Remember When

by your word, particularly to family when for some reason the more intimate you are, the easier a promise is to break. Or at least bend to circumstance."
    "Her great-grandfather broke a lot of promises," Eve reflected. "Jack O'Hara broke a lot of promises, to Laine and Laine's mother. So Samantha's grandmother wanted to end the cycle. You don't intend to keep your word, even when it's hard, you don't give it. You have to respect that."
    She glanced toward the bedroom, back at him. "Offering to take care of her security, and the Maryland Gannons, is classy. But you could've sent a lackey to handle it."
    "I wanted to meet her. She struck a chord with you, and I wanted to see why. I do."
    When Samantha came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, she was teary-eyed. "I'm sorry. I hate worrying her. Worrying them. I'm going to have to go down to Maryland and put their minds at ease very soon."
    She sat, took a bracing sip of coffee. "Judith and Westley Crew," she began. She gave them the foundation data she had, and at one point went to get some of her own notes to refresh her memory.
    "So you see, when my grandfather tracked her and found Crew had been there, he believed he might've given the child something that held the diamonds. A portion of them, in any case. It was a safe place to keep them while he went about his work."
    "He would've had half of them, or access to half of them, at that time?" Eve made her own notes.
    "Yes. With what was recovered in the safe-deposit box, that left a quarter of the diamonds among the missing. Crew's ex-wife and son were gone. Everything indicated, to my grandmother at least, that she'd been hiding from Crew. The change of names, the quiet job, the middle-class neighborhood. Then the way she packed up and left-sold everything she could or gave it away and just got out. It seemed she was running again because he'd found her. Or more, to my grandmother's mind, the boy. Just a little boy, you see, and his mother was trying to protect him from a man she'd come to know was dangerous and obsessive. If you look at Crew's background and criminal record, his pattern of behavior, she was right to be afraid."
    "She might have taken off because she had a few million in diamonds in her possession," Eve pointed out.
    "Yes. But my grandparents didn't believe, and I don't believe, that a man like Crew would have given them to her, would have told her. Used her, yes, and the boy, but not given her that kind of power. He needed to be in charge. He would've found them again when he wanted to. I've no doubt he threatened the woman and would have discarded or disposed of her when his son was older. Old enough to be of more interest and use to Crew. My grandfather let it go, let the remaining diamonds go, let them go. Because my grandmother asked it of him."
    "She'd once been a young child," Roarke said with a nod, "who'd had to be uprooted or moved about, who'd never had a settled home or the security that comes with it. And like Crew's ex, her mother had made a choice-to separate herself from the man and shield her child."
    "Yes. Yes. The bulk of the diamonds were back where they belonged. And they were, as my grandmother is fond of saying, only things, after all. The boy and his mother were finally safe. If they'd pursued it, and I have no doubt my grandfather could have tracked them down, they'd have been pulled into the mess. The young boy would have had everything his father had done pushed in his face, would very likely have ended up a national news story himself. His life might have been damaged or severely changed by this one thing. So they told no one."
    She leaned forward. "Lieutenant, they withheld information. It was probably illegal for them to withhold it. But they did it for the best possible reason. They would have gained more. Five percent more of over seven million, if they'd tracked her down. They didn't, and the world's managed to sputter along without those particular stones."
    Samantha wasn't just defending herself and her grandparents, Eve noted. She was defending a woman and child she'd never met. "I'm not interested in dragging your grandparents into this. But I am interested in finding Judith and Westley Crew. The diamonds don't mean squat to me, Samantha. I'm not Robbery, I'm Homicide. Two women are dead, you may very well be a target.
    The motive for this comes from the diamonds, and that's my interest in them. Someone else can do the research and dig up the fact that Crew