”She’s overdue,” Malcolm said quietly. “Isn’t she?”
Goldie glanced up. “Well, yes. She is.”
Kit tightened his hands on the edge of Goldie’s shop counter. “How overdue?”
”A couple of weeks.”
”A couple of weeks?” Kit exploded. “My God! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
”Because I knew you’d blow up just like this!” Goldie snapped. “They took plenty of protective gear with them. They’ll be fine! They’re just a little overdue.”
Kit studied her, controlling an ice-cold rage that demanded physical action. She wasn’t telling them everything. For someone waiting on a shipment of first quality South African diamonds, Goldie was remarkably untroubled about Margo’s fate.
”What’s your scam, Goldie?”
She widened her eyes at him. “Scam? Why, Margo. was just going to dig out some of the Seta deposits and come back, that’s all.”
Kit leaned over the counter. “You are full of it, Goldie Morran. If Margo was supposed to bring back a shipment of diamonds, you’d have been crawling all over this station looking for someone to go after her when she was two weeks overdue. What kind of scam are you running?”
Goldie pursed her lips like someone who’s tasted poison. “You are a royal pain, Kit Carson. She isn’t bringing them back. Koot van Beek and I jointly invested in a little piece of property up north of Francistown, in Botswana. No one has ever found the motherlode source of the Seta alluvial deposits. So Margo’s going to dig up a couple of potholes’ worth of matrix and fly the ore up to our property on the Shashe River. I have a rube up time who’s biting at the bait. All I have to do is confirm that Margo’s seeded the land and Koot and I will `discover’ samples that match the Seta deposits. This fool will buy the land at a huge profit and we’ll make a fortune. We don’t even have to smuggle the diamonds past ATF this way. It’s all nice and legal.”