I am not offering an excuse, however I am emphasizing that in no way did I expect my transferring the information about the stone to Philip Duke to lead to homicide. When I learned of Thalia’s death, I was as shocked as anyone. Thalia was dear to me. It took a long time for me to integrate the terrible facts and to make sense of them. I finally realized that someone as callous as Philip Duke was likely to attempt to effect a similar end upon me. Frightened, I traveled to the Ojai Valley Inn where I spent two days contemplating my future.
Eventually perceiving that future as dim and hopeless, in addition to having lived with neuralgia and other sources of physical pain for years, and in the spirit of full atonement, I have decided to set my own punishment as capital punishment. In that same spirit, being of sound mind and body and lacking any natural heirs, I hereby bequeath my entire estate to the identical charities benefited by Thalia Mars’s estate, in identical proportions.
Sincerely,
Below that, a description of her estate. Stocks, bonds, real estate. Not dissimilar from Thalia’s. Smaller but still substantial.
“Six mil,” said Milo. “Big Bird’s gonna be soaring.”
Chapter 49
Harold Saroyan looked at Elie Aronson. Elie looked at Milo and me. Both men wore the sad expression of parents forced to punish a usually well-behaved child.
Saroyan, a white-haired, mustachioed man in his eighties, bought and sold colored gemstones from an office in Elie’s downtown building. He’d come to the meeting in a tailored black suit, flawless white shirt, and extravagant yellow cravat, carrying a black leather case from which he drew out a jeweler’s loupe and a stereoscopic zoom microscope.
The meeting was in a high-security room in the crime lab’s property area, accessed by Noreen Sharp’s coded card. Noreen wasn’t there, called moments before to one of the loading docks where two cars, battered and blood-soaked due to a fatal crash on the 101, had just come in.
Just Milo, myself, and the gem dealers, arranged around a plain, gray table. In the center, a gleaming bit of gorgeous, faceted red sat atop a black velvet bag supplied by Noreen. (“Shows off the color, no?”)
Saroyan had begun by holding the ruby up to the light and turning it between his fingers. Following up with the loupe, then the scope, before placing the ruby back.
He sighed. Looked at Elie, again.
Elie said, “Something to tell? Tell.”
Saroyan faced us. “I apologize for having to say this to you. It’s a spinel.”
Milo said, “Which is...”
Elie said, “Not a ruby.”
“It’s a fake?”
“If you tell someone it’s a ruby, it’s a fake. But it’s not glass, it’s another stone, called a spinel. S-P-I-N-E-L.”
Harold Saroyan said, “I knew the minute I held it up but to make you feel better, I had a look inside. No doubt.”
I said, “What did holding it up do?”
“Showed me it has no pleochroism — doesn’t break up light the way a ruby does. Rubies are double-refractive, the light divides at two different speeds. Spinels are single-refractive, you don’t get a prismatic effect. The look inside said the same thing. Spinels have eight-, sometimes twelve-sided crystals. Rubies have six. This one has twelve.”
Milo said, “What’s it worth?”
Saroyan: “Nice spinel, this size? A few thousand dollars. Maybe you could get five.”
“Thousand.”
Elie said, “That’s the point. Not millions.”
Milo sat back in his chair. He’d lost color. I knew what he was thinking.
All those lives for this.
He said, “Obviously, the British Museum wasn’t conned, so it was probably switched with a ruby sometime later.”
Saroyan tugged at the knot of his tie. “Not necessarily, Lieutenant. Dealers in Asia caught on a long time ago but Europeans took longer to get educated. Years ago, a nice blue stone was a sapphire, a nice red stone was a ruby. There’s a big spinel in the British Imperial State Crown that everyone thought was a ruby. Many other situations like that.”
Elie said, “Czars and kings thought they knew what they were getting. They didn’t.”
Saroyan lifted the gem, rubbed it between his fingers. “A little softer than a ruby, seven and a half, eight on the Mohs scale instead of nine for a ruby, but that’s still pretty hard. Making it more confusing, spinels are found where rubies are. They’re actually rarer than rubies. So why aren’t they more valuable?”
He shrugged. “That’s gemstones, it’s all about mystique. Like with women — models. Photographer wants a blonde, pretty brunettes don’t get hired.”
Milo said, “But sometimes brunettes are called for.”
Saroyan said, “True. But so far, the market wants only blondes.”
I said, “So there wasn’t necessarily a substitution.”
“I looked at the pictures of the museum exhibition, sir. No way to know for certain from an old photograph, but I took my time going over it and found facets that are identical to this stone. If I had to bet, it’s the one the Egyptian owned.”
Milo said, “No one would know different until they tried to sell it.”
“Maybe even after they tried to sell it, Lieutenant. Sometimes people aren’t careful. Sometimes they lie.”
“Okay, thanks, gentlemen,” said Milo. “Appreciate your coming down and sorry it was a waste of time.”
“Not a waste,” said Saroyan. “It’s an interesting story. My age, you start to collect stories more than money.”
The four of us exited Hertzberg together. Saroyan got into a gleaming black Mercedes S300, Elie into an equally pampered silver version of the same model.
I said, “So many opportunities for a swindle. Whoever sold it to the Egyptian and who knows how many before that, then onward to the jeweler who consigned with Drancy, Drancy, Hoke, Thalia.”
“Not Demarest,” Milo said. “Idiot. You think Thalia stuck what she thought was a fortune on top of a lamp?”
I said, “That’s the assumption I want to live with.”
“Why?”
“Her having a sense of humor.”
We reached the car. I asked him when I could go public.
He said, “What the hell, nothing to hide anymore.”
“Then hold on for a sec.”
I punched a preset on my cell. Maxine Driver answered at her office.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “About to start office hours. Whining sophomores wanting their grades changed.”
“Keep ’em waiting in the hall, I’ve got a story for you.”
I gave her the basics. Surprisingly short tale.
She said, “That was definitely worth waiting for. You’ve restored my faith in humanity.”
I hung up without comment. But as I drove out of the crime lab parking lot, I thought: What a wrong way to put it.
Chapter 50
Nearly a year after the murder of Thalia Mars, I was invited to a celebration at the Outpatient Division of Western Peds. Normally, I beg off that kind of thing. This time I put on a suit and tie and asked Robin to keep me company.
For the past eleven months, I’d tried to put Thalia behind me with pretty good success. After I’d arranged transfer of her tiny body from the crypt to the mortuary at Forest Lawn in Burbank, I’d selected a hillside plot with a view of a major TV studio, movie lots, and low-rise sprawl.
Scoring her a place near the love of her life would’ve been a nice touch but no room at Hollywood Legends.
No gravestones in this place, so I didn’t need to order one. Everyone got a generic brass plaque installed flat on the emerald turf.