Diamonds and Blood (Chameleon Assassin Book 5) Read online

  “Morgan’s computer system got hacked.”

  “Yeah, that sort of thing happens all the time. Do you think it’s connected to his disappearance?” I asked.

  I think I threw him off balance, because he paused. “Uh, I don’t know. I mean, I called hoping you might know something about it.”

  “Nope. I’ve been out shopping with Nellie. We did some serious damage to O’Malley’s credit account. Now, if you’d told me something about this supposed hack, I might have some thoughts, but so far all you’ve done is some hand waving, and half-ass suggested that since someone died and a computer got hacked, I must be somehow involved.”

  Silence. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I intended at all. I just, well, when the computer thing came in, I thought maybe you might be able to locate any chatter.”

  “I might, if I had any clues as to where to look. Hacked. What kind of damage was done? Was any data stolen? Specifically, what data? You know, a clue, like what cops use to track down criminals or what boyfriends should have when they call their sweeties?”

  He managed a bit of a chuckle. “I do love you, you know.” Late, but he managed to salvage some of his credibility. “Accounting system. They stole customer information, bank accounts, and purchase transactions.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Okay, first, if you bought anything for your other girlfriends from J. Morgan, I suggest you close those accounts immediately. Second, alert your bank for any attempts to open new accounts. Third, if any of those purchases would in any way compromise you, I suggest you consider how you’re going to cover your ass.”

  “No problems here. My girlfriend acquires her own jewelry,” he said, “and I don’t want to know where she shops. What was that third part?”

  “If I was a nasty kind of girl, that transaction data could be used for blackmail. I mean, nice husbands only spend money at places like J. Morgan on their wives. And corporations aren’t too keen on that sort of expenditure coming out of their funds.”

  “Ahhh. I see. You have a devious mind.”

  “Not me. My ethics allow blackmail only in the interest of furthering lofty pursuits, but some people make a good living from it. I’ll take a look around the infonet and see if I can find something,” I said.

  “I appreciate it,” he said. “Love you.”

  I thought about what Wil told me. The computer hack and what I knew about Morgan and his company didn’t add up. Based on what I saw at his apartment, Joseph Morgan’s death looked like a crime of passion. The chauffeur’s death could easily be explained as a cover up, taking care of the only witness. How would a major cyber intrusion fit into that?

  The next mystery arose when I discovered none of the stolen data was available for sale. Of course, the hackers might still be categorizing it and figuring out its value, but there weren’t even ticklers to assess interest.

  One of my searches did turn up transaction data for a French company. Further research showed that intrusion was three weeks old, and the data showed up more than two weeks after the intrusion. I flagged it, and the seller. Then I called Wil.

  “Wil, can you find information on a cyberattack on Hotel de Charm? It’s a French hotel chain, and I think they were hit about three weeks ago.”

  “Sure. You think it might be related to Morgan?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s the only transaction data I can find for sale. If someone has decided that upscale transaction data is a profitable niche, the two could be connected.”

  He promised to get back to me, but it was the middle of the night in France, so I doubted he would be able to contact anyone there right away.

  Nellie wasn’t singing that night, so we hit a local mutie bar in the old city to listen to a local band we’d been hearing about.

  Montreal, being on a river rather than an ocean port, had weathered sea-level rise better than most port cities. The city had built sea walls to hold the water out of the islands that the city was built on, so most of the erosion and land lost were down river and south of the city. As a result, much of the old city and its architecture had survived.

  It had become more cosmopolitan, as one of the great ports on the western Atlantic Ocean. The French dialect known as Quebecois was still widely spoken, but almost everyone spoke at least some English, and we heard plenty of other languages as well.

  The bar was packed when we arrived, so we grabbed drinks and leaned against a wall to listen. Nellie got hit on about a hundred times, but we were both used to that. She just smiled and told them, “You’ll have to ask my girlfriend.” Then I would snarl at them, and they’d go away. Occasionally I’d have to break some guy’s arm, but that night everyone played nice.

  Walking back to the metro, we ran into a gang of young lycanthropes. I saw flashes of light reflecting off the hands of a couple, leading me to suspect knives.

  “This late at night, you have to pay a toll to go this way to the metro,” one of them said in French that was even more twisted than normal Quebecois.

  “Oh? How much is the toll?” I asked as I slipped my hand in my purse and thumbed the safety on my pistol.

  “Just give us your purses,” he said, holding out his empty hand.

  “I dipped my head to Nellie and asked in English, “Are you carrying?”

  “Of course.” Nellie learned to shoot from my father at the same time he taught me, and I bought her a Martin Mini-Stealth thirty-two caliber for her eighteenth birthday.

  “I’ll take the three on the left. Think you can do the two on the right?”

  “On your cue,” she said.

  I switched to French and said, “Thank you for your kind offer, but I’ll tell you what. If you go away, we won’t hurt you.”

  That engendered a lot of laughter. “You should be happy we only want your purses. We could invite you to a party.”

  A couple of the thugs expressed positive opinions of that idea.

  “Last chance, boys. Get out of the way.”

  The main loudmouth took a step forward and held up a six-inch switchblade. “The purses. Now!”

  I shot him, then shot the other two I had claimed. Beside me, I heard Nellie’s Mini-Stealth spit four times. I swung to her side when my targets fell. Both of hers were on the ground. Our pistols were silenced, so the whole affair couldn’t have been heard thirty feet away.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said, grabbing her by the arm and taking off at a pace she had to trot to match.

  We had to stand around at the metro station for a few minutes waiting for a train, but when we finally boarded, I felt the tension flow out of me. Nellie turned to me, and we both laughed.

  She held out a shaking hand and said, “That wasn’t the kind of excitement I was looking for tonight.”

  “No,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and hugging her close. “I think we should invite your brother and his friends to go with us next time.”

  Chapter 3

  Le Reine Élizabeth—the Queen Elizabeth Hotel—was the grand old lady of Montreal hotels, the last of the Canadian Grand Railroad Hotels to be built back in the twentieth century. But after seeing the Royal York in Toronto, the Empress in Victoria, and the Banff Springs Hotel, its sleek, modern look felt rather commonplace.

  On the other hand, one couldn’t complain about the amenities or the service. I was cycling in the gym with my coffee, attempting to maintain some semblance of muscle tone, when my phone rang. Deciding that I was awake enough to juggle one more thing, I answered it.

  “Good morning. I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Wil said.

  “No, I’ve been awake for minutes. What’s up?”

  “Hotel de Charm? It seems the silent partner, the money man behind the corporation, was none other than Joseph Morgan.”

  I let that sink in. “Interesting.”

  “Even more interesting, Morgan is dead.”

  “Really? When did you find this out?”

  “I just got a call from Montrea
l. His housekeeper went to the police and said her security access had been changed. When the cops contacted the security company, they found out the code had been changed twice within a few hours on the night the chauffeur died. So, they broke into the place and found his body.”

  “Heart attack, I presume?”

  “Not hardly. Definitely murder, but you would consider it an amateurish, sloppy job.”

  “Oh, no. He was strangled with silk stockings while having sex?”

  “Almost as good. Pinned to the wall with a lion-hunting spear.”

  “Ah. A fitting end for a lion of industry. You’re right. That doesn’t sound like a professional hit, unless the killer brought the spear with him. Doesn’t sound like a burglar, either. Anything missing?”

  “No idea, but my man in Montreal says the place wasn’t tossed. I’m flying in tomorrow morning. Morgan’s company is large enough to warrant attention, and the cyber angle is weird enough that my brass is nervous. Think you’ll have time for a romantic dinner?”

  “Well, I’ll check my social calendar and figure out which of my many admirers I can let down gently.”

  Wil called from the airport. “I’m going straight to Morgan’s apartment. I’d appreciate it if you came along.”

  “How long was he dead before they found him?”

  “About three days.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll wait until you fumigate the place.”

  The man was insistent. After I hung up, Nellie asked, “Was that Wil?”

  “Yeah. He wants to steal me away from you, but he has a remarkably unromantic date in mind.”

  “He wants to take you to the scene of the crime?”

  “Yeah. I should charge more.” The Chamber of Commerce did pay me a retainer so that they could call on my services, and when they did, the money was pretty good.

  I changed clothes into something more appropriate to a murder scene and went downstairs to wait for Wil. He pulled up in a Chamber car with a driver and opened the back door for me to crawl in beside him.

  “Ooo, fancy limo,” I said, looking around the expansive space and waving at the front seat. “Does this have one of those privacy thingies?”

  Wil pushed a button, and the barrier sealed us off from the front of the car. I threw myself onto his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him. It was tempting to take things too far, but I knew we weren’t that far from Morgan’s apartment.

  The sixty stories in Morgan’s private elevator gave me time for another couple of kisses, and then we had to act professionally.

  Waiting for us were three Chamber detectives and five Montreal cops. We walked off the elevator and I stopped, putting my filter mask back on. The smell wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t feel the need to punish myself. One of his men handed me shoe covers and rubber gloves.

  “Why did you drag me here?” I asked Wil in a low voice.

  “Professional assessment. I need an outside set of eyes looking at this thing. Anything that causes you to question, anything that you find remarkable.”

  Nodding, I turned to the security system keypad. “You say this was changed twice in a short period of time.” Wil nodded. “And you assume it was last set by his killer?”

  One of the Chamber men said, “Or set by his killer, and then reset by someone else.”

  I shook my head. “Why would you think that?”

  He gave a slight shrug. “Just keeping an open mind.” I was always leery of open-minded cops. Hell, I was leery of cops who could think.

  I wandered around the place, first in the public areas, then looking in the nooks and crannies and pantries. Half an hour passed before I came to the murder room. Morgan’s body was gone, as was the spear. The bloodstains and the hole in the wall made by the spear were still there.

  “Pinned him against the wall?” I asked. A cop nodded and handed me a tablet. I scrolled through the pictures, including Morgan as they found him, the spear, and close-ups of his wounds, front and back.

  “How deep was the spear embedded in the wall? He was what? Two hundred pounds or so?”

  “Two hundred five,” the cop answered. “About four inches deep.”

  “So, all the way through him, plus four inches into the wall. I’ll go out on a limb and say he wasn’t killed by a ninety-eight-pound woman.”

  A couple of the cops chuckled.

  “Medical examiner’s report was inconclusive on the chauffeur’s cause of death,” Wil said. “He had a broken neck in addition to a bullet in the brain. ME said it wasn’t possible to tell which one came first. We’re assuming the neck injury was due to the crash.”

  “But the bullet could be a cover to deflect attention from us suspecting a muscle man,” I said.

  “Morgan was known to swing both ways,” the Chamber man said. “We aren’t ruling out a lover.”

  “Or more than two ways,” another cop said. “Word is he had a kink for muties.”

  “Was the bed made?”

  “Yes.”

  I walked out and found the master bedroom. Not only made, but professionally made by a housekeeper, not thrown together by a pair of lovers. “Not a lover on that occasion.”

  “Next of kin?” Wil asked.

  “A brother, but we haven’t been able to locate him,” one of the Chamber men said. “He owns an apartment in Montreal and one in Quebec City. The building manager here says it’s been at least three years since he was last in residence.”

  I spent another hour looking around, then I turned to Wil. “It doesn’t appear anything is missing, or at least nothing appears to be displaced.”

  He looked around at the paintings on the wall, the sculptures, and the artifacts in the African room that we could see through the open door. “Any of this worth anything?”

  I approached one of the paintings I had rehung on the wall. “This one, probably half a million. That large one over the fake fireplace, a million or two.” I led him to the curio case in the corner. “That Babylonian carving there would bring several million. See the provenance displayed next to it? With that, any museum in the world would buy it.”

  Wil looked around again, muttering to himself, “Nothing looks out of place, and all the displays balance. It appears that nothing is missing.”

  “You’d have to ask the housekeeper,” I said. “She’s the one who dusts everything, so she would know. But all of these trinkets are nothing. Morgan was one of the premier jewelry dealers in the world. He has the Regal Ruby, a thirteen-carat Burmese ruby he paid twenty-five million for. He’s put it on display twice. He’s also reputed to have the Winston Blue diamond, a twelve-carat teardrop that he bought for one hundred million.”

  Wil sucked air.

  “Yeah. Have you found his safe?”

  “Surely he wouldn’t have kept something like that here,” the Chamber man said.

  “So, where? In a vault at his store? Safety deposit box at the bank? How much do you think he trusts his employees? Look at the security he has on this place. I’ll give ten to one odds on a thousand credit bet that he didn’t let stones like that out of his sight. There’s a vault here somewhere, and those stones are in it, or were in it.”

  Turning to Wil, I said, “There was a request for bids on a security system for this place last year, and a high-end vault was part of the requirements.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you bid on it?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get it.”

  I headed back into the master bedroom and made a show of looking for the vault. I kept up the charade for half an hour, going from room to room. Then I made a show of having an “Aha” moment in Morgan’s office.

  “This room is too small,” I said. “Take a look. The wall between this room and the next is at least four feet thick.”

  After everyone agreed with me, I said, “The security company that installed his vault should have plans and a way to bypass the locks. Get hold of them and have them open it for you. I would advise, however, that you have some of
ficial from Morgan’s organization and his insurance company present when it’s opened. I don’t think anyone wants to be accused of pocketing a large fortune in gemstones, do you?”

  After all the phone calls, the grand opening of the vault was scheduled for Friday. That gave me two days with Wil. I made him take me out to a fancy restaurant that night, and then I kept him in bed until noon the following day.

  Thursday night we went out to dinner with Nellie and her brother, and then on to the club to hear her sing.

  Bright and early on Friday, we went to Morgan’s apartment, where we met Rene Georges, the local vice president of J. Morgan, three men from the security firm, and three people from the insurance company. One of the security guys triggered the hidden panel and unveiled the vault.

  I had to stifle a giggle when the security technician hooked up a complex piece of electronic equipment and spent twenty minutes bypassing the lock the way I had done in ten seconds. He swung the vault door open and revealed the ruby and the blue diamond in all their splendor, along with a few dozen lesser stones, several to-die-for pieces of finished jewelry, and bags of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires heaped on the other shelves.

  “Well, if that’s what he was killed for,” I said, “I think our murderer went away very frustrated.”

  Wil reached in, grabbed a bag, and opened it. The label said it contained three-quarter-carat grade E diamonds. Peering into the bag, I thought the label was probably correct.

  “Is anything missing?” Wil asked.

  The J. Morgan official and the insurance company people stared at him as though he’d turned into a dragon.

  “I don’t know what was in here,” Georges said.

  “Surely there’s an inventory,” Wil said.

  “Maybe, but I didn’t know anything was here. We have a vault at the company offices, and that is all inventoried.”

  I cleared my throat, and everyone turned to look at me.

  “You think that’s all inventoried? Couldn’t some of this be in your inventory? It appears that Monsieur Morgan was in the habit of transporting rather large amounts of jewels from one place to another.”