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I smiled then. “Yeah, that.”
“How about we pray that we get some help on this case and save Bobby’s life?”
“I can help you pray for the truth to come out and for us to find the real murderer.”
“Do you still believe that Bobby could have done this?”
“I’ve been in this business too long not to believe that good people do bad things.”
“Would you pray with me that we don’t have to kill Bobby if he’s innocent?”
“Sure,” I said.
We’d started to bow our heads but hadn’t quite gotten there when Newman’s phone rang. “Captain Livingston. Afternoon, sir.” Newman managed not to sound as surprised as his face showed for a second. It’s not every day a captain in any police branch calls you on a case without it being for a bad reason. Usually it meant you’d screwed up big-time, but a captain in one law enforcement agency didn’t mean or do the same job as in another.
Newman said, “May I put you on speaker, sir, so Marshal Blake can hear the information?”
Apparently, Livingston said yes, because I was suddenly listening to his voice over the phone. “Marshal Blake,” he said.
“Captain Livingston.” I had to fight not to say I presume. I was sure he’d heard it a million times since I’d been tempted twice already.
“My people are helping the insurance investigator run an inventory of items in the Marchand house that might have gone missing in the robbery.”
I almost asked what robbery, but realized that legally what Muriel and Todd Babington had done might have been burglary or breaking and entering or robbery or a mix of the above. The definition would differ from state to state. The more I learned about regular police work, the more confusing it seemed. Usually my job was much simpler.
“You said you may have found something that could have been used in the murder,” Newman prompted Livingston.
“Is either of you familiar with a bagh nakha?”
We both said no.
“It’s like reverse brass knuckles with concealable claws that fit against your palm. It has rings that go over the little and index fingers to hold it in place. This particular one supposedly has papers proving it originally belonged to a maharaja. Story goes he used it to assassinate his rivals.”
“I’m still having trouble visualizing it,” I said.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen either. I’ve sent some pictures,” Livingston said.
Newman’s phone pinged, and he made the pictures fill the screen. The first things that caught my attention were the jewels. Seriously large, richly colored stones glittered in the photo. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have known they were real and how much money I was looking at, but thanks to helping pick out stones for the wedding rings that were being made for Jean-Claude and me, I knew how much rubies of that size and color would go for. I also knew the stones in the photo had to be antique because of their color and size. People just didn’t find new rubies of that color anymore. The diamonds that encircled the smaller of the two rubies looked like carved ice caught in brilliant sunlight. The larger ruby was encircled with gold, emeralds, and other things I wasn’t sure enough about to name, but it was all beautiful and as flashy as hell. The rings seemed to be attached by a metal bar between them.
“That’s a small to medium fortune in just the jewels,” I said.
Livingston’s voice on the phone said, “With the provenance paperwork and history attached to it, it’s worth even more.”
Newman swiped to the next picture. This one showed the metal claws underneath the bar. “So the rings fit over your fingers and the claws are against the upper part of your palm?”
“Swipe to the next picture. It shows the bagh nakha being worn.”
We swiped, and there was a man’s hand with two brilliant rings on his fingers: the illusion was perfect. It just looked like he was wearing two rings. One was all ruby and diamond, and the other had a larger ruby encircled by a colorful mosaic of smaller jewels and gold.
“Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure the rings didn’t look like a matched set,” I said.
“The bagh nakha was designed to be undetectable until it was used either as last-ditch self-defense or to assassinate someone,” Livingston said.
Newman swiped to the next photo. This one showed the claws curled tight against the palm of a hand. They weren’t gold. I was betting they were good-quality steel or the equivalent mix. The top of the weapon was a work of art, but the bottom was all utilitarian and meant for only one thing.
“Bagh nakha translates to tiger claw,” Livingston said.
“It’s beautiful and deadly, just like a big cat,” I said.
