El Ehr, ruler of Khemed.”
“Who gave it as a gift to his wife, didn’t he?”