Garage Sale Diamonds (Garage Sale Mystery) (17 page)

Did her last warning words hang in the air after she left or was it only Jason’s imagination?

38

Saturday, 10:57 AM

Jennifer pulled out of the driveway onto the street before realizing she had no exact destination. A jeweler, yes, but which one? She ticked off the factors in her mind. She promised Jason to return in an hour so it must be close. She didn’t want the jeweler to know who she was yet—she wasn’t sure why, but anonymity seemed smart—so she must pick a store she rarely frequented.

Tiffany’s stood off Route 7 while Tyson Corners Shopping Mall and Galleria housed many impressive jewelry stores. But there she’d need time to find a parking spot in the lot or garage on a busy weekend shopping day. She’d face a long walk into the mall from her car. Besides her time constraint, she didn’t know the value of the stones in her purse. What if she were mugged? No, she’d drive into downtown McLean and park her car right in front of the store she picked.

BLUMENTHAL & SONS, she read above the door. Inside, a large display case of estate jewelry distinguished it from stores selling only new jewelry. This suggested they bought as well as sold.

The only customer at the moment, she smiled agreeably at the two jewelers behind the counter. “How many Blumenthal sons are there?” she asked cheerfully.

“Actually, three but one became a lawyer so that leaves two. My brother and I manage the store and our father, who’s been in the business over sixty years, still comes to work almost every day to run our repair shop.”

“Then you were both born to the business, so to speak?”

“I guess that’s right,” said the tall brother. “How may we help you today?”

“I hope you can tell me the value of some gems.”

“We’ll help if we can. Do you want a written appraisal?” the short brother asked.

“No. For today, just a ballpark idea of their worth.”

As she extracted the five plastic bags from her purse, “Tall” produced a velvet-lined tray from behind the counter and “Short” helped her line up each stone with its corresponding numbered bag across the tray’s plush expanse.

Each of the brothers pressed a loupe to one eye, picked up a stone and squinted at it. A long moment passed as they turned the stones in their fingers for a thorough visual inspection. Putting them down at last, the brothers exchanged looks before focusing on Jennifer. Saying nothing, they each picked up a second gem and repeated the same process, eyeing her afterward with more curiosity. Tall gave the fifth diamond a cursory glance, apparently deciding it matched the others. Laying their loupes on the counter, the brothers again exchanged meaningful looks.

Well,” said Short, “these are real diamonds, all right, and high quality. They’re almost too perfect, virtually flawless, which is unusual enough to suggest they might be man-made.” He chuckled. “When something appears too good to be true, it often is. I’d like to do some tests to be sure.”

“Tests?”

“Yes, first I’d put the diamond in an electronic color meter, an enclosed compartment showing how light comes through the stone. The light reveals the stone’s color range. Then I’d use a binocular diamond scope to reveal even more clarity. Think of it as a microscope that shows much more detail than this ten-power loupe. Last, I’d check the diamond’s thermal conductivity.”

Noticing Jennifer’s eyebrows furrow, he explained. “Diamonds conduct heat better than anything, five times better than the second-best element, which is silver, so most diamonds show high thermal conductivity and most imitations don’t.”

“May I take a look at the stones with your loupe?” she asked Tall.

“Of course.” He handed it to her and she imitated his earlier one-eyed squint until the diamond swam into focus. This magnification, much greater than the desk magnifying glass she’d used at home, revealed the diamond’s myriad tiny, tilted flat surfaces.

“You’re probably noticing the facets,” Short volunteered. “Basically, the more facets, the more surfaces to catch light and the more light refracted, the more it sparkles and shows its fire. The facets are the diamond’s cut. When we say ‘cut’ we don’t mean the shape of the diamond, we mean the craftsman’s skill in transforming the raw stone to release its brilliance and beauty. When a diamond is cut to ideal proportions, all the light entering from any direction is totally reflected—refracted—through the top and dispersed into a display of sparkling flashes and rainbow colors.”

With the loupe’s magnification and the store’s bright illumination, she did indeed see light and colors dancing in the stone as she twisted it about. “Amazing,” she marveled. “How many of these surfaces, these facets, can you get on so tiny a stone?”

Tall said, “Your stones aren’t tiny. The original standard for hand-cut diamonds was fifty-eight facets, but then gem cutters developed a King Cut with eighty-six facets and a Magna Cut with 102. The latest, a Dutch patent, uses modern machine cutting technology to create 121 facets.”

“Remarkable,” Jennifer allowed, still staring at the diamond with the loupe. “All my diamond jewelry pieces were gifts. I liked their sparkly appearance in beautiful settings without thinking how they were made. Their value to me was that someone chose them to surprise and please me. But now I’m curious. What makes a diamond valuable?”

Short laughed. “Do you want the technical explanation or the holistic version?”

Jennifer smiled. “How about holistic first?”

Short became serious. He selected one of Jennifer’s stones. “A ‘perfect’ diamond similar to this one is awesome because it’s sixty-five million years old. It survived the trauma of originating inside an underground volcano that pushed it up through alluvial pipes only to be buried under soil or rock or river eddies where it might have been ground by giant glaciers. This tumbling through nature’s washing machine was just the first step in the history of this diamond because it takes, generally speaking, three tons of mineral ore—or earth as it’s called—to yield one carat. Diamond cutters are human and all humans make mistakes. It could have fallen into inexperienced hands. But the cutter of this diamond knew what he had and used all his experience, knowledge and talent to execute a totally professional job. Even though we’ll never know who he was, his profound signature exists on this stone. So nature created this from our living planet, but man released its beauty and brilliance.”

Tall summarized. “Three amazing things converged to produce the breath-taking stone we see here: First, that it ever survived the overwhelming stresses of nature like millions of years of heat and extreme pressure. Second, that since they’re hard to find this was ever discovered and dug up, and last, that it happened to fall into the hands of a cutter so remarkably skilled he coaxed the flawless beauty out of what’s really a chunk of carbon.”

“Wow.” Jennifer clapped her hands. “You love what you do and it’s contagious. Now I’m almost afraid to ask about the technical part.”

“Never fear, we know that, too.” Short grinned.

39

Saturday, 11:15 AM

“What makes a diamond valuable?” Tall repeated Jennifer’s question and smiled patiently. “How much time have you to learn? Okay, there are a number of criteria but let’s start with the unique combination of their four Cs.”

“Four Cs?”

“That’s right. I’ve already mentioned cut, which is the most important of the four Cs. The other three are clarity, carat and color. Clarity is about naturally occurring inner flaws called inclusions; the fewer inclusions, the greater the brilliance. The size, nature, location and amount of inclusions determine a diamond’s clarity grade and affect its cost. The eleven grades of clarity inclusions we measure range from none, minute, minor, noticeable and obvious. The clarity grade of your diamonds,” he gestured toward the velvet tray, “appears to be none.”

Tall added, “The next ‘C’ is carat or the unit of weight for diamonds. One carat is 200 milligrams. A carat is divided into 100 points, so half a carat would have fifty points.

“The last ‘C’ is color. This impacts price the most.” Tall continued. “Even diamonds which appear colorless actually have slight tones of pale yellow to brown. But other colors are also possible, like blue, green, orange, red and even black.”

Jennifer hoped her face didn’t show the amazement she felt. “I had no idea but, thanks to you, I do now.”

“Well,” Short chuckled, “the four Cs help, but the jewelry part of the diamond industry is pretty complex. We’ve been exposed to it since childhood but learn something new almost every day.”

Tall picked up the tray. “So let me take these into the back room to weigh the carats, measure their height and diameter with a gauge and do the other tests I mentioned. Then I should have a ballpark idea for you. Please excuse me for a moment.”

“Thank you.” Jennifer wandered around the shop, looking at twinkling diamonds and other jewelry gleaming in the pristine display cases. But after five minutes she felt impatient and then uneasy. What took so long?

A few years ago the Washington Post had reported the arrest of a jeweler in Great Falls whose customers accused him of switching their valuable gems for inexpensive substitutes. As that story made the rounds, friends told her how hard reputable jewelers work to develop a trusted relationship with their clientele. She knew nothing about this store. Were they switching her stones in the back room? Were they checking her gems against lists of stolen property? Would police swarm in at any moment to arrest her? Would they even believe her honest garage-sale explanation? She tried unsuccessfully to curb her overactive imagination.

Just then the brothers returned to the counter with an older man who carried the velvet tray. “This is my father, Abraham Blumenthal. May I ask your name please?”

Jennifer blanched. She wanted anonymity with politeness since they’d given their time and knowledge to evaluate her “broken glass.” “Betty,” Jennifer surprised herself by saying.

Abraham nodded. “Betty,” he began, “it’s not uncommon for someone to bring a jeweler a box of what they think is costume jewelry with some fine pieces of real jewelry mixed in. Good jewelry could be found in a bag in the pocket of clothes bought at a second-hand sale. Sometimes people buy the contents of a storage locker and find valuable jewelry tucked among the junk. You have five exceptional diamonds here. With their one full carat size, their D-grade colorless color, flawless clarity and ideal cut, they are probably in the upper one percent of quality stones. These are some of the finest diamonds I’ve seen during my years in the business.”

“D-grade for color doesn’t sound exceptional,” Jennifer said. “At least, it wouldn’t be in school.”

“This is a totally different system. Diamonds are rated from D to Z, with most falling between D and J. D is the highest color in this system.”

“I see.” Jennifer tried to hide her surprise at her gems’ high rating.

“May I ask how you happen to have such fine stones?”

Uh-oh, what to say now? Blurt out the truth? She studied the counter, groping for an answer. “It’s a long story,” she managed. They gave her a penetrating look but seemed to accept this as she recovered her poise. “Could you please tell me their value?”

“You have five stones, similar but not identical. Three are slightly larger but they are matched in the sense they’re of the same quality and cut and so may be from the same source.”

“…and their value?”

“Appraisal value of the three largest is about $11,000 each and the other two about $10,000 each. That’s their appraisal value, which is your cost to replace them, if lost. Their over-the-counter value would be less.”

“I don’t understand. Isn’t the value constant?”

Tall prepared to answer, but his father spoke instead. “Please forgive my bluntness, but allow me to explain with simple economics. Businesses like ours operate for profit. If we paid you $10,000 for a stone we later sold for $10,000, we made no profit to pay overhead like rent and salaries. Soon we’d be out of business. So if we sell this stone to replace a $10,000 appraised diamond someone lost, we must buy that diamond for less than $10,000 in order to make a profit. What you put here on the tray retails for about $50,000. We’d offer you less to make our profit, but we are willing to negotiate with you to buy your diamonds.”

Jennifer smiled, showing her appreciation for his candor and business lesson. “Thank you for explaining.” Although she and Jay had found 286 stones so far, if the remaining fourteen turned up as calculated, they’d have 300. Factoring that even number proved far easier as she mentally multiplied $10,000 times 300 stones. Over three million dollars? She struggled to hide her reaction to this staggering information.

“One last question.” She spread open one of the papers that had wrapped the diamonds. “Does this paper have any watermarks or other identifiers to verify its origin?”

Father and sons examined it. “No. Looks like standard jewelry paper. Unlike writing paper, you notice it’s very soft and pliable—to protect stones from scratching. These papers come in various colors, usually pastels, but nothing about this distinguishes it from other jewelry papers.”

Learning more from the paper was her last clue, one going nowhere. With a sinking feeling, she realized now whoever owned these valuable diamonds must want them back. Did they know she had them? Could they? If they found out, to what lengths would they go to retrieve them?