Crunch Time

22

Outside the gates, Lolly swerved left behind Ferdinanda. But where Ferdinanda continued on Aspen Meadow Parkway to get to Main Street, Lolly turned on the road that would lead to her apartment building. I used the cell to phone Boyd, asking him to walk out when Ferdinanda arrived. I said we’d be along shortly and that he should tell her something that would sound plausible, like that we’d gone for ice cream since we hadn’t finished dessert.

He chuckled and said it was no problem.

In her apartment parking lot, Lolly got out of her VW and came over to our car, where she climbed in the back. She’d taken off her wig.

“Nice do,” said Tom, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have black and blue hair.”

“I could dye it for you,” she replied, slamming the door.

“No, thanks.” Tom killed the engine and turned around to face Lolly. “Okay, Lolly, I want to hear it from the beginning.”

“I don’t want to be prosecuted for prostitution.”

“Who said anything about prostitution?” asked Tom innocently. “That’s not my department. Homicide is. So, tell me your story.”

Lolly obliged. She gave a quick summary of the DUI, her parents, Julian’s loan, her signing up with an escort agency, her liaison with Humberto, and wearing the necklace to a charity shindig. It wasn’t until she got to the bit about Father Pete telling her to do good, and her helping Ernest, that her voice faltered.

“I got him killed,” she said guiltily. “That damn Humberto.”

There was silence in the car.

“No, you did not get Ernest McLeod murdered,” Tom said firmly. “You helped him with a client’s needs. That’s all you did. So, you have no idea where the necklace is now?”

“Nope.”

“Is there anything else you want to share?”

Lolly told him about Humberto being furious that the necklace had been stolen, his suspicion of her, his guards tearing apart her parents’ house and Lolly’s apartment, and the subsequent cash payments. Then her eyes strayed to my face in the rearview mirror. I looked straight back with as blank an expression as I could muster.

We were thinking the same thing. It was one thing for Ernest to ask Lolly to do unlawful acts, which she was now confessing. It was quite another thing for the wife of a police investigator to ask her to drug her mark, do an illegal search, and photocopy receipts in the mark’s wallet. She knew she shouldn’t mention what she’d done today unless I told her to.

I didn’t. I figured, if I found something out from the wallet receipts, great. I’d tell Tom without mentioning my source. If I didn’t discover new evidence, well, then, no harm, no foul, and I would avoid being soundly scolded.

“Anything else you want to tell me?” Tom asked, his voice nonchalant.

“How’s this? Humberto still suspects me of something,” she lied smoothly. “I don’t know what. Earlier, I told Goldy that he’d redecorated, repainted, the works, after the break-in. He also installed security cameras, including in the bathrooms. I mean, that’s illegal, isn’t it?”

Tom sighed. “No, I’m sorry to say. It isn’t against the law to spy on people in your own home. But it should be. Still, I want you to be extra careful. Humberto may be responsible for the murders of two, or possibly three, men. He may have killed them, or he could have had them killed. Has he ever mentioned anything to you about being in Fort Collins? One of the murders is of a gas station attendant up there.”

Lolly shook her head. “He doesn’t tell me that much about his life, except stuff that isn’t true.”

Tom shook his head. “Still, I’d feel better if you dropped out of sight for a few days.”

“No can do,” said Lolly, shaking the black and blue hair. “Humberto knows where my parents live, and even though I’m not on speaking terms with them, I don’t want Humberto coming after them. Don’t worry, I know how to handle Humberto.”

Tom thought about this for a moment. “All right. I just want you to call me if you find out anything, or if you think you’re in danger.”

“Oh-kay.” She sounded like Arch.

Tom grinned. “Is there anything else you can tell me that might be pertinent?”

“Your computer guy? Kris? He’s a fraud.”

I said, “You weren’t too nice to him on that USB port thing.”

“Nice?” said Lolly, her blue eyes wide. “Who cares about nice? A real data-processing geek would have known, in answer to my question, that I needed to buy a USB hub. That guy’s a liar. I don’t know how he made his money, but it wasn’t starting a computer business in Silicon Valley, or any other valley, for that matter. He’s from Minnesota. He knows something about chemistry, because he tried to jump in with an answer to the medical isotope question. But you could know that from high school, unless you’re Donna Lamar. Still, I’ll bet Kris built up his fortune selling farm equipment. It’s just not as sexy as a Silicon Valley start-up.”

“Lolly?” asked Tom. “You want to apply to work at the sheriff’s department? I’m not kidding, we need a mind like yours.”

“I’m flattered,” said Lolly. “But I’m sure I make more money turning tricks. See you cats later.” She got out of the car.

“Be careful, Lolly,” said Tom.

“No worries.”

When we got home, the streetlights indicated something different about our house.

“What the hell is that?” asked Tom. We both stared at one of the pine trees in our front yard.

A carved wooden mask was nailed to the trunk. Tom shook his head as he pounded ahead of me up the new wheelchair ramp.

“Hey, guys!” said Arch when we came through the door. He was sitting in the living room with Yolanda, Boyd, and a very smug-looking Ferdinanda. “Did you see the cool Santería mask that Ferdinanda made? I helped her nail it to the tree out front.”

“What does it mean?” Tom asked coolly.

Arch’s face dropped at Tom’s tone. Yolanda looked at her hands, while Boyd, clearly in mental discomfort, straightened his shoulders. Ferdinanda lifted her chin.

“Tom!” Ferdinanda said. “You let me worry about what it means.”

“It’s our front yard,” Tom replied evenly.

Ferdinanda sighed. “It’s to ward off evil spirits.”

“I thought that’s why we all went to church,” Tom replied.

“This is extra,” Ferdinanda said.

“What is the significance of that mask?” asked Tom.

“The exact significance?” said Ferdinanda. “After all these years, I forgot. You know what? I’m tired.” She yawned, stretched her arms over her head, and turned the wheels of her chair toward the dining room. “I’m going to bed.” Then she stopped. “Hey! Where’s the ice cream you were out buying?”

“I forgot,” said Tom, before starting up the stairs. I bade everyone good night, then gave Arch a stern enough look that he nodded. Time for him to go to bed, too.

In our bathroom, I pulled out Lolly’s photocopy. With Tom’s mood turning foul after hearing about Lolly’s dealings and seeing a Santería mask in our front yard, he probably wasn’t ready yet to hear about Lolly doing an illegal search of Humberto’s wallet.

Humberto Captain had kept several receipts, only one of which interested me: Aspen Meadow Printers, High Country Dry Cleaners, Frank’s Fix-It, and Excalibur Safes.

Excalibur was delivering its premier model, the Deerslayer, on Friday. Room for numerous guns and pistols, the receipt said, with anchor holes for bolting to the floor, an electronic/mechanical lock, and two-hour resistance to fire. The Deerslayer was touted as their best model for storing papers and valuables.

Yeah, I thought. I just bet.

Say Humberto had figured out that Ernest had stolen the necklace, and either killed him or had him killed. He had put the .38, the gold, and the gems somewhere, until the safe could be installed. But Ernest had insisted that Humberto did not have a safety deposit box, and Lolly had searched the house. If Humberto had put the weapon and valuables into one of Donna’s houses, I would be sunk. Yet Lolly had not said Humberto kept keys with him all the time. He kept his wallet with him. And the wallet had yielded these receipts.

Without a warrant, there was no way Tom or I or anyone could get access to a fancy safe after Friday. But I could visit the three local places the next day. Perhaps one of the receipts would lead to something.

I stuffed the paper back in my pocket and took a quick shower. Once in bed, I felt guilty about Lolly, about the photocopy, about things in general. I loved my husband. When he slid between the sheets beside me, his warm presence made me feel, more than ever, that I wanted him to be happy.

Well, I knew what that meant, didn’t I?

I felt a quirk of emotional discomfort. Was I ready for this? Were we?

Was anyone ever ready to bring another being into the world? Probably not. But I realized suddenly Yes, I want this, too.

I said, “Why don’t I forget the protection tonight?”

He pulled me in for a warm hug. “Are you sure? You think it would be okay if our family got bigger? Should we talk to Arch?”

“If we do, it’ll get his hopes up. He’s always wanted a sibling. Better just to keep it to ourselves, I think, until we know something.”

“Miss G., are you sure?”

Unexpected tears slid down my face. “Yes.”

When the alarm went off at seven, I woke up, startled. Had I been dreaming, or had something occurred to me? Something had been wrong about Humberto’s house. What was it? But the dream, or memory, was as elusive as sunlight flashing across the surface of Aspen Meadow Lake. I hopped out of bed and almost fell down. Exhaustive lovemaking had led to extremely sore muscles.

“Good God,” said Tom, as he rolled over to bop the ringer on the clock. “I can’t move.”

“Me either. But we have to.”

“How about a shower together?”

Well, I knew what that meant, and after twenty minutes of having sex in a hot shower, my muscles were screaming at me. But I felt great, and I moved through a slow yoga routine that eased the physical pain a bit.

In the kitchen, Ferdinanda said, “I already fed Arch. He left because he is meeting someone to review for a math test.” She appraised me with a lifted eyebrow. “You made some racket last night.”

“We didn’t,” I protested. In fact, we’d made a special attempt to be quiet.

“Yeah,” she said as she rolled over to the espresso machine, “you didn’t. But I could tell by that stupid happy look on your face that you made some kind of something.”

My cheeks grew hot. Instead of responding, I bustled about feeding Jake the bloodhound and Scout the cat. Both animals were acting neglected. Jake had his own way of showing this: He came up close and gave me a long, mournful gaze. I patted him, whereupon he threw himself onto the kitchen floor to have his tummy rubbed. Scout, on the other hand, trotted away after eating, without so much as a backward glance. This feline behavior meant that only after he had gotten over his sulk would he twine around my legs and purr.

I let Jake outside. Ferdinanda chuckled and offered me espresso mixed with cream and ice. My face heated up again. Why should I feel embarrassed for making love to my own husband in our own house?

Boyd came into the kitchen. Maybe I was being paranoid, but it seemed as if he, too, was evaluating my expression. He smiled furtively but said nothing. There would be hell to pay from his boss if he so much as said a word about our personal life.

“Yolanda’s going to help you with the soup today,” Ferdinanda told me briskly. “I’m going to chop the mushrooms. You got chicken stock in your freezer?”

“Yup,” I said, and moved with relief to the walk-in. Yolanda called to Boyd, asking for help making up the cots. He disappeared.

“I made you toasted pork sandwiches for breakfast,” said Ferdinanda when Tom appeared in the kitchen, dressed for work. “Sit down and eat. You’re going to need strength after that night you had with Goldy!”

Tom’s questioning expression made me shake my head. Ferdinanda removed a cookie sheet from the oven and slapped it onto the table. English muffin sandwiches lay in neat rows, with sliced grilled pork steaming around the edges and melting cheese oozing onto the pan. Ferdinanda pulled a spatula out from beside her thighs in the wheelchair—one of these days, I expected her to retrieve a full-grown alligator from the wheelchair’s depths—and began levering sandwiches onto our plates.

Boyd came back out and said Yolanda needed Ferdinanda to help her change her bandages.

“I’m going,” said Ferdinanda, wheeling away. “You three eat, or I’m going to be angry.”

Tom’s cell rang as he was eating his sandwich. He said, “Schulz,” then listened. When he hung up, he told Boyd and me, “Stonewall Osgoode was an army ranger who got a dishonorable discharge for dealing drugs. Then he went to veterinary school at Colorado State but was kicked out of there for dealing drugs. This is what we call self-destructive behavior.”

“Colorado State?” I asked. “In Fort Collins, where the murder of the gas station attendant happened?”

Tom nodded. “That gas station attendant was a grad student in chemistry. Stonewall Osgoode probably had nothing to do with that, since he was definitely in his room when the kid was killed at the gas station. They found Osgoode’s roommate, who’s now a full-fledged vet, Dr. Hopengarten. Dr. H. had had the flu and remembers pulling an all-nighter that night, December twenty-third, because he had to turn in a paper on Christmas Eve, the twenty-fourth, or risk flunking a class. The two of them only had enough money for a studio apartment. Stonewall was there, asleep in the same room, so Dr. H. knows Osgoode never left.” Tom ate his last bite of sandwich, then said, “Oh, and get this. Dr. H. suspected that Osgoode was dealing drugs to support himself in school. Dr. H. is also pretty sure Osgoode had a partner. Whenever the phone rang and it was for Osgoode, it was always the same guy on the line.”

Boyd put down his sandwich. “Did Dr. H. see this partner?”

“Nope,” said Tom, discouraged. “And he has no idea who it was. But when Dr. H came back from turning in his paper, it was all over the news that shortly after midnight, this kid had been shot and killed at a local gas station. What Dr. H. particularly remembers, though, is that Osgoode went somewhere late that morning and came back in a foul mood. He said he was going to have to find a job to support himself, because he’d just lost the one he had. Dr. H. said, ‘What job was that?’ but Osgoode said, ‘Some people have no guts at all,’ then clammed up. The next week, the Fort Collins police pounded on their door and arrested Osgoode for dealing drugs.”

“Somebody turned him in?” Boyd asked.

Tom said, “Yeah. Our guys got good information from the Fort Collins authorities. An anonymous informant called them and gave the names of people Osgoode had sold drugs to. The cops pulled in the users, and they all immediately confessed that Osgoode was their supplier.”

I said, “Please tell me Osgoode gave up the name of his partner.”

“Nope. But Osgoode wasn’t as broke as he made out to Dr. Hopengarten, because somebody paid all his legal bills and court costs.”

“Who?” Boyd and I asked in unison.

Tom shook his head. “Don’t know, and whoever it was didn’t visit Osgoode in jail, either. Only the lawyer came, and he was a high-priced criminal defense attorney who managed to wangle a plea deal. Osgoode got a ten-year prison sentence, suspended, and only spent eighteen months in jail. Apparently the DA figured all those drug users wouldn’t make very good witnesses.”

I shook my head. Tom stood, cleared our dishes, and said, “I need to get down to the department.”

After he left, Boyd and I finished cleaning the kitchen. When he went into the living room to watch the news, I quietly pulled Lolly’s photocopy out of my pocket. Ferdinanda and Yolanda were talking in low tones in the dining room, so I crept down to the basement and loaded pink and yellow photocopy paper into our printer, slipped in Lolly’s paper, and let ’er rip.

Inspecting the result, I didn’t know if they’d fool anybody. But as I scissored away to make the copies look like actual receipts, I resolved that I was certainly going to try.

As I walked back up the stairs with the fake receipts in my pocket, the memory that had disturbed me early that morning resurfaced. The part of Humberto’s house that had been weird was an aspect of the décor.

Lolly had told me Humberto had redecorated the house at a fast clip. It had begun the day after Ernest broke in and stole the necklace. Why redecorate then? Okay, he wanted to put in surveillance cameras, but you could do that without painters and a whole bunch of new furniture.

That elusive memory was still flashing, but it was out of reach. I decided to make my first stop the Aspen Meadow Library.

I put four frozen homemade coffee cakes into my canvas bag. Food bribes usually worked if someone balked at helping me, and I couldn’t let that happen. Then I asked Boyd if he would accompany me to my van. When we were walking down the ramp, he asked me where I was going.

Surprised, I said, “Just running a few errands.” He lifted his eyebrows questioningly, but there was no way I was going to tell him what I was really up to.

In the van, I glanced across the street to see if Kris or Harriet was anywhere around. Neither was. I realized I didn’t even know what kind of car Harriet drove. Would Tom be able to find that out, if I didn’t know her last name? Or would he say if I continued to try to snoop into Harriet’s life, I’d be stalking her?

Ten minutes later, I breezed through the library doors and headed right to the reference desk. I didn’t know the new reference librarian, a young, slender woman who wore a khaki pantsuit and had black hair with red streaks. Didn’t anybody lucky enough to have black hair just wear it au naturel these days? I guessed not.

I offered her a coffee cake for the librarians’ break room, and she gratefully accepted. Then I asked my question, and she brightened. She said she loved a challenge, and I had the distinct feeling that she would have helped me out, food bribe or no.

She moved with alacrity to the website archives of the Mountain Journal. I certainly did not know how to search for the articles I needed, the ones that asked, “Can you guess whose view this is?” The following week, the answer was given, complete with a picture of the home’s owner.

Miss Black and Red Hair found the answer by swiftly pressing buttons, and soon I was looking at Humberto Captain’s view, which the librarian had put next to a photo of Humberto proudly pointing to the vista. In fact, I was interested in neither of these views. What did capture my attention was that memory that had been wriggling out of reach. Above Humberto’s head, there was not a light fixture in the shape of a wagon wheel. There was something else entirely.

I thanked the librarian and revved my van in the direction of Frank’s Fix-It Shop, which I thought was the most likely of my receipts to turn up what I wanted.

Frank’s Fix-It, next to Aspen Meadow Bank, looked as run-down as the bank appeared modern and immaculate. I made a U-turn, parked directly in front of the shop, then banged on the door until a heavy young man wearing torn jeans and a scruffy sweatshirt opened up. The scent of marijuana wafted out around him.

“We’re closed,” he said, looking at his wrist that was without a watch. He blinked and slowly turned his head to squint at the bank’s clock, which indicated it was half past ten.

“Your advertisement says you open at ten,” I lied smoothly. The guy looked around for a sign with his hours, but in fact he didn’t have that, either. I figured it was better to play on his sympathies than to piss him off. And wait: If he’d been smoking grass, shouldn’t he have the munchies wicked bad? I pulled another coffee cake out of my big canvas bag. “Would you like to eat a homemade coffee cake?”

The fellow eyed the cake greedily. “Well—”

“Here.” I handed him the cake in its zippered bag. “And, please, please can you help me?” I pulled the pink receipt out of the bag and thrust it under his nose. “My boss says I have to get this today, as early as possible. If I don’t, I’ll lose my job.”

Now the stoner stared at the receipt, his mouth hanging open. Drool trailed from his lower lip as he clutched the coffee cake to his chest. After a few long moments, he said, “We have this?”

“Please help me,” I begged. “It’s your receipt.”

“Awright.” He pushed the door halfway open and lumbered into the darkness of the store. I quickly stepped through and followed him.

The place positively reeked of weed. The wooden floor was worn through to concrete in a number of places, and Frank, or his son, or someone, had sprinkled sawdust on top. The counters were so dusty it was hard to tell if the glass cases actually held anything. But when the guy rounded the corner and ducked behind a curtain, I followed him there, too.

The fluorescent light he turned on did not help. He put the coffee cake on a cluttered table and again gaped at the fake receipt. With more clarity than he had mustered so far, he said, “I have no idea where in hell this is. Or even what it is.”

“Oh, I know,” I said cheerfully. “Why don’t I find it?”

“I can’t leave you here with the stuff,” he said dully. “We’ll lose our insurance if I do.”

I almost choked at the idea of them even having insurance. “I won’t break anything.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said stubbornly.

We seemed to be at an impasse. But a torn red plastic chair offered a solution to our problem. I said, “Why don’t you sit down while I hunt? Then you can eat the cake and keep an eye on me at the same time.”

“Well, I do got the munchies.”

“Go for it. But may I have the receipt back, please?”

“Awright.” He handed it to me, then made his way to the chair. He sat down heavily, opened the bag, and broke off a hunk of cake. Well, I didn’t mind if he dispensed with the whole utensil thing. I just didn’t want to watch.

I surveyed the vast, untidy storage room. Shelves at odd angles were filled to bursting with dusty articles. Damn it, I thought, why can’t anything be easy?

Half an hour later, I realized I was hungry, too. All I had found in searching through the first two-thirds of the shelves was an assortment of toasters with frayed cords, pots missing handles, clocks without hands, and broken, functionless tchotchkes.

The stoner had finished half the cake, and now he was openly smoking a joint.

Well, great. This was another one of those situations where the fact that I was married to a sheriff’s department investigator did not look so hot. I was unlawfully searching for something that I was pretty sure was valuable but that did not belong to me. Meanwhile, the man entrusted with the care of said article was huffing away on an illegal drug. If a reporter from the Mountain Journal came in, I’d be, as they say, screwed.

On the last set of shelves, my hands closed on a large, dirty plastic bag. Inside was what looked and felt like a bunch of dirty rocks. But the receipt number, oh, the blessed receipt number, was the same as the pink one in my hand. And the rocks, I suspected, had been carefully coated with mud, in order to hide what they really were.

“Got it!” I yelled. But the stoner had slipped sideways on the chair and appeared to be asleep.

I tiptoed past him with the bag going clunkedy-clunk. He seemed not to notice. I wrapped up the remains of the cake and stuffed it into my catering bag. I didn’t want to leave any trace of myself. Then I picked up both bags and walked out the door, gently closed it behind me, and heaved the bags into the back of my van.

Unfortunately, I caught a glimpse of Kris Nielsen’s Maserati in my rearview mirror. He was driving very slowly up Main Street. I debated whether to stay in my parking space or take off. Had he been watching me all along? I put on my blinker and pulled out. I drove slowly so as to make out what Kris was doing. He maneuvered the Maserati into my empty space. Had he seen me? I still wasn’t sure.

Lovely, tall Harriet-the-model-with-odd-jobs got out of Kris’s car. She said a few words to Kris, then walked into Frank’s Fix-It. Hmm.

Ahead of me, the streetlight turned. If I didn’t move the van forward, it would attract attention. Still, I strained to observe Kris in the rearview mirror. Was he waiting for her, dropping her off, or what? I really wanted to know, but had no way to find out just then. At the moment, I did not think a return trip to Frank’s Fix-It was advisable.

I skipped the dry cleaner and the printer, because I was sure I had found what I was looking for. But as I drove home, I wondered why Humberto would leave the diamond-laden chandelier at Frank’s Fix-It, even covered with mud, even for a short time. Okay, the place was a jumbled-up mess, like one of those garages full of what the owner thinks is junk. So the owner has a big garage sale, and a lucky customer pays a dollar for a painting worth two million.

As far as I knew, Frank’s Fix-It Shop was not planning on selling off its dusty merchandise any time soon.

Not only that, but if Humberto knew, or suspected, that Ernest was on his trail, maybe even that Ernest was behind the theft of Norman Juarez’s necklace, the last place he’d want to put something valuable was in a safety deposit box or other obvious storage place. He’d want to get rid of Ernest first and then wait for the heat of the murder investigation to cool.

The other reason he’d decided on Frank’s Fix-It was that he’d needed to stash the diamonds somewhere unlikely, while waiting for the big Fort Knox–worthy metal safe to be delivered.

And what if Osgoode had been Humberto’s partner? Maybe Humberto had wanted to hide the diamonds, just in case, and then get rid of Osgoode, in the event he knew anything about the Juarez fortune.

I called Boyd to ask for lookout duty as I returned. Unfortunately, this meant he would see me bringing in a large, unwieldy bag full of clanking stuff, which would mean questions. So when he answered, I asked if he could meet me in the driveway to help me carry in groceries.

“That’s what you have?” he asked when I pulled in, opened the sliding door, and gestured to the dusty giant-size trash bag. “Somehow, it doesn’t look like food shopping.”

“It isn’t. If you’ll take it inside, we can both have a look.”

He mumbled something about keeping his job as he humped the bag up the ramp. I thanked him pleasantly and said how much I appreciated his being a houseguest.

“Oh!” said Ferdinanda when we came through the front door. “What have you got there?” Yolanda, who was reading a cookbook, gave us a curious glance.

“I don’t know yet!” I said more loudly than I intended. “Maybe I can tell you later.” Like when the police come to get it, I added mentally. Even if Humberto and Ferdinanda had seemed to be at each other’s throats the previous night, I didn’t want our houseguests to glimpse the contents of this sack, just in case it contained what I hoped and feared it did.

“Let’s go upstairs, Boyd.” I scurried upstairs and stopped in Arch’s room for a pair of wire cutters he’d used for one of his projects. Then I led Boyd into Arch’s bathroom and stopped up the bathtub. “All right, lower it in there, as slowly as you can.”

Boyd did as I asked, then untied the top of the bag and gently pulled out the light fixture by its chain. It was a gigantic chandelier that looked as if it had been sprayed with mud. Well, I thought, it probably had been. I wondered what kind of cock-and-bull story Humberto had used when he left it off at Frank’s Fix-It. Probably something along the lines of, “We need to order parts for this from France, and we’ll bring them in when they arrive, so you can do the repairs.”

“Should I rinse this off?” Boyd asked patiently.

“Carefully.” Once the warm water was running, I reached for a pair of cotton towels.

“Goldy?” said Boyd. “This thing is huge. Is it an antique or something? I don’t want to know if you stole it, because I know you probably did. Is it worth a lot of money?”

By way of answer, I reached in and gently cut the wire holding one of the pendants in place. Interestingly, these teardrop-shaped pieces were not drilled through at their tops, but were in tiny individual nylon nets. Once I’d freed the stone from the wire and the net holding it, I held it up to the light.

The fire and brilliance of the gem hurt my eyes. I tried not to contemplate the magnitude of Humberto’s theft.

“No, Sergeant Boyd, the chandelier is not an antique. But each of these sparkling pieces is a diamond. The whole chandelier is worth many millions of dollars. Humberto Captain stole these gems from the family of Norman Juarez.”

“Oh, Jesus,” said Boyd. “Time to call Tom, eh?” He punched in the numbers and was poised to talk but at the last moment pushed his cell toward me. “You tell him.”

“Boyd?” my husband’s disembodied voice said. “You there?”

“It’s me,” I said once I’d taken Boyd’s cell. “I found Norman Juarez’s gems.”