I admit I wasn’t a big spider fan, especially when I came across a whole cluster of them scattering in angry confusion. At least, they looked angry to me. This was another little secret I preferred to keep to myself. If my crew ever found out about my spider phobia, they would tease me mercilessly. I would probably find plastic spiders in my sandwiches or my toolbox. I shivered involuntarily.
The fourth wall was under the stairs and not easy to access. But since the steps butted up against the main load-bearing wall of the house, I knew I had to check this one even more carefully than the others. I ducked my head to get under the stairwell, close enough to the wall to study each brick as the flashlight beam hit it. I pushed and scraped as I went, making sure the bricks were still holding up after about a hundred and fifty years. I worked my way down the wall, following the descent of the stairs and finally ending up on my knees in the corner beneath the lowest step I could fit under. Here the mortar wasn’t as solid and a few of the bricks moved easily when I prodded them.
It just figured that the most inaccessible area would need the most work.
Dismayed, I fiddled with one of the bricks until I’d worked it almost completely out of its space. I pulled the brick out and laid it on the floor next to me, then worked on the one above it. A third brick loosened from my pressure on the one next to it. They all came out after only a little prying.
There were a few reasons besides regular aging that might’ve caused the bricks to separate. I just hoped they weren’t suffering from water damage or an infestation of subterranean termites. I got down on my hands and knees and wiggled closer, directing the beam of the flashlight into the cubbyhole I’d made. But the space was too far out of my range of vision, so I knew I’d have to stick my hand inside the space to assess the thickness and integrity of the wall. The hole was too small for me to wear my work gloves, so I pulled one off, blanked out all thoughts of giant mother spiders, and thrust my hand in there. All I felt was something cold and metallic.
My first thought was that the original builder had used steel posts to bolster the brick foundation. But that didn’t make sense. Jesse’s house was only one story and didn’t need that much reinforcement. Besides, the metal I was touching wasn’t as strong as a steel post. I moved my hand and realized the metal was thin but solid. It was a box of some kind.
I pulled at the next brick over and managed to ease it away from the wall. Now I was able to grab what was in the cubbyhole and pull it out. I pushed myself off the concrete floor and sat against the wall with my flashlight trained on what I’d found.
It was a small metal box similar to a cookie tin, the kind sold at Christmas, with a decorative latch on the front and hinged on the back. The top was dented and didn’t open easily, but I finally managed to pry it loose. Inside was some crumpled old tissue paper.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until it whooshed out in disappointment.
“That’s it?” I muttered aloud. “A bunch of paper?”
Halfheartedly, I rooted through the paper until I heard a clink and felt something hard. My heart raced as I pulled a very old, very beautiful necklace from the paper it was wrapped in.
*
Upstairs at Jesse’s kitchen table, recently cleared of all the dishes and newspapers that had been there since Jesse died, I sat to examine more closely what I’d found downstairs.
I opened the box again, unsure if I’d dreamed it or not, but sure enough, the gold necklace was there. Holding it up, I watched it glow radiantly in the sunlight pouring through the window.
I stared at it in awe—and a touch of fear.
This was what Jesse had bragged about finding on his scuba diving trip two years ago. It was spectacular, at least a hundred and eighty years old if I just dated it from when the clipper ship sank in Lighthouse Bay in 1839. But it was probably much older. It looked as though it could’ve belonged to a Renaissance queen.
Cuckoo was wrong. It wasn’t garish at all. It was luminescent, as though lit from within. I allowed that it would be considered ornate by today’s standards, but it was beautiful, made of thick, hammered gold and encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Big ones. Each of the larger jewels was surrounded by dozens of tiny diamonds. I couldn’t count them all. On more careful study, I noticed that three large gems were missing from their settings. Had they fallen out or had someone removed them?
Despite the missing jewels, it was a gorgeous piece. There were three tiers, each hammered to a fine sheen and each inlaid with the three kinds of stones. The lowest tier curved to a point, and hanging from the point was a single, magnificent diamond in the shape of a teardrop.
The diamond would rest at the apex of a woman’s cleavage and a man wouldn’t be able to avert his gaze.
If it was real, that diamond alone had to be worth millions of dollars. And I had no reason to doubt that it was real.