Page 22 of The Expat Affair

It’s weird how I can’t stop thinking about Rayna.

She’s the first thing I thought of when I tugged a warm and sweaty Sem out of bed and into a pair of jeans and his favorite Ajax sweatshirt, wriggling socks onto his feet so the seam lay straight across the tops of his chubby toes. I thought about her as I was spreading peanut butter on his bread or apple slice, bribing him with the promise of a gummy bear for each gooey bite. Somewhere, not all that deep inside, I know it’s too much, all this worry for a woman I just met and barely know, but I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t stop thinking of her face when she told me about the gun.

Xander had a gun. Thomas had instructions to print a gun. Is it the same gun, or are there two guns floating around somewhere?

It’s not in the house; I know that for a fact. By now it’s Sunday evening and I’ve searched the place more times than I’d like to count, rifled through every closet and cubby and drawer, only to come up empty-handed. No 3D-printed gun, no shopping bag containing another cheap bauble, no scribbled note or receipt. Which means exactly nothing, other than that my husband is too smart to leave a paper trail. Whatever Thomas is hiding, whatever evidence there is of his secrets, he’s not brought it into the house.

“Mama?”

Sem says, digging a purple crayon from the box.

Sem and I are seated on the floor in the living room, coloring Paw Patrol pictures I printed from the internet. He’s already in his pajamas, already clean and ready for bed. Cartoons flash on the flat-screen, the sounds mingling with those of Martina, cleaning up in the kitchen while Ollie hovers for scraps at her feet. On the other side of the big picture window, the outside lights have been on for hours already, turning the yard into a canvas of golden yellows and bright greens, a zigzagging trail of spotlights on bushes, trees, garden statues.

I pick up a blue crayon, start in on Chase’s cap. “Yes, sweetie.”

“When Floppy gets to come home with me, can we take him to the American bookstore?”

At that, I exchange the crayon for my glass of wine. Floppy is the stuffed bunny his class adopted at the beginning of the school year, a classroom “pet”

they get to bring home in turns. The last time Floppy came home in Sem’s book bag, Ollie chewed off one of his googly eyes, and Martina had to scour the booths that line the Albert Cuyp Market until she found one that matched. I was really hoping summer break would come sooner than Floppy’s next sleepover.

“Sure. But when will that be?”

“I don’t know, but Mama, luister.”

Listen. He waves a hand in front of my face like I so often do with him. It’s how I know what he’s about to say is important. “I want a Floppy for my birthday. A real one.”

A real bunny, one that will chew the fringe off Thomas’s antique carpets and leave little pellets of shit like a trail of breadcrumbs through the house. There’s no way Thomas will ever agree to a bunny, and yet I’m already thinking about where to get one. The mothers at school would know, or maybe Ollie’s vet. I bury my nose in my glass of wine and wonder how long it will be before Thomas notices a pet bunny. I think of him coming out of the Conservatorium, the cheap trinket he hung for her on that bike, and I wonder if Sem and I will still be living here by the time his fifth birthday rolls around.

It’s a depressing thought, one that beats like a swarm of frantic bats in my chest. I look around the room, at the furniture and the paintings and the silk rug under my butt. This house, Thomas’s bank account, the way being a Prins opens doors I could never have opened on my own . . . When you’ve got every luxury you could ever wish for, it’s too easy to forget that these things are not permanent. That nothing is.

I look over at my son, the tabs on his processor strap flapping behind his ears as he colors a chunk of brown dog. Up to $100,000 a pop, that’s what those little suckers cost, and yes, insurance would have paid for all that back in the States, assuming I had some. But what about all the co-pays? The years of audiological rehab and mapping appointments and speech therapies that he still needs? I could never have afforded that all on my own. I needed Thomas to foot those bills—I still do.

Ollie is the first to hear it, the buzz of Thomas coming through the door. With a startled chuff, he sprints out of the kitchen for the door, his nails slipping against the marble in the hallway. Sem’s eyes go wide with delighted surprise. Thomas hasn’t made it home for dinner in . . . I can’t remember how long.

“Papaaaaaaa!”

Sem tosses down his crayons and jumps to his feet, racing out of the room.

I’m draining my wine when I realize it’s not one set of adult footsteps coming down the hall, but two. Thomas and another man, a stranger in dark pants and a fitted shirt. He pauses in the doorway, his gaze taking in the coloring pages spread across the table, me sitting cross-legged on the floor, a bouquet of colorful crayons in a fist.

The man comes across the carpet to shake my hand. “Arie Boomsma. Sorry to disturb.”

My heart gives a hard kick, then rolls into a rushing gallop. Boomsma. This is the detective Rayna mentioned, the one who’s been questioning her. The one she talked to at the funeral. The one who told her about the gun.

I look to Thomas, trying to catch his eye, but he’s studiously avoiding mine. Sem hangs on his legs like a monkey.

I dump the crayons onto the coffee table and push to a stand, willing my voice not to shake. “ Prins. Aangenaam.”

Nice to meet you.

“Let’s talk in my study, where it’s quieter,”

Thomas says, and I realize with a start that I’m included in this conversation. This man is here to question both of us. Thomas drapes a hand over Sem’s head, nudging him onto the floor. “Martina, will you get Sem to bed, please? We need a few minutes alone with our guest.”

Martina comes bustling out of the kitchen. “Of course, of course. Go.”

She untangles Sem from Thomas’s leg and shoos us in the direction of the stairs. I avoid her questioning gaze, though I won’t be able to escape it later. Martina doesn’t like what this after-hours visit means, either.

Silently, Thomas leads us upstairs to his study, a moody room on the back side of the house. Ebony wood paneling, thick rugs of gunmetal gray, heavy curtains on the windows that even during the daytime keep the room as dark and cool as a cave. He flips a switch by the door, and the lamps and wall sconces flicker to life.

He waves at the matching mohair chairs in front of his desk. “Detective Boomsma found something you need to see. Something that belongs to us.”

I drop into the stool. “Okay.”

My husband isn’t the type of person to talk in riddles, so I have a pretty good idea what he means. Something, as in diamonds. The detective found diamonds, they belong to us, and they’re somehow connected to a murder case. An icy tingling spreads over my skin like a thin layer of frost.

The detective sinks onto the chair next to mine, tugging a velvet bag from his jacket pocket. He turns it upside down over a hand, and something shiny and heavy drops into his palm. My gasp is loud in the quiet room.

It’s my bracelet, the one Thomas snapped on my wrist that night back in the fall, right before taking the call that had him racing out of our anniversary dinner. I take in the wide band, the 25.62 carats of flawless diamonds set in neat clusters, and in the very center, the giant, eleven-carat Prins-cut stone.

I stare at it hard, as if just by looking, I could make it disappear. Xander’s words echo through my head, the ones he said that night back in November: I want to grow the shit out of that Cullinan. And then Fleur’s words, more recently at lunch: Xander was obsessed with the Cullinans. Unbeknownst to Thomas, he planned to launch a lab-grown Cullinan collection.

“Where did you get that?”

The detective leans back in his chair, his gaze bouncing from me to Thomas. “One of my officers found it in Xander’s desk drawer. It was hidden in a box of staples and covered with a pile of papers, so it seems like he made at least some attempt to conceal it. It’s probably why the thief missed it, because Xander hadn’t stored it in the safe.”

“But how?”

Thomas says. “My wife has worn that piece only a handful of times.”

He glances at me as he says it, and I nod even though we both know it’s even less than that. I’ve worn it exactly four times—the night he gave it to me, Anna’s birthday dinner at his parents’ house, a benefit gala at the Waldorf Astoria, and some cocktail party at the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange. The bracelet is not the type of thing you throw on with a pair of jeans, or to take your kid to school. It lives in the safe more often than not. And every time, it was Thomas who pulled the piece from the velvet tray, not me. Look pretty and sport the bling—that is my job as spouse of a Prins.

Detective Boomsma’s gaze flickers between us, landing finally on me. “I’d like to back up a bit. What was your relationship with Xander van der Vos?”

My mouth goes dry, and I wet my lips with my tongue. “Xander worked for Thomas. That’s how I knew him. So I guess you could say it was a business relationship.”

“You didn’t see him socially.”

“I saw him at social functions that had to do with Thomas’s business. Industry parties, company events, things like that.”

“And outside of these business functions?”

“This area of Amsterdam is fairly insular. I run into people all the time at the gym, in the stores, at restaurants. Xander included.”

I pause, choosing my next words carefully. “But it was never anything planned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“When is the last time you talked to him?”

His words feel like a trap. I didn’t count how many times Xander called me in the days before his death, but it was a lot. Someone was following him. Listening in on his calls. Moving things around in his office, his home. Tilting the picture in front of the hidden safe in his study just to mess with him. And he was convinced that person was Thomas.

The detective watches me, waiting for an answer, and I can’t lie. Even if Xander managed to delete the calls from his phone, the police would have requested the records from the cellphone company by now. He will have seen my number all over Xander’s call log. My gut says he already knows about the calls—and if he doesn’t, he will soon.

I give myself a moment to think. “I’d have to check my call logs to be sure, but probably a day or two before his death. He called me a lot that week. He seemed like he was dealing with something, honestly. He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

Across the desk, Thomas’s gaze drills into mine. “Xander was calling you? You didn’t tell me that.”

Because you’re not the only one in this marriage with secrets. Because Xander wasn’t the only one doing the talking. Because I said some things, too.

I lift a casual shoulder. “You know how Xander was. He was calling to complain about you, which I told him was entirely inappropriate and futile.”

I turn to the detective. “I don’t work at the company. I hold no sway there, but it seemed like Xander needed to vent. I figured it was best to just . . . let him.”

“And you?”

Detective Boomsma says, turning to Thomas. “When was the last time you spoke with Xander?”

Thomas clears his throat. “The night he died. I called him from the factory.”

“What time was the call?”

“Just after midnight.”

Thomas’s answer is immediate. He doesn’t pause to think about it, doesn’t hesitate even a split second. He’s probably thinking the same thing I did earlier, that there’s no use denying it. The detective will already know this from Xander’s call logs.

“That’s awfully late to be calling an employee.”

“True, but there were some issues at one of the Asian labs and they needed immediate sorting out.”

“What kind of issues?”

“A shipment with more diamonds than we ordered, stones that were unaccounted for on the waybill. Things like that.”

The detective swings an ankle onto his knee, trying to get comfortable in a chair that was built for a man half his size. “Real diamonds?”

“Lab-grown diamonds are real, Detective. They are optically, chemically, and physically identical to their mined counterparts, virtually indistinguishable from the stones miners pull from the dirt. The only difference is in how they’re created, by pressure deep in the earth’s mantle or by a scientist in a laboratory.”

“But the diamonds we’re currently talking about, these ‘issues’ you mentioned, they were with lab-grown diamonds?”

He pauses for Thomas’s nod. “And you thought Xander might be behind the mistake.”

“It wasn’t a mistake, Detective. It was fraud. The lab was sending two, three, sometimes four or more of the same stone but only listing one on the waybill, the same stone that would make its way into our inventory. The others disappeared into Xander’s pocket.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because it didn’t happen with just one shipment, but many, and for who knows how long. You saw where Xander lived, in a building that commands the highest prices per square meter in all of Amsterdam. He drove a custom Bentley and owned a collection of art and watches that went far, far above his pay grade. He couldn’t have afforded all those things, not with what I was paying him.”

“So basically, you called to accuse him.”

“No.”

Thomas clears his throat. “I called to fire him and tell him I’d be pressing charges.”

“Interesting timing.”

The detective leans back in his chair with a loud creak. “Xander died before you could press charges, but you also didn’t file a police report.”

“I have a diamond house to protect, Detective. After the Cullinan theft and now these two murders, it seems prudent to just . . . accept the loss and move on.”

Detective Boomsma scratches at a cheek. “I’ll have my people take a closer look at Xander’s financials, but if he’s behind the scam with the Asian lab like you suspect, he was likely moving money around via nontraditional methods. Cash, hawala, Bitcoin. Those diamonds and whatever money he made selling them on the black market, it’s likely untraceable.”

Thomas gives him a resigned nod. “Like I said, it’s best to put this behind us.”

“But this bracelet.”

The detective taps a finger to the desk, rattling the links. “Are you absolutely certain yours is in the safe?”

Thomas looks to me for the answer, and I nod, then just as quickly shake my head. “I—I can’t remember the last time I opened the safe, honestly. I don’t go in there all that often.”

It’s one of the few things my mother-in-law can’t detest about me, as much as she doesn’t understand my unwillingness to let Thomas drape me in diamonds. The wife of a diamond heir who doesn’t love the bling? Anna finds it utterly incomprehensible at the same time she secretly admires me for my modesty—a trait the Dutch love in spades. It’s hard to accuse me of being a gold digger when the only diamond I ever wear consistently is my engagement ring.

Thomas flips on the desk lamp, a fluorescent jewelers light with built-in magnifying glass. He points to the bracelet. “May I?”

With a shrug, the detective pushes it across the desk.

“I made this bracelet, Detective. I built it with my own hands. I spent five months drawing it, first on paper, then with 3D renderings, printing the wax model, casting it with metal. None of our master jewelers helped me with this piece. I did all the work myself. I selected and set every one of the hundred and twenty-three stones, including the last remaining Cullinan.”

He taps the center stone then flips the bracelet over, holding it under the desk light. “See here? For my wife on the occasion of our fifth anniversary. This is it, Detective. This is the bracelet I made for her. A one-of-a-kind piece.”

I press my lips together, staying silent. Yes, Thomas did all those things. He spent all those months tinkering away on the factory floor in order to build what is undeniably a masterpiece, a stunning swirl of hundreds of flawless diamonds. The result is a piece that belongs on a princess or in a museum, sitting on a velvet pillow behind a case of bulletproof glass. Not on an arm. Certainly not on my arm. The bracelet is so delicate, its stones far too priceless—and Detective Boomsma was just carrying it around in his pocket. Thomas is right; it is an absolute work of art.

If only it were a work of love.

But also, I didn’t miss that word—3D. Thomas has a 3D printer at work. He used it to make this bracelet, and maybe a gun.

“How did it get from your safe to Xander’s desk drawer?”

Thomas shakes his head. “Impossible. None of the house staff can open the safe. Only and I know the code.”

“And you’re sure this is the one you made and not a copy.”

Thomas pulls a loupe from his top desk drawer and peers through it at the largest of the stones. The Cullinan.

“Correct GIA certification number is engraved on the girdle.”

Thomas looks up, meeting the detective’s gaze across the desk. “Though after the ten-carat fiasco, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you it proves nothing. The other stones are engraved, as well. I’d have to check the numbers against the certs to see if they match up, but I’m guessing they will, too.”

He looks back at the bracelet through the loupe, freezes. Frowns. “Huh. Hang on.”

Detective Boomsma leans forward on his chair. “What do you see?”

“The clasp on this bracelet is different than mine. Well, not different. It’s the same clasp, but it’s not. I engraved the inside of the original clasp with my initials. You only see it if you know where to look.”

Thomas looks up from the loupe, his gaze finding mine across the desk. “, check the safe, will you?”

I nod and rise from my chair, taking my time moving through the rooms and into our closet, because I already know what I’ll find. The original bracelet safe and sound in the vault, sitting on a navy velvet pillow. I wriggle it off the cushion and check the inside of the clasp. Thomas’s initials are engraved into the side.

I carry it back to the study and place the bracelet on the desk, sinking silently back into my chair.

Detective Boomsma lays the two pieces side by side—an identical match, and not just to my eye. To Thomas’s and the detective’s too.

“Just so I understand,”

the detective says. “The bracelet in Xander’s desk drawer is a copy.”

Thomas nods. “It certainly looks that way. The renderings are saved on the Prins server. They’re password protected, but Xander could have gotten to them somehow.”

“And the stones?”

“Lab-growns, I’m guessing, though I’d have to take both pieces to the factory to be sure. Like I told you, lab-growns are identical to mined. I can’t differentiate between the two with the naked eye or even a loupe. I need sophisticated equipment, advanced screening devices. Only a trained gemologist will be able to tell which is which.”

A trained gemologist like Xander. He had access to all those screening devices, too.

“But you said the stones were marked?”

“When a diamond is graded by one of the big firms, Gemological Institute of America or the International Gemological Institute for example, its certification number is engraved on the diamond’s girdle. This is for the customer’s protection as well as for identification purposes in the event of theft or resale.”

Thomas picks up the loupe and holds it to the center stone on the replica bracelet. “Same cut and shape as the Cullinan, same microscopic inclusion on the crown near the girdle, too small to see with the naked eye. I’d need to pull up the certification specs to pinpoint any differences, but from what I can see, these stones are identical.”

He lowers the bracelet, pulls the loupe away from his eye. “But I’d need to put both pieces through a screening at the factory to be sure.”

Detective Boomsma nods, pushing to a stand. “Then let’s go.”