He handed me a sheet of paper. I held it between me and Bob so he could see too. The image on the paper was gray and grainy. Even so, I was able to make out enough of the ring’s distinctive features to be convinced.
Bob looked at me and nodded. We were both in agreement. I reached down and withdrew the small pouch from my pocket.
Susan’s eyes widened at the sight of it. She seemed to be holding her breath. When I held out my hand, she hesitated a moment before lifting the jewelry bag from my fingers.
“Go ahead and take it,” I said. “It belongs to you.”
Chapter 22
“After all these years . . .” Susan said on a slow, indrawn, breath. I can hardly believe it.”
Her husband laughed and nudged her hand forward. “Take a look,” he said. “The suspense is killing me.”
Susan laughed with him then. Hesitation gone, she grabbed the pouch. Her fingers scrambled to undo the slender drawstring. When she pulled it loose, the ring tumbled out into her hand.
For a moment, she didn’t even look at it. Instead she closed her fingers tightly over the piece of jewelry, encasing it in her fist, and simply reveling in its possession.
“It’s the right ring,” she said. “I feel it.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” Jim pointed out.
“I don’t need to. I just know.”
Susan glanced over at me. I nodded. I’d been there.
Slowly she uncurled her fingers and revealed the family heirloom. Its diamonds flashed and sparkled in the light. Jim just stood and stared. Susan’s lower lip began to quiver, then abruptly she burst into tears.
Bob looked taken aback. He glanced over at me. “That’s good . . . right?”
I swallowed heavily. The emotion of the moment had gotten to me too. “That’s very good,” I told him.
“Don’t mind me,” Susan wailed between sobs. “It’s just the pregnancy hormones.”
Franny looked up from her padded seat. Seeing her mother’s tears, she began to cry too. Jim strode over, unbuckled his young daughter, and picked her up. Automatically he began to bounce up and down in place.
“Your great-grandmother’s ring,” he said gently to his wife. “Home at last.”
“Thank you!” Susan launched herself up out of her seat. She spread her arms wide and managed to hug both me and Bob at the same time. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“I think I’m getting a clue,” Bob said with a laugh.
Susan straightened and walked over to where her husband and daughter stood. “Look at the beautiful ring,” she said, waving the bauble in Franny’s face. “Someday it will be yours.”
“And on another day far, far, in the future,” Jim added, “it will belong to your daughter.”
“But in the meantime,” Susan said, tears still running down her face, “you can wear it anytime you want to dance around the room and pretend to be a princess.”
“That’s so great.” I sighed.
Bob’s expression clouded. It looked as though he was finally beginning to understand the impact of the ring’s emotional heft. “Why don’t we have any family heirlooms like that?” he asked me.
I reached over and patted his arm. “Bob, we don’t even have a family together anymore.”
“Oh yeah. Right.” He shook his head. “For a moment there, I forgot.”
We both stood up to go.
“You did a good thing today,” I told him.
“I guess every so often I get something right.”
“You do better than that,” I said.
Jim and Susan were standing beside one another, with Franny tucked in between them. The adults were engaged in a whispered conversation. I figured we should probably let ourselves out.
As we started for the door, Jim called us back. “Susan and I want to give you a reward,” he said.
Bob and I looked at each other. Once again, we were in agreement.
“That’s not necessary,” I told Jim.
“But you deserve a reward,” said Susan. “You could have kept the ring for yourselves. You could have decided it was too hard to track us down. We would never have known the difference. At the very least, let us repay you for your time and effort.”
Bob stepped back to where the couple was standing and extended his hand. Susan reached out and grasped it in both of hers.
“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “But Melanie and I already got all the reward we need.”
Moments like that, I remember why I married that man.
Monday morning. Another work week, more stuff to do.
The first thing I did was call Diana Lee. Well, actually not the first thing. By the time I called Nick’s girlfriend, I’d already made breakfast, washed the dishes, delivered Davey to camp, and taken the Poodles for a two mile walk. Diana didn’t strike me as the early riser type. So I got around to her midmorning.
Good thing I’d exercised some restraint, because she sounded half-asleep when she picked up the phone. I offered to buy her a grande coffee and she agreed to meet me at the Starbucks on Greenwich Avenue in half an hour.
“Sorry,” I said to Sam. “Kev’s all yours again. Diana doesn’t do children.”
“Her loss,” he said with a shrug.
“She doesn’t do dogs either,” I told him.
“Now I know I wouldn’t like her.”
“She has long blond hair and a perfect manicure,” I mentioned. You know, just throwing it out there.
Sam laughed. He didn’t take the bait. Instead, he leaned down, gave me a quick kiss, and said, “And you have an orange juice stain on the front of your shirt.”
“Oh man.” I groaned. “Seriously? I just got dressed.”
So I clumped upstairs, changed my shirt, then drove over to Greenwich to meet Diana. Midmorning, the coffee bar was nearly empty. An elderly woman was reading a book at one table. At another, two teenagers were passing an iPad back and forth.
Apparently Diana had taken my offer of free coffee seriously because when I arrived I saw that she’d staked out a table by the window, but not yet purchased a drink. I took her request, went to the counter and ordered for both of us, then joined her at the table five minutes later.
Diana had been checking her e-mail on her phone. Now she tucked the device into her purse and said, “Where’s the kid?”
“At home with his father.”
I slid Diana’s espresso macchiato across the table. The dark drink looked like a straight shot of caffeine. If I was lucky, she’d gulp it down and start to chatter like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Home?” She lifted one finely arched brow.
“Sure.” I sipped my mocha latte and licked a stray bit of whipped cream off my lip. “What’s the matter with that?”
“It’s Monday. I would have expected your husband to be at work.”
“He might be working,” I told her. “Although Kevin can be a pretty strong deterrent to productivity when he wants to be. Sam works for himself. He designs computer software.”
Diana lifted her glass and took a small sip. Maybe the beverage was still too hot for gulping. I continued to hold out hope.
“Is that a lucrative field?” Diana asked.
“If you’re good.” Just for good measure, I punctuated the comment with a Cheshire cat smile.
Stew on that, I thought. I wasn’t about to mention that Sam was still collecting royalties from a wildly successful video game he’d designed while in business school. Diana would probably jump to the conclusion that I’d married Sam for his money.
Just like last time, it was difficult for me to imagine this woman as a long-term love interest for Nick Walden. Or heck, even a short-term one. Sure she was beautiful. But seriously, they had to have talked sometime, didn’t they?
Yet another reason why men remain a mystery to the legions of smart, capable, worthy, but not drop-dead-gorgeous women of the world.
I gave my head a slight shake, putting my wayward though
ts back in order, and got down to business. “I spoke with Taran Black,” I said.
Diana gazed at me over the rim of her cup. “Did he confess?”
I snorted under my breath. “No. And in fact, he has an alibi for the night that Nick was killed.”
I didn’t add unlike you, but the thought hung there in the air between us.
“Lucky,” she murmured.
“Even better,” I countered. “Not guilty. Taran told me to ask you what happened when you found out that Nick was fooling around with one of this clients.”
“Of course he’d bring that up,” she snapped.
I took another drink of my latte and waited for her to elaborate.
“Taran’s the kind of guy who likes stirring up trouble,” Diana said after a minute.
“For Nick?” I asked. “For you? Or just for people in general?”
Diana glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist. “You ask the dumbest questions.”
Sad to say, it’s not the first time someone has said that.
“Feel free to point me in the direction of better ones,” I told her.
“Why should I?”
“Because you want to see Nick’s killer brought to justice.” I paused, then added, “You do, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Diana said with a shrug. “It’s not up to me.”
“Then there’s no harm in discussing what happened. I’m guessing we’re talking about Carol Luna?”
“Do you know her?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“No great loss.”
I was betting Carol Luna might have said the same thing about her.
“Tell me about her relationship with Nick,” I invited.
“She has some little yappy dog. Maybe a Poodle.” Diana looked up. “That’s what you have, right?”
“Same breed. But mine are big and they don’t yap.”
“Well, Carol’s dog never shuts up. That’s why she hired Nick. Me, I’d have had the thing unbarked. You can do that. I read about it on the Internet.”
I nodded and didn’t correct her terminology. There was no point in allowing myself to get sidetracked when Diana was already feeling antsy.
“But instead she asked Nick to help her,” I said.
“That’s how they met. Or maybe I should say, that’s how Carol got her clutches into him.”
“Nick was a grown man,” I mentioned. “He was capable of making his own decisions.”
Diana shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it.
“We were happy together,” she told me. “He wouldn’t have strayed if she hadn’t gone after him. Carol seduced him; that’s what happened.”
Or that was what she wanted to believe.
“Even so—” I began.
“Any man is susceptible,” Diana said loftily, “when a woman puts her mind to it.”
Said the gorgeous woman who’d probably never heard the word no in her life. It’s a good thing I’m an adult. Otherwise I’d have stuck out my tongue. Did she truly have no idea how the other half lived?
“And you found out,” I said.
“Of course I found out. The woman had no shame. She called Nick. She pursued him. Only an idiot wouldn’t have noticed that something was going on.” Diana stared at me across the table. “And I am not an idiot.”
“Surely not,” I agreed.
“I know what infidelity looks like.”
I wasn’t about to ask how.
“Nick promised me it was over between them,” Diana growled. “But still that woman wouldn’t go away. And then I found out that he was still training her little yapper. How could it be over if he was still seeing her?”
“Did you ask Nick that?”
“I most certainly did. And he had the nerve to tell me that she was a good client. That things were strictly business between them now.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
Diana shook her head. “Did you hear me say that I’m not an idiot?”
Point taken.
“I decided that something needed to be done to illustrate my unhappiness. Something that would make my feelings known. You know—in a way that even a man would notice.”
“So what did you do?”
“I built a little fire in Nick’s backyard,” Diana said with satisfaction. “And I burned half his clothes.”
I’d heard of women throwing hissy fits like that. But I’d never actually met someone in person who’d done it. All the women I count as friends are entirely too practical to be so wasteful. Sitting there with Diana, I suddenly felt like an anthropologist who’d stumbled upon a new subspecies of female homo sapiens.
One that definitely demanded further study.
“Which half?” I asked curiously.
“What?”
“You said you burned half of Nick’s clothing. I was wondering which half.”
“Are you always this literal?”
“Usually,” I admitted.
“It was a rhetorical question,” Diana said curtly. “But since you asked, I didn’t pick and choose. I just burned the ones that were in the front of his closet. I grabbed an armload and went to work.”
I’m sure this wasn’t Diana’s intention, but here’s what I took away from that story. One: she had a volatile and perhaps irrational temper. And two: Diana had had access to Nick’s house when he wasn’t there. Which meant that she could have let herself inside without Nick’s knowledge on the night that he was killed.
“So you resorted to violence to get your point across,” I said.
“Against clothes,” Diana specified. “It’s not like I actually hurt anyone.”
“Do the police know about that?”
“Not unless somebody else told them. I certainly didn’t.”
“I can see why not,” I said. “They might have found the fact you were angry enough at Nick to attack him in that way pretty suspicious.”
“Let me repeat.” Diana spoke slowly and emphasized each word as though I was stupid. “The only thing I attacked was Nick’s clothing. It’s not the same thing at all.”
Or maybe she was making too fine a distinction.
“How long before Nick died did all this happen?” I asked.
“A while,” Diana replied airily. “At least a couple of weeks. Nick and I had long since made up by then. Everything was copacetic between us.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me.”
I regarded her across the table. “Does it matter what I believe?”
“It does if you’re planning to go running to the police and tell on me.”
“We’re not in kindergarten, Diana. This is serious.”
“I know that.”
She reached up a hand and brushed back several strands of hair that had fallen forward over her face. Once upon a time, Veronica Lake had used the same gesture to great effect. Unfortunately its appeal was wasted on me.
“Which is precisely why I don’t want to get any more involved than I already am,” Diana said.
Her espresso was finished. She pushed her cup away, then unwound her purse from the back of her chair and looped it over her shoulder as she stood up. “I never should have come here today,” she said. “Agreeing to meet with you again was a mistake.”
“Why did you?” I asked.
“You’re a woman. I thought you’d understand. Men think it’s their world. That they can do whatever they want and get away with it. And that’s just not right.”
It sounded like a flimsy rationalization to me. “So by burning Nick’s clothes you were striking a blow for all women?”
Diana glowered down at me. “I have nothing more to say to you. Don’t ever call me again.”
The mocha latte was too good to waste. I stayed and finished every drop before leaving. My car was parked on a side street three blocks away. I was almost there when my phone rang. The number was unfamiliar but it was a Green
wich exchange.
“Hello?” I said.
“Is this Melanie Travis?”
Great, I thought. A telemarketer. “Yes, it is.”
“This is Fran Dolan. Do you remember me?”
It took me a few seconds to place the name. Then I said, “Sure I do. You’re Barney’s owner.”
I could almost hear her smile. “That’s right. I hope it’s okay that I called you. Claire told me it would be.”
“Claire?” I asked.
“You know, Nick Walden’s sister? Something’s the matter with Barney. Before, I would have asked Nick what to do. Now I couldn’t think of who else to call so I got in touch with Claire. She sent me to you. I’m hoping you can help me.”
“I can try,” I said slowly. “What seems to be the problem?”
“It’s the way Barney’s behaving. He’s acting all strange.”
I thought of the low-slung Basset Hound who’d done nothing but sleep during my recent visit to the Dolan household and wondered how she could tell. Then I gave myself a mental kick for being mean. Fran Dolan lived just north of the parkway. I’d be headed in that direction just as soon as I got to my car. Stopping by and having a look at the Basset would take me only a few minutes out of my way.
I conveyed that news to Fran and told her I’d be there soon.
“You’re an angel!” she said happily. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
I hoped she wasn’t placing too much faith in my abilities. Nick had been the expert on canine behavior. So was Aunt Peg. I didn’t have their knowledge or their experience. Compared to those two, I was nothing more than a concerned dog lover who also happened to be available.
Fran met me at the door to her house and hustled me quickly inside. “Barney’s in the backyard,” she said. “I had him in here with me, but he started having a little problem with his bladder, so I put him out.”
“Is that normal for him?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Barney’s been housebroken since he was a puppy. And he’s always very good about minding his manners.”
“So that’s one problem,” I said. “Are there others?”
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