Death Wears Diamonds

Chapter 1: The Lady with the Bracelet

The fan on the ceiling of my office turned slow enough to count the blades. Three of them, each one coated in a fine layer of dust that no amount of ambition was going to make me clean. It was a Tuesday in late September, the kind of day when the Santa Ana winds push through the canyons and make the whole city feel like it's sitting inside a lit match. My window was open, but all it let in was heat and the sound of traffic crawling down Vine Street.

I had my feet on the desk and a glass of water sweating through a ring on last month's phone bill when the door opened and she walked in.

She was the kind of woman who made you aware of every wrinkle in your shirt. Tall, with dark hair swept back under a cream-colored hat, wearing a fitted dress the color of a ripe plum. Her gloves were white, her handbag was small and expensive, and her perfume arrived about two seconds before she did. She looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine advertisement for the kind of life most people only see through a window.

"Mr. Corley?" she said.

I took my feet off the desk. "That's what it says on the door."

She glanced around my office with the kind of expression people use when they're trying not to look disappointed. The filing cabinet with the dented drawer. The water stain on the ceiling shaped like the state of Florida. The framed license on the wall that proved I was legitimate, even if the surroundings argued otherwise.

"Please, sit down," I said, gesturing to the chair across from me. It was a decent chair. I'd bought it specifically so clients wouldn't change their minds before they sat down.

She sat, crossing her ankles, and placed her handbag on her lap. "My name is Miriam Haskell."

The name landed with weight. Stanley Haskell was one of the biggest names at Continental Pictures. He'd produced a string of pictures that had made more money than some small countries. His face showed up in the trades weekly, usually next to a starlet or a senator. I didn't follow the society pages religiously, but I knew enough to know that the woman sitting across from me was his wife—his second wife, to be specific.

"I know who you are, Mrs. Haskell," I said. "What can I do for you?"

She opened her handbag and took out a cigarette case—gold, monogrammed. I offered her a light. She took a long drag, exhaled through slightly parted lips, and said, "I need you to find something that was stolen from me."

"What was stolen?"

"A diamond bracelet. Eighteen stones, platinum setting. It's worth more than this building, Mr. Corley, and I don't mean that as an insult."

I didn't take it as one. The building was worth about as much as a good used car.

"When did it go missing?"

"Saturday night. We hosted a party at our home in Bel-Air. Sixty guests, maybe seventy. I wore the bracelet during the evening. Around eleven o'clock, I went upstairs to freshen up. I took the bracelet off and set it on my dressing table. When I came back for it twenty minutes later, it was gone."

"Did you tell your husband?"

"Stanley doesn't know. He—" She paused, and something flickered behind her eyes. "He wouldn't want the police involved. The guest list included people who would not appreciate being questioned. Actors. Studio people. Politicians. Dorothea Vane was there."

I let out a low whistle. Dorothea Vane wrote a syndicated column that ran in forty-seven newspapers. She could make a career or end one with a single paragraph. If word got out that someone at a Haskell party had sticky fingers, Dorothea would turn it into a three-part series.

"So you want me to find the bracelet quietly," I said.

"Exactly. No police. No publicity. Just find it and bring it back to me."

"My rate is forty dollars a day plus expenses."

She reached into her handbag and placed five hundred-dollar bills on my desk, fanned out like a poker hand. "Will this serve as a retainer?"

I looked at the money. Five hundred dollars was more than a month's rent, more than two months if I was being honest about how often I paid on time. I picked up the bills and put them in my desk drawer.

"It'll serve just fine," I said. "Tell me about the party."

Miriam Haskell talked for the next forty minutes. She described the layout of the house—a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate on a hill above Stone Canyon Road, with a main house, a guest cottage, a pool house, and gardens that required a full-time staff of three. The party had been a celebration of Continental Pictures' latest production wrapping, a war picture called The Long Dawn that Stanley expected to be nominated for everything.

The guest list was a who's who of the industry. Lead actors, directors, a couple of writers who still had careers after the blacklist hearings, studio lawyers, and the political contingent—a state senator, a city councilman named Lyle Keppler, and assorted hangers-on who orbited power like moths around a porch light.

"The bracelet," I said. "Where exactly was your dressing table?"

"Upstairs, in my private sitting room. It's connected to the master bedroom. The door was closed but not locked."

"Who had access to the upstairs during the party?"

"Anyone, technically. The staircase is in the main hall. But most guests stayed on the ground floor and the terrace."

"Most isn't all."

"No," she agreed. "It isn't."

"I'll need that guest list."

She reached into her handbag again and produced a folded sheet of paper. She'd come prepared. I liked that in a client, even if it sometimes meant they were three moves ahead of me.

I unfolded the list and scanned it. Names I recognized, names I didn't. One caught my eye: Arthur Goodwin, listed with the notation "set decoration, Continental Pictures."

"Who's Arthur Goodwin?" I asked.

"He works at the studio. Set decoration. Stanley invited several crew members. He liked to appear generous."

"Appear?"

Miriam's mouth tightened slightly. "My husband is a complicated man, Mr. Corley. He's generous when people are watching."

I folded the list and put it in my jacket pocket. "I'll start tomorrow. I'll need to see the house, the room where the bracelet was, and I'll want to talk to your household staff."

"Come at ten. Stanley will be at the studio."

She stood, smoothed her dress, and extended her gloved hand. I shook it. Her grip was firm, her eyes steady. Whatever else Miriam Haskell was, she wasn't fragile.

"One more thing," I said as she reached the door. "The bracelet—does it have sentimental value, or is this strictly about the money?"

She turned back. For a moment, something complicated moved across her face—not quite guilt, not quite fear, but something in the neighborhood of both.

"It has value," she said. "Let's leave it at that."

She left. Her perfume lingered for another ten minutes, mixing with the heat and the dust and the slow revolution of the ceiling fan. I sat there and looked at the guest list and thought about diamond bracelets and parties in Bel-Air and the kind of people who could lose something worth more than my building and not want the police to know about it.

It felt like a simple job. A nice, clean theft case with a well-heeled client and a fat retainer. I should have known better. In this town, nothing that sparkles is ever clean.