Big Jack

“I didn’t take any convincing. I want to live a long and happy life, and I’ll take whatever help I can get to make sure of it. Do you want coffee? Anything?”

“It’s real coffee?”

“She has a weakness.” Roarke smiled. “She married me for the coffee.”

Some of the bloom came back into Samantha’s cheeks. “I could write a hell of a book about the two of you. Glamour, sex, murder, the cop and the gazillionaire.”

“No,” they said together, and Roarke laughed.

“I don’t think so. I’ll deal with the coffee, Samantha. Why don’t you sit down? You’re tired.”

“And it shows.” Samantha sat, sighed and let Roarke go into the kitchen area for more coffee and cups. “I can’t sleep. I can work. I can put my head into the work, but when I stop, I can’t sleep. I want to be home, and I can’t stand the thought of being home. I’m tired of myself. I’m alive, I’m well and whole, and others aren’t, and I keep spiraling into self-pity anyway.”

“You should give yourself a break.”

“Dallas is right,” Peabody put in. “You were up and ru

“I hate tranqs.”

“There you take hands with the lieutenant.” Roarke came in with a tray. “She won’t take them voluntarily either.” He set the coffee down. “Do you want me out of your way?”

Eve studied him. “You’re not in it yet. I’ll let you know when you are.”

“You never fail.”

“Samantha, why did you leave out Alex Crew’s family co

“Co

“Specifically Crew’s ex-wife and son. You give considerable details regarding Myers’s family and what they dealt with after his death. You speak at great length of William Young and your own family. And though you feature Crew prominently, there’s no mention of a wife or a child.”

“How do you know he had a wife and child?”

“I’m asking the questions. You didn’t miss those details in your research. Why aren’t they in the book?”

“You put me in a difficult position.” Samantha held the coffee, stirring, stirring, long after the minute sprinkle of sugar she’d added would have dissolved. “I made a promise. I couldn’t and wouldn’t have written the book without my family’s blessing. Most specifically without my grandparents’ permission. And I promised them I’d leave Crew’s son out of it.”

As if realizing what her hand was doing, she tapped the spoon on the rim of her cup, then set it aside. “He was only a little boy when this happened. My grandmother felt-still feels-that his mother was trying to protect him from Crew. Hide him from Crew.”

“Why did she think that?”

After setting her untasted coffee down, Samantha dragged her fingers through her hair. “I’m not free to talk about it. I swore I wouldn’t write about it, or talk about it in interviews. No.” She held up her hands before Eve could speak. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re absolutely right. These are not ordinary circumstances. This is murder.”

“Then answer the question.”

“I need to make a call. I need to speak with my grandmother, which is going to start another round of demands, debates and worry with her and my grandfather. Another reason I’m not sleeping.”

She pressed her fingers to her eyes before dropping them into her lap. “They want me to come to Maryland, stay with them, or they threaten to descend on me here. It’s tough going to keep them from calling my parents and sibs. I’m holding them off, and I’m gratefully accepting Roarke’s offer for security on them until this is resolved. Until it is, I’m staying here. I think it’s important that I see this through, that I deal in my way with what’s happening now just as they did in theirs with what happened then.”

“Part of dealing is giving the primary any and all data that may pertain to this investigation.”

“Yes, you’re right again. Just let me call, speak to her first. We don’t break promises in my family. It’s like a religion to my grandmother. I’ll go in the bedroom, call her now, if you can just wait a few minutes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Admirable,” Roarke said when she’d gone. “To set such store by your word, particularly to family when for some reason the more intimate you are, the easier a promise is to break. Or at least bend to circumstance.”

“Her great-grandfather broke a lot of promises,” Eve reflected. “Jack O’Hara broke a lot of promises, to Laine and Laine’s mother. So Samantha’s grandmother wanted to end the cycle. You don’t intend to keep your word, even when it’s hard, you don’t give it. You have to respect that.”

She glanced toward the bedroom, back at him. “Offering to take care of her security, and the Maryland Ga

“I wanted to meet her. She struck a chord with you, and I wanted to see why. I do.”

When Samantha came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, she was teary-eyed. “I’m sorry. I hate worrying her. Worrying them. I’m going to have to go down to Maryland and put their minds at ease very soon.”

She sat, took a bracing sip of coffee. “Judith and Westley Crew,” she began. She gave them the foundation data she had, and at one point went to get some of her own notes to refresh her memory.

“So you see, when my grandfather tracked her and found Crew had been there, he believed he might’ve given the child something that held the diamonds. A portion of them, in any case. It was a safe place to keep them while he went about his work.”

“He would’ve had half of them, or access to half of them, at that time?” Eve made her own notes.

“Yes. With what was recovered in the safe-deposit box, that left a quarter of the diamonds among the missing. Crew’s ex-wife and son were gone. Everything indicated, to my grandmother at least, that she’d been hiding from Crew. The change of names, the quiet job, the middle-class neighborhood. Then the way she packed up and left-sold everything she could or gave it away and just got out. It seemed she was ru

“She might have taken off because she had a few million in diamonds in her possession,” Eve pointed out.

“Yes. But my grandparents didn’t believe, and I don’t believe, that a man like Crew would have given them to her, would have told her. Used her, yes, and the boy, but not given her that kind of power. He needed to be in charge. He would’ve found them again when he wanted to. I’ve no doubt he threatened the woman and would have discarded or disposed of her when his son was older. Old enough to be of more interest and use to Crew. My grandfather let it go, let the remaining diamonds go, let them go. Because my grandmother asked it of him.”

“She’d once been a young child,” Roarke said with a nod, “who’d had to be uprooted or moved about, who’d never had a settled home or the security that comes with it. And like Crew’s ex, her mother had made a choice-to separate herself from the man and shield her child.”

“Yes. Yes. The bulk of the diamonds were back where they belonged. And they were, as my grandmother is fond of saying, only things, after all. The boy and his mother were finally safe. If they’d pursued it, and I have no doubt my grandfather could have tracked them down, they’d have been pulled into the mess. The young boy would have had everything his father had done pushed in his face, would very likely have ended up a national news story himself. His life might have been damaged or severely changed by this one thing. So they told no one.”