“Not specifically.” I was almost shouting, and Emmie wriggled away, burrowed back under the covers. “I have a right to know what you’re hearing through the grapevine.”
“Numero Uno—Felix Ochoa—he’s been pulling in favors, holding meetings. Could be about something else, but it’s not really his style to have his people collaborate. Whatever he’s planning is big, and we don’t know what else on his radar could be bigger than you.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry the lump didn’t budge. “So my time window is really narrow.”
“I’d call it non-existent,” Matt countered. “About the protection detail—”
“No,” I said again, firmer this time. “There’s something I need to do. I’ll call you back. Maybe.” And I hung up on him.
CHAPTER 19
I jostled the bed, and Emmie popped out from under the blankets.
“Are you mad?” she whispered.
My mouth was open, a lie on the tip of my tongue, and then I thought better of it. “Yes, I’m mad. But not at you.”
She wrinkled her nose and peered at me through lowered lashes. I had more explaining to do.
“Mostly I’m frustrated and sad and disappointed and scared and worried. And I wish I could wave a magic wand and make all our problems disappear. Does that clear things up?”
Emmie pulled off the bracelet and cupped it in both of her hands. Her voice was tiny, but so wise. “That’s not how it works in real life.”
Timely advice from a six-year-old. “I know, kiddo. But I’m hoping I can turn that—” I pointed at the bracelet, “into a greedy mistress of the underworld.”
That earned me another nose-wrinkle. “Or a donkey,” Emmie suggested seriously.
I grinned and picked up my laptop. “Or a donkey. So much more practical.” We had our respective genie wishes lined up.
In the jewelry collecting forum, nine enthusiastic, elbowing-each-other-out-of-the-way responses had been posted below my note about the bracelet. Several were from Europe, one from South America. The time zone differences explained some of the activity that had occurred in just a few hours, but these people were avid to the point of being rabid. As though they smelled the blood of an inexperienced seller in the cyber waves. I could have started a bidding war.
The most recent message—posted twenty minutes ago—came from California. She posted with a generic avatar instead of a real photo, but her username was AT. She was probably still in her dressing gown, with a mug of coffee in hand, perusing the chat rooms about her obsession. The wording in her message was just aggressive enough to give me hope that I’d tickled the fancy of one Angelica Temple. While subtle, the implication was clear—money was no object, and no pesky questions about provenance would be asked.
Which I thought was unusual, since I’d offered provenance in my original post—the whole grandmother story.
Unless I’d made a dreadful mistake.
I’d researched JHM. I had not researched this specific bracelet. Lazy. So very lazy.
I clenched my teeth and quickly scrolled through search results. Yep. I had a problem.
There were twenty of this particular style of bracelet—known as the Empire Emerald bracelet. Eighteen accounted for, two not—numbers 07 and 19.
No wonder I’d created a flurry by putting it on the market as an unknown owner. The assumption had to be that it was stolen. And probably it was. Wasn’t that how petty thieves unloaded their hot merchandise—at pawnshops? Was there some truth to that made-for-TV stereotype?
Regardless, Skip had known exactly what he’d been looking at in that particular shop, even better than the shop owners and their burglar client.
Clarice entered bearing a heavily laden breakfast tray while Emmie and I were tilting the bracelet this way and that, trying to find an identifying number embedded in the platinum. Emmie’s young eyes spotted it first—07.
No doubt about it now. I’d stepped in it. Way to have the San Antonio police department breathing down my neck, because the bracelet had to have been reported stolen at some point. Maybe. Unless the long-lost rightful owner hadn’t noticed yet. Or more likely, was dead—since she hadn’t cared to register her bracelet.
Emmie scooted off the bed and helped Clarice set up a tea party on the floor, stepping carefully around my organizational paperwork.
I fired off a note to AT, suggesting that we carry on a conversation privately. I set up yet another anonymous email address and included it in my message so she could reach me. Then I deleted my original post about the bracelet, crossing my fingers that none of the other eight responders would investigate further or report my faux pas.
All before breakfast. Yikes.
I’ve probably said it before, but I’ll say it again. Clarice is amazing. She has an absolutely perfect understanding of what constitutes comfort food in every kind of situation.
She’d prepared poached eggs, bacon, scones, tea and coffee with real cream, and little cucumber rounds piped with a red pepper and cream cheese mixture. I’m afraid I didn’t really take the time to savor these delights the way they deserved because my stomach was howling with impatience.
Clarice muttered something about my manners, but mostly the three of us were silent, chewing. Except I did fill Clarice in on a few pertinent details like Kliever’s statement and the bracelet’s questionable history.
I was spreading orange marmalade on a scone when an email message pinged on my laptop. I pulled it over so I could see the screen. “Wow,” I murmured around a mouthful. “That was fast.”
“No rest for the wicked?” Clarice said.
“It appears so. She wants to meet. This girl has itchy fingers.”
“Are you sure she’s really the infamous Angelica Temple?”
I allowed myself the luxury of a sly but hopeful grin. “Let’s find out.”
oOo
It was the first time I’d requested the use of Matt’s special talents and connections in advance. I’d been on the receiving end after the fact numerous times, and it’d be fair to say he’d saved my bacon more than once.
But this was collusion of a sort, even though his agreement was rather reluctant and tentative. It was awfully nice not to have to shoestring my plans along.
He’d gotten over his irritation at my omission of the bracelet’s arrival in the mail pretty quickly, although he insisted that I save the padded envelope for the lab to analyze.
“Any fingerprints are smudged beyond recognition,” I said. “The envelope’s been handled by everybody in this house plus all the mail carriers in between.”
“Quit arguing. What makes you think she’ll talk to you?” Matt asked.
“Why not? A couple girls who like jewelry and who both know the piece in question was obtained illegally. What’s not to bond over?”
“This is a long shot.”
“Has the San Francisco office sent undercover female agents to get close to her, befriend her?” I countered.
“She’s hyper-vigilant. They didn’t think it was a good use of the agency’s resources,” Matt replied. So very logical.
But not everything can be successfully screened by a cost-benefit analysis. “I’m free. No charge,” I said cheerily. “Hook me up.”
Matt sighed heavily into the phone. “When?”
“Saturday at ten o’clock at the—” I glanced down at the website I had open on my laptop, “Gas-N-Guzzle Truck Stop, just north of Longview on I-5 at exit 42. It’s close, but not too close. More my turf than hers—that’s for sure. I’ve had a lot of contact with semitrucks and their drivers lately—it’s getting to be old hat. Besides, I think Angelica would enjoy a little roughneck male attention, might distract her.”
Matt snorted. “If it’s Angelica.”
“Which you’ll know if you keep tracking her travel. At the very least, you can put somebody on her tail to see if she leaves the city Friday afternoon.”
“Be there two hours early. Oh—and I’d stay away from the biscuits an
d gravy if I were you,” Matt grumbled.
oOo
“Not like that, you aren’t,” Clarice announced when I told her about the confirmed meeting. “Angelica will take one look at you and running screaming in the other direction.”
Rats. I’d forgotten about the effects of my plunge through the woods yesterday. “It’s not that bad,” I muttered, rubbing the maze of crisscrossed, fine line scabs on my cheeks.
Clarice grunted and pulled out her phone. “Sidonie? We have an emergency. Bring the kids—and your sales kit.”
Sidonie Gonzales is the wife of my freight terminal manager, Hank Gonzales. I first met her when she stopped by the mansion under the guise of trying to sell us the Petal Hydration line of skin care products—one of those door-to-door, personal relationship marketing ventures. But in reality, she’d been scoping out the new neighbors in the hope of finding female friendship.
Clarice and I had definitely decreased the loneliness she’d been subjected to out here in the boonies, but I’d also exposed her husband to a drive-by shooting. Not exactly a fair exchange.
Sidonie arrived in a short amount of time that belied the fact that she’d had to trundle her infant twin sons into their car seats and pack her young daughter, CeCe, a little backpack full of treasures for a day of playing with Emmie. Plus her industrial-sized makeup case, plus a massive diaper bag. All while looking like a supermodel. A supermodel who drove a sputtering, faded Volvo.
But if anyone could pull off a miracle with regard to my appearance, it was Sidonie.
She started clucking the moment she saw me. In fact, she did a double take. “Nora? Good heavens. What happened to you?”
“I told you it’s a crisis,” Clarice growled. “She has to convince this broad—” she stabbed at Angelica’s photo on the Roman & Bernard website open on my laptop, “to divulge her criminal secrets.”
“I was fending off blackberries—and branches.” I cringed in apology, holding my hands in front of my face, knowing Sidonie had hours of hard work ahead of her.
That was a mistake. Sidonie pounced and curled my fingers around hers, pulling until they were inches from her disapproving scowl. “Your cuticles are disgusting too.” She pushed me into a ladder-back chair. “Don’t move.”
I was quickly smothered in some kind of goopy face mask, and my hands were sunk into bowls of conditioning potion. Sidonie tucked a plastic sheet into my shirt collar and slathered stuff on my neck too.
“What are you wearing to this—this spy session?” she asked.
I tried to tell her I didn’t know, but the plaster on my face had dried too much for decent lip mobility.
Sidonie glared down at me with her hands on her hips. “I just need to know if your toes will show.”
“Better do the whole shebang,” Clarice said in the background, with barely restrained glee. She’d spent the first few minutes cooing at the babies, then she’d been clanking pots and running water in the sink, under the pretense of cooking something. But really she just wanted to witness my humiliation.
Sidonie pulled off my boots and socks, rolled up my jeans, and then my feet were suddenly in warm, sudsy water. And I couldn’t help but relax.
I used to do this—all the time. Weekly trips to the salon, perfect nails, my own personal hair colorist who painted highlights with natural artistry, waxing, massages. It had been, what? Two months, three months? How quickly I’d forgotten what being pampered—and decently groomed—feels like.
Although what Sidonie had to do to make me presentable involved a whole lot of scrubbing in addition to the pampering. Like sandpaper. In stages—from rough grit to fine grit—she polished off the paper cut-type scabs and surrounding epidermal layers. She didn’t draw fresh blood, but I did look as though I’d been badly sunburned.
“The redness will go down in the next twenty-four hours.” Sidonie patted a cooling cream into my skin. “Good thing you called me today, because if we’d done this tomorrow, you’d have gone to your meeting looking like a lobster.”
I was getting delirious from the odors swirling around—chemicals for my beauty treatments and sugary butter smells from the oven.
At one point, the girls came charging into the kitchen, excited and breathless from a game of tag through the dusty halls. They giggled at me until Clarice loaded them with snacks and finger paints and sent them off to the big front room where floor-to-ceiling windows provided the perfect illumination for their artistic endeavors. It was the best possible thing—for Emmie to have a playmate today, for her life to return to normal as quickly as possible.
Then Sidonie tackled my hair. I’ve never been particularly attached to my locks, but I grew concerned watching them pile up on the floor.
“Umm—” I said.
“Shush.” Sidonie snipped close to my ear, and I froze in place.
Clarice pulled sheet after sheet of cookies out of the oven, even while the industrial stand mixer was gnawing through more dough.
And then it hit me. “The garage is finished, isn’t it?” I blurted.
Clarice chuckled. “Walt called a few hours ago. The carpenters are installing the trim in the last room now. The boys’ll be moving in tomorrow. I could have been doing party prep in their fancy new kitchen, but I figured I’d keep you company instead.”
I couldn’t suppress a whoop. Sidonie grabbed both my shoulders and pressed me back down into the chair.
More snipping while I fidgeted.
When she finally stood back and appraised her handiwork, she seemed satisfied.
Clarice glanced over from the counter where she was pounding shortbread crust into a pan for her famous lemon bars. “You won’t have to blow dry it.”
I stuck out my tongue at her. I hadn’t been blow drying my hair for months. Who had time for that? Not me—not anymore. I ran my hands through what was left on my head. I was definitely feeling the breeze up there.
“See?” Sidonie giggled. “It looks even better messy.”
Clarice shuffled around to stand beside her and scowl at me over the top of her cat’s eye glasses. Then she turned and shook Sidonie’s hand. “Next time, it’s my turn.”
“Deal.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon cuddling and bottle-feeding Aron and Adam who had snoozed through most of the busyness, packing goodies into containers for the drive to the garage tomorrow, and catching up on all the juicy stories from the neighborhood.
Right before she left, Sidonie informed Clarice that it was general knowledge that Gus had the hots for her, that everyone knew all about their birding trip and how he’d spent extra time repairing her station wagon to pristine condition. Clarice spluttered and turned a delightful shade of purplish beet red that totally eclipsed my over-scoured flush.
I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to hide my grin. I would have to find a way to give Sidonie a massive thank you tip for that tidbit. Her timing was impeccable.
CHAPTER 20
The next day was a dream.
The whole thing—the gratification of work well done, delighted boys exploring their new digs, a quietly satisfied Walt overseeing operations, an amazing feast, happy faces and exuberant shouts of laughter, a swirl of youthful energy.
It was as though the fears and worries of finding the body plus Emmie’s kidnapping had slipped away unnoticed. There is nothing better in this world than being surrounded by jubilant children.
Tarq and Loretta came too, and they were escorted on a showcase tour even though they’d already seen every square inch of the remodeled building many times. Walt had assigned rooms, and boys claimed bunks and planned decorations for their individual spaces. Every boy aged thirteen and up had his own designated bed, desk, and closet space—almost like college dorm rooms. Walt would keep the younger boys with him in the bunkhouse, but they’d have so much more space there to spread out now.
And then we ate. A couple of the older boys manned the barbecue, turning out grilled burgers and bratwurst. Clarice orchestrated al
l the side dishes and, of course, her abundant array of desserts.
And it left me no time to get nervous about my approaching rendezvous with Angelica, except for the few minutes when Walt approached me with what appeared to be a shy grin—something I’d never seen on his face before.
“You, uh—well, you got your hair cut,” he murmured, his intense blue eyes scanning me.
“Oh yeah.” I waved my hand self-consciously. “I had to look presentable for a meeting tomorrow.”
“This have to do with the kidnapping?” Concern washed over whatever the other look on his face had been.
I shook my head. “A different Numero. Actually, Numero Cuatro’s deputy. I’ll just be fishing for information.” I stumbled around the assertions, not really sure myself what the meeting would entail.
“And this required a makeover?” Walt’s brows drew together. “Because, you know, there was nothing wrong with—”
“It’s a woman,” I interrupted, to save him from blurting out something too awkward to be flattering.
Except it didn’t work. Walt frowned, still confused. “Well, you’re very pretty,” he finally said.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
And we left it at that.
The garage-warming reminded me of what normal felt like. Maybe this particular day was happier than most normal days, but it was similar to the trips I used to take to visit orphanages and bestow grant money when I managed Skip’s charitable foundation. The kind of meaningful activities that thrilled my heart.
A call from Matt while we were consolidating the leftover food capped the brimming day. “Angelica Temple just boarded a Southwest Airlines flight at the San Jose airport. She has a reservation for tonight at a hotel in Portland. I’d say it’s fairly reasonable to assume she’s your mystery bracelet buyer. Good instincts.”
I let out a long breath, but I didn’t have anything to say. It would all be speculation at this point.
“Don’t forget—eight o’clock in the morning. We don’t want any surprises tomorrow,” Matt finished and hung up.
Cash & Carry (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 14
