Bradford leaned close to kiss her goodbye. “I’ve got to get moving. I have a client meeting. But I’ll call later. Okay?”
She nodded and waved goodbye through the back screen door. When he was gone, she sighed and turned to find Finn watching her with interest.
“He’s a good one,” Finn said.
Charmaine set the blender in a cupboard. “Seems like it.”
“I’m happy for you both. Now come into the living room, I’ve got something I have to show you.”
When Charmaine was seated on the couch, Finn sat beside her. She pulled a small box out of her shoulder bag and set it on the coffee table. The box was old and peeling. When she opened the lid, Charmaine peered inside, but couldn’t see anything particularly interesting.
“What is it?”
“After Helen left home, I was curious and looked in her room. This was the only thing I found.”
Finn pulled an old, dull-looking ring out of the box. The ring was large enough to fit a woman’s finger, but there was nothing in the setting. “I honestly don’t know why I kept this thing all these years. It’s not worth anything. There must’ve been a stone in the setting a long time ago. I often wondered why Helen had it hidden in her closet.”
She handed the ring to Charmaine, who turned it over and examined it closely. It was made of gold, although it was so tarnished, it was hard to tell. The setting was large, and she suddenly remembered the diamond they’d discovered in the cave the day they’d followed Betsy down the cliffs.
“Wait here.” She went to her room and found the box with her personal care items against one wall. She cut it open with a box cutter she’d stuffed into her back jeans pocket earlier. She’d stowed her mother’s jewels at the bank, but the diamond they found in the cave, she’d left with her other costume jewellery. It was dull and lifeless and looked like a piece of cubic zirconia. Anyone searching through the box would never guess it was a diamond. In fact, Charmaine wasn’t certain it was.
She carried it out to the living room and set it on top of the ring. Finn gasped.
Charmaine’s heart skipped a beat. The diamond fit the setting perfectly.
“Where on earth did you find that?” Finn asked.
“It’s a long story. Did you ever ask Mum about the ring?”
“She called here once from a public phone years after you left. I mentioned the ring and she said she left it behind because it didn’t have the diamond, but that she had other jewellery and it was worth a lot of money.”
“Did she tell you anything else about it?”
“Just that she’d taken it from the murderer’s lair, or something equally dramatic. It sounded like a fantasy story and honestly, there were times when I wondered if she’d made up the entire thing. But I had the ring and so I’d sit and stare at it, wondering who it belonged to and what it all meant.”
Charmaine set the ring and diamond on the coffee table and tucked her legs up beneath her on the couch. “It’s all so confusing.”
“Apparently, she did some research right before she left Coral Island and discovered that the killer had come to the island after stealing the diamond jewellery from a bank overseas. At least, she thought that’s what had happened. She didn’t have any proof, of course, so when she suggested to the police that the killer was in fact also a robber, she said they laughed her out of the station. They needed evidence, they said. She planned on going back to the station the next day with the jewellery, but that night someone broke into the house and threatened her. She didn’t tell them where the jewellery was, and my parents came home early and scared the person off. Helen left the island the next day. She said she couldn’t risk your safety, or Sean’s.”
Charmaine’s head spun with the new information. How she wished her mother had done things differently. It seemed there were so many ways she could’ve handled the situation better, and maybe they’d all have had a family they could rely on.
“Why didn’t she take the jewellery to the police on the mainland?”
“I don’t know. We can look back now and have a different perspective, but she was alone, scared and inexperienced. She only knew she had to keep the two of you safe.”
“Did she ever tell you the name of the killer?”
Finn shook her head. “She wouldn’t say. She didn’t want to put me or our parents in danger.”
Charmaine sighed. “I have a feeling someone I care about knows the truth.”
Twenty
It seemedimpossible for Charmaine to find out where the diamond jewellery had come from. The time frame was too long ago. There were several mentions of jewellery heists in the old newspapers at the library, but none that matched the items she’d found. She flicked though the images on the computer screen. Then with a frustrated grunt, she collected her purse and headed for the door.
She was thinking through everything she’d seen, when she heard shouting in the florist shop ahead. She stopped before she reached the doorway and peered around the corner and through the window.
Frank was there, yelling at Betsy again. A pit formed in Charmaine’s stomach. She hated conflict more than anything, and lately Frank and Betsy had been getting along better. She’d hoped they’d moved past the constant arguing and bickering, the yelling matches and the storming out. But he was back, and his voice echoed low in the small shop. Thankfully there were no customers.
