Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 01 - A Brilliant Plan by Alex Ames Page B

fine working relationship, never a hitch. I specialized in uncut stones or bigger cut stones and he would cut, divide or modify the stones and, to say it in banking terms, laundered the jewels.
    But Thomas ‘The Fence’ Cornelius III had somehow pulled the stops. Mother of the East. That meant that I couldn’t try any of my other Eastern contacts besides Yehova. To prove the point, I made another stop at a pay phone and called another number, this time in Miami. This time a nice Spanish-speaking lady told me in a haughty voice that all transactions were currently suspended, call back another time.  
    Another call to Boston gave me a similar response.  
    I was stuck. I was stuck with 200K worth of stones that were hotter than hell.

    I finished my run, showered and wolfed down a quick fruit salad. The rest of the family, including Mundy, was still sleeping. Then I set out with my Miata to the Downtown San Diego police headquarters. I arrived at nine a.m. sharp and Juanita picked me up at the front desk. Me, being a good citizen, I had never actually been inside police headquarters, so I looked left and right.  
    Juanita read my mind. “You won’t see too many criminals here. Most of them are booked at the local precincts and then transferred directly into the central jail.” She looked slightly amused at my playful disappointed mimic. We somehow had reached a non-aggression pact without agreeing to anything. Fine with me.  
    Ron shook my hand and offered me some original SDPD coffee in an original SDPD mug. We had Danish pastries and doughnuts as we spread out in a small meeting room that had no windows. And no fresh air. I felt like I was on SDPD Blue .
    “So, what is new?” I asked them.
    “Who starts?” Juanita looked at Ron.
    He took a quick sip, consulted his notes and gave a hurried wrap-up of our own adventures. “We interviewed the surviving daughter, Phoebe Eastman. A starving artist, without talent, according to Calendar. And I am not one to disagree. But living in La Jolla, with an atelier in San Diego and a very nice car. Not much room for a brush and canvas in the trunk.” Ron put a DMV computer printout on the table. BMW Z1, nice, nice.
    “Don’t forget the very expensive necklace,” I threw in.
    “Hang on, yesterday you said ‘excellent’ piece. Overnight it became ‘expensive?’”
    “OK, OK, lesson number 18, excellence always means expensive.”
    Ron continued, “Credit rating agency gives her a good mark. Debt free, healthy credit limits on her cards. That’s what I found out so far.”
    Juanita threw in her results of yesterday’s research. “She has an art major, never had an exhibition apart from an obscure gallery representation, a year ago. Found it on the Internet.” She showed us a note in the local paper mentioning Phoebe. “She will inherit Daddy’s small apartment. And here we have a nice segue to talk about our victim. He was a former college professor who lost his job in an education downsizing cycle—don’t laugh, that’s what it was called in the early nineties. Daddy had small jobs on the side, did SAT and GREP training and lately, night watchman. His apartment is almost debt free, around 15K left on the mortgage. Has a small life insurance policy, he opened in his academic days but quit paying premiums after he couldn’t afford them anymore. Phoebe will get about 20K from that. Plus an old Cadillac Cutlass twice around the odometer.”
    “That’s sad, don’t you think?” I said, feeling it. “A life resulting in such few belongings of value, some policies, a car, a home. And maybe a box of photos of better times.”
    Ron ignored me; he probably saw worse things going on every day of the week. We looked over some of the papers Juanita had collected on Phoebe and her dad. “I think we agree that she is not the hottest candidate to have killed her old man and do the jewelry store job.” As Juanita and I didn’t answer immediately, Ron looked up. “Do