The Bravo Billionaire Part 21

Chapter 17.

" T he ransom." Jonas's voice was hushed and low. Marsh nodded.

Jonas said, "He never spent it."

"I'm sure having it was what it was all about to him. He could go to that safe deposit box any time and there it was, a fortune in diamonds-"

"-And another trophy, like the sc.r.a.pbook."

"That's right." Carefully, Marsh gathered up the stones and returned them to the velvet bag. "Have an expert take a look at these, compare them to whatever records you have of the diamonds your father bought to ransom your brother. I'm certain that they're one and the same. But I think you'll agree it's best to make absolutely sure." He tightened the drawstring, securing the treasure inside. "Here."

Jonas extended his hand.

Marsh dropped the diamonds into it. "Talk about irony. I think my old man imagined it was going to be some huge temptation for me whether to keep my 'big, glittering surprise,' or not." He smiled. Emma thought it was the saddest smile she'd ever seen. "The minute I looked in that bag," he said, "the minute I saw what it contained, all I wanted was to return it, to start making right what the old man had made so very wrong." Jonas rose. Marsh picked up the sc.r.a.pbook. "Better put this away, too."

Jonas took the book and the diamonds and left through an inner door. He emerged empty-handed a few minutes later. "I hope you'll change your mind, Marsh. Have lunch with us, after all?" It was a sincere invitation this time.

Marsh said, "I'd like that."

Jonas buzzed his secretary and ordered another place setting. They all three sat down to eat.

Emma was the one who dared to broach the subject that she knew was on all of their minds. "I wonder..."

Both men looked at her.

So she laid it right out there. "Do you all think that maybe, in Blake's office, or in his things somewhere, there could be something more, something you and Tory missed, Marsh. Something that might help us to find out what happened to Russell?"

Marsh set down his fork and said just what Emma had known he would say. "I've been wondering the same thing."

Jonas sipped from his water gla.s.s. "Well, there's only one way to find out."

Emma grinned. "A trip to Oklahoma ."

Jonas turned to Marsh. "That's where this house of your father's is?"

"Yes. In Norman , Oklahoma . It's a university town, about twenty miles south of Oklahoma City ."

"And you live...?"

"In Norman , too."

Emma prompted, "With your wife, Tory, and your daughter...?"

"Kimberly. Tory wanted to make this trip with me. But Kimmy's in school. And Tory owns a florist shop. It's hard for her to leave on short notice. I'm a little more flexible right now. I own a limousine service that I started in Chicago . I'm opening a new branch in Oklahoma City , and I have managers in place at both locations OKC and Chicago so they can cover for me."

Jonas said, "But I imagine you'll be glad to get home."

"Yes, I will."

"All right. I'll need the rest of the day to deal with a few things that can't wait here. But tomorrow, I'll be ready to go what about you, Emma?"

"As if I would miss it.""Good. First thing tomorrow then, we're on our way. Marsh, you'll be our guest tonight."

"If you're sure. I don't want to-" Jonas didn't allow him to finish. "I wouldn't have it any other way." * * * After Marsh left them, Emma and Jonas moved back to the couch in the sitting area. Emma shucked off her shoes and tucked her legs up to the side. "You had me worried there for a while, Jonas Bravo. I thought you were never going to listen to what Marsh had to say." He wrapped his hand around her neck, pulled her close and kissed her right between the eyes. "You're too d.a.m.n trusting."

"Well, but I was right. About Marsh. Wasn't I?"

He rested his brow against hers head to head. "Yes, Emma. You were right."

She grinned. "Say that again..."

"Don't get pushy. Once is enough." He wrapped his arm around her and settled her in close.

She rubbed her cheek against the fine fabric of his jacket. "I think we'll have to take Mandy. She'll get lonely, if we're gone for too long."

"Emma." His chest rose and fell beneath her ear as he sighed. "We can't be gone for more than two or three days at the most. We both have businesses to run. We'll have to learn what we can as quickly as we can. And then, very soon, we'll have to turn everything over to the professionals."

The professionals. She sat up straight. "You mean the police?"

"And my detectives."

"Maybe..." She hesitated, reluctant to say what she couldn't stop herself from thinking.

"Maybe what?"

"Well, maybe we ought to just turn it over to the professionals right now."

He looked at her levelly. "Maybe you're right."

For about a half a second, she thought that he might have changed his mind about the trip but then she saw that gleam in his eyes. "You're not foolin' me. You couldn't stand it, not to have a look around that 'office' of Blake's yourself. You just have to see what you might find there."

He shook his head slowly, as if he couldn't believe his own foolishness. "That's right. But what we're doing mucking around in the evidence of a capital crime I can't say I approve of it."

"Well, yeah, but what are the police going to do now, anyway, since all this time has pa.s.sed? And which police? The kidnapping happened in California . Blake's house is in Oklahoma ..."

"I know," he said. "I've been thinking all the same things."

She reached over and took his hand. "It is kind of all in the family, now, isn't it? It looks like there's no one for the police to arrest, anyway, since Blake is dead. And if Russell's still alive somewhere and I am prayin' with all my heart and soul that it might be true well, he can't be in any danger, can he? I mean, not because of anything to do with what happened all those years and years ago."

He looked at their joined hands and then he looked in her eyes again. "You're saying the same thing I keep telling myself. That we have the right to do this."

"Well, and we do or at least, you do. And since you invited me, I get to be involved, too."

He chuckled. "Are you always so sure that right is on your side?"

"Well, now, I just said I'm not really sure. But if a person is goin' to do a thing, she might as well do it with all of her heart."

"Don't tell me. Your aunt Ca.s.s said that, right?"

"Right and okay, I can see your point. Maybe we won't have much time to take care of Mandy while we're playin' at bein' detectives in Norman , Oklahoma ."

"I'm so glad you see it my way."

"Only this once."

"I'll try not to get c.o.c.ky."

"Smart thinkin' and we also have to consider the Yorkies and Festus."

"Palmer will take care of them."

"Palmer's just about the most efficient human bein' I have met in all my days. But he's not an animal person. I think I'll just get Deirdre to baby-sit them. She can stay in my rooms at the mansion, or she can take them to her place, whatever works better for her."

"However you want it."She leaned closer. "Say that again."He obliged, softly. "However you want it...""Come here. I'll show you how I want it." She offered her mouth. "Kiss me."He did. She sighed. He guided her back onto the sofa.And then the phone on his desk started buzzing.Jonas lifted his head and swore under his breath. "My two o'clock appointment has apparently arrived."

Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders. She craned up enough to look at her watch. He was right. Two on the nose. They didn't even have time for a quickie. "And I had so many exciting plans for today."

"We'll have to do it again sometime."

"Is that a promise?"

He planted one more hard kiss on her mouth a swift one that time. "It is a solemn vow."

Later in the afternoon, Jonas consulted a diamond broker. The broker a.s.sured him that the diamonds in the bag and those described in the doc.u.ments were the same, though several appeared to be missing from the original count.

That evening, when the three of them Marsh, Jonas and Emma sat down to dinner, Jonas mentioned the missing diamonds.

Marsh frowned. "I swear to you, I gave you all the diamonds I found in that safe-deposit box."

"I'm sure you did. Your father probably spent a few now and then, don't you think?"

"Maybe. As I said earlier, I think he prized the diamonds for themselves, as physical proof of what he'd managed to get away with. And he was no fool. I'd guess that he figured out from the first that putting two million in diamonds on the market was a pretty good way to get caught."

"But still," Jonas argued, "he could have sold a diamond or two, when he needed cash and couldn't get it any other way. That wouldn't have been too dangerous for him. And he'd still have had the bulk of them left to gloat over."

Marsh shrugged. "I suppose."

They talked more of Blake, and of the kidnapping, Marsh and Jonas sharing what they knew in hopes that somehow, by combining what information each of them possessed, something more about what had happened to Russell might come to light.

Marsh said, "My father didn't work, at least not that I ever saw. My mother was the one who worked. I always a.s.sumed that what little we had came from her. But then she died, when I was sixteen. And somehow, my father never had any real problem getting by."

"Getting by? I take it you mean there wasn't a lot."

"You take it right. My father drove the same rattletrap pickup for over twenty years. And after he died, when I went in that shack we lived in, I found the same dingy brown carpet that had been there all my life, the same ancient television with a pair of rabbit ears on top. But in that office of his..."

"What?"

"A state-of-the-art computer hooked up to the Internet, a computer he used along with the stacks and stacks of newspapers and magazines piled up in that room to gather something that was important to him."

"Information," Jonas said.

Marsh nodded. "He was a secretive man, about himself. Maybe keeping track of people he knew gave him a feeling of power and control."

"So careful, when it came to the diamonds," said Jonas. "And the way you describe him, he kept a pretty low profile for most of his life. Yet he had to be d.a.m.ned arrogant. To live under his own name even if everyone he'd known in California thought he was dead."

Marsh said, "I'd be willing to bet he lived under a variety of aliases for a while, anyway after he engineered his own 'death' and after the kidnapping." He sipped from his water gla.s.s. "I managed to get myself something of a college education. Took a psychology course or two. I've come to the conclusion that my father was a psychopath, one with a truly diabolical mind and a surprising degree of impulse control when it suited him to exercise it."

"My mother always claimed he was just plain evil," Jonas said.

Marsh didn't argue. "Maybe it's as simple as that."

Jonas chuckled. "And this is adding up to a lot of maybes."

"I know. The fact is, I doubt we'll ever get at the root of what drove my father."

Jonas agreed. "I'm afraid you're probably right, though I think his motivation for kidnapping my brother is pretty clear."

Marsh grunted. "To you, maybe."

"Oldest motive in the book revenge."

"Against...?"

"My father."

"But wait a minute," Emma said. "I thought it was your Grandfather Jonas who disinherited Blake. And didn't he pa.s.s away before Russell was kidnapped?"

"That's right."

"But then, why would Blake take his revenge on his brother?"

"Because Blake blamed Harry just as much as he blamed my grandfather." Jonas picked up his winegla.s.s, took a thoughtful sip. "The way I heard the story, at first, after my grandfather cut Blake off, my father kept in contact with him. My father gave Blake money whenever he showed up with his hand out. But then Blake ran into my grandfather one day here at Angel's Crest, when Blake came to try to talk my father into giving him another 'loan.'

"My grandfather ordered Blake out. Blake lost his temper. He beat my grandfather, and pretty badly, too. My father came in on it. He tore Blake off of my grandfather and the brothers fought. My father won. He had Blake tossed out and gave orders that he was never to be let beyond the gates of Angel's Crest again." "Oh, yeah," said Marsh. "For something like that, Blake Bravo would have to claim some major revenge."

"And how perfect," added Jonas. "Blake was the second son. And so was Russell."

"Perfect?" Emma wrinkled her nose at her husband. "It's all just plain creepy, if you ask me." "But it makes a sick kind of sense," said Marsh, "given the way that my father's mind worked. His father had disinherited his second son, so in effect, the first Jonas Bravo ended up minus one son. And so Blake saw to it that Harry lost a son, too." Emma couldn't help but say it. "For the first time in my life, I am glad that someone is dead. A man like Blake Bravo deserves to be dead." * * * Jonas woke that night shouting, "No!" Blinking into the darkness, Emma sat up beside him as he threw back the covers. He surged from the bed and then stopped, bent at the waist, his back to her. The sweat was streaming off him, the powerful muscles of his back flexing and jerking, as he tried with all his considerable strength to get air, sucking in through his closed-up windpipe with all his might, making a horrible tight gasping sound. Emma jumped from the bed and then just stood there, debating with herself as she had debated the last time this happened. Should she intervene? It looked like he was getting some air. She knew her first aid. If he was getting air at all, she was supposed to leave him alone wasn't she? He went on, bent at the waist, hands on his thighs, making that horrible desperate wheezing sound. It was too much. She would dial 911. Emma turned toward the phone and then whirled back around again as Jonas sank to his knees.

He fell over on his side and his big body went lax.

He was still. And the gasping had stopped.

"Jonas?" Emma dropped to her own knees beside him and put her fingers at the pulse point on his neck.