The Florentine Deception Read Online Free PDF Page B

Italian restaurants, but with this easy recipe, you can recreate the magic at …
    Italian Dishes for the American Palette
    www.atozrecipes.com/f/florentine_lasagna_recipe.html
    This recipe is one that I discovered while visiting Florence during my honeymoon last year. Here’s the list of ingredients …
    â€œWorthless.” A dozen more pages turned up more recipes. “It must be a codename of some sort.”
    â€œMaybe it’s stolen property,” conjectured Steven, “a famous Italian painting, pottery from an Italian archaeological site?”
    It was worth a try; I googled “stolen Florentine painting” and was rewarded with a barrage of Mona Lisa hits.
    â€œThe Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre. According to the page, Mona was from Florence,” I offered. “They found it two years later when the thief tried to sell it to a Florentine art dealer. Maybe it’s gone missing again.”
    â€œNo way,” said Steven, “if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa, it’d be front-page news. And even if it had been stolen, no one’s going to sell it for five mil.”
    He had a point.
    I broadened my search to “stolen Florentine,” and this time we hit pay dirt.
    The Florentine Diamond
    www.famouslostdiamonds.com/florentine_diamond.html
    The diamond had been in her family since the end of World War I (the Florentine was stolen in 1918). She reminisced that the diamond was of a very unusual shape …
    I waggled my finger at the result.
    â€œYou think it’s a diamond?” he asked incredulously.
    â€œFits the profile.” I pushed my notepad to Steven and pointed to Lister’s most recent Amazon purchases.
    Clicking on the link, we learned more:
    â€œ According to legend, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, wore the 137-carat Florentine Diamond into battle in 1467. After Charles’s death, a foot soldier discovered the gem on the battlefield, and taking it for a worthless piece of glass, sold it for a florin. In 1657, the stone again surfaced, this time in Austria within the coffers of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. After the fall of the Austrian Empire during World War I, the Florentine was spirited away by the imperial family to Switzerland, where it remained until its theft in 1918. ”
    Midway through my reading, Steven smeared his index finger on the LCD display and read: “The diamond hasn’t been seen since, although rumors have been circulating for nearly ninety years of its demise,” then continued, “your Mister Lister had a one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-carat diamond. And now he’s dead. The question is: did the bad guy ever get the diamond?”
    â€œI don’t think so.” I considered. “I’ll bet it’s still missing. Whoever sent that email didn’t know that Richard had already died. He didn’t know where the gem was or he wouldn’t have made the threat.”
    Steven became quiet. I think we were thinking the same thing, or at least I hoped so. For the first time in a long time, I’d actually enjoyed myself; I’d found the day’s hours of sleuthing intellectually mesmerizing. And the prospect of a treasure—buried or not—titillated me. A prepackaged adventure had been dropped in my lap, reviving my childhood treasure-hunting obsession. I could already see myself crawling through musty passages in abandoned mines, hunting for the diamond.
    Back to reality.
    I punched Richard’s Latigo Canyon address into Google to get a map. To my surprise, Google responded with a “house for sale” webpage at the top of the search results.
    â€œHis place is for sale,” I said. Steven was still zoning out.
    â€œSteven?” I roused him from his stupor. “Richard’s house is for sale. And no one knows about the diamond except us and our mysterious emailer-slash-jewel collector-slash-psychopath.”
    â€œOkay, and?”
    â€œAnd I