Beau nodded. He was getting the idea where this was going. “Did you hand over your wife’s ring to the man?”
“Well, no. I mean, we’d just met him.”
“Where does the little envelope come into it?”
“We met a few more times. He even came by the office and brought some stones to show me. I chose one and agreed on a price, which included him taking Sally’s diamond in trade. He even knew a jeweler in New York who could mount the new stone. He said we didn’t have to pay for the new stone until we saw the finished ring.”
“And here’s where it got tricky?”
“Well, yeah. I thought I was being so careful. I talked to the jeweler on the phone and he said John knew how to package the ring and send it registered mail. They would handle the whole thing. All this time, my wife thought I’d just taken her ring to our normal jeweler on the plaza. You probably know the place—it used to be owned by an old guy who retired, and a younger gemologist is there now.”
“And the envelope?”
“A couple weeks later, I saw John in the casino and asked how the ring was coming along, told him I thought it would be done already. He’s all happy to see me, and he tells me he’s got it right there. Reaches into his pocket and hands me this little envelope. It sure looks like Sally’s ring, and it has a huge stone now. I wrote him a check and thanked him.”
“That’s it? Everything was fine?” Beau had to admit he was surprised the story had turned out this way.
“Uh, no. Sally takes one look at the ring and says it’s not hers. The inscription inside the band got our wedding date wrong.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, huge oops. Not only did I look like a fool in front of my wife, but I began to panic about the five-grand I’d given John Lukinger. I called the number he’d given me, but no answer. I called the jeweler in New York. It was a real store, all right, but they’d never heard of me or anything about the ring I was describing.”
“But you got the larger diamond.”
“Except it was a fake. When I took it to Randolph’s, they took great pity on me but said the stone was just a zirconia. As were all the smaller stones, and the gold in the band was plating over a cheaper base metal. John Lukinger got five thousand dollars from me, plus a ring worth another couple thousand.”
“What did you do next?”
“Well, I knew he hung out at the casino a lot, so I went there. I gave him the fake ring and demanded Sally’s real ring back.”
Beau had been writing notes on the pad. So far, this gelled with what they’d seen on the tape.
“Did you ever catch up with him again?”
Grant Mangle got quiet. “I wanted to, Sheriff. Boy, did I want to.”
“Maybe your paths crossed again. Say, about a week ago?” Beau had stopped writing and made direct eye contact with his suspect. “If you met up at the casino again, we’ll know. We are currently going through the footage from every one of Lukinger’s visits.”
Mangle got quiet. “What happened a week ago?”
“Let me ask the questions. Where were you on the thirteenth?”
The suspect gave an impatient sigh. “I don’t know. Where were you? Do people actually remember where they were all the time?”
“They do if something important was happening. Like, maybe, if a guy was retrieving a valuable item he thought he’d lost.”
A variety of emotions crossed Mangle’s face, and Beau couldn't tell with a certainty what any of them signified. “Mr. Mangle, I should let you know that Percy Lukinger, a.k.a. John Lukinger, is dead.”
“Whoa! Hey, you should have told me that earlier.”
“I’m telling you now. You know anything about that?”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.” But when Mangle noticed Beau’s expression, he backtracked. “Sorry. I don’t mean that. But if it’s true about all the people he gypped, someone must have had it in for the guy.”
“I didn’t say he was murdered. Maybe you know something about that.”
Another flicker of emotional turmoil “I’m not saying that at all. And if we’re having this conversation, I want a lawyer.”
Chapter 33
Beau had told Grant Mangle he wasn’t under arrest for anything; they were merely trying to locate people who had dealings with Percy Lukinger and establish alibis for them. But the man was insistent upon calling his attorney. The two of them were conferring at the moment, and Beau was using the time to phone Rico to see if anything new had turned up during the search of the apartment.
“Nothing with this suspect’s name on it,” Rico told him. “We’re still here, poking around in corners.”
When Beau walked back into the interrogation room, the attorney sat up a little straighter in his chair.
“My client is ready to cooperate,” he said.
Beau felt as if he was starting at the beginning. “Okay, Mr. Mangle. Have you remembered where you were from noon onward on the thirteenth?”
“I was working alone in my office.”
“Did anyone call or stop by, anyone who can verify you were there?”
“The phone rings a lot. I’d have to look at my records to see who called that particular day.”
“How do you handle calls when you’re away from your desk? Do they go to an answering device, get forwarded to your cell phone?”
“Some of each. When we’re especially busy, like at the first of the month, I have a part-time girl who comes in.”
“What did you do on that particular day?”
A flicker of irritation. “As I said … I would have to check my records.”
“Anyone come by?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see another person all day?”
Grant fidgeted in his chair and glanced at his attorney, who gave a small nod.
“I had a late lunch with my wife, met with a client for a few minutes, then I was back at my desk by about three-thirty or so.”
Pulling teeth. Seriously. Beau had to work to keep his annoyance from showing. “And this client’s name?”
More fidgeting. “It was John. Lukinger.”
“He was a client of your business, too?”
“Well, okay, maybe ‘client’ is the wrong word.”
“You saw John Lukinger—Percy—within hours of when he died, and you couldn’t have simply told me this?”
The attorney spoke up. “Sheriff, there’s no need to harass my client.”
“And there’s no need for your client to make me play twenty-questions to get the simple information I asked for an hour ago, before you ever got here. He’s wasting both your time and mine.”
Clearly, the attorney didn’t care how much time was wasted at his hourly rates.
Beau took a breath and resumed. “Mr. Mangle, what transpired between you and Mr. Lukinger at that meeting?”
The attorney nodded toward his client, giving the go-ahead to answer.
“Well, it wasn’t actually a formal meeting. As Sally and I were leaving the restaurant, she got into her car and I was walking over to mine when I saw Lukinger across the parking lot. I caught up with him and asked about my wife’s ring, the real one.”
“What did he say?”
“He laughed. Actually laughed. Said he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“And your reaction to that comment?”
“I was stunned. To claim he didn’t know what I was talking about—after being so chummy at our previous encounters.”
“Did you want to retaliate? Punch him?”
The attorney gave Mangle a nudge with his elbow.
“Lukinger hopped into his car and zoomed out of that parking lot so fast, I didn’t have time to say or do anything. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d stayed around. I ran over to my car and got in, but by the time I was able to cross the traffic, he was long gone.”
Beau made notes, trying to formulate hi
s next question, when the attorney spoke up.
“Sheriff, my client has given the information you asked for. He’s being cooperative. He’s a man of good standing in the community, with a business, and his wife’s employment keeps her here. They won’t be going anywhere, so unless you have evidence and are ready to make an arrest, I’m asking that you release him.”
As much as Beau would have liked to have a suspect for the murder locked away in his cell, he had to admit there was nothing but circumstantial evidence against Mangle at this point.
“Advise him, counselor, to stick around town and to be ready to answer any clarifying questions we might have later. Meanwhile, I want a list of your appointments and phone calls, Mr. Mangle.”
The attorney nodded toward his client to acknowledge all of it, and the two men pushed their chairs back. Beau watched them leave, hoping his number one suspect would heed his own attorney’s advice and not try to run.
Back at his desk, he fiddled with the bags of evidence they had so far. The fake diamond glinted at him from its plastic bag. He thought of Mangle’s story about how Lukinger had switched the rings. If Beau hadn’t personally taken this stone to a jeweler, he might have thought this stone could be Sally Mangle’s. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The real ring and real stone were probably long gone. The situation was sad, but it could also be a reason for Grant to have gone off the deep end. The man had not exactly given an iron-clad alibi.
He picked up the paper envelope Walters had found in Missy/Ramona’s apartment. The ring inside must be the fake Mangle had described, the one his wife recognized immediately because the inscription had got their wedding date wrong. He dumped the ring into the palm of his hand and held it up to catch the light. It seemed lightweight for its size; otherwise, he wouldn’t have had any idea it wasn’t made of real gold and real diamonds.
He thought back to his conversation with Detective Rodriguez. When a con man was pulling a pigeon drop scam on someone he had to have a way to know which packet contained the real item. Beau set the ring aside and looked carefully at the envelope. On the back bottom corner he spotted a dot of black ink, inconspicuous, the kind of spot most anyone wouldn’t notice. Anyone but the con man. This had to be his way of telling two otherwise identical envelopes apart.
He picked up the phone and dialed Rico’s cell.
“Have you guys left the apartment yet?” he asked.
“Just about ready to. Why?”
“Did you find another envelope like the one Walters found with the ring in it?”
Some shuffling in the background, Rico asking Walters the question.
“Nope, doesn’t look like it.”
“Could you do another quick check? Pockets of clothing, purses or wallets … anywhere a person could carry it. The other one may or may not have anything inside. Probably won’t.”
“We pretty much—”
“It’s important,” Beau said.
A long sigh, but Rico agreed to go through the place one more time. Beau felt badly, asking them to stay. Searches could become mind-numbing after several hours. But coming up with two identical envelopes in the con couple’s apartment would go a long way toward proving the fraud once the district attorney took the case to court. Visual evidence always worked better in front of a jury than theoretical explanations.
He’d placed the fake ring and the paper envelope back inside its plastic evidence bag when another thought hit him. Even if Grant Mangle had walked away from Lukinger, there was still the possibility Ramona had turned on her husband. Maybe he’d planned to double-cross her by taking the cash and the real ring.
Chasing down two different suspects with two entirely different motives … yeah, this would definitely complicate things.
Chapter 34
Sam sat at her desk upstairs at the chocolate factory, head in her hands. The harder she pushed her brain to come up with new ideas, the more blocked she felt. Stan Bookman and his pilot had left two hours ago, saying they must rush to get airborne before the storm closed in.
She’d been pleased with their initial reaction to the three samples she presented, but the problem remained. She needed to come up with boxes for nine destinations, a dozen chocolates per box. More than a hundred pieces of candy for each couple, and Bookman expressly said he wanted them unique and destination-specific. He’d hinted that it could be intriguing for each couple aboard the flight to get something slightly different in their boxes; it would spark interesting conversations.
Sam hoped she had quelled that idea by suggesting it could spark claims of favoritism or worse. You never knew what wealthy people would find to nitpick.
“Surely, no one would want a refund of their travel fee based on something so minuscule as a fellow passenger getting preferential chocolate?” she had asked. That was the moment Bookman had agreed all the boxes should be identical.
Still, it didn’t exactly solve her current creativity crisis as she struggled to come up with ideas for shapes and flavors. A dark cloud of despair settled over her—until she looked out the window and realized the storm was quickly moving in.
Okay, Sam, get your mind on something else for a while. Sometimes it helped when she was stuck for a cake idea just to take a walk or scrub something. She left her sketchbook behind and went down to the kitchen.
Benjie took her aside. “Weather station says snow will start accumulating within the next hour,” he said. “Do you think we should let everyone go home a little early?”
Sam looked out the kitchen window and saw the light flurries had become large flakes, which had already given the ground a light coating of white.
“Mr. Bookman took seven cartons with him for his charters,” Benjie said. “That’s all we had ready at the time, except the box I was going to send with you for the bakery. Tomorrow’s orders for Book It are already underway. The chocolate has been tempered and molded. I can stay a while and decorate.”
“You should probably leave too,” Sam said. Benjie drove a little rattletrap car that she wouldn’t trust when the roads became tricky. “Have you said anything to the others yet?”
Her attention flicked around the kitchen, where everything seemed well organized. Together, they walked to the packing room. Lisa and the new girl, Dottie, were working on the last two racks of chocolates, placing them carefully in boxes. In the shipping room, three cartons labelled BOOK IT stood near the door. Ronnie and Lucinda were filling a fourth with the decorative beribboned boxes Bookman’s charter passengers received.
Twelve more cartons were ready to be shipped by UPS to the three boutique hotels where Stan Bookman had secured contracts for his charter passengers to stay; chocolates were part of the deal there, as well. Sam wasn’t quite sure how her little company would keep up with demand if his grand plans for a cruise line were to develop.
“These will be ready whenever the customer comes to get them,” Ronnie told Sam, indicating the boxes he and Lucinda were working on. “They took seven already.”
“Thanks. That should be enough to keep them stocked for a few days, in case this storm keeps their planes from getting to town right away,” Sam told him. “Meanwhile, Benjie suggested we all go home a little early today. I agree. We want everyone safe. Tomorrow morning, as usual, we’ll go by whatever the schools do. If they’re open, we are. If they call for an abbreviated day, that’s what we’ll do.”
Smiles appeared, although Lisa tried to tamp hers down and even offered to stay late if needed. “I have all-wheel drive,” she told Sam.
Sam patted her arm. “It’s okay. It’s already after four. Everything’s in good shape here, so go home, everyone, be safe. See you tomorrow.” She would call Sweet’s Sweets and pass the same message along to the crew there. Unless a customer was scheduled for a late cake pickup, they could close up shop.
Frankly, after the crazy morning pace and the meeting with Bookman, she was looking forward to a little time alone. Constant hustle-bustle wasn�
�t exactly conducive to the creativity she needed right now. Sam had brought her pickup truck today; the beefy four-wheel drive machine could get her through fairly deep snow, if it came to that.
She watched the others get into their vehicles and drive away, making distinct tracks on the now-white driveway. She breathed a sigh and allowed herself five minutes to take in the beauty of the open fields. Black branches on the surrounding trees spiked upward against the pale grey sky, the larger ones already becoming topped with a gentle sugaring of white.
Walking through the rooms, she saw her workers had covered the racks of candy with light cloths, and the gift boxes and ribbons were neatly organized, ready for work to resume on a moment’s notice. Kitchen vessels had been put away clean, and the chocolates that had been unmolded stood ready for Benjie’s talented hand at decorating them. For an instant, Sam saw Bobul standing at the worktable at Sweet’s Sweets when he’d shown up to help with her first Christmas season. His large hands were able to work the most delicate designs, a fact that constantly amazed her whenever she watched him work. She blinked and the hazy picture vanished.
“Inspire me,” she whispered to the empty kitchen. “I need your ideas.”
Aside from ideas, it occurred to her she’d better check her stash of the special powders she used, the mysterious ingredient the Romanian chocolatier had supplied, the unexplained magic that made her chocolates completely irresistible.
Right now was one of the rare occasions she was alone in the old Victorian building. Might as well take advantage. She reached for the shelf above the stove where she kept a tin canister with three cloth bags inside. Benjie was under strict orders to personally add a pinch from each—the blue, the green, and the red pouches—and never to discuss them with his coworkers. Somehow he knew not to question where the powders came from.
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