“No!”
“You’ll never guess what I found this morning,” Diesel said. “You left your wet clothes on the floor in the bathroom, and when I kicked them aside the Blue Diamond fell out of your jeans pocket.”
“Omigosh. I stuffed it into my pocket and forgot about it.”
“I’m sure Rutherford had a dark moment when he realized he’d left it behind. It’s invaluable.”
“I don’t think Rutherford knew about the diamond,” I said.
“Can you glaze those things faster? We have a lot of ground to cover today,” Diesel said.
“Do you have a game plan?”
“I want to talk to Nergal. I have the skull with me.”
“And after that?”
“No plan.”
“So that doesn’t seem to be a lot of ground.”
“I’m working on it.”
I finished my tray, cleaned my area, and asked Clara if she had anything else for me to do.
“Nope,” she said. “It’s a slow Monday. You might as well take off.”
We stepped out of the bakery, and I looked around. “Where’s your car?” I asked Diesel.
“It’s the little black one,” he said.
“That’s a Porsche 911 Turbo. What happened to the last car?”
“It got swapped out. I parked it in front of your house last night, and this morning it was gone, and the Porsche was parked there.”
“How do you know it’s yours?”
“My cars always have similar license plates. ‘DD0000.’ Or some variation.”
We drove the short distance to the hospital and found Nergal in his office.
“We brought you something,” Diesel told him.
“I hope it’s cupcakes.”
“Sorry, no cupcakes,” I said.
“It’s something dead, isn’t it?” Nergal said. “What is it with you people? You’re like the death squad.”
This from the man who decided to be a coroner.
Diesel pulled the skull out of his battered brown leather backpack and put it on Nergal’s desk.
“I didn’t have room to bring the rest of him home with me,” Diesel said, “but this is probably all you need. We think he’s Palgrave Bellows.”
Nergal leaned forward and took a closer look at the skull. “The real Palgrave Bellows? That’s pretty cool.”
I nodded in agreement. “We found him in a cave.”
Nergal put his hand on the skull, and his eyes got wide. “Whoa! This guy is nutty.”
“What’s he saying to you?”
“He’s saying that it all makes sense. That it’s all fallen into place. That he knew the power was within him. That he was destined to become the demon Mammon. And now he’s going to eliminate all disbelievers and rule the world. That he’s sure the crushing pain in his chest is Mammon being reborn in his body.” Nergal removed his hand from the skull. “Personally, my money’s on massive heart attack over the Mammon reborn theory.”
“You get anything else from him?” Diesel asked.
“Nope. That’s it. Can I keep the skull?”
“Sure,” Diesel said. “Maybe someday I’ll bring you the rest of him.”
Neither of us said anything until we were out of the building and back in the Porsche.
“Bellows was holding the stone when he died,” I said to Diesel. “It sounds to me like the stone makes you go nutty with the whole greed and Mammon thing. Devereaux had a similar reaction when he got the entire coin in his pocket.”
“Where’s the coin now?” Diesel asked me.
“So far as I know it’s still with Devereaux. He had the coin on him when he fell. I suppose Rutherford or one of his men could have picked it up on their way out of the cave, but no one mentioned it when they were gathering up the treasure pieces, and I have a feeling it was forgotten.”
“And the diary?”
“Ammon has the diary locked away somewhere. Probably in Marblehead.”
“I see a road trip in my future.”
“We’re going back to the island?”
“Me. Not you. I can do this faster on my own. I want to get there before Ammon or Rutherford or whoever is running the show decides to send his minions back for the rest of the treasure.”
“I don’t think Rutherford runs anything. I think he’s in damage-control mode, hanging on by his fingernails. I can tell you how to get to the tunnel. It might be easier than using the water entrance. Devereaux and I crept down a dangerous staircase carved out of the rock face. Rutherford and his men rappelled down. It was quicker and safer. Devereaux is at the bottom of the staircase. Another narrow tunnel connects the staircase to the cave and underground lake.”
An hour later, Cat, Carl, and I watched Diesel drive off.
“Just the three of us today,” I said to Cat and Carl. “What should we do? Clean the house?”
Cat pretended not to hear, and Carl climbed onto the couch and turned the television on.