Fortune and Glory (Stephanie Plum #27)(76)

“Technically Gabriela blew up the chapel.”

“She chose poorly,” Ranger said.

“It’s amazing that she was able to retrieve so many diamonds. I don’t imagine she’ll find all of them.”

“I can guarantee it,” Ranger said, taking my hand and placing a diamond in it. “I thought you deserved a finder’s fee. You might not ever be able to cash this in, but you can put it in your underwear drawer with all your other treasures.”

“I don’t have any other treasures.”

“Not yet,” Ranger said.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Morelli knocked on my door at nine o’clock. He had a bottle of wine and a box of cupcakes.

“Is this a celebration?” I asked him.

“I thought we’d see how it goes.”

He opened the bottle, and we took the wine and cupcakes into the living room.

“This has been a busy day for you,” I said. “I heard Shine took a plea bargain on the kidnapping.”

“We brought him in, and he went off on a rant. His lawyer was sitting next to him and he couldn’t stop Shine from talking.”

“Anything you can share with me?”

“I’m going to share everything with you. It’s going to all come out anyway. You can’t keep a secret in the Burg.

“Eighteen years ago, a guy named Paulie Valenti was working as a tech for a security company. On one of his jobs he got to see the interior of a vault in a pricey Manhattan brownstone. The vault held racks of gemstones. Mostly diamonds. Paulie mentions this to his cousin, who mentions it to his wife, who mentions it to Jimmy’s wife, who mentions it to Jimmy, who tells the La-Z-Boys. The La-Z-Boys get friendly with Paulie, and before Paulie knows it, he’s deep in their pocket and providing them with security codes to all his accounts. Two weeks later, the La-Z-Boys, armed with safecracking tools and the security code, break into the Manhattan brownstone and make off with $30 million worth of diamonds. They grab four boxes indiscriminately, choosing them by their unique blue velvet cases.

“It turns out the diamonds weren’t the largest or most valuable. They were the owner’s private collection. They were the diamonds that were never supposed to be sold. The owner goes gonzo and offers a sixty-million-dollar reward for the capture of the thieves and the return of the diamonds. This is double the value of the diamonds.”

“He took it personally.”

“Big time.”

“Let me guess the fate of Paulie,” I said.

“We did some digging in old police reports and Paulie’s fate wasn’t good. A shallow grave in Far Rockaway.”

“So, they took the diamonds and hid them away until they weren’t so hot.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that. All diamonds are unique. They have their own distinct fingerprint that identifies them under x-ray or with the use of a laser. The owner distributed the fingerprints of his diamonds to every law enforcement agency, every jeweler, every pawnshop, every black-market fence worldwide. The La-Z-Boys had no choice but to hide them away for a long time.”

“If they’re all perfectly hidden away, how did Gabriela track them to Trenton?”

“One of the smaller diamonds surfaced. Jimmy brought it to a trader in New York’s diamond district. Jimmy told him it was his wife’s, but his wife had passed some time ago, and now he was going to get married, and he needed money for his honeymoon.”

“Omigod!”

Morelli was grinning. “I know. It gets better and better. Anyway, the trader lasered the diamond and checked the list and knew it was hot. He bought it from Jimmy because he knew the reward was a lot more than the money he shelled out for the stone. Unfortunately for the trader, he walked into a bullet when he was closing up shop that night. I feel comfortable assuming Jimmy was the shooter. Unfortunately for the La-Z-Boys, the trader had already sent an email to the diamond’s legal owner. And the owner hired Gabriela to retrieve the diamonds. My understanding is that Gabriela is an expert at treasure retrieval.”

“Did Shine say anything about how he found the safe location?”

“He followed Jimmy way back when Jimmy first hid the treasure. Shine always knew where the safe was located, but he didn’t know how to get in without setting off the explosion.”

“As it turns out, the treasure wasn’t in the safe anyway,” I said.

Morelli topped off our wine. “You were surprisingly mellow when the safe turned out to be empty.”

“In the end, it was the journey and not the destination for me. I am upset that you knew about Gabriela and didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“One of those cop things.”

“Yes.”

Morelli cut his eyes to the cupcake box. “Are you going to eat the chocolate one with the sprinkles?”

“I might have been thinking about it.”

“What would it take to bargain it away from you?”

“What have you got to offer?”

Morelli smiled. “Something a lot better than a cupcake.”

I knew this to be true.





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