Diamond In The Rough (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 3) Page 5

  “You know how to intrigue a fella, I’ll give you that much,” Kendrick conceded. “Go ahead, let’s hear some more.”

  Amelia regarded him. “Should you decide not to get involved, I’ll need your assurance that what I’m about to tell you will be kept in strict confidence.”

  “You have it,” Kendrick told her.

  “Excellent.” Amelia gave a single nod and then proceeded. “Are you familiar with the so-called Camel Corps that the United States Army experimented with in the years just prior to the Civil War?”

  “Sure. I’ve heard the stories. Some hair-brained notion about using camels to replace horses and mules out in the desert regions of the Southwest territories. Right?”

  “Only it really wasn’t such a hair-brained notion. Not in instances where the testing of the animals wasn’t done with an already pre-formed firm bias against ever allowing them to succeed. When the camels were actually put in fair trials, they performed wonderfully.” Amelia waved a hand dismissively. “But never mind that. That’s a discussion for another time.

  “After the war, whatever sliver of interest was left for our cavalry to try and make use of camels, quickly dissipated. The animals were sold off to circuses, zoos, mining companies, and a handful of individuals. Many of them had already escaped confinement while the war was going on, others were simply released into the desert by soldiers who resented having been assigned to look after them in the first place.”

  Kendrick grinned. “I’ve heard a few stories about that, too. Tales of those roaming camels poppin’ up all of a sudden out in the middle of nowhere, scaring the bejeebers out of some lonely old prospector or maybe a poor, unsuspecting ranch wife workin’ in her garden.”

  “Camels commonly live sixty or more years. And given their ability to adapt and survive in the most barren environments, it’s not at all surprising to hear reports of them still being seen in west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona—even parts of Colorado and Utah.”

  An added glint of excitement formed in Amelia’s eyes as she continued. “With no distinguishable pattern to the sightings and the fact one camel tends to look pretty much like another, it’s hard to tell how many may still be out there. But there’s one who does have some distinct marking and he seems to get reported on quite regularly.”

  “The Red Ghost,” Kendrick said.

  Amelia seemed both surprised and pleased to hear this. “You’re familiar with him?”

  “Familiar with the stories about him. Can’t claim the experience of ever running into the critter first hand.”

  “And you know his markings?”

  “Reddish-tinted fur and a white blaze in the middle of his forehead.”

  “The reddish color isn’t that uncommon, certainly not over in Egypt where the Army purchased the camels who were brought here. But the blaze marking is rather unusual, and also Nadba—that’s Arabic for ‘Scar’, the name his original handlers gave him because of his unusual mark—is somewhat larger than the average camel.”

  “You know his history that close?”

  “Trust me, we’ve done extensive research.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’,” Kendrick pointed out. “You mean you and the Egyptian folks you’re traveling with?”

  “Yes, they’re part of it now,” Amelia acknowledged. “In the beginning it was my father who became interested in Nadba. He involved my brother and me and … But they’re dead now.” Her expression tightened. “So it falls to me to finish what my father began. It is toward that end that Faleejah and Kazmir are also involved.”

  “What about Hugh Crandall, the private detective?”

  “I already told you that he was in my employ. Of course it had to do with the same matter, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So you want to hire me to replace Crandall. Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I ain’t no detective, ma’am.”

  “You go after men and succeed in finding them, don’t you? Isn’t that roughly the same thing? And you’re certainly doing a good job of grilling me with questions right at the moment.”

  One corner of Kendrick’s mouth lifted in a somewhat sheepish grin. “I guess I am at that.”

  “Does that mean you’re interested in my proposal?” Amelia wanted to know.

  “Interested enough to want to hear the rest of it.”

  “The whole thing hinges on locating Nadba—the Red Ghost, as he’s known in these parts.”

  Now Kendrick frowned. “Out on the trail, you said you were a writer working on the story of a lifetime.”

  “That still holds true.”

  “And finding some shaggy runaway beast left over from the old Camel Corps is what you need to tell this story?”

  “Not just find him,” Amelia corrected. “But find him and then reclaim the priceless artifact he is in possession of.”

  Chapter Nine

  “A priceless artifact.” Kendrick repeated the words slowly, carefully. “In the possession of the Red Ghost, a camel clomping around somewhere out there in the Arizona desert.”

  Unable to suppress a faint smile, Amelia said, “I realize it sounds rather outlandish.”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, I’d say that’s putting it mildly.”

  Amelia’s expression turned sober once again. “Let me finish explaining … The artifact is a fabulous diamond, dating back to the time of Julius Caesar. It came from the richest diamond mines of Nubia. At a point when his romance with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, was at its peak, Caesar gave the diamond to her as a gift. This was well chronicled at the time and only added to the scandal and humiliation Caesar’s wife Calpurnia was having to endure back in Rome while his flagrant affair with Cleopatra continued.

  “After Caesar was assassinated and Cleopatra eventually took her own life a few years later when Egypt fell under the Roman forces of Octavian, the magnificent diamond somehow got lost in the spoils of war. That was in 30 BC. The diamond—generally referred to as Cleopatra’s Devotion or simply the Devotion Diamond—fell into the mists of time and legend.

  “Until, that is, the summer of 1854 when a reclusive Arab sheik with only months to live summoned a renowned British archeologist and revealed to him a diamond that he claimed was the Devotion Diamond. The sheik was also in possession of several carefully bound papers—journals, diary pages, ancient papyrus scripts—that he felt would authenticate the stone. He gave these to the archeologist—whose name was Perry, by the way—and asked him to verify them to his own satisfaction. If Perry agreed they were authentic, then the sheik wanted to make arrangements to bequeath the diamond to a prestigious museum of Perry’s choosing.”

  “Was the archeologist able to determine whether or not the papers were authentic?”

  “He was indeed. All the details were consequently ironed out. Perry took possession of the diamond with the intention of transporting it back to London where it would be prominently displayed at the famous High Pointe Museum. Meaning to take every precaution, he hired a company of heavily armed mercenaries under the command of a Frenchman named Gestardt to keep the diamond under guard until it was safely in England at the High Pointe.

  “Unfortunately, Perry’s skill as an archeologist did not make him a very good judge of character. Before ever making it back to Cairo, Gestardt murdered Perry and claimed the diamond for himself. It was August of 1855 by this point and, coincidentally, the first shipment of animals were getting ready to leave port for delivery to the Army Camel Corps in the America. When Gestardt got word that the Cairo police authorities were getting ready to arrest him for a crime wholly unrelated to the Perry matter, he came up with an ingenious plan for hiding the Devotion Diamond until he was free of these other charges. The son of a veterinarian, Gestardt had picked up enough rudimentary skills from his father to be able to make a small incision and implant the stone under a layer of fat at the base of the front hump of a distinctly marked camel he spotted in the herd of his father’s neighbor.”

&nbs
p; “Let me guess,” Kendrick ventured. “Some camels from the neighbor’s herd happened to be slotted to ship off for the Camel Corps. And the ‘distinctly marked’ animal Gestardt had selected was the one known these days as the Red Ghost.”

  “Precisely. The fate of this diamond—just the few incidents we know about at this point, without even considering the unaccounted for centuries in between—has gone through so many twists and turns it’s incredible.”

  “Uh-huh,” agreed Kendrick.

  “Gestardt had every reason to believe the neighbor’s camel herd would remain in the vicinity and that he could easily find Nabda and his unusual markings again once he was clear of the other criminal charges. But before it came to that, before he even made it out from behind bars to stand trial, he was killed in the cell block by another prisoner holding an old grudge. He died never knowing about Nadba, and the diamond the animal was now carrying, being shipped to America. And because he’d never entrusted anyone else with the secret of what he’d done with the stone, it nearly slipped forever back into oblivion.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “It was only a couple of years ago that the events involving the sheik, Perry, Gestardt, and the rest, from over three decades prior, came to light once again as the result of inquiries from one of the sheik’s sons. In the course of visiting London for the purpose of selecting a university for his own son to attend, the pair sought out the High Pointe Museum, expecting to find the Devotion Diamond on display there. It seems the old sheik who turned the diamond over to Perry passed away without knowing how wrong things had subsequently gone. When his son and grandson discovered otherwise, an investigation was naturally demanded and this led back to Cairo and the murders of Perry and Gestardt.

  “It was at that point that my father was drawn into the matter. He, too, was an archeologist of considerable renown—as was my brother. They were working jointly on a dig not too far outside of Cairo when rumors of recent activity regarding the fabled Devotion Diamond reached them. I was there also, writing a series of articles for a Chicago newspaper on my father’s current and past work. The three of us, however, set everything else aside and joined the search for the gem so long thought lost.”

  “The find of a lifetime. The story of a lifetime,” Kendrick murmured.

  “Exactly. It was my brother, Duane, who managed to uncover the secret of what Gestardt had done with the Devotion before he was unexpectedly killed behind bars. You see, the Frenchman had a young nephew who was present that night when he implanted the gem in Nadba. The boy was needed to hold a lantern so his uncle had light to perform the bit of minor surgery. He was only six or seven at the time—too short to see clearly what was going on and too innocent to be suspicious. All he understood was that his uncle needed a helping hand and he was proud to be able to provide it. It was only under my brother’s careful questioning that a realization of what Gestardt had been up to that night finally started to emerge.”

  Talking about her late father and brother had put a mild strain in Amelia’s voice while at the same time her gaze seemed to have softened somewhat.

  Gently, Kendrick said, “You were very fond of your brother, weren’t you?”

  “Very. And my father, too. My mother passed away when I was just a tiny baby, I have no recollection of her. My father and older brother raised me. The three of us were very close.”

  “I get the impression your father and brother were taken from you suddenly?”

  “Very,” Amelia said again. She rose abruptly and went to a large valise that lay open on the bed. After rummaging inside for a moment, she withdrew a bottle of amber-colored liquid and held it up. “I don’t know about you, Mr. Kendrick, but I could use something a bit stronger than tea. Will you join me in some brandy?”

  Kendrick held out his emptied tea cup without speaking.

  Amelia poured in a generous amount, then did the same in her own cup before seating herself again. She placed the bottle on the desk.

  “These cups are highly inappropriate for fine brandy. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “On the trail, everything I drink is either out of a tin cup or a canteen,” Kendrick told her. “Reckon these dainty little cups will do me okay.”

  Amelia took a healthy pull of her brandy, then lowered the cup and picked up their discussion once again, exactly where she had veered away from it. “Too put it bluntly, my father and brother were murdered.”

  “My condolences,” Kendrick said lamely.

  “It turned out my father wasn’t much better at choosing his allies than Mr. Perry had been. A man named Brandon Totter, you see, was financing the dig my father and brother had been working on. Once we’d determined the Devotion Diamond had inadvertently traveled to America, sewn under the hide of a camel, it was imperative to pursue it as soon as possible.

  “But my father didn’t have the money, neither for the ocean voyage nor to mount an expedition into the Southwest to try and track down Nabda. So he sought—and received—further backing from Totter who, I should explain, is a wealthy shipping magnate intent on climbing the New York social ladder in order to marry a certain widow with ties via marriage to one of our founding fathers. His support of the dig my father and brother were originally working was aimed toward impressing said widow who has a passion for ancient artifacts. So the chance to be associated with the daring recovery of Cleopatra’s legendary diamond naturally appealed to him.”

  “An overly ambitious man can be a mighty dangerous thing,” Kendrick observed dryly.

  “How I wish we would have taken that into consideration at the time,” Amelia responded. “As it was, I was immediately sent on ahead to do some additional checking through my newspaper sources. We knew that the Army Camel Corps had disbanded by then, but little else. It was my assignment to find out more details about the camels who made it to America and then what might have befallen them after the Corps no longer existed. Accompanying me on my journey was Faleejah and Kazmir, who had come forward back in Egypt after hearing rumors of the sudden interest in the Devotion Diamond. Although open to some dispute, Faleejah’s family has for generations laid claim to being of Cleopatra’s lineage. Totter bought their story, though, and thinking it would add credence to our discovery if we were successful, he insisted on making them part of our undertaking.”

  Kendrick picked up a hint that Amelia might not share so wholeheartedly in believing the claims of her traveling companions.

  “Once back in the states,” she continued, “I began gathering the information I was sent to get and, for the first time, ran across reports of ‘Red Ghost’ sightings. The descriptions fit so closely with those of Nadba that I knew it had to be the same animal.”

  Amelia’s expression suddenly clouded. “Right after that, I learned my father and brother were dead. I received two telegrams in one day. The first was from Totter, expressing his great sorrow and informing me they had been washed overboard together—my brother trying to save my father—during a storm at sea. An hour later, I received a second message from the ship’s captain, discreetly advising me that the incident resulting in the loss of my father and brother was highly suspicious and warning me to beware of Totter. He didn’t have sufficient proof to go to the authorities, he explained, but he nevertheless suggested strongly that I take every precaution and stay clear of Totter.”

  “Decent of him to go to the trouble of warning you,” Kendrick allowed. “As long, that is, as he’s not some kind of crackpot.”

  Amelia shook her head. “I did some digging into the background of Brandon Totter. Something I sorely wish I’d done sooner. It turns out there are numerous indicators that Totter gained most of his power and business holdings in the shipping industry by means of practically every underhanded and unscrupulous act you could name. In other words, his whole history is of someone who stops at little or nothing to get what he wants.”

  “Then the ship captain’s suspicions were likely on the mark.”

  “I’m sure
of it.”

  “Have you had any further contact with Totter?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “So he’s not up to speed on everything you know.”

  “He knows nothing about the match between Nadba and the Red Ghost, nor about the recent Red Ghost sightings here in the vicinity of Lowdown. That little tidbit of information came to me courtesy of Hugh Crandall, by the way. It’s what brought us here.”

  “Where was Totter when he notified you about your father and brother?”

  “He had just docked in New York City. I was in Chicago. After tantalizing a newspaper editor there with just the scantest details and promising him an exclusive when I had it all sewn up, I was able to procure from him an advance to finance my hiring of Crandall and to make further travel arrangements for me and my two companions.”

  Kendrick rubbed his jaw in thought. “You breaking off contact with Totter likely has him fit to be tied. He’ll figure either you either caught a whiff of the stink surrounding him, or decided to strike out on your own out of greed to claim the whole thing for yourself. Either way, he’ll draw on all the resources he can muster to come after you. Only a matter of time before he trips to the Red Ghost sightings, just like you did. And then the most recent reports coming from near Lowdown, like Crandall found out … Even still, if you lit out of Chicago while he was still in New York, no matter how quickly he was able to gather that information and then head out himself, he’s got to be days behind.”

  “That’s the way I’ve been figuring it.”

  Kendrick drained the last of his brandy and set the empty cup on the serving tray. “The only thing that leaves, then,” he said, “is convincin’ the Red Ghost to let himself be found—by us—before Totter closes that time gap and shows up to spoil the party.”

  Amelia’s eyes widened. “You mean you’ll do it? You’ll help us retrieve the Devotion Diamond ahead of Totter?”

  Kendrick grinned. “You ply me with sugar biscuits and brandy and tell me a tale like you just spun … How can I resist?”