CHAPTER SIX

ABBY PRINTED OUT THE information and took it to the museum with her in the morning. She was rather late arriving and Hugo's car was already in the parking lot when she pulled into her usual spot. He’d apparently returned to the island on an early ferry. She stopped in her own office just long enough to hang her jacket behind her door and then hurried down to Hugo's office. She had so much to tell him!

His door wasn't closed when she arrived but he hastily shoved some papers into a drawer when she peeked through the open doorway.

“Abby, everything go okay in my absence?”

“Oh yes, fine. No problems.”

He smiled. “Well, maybe I’m not as essential around here as I like to think I am, then?”

Hugo sounded cheerful, but again Abby detected that uncharacteristic note of too-hearty joviality. Half a dozen questions poised on the end of her tongue. Why did you go to Seattle? What did you do there? But again he obviously didn't want to confide in her, so she laid her receipt from Henry and the computer printout on his desk.

“First, I took the necklace into Siebert's Jewelry. Gordon Siebert had never seen it before. But he identified the center stone as a blue diamond and the clear stones that encircle it as diamonds also. Even the tiny stones in the entwined strands are diamonds. He estimated the necklace's value as at least three million.”

Although Hugo had earlier seemed less interested in the necklace than Abby would have expected, these blunt facts got his attention.

“Three million dollars?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Three million or more. Gordon Siebert said that was a very conservative figure.”

“Abby, that's incredible. How could something like that possibly wind up here at the museum?”

Abby had no answer, of course. “So then I took the necklace to Henry …Sergeant Cobb . . . at the sheriff's substation. He's going to check for reports of a missing or stolen necklace. For now, he put the necklace in a safe deposit box at the bank.” She pushed the receipt Henry had given her for the necklace toward Hugo, but he didn't pick it up.

“And then, because Gordon Siebert said valuable gems often have documented histories, last night I went on the Internet and did some research.”

Hugo eyed the computer printout. After the initial shock of the necklace's worth, his attention seemed to have faded again. He picked up a brass letter opener and toyed with it. “And you found something, I take it?”

“Oh yes. Something quite interesting. You can read it for yourself—”

“Maybe you can just give me the gist of it?”

Abby wasn't truly surprised, given his dismissive attitude the day she’d found the necklace, but she was still puzzled. It just wasn't like Hugo to be so . . . what? Not bored, but certainly not as intrigued by this mystery as she was.

“I found a site that gave information about a long list of famous gemstones, about twenty of which were blue diamonds. There was much information about some of the stones, all about their size, history and current ownership. But little is known about many of the others. I found one description of a blue diamond that closely matches the one in my desk. It's called the Blue Moon.”

“The Blue Moon.” Hugo repeated the name as if he found it mildly interesting. “A colorful word picture. Someone had an imagination.”

“All of the well-known gems seem to have names, although the origin of the name is often not known.”

“So in what way does this Blue Moon match the necklace in your desk?” Hugo didn't sound truly disbelieving, but he did sound as if he needed convincing.

“Gordon Siebert measured the stone and said it was twenty-one carats. The Blue Moon is twenty-one carats. None of the others on the list were that exact carat size. It's large enough to be quite rare.”

“But there are probably other blue diamonds that aren't on the list that do weigh twenty-one carats.”

“Yes, that's true, of course. Gordon also said this diamond was cut in an older style called a cushion cut. The cut of the twenty-one carat gem on the Web site was not specifically named, but it was originally cut in 1888, when the cushion cut was popular.”

“Can't gems be identified by what shows up inside with a microscope? I’ve heard flaws can be almost like a fingerprint.”

“Yes, I think so. Gordon said this one has a couple of small flaws, but the Web site didn't mention the Blue Moon as having any. So that isn't helpful for identification.”

“Was there a photo on the Web site?”

“Yes, but it's very old, just a fuzzy black-and-white shot. The diamond was also in a different setting back when the photo was taken, one of those old-fashioned, fussy styles. Not particularly attractive, actually, and not nearly as spectacular as the current setting.”

“So the photo itself can't actually be used to identify the necklace.”

“True.”

“Abby, I’m not trying to be some grumpy spoilsport here, but it just seems so unlikely that a diamond with a name and a three-million-dollar value could turn up here. This is the kind of thing that happens in a Gothic novel. Maiden trapped in crumbling castle finds famous gem lost for a century, saves the family estate from the greedy, mortgage-foreclosing villain. It just doesn't seem likely here on Sparrow Island, and comparable size and cut of the diamond itself really aren't much to go on.”

“I suppose my imagination could be running away with me,” Abby admitted. It had certainly done so at the house when she imagined prowlers everywhere, stomping on the front steps and climbing the rose trellis. “But it is a twenty-one carat blue diamond. No imagination about that. And it is worth an exorbitant amount of money.”

He eyed her for a moment. “Actually, although you have been known to have an active imagination on an occasion or two, I think you’re quite well grounded in reality, not given to wild speculations. Scientific people usually are sensible. I’ve also never known you to be short on good sense.” He paused, and for a moment she thought he was going to plunge into a different subject entirely. Instead he shifted in his chair and said, “I don't suppose there was an owner's name on the Internet?”

“No. The raw diamond was supposed to have been discovered in India in the 1880s. It was cut in France and had several owners, a king and various noblemen among them. But at some point about the time of World War II it disappeared, although whether it was stolen or sold to someone who wanted to remain anonymous is unclear. There are rumors that it's here in the States now, probably reset, but the owner is unknown.”

“Well, in any case, the gem's history probably doesn't matter now that the sheriff's department is handling the situation. It's out of our hands.” There again was that dismissive attitude, which seemed so unlike Hugo. Ordinarily he’d be as eager as she to find out more about the blue diamond and locate its owner.

“Would you like to see the photo I got off the Internet?”

He hesitated, and she suspected he’d rather get back to those papers he’d stuffed in his desk drawer, but he finally said, “Yes, please. You’re doing a great job of gathering information here.”

She rifled through the computer printout on the desk until she found the paper she was looking for. Hugo studied it only briefly before handing it, along with Henry's receipt, back to her.

Hugo glanced up and saw Abby watching him with concern. “Abby, I’m sorry. I don't mean to disappoint you by being rather blasé about this. Finding an incredibly valuable necklace with an unknown owner here in the museum is exciting and intriguing. It's just that I have some things on my mind.”

Now he sounded more like the old familiar Hugo, a man always sensitive to the needs of people around him, a man whom she knew had helped more than one young Sparrow Islander to a college education, a man who’d given her the bluebird earrings she wore today.

“If it's anything you want to talk about, I’d be glad to listen,” Abby offered. “Or if I can do anything to help . . . ?”

He looked at her, head tilted, worry lines cut between his thick white eyebrows, and for a moment she again thought he was going to tell her something. That he wanted to confide in her. Then, although he didn't physically move, she sensed him backing off again.

“What else did this Web site have to say about our mysterious diamond?” he asked.

She, too, slipped back into the impersonal. “The Blue Moon comes with a superstition. A curse, actually,” she said lightly.

“What kind of curse?”

“The original owner in India was beheaded, reason unknown. An owner in France was believed murdered by a lady friend, although nothing was ever proved. A later owner, a wealthy woman whose family was a big name in the wine-making business, lost everything when some disease destroyed their vineyard.”

“Sounds as if an owner of the Blue Moon had better watch his back. And not let his insurance lapse.”

“It's kind of an all-purpose curse and may strike a whole area rather than an individual person. Most of a town in France where it was once kept burned to the ground. And a lodge in the Alps where a woman wore the diamond to a ball was buried in an avalanche a few weeks later, although, fortunately, no one was in the lodge at the time. Some disease hit another area where the stone was in residence. The Web site didn't say so, but if my knowledge of history is correct, the disease hit various other places as well.”

“Well, this does sound like one big, evil-tempered diamond. How was it supposed to have acquired this curse?”

“That wasn't explained. The beheading gave it a rather gruesome start, of course.”

“Does this mean this curse is now going to affect the museum because the diamond was here for a while? And we’re doomed to have, what? A flood, a fire, an earthquake?”

“An invasion of mice perhaps. I’ve spotted a couple in my office.”

Hugo laughed at Abby's frivolous possibility. “You don't take the curse seriously, I can see.”

“No, I don’t. God is in control, not some inanimate chunk of boron-contaminated carbon,” Abby said firmly.

Hugo lifted his white eyebrows at that inelegant description of the valuable blue diamond. “No jewelry company is going to hire you to write their ad copy,” he observed. “Not with that kind of attitude. You’re too truthful.”

“Diamonds are a form of carbon,” Abby elaborated. “Gordon Siebert said the color of a blue diamond comes from a tiny amount of boron mixed with the carbon. So when you get down to basics, that's all this valuable diamond is, a chunk of carbon contaminated with boron.”

“Put that way, it certainly sounds harmless. Not that I’d believe in something as foolish as a curse under any circumstances.”

“I do feel this really may be the Blue Moon. Not on a scientific basis, because what was on the Internet isn't true proof, of course. I just . . . feel it.” She also felt a faint flush rise to her cheeks because the feeling was so very unscientific, so very much just a feeling. Not how she usually approached a problem or situation.

Hugo lifted those expressive white eyebrows again. “Woman's intuition?”

Abby smiled. “I guess that's as good as anything to call it.”

“Good enough for me.”

Abby turned to go when a new thought occurred to her. She felt a fresh tingle of excitement. Why hadn't she thought of this before? “We have no idea how long the necklace had been hidden in the desk, and the desk is an antique. Maybe the necklace was put in there long before you brought the desk to the museum!”

“That's true. Actually, I think that makes more sense than the possibility someone hid the necklace in the desk during the time it's been in your office.”

“Where did the desk come from?”

He answered without hesitation. “I bought it right after you first agreed to become Associate Curator for the conservatory, and I was getting the new office ready for you. From Donna Morgan at Bayside Souvenirs.”

“Are you sure?” Abby asked. “I didn't know Bayside ever carried any furniture. I thought it was all knickknack type souvenirs, coffee mugs, kites, wind chimes, that kind of thing.”

“It was in the back room, not part of her regular stock. I’d been planning to go over to Seattle to look in office or antique stores for something appropriate, and then I heard Donna had this antique desk for sale so I stopped by to ask her about it. Actually, even though she had it for sale, she was rather ambivalent about letting it go, as I recall.”

“I’ll check with her and see what I can find out.”

“Okay. Only . . . be careful.”

“Be careful?” Abby repeated, surprised. “What's there to be careful about?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It's just that this situation with the necklace is very peculiar. With something this valuable, who knows who might be involved or what might happen?”