The Case of the Yellow Diamond (2 page)

 

Chapter 2

T
od Bartelme told me a lot of other things, too. About how he and Josie were experienced SCUBA divers and that it looked like the bomber with her granduncle shot down over Yap went into the ocean with everybody aboard. The wreck had never been found. A sad story, but it had happened to a lot of others and it happened a long time ago, and I wasn't so sure I needed to know all that. I still wasn't clear on why the Bartelmes needed the services of a private investigator located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So I interrupted my potential client to ask, “This is all interesting history, Mr. Bartelme. But I confess I don't see the connection to today. Why do you want to hire me?”

Bartelme stopped and took a swig from a water bottle he carried. He smiled. “Sorry. I'll get to the point. It appears someone's trying to sabotage our next trip to Yap.”

“Sabotage. Your trip to Yap.” Of all the things I might have supposed Bartelme would say, that was about at the end of the list. Hell, it didn't even make it
on
the list. “Somebody doesn't want you to go back to the South Pacific? Why?”

“Haven't a clue. That's where you come in, if you'll take the case, Mr. Sean.”

I liked that he didn't hesitate over my name. Over either of my names. My first name was the same as my last. Sean Sean, Private Investigator, Ltd. That was what it says on my office door. I had it painted there when I leased this office. I might be limited in the height department, being only five-two, but otherwise, I was fully functional.

I didn't do divorce cases or other domestic wrangles, and I tried to stay away from the bent-nose boys, the organized, mobbed up, fellows. I had an acquaintance, a guy in town who was a player. Maybe. I don't believe everything he told me. He claimed to have some ties to organized crime in places like Chicago. I used him as a sort of resource. If I got vibes I didn't like, he could often warn me if I was getting too close to an organized felony. I used to insist I'd never get involved with the CIA and international spies and such, but then last year I had to deal with a stolen painting. From Poland.

Tod Bartelme was not mobbed up and he wasn't a wise guy. From everything I could determine with a quick Internet search, he was just a guy who had worked for the state in mid-level administrative positions for a ton of years and had never been in any trouble with the law. I hadn't met his family, but that could come later. Right now I had to suss out whether there was even a case here. We talked some more and I made some notes. Then we made an appointment for the coming weekend. I would drive to their place on White Bear Lake, a northeastern outer suburb of Saint Paul. I wasn't fond of woods and brush and things rural, even though I lived in an inner suburb with a lot of trees. A former client gave me the place. I could hardly refuse, right? I grew up in the city and I liked it there. I even enjoyed the tall buildings, the smell of hot pavement in the summer, the street musicians, the parties and even the scufflers and the players. Some of them. The Bartelmes liked the cooler leafier suburban life. And the water. Okay with me.

What I'd learned from Tod that made me think there was something hinky going on was this: for a couple of years Josie and Tod have been looking for her granduncle, Richard Terry Amundson. The Bartelmes had done their research and even made two trips to Yap. They had zeroed in on his bomber group, the planes and the date and approximate flight route. They had developed a contact with a guy in St. Louis who said he was a crew member of a different aircraft in the same group and could tell them things. What things? Important things, apparently. He was due to arrive in the Twin Cities a few days after my meeting with the Bartelmes.

Bartelme was excited. He explained he thought that, with the information the St. Louis vet would supply, they'd pinpoint more precisely the location of the bomberwhen it was shot down. That was to be their next big trip, coming up in August.

But then, he said, things started going wrong. Oddly wrong. “Suddenly, the wheels are coming off the cart,” as he put it. Somebody seemed determined he and his wife should not go back to the remote island of Yap or ever find her granduncle's remains. Would I meet with him and his wife to discuss the rash of odd happenings?

Yes, I would meet with them. I was willing to meet because what little I had learned about Yap and the war in the Pacific intrigued me. I also had a personal connection, tenuous though it was. What I knew of my dad was what my mother had told me not long before she died. My dad had been in the service, probably the Navy, although my mom wasn't too clear when the topic came up. He'd definitely been in the Pacific, she told me, fighting the North Koreans. I'd never met my dad. He and my mom had split right after I showed up. Her information about his sojourn in the service was sketchy. She also told me that my grandfather, her dad, had been in the service as well. He was apparently a sailor and had been in action in the Pacific. I'd never met my grandfather, either. I was intrigued, mildly so, by Bartelme's tale. So I'd journey out to the far eastern reaches of our metropolitan area, to that foreign land called White Bear Lake, to meet his wife and look over the information they had. Then I'd assess the problems that had recently poked up and see what there was to be seen.

Meanwhile, but not back at some ranch, I would connect with my pard, and we'd ride off to some nice downtown restaurant for the evening repast before we took in a late movie or something else just as benign.

* * * *

My pardner is the tall, willowy and wealthy massage therapist Catherine Mckerney, holder of profitable massage contracts and owner of a massage therapy school and a bunch of stocks. Her dad had left Catherine well-enough fixed, but being a smart cookie and not one to rest on her well-formed backside, she bought a massage school and turned a documented need into a lucrative operation that gave her a very comfortable living, something I was willing and able to share.

What? Shocked? I made a reasonable living as an independent PI. I shuffled about and took care of business just fine. But there was no fancy mansion on Lake of the Isles, no Bentley in the garage. No Pontiac GTO, for that matter. I had my little office on Central Avenue, and I had my ­practice, and as long as Catherine Mckerney would put up with my shortcomings and my demented wit, we had a fine relationship. It's called love, I think.

I wheeled into the underground garage at Catherine's abode, then zipped up to the fourth floor and down the well-carpeted hall to our apartment. As I went I admired the fine prints on the walls between doors. The doors were widely spaced because the apartments on the fourth floor were roomy, sporting multiple bed- and other rooms. Catherine liked her space, and as I might have mentioned, whatever Catherine likes . . .

Inside, I discovered I was alone save for the blinking light on our joint telephone service. I was something of a reluctant techno user. I had a regular “blower” in my office, one of those units that squatted on a desk. With wires hooking it to the wall. It had a letter and number dial, and you picked up the hand piece and talked into one end while listening to the other. There was an extension here in Catherine's place and another in my Roseville palace, my address of record. Catherine had a cell phone. I owned one but most emphatically did not carry it. Who wanted to talk on the telephone while driving somewhere? Not me. Maybe I was prejudiced because, not that long ago, I helped an EMT after a bad multi-car accident on a freeway at the edge of the city. I had the misfortune to help collect body parts. One of the parts we collected was the hand and wrist of one of the three dead drivers. The fingers still clutched a cell phone.

So, with the telephone arrangement, I knew I could answer the blinking summons because it was
our
telephone service. I picked up the mobile unit and ambled into the kitchen while I retrieved the call. There was only one. It was my sultry-voiced lover, Catherine herself.

“I miss you, sweetie. And I have to postpone tonight's dinner date. Some things at the school need my immediate attention. I'll make it up to you. There are leftovers in the fridge. I should be home by eleven or so and then we'll have some fun.” Her voice dropped almost an octave, and she sort of growled at me when she hung up. It was very stimulating.

Before Catherine and I came together after a chance meeting at a symphony ball affair, I would have gone out for a quick supper or back to my office with a beer and brat takeout. Something like that. Catherine had modified my eating habits so I was healthier. I checked the refrigerator, went and changed and slipped down to the basement pool to do a few laps. After laps, supper consisted of a large plate of cold broiled chicken, a bowl of cole slaw and a very nice crisp Sterling Sauvignon Blanc. The Napa Valley variety.

Later, about eleven-forty or so, just as I was dozing off after having watched Charlie Rose interview somebody important, the other side of our big bed sank a bit and a long-legged, naked siren slid under the covers and began making free with my body.

 

Chapter 3

N
oon, on a sunny summer day in Minneapolis. Well-rested, well-sated and rarin' to go, I left my office where I'd checked my mail and messages and headed east for my meeting with Tod and Josie Bartelme.

Half an hour later, I wheeled my tired blue Taurus into a wide, winding driveway of slick-looking asphalt and up to an even wider turn-around and parking area. On the right stood a white three-stall garage. It looked to have a big room over the stalls. Directly ahead was a large fieldstone-walled house with windows set back from the façade in rock sills and neat wood frames. I exited from my ride and took a gander at the three-story home. It was pretty obvious this was the back of the house, which was oriented to the other side. I expected that would be the lakeside. I was right.

An ordinary door at the side appeared to provide access to a narrow space between garage and house. The breezeway door between the garage and the side of the house opened and a teenaged blond boy grinned out at me. “Hi,” he said in a high tenor. “I'm Cal. Pederson. You must be Mr. . . . Sean.”

“I am,” I replied. I walked toward him and we shook hands. Kid seemed mature and self-possessed for one I judged to be about sixteen. He had me in the height department by an inch or so.

“Your first and last names are the same. That's sorta odd, isn't it?”

“It is. My mother did that. But I don't mind. I'm used to it.”

“Cool. My name's actually Calvin. I don't like it much so everybody calls me Cal. Or Buddy. You're a PI? A private investigator?”

“Right.”

“Cool. D'you carry a gun?”

“Almost never.” I gave him a sideways glance as he pointed me into the breezeway and toward another door facing west, this one up two steps. We went through the door and into a large room with a slanted ceiling. Half a cathedral. The wall facing me several yards away was all glass. It looked out on a shady lawn and farther away, the lake. We came in at one end and under a balcony, which was an extension of the second floor where I guessed the bedrooms were. I stepped out from under the balcony and glanced up. Apparently all the second-floor rooms looked at the glassed wall as well. Nice. The kid kept up a steady stream of chatter, and I learned he was Josie and Tod's nephew, that he was from Chicago, and was staying with his aunt and uncle for the summer.

I heard voices in murmured conversation. “Everybody's waiting on the deck,” said Cal, pointing toward a sliding glass door at one end of the opposite wall. The fourth wall held a large fieldstone fireplace that looked clean but well used and two doors in the wood-paneled wall. Turned out the deck extended a few more feet along the axis of the glass wall. The deck held a long white table and lots of chairs. Several people looked up or stood when they saw us coming. It was, apparently, a gathering of the clan Pederson or Bartelme. I'd expected to meet privately with just Tod and Josie. This affair looked to be a command performance of some sort.

If I'd realized that, I would have created a powerpoint presentation. Not that I had any idea how to do so. Or how to run one. We ambled through the glass door at one side of the room and Cal led me soberly toward the assembled family. He was clearly delighted to be presenting me to his family unit.

Apart from Tod Bartelme and Cal, of course, I recognized only one other person. He was a tall, stork-like man, someone I'd encountered in an oblique way in the past. He was a lawyer who specialized in trusts, retirement investments, money management, wills, and conveyances—things that I have only limited understanding of or contact with. That was due to my lack of loose cash. His name was Anderson. Gareth Anderson. Gary, he was called. Slender, six-six or -seven with a carefully barbered, short, ginger mustache and head of hair, he had a sharp penetrating gaze which belied his smile and easygoing manner. I reached up and shook his hand since he was closest. I wondered why he was present at this preliminary meeting.

Calvin nudged my arm then and steered me to a nicely set-up woman with short brown hair, an amused expression on her lips, and a slender, athletic-looking body. This was Cal's aunt, Josie Pederson Bartelme, wife of Tod. I knew she was a lawyer with a Saint Paul firm, but that was about all I'd had time to learn. She had a strong, almost-hard grip and when she turned to take a chair, I could see the fluidity of movement and athletic economy that a diver would naturally possess.

Preston Pederson was next, father of Josie, head of the clan, if I was any judge. I knew a little about him, just from reading the local newspapers. The old man still moved well, if slowly. He had been a vigorous, perhaps even a dominating personality in his younger years. Preston had built a solid business in the investment field on the foundation of his father's development and construction firm. He was one of the Twin Cities movers and shakers. His eyes were cold and appraising, and he held my hand in another hard grip a little longer than necessary. His smile was wide and generous. “I think you should know,” he said after the introduction, “that you weren't our first choice.”

I raised one eyebrow, something I occasionally practice in the mirror, to signify I wasn't put off by his statement. Behind him I caught a fleeting grimace from Tod. “Well, Mr. Pederson, I'm here now, so we'll all just have to make the best of the circumstance, won't we?”

He shrugged minimally and stepped back to find a chair at the table. I felt that little tingle that usually told me I was committed. Later I wondered if he was playing me, that he'd wanted me to have that reaction.

Oily showed up next in the form of one Alvin Pederson. Family characteristics weren't his strong suit. I never got the exact family connection. A cousin, perhaps? Weak of chin and shifty of eye, his handshake was nevertheless normal. He was slender and, unlike the rest of the men present, dressed in a suit over a blue dress shirt with a paisley tie snugged up. He looked hot and uncomfortable. Then came sex. A lot of it and pretty blatant.

Introduced as Alvin's wife, this was Maxine. I was nonplussed for a moment. I recovered quickly without outward sign, I hoped, but I caught my breath when she inhaled. She did that a lot. Her tight white tennis dress showed off her impressive cleavage. The short skirt showed off her well-shaped, tanned legs to good advantage as well. She was easily ten years younger than her husband. Her eyes, wide-spaced and dark brown, were as active as I'd ever seen. She scanned me side to side, and up and down as well. It was a quick assessment, and I'd bet she had my net worth within a few hundred, one way or the other. Her hands were quick and agile. She didn't shake my hand, but took me by the arm. She came close, touched my shoulder, and one hand ran up, then down my arm. If we'd been alone, I figured she'd have squeezed my biceps and made oohing and ahhing noises. It all took just seconds. When she turned to release me back to the rest of the assemblage, she leaned in just enough so I felt her breast slide along my upper arm. I resisted an urge to check and see if my wallet was still in place.

When I looked beyond the voluptuous Maxine at the rest of the folks, a couple of the men appeared bemused or maybe envious. Josie Bartelme looked a little uncomfortable, as if she thought Maxine's come-on out of place.

“Come and sit down, Mr. Sean. Would you like something to drink?” asked Josie.

“Thank you, no. I'm fine. I'd like to get to the meat of the matter, as it were, and have you folks tell me just what it is I can do for you this day.” I already had a good idea what I could do for, or to, the lot of them. The vibrations were beginning to get me in the pit of the old stomach. I was starting to assume I'd need a drink before this war kicked off.

There was a general shuffling about as people found chairs. Alvin sat on my left, just behind Josie Bartelme. His wife, Maxine, wobbled off on her high heels to the far end of the oval table where she sank gracefully into the shade of an umbrella-ed lounger, a bored expression settling on her face.

Preston Pederson, Pres to his friends, of whom there were few, according to one of my sources, sat in the chair close on my right and dragged it noisily closer so he was almost in my space. Figured. He was, after all, the moneyman in this group. Neither of the Bartelmes held high-income jobs that would support multiple diving trips to Yap Island. Alvin looked like he poured most of his disposable income down his throat and onto his wife's shapely back. At the last minute another man stepped out of the house onto the patio. He introduced himself as an associate of Preston Pederson. I took him to be a hard man who would sometimes be called on to do hard things for his employer.

“So, Mr. Sean. What is it you can do for us?” The question came, as I'd expected, from Preston Pederson. Tod had opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Sorry, Tod, I know this is your show, I just thought I'd get the ball rolling.”

“Depends on what you want.” Tod and I had already had this conversation, but I addressed him directly. Regardless of where the money came from, I figured it was his deal until he told me different. “As I understand it, you're embarked on another somewhat perilous effort to get to the South Pacific to try to locate a drowned B-24 off Yap Island. You're looking for a missing relative. A granduncle, I believe?”

“That's right, Mr. Sean. My granduncle Richard Amundson flew with the 350th Bomber Wing during the war. He was stationed in the Pacific in Hawaii first and then they moved to a forward base.” Smoothly, his wife Josie picked up the narration.

“Later when U. S. and British forces, along with help from Australia, began to overrun the islands the Japanese had fortified, the bomber group was relocated farther to the west in order to bomb the Japanese mainland on a regular basis. They were also used to support the invasions of the Pacific islands, like Iwo Jima.”

She stopped and Tod took up the tale. This was something these two obviously did for some sort of public presentations and they fell naturally into their practiced roles. “In July of 1944, Josie's granduncle was in a four-plane group that flew from a base on Los Negros to Saipan. My records aren't entirely clear as to the target of that raid. On the way home the bombers were attacked by a number of Zeroes out of the airstrip at Yap.” He stopped when I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Zeroes?” he grinned. “Our designation for one of the Japanese little single-seat fighter airplanes.

“I guess the bombers had slipped by on the way out in the dark, but now it was broad daylight for their return flight. So apparently they were easy targets. Three of the four planes were shot down and crashed in the ocean. Josie's granduncle was on one of them.”

Tod stopped and took a breath. Except for birds twittering in nearby bushes, we were silent. It had happened almost seventy years ago, but talking about armed action in skies over that distant ocean and involving the death of a relative seemed to bring it rushing back in all its immediacy. Young men in the ferocity of their potent youth, struggling for what they believed in, for what they knew to be true and right, directed into combat by old soldiers who were a lot less certain of the right or wrong of it.
Combat,
I thought.
The fog of war.
I had never experienced it and had never had a desire to do so. In spite of my profession, I wasn't so sure the force of arms was the best way to settle things. Ever.

In the near silence, Josie got up and went to the rail facing the water, her head turned away. White Bear Lake was blue and quiet in the sun. Tod glanced at his wife and then resumed in a softer voice.

“Anyway, Amundson went down and is still listed with the others in his crew as MIA, missing in action. After we got interested in his history, we—Josie, actually—did a lot of research. Then two years ago we went to Yap and, using the records we had found, dove where we thought the bombers might be. It's not that deep in a lot of places and we located a plane. Not the right one, but we were sure we were on the right track.”

“The plane you found was one of those in the mission you were looking for? What sort of research did you do?” I asked.

“Internet, the library, lots of reading. It's pretty interesting, actually,” Josie turned back to us and said. “Then I had the idea to contact any members of the bomber wing who were still alive. The VA and some private organizations helped me find people.”

“We have a lot of letters,” said Tod.

“I'd like to see some of them,” I said.

Tod nodded and went on. “Well, we were thinking about whether we could make another trip out there. It's a long way and expensive.”

“How'd you finance the first trip?” I asked.

“Is that any of his business?” demanded Alvin.

“Yes, I think so,” responded Josie quietly. “If Mr. Sean is going to help us figure out what's going on, he needs to know everything there is.”

“And?” demanded the older Pederson, raising his head and fixing me with a stare. “I'll tell you frankly, I originally thought Josie and Tod's idea to travel all the way to that speck of coral in the Pacific Ocean was a bad idea. Dangerous. But they persisted, and I guess all the research was maybe paying off. Am I right?” He showed his teeth at Tod and Josie. “Although when the day's done, I don't know what you'll have. We already know Amundson died when one of those planes went down, right? Nothing's going to change that. Right?”

“Everybody here and some others contributed,” said Tod. “But Josie's dad contributed most of the support.” Preston nodded in acknowledgement, and now there was an uncomfortable feel to the air around me. My detective's radar was screeching in my head. I wondered just how eager the old man had been to finance the expeditions.

Maxine bounced up and said, “I'm thirsty. Can't we have some iced tea or something?” It was a tension breaker. Josie stood up and Preston shoved back his chair.