Ginny Aiken - Priced to Move

I fight the sadness, sigh, and then say, “Okay. I’m sorry he’s dead, and I will miss him. He was great to deal with, and he handled the finest rubies on earth. What I don’t get is why you felt the need to come all the way over here to share this.”

“Maybe”—he draws an envelope from his pocket—“this will help you ‘get’ why I came on over today. The coroner found it.”

I take the envelope, an official-looking, heavy vellum deal, with my name written in exquisite calligraphy. “How weird is this?”

The geriatric pals hustle over. Miss Mona peers over my shoulder and Aunt Weeby takes hold of my hand to bring the envelope close.

“Ooooh . . . ,” Miss Mona coos.

“Aaaah . . . ,” Aunt Weeby sighs.

“Whoa!” Max comes to a standstill just inside the door. “Did someone else die?”

Does this guy ever think before he blurts?

I jiggle the envelope in my hand—and Aunt Weeby’s. “No,

Max. No more corpses around here. The chief brought me this. He says the coroner found it on Mr. Pak while doing the . . . the autopsy.”

I just can’t get my head around the thought of someone cutting up a dead person to figure out what killed him. How can people do that day in and day out? I couldn’t, that’s for sure.

I mean, really. Think about it. Mr. Pak is dead. By the time a coroner gets a corpse, it’s cold, stiff. Certainly not the person anyone has known in life. A shudder runs through me. Dead bodies . . .

Then I realize everyone’s staring at me. “What? Did I do something wrong? Say something?”

“No, sugarplum.” Aunt Weeby pats my cheek. “But you just seemed to . . . oh, I don’t know. You seemed all spacey-like. Are you feeling peckish?”

Peckish . . . Great-Great-Grandma Willetta’s fish oil! Ugh.

I give her a hug and drop a kiss on her cheek. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about Mr. Pak.”

“Well?” Max says. “Are you going to open it? Everyone’s waiting on you.”

“I doubt the chief is waiting with bated breath. He—or someone in his office—already opened it.”

I suspect they also checked it for fingerprints, even though I don’t see any of the black dust you see used on those CSI shows. The cover of the card has an ornate seal engraved in gold. My heart does a tap dance against my rib cage as I run my finger over the seal.

But that measly little tap dance is nothing compared to the stampede that breaks out when I read the message inside. “Oh! Oh, oh, oh! I—Oh. My. Goodness. I can’t believe this!”

“Andrea Autumn Adams! Get ahold a’ yourself, sugarplum. You’re spitting and spurting and making no sense at all. What is that card there all about?”

I’m near hyperventilating, and I really don’t want to pass out. Not in front of Max the Magnificent, that’s for sure. But this is incredible—for a gemologist, that is.

“Oh, Miss Mona, look. You’re not going to believe this. It’s an invitation. I just don’t understand why he would have this with him, and why they’d invite me—us—in the first place.”

Miss Mona plunks her fists on her hips and gives me a stern look. “Who invited you? Who’s ‘us’? And what’d we get invited to? And where?”

I keep blinking, but the words still read the same. I hold out the card. “Here. You read it. I’m afraid I’m dreaming or hallucinating or . . . or something.”

My boss takes the card and seconds later she’s spitting and spurting, as Aunt Weeby said, just like I did.

“Andie, honey! Is this real? The government of Myanmar is really inviting us to visit their mines? You do know what kind of politicking trouble’s been going on out there, don’t you?”

“Of course I know. Mr. Pak, Roger, and I talked about Myanmar more’n a million times. It’s awful the oppression going on there—you know, the government squashes political parties, there’s forced labor of adults and kids, human trafficking. It’s bad.”

“And now this . . .” She waves the card.

“It looks real, don’t you think?”

She studies the card again. “I wouldn’t know real from not, but it sure does look like it’s official, at least someone important must have put it together. But I reckon we can check to see if it’s real. We can call the embassy—oh, that’s right. No diplomatic relations. They don’t have an embassy in the U.S., do they?”

A scrap of info tickles the back of my memory. “You know . . . the last time Mr. Pak came to New York, he mentioned that Myanmar had begun to offer thirty-day visas for tourist travel inside the country. They might have an embassy now.” I wave the invitation. “Do you think this might be part of that effort to open things up?”

“Who knows? Who cares? All I know is that this invitation is a golden opportunity for us, for the S.T.U.D. Network.”

“Okay,” I say, still unconvinced. “Tourism or not, that military dictatorship’s not crazy about Americans and Brits—one of those sanction deals. And our government isn’t crazy about them—that communism and organized violence against their people—the whole human rights issues thing.”

A shrill whistle pierces my eardrums, my brain, total consciousness. It makes both Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona stumble.

Max, of course. His whistle’s almost as good as mine.

“What’s that for?” I ask.

“Because from what you and Miss Mona have said so far, we can figure out you’ve been invited to something-or-other in Myanmar—something to do with mines, but you two haven’t let the rest of us in on the whole thing. ”

I give Aunt Weeby an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. But this is so exciting, I can’t get my brain to unscramble. It says it’s from the Myanmar government—Myanmar’s what most people know as Burma—and they’re inviting me, and the S.T.U.D. Network, to feature the Mogok Valley on the show. That’s where the world’s most fantastic rubies come from. But the deal is, they aren’t good buddies with our government.” “You’re still telling me you didn’t know the victim was coming here, Miss Andie? Or bringing this invite to you?”

Only now do I remember Chief Clark. And his silent shadow. “Of course I had no idea. I’ve told you over and over I didn’t know he was coming.”

The chief’s not about to let it go. “When was the last time you spoke to that there Mr. Pak?”

I think back. “About six months ago. He brought my boss in New York a small lot of Burma-ruby solitaires, a few good Ceylon sapphires, and some nice Cambodian blue zircons. We only bought the rubies, since the price has gone up so high. Besides, not many customers are willing to pay for the Burma material when they can get stones from Madagascar with almost the same quality, and for a fraction of the cost. We passed on the sapphires and the zircons.”

“I still smell me a skunk,” the chief says. “You come to town, and this dead guy follows.”

“Why, Donald! That poor man there didn’t follow Andie dead . Someone killed him once he got here. And that’s who you’d do better asking all these questions, don’t you think? Not Andie.”

“I mean to find me that someone, no matter who it turns out to be.”

I give him a leery look. “Do you still think I had something to do with it? After all I’ve told you?”

He shrugs. “I can’t arrest you since I have millions of witnesses.”

Talk about a non-answer.

Max laughs. “So that’s the perfect alibi—a TV show.”

I give him a crooked grin. “I guess I scored, huh?”

“With the show and that invite. Are you going?”

I shrug. “It’s up to Miss Mona. But I’ll tell you what. Because Mr. Pak is dead, and he did bring me that invitation, and fewer than few gemologists ever get to visit those amazing mines, I’m ready to jump at the chance.”