Julie grimaced.
“How come a high-tech guy like you never heard of cholesterol?”
“Heard of it. Don’t care. If we never really die, cholesterol can’t
kill me. It can only move me out of this life a little sooner.”
ARCHER VAN CORVAIRE cracked open the Levolor blind and peered through
the thick bulletproof glass in the front door of his Newport Beach shop.
He squinted suspiciously at Bobby and Clint, though he knew and expected
them. At last he unlocked the door and let them in.
Van Corvaire was about fifty-five but invested a lot of time and money
in the maintenance of a youthful appearance. To thwart time, he’d
undergone dermabrasion, face-lifts, and liposuction; to improve on
nature, he’d had a nose job, cheek implants, and chin restructuring. He
wore a toupee of such exquisite craftsmanship, it would have passed for
his own dyed-black hair-except that he sabotaged the illusion by
insisting on not merely a replacement but a lush, unnatural pompadour.
If he ever got into a swimming pool wearing that toupee, it would look
like the conning tower of a submarine.
After reengaging both dead bolts, he turned to Bobby.
“I never do business in the morning. I take only afternoon
appointments.”
“We appreciate the exception you’ve made for us,” Bobby said.
Van Corvaire sighed elaborately.
“Well, what is it?”
“I have a stone I’d like you to appraise for me.” He squinted, which
wasn’t appealing, since his eyes were already as narrow as those of a
ferret. Before his name change thirty years ago, he’d been Jim Bob
Spleener, and a friend would have told him that when he squinted
suspiciously he looked very much like a Spleener and not at all like a
van Corvaire.
“An appraisal? That’s all you want?”
He led them through the small but plush salesroom: handtextured plaster
ceiling; bleached suede walls; whitewashed oak floors; custom area
carpet by Patterson, Flynn & Martin in shades of peach, pale blue and
sandstone; a modern white sofa flanked by pickled-finish, buriwood
tables by Bau; elegant rattan chairs encircling a round table with a
glass thick enough to survive a blow from a sledgehammer.
one small merchandise display case stood off to the left. Corvaire’s
business was conducted entirely by appointment, his jewelry was custom
designed for the very rich and tasteful people who would find it
necessary to buy hundred-thousand dollar necklaces to wear to a
thousand-dollar-a-plate char dinner, and never grasp the irony.
The back wall was mirrored, and van Corvaire watched him self with
obvious pleasure all the way across the room. He hardly took his eyes
off his reflection until he passed through the door into the workroom.
Bobby wondered if the guy ever got so entranced by his image that he
walked smack into it. He didn’t like Jim van Corvaire, but the
narcissistic creep’s knowledge of gems and jewelry was often useful.
Years ago, when Dakota & Dakota Investigations was julie Dakota
Investigations, without the ampersand and the red dancy (better never
put it that way around Julie, who wouldn’t appreciate the clever
wordplay but would make him eat redundancy. Bobby had helped van
Corvaire recover a fortune in unmounted diamonds stolen by a lover. Old
Bob desperately wanted his gems but didn’t want the woman sent to
prison, so he went to Bobby instead of to the police That was the only
soft spot Bobby had ever seen in van vaire; in the intervening years the
jeweler no doubt had grown a callus over it too.
Bobby fished one of the marble-size red stones from his pocket. He saw
the jeweler’s eyes widen.
With Clint standing to one side of him, with Bobby behind him and
looking over his shoulder, van Corvaire sat on a high stool at a
workbench and examined the rough-cut stone through a loupe. Then he put
it on the lighted glass table with a microscope and studied it with that
more powerful instrument.
“Well?” Bobby asked.
The jeweler did not respond. He rose, elbowing them out of the way, and
went to another stool, farther along the work bench. There, he used one
scale to weigh the stone and another to determine if its specific