She pushed the buzzer outside Fassi’s building. “Julie, for Jacqueline Zanuso,” she shouted into the static of the ancient intercom. She climbed the stairs to the third floor and wound around the cracked marble corridor to Fassi’s door.
He pushed the door open just a crack—she knew to catch the knob before it fell shut again—and returned to his post behind the glass case.
“Vous-desirez?” His grumble was half phlegm, half resentment. “I’m having lunch soon.”
She pulled out her crumpled slips. He shuffled to the long row of card catalogs and map chests that lined the back wall. He flipped through file cards, returning with three brown paper envelopes, each in use for many years, old tape clinging to their edges. Grace pulled a velveteen mat in front of her and they each grabbed a loupe.
“How many?”
“Two, a matched pair.”
He muttered as he sorted and measured the trillions. They easily found a pair in the right size, but Fassi discarded one after looking at it through his loupe. He set it aside and ran his stubby finger through the pile, looking for another.
“What’s wrong with that one?” she asked him.
“Not perfect.” He shrugged. “A little ribbon near the bottom.”
“An inclusion? In moissanite?” She picked up the stone. He was right. The white needle, like a crack in ice, was so tiny she had to squint to see it even with a loupe.
Fassi set two more stones with the first trillion. “You choose,” he said. “These are all good.”
She paid with the blank check Jacqueline had sent with her, made out to Fassi, and he handed her the taped paper parcel, no bigger than a saltine cracker.
Grace hadn’t known that moissanite had inclusions. Of course it did; moissanite was natural, flawed like any precious stone.
She fished out her crumpled note again, making a sour face.
“Wait,” she said. “I was supposed to get two pairs. Four of them.” She frowned in annoyance. “I’ll have to take the one with the inclusion. And I already gave you that check.” She rummaged in her purse for her wallet. “How much for the bad stone?”
“Eh, you can take it for two twenty-five.”
He was ripping her off. “And two fifty for the other. Here’s four seventy-five.” She made a neat stack of notes on the counter. Her rent money. He raised his eyebrows.
“She better reimburse me quickly,” Grace said.
? ? ?
It was possible Jacqueline had noticed the small inclusion in the diamond trillion, but Grace was certain she would not have inspected it closely enough to register its exact size and shape. Still, her palms grew damp. The only thing she was sure of was the flaw’s placement. Even if Jacqueline hadn’t thoroughly examined the inclusion, the ring’s owner might have. It would be a month’s rent and nowhere to go if she were caught.
No. This ring wasn’t owned by a gemologist. Someone had been sloppy enough to trust Jacqueline, whose fingers were too stiff to repair fine work but plenty sticky enough to steal it. Even to a jeweler, an inclusion didn’t warrant truly investigative attention, only enough to dock the stone’s value accordingly.
When Grace returned to the workshop, she showed the pair of perfect trillions to Jacqueline, who looked them over next to the ring and nodded. “I’ll bring the ring out to you in a moment.”
Grace went back to her desk. Hanna was there, biting her lip as she clipped the loose ends from wire loops. Grace took the imperfect trillions out of her purse and began to work them over with a damp cloth.
Jacqueline came out with the ring and pulled up a chair. She was going to sit there and watch as Grace removed the diamonds.
“I’m going to put them right back in the safe,” Jacqueline said. “We can’t have diamonds floating around the piles of sawdust and glue guns.”
There was no sawdust. There were no glue guns. Their workshop was spotless.
“Of course,” Grace said, carefully setting the wad of cloth, trillions deep inside, on the table. Damp, the cloth stayed together. “I don’t think they’ll be hard to remove.”
The ring was old, the gold soft, and Grace’s prong lifter easily pulled apart the weak jaws of the jewels’ settings. She lifted out one trillion, and then the other. There was a rim of grayish gunk around the perimeter, decades of dirt, hand lotion, and flaking skin cells.
“Let me clean them up,” she said.
Jacqueline stared at the diamonds in Grace’s left palm as though they might jump up on their own. Grace took the balled cleaning cloth in her right hand and let the stones fall into a fold. She massaged one through the cloth, and then the other, feeling for the other stones, deeper in the fabric. When she found them, she reached into that fold and plucked them out. She dropped the two moissanite trillions into Jacqueline’s waiting hand, one of them featuring a small inclusion.
“Perfect, thanks,” Jacqueline said, standing up. She hurried back to her office, leaving Grace alone with diamonds and disbelief.
“She’s got you on the leash now,” Hanna said.
She had not seen.
“Stop pretending you wouldn’t do it, if you had nowhere else to go,” Grace said. “I can’t say no. You’re almost finished with the centerpiece and there’s nothing else.”
Satisfied surprise flickered across Hanna’s eyes.
“I’m only worth what someone will pay me,” Grace said.
Hanna had nearly finished the centerpiece, earlier than she had expected, but she had been interrupted by no other jobs. Grace felt a peculiar envy as she looked at the centerpiece. She wanted something beautiful to work on, something with some substance and worth and history. It was impossible to hang on to any ideals in the current atmosphere. What beauty was there to aspire to?
? ? ?
Grace cleanly set the pair of perfect moissanite trillions in the ring, next to the solitaire. She looked at the prongs through her loupe. They were gently closed and clinging tightly to the stones. Perfect.
She took the ring to Jacqueline, who uncrossed her legs to lean forward and admire it in the light of her desk lamp. “You really can’t tell,” Jacqueline said. “Moissanite. It’s a shame the name is so ugly.”
It was right to steal the diamonds because Jacqueline was a thief herself, and because she had used Grace to help her steal. She hadn’t given Grace any choice but to steal. And the high, the high that raced up and down her, was electric, filling her head with champagne fizz, causing curls to spring up in her hair at her temples, making her forget, for moment, everything else.
26
Parolees Still Missing
August 21
Cy Helmers
The Tennessee Department of Corrections continues to search for two missing parolees. While it was initially believed that the men may have absconded together, law enforcement officials now believe the men may be acting or traveling independently.
Riley Sullivan Graham, 23, was last seen Saturday at Swiftway Dry Cleaning in Garland, where he had been employed since his release from the Federal Correctional Complex in Lacombe.
Allston Javier Hughes, 23, is believed to have disappeared as early as Thursday night from his place of residence, 441 Jewett Road in Garland. After Hughes missed a scheduled meeting, his parole officer contacted Hughes’s father, employer, and known associates, including Graham and his family.
Graham and Hughes were paroled on August 10 after serving 36 months for robbing the Josephus Wynne Historic Estate in June 2009.
The Department of Corrections has issued warrants for both men’s arrests.
She didn’t know what to make of it.
Freindametz had gone out but left the TV on. A French game show cackled and screamed from her bedroom and Grace went in to switch it off. She wished she weren’t alone in the house. She poured herself a glass of the Scotch she kept far back on a high shelf above the stove and sat down on the stairs.