The Diamond Affair (5 page)

He didn't bother
answering her, just crossed his arms and glared right back. He wasn't going to
let her get the upper hand. A woman like her could take advantage of a man if she
got on top of him.

Finally, she
turned away and he started breathing again.

"Have you
got somewhere to go for a few days?" she asked Aaron. "Somewhere out
of town maybe. I'll call you when this is over."

Aaron nodded. "I'll
take my phone with me." He pulled her into an embrace which she readily
returned. They held each other for a long time. If she hadn't mentioned that
Aaron was gay, Jake would have suspected there was something going on between
them.

He headed
outside, keeping his eyes on the road and listening for movement in the nearby
bushes. Apart from traffic and a white cat licking its paw, it was quiet. A few
minutes later, Ruby appeared and they walked together to the car.

"Was that
question necessary?" she asked as soon as she closed her door. "Considering
everything you saw just now?"

"Yes." After
a pause, he added, "You care about him."

"He's like a
brother to me when Matt is away. He's the next best thing to family. That's why
I know he didn't steal the Florentine. He wouldn't deliberately get me into
trouble."

"Point
taken."

A few minutes
later, he said, "You should carry a gun."

"No thanks. I
hate guns. They're dangerous."

He couldn't help smiling
at her. "But it's okay for me to carry one?"

"You know
how to use them. I've never even held one."

"I can show
you if you like."

"I said no."
She spoke with such finality he thought it best to drop the subject. "So
where are we going now?" she asked.

"Home to
think this through some more. There's gotta be another suspect."

Ruby sighed and
rubbed her forehead. She could feel a headache coming on. Thinking wouldn't
help it to go away. "Maybe I should just go to the police. This is getting
out of hand." It was one thing for her to be dogged by Fat Frankie but it
was entirely another for her friends to be subjected to his filthy presence. Thank
God Aaron was heading out of town where he'd be safe, and thank God Matt was
overseas.

"The cops
won't be able to help you," he said. He sat relaxed at the steering wheel,
as if he hadn't just been shot at. "Even if they find Frankie, he's
unlikely to talk and the cops need him to talk to get the link to his boss. Beauvoir
would have paid his goon a small fortune to make it worth his while to have a
stint in jail rather than give the cops that link."

She groaned and
pressed her hands to her temples. "Surely they could get something connecting
the two of them if they couldn't get Frankie's confession."

He shook his
head. "People like Beauvoir know how to cover their tracks. He's been
doing it very successfully for years. Let's just get him off your back and let
the cops worry about convicting him for one or more of his other crimes. That's
not our job."

No, but it made
her feel hollow inside to think there was nothing she could do to bring him
down.

Jake's phone
rang. He glanced at the name flashing on the display and an odd growl rumbled
at the back of his throat. Instead of answering it, he pressed the Off button
but not before Ruby saw the name.

Dad.

She glanced at
him. He was focused on the road ahead, his hands twisting around the steering
wheel like he wanted to strangle it. She opened her mouth to say something then
shut it before she could put her foot inside. As much as her curiosity burned
to know why he'd hung up on his father, it wasn't her business.

The phone beeped
to indicate a message had been left. Jake ignored it.

When they got
back to his apartment, he continued to ignore it. If Ruby knew she had a
message on her phone, it would drive her nuts until she listened to it. Then
again, she had no self-control which was why she had to keep only one chocolate
bar in the pantry at all times. Any more and she'd eat the lot in one go. She
bet Jake's chocolate lasted for months. That's if he even ate it.

"Will coffee
help you think?" he asked as coffee poured from the café-style machine
into a mug.

"Think?"

"About who
could have stolen the Florentine."

"I'm telling
you, I don't know." She rubbed her forehead. The piercing headache had thankfully
subsided, replaced by a dull throb.

"Then let's
think about who else might know he had it." He added the right amount of
sugar and milk to the mug and handed it to her. "If you were Beauvoir, who
would you tell?"

She sipped the
coffee and sat at the kitchen table, watching his back as he made his own. The
black T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, taut in all the right places and clinging
to every muscle as they moved beneath the cotton. Nice. Very nice.

Then there was
the bottom half. The black jeans fit snugly around his—

"Personally
I wouldn't tell anyone," he said, turning around. He caught the direction
of her gaze and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

Oops.

"My brother."
She held the mug in front of her face to hide her blush as best she could. "And
Aaron too, just because I know it would be a dream of his to see it."

His smile
vanished. "Your loved ones," he said, flatly. He leaned against the
kitchen bench, cradling his mug in both hands and studying the contents as if coffee
were the most fascinating thing.

Didn't he have
anyone to care for him? What about his father? Maybe he was the problem. Or
maybe Jake was the one with the problem, not his dad.

Don't do it. Don't
dive into those muddy waters
. She needed to keep
focused on the dangers of Beauvoir and not the dangers of whatever lurked
within Jake Forrester. "Do you know if he has any loved ones?" she
asked.

He looked up, his
expression hard and closed. "My sources told me he remarried a woman
twenty-years his junior. He also has a seventeen year-old daughter from his
previous marriage."

"Okay."
But she shook her head. "Why would his family steal from him? It doesn't
make sense."

He shrugged. "Could
be a million reasons. The wife might be mad at him for something. She might be
planning on leaving him and needs the diamond to exchange for cash. Same goes
for the daughter. We also don't know if he's got mistresses he might have told,
nor do we know if the wife and daughter have confided in anyone else. The web
can widen exponentially without his knowledge of it."

"Great. It's
going to be impossible to find out who took it."

"Maybe not. We
just have to systematically find all potential suspects then eliminate them one
by one. First we start with the wife and daughter."

He made it sound
so easy. "Okay. So let's go talk to them."

"Whoa, not
yet. We can't just ask questions like we did with Aaron."

"So what do
we do?"

"We? We do
nothing. I break into their house."

It was tempting
to let him do it, to stay as far away from Beauvoir and Frankie as possible,
but she knew Beauvoir's house. She'd been there once before to value some
diamonds from his vault. She knew the layout. Besides, it would be faster with
two.

***

Ruby was relieved
when she learned that Jake didn't actually mean breaking and entering the Beauvoir's
house like cat burglars in the dead of night. More like infiltrating in broad
daylight. Beauvoir's mansion was located behind a huge fence in Melbourne's blue-blooded
suburb of Toorak. Like its neighbors, the house was old, grand, and came with a
housekeeper.

Complete with
overalls, toolbox and a fake ID, Jake charmed his way past the elderly woman into
the house. Finding out he actually had charm beneath his rough exterior was an
eye-opening experience. The man certainly knew how to use his looks to full
advantage, and when he turned on a high-voltage smile as well, the housekeeper
was a goner.

Ruby tagged along
behind with a clipboard. He hadn't wanted her there. Too risky, he'd said. They'd
argued for some time but she'd eventually beaten him down by assuring him the
workaholic Beauvoir wouldn't be home.

Dressed in the
pants suit she'd worn to work the day before, she looked like any
official-looking employee of the Australian Gas Authority, a government
organization that Jake had made up. Ruby got the feeling he'd used the disguise
before. He seemed way too smooth, too at ease, to have been doing it for the
first time.

He explained to the
housekeeper that they were investigating a gas leak down the street and had to
check all the nearby houses to ensure their services weren't affected. He then
repeated his claim when they came across the lady of the house a few minutes
later in one of the lounge rooms.

Sonya Beauvoir
looked up from the fabric samples laid out on her white couch. An exquisite
woman, she was tall, blonde and striking in a yellow summer dress that revealed
a lot of cleavage and tanned skin. Her gaze swept past Ruby as if she wasn't
even there and settled on Jake. She smiled and extended her hand.

"Hello. My
name is Sonya." Her voice was soft but her smile was predatory. She held
onto his hand a few moments longer than polite but he didn't seem too eager to
extricate himself.

"Tom from
the Gas Authority. My partner and I have to test all your outlets."

She let go of his
hand and held out her arms in a come-get-me gesture. "My outlets are yours
to test." The smile never left her lips.

He smiled too and
pointed to the fireplace. "That gas?"

"No. But the
central heating is gas. The unit's upstairs. Care to take a look while your
colleague checks down here? I'll show you of course."

Of course
. Could she be any more obvious? Ruby cleared her throat. "That
won't be—"

"I'd love
to," Jake cut her off.

Ruby glared at
him. He'd told her in the car that he wouldn't leave her on her own and now he
was, just so he could be alone with a woman with too much time on her hands and
not enough modesty. Damn him. He was supposed to be doing a job—
her
job—not
flirt with the megalomaniac's wife. Not completely forget Ruby even existed.

"But first I
need to give my colleague some guidelines," he said. "She's new."

Okay, so he hadn't
forgotten her existence, but he was still leaving her there without a clue what
she was supposed to be doing.

He winked at
Sonya—winked!—then turned to Ruby. She put as much of her annoyance into her
glare as she could but only got a raised eyebrow in response. The idiot had no
idea what he was doing wrong. Either that or he just didn't care. The lure of
Sonya, with her long legs and luscious figure, was apparently too tempting.

Men!

"You know
what to do with these?" he asked, handing Ruby a small case he extracted
from his toolbox. It was the case with the bugs.

She took it. "I
think I can manage." He'd shown them to her earlier. "See you soon,"
she said, emphasizing the
soon
.

He gave her one
of his crooked smiles then left with Sonya. Ruby waited until their footsteps
faded before placing a bug under the phone cradle. She straightened just as the
housekeeper entered.

"This way,"
the woman said. "Through here."

Ruby pulled out a
few bugs from the case and shoved them into her jacket pocket. She followed
behind the housekeeper, discretely placing bugs under hall stands, tables, and
inside lamp shades as they walked through the rooms. She also did a serviceable
job as a gas technician, inspecting the outlets she was shown and making a
point of sniffing the air to check for leaks.

When they reached
the hallway leading to the back door, the housekeeper said, "The barbeque
is gas."

Ruby followed her
gaze to the undercover seating area with a built-in barbeque. "Thanks. I'll
be a few minutes."

"I'll be in
the kitchen," the housekeeper said, pointing to a nearby door. "When
you're ready you can come in and check the stove."

Ruby was glad to
see the back of her. It wasn't that the housekeeper suspected anything, more
that Ruby couldn't relax with her around. Keeping up the disguise was mentally
taxing, not to mention hell on her nerves.

She didn't have
any bugs left but if they were to find out who knew about the Florentine, they'd
need to do more than plant listening devices. They'd need names of Beauvoir's
business contacts, other close family members that may have been told about the
diamond, and they'd need emails and phone records. The task was beginning to
seem insurmountable.

She wouldn't find
any of those things standing around in the hallway, and she doubted Jake would
be able to do much under the watchful Mrs. Beauvoir. Ruby was about to head
into another room, see if she could find Guy's study, when she heard a door
slam outside.