Focus.
Amanda had been in this shop at least once every day for the past several years. She should be able to pick out empty spots on the shelves where certain pieces had stood, perhaps even recall what was missing. Focus on that, she reminded herself. On helping Marian. Forget about how she looked the last time you saw her, there on the floor . . .
“Anything seem out of place?” Sean watched her carefully from the front of the shop. At the first sign that she might begin to crack, he was prepared to take her right out the front door. He’d carry her if he had to. She’d been through so much, and she was trying so hard to keep on going.
“Nothing . . . no.” She shook her head, her eyes moving shelf to shelf, cabinet to cabinet. “Nothing so far . . .”
She walked the perimeter of the shop, carefully noting the placement of furniture and artwork, shaking her head. “As I told you earlier, I wasn’t familiar with all of Marian’s stock. I don’t see anything obviously out of place, but . . .”
She paused near the counter. “She did buy some Russian antiques earlier in the week. I don’t see any of them here. She mentioned she had potential buyers, though, so she could have mailed them out before . . . before yesterday.” She looked over her shoulder. “Maybe in the office . . .”
“I’ll go in.” Sean walked toward the back of the shop. “You just tell me what I’m looking for.”
Amanda described the items for Sean.
“There’s something here all packed up for the post,” he called from the office a moment later. “It was under the desk. And here are a couple of receipts from one of those express delivery services. Picked up some stuff on Wednesday afternoon, it looks like.” He brought the box and the papers with him to the front of the shop and placed them on the counter.
“Let me see those,” she said. “They should note what was in the packages and give an approximate value . . . yes, here, see?”
She held up one of the slips.
“It says salt box.” Sean frowned. “She mailed a box of salt?”
“A box used to keep salt in,” Amanda explained. “She insured it, see here?”
Sean whistled at the amount the piece had been insured for. “That must have been some box.”
“It was. Rare and beautiful. Silver and enamel.” She waved a second receipt. “And this is for the clock. Can we open the box to see what’s in it?”
Sean nodded and pulled out a pocketknife.
“This might be the miniature she bought,” Amanda offered.
“Miniature what?”
“Portrait. Of Alexander the First.” She waded through the packing. “Here it is.”
She held up the small painting. Sean leaned closer for a better look.
“That’s Alexander the First? The Russian who was assassinated with his family? Anastasia, and all that?”
“That was Nicholas.”
“Oh, right. And she was going to trust this to the mail?”
“No, this was going by courier, see? She was paying a premium to have this handled with kid gloves.”
“You familiar with this service?”
“Yes. I’ve used it myself. We all have. They’re reliable, fast, and relatively inexpensive, compared to the competition.”
Sean folded the wrapping back over the package within a package and prepared to take it with him.
“We’ll want to speak with the service, see if their man made it down here yesterday before you did.”
“They would have called the police right away and volunteered the information, if they’d been here. They’re very reliable.” She added, “And for the record, the company is owned by a woman. Several of her drivers are women.”
“Sorry,” he said absently. “So, everything else is intact, you think?”
“I think so. I wish I’d been able to be of some help.”
“Oh, but you have. If nothing else, we’ve been able to pretty much rule out robbery as our primary motive.”
“Then what was the primary motive?” She frowned.
He’d been afraid she’d ask. “I think he came here with the express purpose of murdering Marian.”
“But why?” she whispered hoarsely.
He hesitated a little too long. She caught it.
“What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Well, as we discussed, I do believe that the same person killed Derek and Marian—”
“But why? Why would anyone want them dead?”
“Well, as I said before, the only strong link between the two of them—besides their profession—is you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“It makes sense to the killer. We just have to be smart enough to figure it out.”
“Do you have any ideas on this?” She folded her arms across her chest as if suddenly cold.
“Well, there’s the pottery. . . .”
“But Marian had nothing to do with that. She never even saw the piece.”
“How about this?” Sean leaned his elbows on the glass counter. “How about if someone was here, going through your shop on Wednesday night, after you closed, looking for the goblet. Maybe Marian saw something—a light, a figure, whatever—and came over to investigate. Maybe at first she thought it was you working late, just as she had been. Maybe she tried the door and found it open, came in. He forces her back over to her place, where he kills her.”
“Maybe. Maybe. She would have come over, if she’d seen something.” Amanda nodded thoughtfully. “Just like I went to her shop when something seemed wrong.”
“Or . . .”
“Or . . . ?”
“I mentioned, I think, that I’d read through your file. The one from last year.”
“The case against Archer Lowell, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, and you found that Lowell had threatened Derek. We knew that.”
“Did you know that he had threatened Marian as well?”
“What?”
“When Lowell was arrested, he made the statement to the arresting officers that if it was the last thing he did, he’d get back at that bitch who’d called the cops on him.” He leaned back against the counter. “Marian was the one who called 911 the day that Archer attacked you outside your shop.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her face grave. “Yes, she did. And she was going to testify against him in court.”
“But then he pled out, and there was no trial.”
“You think somehow this is all connected to him?”
“It’s worth following up on. At one time, he’d threatened both Derek and Marian. And now they’re both dead.”
“But you said the prison officials confirmed that he’s had no other visitors, no contact with anyone other than his mother and his sister.”
“We’re going to have to look a little closer at Mr. Lowell. Maybe there’s a former cell mate, someone he came in contact with—”
Her hands started to shake and her legs went weak. “I don’t want that to be it. I don’t want it to be because of me. I don’t want them to be dead because of me.”
Without thinking, he put his arms around her and let her cry, held her until she stopped shaking.
“Bastard,” she growled. “I thought this was all behind me—that he was behind me. Bastard. If he had anything to do with this . . .”
“We’ll figure it out. If it’s him, if he’s involved somehow, we’ll find out. If he’s behind this, we’ll find out.”
“It’s so hard to believe. For one thing, I would never figure him being smart enough to plan something like this. I mean, wouldn’t you have to be pretty smart to pull off something like this from behind bars?”
“Maybe he has a smart friend.”
“He’d have to.” She disengaged herself and dug into her purse for a tissue. Not finding one, she went behind the counter and pulled one from the box that sat on the shelf. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and turned back to him. “Let’s find him. Let’s find Archer�
�s friend, if he has one.”
“Let’s do that.” Before Archer’s friend finds you . . .
Her eyes returned to the glass case that stood between them. “Marian bought several pieces of jewelry at the sale.” She leaned down to peer at the items on display. “There are the earrings . . . and there, there’s the bracelet.”
She frowned.
“Something wrong?”
“There was a pendant on a nice gold chain. Emeralds set in concentric circles, quite lovely. She had that in here.”
“Maybe she sold it.”
“If she did, it would have had to have been sometime on Wednesday. I can’t believe she wouldn’t have mentioned it, though. Let me check her receipts for this week.”
She took a few steps in the direction of the office, then stopped.
“Tell me where it is. I’ll get it,” Sean said.
She shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.”
She pushed open the door and went into the small room, which still held the smell of blood and fear. She steeled herself against it and walked around the stain, refusing to let the images in.
In the top desk drawer was the black folder in which Marian recorded her purchases. Amanda grabbed it and returned to the front room.
“You might want this,” she told Sean. “Though there doesn’t seem to be too much sales activity this week . . .”
She scanned through the folder once, then a second time.
“It’s not here. If she sold it, she would have noted it. She was a stickler for keeping track of her sales.”
Amanda went back to the glass case to take another look. “Not here.”
“When had you last seen the necklace there?”
“Late on Wednesday afternoon.”
“And it was in that case?”
“Right there on that black velvet stand. Unless she moved it to another case . . .” Amanda made her way around the shop, studying the contents of each glass case. “It isn’t here, Sean.”
“Then she must have sold it after you saw it on Wednesday.”
“There’d be paper on it.”
“Maybe she planned on taking care of that when she got in yesterday. Maybe it was late in the afternoon . . .”
“No. She would have done it there and then. There was no mañana to Marian. She would have written a receipt at the time of the sale.”
“Did you happen to notice any customers going in or out of her shop on Wednesday?”
“Only earlier in the day. There was a busload of shoppers from Maryland who came in around ten and left around three.”
“But you saw the necklace after that. Later in the day.”
“Closer to four.”
“So if the necklace was in the shop on late Wednesday afternoon, where is it now?” Sean rubbed his chin. “A souvenir, maybe . . .”
“I’m sorry?”
“He could have taken it as a souvenir. Do you remember what it looked like?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to make a drawing?”
“I can try, but I’m afraid I’m not much of an artist. And I may not remember all of the details. I only saw it once close up.”
“Maybe you can sketch out what you remember, then we’ll pass it on to Dana and maybe she can work something up. She’s a pretty fair artist. Would you have time to sit with her for a while today?”
“Sure. I have all the time in the world.”
She looked across the cobblestone walk to where her own shop sat, locked up and dark. She had no desire to so much as unlock the door.
“Ready, then?” Sean stood near the door.
“Sure,” she sighed. “Why not?”
Her two best friends were gone, her business—once her sanctuary—now a sad and silent reminder of all she’d lost over the past few weeks.
She might as well spend the rest of the day at the police station. She had nowhere else to go.
Now, where was the bitch? Honest to God, you turn your back on a woman for twenty-four hours and she disappears.
Vince had tramped through the woods that bordered the open field behind Amanda’s house, climbed a tree he’d used for this exact purpose several times before, and, binoculars in hand, studied the house for the past three hours. There’d been no movement. No lights on at dawn, no music, no TV chatter, as was her usual routine.
Maybe she’s in mourning, he thought wryly, then glanced at his watch.
Till nine-thirty in the morning? Not likely. Not her. She was the original early to bed, early to rise girl.
He should know.
So far this morning, he’d watched the neighbors on either side of the little Victorian house leave for work. Amanda should have followed them by now.
“Oh, what the hell . . .”
He swung his legs over the branch below and dropped effortlessly to the ground. Cautious, just in case someone in the neighborhood was still at home, he approached the house along the shrub line, bent over at an angle so that his head never rose above the shortest of the shrubs. When he got to the back of her garage, he straightened up and stealthily inched along the wooden structure until he had an unobstructed view of the driveway.
Her car wasn’t there.
Well, well, well. Wonder where Missy Amanda slept last night?
He crept along the drive, then made a dash for the back of the house. Once near the porch, he knew he was safe. The steps blocked off the view from the neighbors on the left, even if anyone had been home at that hour. He dropped to his knees and ever so carefully pushed out a pane of glass in one of the basement windows. He placed it on the grass, out of harm’s way, and pushed in the sash. He lowered himself through the opening and dropped quietly into the basement, as he’d done so many times before.
“Let’s see what Miss Amanda has been up to,” he muttered.
He went directly to the far end of the basement and into the small room where a washer and dryer stood on a raised pedestal of concrete. He opened the washer and looked in. Empty. He peeked in the dryer. Empty as well. No laundry yet this week, Amanda?
Disappointed, he went up the stairs. Last time he’d lifted a pretty thong made out of a pale pink fabric and stuck it in his pocket. No such prize today.
He wondered if she’d even noticed it was gone.
Maybe she thought she’d left it someplace else, he snorted as he used a credit card to unlock the basement door.
The house lay still. Even the air seemed to be undisturbed until he made his way through it. He looked through the refrigerator and helped himself to a handful of strawberries, which he munched while he rifled through her mail and selected a magazine. He popped the tab on a beer and took it with him up the steps to her bedroom. Pausing in the doorway, he looked around the room.
Nothing had changed since his last visit a few days earlier.
He placed the beer bottle on the magazine on the bedside table, then lay down on the bed and stretched out. Catching her scent, he followed his nose, then buried his face in the pillow. It smelled clean, slightly lemony. It turned him on. He’d have to check her dresser and see if he could figure out which of those bottles held this perfume. He’d buy some for Dolores and make her wear it when they went to bed.
He wondered when he’d gone from wanting to kill Amanda, to wanting her.
He wondered if it mattered. His plan hadn’t changed. He’d still kill her. But if he could have her for a while first, if he could indulge himself in her for a time, why shouldn’t he have that pleasure?
He closed his eyes and thought about having spent the night in Dolores’s bed. He felt himself start to grow hard, remembering the enthusiasm with which Dolores had thanked him for his gift. He slid the zipper down on his jeans and freed himself, stroked himself, an image filling his mind’s eye.
Dolores’s body, Amanda’s face.
Amanda’s face. Amanda’s body.
Everything he wanted to do to her. Everything he would do to her.
God, he couldn’t wait.
> CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
“Was it more rounded like this, do you think, or was it more oval-shaped?” Dana slid the sketch pad across the table to Amanda.
Amanda studied Dana’s efforts. “I’m not sure,” she said, and shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t remember. I really didn’t study the pendant all that closely. Marian had bought several pieces at the same sale and was showing them off all at once. I do remember that the general shape was round, that there were concentric circles in the middle there, just like you’ve done, but I don’t remember what kind of bale was at the top and whether or not it had stones in it, and I don’t remember if there was some sort of gold fretwork around the outside. I seem to think there was, but I can’t swear to it.”
She looked up at Dana and exhaled slowly, one long tired breath. “I’m so sorry. That’s the best I can do.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. You did just fine. We have a fairly good description of the pendant, enough that should alert the dealers throughout the county that we’re looking for a similar piece.” She stood, smiling. “I’ll run this past the chief, then maybe we’ll put it out to the press and the pawnshops throughout the county.”
Dana bit her lip, examining her work. “Maybe we should send it out a little farther. Down to Philly. No, all of Pennsylvania. North Jersey, New York.” She looked up at Amanda as if just remembering that she was there. “Though I’m betting we don’t find it. I’m thinking he’s going to keep it. A pretty souvenir. Which would be good for us, you know?”
“Because when you find the pendant, you’ll know you’ve found the killer.”
“And then”—Dana scooped up her drawing and headed to the door—“we’ll hang him with it.”
“Nice work.” Sean looked over Dana’s sketch. “Very nice. I’ll get someone to send out the faxes right now.” He glanced at the clock. “And if I hurry, I can get a press conference in before the early news begins, show it off. Get the local papers to run the sketch.”
“You don’t believe he’s pawned it, do you?”
“Not a chance.” He shook his head. “He’s holding on to this or keeping it someplace close to him, where he can see it.”
Dead Certain Page 17
