Alex Harris 00 - Armed

break. The weather turned sunny and cold, but the weatherman on CNN forecast snow for Christmas Eve. I hoped so. I loved white Christmases and besides, we had new sleds for Henry and Kendall and needed the good stuff, not the icy snow currently covering everything. I found a table by the large picture window and hung my coat on a rack at the back of the bakery.
    “I really shouldn’t, but okay, yes, I’ll take a slice of your three-layered chocolate cake and a cup of your Christmas tea,” I responded to the young waitress who probably heard these guilty protests a hundred times a day. What the heck. In the last week I lost a few pounds due to poor eating, lack of sleep, and stress. Finding a body will do that to you.
    I took a sip of the tea as John pulled into the space next to mine. Dressed casually today in a pair of jeans and a pale blue oxford cloth shirt, I could see what a good-looking man he was but more importantly he seemed like a good guy. Before I got in too deep, I wanted Meme to meet him. Hopefully, she would give me the thumbs-up sign when they met on Christmas night. He took a giant step over a puddle of slush and came inside.
    “Sorry I’m late. Good, you’ve ordered.” He took off his jacket and draped it over his chair. A few people looked over at him with startled expression at the sight of the gun.
    He glanced at the menu and decided on a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of fresh cherry pie. His choice of food always surprised me. I didn’t think of this tall, rather well built man as the hot chocolate type, though the cherry pie was exactly what my father would have ordered. And Grandpa. Yikes. I hoped John had nothing more in common with my au naturale grandfather.
    “Your phone call sounded ominous. Is something wrong? Oh, my!” I gasped. I put down my fork and looked seriously at him. “You’re going to tell me Richard Sheridan killed Mrs. Scott. That’s it, isn’t it?” My hand went up to my chest and I held my breath while I waited for John to confirm my suspicions. “Well?”
    “Let me tell you what I’ve been up to since last night.”
    “Is this allowed? I mean sharing evidence with me?”
    “Probably not.” He shrugged. “I picked Richard Sheridan up last night. He wanted his lawyer so we had to wait almost two hours for the lawyer to show.” The waitress arrived and asked if I wanted more hot water. When she left John continued. “I knew someone else had to be involved other than Emmanuelle.”
    “You mean she admitted to diamond smuggling?”
    “No. But I’ll get to that. We know smuggled diamonds don’t come from some little town in Iowa. Hiding diamonds in the eyes was brilliant. Who would look at a box of doll eyes headed for a mannequin factory? Sounds innocent enough to me.”
    I nodded my agreement and he continued with his story. A little too slow for me, but I needed to work on my patience skills.
    “Tuesday night, after we found the diamonds, I did some digging. I called a good friend of mine, Ken Clark, up in Boston, and asked him to do some checking. He’s pretty high up on the ladder in Boston, but more importantly, I remembered him speaking about a man who works for the Police Judiciarie in Brussels. Ken lived in Belgium for a year in high school with a family and has maintained a friendship with the son all these years. I’m getting off the track. Anyway, the eyes came from a factory just outside Brussels. In case you didn’t know, Antwerp is the diamond capital of the world.”
    I interrupted. “Couldn’t the diamonds have been placed in the eyes after they arrived at the factory here?”
    “Yeah, except the diamonds had to come from somewhere. So whether they’re put into the eyes in Brussels or here, my guess is they’re still coming from Europe, maybe Russia or even Sierra Leone, for that matter.”
    “So the most logical step was to try the Belgian route first.”
    “Exactly. So Ken calls his friend, Gerard Willix and asks him what he knows about the factory. Gerard emails Ken back saying as far as his contacts could tell, nothing unusual is happening at the eye factory.”
    “So you were wrong. Do you have another theory?”
    Little lines formed at the corners of his eyes and his mouth spread into a smile. “Not so fast. There’s nothing strange about the factory, but there is an interesting tidbit concerning an employee. Seems there’s a very tenacious police detective in Brussels who’s been following a certain man for