At Wick's End - Tim Myers [64]
At least it wasn’t in danger of being stolen where it was.
I lit Belle’s candle to give me inspiration as I read. After spending two hours with the books studying all of the things that could go wrong with a wax pour, I was beginning to be astounded that they ever turned out well. It still amazed me that candles could burn with dyes, fragrances, blocks of other waxes, even hard objects imbedded in them. I remembered how the wax would have swallowed up my first shell on my initial attempt at pouring, and realized suddenly what a wonderful hiding place the inside of a candle would be.
On a whim, I picked up Belle’s last candle and turned it over, not really expecting to find anything there.
At first I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the red bottom, but there was something about the way the light struck it that caught my eye. Was there a small square of wax that was lighter than the rest? I carried it closer to one of the floor lamps and studied it more carefully. Indeed, what was once hidden was now suddenly revealed. Belle had buried something within the mold. But why had she hidden it so carefully instead of making it a prominent part of the candle?
There was only one way to find out. Whispering a prayer asking for forgiveness, I took a hammer and screwdriver and started breaking up the last candle my great-aunt would ever pour on this earth.
The screwdriver my hand clattered to the floor as I found a small tightly wrapped packet imbedded within the candle’s base. What in the world was it doing there, where it had no right to be? My hands were shaking as I carefully unwrapped the package.
To my utter amazement, a twinkling diamond the size of my thumbnail tumbled out.
Now what was I going to do? My first instinct was to call Sheriff Coburn, but the way he’d been treating me lately, he’d probably claim it represented Belle’s life savings and then try to tell me that she’d been afraid of banks. That wasn’t fair, I knew he had more pressing worries than solving what he honestly believed to be an accidental death, but I still wasn’t sure what finding the diamonds really meant. It was pretty clear that Belle had uncovered evidence that someone near her had stolen the diamonds and killed the jewelry-store owner, but I was no closer to knowing who it was than the police were. What I did know, once and for all, was that Belle had been killed for what she knew. No one could claim that she’d tumbled off that ladder by accident. But who was the culprit? Clearly it had to be someone around River’s Edge. That was as far as Belle’s sphere of acquaintances reached.
There was only one way to find out for sure who the murderer was. I had to set a trap and see who walked into it. After I had a better idea who had committed the robbery and two homicides, I’d call Coburn and turn the evidence all over to him, including the diamond. After all, I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was just trying to find out who had murdered my great-aunt.
I knew that the diamond in my hand had to be the reason for the recent break-ins at River’s Edge. Someone wanted it badly enough to trash my great-aunt’s apartment and then ransack the lockers searching for it. I had to give Belle credit; no one but a candlemaker would think to look inside a candle itself.
The only problem was, now that I had it, what in the world was I going to do with it?
I stared at the shattered remnants of Belle’s candle for nearly an hour as a plan formed in my mind. There had to be something, some way I could use my discovery to flush out Belle’s killer.
Suddenly the apartment felt too crowded and confining. , I needed room to pace. I walked out into the hallway, strolled up and down the carpet as I thought about what I could do. Maybe it would help to talk to someone else, to gain a little perspective. I paused at Markum’s door, knocked twice, then put my ear to it.
No response, nor was there a sound coming from inside. Either he was ducking someone, or the salvage man truly was not in.
I went back to