A Death Long Overdue by Eva Gates

Author:Eva Gates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

Chapter Thirteen

I climbed into bed with my iPad and Charles, full of fish and salads and some of Josie’s marvelous pastries that she’d brought for our dessert. I searched for more information about the Rajipani Diamond and the Blackstone family treasure. I found a picture of the necklace and studied it. I agreed with Rachel: it was incredibly ugly, designed to show off excessive wealth rather than good taste. I chastised myself for the unkind thought. Rachel said her grandfather had loved her grandmother very much. Perhaps, he gave her this necklace, thinking it matched the strength of the feelings he had for her.

The main feature was a ginormous white diamond, about the size of a golf ball, which the article confirmed was a hefty one hundred and one carats, set in gold and surrounded by sapphires. The pendant hung from a chain covered with smaller diamonds, more sapphires, and rubies. A smaller circle of equally precious gems lay inside the first.

Not something that’d drop between the floorboards and be forgotten, or would easily slip into the Nags Head criminal underworld. If Nags Head had a criminal underworld. That was something I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

Articles on the necklace told me the main feature, the big diamond, was named the Rajipani Diamond after the Indian prince who’d had it cut into its current form. It had been found in South Africa in 1903 and had passed through several hands, eventually ending up with Prince Rajipani, who had it cut and inset into the necklace. Around the time India got its independence, the newest Rajipani prince had fallen onto hard times and was forced to sell almost all his family’s assets at fire-sale prices. Apparently his son had later gone into the movie business and made a new fortune as the producer of Bollywood flicks. The articles I read said nothing about him trying to get back the diamond, and there was no indication he’d ever come under suspicion for the theft.

From what I read, if he wanted it, he had the funds to simply offer to buy it. No need to pretend to be an American drifter working construction and hanging around beach house parties waiting for a chance to grab it.

I couldn’t help but think about our book club’s current selection, The Moonstone, which concerns the search for an Indian jewel known as the Moonstone. In the book, members of a religious cult come to England in pursuit of their sacred jewel, stolen by one Colonel Herncastle, who gave it to his niece for her eighteenth birthday. And there the story begins.

As far as I could tell from my search of the internet, the Rajipani Diamond had no supernatural or religious significance. It was simply worth a heck of a lot of money.

I expanded my search and found a picture of Jeff Applewhite taken about a year before his disappearance. He seemed to me like an average-looking guy. Late twenties, scruffy dark hair in need of a wash, messy beard, big eyes in a thin face with prominent cheekbones.

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