I hefted the necklace in my hand and thought it might weigh close to a pound. I couldn’t believe that some woman had once actually worn it. A very wealthy woman, no doubt, with a strong neck. It made sense that it had belonged to a Spanish princess, because who else but royalty could afford a piece of jewelry so lavish back then?
And if something this extravagant had been found inside that sunken ship, wasn’t it possible that there was more treasure to be found out there?
I’d never learned to scuba dive and now I wondered if maybe I should’ve. For anyone who grew up in Lighthouse Cove, the sinking of the Glorious Maiden on a stormy night in 1839 was a familiar story. Maybe I should’ve shown more of an interest in exploring our famous underwater attraction.
I shook myself out of all that history to realize I’d been staring at the necklace for too long. What if someone broke into Jesse’s house at this very minute and found it in my hands? I could wind up as dead as Jesse.
“Yikes,” I muttered, and started to wrap it up, but then stopped. I pulled my phone out of my purse and took a few pictures of the necklace from different angles, just to have a record of it in case of . . . what? In case it was stolen? Ripped from my hands? I shivered again.
I quickly wrapped the priceless jewelry in the old tissue paper and put it back in its tin box. For a few seconds, I wondered where I could hide it without taking it back to the basement. Then I decided I wasn’t about to let it out of my sight for one millisecond. Shoving it into my bag, I grabbed my phone and called Jane.
*
“What’s the big hurry?” Jane asked when I answered the door at my house.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her inside, shoving the door closed behind her.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “You’ve gone crazy.”
“I have something to show you,” I said, leading the way to my dining room table. I nudged Jane into a chair and sat down next to her.
“Stop pushing me around,” she groused.
I laughed. “I hardly ever push you around, but you’ll be glad I did this time.” I placed the tin box on the table in front of her.
“What’s this?”
“Open it, for God’s sake.”
“All right, all right.” She had to fiddle with the latch to get it open and then waded through the mass of crumpled paper. “Oh, Shannon. It’s paper. How exciting! Thank you for calling me over.”
“Keep digging while I ignore your mockery.”
She found the heavy piece at the bottom and unwrapped it. The necklace fell into her hands. “Oh my God.”
I grinned. “I know.”
She stared at me with her mouth open. “You found it. Where? How?”
“In Jesse’s basement, under the stairs. It wasn’t easy. He hid it behind a couple of bricks in the wall.”
“Not exactly in plain sight,” she murmured as she studied the gorgeous piece.
“I wasn’t looking for it. I went over to do a quick inspection and found it completely by accident.”
She held the necklace up to the light and gazed at it in amazement. “That is a gigantic diamond. It sure looks real.”
“I think all the stones are real.”
“It’s fantastic.” We were silent for a moment while she continued to gaze at the treasure. She hesitated, then asked, “Do you think this explains why Jesse seemed to be getting more paranoid over the last year or so?”
“Could be,” I said. “I know I would be plenty paranoid if that thing were hidden in my house.”
“I just thought he was getting old,” Jane said. “I was worried that he might be . . .”
“Did you really think he was going senile?”
“I didn’t know,” she said, looking bummed. “He acted so weird sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too.” She held up the necklace. “This is amazing. I’m so grateful you found it.”
“I’m just happy I found it before someone else did.”
She exhaled softly. “Someone else had to be looking for this. It wasn’t Jesse. He couldn’t have simply misplaced it.”
“I agree. It’s not like he slipped it inside some drawer and forgot about it. I had to crawl under the basement stairs, break loose some bricks, and pull it out of the wall.” Shaking my head in admiration, I thought of just how clever Jesse had been. “That took some planning and hard work.”
“I’ll say.”
“I had to get down on my hands and knees to feel around behind those bricks.”
“Ew, spiders,” Jane said, rubbing her arms.
I made a face. “Tell me about it.”
“It was worth it, though.” She cast another glance at the necklace. “This thing is magnificent. I guess I don’t blame him for being paranoid.”
“He may have been paranoid, but he wasn’t going senile. More likely, he was just scared to death that someone might find it and steal it.”
She stared at the necklace for another full minute, turning it this way and that, touching the jewels, rubbing her fingers over the hammered gold. “I can’t believe Cuckoo Clemens saw this two years ago and didn’t buy it.”
“Not enough cash, he said.”
“Oh, right.” Jane rolled her eyes. “He looks guiltier by the minute.”
“He seemed pretty desperate to buy it from you.”