“A lawyer?” Lorea said and shrieked when I tossed a decorative pillow her way. “If he wasn’t a lawyer, would that change things?”
“Of course.” Then I thought of the conversation we’d had earlier and clenched my fist tight. “I guess not.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s still going on about how he’s against marriage.”
“I think that’s just some weird mind game he’s playing to keep you interested.”
I wanted to tell Lorea about Luke’s secret, but I decided to wait. For some reason, he trusted me, and I didn’t want to break that trust. I thought of the way he and Brock had bantered with each other and wondered if Brock knew about Luke’s wife. No. If he had, I didn’t think he would have been so brazen about setting up a double date.
Lorea studied me, and I turned to her and smiled. “I don’t think it’s a mind game. I think he’s committed to his plan. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to let that cloud my judgment concerning Dallas.”
“Oh, really?” Lorea didn’t look convinced.
“I’m going to take your advice. Tomorrow, Dallas and I are going up to the hot springs. If I don’t feel anything more for him, I’ll break up with him.”
Lorea held out her pinky. “Swear.”
I frowned but hooked my pinky with hers. “I swear. I’ll nip it in the bud if there’s nothing there.”
“It’s a little late for nipping,” Lorea said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he proposes before the night’s over.”
I gasped. There was no way we were even close to that.
Chapter 24
A Twist on the Ring Pillow
Tie wedding rings to a vintage or family heirloom Bible using ribbons that match the wedding colors.
Courtesy of www.mashedpotatoesandcrafts.com.
The birds chirped outside the window of the breakfast nook while Lorea and I munched on extra-large apple-cinnamon muffins. I licked some streusel off my finger, figuring that one muffin would equal two meals if I was counting calories, but with the stress I’d had that week, I didn’t care.
“Thanks, Lorea. It was fun to stay here.” We had talked past midnight. Part of the conversation centered on my trying to convince her to give up her cynical views of love and romance. As usual, I didn’t make much headway.
“I’m glad you decided to come. And I know you don’t think I’m listening to you about love, but I am. Part of me would like to fall in love again, but until Mr. Right shows up, I’m not going to worry about it,” Lorea said.
I definitely didn’t want to argue with that progress. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to plan your wedding.” I shied away when Lorea attempted to slug me in the arm.
I checked my phone again. I’d sent a text to Tony asking him for news, but he had yet to respond, which meant there probably wasn’t any. My cell phone sang “Marry Me” as I pushed it back into my jeans pocket. I scrunched my eyebrows together when I didn’t recognize the number.
“Pyper’s Dream Weddings, where happily ever after is your destination.”
Lorea snorted, and I pushed her off the stool.
“Hi, Adri. It’s Necia.”
“Hey. How are things at the store?” Necia owned a cute consignment store called Everybody’s Closet, and I frequented it to look for unique pieces for wedding décor and fodder for my Mashed Potatoes and Crafts blog. Mom and Jenna had been on an upcycling kick for the past few months.
“I have something that might interest you.”
“That’s so nice of you to think of me.”
“Could you come over this morning?” Necia sounded nervous.
“Uh—sure.” It must be something big for Necia to want me to come right away. “How about I head over now?”
“That’d be perfect. Just come around back.”
I ended the call and grabbed the rest of my muffin. “I’m going to Everybody’s Closet. Necia found something she seemed anxious for me to see. Meet you at the store?”
“I’ll be there in the next thirty minutes.” Lorea waved as I hustled out the door.
The nice thing about living in a small, touristy town like Ketchum is that it hadn’t taken me long to learn the lay of the land. I had made it my job to get to know the members of the Chamber of Commerce. Necia was on the board, so my reasons for making her acquaintance had been twofold.
The consignment store had been in business for more than ten years, and with the recent downturn in the economy, its popularity had risen. Necia always put new items out on Thursdays and Fridays, and the committed thrifters were usually waiting for her store to open at ten. The dashboard on the Mountaineer read fifteen to nine, so she had called me in time to check out whatever she had found before anyone else had a chance to see it.
I had scored major points with Natalie when I bought an old family Bible from the store to use in her wedding ceremony. She planned to tie the rings to the Bible instead of to a ring pillow.
I signaled to turn left into the tiny parking lot and eased over the dip in the pavement. A horn blared behind me, and my heart jumped as I slammed on the brakes. A familiar brown truck showed up in my rearview mirror. I frowned. Why was Colton honking at me? He had stopped his truck alongside the road, so I put the Mountaineer in park and turned to see what he was up to. He jumped from his truck and grabbed a box, heading toward me with a grin.
With a shrug, I opened my door and leaned out as he approached. “Morning, Colton.”
“Adri, I’m so glad I saw you. I have a package for you. I think it could be that cupcake stand you ordered the other day. I’m really sorry about how I acted.” He held out the box. “I thought it might help if you had it before you opened your shop.”
“That’s really kind of you, Colton, but you didn’t need to worry. Let me pop the back.” I pressed the button to release the liftgate and followed him around to the back of my Mountaineer.
He set the box inside and wiped his hands on his pants. “I hope that helps. I even stopped by your house this morning, but you’d already left. I feel better knowing this is delivered and it won’t be knocking around my truck all day.”
“Wow, thanks,” I said. “Wait—how do you know where I live?” All my packages were delivered to the shop, so I didn’t have boxes sitting on my doorstep at home.
Colton grinned. “I’m the delivery man. I know where everyone lives.” He winked. “Your neighbor—Lily Rowan—she gets a lot of packages, and I’ve seen you coming and going a few times.”
“Well, thank you again. I appreciate you looking out for me.”
“No problem. Tell Lorea hello for me.”
I waved and got back in my vehicle. Colton’s truck roared by a second later. I hadn’t had the heart to tell Colton that Sylvia had postponed her wedding. He’d caught me off guard when he mentioned stopping by my house. It bothered me that he knew where I lived and had made a special trip to deliver this package. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to make a good impression on me in the hopes I’d convince Lorea to go out with him someday or if he really was that friendly. Chill out, Adri! I thought as I drove across the parking lot and around to the back of Necia’s store.
Too much anxiety had me questioning everything lately, even a delivery man’s good will. After locking my vehicle, I hurried down the alley. I knocked three times on the large gray metal door, and it echoed across the clear morning. Necia must have been waiting for me because the door swung open just as I pulled my hand away.
“I’m so glad you could come down.” She motioned for me to follow her through the back of the store and then swept a lock of her straight brown hair over her shoulder. “I read the paper this morning. You poor thing. First the stolen wedding gowns, and then to have that awful man attack you. Are you okay?”
“I am now. It’s been a stressful couple of weeks.” The scent of lavender floated in the air as we passed aisle after aisle of knick-knacks, old books, baskets, ceramics, and antique dolls.
“I�
�ll say. That’s why when I found this, I called you right away.”
We turned the corner, and my breath caught in my throat. The morning light streaming through the side window caught the rhinestones sewn onto the dress and created a dazzling sparkle. The gown intended for Sylvia Rockfort had somehow ended up in the consignment store.
I hadn’t thought of Sylvia for two full days. It had been a wonderful reprieve, since Miss Nostril had haunted my days for the past eight weeks. When I saw her dress, intact, its train billowing down from a second hanger, my knees wobbled. I grabbed a wicker chair for support and sucked in a breath. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in a box out back. Someone left it there last night.” Necia watched me. “It’s one of yours, isn’t it? One of the stolen gowns?”
“We need to call the police.” I had learned my lesson. I didn’t even want to look at Sylvia’s dress without Tony. I dialed his number. “I have a minor emergency, and I need you at Everybody’s Closet. Now.”
“Are you hurt?” Tony asked.
“No, I’m fine—no danger. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Is everything okay?” Necia asked after I hung up.
“I’m glad you called me. The man who attacked me did it because of the wedding gowns.”
Necia’s eyebrows shot up.
“It’s a long story, but I have to wait for Tony’s permission before I fill you in.”
Tony arrived at the store five minutes later. “Adri, do you have my number on speed dial yet?”
With a smirk, I tipped my head toward the wedding gown.
“Is that . . .”
“Yes. It’s Sylvia Rockfort’s stolen wedding dress.”
“But how did it get here?” He crouched and lifted the bottom of the dress with a closed pen. “And it’s in perfect condition, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t check it over fully. I called you first.”
He stood and patted my back. “Good girl. Why don’t you take a look now?”
I nodded toward Necia. “She doesn’t know what’s going on. I didn’t tell her. But she called to tell me about this.”
Tony pressed his lips together and turned to Necia. “How did you get this dress?”
“Someone left it out back last night. I saw the box first thing this morning. I have no idea where it came from.”
Tony scrutinized Necia until I interrupted. “She didn’t steal it. Why would she call me?”
“I know, it’s just . . .” He hesitated. “This goes no further.” He indicated the three of us, and Necia nodded. “We have a big investigation going on with these dresses. Adri found diamonds sewn into the hem of one of them.”
Necia’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth. Her gaze flicked toward me and then back to the dress. “Diamonds?”
With a nod, I sat in the wicker chair and reached for the hem of the dress, carefully pulling the satin material through my hands. Tony gave Necia a few more details about the rough diamonds as I studied the fabric. There weren’t any odd bulges, and I couldn’t find any damage, not even a broken stitch.
Tony watched me examine the fabric and crouched to look at the hem. “Will you be able to tell if anything has been altered?”
“You mean, like if someone already took the diamonds and sewed it back up?”
He nodded.
“Possibly. Lorea’s the expert on those things. She would definitely be able to tell if there was any inferior stitching going on.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Tony’s forehead wrinkled as he studied the dress.
I started to agree but then stopped and considered the gown again. A thought tickled the back of my brain. A few random bits of conversation from Lorea, Sylvia, and her mother congealed into something suspicious.
Lorea and I always believed that Sylvia’s wedding was set up to make Brock jealous in some insane hope that he’d break off his engagement to Natalie. We’d made bets on how soon after the nuptials an annulment would come about. Lorea had joked that they’d stop at a drive-through annulment office on the way to their honeymoon and then go their separate ways.
“From the viewpoint of the diamond smuggling, it doesn’t make sense, but if we think about it in terms of Sylvia Rockfort, it might.”
He stood. “What do you mean?”
I smoothed the dress back down and put one hand on my hip. “Are you aware of the gossip surrounding Sylvia, Brock, and Natalie?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Yes, that she’s crazy about Brock and hates Natalie, or some such nonsense.”
“That would be correct. But have you also read anything about how Sylvia’s engagement was invented to make Brock jealous?”
“I don’t think she’s that crazy,” Tony said.
Necia made a choking sound, and I could see that she was trying not to laugh.
“I’m starting to wonder if she ever intended to take it this far.” I fingered an embroidered rose on the sleeve of the dress.
“I did ask our perp about this gown, and he acted like he didn’t know anything about it. At first I thought he was lying, but then he gave me quite a bit of intel about the other gowns. I didn’t understand why he would withhold information about this dress unless it had more diamonds.”
He fiddled with the radio clipped to his belt. “I planned on calling you later this morning. I interrogated Jerry—that’s his name—last night and again this morning. He doesn’t know anything about the picture left on your door. Hamilton and I were getting ready to head out to the Grafton residence to check their security footage, but it looks like that’ll have to wait.”
That didn’t help my mood, but I didn’t want to think about the picture and veiled threat. I wanted to figure out why Sylvia’s dress had gone missing in the first place. “What if we’re looking at two separate thefts?”
“Like, someone stole this dress so she couldn’t get married?” Necia asked.
“Not someone. Sylvia stole this dress so she couldn’t get married.” I paced back and forth in front of the dress, watching how the light reflected off the rhinestones. It was exquisite.
Tony shook his head. “That’s a little too far-fetched for me.” He reached for the gown.
“I’m going to take this back to the station—,”
“What? But you—”
Tony held up his hand to stop my outburst. “I want you and Lorea to come help me search every square inch of this fabric for hidden diamonds. Once we know it’s clear, it will be returned to you.”
“Fair enough.” I sighed. “I’ll call Lorea and see if she can meet us there.” Lorea was going to flip her lid if I dragged her to the police station.
For more than an hour, Lorea, Tony, and I examined and reexamined every stitch of that blasted wedding gown. Lorea picked out sections of the hem. There were no diamonds. Tony filled out a report, took some pictures, and lifted a brow. “The dress is yours—or Sylvia’s?”
“We refunded her money,” Lorea said.
“Probably what she planned on all along,” I added.
Tony shook his head. “There’s no proof Sylvia took it.”
“She was there the next morning,” I said. “She’s never that early. Then the first chance she got, she called off the wedding.”
“Not even circumstantial,” Tony continued.
Clenching my hands into fists, I spouted off the thought that had been running through my mind for the past hour. “I’ve invested a lot of time and resources into planning Sylvia’s wedding, and I don’t intend to be cheated out of my work. The Rockforts put down a $25,000 deposit, and I’m not giving one cent of it back.”
“I think that’s fine. They signed a contract with you, didn’t they?” Tony asked.
“Yes, but they have a way of dragging people through the mud when they don’t get what they want.” I glanced at Lorea, and she nodded her agreement. “My business is new, and I can’t afford bad reviews—the same goes for Lorea’s dress business. Sylvia has already put her thro
ugh hell over the stolen gown.”
“If you want to dance with celebrities, you have to protect your toes. I wouldn’t recommend pursuing this,” Tony said.
“If she is behind this, I want to make sure she’s caught and pays restitution.”
“But if she already paid for the wedding dress, is it really a crime for her to steal it?” Lorea asked.
“Good point,” Tony said. “I think you’d have a difficult time pressing charges against her.”
“Then what about letting her know that I know she was behind this?” I could feel the frustration seeping into my tone.
Tony sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Sounds dangerous unless you can find something really solid.”
I took a step forward and lowered my voice. “Do I have your permission to use my detective skills?”
Tony groaned, and Lorea laughed.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Now let’s get this dress back in business, Lorea.” I had a few ideas to start my investigation and even a pretty good guess as to how the dress had left my shop.
“I have one more piece of information for you,” Tony said. “Jerry, the diamond smuggler, gave us a couple names of people he worked with, but we think they were aliases, so we still don’t know who was involved.”
“Did he say if they were in Sun Valley?”
“Jerry said he didn’t think they were.” Tony’s phone rang, but before he answered it, he gestured toward us. “Please be careful. We’re heading out to Brock’s later today to investigate how this person was able to take the picture in the first place.”
I followed Lorea out of the station, mulling over the information Tony had shared with us. The revelation that there could be more criminals in the vicinity looking for diamonds or a wedding planner who imported dresses shoved aside my indignant attitude toward Sylvia. Maybe I needed to hope for the best when it came to Sylvia and just give myself a different outlook. The important thing was that we had the dress, and it hadn’t been vandalized. But if Jerry, the man in custody, wasn’t telling the truth about the whereabouts of his accomplice, what was the diamond smuggler’s next move?
Diamond Rings Are Deadly Things Page 24
