"Oh, yes," Fleetwood said and reached into his pocket. He took out the ivory box and held it out to her.
"The case!" she said, and he noticed that her hand trembled as she took it. "Are they ... are the stones all right?"
"They're all there," Fleetwood said and waited for the touch, the glance that he had hoped would be his reward. "You may jump a little, though, when I tell you where I got them."
"Oh?" she murmured. Her gaze remained fixed on the box and its contents.
"Mario," Fleetwood said. "He lifted them the night of the killing." He sat back and waited.
There wasn't a touch or a glance. There wasn't even a flicker of surprise. He should have gotten it straight right there, but it wasn't until she turned and glanced back over her shoulder that he really tumbled. He jumped up, but Mario was already in the doorway. The gun in Mario's hand was only the companion piece to the cold ruthlessness in his eyes.
Evelyn got up from the divan and faded back into the shadows beside the fireplace. She still had class, cowering there in the dimness, but you could sound the "a" through your nose.
"So that's how things match up," Fleetwood said. He turned away from Mario and stared at Evelyn, a dumb move, the kind of thing a guy does when he finds out that the angel in his life got her halo from the local tinsmith. "You're wasting yourself, Ev," he said softly. "You didn't have to team up with a rotten slob like that, not a gal like you. It's like pitting platinum buttons on a suit of flannel drawers—"
He stopped short and swung about. It was more than a qualm this time; it was a full-blown mental flip-flop. What the hell was he thinking about, turning his back on a guy with a loaded gun in his hand? Maybe it was romantic as the devil to stand around orating to a beautiful woman on manners and morals in the face of death and destruction but it certainly wasn't good sense. And now that he came to think of it, what in heaven's name was he doing in a preposterous situation like this anyway? Whatever was going on it certainly couldn't be allowed to go any further.