Carats and Coconuts (11 page)

Every time they want to talk about the
dangers of the family biz, they have to either be in a kitchen or a
restaurant, the latter of which they secretly own. Or hell, now a
super-sophisticated and regal seaside picnic station.

The mob thrives on food and foul
play.

Apparently, satisfied his hit men were
able to do their jobs without him long enough that he could eat
with us, Vitto joined us for lunch.

“
We brought you a little
welcome back gift,” Granny V said.

I looked at Roman, who, judging by the
intense look on his face, knew exactly what this gift
was.

Vitto removed a small, and remarkably
plain brown parcel paper package from inside the jacket of his
linen suit.

Damn, the Italian mob knew how to
dress.

Dress and eat…mob
specialties.

“
Did y’all know the Hope
Diamond arrived at The Smithsonian in a similar package, having
been sent by Harry Winston via registered mail and insured for just
one million dollars?” I asked, enjoying the fact that little me
could teach the mob something.

I used my thumb-nail to slice through
the packing tape then opened the lid of the box.

Nestled inside a velvet lining was our
Witherspoon Precious Aquamarine.

There she was…all one thousand carats
of cut and polished, inorganic, solid, chemically-compounded
natural beryl crystal, with a bunch of iron impurities in two
different chemical states. And because of those impurities, she had
all the incredible colors of the sea we now lunched
alongside.

The best emeralds of natural beryl
crystal are primarily from Columbia, but not the aquamarines. My
family’s mine in Minas Gerais is by far the leading supplier of gem
aquamarine.

“
Did anyone die to get this
back?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure what the answer would
be, and I more than likely didn’t want to know.

“
Not yet,” Vitto said in
stereo with his grandson’s response.

They said it with the same
matter-of-fact, cavalier cool as if they’d both simply asked for
Granny V and I to please pass the sea salt for their
cantaloupe.

“
That’s comforting. I
think.”

“
Let’s just say gem
smuggling works a bit differently here in Brazil than the
operations I’m familiar with in Italy,” Vitto continued, his eyes
lighting up as if he were enjoying this new type of danger-laden
challenge. “I’m having to change-up my normal methods.”

I looked at Roman, who just shrugged
his shoulders as if to say “what are you gonna do”.

“
I think we’ve definitely
discovered the source for the majority of the treasures in New York
City’s West 47
^th
Street Diamond District,” Granny V said, wiping a
loose shred of melon from her over-botoxed lips.

I still had difficulty eating with
her. I was always tempted to dab my napkin to my mouth as a silent
suggestion for her to do the same to rescue the food trapped there.
Food that she couldn’t feel.

But moving onward, from botox back to
gems…

“
You’re right. Most of the
gems bought, sold and traded in those Diamond District stalls
originate here in Brazil.”

“
So tell us about your pink
beryl,” Roman said.

I choked on my kiwi, and I didn’t have
over-botoxed lips to blame.

Pink beryl, also known as Morganite,
is named after financier J.P. Morgan, the backer of the famous
gemologist George Kunz who named the crystal. It gets its unique
color from trace quantities of manganese, and the world gets most
of its Morganite from our mine.

“
What do you want to know?”
I asked, and yes, for the record, I knew exactly what he wanted to
know, but I didn’t want that knowledge to put a price on his
head.

“
I need to know enough to
keep our family safe,” Roman said, evidently unwilling to
negotiate.

“
Well, Morganite comes in
shade ranges from pink and rose to peach. There are also some
purple-pinks from Madagascar.”

“
Cute, but I already know
that. You and I also know we’re not concerned with Madagascar’s
Morganite right now. Just the Witherspoon & Witherspoon
Morganite, which oddly enough is right here, with us, in Brazil.
Would you agree?”

I could tell from the short quips of
his voice that he’d reached the limit of his patience.

“
Perhaps I need to be more
direct,” he said.

“
That always works for me,”
Vitto said, his voice so Marlon Brando soft, I barely heard
it.

“
No it doesn’t
always
work for you,”
Granny V said in a sing-song scolding tone.

From the attempt she made at narrowing
her eyes, although they wouldn’t budge much due to being
cosmetically tied behind her ears, I had a feeling she knew
something I didn’t.

“
How much does Stanley know
about your Morganite?” Roman continued, not bothering with his
grandparents’ side tiff.

“
Enough to get us all
killed,” I said, then took a long swig of coconut water to give
that thought time to digest.

“
By who?” Roman asked, his
upper body lifting and his pecs flexing like they did right
before…shit, right before he cracked his neck, like he just did,
meaning heads and bodies too were about to roll.

“
Depends on who you ask,” I
said, being completely honest.

“
Sounds like we better start
asking then,” Vitto said, raising his wine glass in salute to who
only knew what kinda trouble we were about to stir up.

B
ack in my childhood home, which was now a Winter Wonderland
along the fabulous shores of Lake Michigan, people had just
finished celebrating the holiday spirit of over the river and
through the woods to grandmothers’ houses they go.

But not so down here in Brazil, the
land of Rio’s Carnival, carats galore, and now grandparents with
mob connections.

There’s a ton more goin’ on along this
surf and sand paradise than dancing the night away to the samba and
world-class sea turtle conservation projects.

We were about to embark on our own
version of over the river and through the woods.

We’d head over the Sergipe River by
ferry. And after keeping up our energy for the rough journey ahead
with some grilled fresh fish from one of the street stalls along
the way, we’d be travelling much more than through the woods. We’d
be heading straight into the Amazon Rainforest, the home of Stone
Age Indians who made their livings from the land on which my
family’s mines were built.

Indians who Stanley had royally pissed
off by stealing from them what was theirs…not ours.

Somehow, I had to make all this right,
before we ended up in a mass grave like the ones that held other
gem thieves and smugglers.

I couldn’t think of a better way to
save my two families - or Witherspoon & Witherspoon - than to
seek the help of the rainforest Indians I’d come to love like
family.

What I wouldn’t give, though, to still
be safe inside my parent’s gem vault, buried deep beneath the
snow-covered drifts along Lake Michigan.

People are always amazed by the beauty
of the snow on its glistening-like-diamonds surface. But there’s an
entire world buried underneath the snow-covered Earth, a world that
has its very own razzle-dazzle. But along with that dazzle comes
deadly games to procure then secure its brilliance.

And here in the land of carats and
coconuts, I’m about to show you just how deadly that well-cut and
polished dazzle can be.

Nothing means power, control, and
unfathomable wealth like conflict gems.

And the world of smuggling that
circulates those rock-sacks-of-riches is responsible for one
helluva deadly, cozy cash caper.

I only hope we can stop it before it
buries us first.

THE END

(Cozy Cash Mystery #3)

N
ow
that you know my life is just a cut above crazy, let me pick up
where we last left off…

I was seated at my Brazilian beachside
picnic with my fake husband Prince Roman Bellesconi eating
cantaloupe with sea salt and trying to figure out just how much
trouble Queen Granny V and King Grandpa Vitto had gotten us into.
It looked like the kind of trouble that could result in us being
buried alive beneath this brilliant and beautiful white sand
beach.

There’s only one thing – or person,
rather – who could bury us deeper still.

And she was coming right at us, across
the beach, looking as if she’d stepped right out of a Maxine comic
strip.

I mean it. She looked exactly like
John Wagner’s Maxine, with the same open-mouthed,
crankiness-twisted, sourpuss face in full reverie.

And by ‘she,’ I’m referring to Grams,
who was making her way through the sand, bitching a mile a minute
about every sea shell that poked her bare feet.

I glared at Roman, who responded with
his favorite shrug then said, “Look, you know she has bigger balls
than any of us. We need her for this mission.”

I wasn’t arguing with the balls
factor. He was right. Grams had huge cahonies.

“
But she also has a big
mouth that comes with those super-large cahonies, and that thing
could get us all killed even quicker.”

“
Good point,” Roman said,
looking at me with those puppy dog eyes that he knew would damn
well guarantee he’d be off the hook in no time.

“
But you have to admit, we
have a ton more fun with her around,” Granny V said, raising her
wine glass to the still-bitchin’ Grams, who I noted, had never
stopped swearing the entire way from our villa’s boardwalk to our
glamorous beachside picnic canopy.

“
And y’all think I have a
potty-mouth,” I said, then harrumphed.

“
Aloha, Y’All,” Grams said,
tossing her recycled brown paper grocery bag onto our lavish lunch
table.

Sand poured out from the glued folds
of the bag and scattered across the table linens and into the
serving dishes still filled with fruit…well…make that fruit and
sand.

“
I think I must be allergic
to this lame ass lei.”

“
No offense, Grams, but your
lei is plastic, and you’re not allergic to plastic. Also, both your
lei and your Aloha greeting are Hawaiian. You’re in
Brazil.”

Roman covered his mouth, trying but
failing to completely hide a huge grin.

“
Polynesian. Portuguese.
Whatever. The tropics are the tropics, and this lei happens to
match my ensemble.”

I said nothing. I just shook my head
and quickly put on my sunglasses. That way, no one would see my
eyes rolling in response to her antics.

I’m not sure why I expected anything
different from her. Hell, when we were in Italy, she was speaking
to everyone in Spanish. When we visited my parents over the
holidays along the fabulous shores of Lake Michigan, she sputtered
Greenlandic East Inuit Danish phrases ‘cause she thought we were
close to The North Pole.

That was Grams…always at least one or
two countries behind our current location. And it was clear from
her ensemble in all its mix-matched glory, she was also a fashion
season or two behind.

Her ‘ensemble’ (one of her new
favorite words, because she’d seen it used on the online fashion
report my styling company produced daily) consisted of bright
turquoise gauchos with Tuscan yellow daisies. The pants were so
bright, they damn near made you dizzy. She’d paired those blinders
with a lime green camp shirt over the top of a hot pink shell. To
top it off, she’d added a huge straw safari-style hat, complete
with mosquito net.

“
You know you can tell a lot
about a person at a nude beach. Of course, it’s usually stuff I’d
rather not know,” she said, shoving a piece of watermelon in her
mouth.

“
You’re not on a nude
beach,” Granny V said and chuckled.

“
But there’s one close by.
And y’all can bet your ass I’m goin’ there. I might even join in
the festivities, if you know what I mean.”

“
Is that a Maxine-ism?”
Granny V asked.

“
You know, I wonder if
Maxine’s ever been to a nude beach? But that’s one of her lines, so
I’m bettin’ she has. I’ll tell ya what…I’ll ask her. I just signed
up to attend one of her conventions, and I can’t wait.”

Grams clapped her hands together like
a child who’d been invited to a birthday party she was dying to
attend.

“
A Maxine Convention…that’s
wonderful,” Granny V said then winked at Roman and I before
whispering to me, “Does she think Maxine is a real person and not
just a comic character?”

I nodded.

Maxine was Grams’ latest passion.
She’d seen one of her calendars in my office and was instantly
hooked. I swear, she even dressed like her. And every day, every
damn day, she piped up with more Maxine quotes.