Bertie came out of the office with a grimace on her face, sweat in her eyes, and one hand pressed into the small of her back. “Not quite as young as I once was.” Bertie always complains that her office is too small. Today, we were glad of it.
When the floorboards were all stacked in the hallway and in the staff break room, we gathered in the office, standing on the support beams, staring down into the dark hole of our own making.
“I don’t see anything,” Charlene said.
Bertie produced a flashlight and swept it around the space. We saw plenty of cobwebs and evidence that mice had recently been in residence. We saw no twenty-five-million-dollar diamond.
My heart had sunk into my stomach. I’d guessed Jeff had hidden the necklace under the floor because that was the major change made to the office. But it might have gone into the window frames or even a hole in the wall that was patched before being painted. I didn’t know if we could completely destroy this room.
“Did they do any other work at the time?” Connor asked. “Apart from the director’s office?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I suppose they might have.”
“We can’t tear down the entire place,” Charlene said.
I became aware of a loud banging noise coming from the front door.
“It’s nine twenty-two,” Ronald said. “We’re late opening.”
“Will you take care of that, please,” Bertie asked him. “Don’t let anyone into the hallway.”
When Ronald had left Bertie surveyed the damage. “I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to put this all back together.”
“I’m so sorry. This was obviously an incredibly stupid idea.” I was crushingly disappointed. Because of a stupid dream, I’d dragged my boss away from a rare leisurely morning; I’d ruined the morning after our engagement for my fiancé as well as me; and I’d caused the destruction of the entire office floor.
Charles, who’d been watching the activity with a confused expression on his face and getting in everyone’s way, jumped into the hole.
“Get him out of there,” Bertie said, “He’ll start digging around and we’ll never find him.”
I fell to my knees and stretched out flat on my stomach. I stuck my arms under the supporting beams calling for the cat and feeling for the thick fur. “Come on Charles, this isn’t a playground. I’m not in the mood to play.”
Bertie shone a flashlight onto the spot where Charles had disappeared.
“Charles,” I said, “if you don’t come right now, I’m cutting off your tinned food for a week.”
The tips of his ears appeared, and then his entire head. Something was in his mouth. He leaped out of the hole in one smooth movement and dropped what he was carrying next to me. I jumped to my feet with a shriek. He’d given me a dead mouse.
“Oh my goodness,” Charlene said.
“Can it be?” Bertie said.
Not a dead mouse. A dust-encrusted black velvet bag tied with a black drawstring which I’d mistaken in my panic for a rodent’s tail. The black bag had blended so completely into the dark of the hole, we hadn’t seen it even with our flashlights.
We stood in a circle staring at it.
Charles swatted the bag.
“Lucy,” Bertie said at last. “I think you’d better check that.”
I bent over and took the bag in my hands. The contents shifted as I lifted it up. The drawstring was tattered and frail and the knot had been chewed away. I looked at Connor. He gave me a nod. Scarcely daring to breathe, slowly and carefully I opened the bag, turned it over, and held out my hand. The contents poured into it like liquid fire.
It was as though the sun had come inside. The enormous, multifaceted diamond caught the lights of Bertie’s office, reflected and magnified them many times over and threw the rays at us. The smaller jewels—deep red rubies, glowing green sapphires, diamonds made of pure light—sparkled and danced as though delighted to see the light of day after all these years trapped underground.
“The Rajipani Diamond,” I said, “and the Blackstone necklace.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Once we’d recovered some of our wits, Bertie marched into the main room, announced that the library would be closed for the rest of the day, and unceremoniously hustled confused patrons out the door. When they’d gone she used the phone on the circulation desk (because the one in her office was balanced on a support beam) to call first Rachel Blackstone and then Sam Watson.
Bertie put the necklace on the circulation desk and we all gathered around, staring at it. When Rachel saw it, having simply pulled a track suit on over her pajamas, she took one look and burst into tears.
We went outside, letting her spend some time alone with the necklace and her thoughts.
“I hope you won’t have to take it into evidence, Sam,” Bertie said to the detective when he arrived.
“Believe me, Bertie, I do not want anything like that in my possession for a moment longer than necessary. I’ll take it to the station and have it photographed and get a jewelry expert in ASAP. Rachel can stay with me the entire time, if she wants, and then take it home. She can call a jeweler of her own to verity it’s the original.”
He checked his watch, decided she’d had enough private time, and went inside.
Butch had come with the detective. “I hear congratulations are in order.” He gave Connor a hearty handshake and me a hug that had me fearing for the state of my ribs.
Rachel and Watson came out of the library moments later. Rachel carried the bag and Sam Watson stayed very close to her.
“Detective Watson says it was you who guessed where it was,” Rachel said to me. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I said.
“He also tells me you’ve been busy lately. You got engaged. Congratulations to you both.”
Connor put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him.
Rachel smiled at him. “Your Honor, will you call
