Cat Got Your Diamonds

by Chase, Julie;

  What would I do with all those turtle tiaras?

  Paige elbowed me. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “If.” He lifted a warning finger. “If you’re cleared of the charges before the next payment comes due, I’ll make the payments, but please understand, Lacy. It’s not personal. It’s business.”

  I nodded. “I’ll figure it out. I promise.”

  Paige released a whistle. “Hello, handsome.” She grew impossibly taller.

  I followed her gaze across my studio.

  Detective Oliver headed our way. A shiny silver detective badge hung around his neck on a beaded chain. “Mrs. Crocker.”

  I gritted my teeth. I hadn’t seen him come inside. “Detective Oliver. Once again, it’s Miss Crocker.”

  Mr. Tater nodded at the detective and saw himself out. No doubt distancing himself from the woman accused of murder.

  “I’m Paige.” She shot a long, thin arm toward him. Energy zipped in the air around her.

  He dipped his chin. “Nice to meet you.” His unusual blue eyes captivated and frightened me. The barely existent color of his irises fluctuated in the sunlight through my shop windows.

  He rested a hip against the counter. “Anything you want to tell me today, Miss Crocker? Something you, perhaps, weren’t ready to share last night at the station?”

  I glanced at my phone on the counter. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  I squared my shoulders and tried to look bigger. An impossible goal when standing beside Paige. “I don’t think Miguel Sanchez was the victim’s real name.”

  Paige dragged her gaze from Detective Handsome to me. “What?”

  I peeked at the screen on my phone. “Some people addressed him as Tony. Tony isn’t an acceptable nickname for Miguel. In fact, Tony is only used to shorten the name Anthony. So Miguel wasn’t his real name.” Or Tony was the fake name. Either way, why would anyone need a fake name?

  Detective Oliver crossed thick arms over a broad chest. “I know Miguel Sanchez was an alias. His real name was Anthony Caprioni. He’s from Jersey. What I don’t know yet is why he used a fake name or how you know this.”

  “I asked around.” I should’ve expected the detective to know at least as much as I knew after three minutes online and one conversation with someone Miguel’s age.

  “You know, I’ve been wondering, Miss Crocker. You moved home after nearly a decade away. Why was that?”

  I dragged nerve-slicked palms down the fabric of my dress. “It’s like I told you last night: personal and none of your business. Besides, this isn’t about me.”

  “Maybe it is. Humor me. Why’d you rush back to the place you’d left at your earliest opportunity? Your family’s not sick. No one died. You look healthy.” His eyes slid over my face and torso. “Why the sudden life change? You’re too young for a midlife crisis.”

  Ha. He’d be surprised.

  “Looks to me like an escape on your part. So what were you running from?”

  Stress. Heartbreak. Disappointment. Betrayal. “I wasn’t running. I came back because New Orleans is my home. And I didn’t leave at my first opportunity. I went to college like everyone else.”

  “Why’d Mr. Tater invest in you?”

  “How do you . . . ?” I filled my chest with air and curbed my temper. Of course he’d researched me. His only suspect. “You should probably ask Mr. Tater. Unless you already know and are only here to provoke me again.”

  “I know everything.” He tapped his temple. “Anything I don’t know, I will find out. Soon.”

  “Since you’re here, can we focus on the actual investigation, please?”

  Detective Oliver smiled. “Absolutely.” He widened his stance and circled a wrist, indicating I should enlighten him.

  “If my prints were the only ones on the sprayer and the sprayer was the murder weapon, then the killer wore gloves to hide his prints. He must’ve come here to commit a crime. Could the killer have come for me? I don’t keep enough cash on hand to justify a break-in, and my inventory is mostly made of supplies waiting to become something fabulous. Beads and rickrack aren’t exactly in demand.”

  The detective looked like I’d sucker punched him. “You think you were the intended target? Who would want to hurt you?” He pulled a pen from his pocket, flipped a business card face down, and shoved the pair across the counter to me. “Make a list.”

  I guffawed and locked my hands behind my back. “I don’t have a list of people who want to hurt me.”

  “Then give me one name.”

  It was as if time had frozen, immobilizing all the fake shoppers. The store seemed to hold their collective breath and stare.

  My cheeks burned. “No one wants to hurt me. This is the Garden District. We don’t have crime. We have fundraisers and parades. Whatever is going on here has nothing to do with me.”

  “Yet you brought up the possibility.”

  I pinched my lips together and shot Paige a look. She’d put the thought into my mind. Better to change the subject. “I’m trying to understand why there aren’t any other prints on the murder weapon. If the killer wore gloves, which he must have”—I eyeballed the detective—“then why? Why come here with gloves on? What was the plan?”

  “You tell me.”

  I dug my heels into the floorboards and locked my knees. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Are you always so impossible, or is this special for me?”

  A glint of humor flashed in his eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched. “I have a few stops to make. I’ll decide whether or not I can make a case against you after I run the rest of my leads. Until then, stay out of my investigation. No more nosing around.” He set the business card on my register. “Remember who the detective is.”

  My jaw dropped. “I’m not nosing.” I’d talked to my employee for five minutes about Miguel. Hardly the makings of an all-out investigation.

  “I mean it, Crocker. I asked around about you. Folks say you’re obstinate to a fault, but obstruction is against the law. Do us both a favor and keep that in mind. Curiosity never did the cat any favors.”

  My hands fell limply to my sides. I forced my jaw and eyebrows to relax. “I’m not obstinate or a cat, thank you very much.”

  “I notice you didn’t deny the curiosity.”

  “That part’s true, and it normally works to my advantage.” But if someone didn’t unearth the killer by the end of the month, I wouldn’t just lose Tater’s backing. I could be in an orange county jumpsuit. And Detective Oliver definitely wasn’t going to get the job done by badgering me.

  He smirked. “Do yourself a favor, kitten, and let this one alone.” He breezed out the door looking arrogant and bossy.

  Paige collapsed onto the counter with a theatrical sigh of collegiate proportions. “How do you keep it together around him? He talks and I want to circle him like a shark, but I have no idea where to begin with such a man-beast.”

  “Good lord. Get up.” I pulled her arm. “He’s not nice. That’s how I keep it together. I think he wants to put me in jail. And he called me kitten. How misogynistic is that?”

  Paige pressed a fingertip to her bottom lip. “I think it’s hot.”

  A few shoppers nodded in agreement.

  I groaned. “That’s it. No more of that. He’s the enemy. You can work on removing the window display while I get to the bottom of this mess. This is business. No hormones allowed.” Luckily, mine had dried up with my last relationship and barren bank account. Even those extraordinary blue eyes weren’t enough to sidetrack me from clearing my name.

  Kitten my foot.

  I was small and mighty. Like a fire ant, a bee, or something else I’d think of as soon as my temperature returned to normal. I plucked the neckline of my dress away from my piping-hot chest, then marched into the storeroom to turn down the thermostat.

  Chapter Four

  Furry Godmother’s secret to a happy life: Keep your friends close. Sometimes they have
wine.

  Everything about Miguel Sanchez puzzled me. Why move so far from home? It wasn’t a grand business opportunity. Surely, restaurant work in New Orleans was no better than what could be found in New Jersey. Why did some of his local friends call him by his real name? What use was an alias if he didn’t fully embrace it?

  I adjusted a stack of bunny bonnets on my Alice in Wonderland display as I pondered the same questions. The white rabbit looked smart, as always, in his little vest and monocle. He’d know the answers. I patted his soft head and traced his little golden chain with my fingers. I’d admired his pocket watch since preschool, when I discovered the book on Mom’s overcrowded shelves. We’d read fairy tales together until the gilded edging rubbed off the pages.

  I had tried to emulate the anything-is-possible feeling at Furry Godmother with every addition to my collection. Each Royal Package featured a different fairy tale theme. All concepts were spun with love, sprinkled with glitter, and executed with the fervent attention to detail with which the good Lord had saddled me. Alice was my favorite, but the display was admittedly faded, and according to my mother, it was time for a change.

  I hefted the book from the display and wiped it with a soft cloth. The best place to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was under the sprawling bearded oak tree in our backyard. The pages of my childhood copy were colored with evidence of my love—mainly water spots from sudden thunderstorms and a rainbow of fingerprints in shades from fruit popsicle to chocolate. Scarlet had her own copy, and we’d chased our share of rabbits under that tree.

  I bit into the thick of my lip and rubbed a thumb across the screen of my phone. Scarlet was excellent at snooping and shenanigans, but I really should leave her out of my mess.

  I dialed and pressed the phone against my ear.

  “Hello?” The sound of her voice formed an immediate smile on my lips.

  “Hi. It’s me. How are you?”

  Silence.

  I pulled the phone from my cheek and peeked at the screen. I hadn’t lost the call. “Scarlet?”

  “Okay.” The soft click of a closing door sounded through the phone. “I shut myself in the bathroom. That gives you about two minutes before they come for me. Skip the small talk.”

  Ah. The joy of motherhood. I laughed.

  She didn’t. “Ticktock.”

  “How would you like to go out to dinner?”

  “Are you kidding me? If I can leave Carter and the kids at home, I’ll go anywhere you want.”

  “Excellent.” Mischief was always more fun with an accomplice. “How about the Barrel Room?”

  “A winery. Is that a taunt? Do you need a designated driver or something?”

  Ideas rolled over schemes and plots in my head. “Something.”

  “Fine. I’m in. I hear amazing things about their chicken. Can I meet you there at six?”

  “Six is perfect.”

  A choir of small voices lodged complaints at her door ten seconds later, and we disconnected.

  I locked up at five with a head full of questions and no more patience for faux shoppers. I flipped the “Closed” sign in the window and wiped my brow. The scorching southern sun burned through the studio’s interior, illuminating dust motes suspended in the air and fingerprints pressed on my freshly polished glass. I puffed into overgrown bangs. Time to clean up.

  I went to the back for my spray bottle and cloth.

  Something niggled in my mind. Fingerprints. Everyone left fingerprints unless that person planned ahead. What crime would a person plan ahead for in my store? Could someone want to heist my inventory of beads and swatches? Did they long to illegally acquire miniature stage props and custom pet designs? I had everything from guinea pig wedding gowns to wigs for rabbits in the stock room. Maybe I’d been too quick to discount the possibility. Competition in the world of pet shows was stiff, but was it deadly? Even if robbery was the intent, breaking in to steal or sabotage my critter couture was a long throw from murder. The other possibility wiggled back to the foreground. What if someone’d come to hurt me and Miguel got in the way? Did I have a mortal enemy? A nemesis? A stalker? And if that were the case, why had Miguel been there? Did his visit yesterday afternoon have anything to do with his return last night?

  I collected my supply bucket and scrubbed the shop furiously, removing fingerprints from the windows, door, and bakery display. I wiped the shelves, counters, and doorknob. Dust carried in from the streets clung to my floors. I drove my Swiffer around the room on a mental grid, careful to reach every nook and cranny, then set my Roomba, Spot, to work for the night.

  I made one last trip around the stockroom, skimming my gaze along box tops and fabric bolts, begging the inventory for clues. Frustration coiled in my chest. What had happened to Miguel after I left last night? My phone buzzed, and I turned it over in my hand. A text message from Scarlet.

  Carter’s home. The kids are fed. I’m on my way.

  Thank goodness. I hit the light switches and jumped over Roomba-Spot on my way to the front.

  I stopped short at the sight of unusual pink light filtering through my front window. “What on earth?” I crept closer, confused by what had happened during the few moments I’d been in the back room. There was something on my window. Had someone vandalized my store in broad daylight? Surely not.

  I stepped outside for a better look and confirmed the disgusting truth. Sticky chunks of strawberry smoothie clung to my freshly cleaned window, sliding over the glass like a plague. I could practically hear the ants lining up for a party. An empty go cup rolled on the ground where I’d accidentally whacked it with the door.

  Shoppers and pedestrians stared but didn’t stop.

  A fly landed in the muck, and I gagged.

  I texted a picture to Scarlet, then hustled inside for a bucket of soapy water and a squeegee. I was going to be late for dinner.

  Twenty minutes later, I left for the Barrel Room with renewed vigor and the scent of sunbaked smoothie in my nose. Scarlet’s time would be limited by little ones in need of baths and bedtime stories. I slid behind the wheel of my VW and cranked the air conditioning.

  Traffic poked down Magazine Street, blissfully unaware of the dark turn my week had taken. It’d been twenty-four hours of craziness, and I was ready to go back to my previous life’s troubles. Gossiping neighbors and a disappointed mother beat the daylights out of wondering if someone nearby wanted to destroy me or my boutique.

  At the pace of a lumbering hound, I made my way to St. Charles Avenue, where I motored alongside the proud and stately streetcar in companionable silence for several blocks. The Barrel Room bordered Uptown, and it was already packed. I slid into the last available space in the lot and scanned the area for my best friend’s Escalade.

  Scarlet waved from the sidewalk. Her opposite hand pressed against the small of her back, amplifying her distended silhouette. Wild, red hair mounted into a sloppy bun on top of her head. Flyaway strands stuck to freckled cheeks. She looked runway ready in a perfect orange wrap dress and matching Pucci headscarf. I tugged my humidity-wrinkled sundress and made a mental note to up my game.

  I met her with an awkward hug. “Wow. You’re not easy to get close to these days.”

  She raised a perfect eyebrow above oversized sunglasses. “Keep it up and you’re buying.”

  “I’m already buying.” I tugged the glass door open and icy air poured over my shoulders. “What kind of person invites a pregnant woman to dinner and expects her to pay?”

  “Pretty much everyone I know, unfortunately.”

  A young woman in a pressed white shirt and black skirt interrupted with a smile. “Two?”

  Scarlet shuffled forward, tipped slightly back at the hips. “Yes, please.”

  The hostess gave her a sidelong glance. “I guess you don’t want to sit at the bar.”

  She sighed. “Oh, no. I want to. Trust me.”

  The hostess led us to a table dressed in maroon linens and set for two. “Your waitress wil
l be with you shortly.”

  Scarlet wiggled into her seat and leaned across the table on both elbows. “What happened to your window? That picture looked like my kids had been there.”

  My mouth dried with the memory of hot strawberry goop on my rubber gloves and giant southern bugs running into the rancid mess. “Someone threw a smoothie, but the window’s fine now.” I waved a dismissive hand.

  Scarlet made a disgusted face. “This district is losing its mind.” She steepled her fingers on the tabletop. “What are we up to tonight?”

  I mocked offense at her question. “Can’t a girl buy her best friend dinner without an agenda?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  A fish-faced man in black slacks ferried two glasses of ice water to our table before winding his way through the dining room in the opposite direction.

  Scarlet lifted a finger, effectively stopping my answer, and chugged her water like a woman lost in the desert.

  I shoved my glass across the table in case hers wasn’t enough.

  “Thanks.” She blew out a long breath and curled her fingers around the offering. “Better. Now tell me why we’re here.”

  “You’ve heard what happened to me last night?”

  “No thanks to you, but yes.”

  I ducked my head and lowered my voice to a whisper. “The detective assigned to the case thinks I did it. Can you believe that?”

  She matched my posture, leaning her belly into the table’s edge. “He died outside your boutique. You were there. Your prints were on the murder weapon. Honestly, I can’t believe you didn’t call sooner.”

  Never underestimate the efficiency of a sturdy grapevine. “I didn’t want to stress you out, but it turns out I can’t process something like this on my own. My brain keeps rejecting it as reality.”