The two of them just stood in the doorway staring at the disaster inside. Duke wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go in. It looked nasty. Sniffing, he tried to figure out what it was he was smelling. Then before the two of them could even react, a Siamese cat darted out the door and left down the hallway as though it were on a desperate mission of escape.
“For pity’s sake!” Olivia moaned. She pointed to the far corner of the huge dressing room. “He left that cat in here with nothing but a litter box, a bowl of kibble, and some water in a red plastic cup?”
Duke felt like he was a little behind the ball here. “What cat? I mean, I saw a cat. It was big and fuzzy and kind of hard to miss, but what on earth was it doing locked in his dressing room? Isn’t that against the rules?” Duke realized he wasn’t entirely sure what the rules about animals and Branson shows were to be exact, but this certainly seemed like a violation.
“Yeah. Let’s…” She pushed the door open and then moved to the windows. “I’m opening the windows. I don’t know what that cat did in here, but I suspect she didn’t use the litter box for her business.”
Duke turned in a slow circle. The room was vaguely triangular in shape. There was a sofa somewhere beneath a pile of old newspapers and books and what might have been movie scripts or screenplays, it was difficult to tell. A chair was somewhat less cluttered sitting at an angle to the couch. A flat screen television hung on the wall opposite the chair and there was a tiny dog bed beside the chair just below an end table. The floor was covered in area rugs stained with what looked a lot like pee.
Duke flashed back to Titus’s abhorrence of dog piss and was glad the boss hadn’t decided to come along this morning. No doubt Titus would have been out in the hallway retching or something. The smell was making Duke’s eyes water. The couch and the chair were leather, which was good. The curtains hanging from the windows were not and they were shredded within an inch of their life.
“I recognize this work,” Olivia said as she stared at the curtains. “And it serves him right for bringing that poor Siamese cat in here and just locking it in. He was probably afraid that it wouldn’t get along with Chili.”
Duke couldn’t necessarily tell where to start looking for potential valuables. There were shelving units all around the perimeter of the room. Most were covered in books and framed photographs of Riley with all kinds of famous Branson personalities—Andy Williams, Kirby the Magician, the entire troupe of Irish dancers. The photos were so numerous that Duke almost missed a few little knickknacks here and there that seemed strangely out of place.
Moving toward one of the shelving units, Duke picked up a little porcelain box. The thing was tiny, like a pillbox. He turned it over in his hands and noted the delicate purple flowers painted on the surface. Duke could remember his grandmother owning something similar.
“What are you looking at?” Olivia’s voice was high-pitched and tensed. “I’ve never understood why my uncle has these things around his office. They don’t have any meaning. I’ve asked him. He just says he picked them up somewhere.”
Duke looked more closely at the collection. Some items, like the pillbox, looked expensive or like something you would find in an elegant old lady’s handbag. Other things were the opposite—a child’s matchbox car, and a tiny resin dog possibly from one of the other museums or souvenir shops around town. There was also a massive collection of pins, each with the back neatly on and displayed as though they were trophies.
Trophies. Duke felt his heart do an uncomfortable double tap as he realized what these must be. “They’re all stolen.”
“What?” The disbelief was still there in her tone but Duke could hardly blame her.
Thieves liked trophies, liked to keep stuff they’ve taken. Not the valuables but the other things that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but them. Junk sometimes, but priceless if it has become like something a hunter might hang on the wall.”
“Oh God.” Olivia lifted her hands to her mouth. “Are you saying that all of this stuff is stolen?”
Duke gazed at the collection. It was rather extensive once you started to put it all together. There were at least half a dozen shelves. There were books and things, but there were more knickknacks and photographs than books. “I don’t know, but I would suspect the answer is yes.”
“But this stuff couldn’t have all come from the theater!” Olivia protested.
Duke turned to stare at her. He needed her to come to the right conclusion in her own mind because he knew what his brain had already decided. He could see it. The moment Olivia realized her uncle had been at this for far longer than she could have imagined and probably in far more creative ways than she wanted to think about.
“You’re saying you think he’s been stealing for years?”
Duke spread his arms to take in the room. “Look around and tell me what you think.”
“But why?” She actually stared up at him as though she were expecting an answer.
But Duke could only shrug. “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. Only Riley can.”
She seemed to stir from her contemplative horror. “We have to find that lady’s wallet and the rings and get out of here. Riley will be here soon. He usually shows up at ten.” She turned to point at the clock. It was twenty minutes until and she was right, they needed to be well away from this office before the appointed time.
Suddenly, it seemed as though Olivia had had stopped caring whether or not Riley could tell that someone had been in here. She was moving things, stacking them, setting them aside, opening drawers in the long desk and in the filing cabinet. There was no stone that Olivia was not willing to turn over.
Duke eyed a Chinese box. The thing was looked like a cheap relic from another era. He moved toward it and lifted the lid. The sheer number of rings inside that box was staggering; there were at least two dozen or more both men’s and women’s. Some of them thick and blocky, traditional wedding bands, others were narrow and delicate.
“Olivia, come look at this,” Duke murmured. He actually felt a little helpless. How were they supposed to find the owners of these things? Put an ad online? “I don’t think we can tell which ones belong to the woman who came to my office this morning.”
“Oh my word,” Olivia whispered. She reached for a little brown paper bag that had been cast aside on the desk at one point. There was a pet store logo on the front of it. “Here, put them in this and take them with you. Just take them. We need to go!”
“Did you find the wallet?” Duke asked as he reached into the Chinese box and pulled out a handful of rings. He heard the tinkling of metal and stones against the whisper of the small brown paper sack as they filled it up.
Olivia was already shaking her head. “No. I didn’t see any wallets. I think he must have taken whatever he wanted from the inside and then ditched the rest. We need to find out what he’s done with them.”
“We need to go,” Duke said in a strained voice. The clock was inching toward five minutes till ten. “Now. You too. Don’t stay in here.”
Olivia nodded. She hurried behind him as Duke moved toward the open door. He slipped into the hallway with her right behind him. She turned off the light and shut the door. Then she used a key to lock it.
Duke looked down at Olivia. He could not imagine that Riley wasn’t going to know that there had been someone in his office. Hoarders, like Riley, especially of the thieving kind, usually knew when someone had been in their space.
“I’ll use the cat,” Olivia said suddenly.
“What?”
“As an excuse for being in his office.” Olivia touched Duke’s arm. Her hand was light and warm against his skin. She placed her palm on his forearm and gave it a tiny squeeze as though she were trying to reassure him. “The cat will make the perfect diversion.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go back out the way we came in,” she told him tensely. She was already pushing him toward the back doors. “I’ll take care of things
here. You go and contact that woman to see if she can identify her rings. And then you need to call the police. Use your discretion. Whatever. But we have to involve the police. There is too much stuff in there over too long a period of time to just let this go on.”
Her words rang true. She was right. But Duke didn’t like leaving her all alone at the theater to face her uncle. “Olivia, be careful. He’s not who you think he is.”
“I know that,” she whispered. Her big brown eyes were haunted. “I think I’ve known for a very long time.
Duke put his palm against her cheek. He cupped it lightly and skimmed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. “Brave angel,” he whispered. “Call me when you’ve spoken to him. I want to hear from you. And if it gets bad, you leave. Do you understand me?”
“Yes. Now, go!” She was insistently pushing him toward that exit.
Duke didn’t argue any further. He left the building through the back exit and made his way to the parking lot. He thought he’d gotten all the way out when he spotted Riley Saunders leaning against the fence there at the donkey’s paddock. The little red chihuahua was shivering as she sat by his feet and the donkey was eyeing him suspiciously from the center of the pen where it was happily munching away and showing no desire to be any closer to the human.
The animal’s behavior struck Duke as odd. The creature had been nothing but friendly to Duke and Olivia. Why would it suddenly decide Riley wasn’t trustworthy? Usually, animals had a sixth sense about these things. Duke slowed his walk. His truck was parked pretty much right by the corrals anyway. There wasn’t going to be any point in trying to hide until Riley lost interest in the donkey and went inside.
Riley spotted Duke when he was only a few yards off. He threw a glare in Duke’s direction. “What are you doing back here? I thought my niece fired you.”
“She did,” Duke said mildly. There was no reason to give it all up now. “I had to bring her a file of information we collected on this case. She’d asked for it yesterday. Now, I’m leaving.”
Duke turned toward his truck and tried to ignore Riley’s attempts to coax the donkey closer. “This donkey has been in films almost all its life. It used to belong to some really famous production companies.”
It was the sort of boast that was ridiculous and yet would be totally normal coming from a guy who had framed photographs of himself with various other local show stars so he could make sure people knew he was part of that crowd.
“If that’s true,” Duke said as he opened the driver’s door of Henry and set the bag of jewelry inside the cup holder in the center console, “then I feel bad for the poor little guy for winding up half-starved and nearly dying of thirst when he showed up here an hour ago.”
Riley’s mouth popped open, but Duke was done talking. He got into Henry, settled himself, and drove away without looking back. He needed to get these rings sorted and then get some advice from Titus on what to do next.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Olivia wasn’t sure where to start with her uncle. How did you open up a conversation like that with someone who intimidated you already simply because he had been so very dismissive and rude lately? What if Olivia mentioned her concerns and Uncle Riley just blew them off? What if he told her it was none of her business? What was Olivia prepared to do? Maybe that was the bigger question.
“Um, Olivia?” Clara popped her head into Olivia’s office. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but Jackie said there’s a huge fight going on out back. Like people screaming at each other. I think it’s Mona and Riley.”
Clara’s apologetic expression was enough to make Olivia’s face flame red hot at the thought of her uncle outside in a screaming match, but that was about the time that Olivia remembered their new arrival.
“Oh my God, the donkey!” Olivia shot to her feet and sprinted out of her office past Clara.
Clara’s look of confusion would have been hilarious if it weren’t for the situation. “A donkey?”
“Long story,” Olivia called over her shoulder. “Thank you for alerting me!”
Sprinting down the hallway, Olivia fumbled with her keys and managed to find the one to the door that led backstage before she crashed headlong into the breaker bar. She managed to get the key into the lock and passed through the door without bothering to lock it. None of that mattered right now. The only thing that mattered was Mona. If Riley screwed this up, they were all in deep trouble.
The sounds of Mona and Riley shouting at each other were audible in the back room where the pony and Riley did a lot of their training. The big garage door was closed, but Olivia went out the side door that she and Duke had used just a short time ago. Bursting through the door, Olivia did not stop until she was between the two people shouting at one another.
Mona Epson was a tiny woman in her sixties. She had a shock of gray hair and weathered-looking skin from being outside taking care of animals for most of her life. Her clothing was an odd assortment of denim and cotton that involved short pants that barely reached the tops of her cowboy boots and a button-down shirt already smeared with pony snot and dusted with alfalfa hay.
“I told you, you belligerent old man,” Mona said angrily as her hair flew about widely and her faded blue eyes practically shot sparks, “I don’t do donkeys.”
“And I told you before,” Riley shot back with enough arrogance to make Olivia grind her teeth in frustration, “I don’t care what you do or don’t do. You will house whatever animals I want you to, or I will take my business elsewhere!”
“Riley, stop!” Olivia grabbed Riley’s arm and pulled him back away from Mona.
At least that’s what she was trying to do. But before Olivia could get Riley to back away even a step, he swung around and smacked her hard across the face. Olivia reeled back, stumbling a few steps before she could regain her balance. In the meantime, she heard Mona gasp.
“Don’t you ever grab hold of me like that, girl” Riley snarled at Olivia.
Mona reached out to take Olivia’s hand. “Are you all right, sweetie? Hon, I think both you and I know that this show is circling the drain because of that nasty old bastard.”
“Woman,” Riley threatened with his first, “I will put my hand so far up your keister that you won’t know what hit you!”
“You try it,” Mona growled. “You won’t get far with me. I’ve been handling horses six times my size since I was nothing but a little girl and wrestling fifty pound bags of feed and eighty pound bales of hay. You don’t get to push me around or I will knock you from here to next week!”
“Enough, please?” Olivia gazed at her uncle. “Go inside. Now. I think you’ve made enough trouble. Don’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean you sanctimonious brat?” Riley’s expression was pure ugliness and hatred. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, Olivia, but I didn’t raise you to be this uppity with me. You work for me. Not the other way around.”
“You might want to go and check out your office!” Olivia suddenly shouted. “I opened the door earlier because that poor cat you shut in there overnight was yowling as though she were dying. It smells and looks like she destroyed the place last night. Why would you do that? Why would you leave an animal locked in your office overnight without anyone in the theater knowing about it? What if the place had burned down or something else had happened, Riley? You’re not supposed to do that. It’s against the animal control rules!”
Mona was looking horrified. “You just left a cat shut in your office?”
“It’s a cat,” Riley moaned. “You idiotic, bleeding heart, women.” He threw that last word as though it were the worst insult he could think of. “You think that everything needs to be coddled. But it doesn’t. Cats need a litter box, some food, and some water.”
“In a red plastic cup,” Olivia shot back. “Yeah. I know.”
Mona shook her head. “That’s going to get your show shut down, Riley, and you know it. Why would you do that? You know better. I thoug
ht you were an animal lover.”
Mona’s condemnation was too much for Riley. He turned on his heel and stalked off into the building with Chili desperately trying to keep up. But when Riley slammed the door to the building, he did not bother to make sure the dog got through. Poor Chili had to leap back or be squashed. His little yips and whines were more than Olivia could take. She ran to the building and scooped the dog into her arms. Chili immediately quieted, but gazed up at Olivia as though the dog’s current plight was somehow her fault.
“Ugh!” Mona groaned. “The man is insufferable, Olivia. How do you deal with this anymore?”
“I don’t know.” Olivia bit her lip. “But it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about the donkey. Can you help me get the vet out here to at least look the thing over and get him some vaccinations?”
“Yes, but I told you, I’m not taking a donkey. I don’t do donkeys. I don’t like the noise. It’s noisy enough at my place.” Mona was trying to be tough, but Olivia could see her relenting as the donkey came to sniff at them through the fence. “He doesn’t like Riley,” Mona commented suddenly. “It’s not going to work if Riley can’t get near the little guy.”
“I don’t want it to work,” Olivia murmured as she stroked Chili’s ears. “It doesn’t matter. All right? Just help me get some care for the poor thing and I’ll worry about the rest. He can stay here. I’ll work it out with some of the employees. They can help me get a twenty-four hour watch going. We’ll have to anyway just as soon as we find the cat.”
Mona shook her head. “You’re far too good to that bastard. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I know that.” Olivia was only just starting to admit it to herself, but she felt as though she had known deep down all along that there was just something wrong with the relationship between her and Uncle Riley.
Mona went to get back into her truck. There were other animals in the large trailer. This wasn’t her only stop and they weren’t her only clients. She waved to Olivia. “I’ll see you back here at the usual time to pick up Snooker.”
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 17