Lost Diamond

  A Darke and Flare Mystery Prequel

  by

  Parker Avrile

  ♥♥♥

  ©2018 by Parker Avrile & Paris April Press

  All rights reserved

  His hot new boyfriend asks an infatuated New Orleans police detective to locate a missing diamond, but it's hard to find a precious gem when you're caught in a web of deception.

  This 8,000-word short story is a prequel to the Darke and Flare gay romantic suspense mystery series. Please do not upload my story to free, sharing, or pirate sites, and do not sell or give it away as your own work. This work is fiction, and no real persons or events are described therein.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Extended Copyright & Credits

  Chapter One

  “...Less than three days.”

  A trick of the acoustics caused the low, husky voice to sound as if the speaker was whispering into my ear. I paused in a ray of light cast through the open door, blinking to orient myself in the historic dark of a French Quarter theater that had been built, burned, rebuilt, burned, rebuilt, flooded, rebuilt again over the course of the years since its original construction in 1786. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, already over a decade in the past, must have been the last time a man climbed high on a ladder to paint a single layer of twenty-four karat gold leaf over the rococo gingerbread of the ornamental molding.

  An old-fashioned ring of metal keys rattled behind me, the security guard who'd opened up for me vanishing back into the street. The door closed, and the ray of light vanished. There was a time when April in New Orleans wouldn't have demanded air-conditioning, but that time was long past, and the building was actually a little chilly.

  No one was rehearsing today. It was just me and the two figures talking quietly together at the foot of the stage. Tyler, playing the part of a plain brown sparrow from the chorus line, was dressed down in skinny jeans and white tee-shirt, his tousled hair caught back in a tiny man-bun. There was something actorly I was beginning to recognize about the way he leaned into people to cater to their egos. Pretending to be plain was something only a truly beautiful man could carry off.

  Today, he was leaning into the theater's current headliner, Beyoncé imitator Lotta Guise. Only five years or so older than Mrs. Carter, Lotta's long bare legs displayed beautifully in the once-notorious leather shorts.

  They turned. I extended my right hand, and Lotta shook with a firm grip that surprised me, coming as it did from that theater world of hugs and air kisses.

  “I'm Darke Gauthier.”

  “Of course. Tyler has told me so much about you, and I appreciate you coming in like this on your day off so, so much, Detective. As I was just telling him, this case is a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  Three days to find a diamond ring. Not an impossible deadline. You'd either find it in three days, or you'd never find it at all, not in one piece, anyway. Still, I did shoot some side-eye at my beautiful boyfriend. He looked back, eyes wide and innocent as only an actor's or a salesman's eyes can be once you've turned twenty-one. He wanted me to help Lotta, who in turn would help him rise from the chorus line. It was the kind of quid pro quo I felt uneasy about getting involved in as a police investigator, even when I was off duty.

  Off duty or not, I was a public official, and I had a responsibility to say all the right words. “If the matter is truly urgent, Miss Guise, I strongly advise you to report the theft as soon as possible to NOPD. You'll have to do it sooner or later, or your insurer won't even consider your claim.”

  She closed her eyes a moment. This early in the morning, she hadn't applied any product to her lids, but I caught a glimpse of mica from last night's shimmer-gold shadow. “Look, honey, I've been around the block a few times. If I report this robbery, what are the odds the police doesn't even send out a crime unit? They'll ask me a few questions and assign me a police report number over the phone. That's it. Then I can pay for the full report so I can send it to my insurance company. That's all they'll do. That's what they call an investigation.”

  Lotta wasn't wrong. The theft of somebody's diamond ring simply couldn't be a matter of public urgency in a city with one of the highest per capita murder rates in the nation. Her precious gem's disappearance would be nuisance paperwork for NOPD, not the focus of a large-scale investigation.

  “You have to find Lotta's diamond. I promised,” Tyler said. “And we both know NOPD is allowed to take off-duty jobs. Your partner does it all the time.”

  The things we'll do to impress a younger man. I was over thirty now. Thirty-one. Just barely over that hill but still on the wrong side. “Tyler, honey...” I wanted to say he shouldn't be making promises in my name, but we didn't need to have this discussion in front of a third party. And maybe I didn't have the willpower to have that discussion at all, not when I was looking at the full curves of his inviting lips. “Honey, those off-duty jobs are usually patrolling neighborhoods or escorting funerals. Not investigating cases.”

  “You're my only hope,” Lotta said. “I have three days to find this diamond, or there's going to be hell to pay with my great-grandmother.”

  I didn't ask what was going to happen in three days. The flood of pain in my heart told me before Lotta could. Holidays when family gathered― especially this holiday when family gathered― were something I blocked out of my mind ever since my parents and sister were wiped out by a drunk driver on spring break in Florida. Easter Sunday. Chocolate eggs, morning mass, a big family feast with all Lotta's large extended family spread around her.

  Not that large families were always an undiluted blessing.

  “I've already been written out of the will twice,” she said. “The old hag is ninety-seven. Three times won't be the charm.”

  “So it's her diamond.”

  “On extended loan, as the museums say. Grandmere thinks I live a crazy, careless, sloppy life, and she was testing me. It went unspoken, but I knew damn good and well it was a test. I took such damn good care of that damn ring too.”

  “You have to help her.” Tyler was working me with his amber-flecked eyes. The man-bun, a style he seldom wore, made those big brown eyes even bigger.

  Grandmere wasn't the only one giving people tests. Tyler was testing me. Testing to see if I could say no. To see if I could deny him anything.

  “There's another thing,” Lotta said. “Police records are public. Anybody can download them for the cost of a lookup fee. If I report the theft, some asshole reporter could end up tweeting the whole story for the ten o'clock news. That is so not the way I need my grandmere to find out her six-carat diamond vanished in a puff of a smoke.”

  Lotta Guise getting robbed was hardly the Bling Ring, but it might be worth thirty seconds on a local station if it was a slow news night. Still, how the fuck did she expect me to investigate a robbery nobody was supposed to know ever happened?

  I repressed a sigh. “I'll do my best to be discreet, but there's a limit to discretion. I can't investigate a crime without asking questions.”

  “My party guests are not going to talk to the press. Not without permission from my publicist.”

  She trusted her guests not to yap, but she didn't trust them not to steal. Got it. “Moving on. You weren't mugged. You were hosting a party, maybe having a few drinks, maybe letting your hair down. How do we know the diamond isn't just misplaced?”

  “Oh, for fuck... for sugar's sake, honey. I did not, did not merely misplace my grandmere's six-carat diamond ring.”

  Tyler took my arm. “Please, Darke. I've told Lotta so much about you. How smart you are. All the bad guys you catch.”

  Translation: Tyler had boasted about his latest catch, one of New Orleans Police Department's few openly gay detectives. I should have been annoyed, but I was proud to be somebody worthy of Tyler's boasting.

  What beauty does to us. All my experience as a police officer was telling me to refuse this job. And yet I couldn't walk away.

  My turn to close my eyes. My turn to look inside. At last, I nodded. “Miss Guise, before we finalize this assignment, I need you to acknowledge you understand my limitations when I'm working off duty. I can't use NOPD resources for a private investigation. Crossing that line could cost me my job.”

  Lotta touched my arm, leaving another fleck or two of glitter. “I don't expect you to do anything to put your job at risk, Detective. But it would be everything if you could get my grandmere's diamond back.”

  “This investigation will be good for you,” Tyler said. “It will give you something to focus on besides...” He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

  Something to focus on besides the holidays.

  Maybe I was wrong about Tyler. Maybe he wanted me to do this for me, to get me through an impossible anniversary. Maybe I was wrong to assume he only wanted me to do this to impress a well-connected diva who could help him get a better role.

  “I can't guarantee I can locate the ring in seventy-two hours. All I can do is try my best.”

  Tyler's smile was a beam of sunlight in the dark theater. “I have every faith in you.”

  “This was supposed to be my day off,” I said.

  Chapter Two

  Out of the theater and down a few blocks. Tyler excused himself to attend a dance class, his high round bottom shifting easily in his form-fitted jeans as he headed off in the opposite direction. My eyes tracked him until he vanished around a corner, although I didn't want to stare in front of Lotta Guise.

  You have it bad, boy.

  She had a good apartment on a good street in the French Quarter. Wrought-iron balcony for a view of the parades. An expensive place these days, but I guessed she'd bought in during the Destiny's Child era. Maybe she was a Diana Ross imitator back then.

  Walking into the entrance hall, I caught sight of my own eyes in a large mirror in a gold rococo frame. They were the color of sapphire, or so people always said, and they came from my mother's side of the family, along with the name Darke, my grandmother's maiden name pressed into new use as a first name.

  Lotta, behind me in the mirror, was checking out not my eyes but my shoulders and the line of the light jacket I wore to conceal my Glock 22. My large, well-muscled body could intimidate, especially in combination with my badge and my firearm, but it wasn't intimidation I read on her face.

  “So, honey, tell me everything. You and Tyler. Are you exclusive?”

  Was this really the best use of our time right now? I shrugged.

  “You'd like to be,” she said.

  “Who's the investigator, you or me?”

  On the inside, the place was an eclectic jewel-box. Colorful chandeliers incorporated hundreds of individual Murano glass crystals. Art Deco furniture bought on the cheap had been upcycled by loving hands and an artistic eye.

  An easy place to lose a gemstone. Light danced everywhere, making it harder to spot the glitter of a missing diamond.

  Some of the light came through a glass door, creating rainbows where it shone through the crystals of the nearest chandelier. Like most buildings in the quarter, this one overlooked a central garden courtyard hidden from the street Spanish-style. The internal balcony also featured a wrought-iron rail which caged a small circular iron table and two matching chairs, all painted white. A Murano glass ashtray sat dead center on the tabletop for the convenience of Lotta's smoking guests. It must have been full after last night's party, but it was sparkling clean now.

  A mockingbird and a blue jay sat on the back of the chairs, one bird on each chair, spitting and hissing, closer to each other than they'd like to be, united by the fact they were both scheming how to get at the fluffy blue Persian cat on my side of the glass.

  I considered the odds this large, lazy animal had swallowed a diamond ring. She blinked a long slow golden-eyed blink, the better to assure me she couldn't be bothered.

  When I stepped over the cat and into the outside, the birds scattered. Lotta was only a step behind me. “You need a better lock on that glass door,” I said.

  “Whoever took my ring didn't come in through the courtyard, Detective.”

  She was right, but the police officer in me felt obligated to say it. The courtyard itself was a quiet square of red brick complete with flowering shrubs growing exuberantly from oversized terracotta urns. Someone had set out a clumsily knocked-together wooden nest box painted robin's egg blue, presumably to attract wrens or bluebirds. A child's project, maybe a school project, taught by a teacher who didn't know that if you made the entrance too wide, you'd get sparrows instead.

  A pigeon landed on another balcony two apartments down. It flew again once it decided we weren't going to scatter any crumbs.

  Back inside, Lotta gestured toward a celestial-blue couch heavily embroidered with gold thread.

  I ignored the hint to sit.

  “The thief has to be somebody I know. That's what's so disappointing. The sense of betrayal.” Walking over to the bookshelf, she fingered a photo that was almost all ornamental gold frame. I had to squint to see the image, an old black-and-white photo booth snapshot of Lotta twenty years or so earlier. I was right. She was indeed doing Diana Ross back then. A very young Diana Ross.

  “Do you remember when you last saw it?”

  She lifted her hands from her sides, then let them drop. “I must have had it on when I got my manicure, or Shawneesha would've said something, but...”

  “And that was when?”

  “She came in about two hours before the party to assist with my hair and makeup.” Lotta shook her head. “After that... I just don't know. I keep going over and over it, trying to figure out when I saw it last, but you know how it gets... so many people, trying to be a good hostess, trying to make sure everybody has a good time...”

  There was a little trick a gifted pickpocket used for sliding a ring right off a finger while shaking hands. But that was a stranger's trick. Friends and family members hugged. I could see from a glance around this place the party couldn't have been that big. “There was nobody here you didn't know.”

  “It was just an intimate get-together. Well, there was one person.” Her eyes narrowed. “But he wouldn't have the chance to get anywhere near my ring. For some reason, my fucking ex decided he wanted to stop by and show off his newest eighteen-year-old. A fucking blond from Serbia. Completely extra. Van always told me he preferred brunettes.”

  The ex was likely part of the reason she'd been so scattered that night. “Did they stay long?”

  “Oh, fuck no. Van showed up to make a point, drank half a cheap bourbon, and left. Twenty minutes at the most.”

  I got the ex-boyfriend's details anyway. It was one of those things you had to check out, although I doubted it would amount to anything. “Have you lost weight lately?”

  She narrowed her eyes at a question she'd normally find flattering. “The ring did not slide off my finger, Detective. I did not drop my ring.”

  “You were distracted. You were upset. You're an energetic person, and you've maybe lost a couple of pounds over the breakup stress. Your ring slides off unnoticed and gets kicked out of sight under a piece of furniture. That's a possibility I can't ignore.”

  “Oh, for fuck's sake, Detective. I've already searched. Don't you think that's the first thing I did? I tore this place apart from top to bottom. Tyler helped me, he was a great help to me. And the housekeeping crew who came in after the party. They scoured this place from top to bottom.”

  This so-called crime scene had been hopelessly compromised. At least, I wasn't fucking up something NOPD could have solved. As I'd surmised from the sparkling clean ashtray, they'd already fucked it up on their own.

  Besides the destruction of evidence, it was entirely possible one of the oh-so-helpful searchers had found the ring and quietly pocketed it for themselves. I'd need the name of the service. For now, I went the tactful route. “It's possible you all missed something. I'll still be happier if I check for myself. Police officers are trained to perform searches.”

  “Police officers are trained to search for items that somebody's trying to hide. My diamond isn't trying to hide, it's just not here. Please, Detective. We're wasting time.”

  I squatted to shine a flashlight under the celestial-blue couch. “I'm sure, but I have to take a quick look anyway. And, please. You're a friend of Tyler's, and I'm off duty. Call me Darke.”

  The service had been thorough. I couldn't find a dust bunny, much less a diamond. As Lotta wrung her hands, the very picture of theatrical distress, I moved carefully but quickly through the apartment to arrive at what was once a second bedroom.

  “The art gallery,” she said in her husky, slightly ironic tone, at the same moment I opened the door.

  This room, unlike the others, was a clutter of creativity in progress. She didn't paint, at least not here, but she was a skilled sketch artist who'd filled an impressive number of the pads scattered around the room and spread across the long wooden table. One drawing in black charcoal, matted but not yet framed, caught my attention. It was a portrait of Tyler from the collarbone up, his hair tousled and tumbling over his eyes, the hollow of his throat sweet enough to kiss.

  I didn't want to smear the charcoal but I couldn't resist thumbing that spot. Fortunately, the sketch had been set with some kind of clear fixative.

  “He's a beautiful model,” she said. “You're a lucky man.”

  I swallowed hard but said nothing.

  “Beautiful young men don't give their heart easily. But they do have hearts.”

  “I know, Mom.” Dropping the sketch, I turned my attention to a hand-drawn party invitation. Because of course Lotta Guise was the kind of hostess who drew and snail-mailed her own personalized party invitations. “I'll need a complete list of everybody who attended.”

 

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