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Odelia looked distinctly unhappy, but since there wasn’t anything she could do right now, she pressed on in the direction of the house where Craig Bantam’s daughter lived, and five minutes later was ringing that lady’s bell, Dooley and I at her feet as usual, willing to lend any assistance we could. We were, after all, unbadged consultant’s consultants and we took our jobs seriously.

“Mrs. Bantam?” asked Odelia the moment the door swung open.

“Bantam is my maiden name,” said the woman. “These days I go by my married name—Fossard.”

“My name is Odelia Poole, and I’m a civilian consultant with the local police department. We’re investigating the Pink Lady diamond. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”

The woman who stood before us was of the slightly rumpled kind, with a thick crop of dark hair, a round face, and dressed in a sweater and jogging pants. She looked as if we had caught her engaged in some sort of strenuous activity, since her cheeks were flushed, and a sheen of sweat covered her brow.

“Of course I’ve heard of it,” she said cheerfully. “It’s all people are talking about. Come in.” And as she led us inside, she continued, “I was just doing my workout routine, so you came at the right time.” She grinned. “Any excuse to take a break from that torture machine is fine with me.”

We found ourselves in a cozy living room, with plenty of throw pillows covering several couches placed strategically in front of a large-screen television. Posters of ABBA bedecked the walls, and framed pictures of the four members of the group covered every available surface, from the display cabinet to the sideboard.

“I’m a big ABBA fan,” she explained when she followed Odelia’s look. “I think they’re just great. I keep hoping they’ll get back together and play a concert.” She gestured to the white leather couch. “Take a seat. Can I offer you anything? I have ABBA tea, ABBA coffee, ABBA lemonade, ABBA cookies…”

“ABBA coffee will be fine,” said Odelia, who’s a big coffee drinker. “And maybe water for my cats. It doesn’t have to be ABBA water,” she quipped.

“Oh, but I have ABBA water,” said Mrs. Fossard. “It’s more bubbly than regular water and tastes sweeter.”

“Thanks,” I said gratefully when moments later a dish of water was placed on the floor for my and Dooley’s enjoyment. She was right, by the way. It was sweeter.

“So what’s this all about?” she asked as she sank into an armchair with visible relish. The music blasting from the speakers was of course ABBA, and she now turned down the volume.

“So you know all about the Pink Lady turning up on the beach the day before yesterday, right?” asked Odelia, scooting forward on the couch and causing it to make squeaky noises.

“Absolutely. Imagine looking for seashells and finding a precious diamond instead. Oh, the joy that little girl must have felt!”

“So I take it you don’t know about the safe?”

“Safe?” asked the woman. She took a nibble from one of her ABBA cookies, then seemed to think better of it and ate it whole. In other words a lady after my own heart.

“I like a woman with an appetite, Max,” said Dooley, who’d noticed the same thing.

“Me, too,” I said. I’d taken a great liking to Caroline Fossard, though the fact that she’d placed a small dish with liver p?t? next to the water might have had something to do with that.

“Well, the Pink Lady was stolen from the Capital First Bank last year, and according to the information from the bank manager it was actually stolen from your safe.”

The woman gawked at Odelia.“My safe? What do you mean?”

“I mean the safe the Pink Lady was stolen from is registered in your name, Mrs. Fossard.”

“Oh, dear. You mean there was something of actual value in that safe? I thought it was just a pile of old junk!”

“I’m sorry—I don’t understand.”

“I’ll tell you what happened. My dad took that safe, but he put it in my name for some reason. But so eighteen years ago he died, and as far as he’d told Mom the only thing he kept in that safe were some old work documents and unimportant stuff. She still wanted to take a look, of course, after he died, but discovered that Dad hadn’t left her the key to the safe—he’d died unexpectedly, you see—or the combination. So she went to the bank to ask them to open it and they said that since it was in my name she had to have the key. Otherwise they’d have to drill out the lock and replace it, and that would set her back three hundred bucks. So she never bothered, and then more or less forgot all about it.”

“But you kept on paying for that safe. That must have cost you a lot of money over the years.”

“Oh, no. You see, it was all paid in advance. Dad had arranged all that, and so Mom figured that when the money ran out, the bank would open the safe and that would be that.”

“So the years passed and…”

“And some idiots burgled the bank, and stole everything they could lay their grubby little hands on. So I thought, tough luck, but I wasn’t going to weep over a bunch of old documents.”