Carats and Coconuts (17 page)

I climbed up the steep riverbank and
sat down, unable to keep the tears from flowing out fast enough to
create an entire new river to rival the one I was sitting
above.

Roman, like the good man he was, said
nothing. The fact he simply sat down beside me and held me in his
arms spoke volumes.

I tried to use the deep-breathing
techniques my Yoga Master had taught me, but I couldn’t make them
work. Feeling the rough edges of the uncut stone pressed against
the inside of my tightly closed fists was the only thing keeping me
convinced this day had finally come. I was even afraid to drop the
stone into my rock sack for fear it would somehow disappear and
would seem to have been a dream.

Thinking I should probably have Roman
pinch me, very lightly, as I was kinda’ squeamish about pinching in
general, I leaned away from him just long enough to ask him to try
it.

But wild screams coming from upstream
made the pinching for reality totally unnecessary.

Whatever was happening back there was
very sure to be real and possibly life threatening.

B
y
the time we’d scrambled to our feet, Beefcakes was heading toward
us along the river’s edge. He was waving his arms high in the air,
as if we wouldn’t be able to see that jolly-tanned giant coming at
us.

Roman quickly arranged for Beefcakes
to guard our Long Tom while he, R and I took off for Bunny and
Grams’ mining site.

I don’t even want to take you to where
all my mind was racing as we did the best we could in our heavy
waders to scramble to their site to see what the hell was going on
up there. Those thoughts were surely scarier than what we were
about to see. Although, nothing good could make people scream like
that. Let’s just hope the screaming continued, which would mean
they were still alive.

Reaching the base of the last tiny
hill before Grams and Bunny’s camp, I paused just long enough to
catch my breath, thinking if there was ever a time for a yoga deep
breath, it was sure as hell now.

“
You okay, Princess?” Roman
asked, stopping beside me and rubbing my back.

I bent forward, hands on my knees,
trying to suck in some much needed air.

“
Yeah. Just a little out of
shape. That’s all.”

We crested that last hill together and
speed-walked the last few yards to their Long Tom, which was now
abandoned.

But to our relief, at least life
hadn’t abandoned them. I scanned the small crowd and quickly
accounted for everyone. Okay…everyone…except Grams.

“
Where’s Grams? And what’s
all the screaming about? Jesus. We thought you all were dying some
horrible death,” I said, trying to shield the sun from my eyes as I
continued scouring the site for Grams.

“
At this point, dying would
be a relief,” The Foz said, clearly shaken by whatever had
occurred.

“
Don’t wish for something
you’d regret receiving,” R said, in that stoic but dead serious way
he did while threatening someone’s well-being.

Have I mentioned that I hope I’m never
on that guy’s bad side? I love him like an adopted grandpa, but I’m
still scared shitless of him.

Fosito said something in Portuguese
that clearly got Roman and R’s panties in a pinch, but I didn’t
have a clue what it was, which was probably a good
thing.

The sooner we could nail that asshole,
the better. But for now, we had to continue to let him think he was
part of our trusted team.

“
So again…where’s Grams?” I
asked.

And with that, there she was, naked as
a very disturbed jaybird, waving her arms and speaking in tongues
over the tops of a nearby row of wild jungle shrubs.

“
What the hell are you
doing?” I asked her, seeing her clothes on the picnic table the
crowd had been gathered in front of.

I grabbed her horridly mismatched
garments and headed for the shrubs.

“
It’s my job to keep track
of this Foz bastard, and I prefer to garden in the nude,” she said,
almost hissing at me, probably because I was holding out her
clothes with a look strongly indicating she’d better get her small
skinny ass into ’em.

“
What does gardening in the
nude have to do with
guarding
Fosito? And for what it’s worth, you’re mining for
gems, not gardening.”

“
Gardening in the nude is a
lot cheaper than using scarecrows,” she said, without a hint of
hesitation or inclination that there was anything wrong with what
she’d done.

“
Let me guess. Another
Maxine-ism?”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Perhaps, my ass. Cover up
yours and get out of those bushes. There could be snakes in
there.”

I looked at Grams, and unfortunately,
I knew precisely where her mind was now wandering.

“
And not the kind of snakes
you prefer.”

“
You should be thanking me,”
she said, not waiting to get dressed before sashaying out from
behind the bushes, which for a moment, had covered at least part of
her.

“
Thanking you for what?” I
asked, blocking her tiny frame with mine, so as to not further
incite the crowd.

“
You told me to guard that
son of a bitch, and I did. And trust me, after what he’s seen
today, he’ll be too traumatized to do anything else all day
long.”

“
You’ve got a point there,”
I said, thinking she was probably right.

Hell, The Foz actually looked kind of
pale, which was hard to do with his dark skin.

“
You’re damn right I’ve got
a point. And for the record, I don’t do anything
half-ass.”

“
Obviously,” I said, looking
away from her trying so hard not to laugh.

B
ack at the lodge, we settled in for the remainder of the
afternoon. All of us were too out of sorts to continue our mining
operations.

Following our Bonus Stone discovery
and Grams’ latest Maxine Moment, Roman, R and I couldn’t deal with
the idle chitchat the others were engaging in. Besides, we needed
to place a conference call to my parents. So, we excused ourselves
and met up in my father’s den.

At this stage in the game, we had to
not only keep Fosito in sight at all times, we also had to go
deeper still within his gem-trading schemes.

I settled into my father’s well-worn,
faux leather club chair, while Roman and R sat on the large
matching sofa across from me.

My father’s comforting voice began to
filter through the conference phone’s speaker system.

Even in the midst of the total chaos
we were now involved in, my father always remained a source of
quiet, self-assured reason.

Actually, the only time he ever
waivered from that was when he and Father Time were at each other’s
bearded throats. Thank goodness their latest hullabaloo was over,
but I wasn’t in total denial. It wouldn’t be long before they were
at it again.

So, Father Time rattled my St. Nick
possessed Dad, but the thugs from his gem-mining jungle world
didn’t.

“
You’re certain that Stanley
has already given the Maple Lynch money to Fosito?” Dad posed the
question to any one of the three of us who could answer
him.

I could picture him and my mom in
their home office, back along the fabulous shores of Lake Michigan.
The office was set up a lot like this one. My mom would be in a
chair just like mine, while my dad would have the whole couch to
himself with his feet up. Both of them were more than likely
sipping hot cocoa while chatting with us as if this were just a
normal staff meeting.

Just the thought of that made me feel
a little more calm. And wow could I use a whole bunch of
that!

“
Yes. Bunny and Beefcakes
confirmed for me this morning that the transfer has taken place.
Actually, it took place yesterday. So we’re all good there,” R
said.

“
And Fosito claimed he’d
indeed try to buy more gems from his rogue Sol Larga sources,”
Roman added.

“
We’ll be there when the
trade goes down,” R said.

“
And that’s when we’ll
finally nail the bastards,” I said.

As I thought about stopping Fosito and
Stanley’s smuggling ring, the calm completely left me.

“
This investigation has
taken waaay too long,” my mother finally spoke. “And I’m still not
convinced we know everything.”

“
I have to agree with you,
Suzie,” Roman said, as he left the couch to take up his habit of
pacing off a room while connecting his theories and
concerns.

“
We now know there are over
a hundred Brazilian police officers involved, as well as government
officials from the Bureau of Indigenous Affairs. Not to mention the
Belgian buyers egging on all this greed to its maximum
take-everything mentality. This is much more than the sale of our
gemstones,” Mom said.

Her voice was always much more intense
than my dad’s.

I had always thought I was more like
my mom in that regard, but it wasn’t until I started down this
latest Cozy Cash Trail that I realized just how much.

I wish I had more of my dad’s
easygoing ways, but in this world, that could get you
killed.

“
Even the governor of the
state on which your mines are located is now under investigation,”
R added.

“
Chief Valente was
approached by the governor and a local mayor. They wanted to trade
improved roads, schools and medical clinics in exchange for placing
new Long Toms and other extraction machines on the reservation.
When Valente refused, the officials pulled Fosito’s men from the
roadblocks and allowed their own wildcat miners to continue
business as usual,” Roman said.

“
That also meant back to
business as usual for Stanley and Fosito. Their smuggling
operations are back in full swing,” I said, “but that’s what’s
bothering you and I most, Mom. If business was sooo good now, why
did Stanley place that last call to Myra?”

“
Precisely, my dear.
Why
now,
when all
was back in high gear, would Stanley tell Myra how nervous he was
and that he needed to get out of the country immediately and back
to their New York Diamond District base?”

I knew my mom, and she was thinking
the same thing I was, but if we voiced those thoughts in front of
the men we loved, we’d basically be putting a price on their heads
that was even higher than those on ours.

I’m not usually a person who waits for
anyone to take the lead away from me, but this time I needed to let
Mom start this part of the conversation.

“
Stanley was worried about
one particular shipment,” she began.

An eerie silence descended both in our
room and in my parent’s office in Michigan.

Not one of the men said anything. And
the silence was horrible to sit through.

At least Roman and R had each other to
take comfort in. My poor dad had no one.

I knew Roman would be the first to
finally say something, and he proved me right.

“
What shipment?”

Now that he was back to his
two-sentence questions, I knew the intensity in our hemisphere of
the world had rocketed to new heights.

“
The missing shipment he’d
promised Fosito,” I said, looking at Roman, begging him with my
eyes to just hear us out before he flipped his gourd.

Not that he wasn’t entitled to flip
his gourd, because he certainly was. I just hoped to keep it to one
single explosion instead of a fireworks extravaganza.

“
What kind of missing
shipment?” Dad asked.

I envisioned his hands tightening
around his beard.

“
Stanley used another,
unreported and very large shipment of our stones as collateral on a
second Maple Lynch loan, a loan he then planned to use to finance
another deal he’d made with Fosito,” I said, beginning to fill in
the blanks of this saga.

“
But Fosito, not knowing
that shipment was Stanley’s collateral, not that he would care
anyway, stole the shipment and sold it himself in Antwerp, leaving
Stanley without the collateral to make good on his loan or his deal
with Fosito,” Mom continued.

“
So Stanley needs to find or
at least needs us to find this new stash of the largest ever take
from these mines to pay off Fosito? And if he doesn’t, then what?”
Roman asked.

The fact he was back to using more
than two word sentences gave me hope.

“
Or…one-by-one, Fosito will
take out all of Witherspoon and Witherspoon and our associates,” I
said, knowing this time, the silence would be broken in a big way
with finale-worthy fireworks from Roman, R and my dad.

“
How did you find out about
this shipment?” Dad asked, his voice louder than I’d ever heard it,
even when he was fighting with Father Time.