Fortune and Glory (Stephanie Plum 27)

“Diamonds,” she said. “D color and flawless. I represent the legal owner of the diamonds, and I’ve been empowered to claim them and have them tested and ultimately returned to my employer.”

“I assume you have documentation for this,” I said to Gabriela.

“I do,” she said. “Morelli has seen it, and it’s been filed with the court and the appropriate agencies.”

“Why were you following me?” I asked her. “Why didn’t you just go after the diamonds?”

“You and I have something in common,” Gabriela said. “Tenacity. Beyond that our talents are miles apart. You have no skills whatsoever, but you have dumb luck and uncanny instinct. I have skills, but I don’t always have luck. And as they say, it’s better to be lucky than good. At least some of the time. I realized in this instance, I was better advised to follow you around and let you find the diamonds than for me to do my own investigation. All I had to do was keep you alive. That in itself is a full-time job.”

I shifted my attention to Ranger. “Did you know?”

“No,” he said. “I was concentrating on keeping you in cars.”

“None of the La-Z-Boys took the diamonds,” I said. “I’m sure Jimmy has them stashed somewhere, either for himself or as part of the clue system. Shine had the last clue. Number nine. That was the number on the storage locker. The wedding bands had the safe combination, but maybe that wasn’t Jimmy’s clue.”

“You know the location of the clue,” Gabriela said.

I nodded. “I have a suspicion. Look under the La-Z-Boy seat cushion.”

Ranger lifted the cushion and found a folded piece of paper and a key ring with some age-worn keys on it.

Ranger pocketed the keys on the key ring and opened the paper. “RIP, Anthony.”

I called Connie. “Did Jimmy Rosolli have a relative named Anthony?”

“His grandfather,” Connie said. “Anthony Rosolli.”

“Do you know where he’s buried?”

“Hold on,” Connie said. “I’ll ask my mom.”

Connie came back on the line a minute later. “She thinks it’s Saint John’s. It’s outside of Egg Harbor. Anthony was a big deal. He immigrated from Sicily, and he was made. I guess he was like Godfather or something. Mom said she was a little girl when she visited the cemetery, but she remembers that Anthony Rosolli had a house there.”

“A house in the cemetery?”

“She said it was probably a little chapel or maybe a monument, but she remembers it as a house. I already heard there was no treasure. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Life goes on.”

I hung up and looked at Ranger and Gabriela. “Saint John’s Cemetery.”

“Let’s check it out,” Ranger said. “Ramone has already gone back to Trenton, but I have the keys and the wedding bands.”

Gabriela had the cemetery pulled up on her smartphone. “It’s about twenty minutes from here. Follow me.”

* * *

Saint John’s Cemetery was on the northwest side of Egg Harbor. It was a small, ancient-looking graveyard attached to a small, ancient-looking Catholic church. We parked on a dirt road that ran parallel to the church lot, crossed over some scrub vegetation, and passed through the elaborate wrought-iron gate that led to the graves. We read the names on the weathered tombstones as we walked. Gianchinni, Mancuso, Salerno, Capaletti. Obelisks, crosses, statues of the Virgin marked the graves of the wealthy. Others had simple granite markers. A badly maintained small stone and granite chapel had been erected on a patch of flat ground in the middle of the cemetery. There was a peaked roof on the one story, windowless building and two Corinthian-style columns on either side of the door. The entire building was decorated with reliefs of angels, cherubs, Madonnas, and horse-drawn chariots. The name carved into granite above the door was Rosolli.

“I think we found the house of Rosolli,” I said.

Ranger tried the door. Locked. He looked at the three keys on the key ring he found in the La-Z-Boy chair and selected one. He turned the key in the lock and the door opened. He switched the light on and nothing happened. No electricity. We stepped inside and Ranger and Gabriela powered up their Maglites.

The walls were covered with religious paintings. Some were in the form of murals, others were on velvet. An occasional cobweb clung to the velvet. Two rows of ornately carved pews that could have seated no more than four people were on either side of a center aisle. A small altar holding a cross and a bunch of burned-out votives was at the front of the room. There was a tiny cast-iron staircase behind the altar.

I saw Ranger scan the room, looking for security cameras.

“See anything?” I asked him.