Untitled

Chapter Thirteen

Sunday-The Long Beach Terminal resembled a large auditorium with a cathedral ceiling. After the Sunbeam docked early that morning, Jerry's men, along with DEA agents, customs inspectors, and drug-sniffing dogs boarded the ship, entering the luggage storage area.
The long, tedious job of inspecting luggage would be expanded beyond the normal inspection routine due to the necklace theft and the introduction of the drug traffic issue. Each passenger would be required to clear customs, and there were several inspection stations to accommodate the process.
Jerry nodded to Ben from across the room as he stationed himself near the customs area. Two of his plain clothes officers, both friends of Bens', stood adjacent to the gangplank.
After their last breakfast aboard the Sunbeam, passengers began to debark. Jean and Bill Harlow were two of the first to come across the gangplank. Ben watched as Jerry signaled to his two officers, who then immediately handcuffed the startled couple and hurriedly escorted them away. Inwardly, Ben was ecstatic; maybe this was one of the reasons he hated leaving the force.
As the hours passed, irritated passengers, now having to wait up to an hour to process through customs, began to express their displeasure.
Ben glanced to his right and noticed Ricky and Sharlet being led into a side room used by customs inspectors. Male and female plain clothes officers accompanied the inspector. Ben instinctively took a few steps in that direction. A nagging intuition told him to stop. 'Let them do their job,' he thought.

Lisa had debarked now and was standing in Ben's view. She began walking toward one of the customs gates. As he studied Lisa walking, admiring the beautiful singer, a familiar still, small, inner voice penetrated his consciousness, beckoning him to listen. It was that same intuitive knowingness that had often caused him to persist in following certain leads on cases after his co- investigators had dismissed them. This time, his first reaction was denial.
His memory, as it so often did, swiftly went back to his childhood, when he first experienced his psychic gift. It happened one day while walking home from school. He suddenly knew that his grandfather had died. He ran to his grandfather's house, flew through the door, and saw him sitting in his rocking chair, smiling. He hugged him, talked to him, and told him he loved him. His grandfather died of a heart attack the next day. Ben was always grateful for that last chance to say good-bye to the grandfather he dearly loved, and vowed never to ignore the strange feeling he experienced that day.

'No,' he said to himself. 'It can't be Lisa.' Both he and Louise were aware of her background, and shared feelings of empathy for her. And they were extremely fond of her as well. He felt sad, though, because he knew how difficult it was to break away from alcohol and drugs.
Lisa could have picked another customs gate, but instead, turned and went right to Ben's.
"Hi, Lisa."
"Why, hello, Lieutenant," she said cheerfully.
"Me and Louise really like your singing and hope to see you again."
"I hope so, too, Lieutenant. I really must hurry though, I have someone waiting."
"This shouldn't take long," he said apologetically.
The customs inspector asked to see her purse. Instead, she willingly dumped its contents onto the inspection table. The inspector placed the empty purse under a high intensity x-ray machine and examined the screen for any unusual patterns in the bindings or leather-covered handles.
Ben, still questioning himself, addressed Lisa, "I'm gonna have to ask you to do one more thing. I know it's an inconvenience, but could you empty your pockets please?"
Lisa was wearing a heavy weave, Mexican style jacket that had two large pockets in front. "Well, I really don't have anything."
"I need you to empty them anyway. That way, we can say we performed a complete search. Everyone has to do it."
Lisa reached into one of the large jacket pockets, removed two bags of candy, and set them on the inspection table. Upon examination, Ben noted that one of the bags was sealed and the other opened, with a few pieces of candy apparently missing. He opened the unsealed bag by unwrapping the cellophane from the top and then set it back down. He picked up the sealed one and casually examined the Mexican print on the bag, just killing time while the inspector put Lisa's articles back into her purse. In the past, Ben's intuitions had not been one hundred percent accurate, so he gladly dropped the matter.
Suddenly, the inspector inadvertently bumped the table, which was on casters, causing it to jerk. One of the candies rolled out of the bag, across the table, and onto the hard tile floor. Lisa instinctively jumped back, looked at the floor, and watched the candy ball roll under the fixture that held the x-ray machine. She fell to her knees, jammed her hand under the fixture, where the candy had disappeared, and frantically searched for it with her fingers.
She quickly realized what she was doing by making a big deal out of finding the candy ball. When she finally looked up, Ben was staring down at her. She tried to display simple embarrassment. She looked away and then back up again, only to find Ben's unrelenting eyes fixed on hers.
Ben picked up one of the candies and bit through it's hard, bitter shell. One point of a shiny diamond poked through the surface.
Lisa kneeled there motionless, speechless; moments seemed eternal. In Ben's eyes, she saw empathy, sorrow, and deep disappointment, a reflection of her own inner anguish, except most of all, she was scared. Without speaking, Ben extended his hand to help Lisa to her feet. Rising from her crouched position, her legs were wobbling so at the knees, she could hardly stand on her own. Ben pulled her to her feet. While they stood there, still without speaking, Ben opened the sealed bag of candy. He compared the two candies and found they were close replicas, but not exactly the same. Lisa was trembling. She had been afraid before, but this time there was nowhere to run. 'I would rather die than go to prison,' she thought.
"You want to tell me all about it?" asked Ben in a subdued voice. Terrified, she didn't answer. Again, he gently extended his hand, "You have to come with me, Lisa."

As Ben led her to an enclosed office area, he noticed Ricky and Sharlet in the distance, walking toward the terminal exit. They stopped, quickly kissed, and continued in the direction of the exit doors. They were holding hands and swinging their arms back and forth like a couple of lovesick teenagers. Ben was still scratching his head in disbelief at the couple as he shut the office door.
Inside, Bernice Chandler and Paul sat waiting. They both wanted to be close by in order to receive the latest information.
Bernice took one look at Lisa and her heart sank. 'Not again. Can't anyone be trusted?' she thought in anguish. She turned her head and rested it on Paul's shoulder.
At the sight of Bernice and her reaction, Lisa, who was equally surprised, slumped down in the brown, leather love seat placed perpendicular to the couch on which Paul and Bernice were sitting. Ben remained standing.
Lisa had deeply hurt Bernice, and the thought of it started tearing her apart, so much that she forgot about the prospect of going to jail. Bernice was the only one since Granny who she could confide in, who understood her. Their friendship was short, but she wanted to make it a lasting one, as did Bernice.
With tears in her pleading eyes, she looked at Bernice and feebly uttered, "I am so sorry, Bernice. I didn't know they were yours and I was going to package them up and send them back to the Captain as soon as I got home anyway.
"I was afraid to give them back on the ship. I couldn't take a chance on getting arrested. And I didn't want to go to jail, especially since we met and talked. I was so confused. You were so nice to me and gave me new hope. That is the honest truth. What I did was wrong and I know it. I had been drinking again that night and panicked. I ran to my stateroom between performances to clear my head. I pictured myself jumping from job to job and finally ending up on the streets again. While walking back to the lounge, I noticed a key sticking out of a stateroom door and the door slightly open. I knocked and then went in, thinking someone might need aid."
Ben was busy passing out tissues to both ladies, as Lisa sobbed out the rest of her story.
"I saw the necklace laying on the edge of the dresser by the bed. And without thinking, I picked it up and shoved it into my clutch purse and left. The money I could get from the diamonds would hold me over for a long time, I thought. I have never stolen anything before. And, until meeting you, I had been miserable."
The room was silent for awhile, as Lisa held her hands over her face and cried, unable to stop.
"I don't expect you to believe me, let alone forgive me." Lisa's eyes and face were swollen, and her hands trembled as she attempted to dry her tears. Bernice, her eyes wet from emotion went over and sat beside Lisa. She gently placed Lisa's head on her shoulder as she had done on the ship a few days earlier. "I believe you, dear," she whispered.
Both Paul and Ben reserved comment.
"I'm gonna have to take you downtown, Lisa. You know that, don't ya?"
"Yes, sir."
"First, though," said Ben, half smiling now and wondering how Lisa had almost pulled off this near perfect crime. "Tell us how you did it."
Lisa, having been comforted by Bernice, was somewhat composed by now. "After the show that night, I went directly back to my stateroom with the necklace. Using utensils from my makeup case, I pried the diamonds out of their setting. An idea came to me that I could make candy and hide the diamonds inside.
"You see, when I was a little girl, my Mom and Dad owned a candy store and we made all our own candy. Also, I just happened to have two bags of candy that I had picked up in Mazatlan. I bought the candies because they reminded me of one of the candy types we used to make at the store. You probably don't know it, but round candies like that are pretty standardized. My Dad gave me a small candy mold that had been passed down from his father, and I used to spend hours experimenting with it. It had handles on the front and hinges on the back, and would make eight candy castings at a time. It has been long obsolete, but I always carried it with me, along with this little Bible." Lisa displayed the Bible. "They were the only mementos I got from my Dad.
"I was able to duplicate the Mexican candy, which I believed to be American candy in Mexican packages, by using my little mold. I used makeup materials, sugar, flour, and food coloring from the kitchen pantry for ingredients. I was able to concoct a colored mixture that closely matched the Mexican candy. I then placed a diamond in each mold pocket, closed the hinged molding, and then, using a makeshift funnel, poured the mixture into a hole on one side of the mold. I used a hair dryer to aid in the hardening process."
Ben clutched his chin with his right hand, while inwardly laughing at himself.
"I also had to revolve the mold several times, enough to make sure the diamonds were completely covered. Then I had to round off the edges with a fingernail file. I later gathered up all the stuff I used, put it into a plastic bag, and dropped it over the side when nobody was looking. You won't believe me, but when I took the diamonds, I had no idea I was going to do this. I didn't know they existed when I bought that candy."
"That's incredible," remarked Ben.
"Sir," responded Lisa, "what's incredible is the circumstances surrounding the whole thing; me drinking again; being forced to go to my stateroom to recover; Mrs. Chandler leaving the necklace on the table and then leaving her door open; my buying the candy in Mazatlan and then conceiving the idea to make the candy, and having the where-with-all to do it. Making the candy was easy. I had done it many times except I used nuts instead of diamonds and a hot plate instead of a hair dryer. It's almost like the whole thing was planned ahead of time. But surely not by me!"
Ben and Paul smiled at one another as they thought of the million dollar drug bust that would not have happened but for the diamond theft.
Ben understood perfectly. He was not a brilliant man, but he possessed a certain wisdom gained through experience and openness to his special gift. Accordingly, he realized that his personal feelings and admiration for Lisa caused him not to identify her as a suspect, even though she was seen by Juan in the hall that night. His emotions had the effect of dulling his extrasensory perceptions.
'It's those whom you emotionally attach yourself to that are the most difficult to read sometimes!' he mused to himself.