"Comes as no surprise to me. Dina's smart, don't get me wrong, but her brother's always had a sharper head for figures. Why, before Randy started school, he could cipher whether the green beans the store put on sale were any cheaper than the others."
"A financial whiz," Dina muttered, "at begging for money. Even better at getting some out of Mom."
Determined to keep the interview on track, Jack said, "You fenced the merchandise through somebody. I want to know who, how you met, how and where the exchanges went downeverything."
Dina directed a smirk at her mother. "I asked a friend of my mooch of a baby brother which pawnshop would give me the most for my wedding rings."
"You're married?"
"Happily divorced." She went on, "When Randy's friend found out why I needed the money, he took my cell phone number and said a friend of a friend of his might be able to help. A day or two later, a man called, saying he was in the market for upscale jewelry. It took a while to realize he meant hot upscale jewelry. I hung up on him."
"But you couldn't stop thinking about it."
"Not when it seemed like every other kennel customer wore diamond studs as big as marbles. Sapphire tennis bracelets, fancy rings, watches, pendants " Shame leavened her voice. "And I was canceling Mom's doctor's appointments and telling her they were postponed because I didn't have enough money for the copays."
"You were?" Mrs. Wexler thrust out her chin. "If I'd known that, I wouldn't have taken your guff about my medicine for a second."
"Oh, yeah? Well, putting off checkups is why it scared me to death when I found out you were skipping your meds, or cutting them in half."
"Some of them made me sick, or light-headed, or so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open."
"They don't when I'm here to make sure you eat something first, or that you don't, if they're supposed to be taken on an empty stomach."
Dina drew up her knees, her arms clamped around them like metal straps. Mrs. Wexler stared at the hallway. She worried the gold wedding band on her finger, mumbling about being a burden.
If tension had a color, it would be chartreuse and the room was pulsing with it. Jack wasn't immune to the effect or the vibe, but should have been. From the moment he recognized the thief's pretty face, he'd felt as if his shoes were on backward.
Seldom was objectivity a conscious effort. Any personal interest in a case was exclusive to the client. Almost without exception, the women Jack had encountered in the course of an investigation were either married, significantly othered or he wouldn't date them if they were stranded on a life raft.
Admit it, he thought. You've felt like your shoes were on backward since the day you met Dina Wexler. She blindsided you, sport. There's no future in it and never was. You didn't know it until an hour ago, but you damn sure do now.
He pushed up from the couch. His coffee cup was deposited on the kitchen counter. A dining room chair was moved into the living room, as though a poetry reading were about to commence.
He pulled a notebook from his back pocket, unclipped the pen from his shirt placket and sat down. "The fence's cell phone number, Ms. Wexler."
Startled by the bad-cop routine, Dina glanced at her mother. Mrs. Wexler sipped daintily from the water glass, content to let her back-talking daughter twist alone in the wind awhile.
Flustered, but loath to show it, Dina splayed her left hand. A seven-digit sequence was recited, then she squinted at her palm. "Wait. I think that last number's a seven, not a one."
Jesus friggin' criminy. The Calendar Burglar the police had chased their tails for two years to apprehend had inked her fence's phone number on her hand.
"Do you have a lousy memory, or does it change pretty often?"
He already knew the answer, and that the fence's revolving contact numbers were linked to untraceable prepaid units, of which he had a sackful. Occasionally, he'd make brief, selective use of a stolen cell phone.
"How do you contact him?" Jack asked.
"From pay phones."
"Never the same one twice, right?"
Dina nodded.
"And he tells you, don't use this contact number next time, use this one."
Another nod.
"You don't know his name, but does he know yours?"
"Just as D.J." Dina frowned. "Unless somebody told him." A pause, then, "I don't think Randy's friend would have, and the man hasn't ever called me Dina or anything."
Odds were the fence knew exactly who she was, where she lived and why she'd resorted to burglary. Multiple receiving-stolen-property charges would bargain down nicely in exchange for particulars on the actual thieves. Even a jailhouse shyster would demand a conspiracy-to-commit charge be taken off the table before the fence flipped on his crew.
"Call him." Jack lobbed his own untraceable, prepaid phone to her. "Say whatever you usually do to arrange a meeting."
Leery, she argued, "He'll know it isn't a pay phone call. He won't answer."
"Try it."
Dina punched in the number and held the unit to her ear.
A quizzical expression, a disconnect, then a second try. She muttered, "Maybe it is a one instead of a seven." Her eyes telegraphed an active ring tone. A start, then, "Oh. Sorry. Wrong number."
To Jack, she said, "I don't understand."
He did. A new and legitimate phone number was Dina's pink slip. The fence was feeling heat, or decided she'd become a liability.
"Okay," Jack said, "pretend you've made your haul and a clean getaway. What was the drill from there?"
"I'd call, he'd tell me where we'd meet, he'd look at what I have and pay me."
"No ballpark estimates on the gross? No dickering? Just, 'Here's your ten percent, see ya in the funny papers'?"
The evil eye Dina leveled sufficed as an answer. "For what it's worth, which is probably nothing, I didn't take wedding rings, anniversary rings, anything that looked like an heirloom or was inscribed. Sure, some pieces may have been gifts or had sentimental value, but if I sensed they might, I left them alone."
"Lord in Heaven." Mrs. Wexler moaned and clapped a hand to her face. "You really are a thief."
Dina stiffened. Her cheeks flushed, but she didn't respond.
"All I've got to say is, thank God your daddy isn't alive to hear this."
Since "All I've got to say" is usually an intro, not an outro, Mrs. Wexler went on, "Why didn't you tell Randy you needed help making ends meet, instead of this so-called friend of his?"
"I did, Mother. About a hundred times. Including just last week, as a matter of fact."
"I don't believe you." Mrs. Wexler tossed her head. "Randy is the man of the family now. He'd have come home if you'd asked him to."
Dina looked at Jack. The resentment of a second-favorite child smoldered in her eyes. "Go on, McPhee."
A now familiar flinch tugged his solar plexus. Dina had lived a pressure-cooker existence for years. No time to herself, none for herself. The byproducts of stress and unrelieved exhaustion were a numb conscience and quashed fears of what would happen to her mother if Dina were arrested.
Prison could be construed as a respite. Three hots and a cot, sequestered and protected from the world's problems, responsibilities and hypocrisy. A comparative nirvana, as long as common sense sat down and shut its yap.
Jack slashed underlines beneath his latest note. Every criminal had a sob story. Letting Dina Wexler get to him was friggin' amateur hour. He snapped, "Where'd these alleged transactions take place?"
"All over town," she said, taken aback. "It depended on the time of day."
"All over town, where?"
"Internet cafés. Library study carrels. Bars with live music. The airport. Once at a moonlight madness sale at the mall." Dina's scarcely audible addendum was, "A Sunday church service. A mortuary during a funeral."
Safety and anonymity in numbers, Jack thought, as long as the crowd's attention is directed elsewhere. Smart dude, this fence. The drug trade had rendered obsolete the traditional
rendezvous at a park bench at midnight. Hide in plain sight was safer.
"Never in a car? Yours or his?"
"No." Dina anticipated his next question. "I never saw his car."
Chancy though it would be to walk around with sufficient cash for the payoff, a metro bus pass could deliver the fence to most of those meeting sites.
"The jewelry itself," Jack said. "How did you know the genuine article from costume?"
A cord worn like a necklace was reeled up from inside Dina's shirt. The black-cased jeweler's loupe at the end resembled a plumb bob. "I logged onto the Internet at the library to convince myself that burglary wasn't just wrong, it was crazy. I'd never be able to tell a cubic zirconia from a diamond, or any fake from the real thing."
She yanked the cord over her head. The magnifier slapped the couch cushion. "Instead, I learned how to use a loupe and what to look for."
"Such as?" Jack's query was half curiosity, half for future reference. Keeping up technologically with the crooks was impossible, but now and then, you'd nab a Luddite.
"Well," Dina began, aware she now had her mother's and Jack's rapt attention. "Zirconias are synthetic, but different than cultured stones that are graded like mined diamonds. Real and cultured may have lasered serial numbers, but nobody does that to fakes.
"Some stones are fracture filled or clarity enhanced, too. That means cracksflawsare filled with glass. How, I have no clue." She snickered. "Want to impress a wife or girlfriend without blowing your trust fund? Buy her a fracture-filled headlamp solitaire. Want to rip off somebody? Sell a clarity-enhanced stone for the price of a high-graded one."
Her tone now mimicking a bored socialite, she added, "But do avoid chips, scratches and inclusionscarbon or crystal flaws. They so decrease the value. The cut can increase it, but the makethe skill used to cut it? That's the fire in the ice."
Mrs. Wexler gasped. "I had no idea you knew all that. You should apply for work at a jewelry store. It wouldn't be as tiring as grooming dogs, and it's legal."
The comment was bemused, albeit complimentary, but Dina sneered, "My on-the-job experience is in breaking and entering, Mom. Not in retail sales."
"That loupe," Jack said. "Did you boost it, too?"
"No." Dina didn't say, "You asshole," but Jack heard it. "The, uh, fence gave it to me. Well, he didn't give it, he deducted a percentage of the cost from what he paid me."
Crib-noted contact numbers. A jeweler's loupe on the installment plan. The bad-cop schtick didn't prohibit laughing, but Jack was afraid if he did, he'd lose it completely. "Assuming that's a 10X model, how much did he ding you for it?"
"A hundred and fifty dollars," she said.
Double or nothing, the nameless fence had gouged her, but good. By what she'd said earlier, naiveté had also cost her the difference between an experienced thief's percentage and her take.
Fuzzy math might apply to the stolen merchandise's appraised and insured value, as well. Purchase price aside, every appraisal is subjective. If an owner received more than one appraisal, the higher estimate would dictate the insured value for replacement-cost policyholders. Low appraisals could pare down taxable assets for those less worried about theft than an IRS audit.
Therefore, Dina got screwed, the insurance company probably got screwed to an extent and the fence and the burglary victims were smelling American Beauty bouquets.
Typical, Jack thought. Crime does pay. It just doesn't pay dependably or equally. "This library research of yours," he said. "Why didn't you Google up some jewelry Web sites or eBay for price comparisons before you sold the stuff?"
"I thought about it." A silent standoff eventually prompted, "To go online, I have to use my library card. I was afraid the police could trace the searches back to me."
If only. Jack stifled a grin. The Feds' forensic computer expertise rivaled his own, sad to say. Provided you already knew what to look for and where, it might be found. Otherwise, the Internet was a vast electronic haystack.
"Besides," Dina said, "what if I did find out the fence was cheating me? What was I supposed to do? Threaten to take my business elsewhere?"
Good point, but Jack didn't concede it aloud. "Yeah, well, describe Mr. Loupes 'R' Us for me."
"I never got a good look at his face. He always wore baseball caps and kept his head down a lot." Her teeth sawed across her lower lip, as though mentally formulating an artist's sketch. "Glassesgeeky frames, not wire. Tinted lensesgrayish, maybebut regular, not pop bottles. Clean shaved. The cap mostly covered his hair, but I'd guess it was brown. About your height and weight."
"Tattoos?"
"Um, uh-uh. Not that I can recall."
"How does he dress? Sloppy? Neat? Soccer dad?"
A frown, then, "Soccer dad, if that means like pretty much anybody over thirty you see at the mall."
"Over thirty? As in forty? Fifty?"
"I don't know, okay? My impression is somewhere above grad student and below AARP."
Hence, he hadn't disguised his appearance per se, but anything memorable was unremarkable: baseball cap, glasses, no facial hair, no visible tattoos. The bowed head offset Dina's stature. In addition, both of them wanted the transaction concluded as rapidly as possible.
Jack pictured Dina figuratively if not literally wringing her hands, trying to gulp down whatever internal organ was lodged in her throat. Apart from the burglaries themselves, selling the merchandise was the riskiest part of her crimes. The fence needn't have told her to keep a lookout while he examined the loot.
"His voice, in person and on the phone," Jack said. "Did he speak with a drawl, a lisp"
"McPhee?" Mrs. Wexler languidly waved the TV's remote control.
Jack had all but forgotten she was in the room. He smiled and said, "Yes, ma'am?"
"Are you taking Dina to jail?"
He checked a nod. The impulsive decision he'd made in Belle's backyard and what he'd learned since advised a consultation with his attorney first, cop house later.
Reverse that order and based on Jack's witness statement, he was reasonably certain Dina's chargeable offenses began at B&E and ended at trespassing. Explain how he'd witnessed both before he ran it by a lawyer could get Jack arrested for everything from trespassing to criminal conspiracy to flight to avoid prosecution.
His notes were essentially a confession. By legal definition, they were hearsay, barring her corroborating statement to the police. Dina had either surmised that, or would tick-a-lock after she was in custody, because she wasn't stupid and neither were public defenders.
Absent her self-implication and any concrete evidencewhich Jack doubted existedand the cops might have probable cause for a twenty-four-hour hold on suspicion of burglary. Him, they'd throw in jail for the forseeable future.
The kennel connection was a shoo-in, but circumstantial. A property-crimes unit's second canvass of neighbors surrounding previously burgled homes might result in someone recognizing a photo of Dina's VW. Could that witness swear the vehicle was seen on a specific date, at a specific time or for a specific period of time?
As the world's worst defense attorney would say, an aircraft carrier was easier to torpedo than hindsighted recall.
Even if it wasn't, it was still circumstantial, not direct evidence that Dina Jeanne Wexler was the Calendar Burglar. The trip wire that investigators would inevitably reveal was Dina's income versus expenditures to close the Medicare doughnut hole. Those mysterious, inexplicable windfalls would trigger the prosecutorial avalanche.
And Jack could play bad cop till his skin turned midnight-blue, without the fence, her conviction and a lengthy prison term were nearly guaranteed. Those who steal from the rich and influential don't receive probation. Not if a prosecuting attorney wants to win reelection.
Given Dina's extenuating circumstances, if Jack collared the fence, along with a few of his other suppliers, her testimony might broker a reduced sentence.
"Tomorrow is soon enough to talk to the police, Mrs.
Wexler." Jack's gaze flicked to her daughter. "I don't think I have to worry about her being a flight risk."
"Well, then " Mrs. Wexler's breathless quaver caught his and Dina's attention simultaneously. "Is it okay if she calls 911? Think I'm another heart attack."
10
"My mom had a rough night last night, Gwendolyn," Dina said into the kitchen wall phone's receiver.
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Page 11
