Chapter 5 - The Diamond That Wasn't Hers
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The next morning Matteo told me to put on my coat because we were going to Brooklyn to hear Henry Weiss say everything to our faces.
Daniel drove us in the black SUV while Matteo reviewed Greene's file in the back seat beside me.
Halfway over the bridge Matteo finally broke the long silence between us.
"My mother trusts you more than she trusts either of her sons right now and I am not going to pretend I do not understand why."
"I only did my job, sir."
"No, Maggie, you did the job Anthony and I should have done when you noticed her jewelry was vanishing."
"Mr. Russo, I already told Mr. Greene everything I know."
"Then you will tell me again while I look at you."
Weiss kept a small appraisal shop on a quiet street in Brooklyn and his hands shook when he locked the door and turned the sign to closed.
He led us to a back office that smelled of metal polish and old paper and placed a ledger on the desk opened to a page dated six weeks earlier.
"Anthony Russo brought the ring in a velvet box and told me his mother had died in February and the family wanted the stone reset for his brother's fiancée."
"He showed me a death certificate and a letter with your signature authorizing him to liquidate estate jewelry for family taxes."
Matteo leaned over the ledger.
"Did you believe him?"
"I believed the documents and I believed a Russo would not lie about his own mother on paper."
He turned another page and showed us the formal entry he had written for the original diamond that morning.
"One point eight carats, old European cut, small chip at lower girdle, family stone per Elena Marino setting."
"That chip is how I knew the stone in Lauren's band was false when I saw the photographs your attorney sent me."
Matteo asked where the copy had come from.
"Anthony paid me to have a lab stone cut to match and set into the original band so the ring would still look correct in photographs and at public dinners."
"I kept a broker's fee and I am ashamed of that now because I knew the request was strange even if I believed the certificate."
Matteo's voice was dangerously calm.
"Who bought the real diamond?"
Weiss opened a drawer and took out a business card that he placed on the desk like it might burn his fingers.
"The sale went through a broker named Peter Nolan who handles private stones for collectors who do not want their names in any public record."
"He paid ninety-two thousand dollars for an unmounted stone that is worth three times that amount with its provenance."
"He told me the buyer wanted it quickly and wanted no questions about the family history attached to it."
Daniel took a photograph of the card with his phone and sent it directly to Greene.
Matteo stood and Weiss flinched in his chair.
"I am not going to hurt you, Mr. Weiss, but you will give Mr. Greene every receipt and every message from my brother before this day ends."
Greene called us before we had even reached the car and Daniel put the call on speaker in the back seat.
His investigator had spoken to Peter Nolan for less than ten minutes before the broker admitted the truth he had been paid to hide.
The private buyer of Elena Marino's diamond was Victor Kane.
Matteo went very still beside me in the back seat.
"Of course it was Kane," Matteo said quietly.
"Anthony owed him three point eight million and he paid part of that debt with my grandmother's stone while planning to hand him the whole company through Lauren."
Greene's voice came through the car speaker.
"Kane will deny he knew the stone was stolen because Nolan listed it as an estate liquidation with papers matching your brother's story."
"We need him to admit possession in front of witnesses or we need the stone itself recovered with a clear chain back to Anthony."
Matteo made a decision without hesitation.
"Then we go and ask him for it."
Kane owned a private club called The Marble Room in Midtown where men who lent money at ruinous rates drank behind doors that never appeared in any guidebook.
The hostess recognized Matteo's name and led us to a corner booth where Victor Kane was already waiting with a glass of wine he did not drink.
"Matteo Russo, this is an unexpected pleasure."
Matteo sat down across from him and I stayed standing near the booth because nobody had invited me to sit.
"You bought a diamond that was stolen from my mother."
"I bought a diamond from a licensed broker with estate documents that carried your signature, Matteo."
"If your brother forged those documents, that is a family tragedy and not a crime by the man who paid for a stone."
"It was not fair money and you knew exactly whose stone it was because Anthony told you when he used it to buy himself more time on his debt."
Kane's smile did not change.
"Prove that in a room where nobody is recording and nobody here will ever repeat your accusation."
Matteo leaned forward.
"My mother is alive, Kane, and she will testify and so will Weiss and so will Lauren if the district attorney offers her a reason."
"Then I look forward to seeing what a court makes of a seventy-eight-year-old woman and a dismissed fiancée and a jeweler trying to save his own shop."
He said the word confused exactly the way Lauren had said it at the engagement table and I felt sick to hear it again.
Matteo stood slowly.
"You will return that diamond."
"I do not keep loose stones in my pockets, but I do enjoy giving beautiful things a public purpose."
"My foundation is holding a charity auction on Saturday night at the Astor Hotel and several estate pieces will be displayed for children’s hospitals."
"You and your mother are warmly invited to attend as my personal guests."
It was not generosity and everyone at that booth understood it was a dare to watch Russo property sold in public.
We left the club without another word and Matteo told Daniel that Greene would seek an injunction before Saturday.
"If he cannot get one, we will be in that auction room and we will not leave without my grandmother's stone."
That night Rose asked me to help her sort the printed auction catalog that Kane's office had delivered to the house by courier as another deliberate insult.
Rose turned each page slowly with her reading glasses low on her nose while I read the descriptions aloud beside her bed.
Near the back of the catalog she suddenly grabbed my wrist.
"Maggie, stop."
I looked down at the page she was holding open with a trembling finger.
Lot forty-seven was a platinum pendant described as a vintage European diamond in a modern setting offered by an anonymous donor.
May you like
The photograph showed a brilliant stone suspended from a delicate chain under bright auction lights.
At the lower edge of that stone, magnified by the photographer's lens, was a tiny familiar chip I had polished and photographed on a blue velvet cloth in February.
