Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

photo of all seven blue sapphires down in front of Stafford and watched his eyes pop.
    “God. God. God.” Stafford swallowed hard. “Are these real ?”
    “Have you seen or heard of anything like these stones?”
    Stafford reached for the photo.
    Sam pulled it back.
    “Did Purcell have all of those?” Stafford asked hoarsely. “My God, where did he get them? Why didn’t he—”
    “No one said these were Purcell’s. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “No, no, no. It’s just that he had one so I assumed he had the rest.”
    “Is that what everyone assumed?” Sam asked.
    “I don’t know.” Stafford shook his head like he was coming up from deep water. “I only knew about the emerald-cut stone. That’s all he showed me. I can’t believe he’d keep the rest secret. He loved showing us that one stone, watching us want it. I still can’t imagine why it originally was offered to him instead of…” Stafford’s voice dried up.
    “Instead of you?”
    Stafford looked hunted.
    “You are head buyer for WWEG, right?” Sam asked.
    “Yes.” It was almost a whisper.
    “Was Purcell known for spending top dollar?”
    Involuntarily, Stafford laughed. “He barely squeezed out bottom dollar.”
    “Yet he ended up with the big blue prize. Why?”
    “Uh…”
    Sam waited.
    Stafford started sweating.
    Sam waited some more.
    “Look,” Stafford said hurriedly. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry. Obviously, Mike Purcell had some contacts that I don’t have. And I thank God for it. I don’t want to end up the way he did, his tongue hanging out of his throat, for God’s sake.”
    Sam went still. “Who told you that?”
    “I don’t know, I just heard it somewhere. You know, when you hang around with gem—”
    “—traders you hear things,” Sam cut in, because he’d heard it all before and was damn tired of it. “Yeah, I know. What else have you heard?”
    “Nothing,” Stafford said desperately. “Look, I’m an honest businessman. I can’t help you and you’re ruining my business by standing here.”
    “Why would an FBI agent keep clients away from an honest businessman?”
    Stafford groaned.
    Sam decided he had better things to do than watch Stafford twist in the wind. At least, Sam hoped he did. He might get something out of Stafford if he spent the rest of the day with him in a locked room. And then again, he might not. All Sam knew for sure was that somebody was talking out of school.
    The Colombian necktie hadn’t been one of the facts released to the press.

Chapter 35
    Glendale
    Friday
    3:00 P.M .
    “You were right,” Sam said to Kate as he put a shopping bag on the worktable. He didn’t take out the red wig and colored contacts. He’d save those for later, after he’d told her the bad news.
    Kate looked up from the transfer machine. “I was right? Can I have that notarized and framed?”
    One corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “Hey, am I that bad?”
    “Worse.” Then she smiled. “Actually, you’re a lot better than most of the men I deal with.”
    “Wow. Tanked by faint praise.”
    “I think the original phrase is ‘damned.’ ”
    “That too.”
    Sam walked down the aisle between two rows of worktables, touching machines and tools without actually moving anything out of whatever alignment she’d put them in. He saw that Lee’s file was open in the middle of one table. On the right side of the folder there was a snapshot of Lee grinning out at the world he would soon leave.
    Saying nothing, Sam pulled a sealed envelope out of his lightweight jacket. He dropped the fat envelope with the Royale’s logointo the folder. He didn’t bother to take out the paperwork describing Lee’s blood group and major subgroup, plus a VNTR sequence analysis. It was the kind of techno jargon that would have meaning only to a lab tech or a prosecutor looking to nail a perp’s ass to the jailhouse wall.
    Or someone trying to prove that Lee Mandel’s blood had been spilled in the trunk of a rental car five months ago.
    Sam didn’t have any real doubt, but that didn’t add up to a court case. He’d applied for a warrant for Lee’s medical records and a search warrant for his apartment, among other things. A few more in a long list of paper chases Sam had set off in the name of a case everyone had wanted to vanish five months ago.
    A case that, unlike Lee, wasn’t going to go away.
    Grimly, Sam wondered how long he had before somebody noticed that the Mandel file was active