“Please, don’t apologize. I can’t imagine the pain that you’re going through. That letter did answer the question. So one of the Crown Jewels, on loan from England to the Confederacy, was lost in the river. Maybe not far from where the woman in the photo, or in the painting, was standing. Is that where your husband located it?”

“Yes. Jack was about half way done with his documentary on how the CSA Secretary of War, John Breckinridge, managed to escape, using three boats to sail from Florida to Cuba to England. Jack thought Breckinridge knew about the diamond, but it wasn’t part of the lost Confederate gold from the treasury. That diamond, called the Koh-i-Noor, in the contract, has lots of political history and turmoil behind it. We learned that, at one time, the country of India owned it. Apparently, it had belonged to many dynasties over the years. In 1850, about ten years before the Civil War, the diamond was taken, some argue stolen, from the Shik Empire by the British East Indian Company and secretly ushered from India to Britain where it was grouped in with the rest of the British Crown Jewels. The diamond became the property of the monarch, which, at that time, was headed by Queen Victoria.”

O’Brien finished his coffee. “Do you think the finding of this contract and the connection of the letter to the diamond is the reason your husband may have been murdered?”

“Yes. Jack was a diver, and a darned good one. He got some of his friends, most of them re-enactors, and they used pontoon boats and underwater cameras to search the bottom of the St. Johns River. They weren’t sure where the spot was — the exact place where the woman stood in the painting, but they searched — made quick dives to avoid attracting alligators. And they did it every Saturday morning for more than two months. Most of the search area was near where Dunn’s Creek flows into the river. Finally, Jack and his best friend, Cory Nelson, pulled the strongbox from the river mud and the diamond was inside. He kept it in a safety-deposit box the first month. This is where you really have to understand my husband, the code he lived by, his longtime allegiance to the traditions of the Old South, and what honor is supposed to mean. To honor the intent of the contract and the wishes of the soldier who wrote the letter to his wife, Jack was trying to figure a way to return it quietly to England without creating an international incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

“Many people in India believed at that time, and apparently many still do today, that the diamond was embezzled by the British, taken out of India and given to Queen Victoria without the knowledge or consent of the Indian government. They want it returned.”

“Did Jack get video of the diamond?”

“Yes, but he didn’t want it released until he’d returned it to England and his documentary was done.”

“Did you show the footage to police?”

“I gave it them on a flash drive. I also gave them the names of the three men on Jack’s production crew. Jack has his own camera gear, and he used one of our bedrooms as his office and editing area.”

“Is that where the raw video footage is, here in the home?

“Yes. There are a couple minutes of video. Would you like to see it?”

“I would.”

“Follow me.” Laura led O’Brien to a back bedroom converted to an office. It was filled with Civil War memorabilia, framed vintage photographs of the war, Andersonville Prison, soldiers with the look of lost hope on gaunt faces. Laura pointed to a vacant part of one wall. “That’s where the painting of the woman by the river hung until Jack let the movie company borrow it.” She turned on a computer, found the file, and played the video.

O’Brien watched it carefully. The images opened with one man in a diver’s wetsuit pulling a rope, hand-over-hand. O’Brien could tell they were on a pontoon boat in the center of the river. Within seconds, a wet and rusted strongbox, about the size of a small toolbox, was pulled from the river, water dripping off of it. A diver emerged from the river, lifting his dive mask. He spit out his mouthpiece regulator and shouted. “Yeaaah, baby! We found it!”

“That’s Jack,” said Laura.

Another diver surfaced beside him, removing his mouthpiece and grinning.

Laura pointed to the screen. “That’s Cory Nelson, Jack’s producer and best friend.”

“I met Cory on the movie set.”

“You did?”

“Yes, he mentioned that someone named Silas Jackson, a re-enactor fired from the set, had an interest in the painting.”

Laura said nothing, her thoughts suddenly distant. She looked back at the computer screen.

O’Brien watched the two divers climb up the diver ladder. Jack looked toward the camera and said, “Maybe it’s an old toolbox. Or just maybe it’s a strongbox that’s been resting down there on the river bottom since the Civil War. The only way to find out is to open it.”

Paula Jordan stood in the open doorway and said, “That’s Daddy! That’s my Daddy!”

Laura inhaled deeply, biting her bottom lip. “Yes it is, sweetheart. Your daddy was hunting for something in the river. Something that has a lot of history.”

“What’s his…tor…ee?”

“Things that happened in the past.”

Paula held up her coloring book. “I colored the butterfly!”

“You did a beautiful job. Show Mr. O’Brien.”

`O’Brien knelt down and looked at the page. Paula said, “I made the wings yellow and the butterfly’s head pink. She’s a girl.”

O’Brien smiled. “That’s one of the most beautiful butterflies I’ve ever seen.”

Paula grinned wider.

Laura said, “Go start the next page and we’ll celebrate by having an ice cream, okay?”

“Okay.” She turned and walked quickly toward the kitchen.

O’Brien stepped back to the computer on the desk. He played the rest of the video. It revealed the strongbox lid opening, the camera operator zooming closer. A hand reached in, two seconds later, removing a dark leather pouch. Someone said, “It’s dry as a dinosaur bone in that box. The seal worked well for 160 years.” There was laughter, the sound of the river chop lapping against the pontoons.

The shot pulled wide and Jack Jordan stood there in his wetsuit, water rolling from his black hair down his angular, grinning face. He untied the leather pouch and lifted out a large diamond. “Wow! It’s big as an egg,” he said, holding the diamond between his thumb and forefinger, the sunlight pouring through the brilliant stone and creating rainbows of light moving against Jack’s face. “This thing, I do believe, is the diamond known as Koh-i-Noor. It’s probably priceless. Its value for us though, in this documentary, isn’t monetary…but historical — proof that England played a covert role in the American Civil War. My wife and I found the contract between England and the Confederate States of America tucked between in the pages of an old magazine we bought from an antique store. The contract, and a hand-written letter from a Confederate soldier, pointed us in the direction to search a specific area of the St. Johns River to look for the strongbox that held the diamond. England secretly was supporting and partially financing the Confederate war effort. And per the terms of the 160-year-old agreement, signed by Jefferson Davis and Lord Palmertson — the British Prime Minister at the time, the diamond is long overdue to be returned.”

Jack looked at the diamond in his hand and then back at the camera. He smiled, used the tip of one finger to brush a drop of river water from his nose. “Maybe the Queen will offer a small reward, or at least a plane ticket to London to return it.” The shot slowly zoomed in, the diamond filling the frame in a fiery burst of colors, then the image cut to black.

“That’s all there is,” Laura said. “I get so emotional seeing Jack there, on our pontoon boat. It’s like he’ll walk through the door any minute, but he never will again.”