Chapter 82
AFTER TREVOR THREATENED her, drank, shoved her around, and collected his marital due, he finished a six-pack and went to bed. Red-eyed, sore, and frightened, Sarah sat in his chair, squeezing the exercise ball. She changed hands, working her fingers until they were nearly numb. Then she shook out her hands and booted up her laptop.
Once she was on the Web, she clicked on Google News and typed “Hello Kitty” into the search bar.
To Sarah’s relief, there was no mention of the burglary at Diana King’s house. Not yet. But Sarah was worried about the tools she’d ditched in her steeplechase through Pacific Heights. Specifically, had she been wearing gloves when she changed the battery in her headlamp? She couldn’t remember.
And so Sarah searched her mind for an out. She’d dumped the tools in a trash bag near that small construction site. Maybe if someone found it, he’d think, Cool. Free stuff. Or maybe the trash bag would be tied and simply taken out to the curb.
Sarah thought about all the other stuff she’d left behind like a trail of bread crumbs: her sweater and socks and shoes. By themselves, they were nothing. But if her prints were on the battery, everything else could be used to back up the charges against her.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, if the shoe fits, you must nail her ass for twenty years without possibility of parole.
Sarah groaned and ran the cursor down the Hello Kitty page. She read a few articles about her burglaries and her growing infamy, taking no pleasure in any of it. A headache bloomed behind her right eye as she tapped into the canon of stories about the Dowlings. The most recent clips were all Marcus Dowling quotes and interviews, but as she scrolled to ear
lier pages, she found stories from the day after she’d done the Dowling job.
A headline grabbed her attention.
“The Sun of Ceylon Stolen in Fatal Armed Robbery.”
Sarah flashed on a few words that had been almost forgotten since she’d spoken with Sergeant Boxer. The cop had said that the yellow stone was a diamond. Now it seemed the diamond had a name. After clicking on the link to the article, Sarah began to read.
“The Sun of Ceylon,” a twenty-karat yellow diamond, was stolen from actor Marcus Dowling and his wife, Casey Dowling, who was killed in an armed robbery. When last seen, this showy stone was set in a handworked gold ring with 120 smaller white diamonds.
The Sun has a long history, marked with sudden death. Once the property of a young farmer who found it in a dirt street in Ceylon, the stone has passed from paupers to kings, leaving a trail of tragedy behind.
Sarah felt as if a fist had closed around her heart. She called up the history of the Sun of Ceylon and everything that had happened to the people who had owned it—a long list of financial ruin and disgrace, sudden insanity, suicide, homicide, and accidental death.
In her research on gems, Sarah had read of other stones like the Sun. The Koh-i-noor diamond, known as the “Mountain of Light,” brought either great misfortune or an end to the kingdoms of all men who owned it. Marie Antoinette wore the Hope diamond, and she was beheaded—it was said that a string of death and misfortune followed the stone.
There were other gems that carried curses: the Black Orlov Diamond, the Delhi Purple Sapphire, the Black Prince’s Ruby. And the Sun of Ceylon.
Casey Dowling had owned it. And now she was dead.
Sarah had given that stone to Heidi as a romantic gift—but what if it brought evil into Heidi’s life?
Sarah had to ask herself, Am I really this superstitious?
Crossing your fingers and throwing salt over your shoulder were baloney. Still, call it stress, call it irrational—it didn’t matter. Sarah felt it strongly. It was well-documented. People who owned cursed gemstones died.
She had to get that diamond back from Heidi before Pete really hurt her.
Chapter 83
THE POLICE CAR circled the parking lot at Crissy Field like a buzzard. Sarah stiffened as she watched the cruiser in her rearview mirror, seeing it loop slowly around the lot while she wondered if her former student Mark Ogrodnick had told the police that she’d been in Whole Foods, barefoot, scraped up, and looking scared.
Sarah held her breath and moved only her eyes, and then the black-and-white eased out of the exit and continued onto the boulevard.
God, Sarah, chill.
There’s no way those cops could be looking for you here. No way!
Putting on her sunglasses, Sarah got out of the car. She crossed over the trail to the beach side of the walk and sat on an empty bench facing the water.
Weather was coming in, clouds obscuring the afternoon sun but not stopping the windsurfers, who were shouting to one another as they changed their clothes out there on the asphalt.
Zipping up her jacket, Sarah felt chilled inside and out. How do you tell someone you love that you’ve been leading a double life—and, in her case, a criminal double life? She had to get Heidi to understand that she knew stealing was wrong and dangerous, but if she could provide the means for all of them to escape Terror and Beastly, then she could live with what she’d done.