The Color of Death Read Free

called the FBI and told them Lee had been kidnapped. They didn’t want to listen to me. They gave me a verbal pat on the head and told me to leave it all to the Florida authorities. I told them the Florida cops were idiots who were more interested in smearing Lee than in finding him.”
    “Lee’s right,” Norm said. “You’re a pistol. I can’t wait to meet you and the family.”
    “One big happy reunion,” Kate said, forcing herself to sound cheerful instead of bone-deep worried.
    Afraid for Lee.
    Cold right to her soul.
    “Norm…”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m scared. I didn’t tell you before and Dad would have a cow if he knew I was telling you now, but Lee’s rental car was turned in a day late and the package he was carrying never arrived.”
    There was a long silence followed by the sounds of a man swallowing hard not to show emotion. “No sign of…foul play?”
    “No.”
    “You don’t sound happy about that.”
    “I’m not. I’m scared and mad and…scared.” Kate closed her eyes, yanked her hair clip out of her dark hair, and massaged her scalp. Lee, where the hell are you?
    “I’m scared too,” Norm said. “I got past mad after the first twenty-four hours.”
    “This is so unlike Lee,” she whispered. “Even if he forgot to call me after he delivered the Seven Sins, he’s just plain nuts for you. He’d call you, no matter what.”
    Norm gave up swallowing and let the tears clog his throat. “Thanks, Katie.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “Do you suppose he had some kind of accident and doesn’t remember his name?”
    Kate leaned against her worktable, hearing the same fear in Norm’s voice that was twisting through her, the words neither one of them wanted to say aloud: What if Lee is dead?
    “I’ve called every hospital between Fort Myers, where he picked up the rental car, and Captiva Island, where he was supposed to make the delivery,” Kate said. “No one has admitted an amnesia patient in the past five days, or any John Doe patient that doesn’t know his own name.”
    “They’re sure?”
    Kate didn’t answer. Norm’s words had been more a cry for hope than a real question.
    “Call me the instant you hear anything,” she said.
    “You too.”
    She cut the connection and let her own tears come, grief and fear mixed together, shaking her.

Chapter 4
    Scottsdale, Arizona
    Five months later
    Tuesday morning
    9:30 A.M .
    Heart pounding, Kate looked over the crowded conference. She tried not to think about the eerie mechanical voice on her answering machine, telling her that she would die if she didn’t stop asking questions and trying to find out what had happened to Lee Mandel, why no one had seen him, why he hadn’t called anyone, even the older sister who had always loved him no matter what a handful he was.
    But she’d kept asking anyway. Just more carefully. She’d focused on the missing gems rather than on the brother she was afraid she’d never see again.
    She watched the room with dark eyes that had seen a lot of people yearning over a lot of gems. No one glanced back at her, not even the man leaning against the far wall, a heavy show catalogue in his hands and a shuttered expression on his face. Except for him, everyone was poring over the gleaming wealth laid out beneath glass.
    The real show wouldn’t open for days, but some nice goods were already on public display. The preshow booths were a kind of dress rehearsal featuring the dealers who couldn’t, wouldn’t, or hadn’t been invited to pay the stiff stall rentals for the main show. A handful of these excluded merchants had pooled their money to rent alarge conference room off the lobby of the hotel for the week before the main show. Purcell Colored Gems was one of the second-tier merchants that had set up a booth.
    Yesterday Kate had seen one of the Seven Sins on display there.
    The Purcells hadn’t been helpful when she’d asked where the gem came from, but she’d found a way around them. Now all she