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Out of the theater and down a few blocks. Tyler excused himself to attend a dance class, his high round bottom shifting easily in his form-fitted jeans as he headed off in the opposite direction. My eyes tracked him until he vanished around a corner, although I didn't want to stare in front of Lotta Guise.
You have it bad, boy.
She had a good apartment on a good street in the French Quarter. Wrought-iron balcony for a view of the parades. An expensive place these days, but I guessed she'd bought in during the Destiny's Child era. Maybe she was a Diana Ross imitator back then.
Walking into the entrance hall, I caught sight of my own eyes in a large mirror in a gold rococo frame. They were the color of sapphire, or so people always said, and they came from my mother's side of the family, along with the name Darke, my grandmother's maiden name pressed into new use as a first name.
Lotta, behind me in the mirror, was checking out not my eyes but my shoulders and the line of the light jacket I wore to conceal my Glock 22. My large, well-muscled body could intimidate, especially in combination with my badge and my firearm, but it wasn't intimidation I read on her face.
“So, honey, tell me everything. You and Tyler. Are you exclusive?”
Was this really the best use of our time right now? I shrugged.
“You'd like to be,” she said.
“Who's the investigator, you or me?”
On the inside, the place was an eclectic jewel-box. Colorful chandeliers incorporated hundreds of individual Murano glass crystals. Art Deco furniture bought on the cheap had been upcycled by loving hands and an artistic eye.
An easy place to lose a gemstone. Light danced everywhere, making it harder to spot the glitter of a missing diamond.
Some of the light came through a glass door, creating rainbows where it shone through the crystals of the nearest chandelier. Like most buildings in the quarter, this one overlooked a central garden courtyard hidden from the street Spanish-style. The internal balcony also featured a wrought-iron rail which caged a small circular iron table and two matching chairs, all painted white. A Murano glass ashtray sat dead center on the tabletop for the convenience of Lotta's smoking guests. It must have been full after last night's party, but it was sparkling clean now.
A mockingbird and a blue jay sat on the back of the chairs, one bird on each chair, spitting and hissing, closer to each other than they'd like to be, united by the fact they were both scheming how to get at the fluffy blue Persian cat on my side of the glass.
I considered the odds this large, lazy animal had swallowed a diamond ring. She blinked a long slow golden-eyed blink, the better to assure me she couldn't be bothered.
When I stepped over the cat and into the outside, the birds scattered. Lotta was only a step behind me. “You need a better lock on that glass door,” I said.
“Whoever took my ring didn't come in through the courtyard, Detective.”
She was right, but the police officer in me felt obligated to say it. The courtyard itself was a quiet square of red brick complete with flowering shrubs growing exuberantly from oversized terracotta urns. Someone had set out a clumsily knocked-together wooden nest box painted robin's egg blue, presumably to attract wrens or bluebirds. A child's project, maybe a school project, taught by a teacher who didn't know that if you made the entrance too wide, you'd get sparrows instead.
A pigeon landed on another balcony two apartments down. It flew again once it decided we weren't going to scatter any crumbs.
Back inside, Lotta gestured toward a celestial-blue couch heavily embroidered with gold thread.
I ignored the hint to sit.
“The thief has to be somebody I know. That's what's so disappointing. The sense of betrayal.” Walking over to the bookshelf, she fingered a photo that was almost all ornamental gold frame. I had to squint to see the image, an old black-and-white photo booth snapshot of Lotta twenty years or so earlier. I was right. She was indeed doing Diana Ross back then. A very young Diana Ross.
“Do you remember when you last saw it?”
She lifted her hands from her sides, then let them drop. “I must have had it on when I got my manicure, or Shawneesha would've said something, but...”
“And that was when?”
“She came in about two hours before the party to assist with my hair and makeup.” Lotta shook her head. “After that... I just don't know. I keep going over and over it, trying to figure out when I saw it last, but you know how it gets... so many people, trying to be a good hostess, trying to make sure everybody has a good time...”
There was a little trick a gifted pickpocket used for sliding a ring right off a finger while shaking hands. But that was a stranger's trick. Friends and family members hugged. I could see from a glance around this place the party couldn't have been that big. “There was nobody here you didn't know.”
“It was just an intimate get-together. Well, there was one person.” Her eyes narrowed. “But he wouldn't have the chance to get anywhere near my ring. For some reason, my fucking ex decided he wanted to stop by and show off his newest eighteen-year-old. A fucking blond from Serbia. Completely extra. Van always told me he preferred brunettes.”
The ex was likely part of the reason she'd been so scattered that night. “Did they stay long?”
“Oh, fuck no. Van showed up to make a point, drank half a cheap bourbon, and left. Twenty minutes at the most.”
I got the ex-boyfriend's details anyway. It was one of those things you had to check out, although I doubted it would amount to anything. “Have you lost weight lately?”
She narrowed her eyes at a question she'd normally find flattering. “The ring did not slide off my finger, Detective. I did not drop my ring.”
“You were distracted. You were upset. You're an energetic person, and you've maybe lost a couple of pounds over the breakup stress. Your ring slides off unnoticed and gets kicked out of sight under a piece of furniture. That's a possibility I can't ignore.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake, Detective. I've already searched. Don't you think that's the first thing I did? I tore this place apart from top to bottom. Tyler helped me, he was a great help to me. And the housekeeping crew who came in after the party. They scoured this place from top to bottom.”
This so-called crime scene had been hopelessly compromised. At least, I wasn't fucking up something NOPD could have solved. As I'd surmised from the sparkling clean ashtray, they'd already fucked it up on their own.
Besides the destruction of evidence, it was entirely possible one of the oh-so-helpful searchers had found the ring and quietly pocketed it for themselves. I'd need the name of the service. For now, I went the tactful route. “It's possible you all missed something. I'll still be happier if I check for myself. Police officers are trained to perform searches.”
“Police officers are trained to search for items that somebody's trying to hide. My diamond isn't trying to hide, it's just not here. Please, Detective. We're wasting time.”
I squatted to shine a flashlight under the celestial-blue couch. “I'm sure, but I have to take a quick look anyway. And, please. You're a friend of Tyler's, and I'm off duty. Call me Darke.”
The service had been thorough. I couldn't find a dust bunny, much less a diamond. As Lotta wrung her hands, the very picture of theatrical distress, I moved carefully but quickly through the apartment to arrive at what was once a second bedroom.
“The art gallery,” she said in her husky, slightly ironic tone, at the same moment I opened the door.
This room, unlike the others, was a clutter of creativity in progress. She didn't paint, at least not here, but she was a skilled sketch artist who'd filled an impressive number of the pads scattered around the room and spread across the long wooden table. One drawing in black charcoal, matted but not yet framed, caught my attention. It was a portrait of Tyler from the collarbone up, his hair tousled and tumbling over his eyes, the hollow of his throat sweet enough to kiss.
I didn't want to smear the charcoal but I couldn't resist thumbing that spot. Fortunately, the sketch had been set with some kind of clear fixative.
“He's a beautiful model,” she said. “You're a lucky man.”
I swallowed hard but said nothing.
“Beautiful young men don't give their heart easily. But they do have hearts.”
“I know, Mom.” Dropping the sketch, I turned my attention to a hand-drawn party invitation. Because of course Lotta Guise was the kind of hostess who drew and snail-mailed her own personalized party invitations. “I'll need a complete list of everybody who attended.”
It was surrender. If the ring was somewhere in this apartment, I wasn't going to find it without taking the place apart. Lotta had already done that and put it back together too.
“Your brothers were there. They stand to gain if you're written out of your great-grandmother's will.”
She nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I think it was probably Mike. My older brother. Hate to say it. But, yeah, it was Mike.”
“Tell me about Mike.”
“He's almost fifty. An attorney for...” She named a white-shoe New Orleans law firm.
“Sounds respectable enough.”
“Yeah, well. New Orleans money isn't billionaire money. He's got a bad case of keeping up with the Kardashians. If our grandmere leaves him my money, a lot of his problems go away.”
“What about the other brother?”
“Joey? Forty-two. He's...” There was a long pause while she scrambled to describe what Joey was. “I think he's a flooring installer this year.”
“So he could use the extra money too.”
“Sure, who can't? But that's all it is to Joey. Extra money. He knows how to do a lot of things to get it when he needs it. Construction. Flooring and walls. Painting. Even landscaping. Whatever the day brings, Joey's got his truck and the way to make it pay.”
I didn't necessarily take Lotta's word for it. Siblings see each other through a fog of family history, and a drag queen was likely to feel closer to a dilettante than to a corporate attorney. Either of them could have taken the ring. Hell, anybody at the party could have taken it. Anybody at the after-party. Even Tyler could have taken it, although he wouldn't have put me on the case if he had.
“Look, Detective, um, Darke. This is the other reason I want you to keep this investigation on the downlow. I don't think it was anything malicious. I think it was a crime of opportunity. Maybe I did drop a few pounds, maybe I did drop the ring, Mike saw it, and he took it. I don't want him arrested or prosecuted. I just want to get the ring back in time for the family Easter dinner.”
“You don't know your brother took the ring.” I had long experience making my voice gentle to break bad news. “If someone took it to resell, it's already gone, Miss Guise.” The braided white and rose gold of the setting was already melted down, and the diamond itself was halfway to the New York market.
She said nothing for a moment. Neither of us did. My eye caught on the sketch of Tyler again. My personal diamond. It had that easy, breezy look of a sketch made at a party. I'd missed it, I'd had to work, but he said he felt obligated to come and network. Staying at home wasn't something Tyler ever did.
Lotta's eyes tracked my gaze. “You'd like that, wouldn't you? After I finish the framing, I'll have it sent to your home.”
“Thanks. I would like that. Very much. ”
“Talk to my brother. Tell him I'm not angry, I just need to get the diamond back. If he knows a police officer is involved...”
My sense of unease returned. This was miles away from an off-duty cop poking around to find some kid who was stealing other kid's bikes. Private investigations by off-duty NOPD weren't supposed to be about diamonds and in-depth interviews.
“I'll talk to both of your brothers. But I can't make any promises. You can still file a police report and they'll send an alert to all the local jewelers and pawn shops to watch out for someone trying to resell it. Honestly, that's your best option.”
“No way, honey. If it gets out into the wild that I lost my grandmere's diamond, I haven't just lost a diamond, I'm written out of a million-dollar inheritance.”