The apartment door opened as far as the deadbolt allowed. “Nicoline, open the door.” I’d heard that low, deep voice somewhere before.
“One moment,” she said.
I was so caught up in Nicoline’s panic that I didn’t have time to worry about my own fear of heights as I stepped onto the outside metal grate landing. My heart was jumping around in my chest as I crouched over then grabbed the railing. I held on for dear life as I sank down onto the first step. There was no way I could walk down the steep flight of circular steps so I used the method toddlers did and scooted down on my butt.
That saved me from looking down. I hoped no one was watching me, although suffering embarrassment was the least of my worries at the moment. I actually counted each step, trying to distract myself and when I got to the ground I said, “Forty-eight,” out loud. Then I got to my feet with some effort. They were shaky from the adrenaline pumping through my body. I hurried around the hotel to the front sidewalk and ran. Not what an athlete would call running, but faster than I was usually able to move. Especially wearing a puffy coat and lined winter boots.
All the while what kept going through my mind was, Nicoline must have stolen the three bears snow globe from under the counter in the shop. But how, and why? She had wanted the first three bears scene, but Frosty had bought it before she’d had the chance. Then when she could have had first dibs on the second one, the company had forgotten to include it in the order. After I’d made the decision to send the third one back to the company, she must have found the snow globe under the counter. Is that why she was so adamant about taking it to the post office? Because she was planning to keep it for herself?
19
I was out of breath when I got back to Curio Finds. Erin was waiting on a customer and sent me a quick, inquisitive look. As I passed by the archway, I noticed Pinky was serving drinks at her counter. What would my friends make of it all? They’d been more suspicious of Nicoline than I had, and it seemed with good reason. I assured Pinky and Erin that Nicoline was all right, but it was too busy to get into a discussion about it. I’d give them all the unbelievable details later.
As soon as I’d hung up my coat and kicked off my boots, I slid open the door behind the checkout counter and squatted down, looking for the Three Bears by River box. It was still there. I took it out, looked inside, and confirmed it was the same scene as the snow globe on Nicoline’s counter. Oh my goodness. There were two possibilities to consider. Either Nicoline had gotten the Three Bears by River snow globe somewhere else, or she was slicker than I would have imagined—she’d lifted it from the second order and left its box inside with the others so we’d make the missing snow globe discovery together.
Business was steady and there wasn’t a good opportunity to talk to Pinky and Erin. Jason Frost called me just before five o’clock with two revelations. “Assistant Chief Lonsbury phoned a couple of hours ago to tell me they heard back from the two independent jewelers who were comparing the diamond found in Dad’s office with the one in my grandmother’s pendant.”
I tensed in anticipation. “What’d they say?”
“It is not the same one. They did the measurements, checked the clarity, et cetera, and they arrived at the same conclusion. The one from the office was definitely not the one from the pendant in the painting.”
“So the pendant is still missing?”
“Yes. And that brings me to the second phone call I got from Lonsbury a few minutes ago. The lab called him with the results of the fingerprint search, the ones they lifted from Dad’s safe. One set belonged to Dad. The others belonged to Aunt Loretta.”
“Oh, Jason, I’m sorry. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she took the pendant.” But who else would have?
“Yeah. The police are on their way to question her, so I wanted to thank you again for calling them when you saw her at Dad’s place. My wife and I weren’t sure how we wanted to handle it and had basically decided we’d look through Dad’s house with Anne this weekend to see if we noticed anything was missing. But now it’s a police matter, as far as we’re concerned.”
“You’re right. I appreciate you telling me all this.”
“You didn’t hesitate helping us when we asked. And I get the feeling you want answers as much as we do.”
• • • • • • • •
There were only a few people sipping on drinks at a table in Brew Ha-Ha, and after the last two customers left Curio Finds, I waved Pinky and Erin over to a spot on my side of the archway where we wouldn’t easily be heard. “I don’t know what to think, girls. I don’t have proof of this, but I think Nicoline stole a snow globe from an order we got last week.”
“What a lame thing for her to do,” Pinky said.
“Have you noticed anything else missing? Merchandise, money?” Erin said.
“No, the cash in the till has balanced every time she’s worked. And nothing else is missing, as far as I can tell.”
“She didn’t show up for work today, and didn’t even call in sick. And you’re pretty sure she stole something. We can’t keep Nicoline on, Cami,” Pinky said.
“I know. I just wish we could help her.” I took a deep breath, filled them in on Nicoline’s uncle coming home and Nicoline making me leave via the fire escape.
“How did you do that being so afraid of heights?” Erin said.
“I was more afraid for Nicoline, I guess.”
“Wow” Pinky said.
I pondered whether or not to tell them what Jason Frost had relayed to me. “And here’s another thing. Last night I drove by Frosty’s house and I saw a woman in his driveway closing his garage door.”
Pinky grabbed my hands. “Cami, you waited all day to tell us this?”
I spread my fingers and she let go. “We’ve had a few things going on, Pink.”
“I guess. Do you know who it was?”
I nodded. “I called Mark and gave him her plate number. He called Jason Frost, who later called me, and it turns out it was his aunt, Loretta.”
“The sister Frosty didn’t like?” Pinky said.
I shrugged. “Something happened between them is all I know.”
“What was she doing there?” Erin said.
“The police are going to talk to her about it.”
“She waits until Jason leaves and then she sneaks in the house. That’s even lamer than what Nicoline did,” Erin said.
I thought so, too. “Anyway, Jason told me a couple of other things, but I can’t repeat them yet or Clint will have my hide.”
Pinky’s eyes opened wider than wide. “Cami, you know how much I hate it when you do that.”
“Sorry, but I got into enough trouble taking the photo of the diamond in Frosty’s office.”
“Cami’s right. We can wait, Pinky,” Erin said.
“Speak for yourself, Erin.” But then she smiled.
• • • • • • • •
After Pinky left, Erin took care of most of the clean-up tasks while the customers finished their drinks and conversations. We were the only two left in our shops by 5:36, so Erin went home, too. Once in a while, when I was alone in the shops after a busy day, I was struck by how eerily quiet it was. I pulled the Three Bears by River snow globe out from the under-counter shelf and studied it like it was a laboratory specimen. I was on edge. I wanted to talk to Clint and Mark and get their take on Nicoline, but after what Jason had told me, I figured they were likely questioning Loretta Proctor by now. It wasn’t as though my questions about Nicoline were time sensitive.
Or so I thought.
On top of everything else, Jason Frost had to face the fact that his aunt was the prime suspect in the missing diamond pendant that had been willed to his father. A treasure insured for over two million dollars. Holy moly, as Pinky would say.
I checked the business e-mail account, and reread the response from Van Norden Distribu
ting to my message regarding the missing snow globe in their order. They’d thought it was included, but weren’t going to argue about it. So Nicoline must have taken it. The question I kept asking myself over and over was why.
Then the revelation hit me. Maybe, that’s where the diamond on Frosty’s floor had come from, from the broken snow globe. It had been about diamonds all along, hiding in plain sight.
Things that had bothered me started to fall into place and make sense. Van Norden Distributing had sent three snow globes with similar three scary bear scenes, and each time one arrived in an order, there was a big hoopla about it. Unlike the other snow globes in the orders. There was no one clamoring for the more pleasant, normal scenes. Was it possible they were using Curio Finds, a small shop in a small town in Central Minnesota, to smuggle diamonds into the country? And meek little Nicoline was part of the ring? Is that why she was here, helping her “uncle”? Had she killed Frosty, and that was the real reason she’d withdrawn when we’d talked about him?
I picked up the snow globe and stared at the area where the bears were standing. Were there some diamonds under the snow-covered grounds? I tapped the base against the counter then shook it to see if anything came loose. No. They’d be hidden in the base. I tapped it again, a little harder hoping the base would separate from the glass globe. I moved the globe to my chest for some traction and held the base with one hand and the globe with the other. I used all my strength and twisted, but it didn’t budge. I gave it another hard tap and a good twist. When it dislodged, I thought at first I was imaging things, but it was coming unscrewed. I set it back on the counter and lifted the globe from the base.
There was a thin metal plate over the top of the base. I used my fingernail to lift it off. Inside were cotton balls and diamonds. Damn. My heart was beating so fast it took my breath away. I wished we had a safe in the shop to store them until they were securely in the hands of the authorities. Was Nicoline planning to break in and search for it during the night? She wouldn’t know whether or not I’d mailed it back today. Thank the good Lord I hadn’t. I put the snow globe back together, placed it in the box, and then back on the shelf under the counter. I phoned Clint, then Mark, but both calls went to voicemail. If they didn’t call me back before I left, I’d have to take it home with me.
I was anxious to get going and it was close enough to six that I shut off the machines and lights and turned down the heat in Brew Ha-Ha. I put my coat on and was standing behind my checkout counter, ringing out the till when the shop door opened. The last thing I needed at the moment was a late customer. It was the huge man that had stopped in a few times on his way through town.
When I remembered he was one of the seekers of the three bears snow globe, my skin prickled. When he said, “Where is that snow globe?” I recognized his voice was that of Nicoline’s uncle—the one she was afraid would see me when I visited her earlier. My insides started to tremble. He turned the sign in the window to Closed, and I felt the room spin around for a second.
“Which snow globe are you talking about?” I was surprised my voice was steady and sounded matter-of-fact. I felt like someone else was talking for me.
His voice was like a growling bear’s. “I am not here to play games.”
No, that was obvious. He was involved in some very serious business. “Have a look at the shelves, see if there are any you like.”
When he started coming toward me with the darkest look imaginable, I pulled the canister of Mace out of my pocket, used my thumb to locate where the nozzle was, then aimed it at his face and blasted him with a full dose. I caught enough to make my eyes and nostrils burn.
“Ahhh!” He grabbed at his eyes then started coughing. But it didn’t stop him from coming toward me. I picked the Marilyn Monroe snow globe off the counter and threw it at him. It miraculously hit him right between the eyes, bounced off his nose and onto his chest, then rolled down his body. I snatched up the shop phone and was on my way to the bathroom to lock myself in and call 911, but he managed to grab a handful of my hair. He pulled me back with such force that I stumbled, causing him to lose his grip on me.
Then the shop lights turned off. I sensed the movement of the man’s hands groping for me. But I had the advantage of knowing the layout of the store. He was blocking my exit so I headed toward the back office to barricade myself in. I hadn’t gotten far when the shop door opened and bright streams of lights moved across the ceiling and walls. “FBI Special Agents Reese and Omann! Hands up where we can see them!”
The lights came back on with the sound of the agent’s voice. The visual assault made me blink until my eyes adjusted to the light. Whether I was in trouble or not, I raised my arms to be on the safe side. The mammoth man’s eyes and nose were watering from the Mace, and blood was dripping out of his nose from my snow globe attack. He used his arm sleeves to wipe his face as he lifted his hands. Two agents, a male and a female, had their guns drawn and aimed at him.
“Camryn,” the female agent called to me and my first thought was, how does she know me? That’s when I noticed it was the strange-acting woman who’d been in the shop several times the past week. She had inquired about a snow globe, one we’d gotten from Van Norden. She’d also said the man was a friend of hers and asked if he’d bought anything. Now her visits made sense. She nodded at me, and I understood that meant I could lower my arms. The FBI had no doubt investigated me and my background. I was never happier to be on the right side of the law. And to be rescued by them.
“Unbutton your coat with your right hand, keeping your left arm up,” the male agent instructed the man. When he’d finished that, the agent said, “Now put your right arm up and slowly turn in a complete circle.” The man did that, too. “Do you have a firearm or other weapon on your person?”
“No, I do not.” His voice had lost its growl.
“Then slip out of your coat, but keep your hands where we can see them at all times. If you attempt to reach in a pocket, we will assume you are going for a weapon. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
Once the man’s coat was off, the male agent moved in and cuffed his hands behind his back. The agents told him to step out of his boots, and helped him do that. They spent a couple of minutes checking them. Then he was cleared to put them back on, not an easy thing to do with handcuffs on. But he managed with one agent on either side of him. The male agent frisked the man, emptying his pockets in the process while the female agent kept her gun pointed at him.
I remained where I was, leaning against the wall through it all. My heart pounded away in my chest, and my pulse was beating frantically. As they led the man to the door, the female agent looked over her shoulder at me. “Stay put. I’ll be back.”
I didn’t budge from that very spot until she returned. She walked over to me and shook my hand. “I’m Special Agent Omann.”
“I don’t know what to say except thank you. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”
“You can thank your friend.”
My friend, which one? “What do you mean?”
“Nicoline. I can’t go into details now, but we’ve been working with the CIA and U.S. Customs for some time to take down a diamond smuggling ring. They’ve been very clever and have managed to elude us in other locations, but we got timely intel from one of our informants, and that’s why we’re here. They were using your shop as a front for their operations.”
“Believe it or not, I started to suspect something suspicious was going on with the snow globes. But I didn’t know what it was until just a couple hours ago. You knew about the mayor’s death, and the diamond found on his office floor, lying near the broken snow globe?”
“We knew about the mayor, but only found out about the diamond today. The local authorities hadn’t released the details to the public. We knew he’d been struck on the head by an object, prior to hitting his desk, and that it was being investigated a
s a homicide. We’ve kept a low profile the days we’ve been here, and didn’t reach out to local law enforcement until this afternoon.
“Long story short, we talked to Nicoline Ahlens, and she told us about Omar Brams’s plans to retrieve the snow globe from your shop today. We were poised to catch him in the act and wanted to apprise city law enforcement of what we were doing here. Assistant Chief Lonsbury told us—and he said you knew this—they’ve been investigating the diamond’s origin, and were able to eliminate one possibility today.”
“That’s what I was referring to. I had a phone call from Mayor Frost’s son telling me they’d learned the diamond wasn’t from the pendant his father owned. That’s when I started piecing together peoples’ strange behaviors over the scary bears snow globes. Mayor Frost bought the snow globe before either Nicoline or Omar were able to. And they had to get it back.” I was heartsick thinking Nicoline was involved with the mayor’s murder.
I pointed at my checkout counter. “The snow globe that man—Omar—was looking for is under the counter. It has diamonds hidden in the base that be must be worth millions and millions of dollars.”
“Let me call in another agent to witness me receiving the evidence.” Omann used her cell phone and a second male wearing a black jacket with an FBI arm patch and a black stocking cap joined us.
With the two agents beside me, I removed the snow globe box from the shelf and set it on the counter. Then the male agent moved me aside, opened the box, lifted out the snow globe, gave the base a twist to the left then back to the right. He replaced it in the box. “Did you count the number of diamonds in there?” he asked me.
“No, I didn’t.”
“All right.”
Over the next hour, they put the snow globe in an evidence bag, and the empty box from the second snow globe in another. They examined the other snow globes we’d received from Van Norden Distributing to confirm their information had been correct and it was only the snow globes with the three bears scenes that held smuggled goods. Those scenes were designed so they wouldn’t appeal to 99.9 percent of shoppers in the unlikely event Omar was detained and unable to be in the shop the minute they went on the shelf. Unfortunately for Mayor Frost, that’s exactly what had happened and it had cost him his life.
Frosty the Dead Man (A Snow Globe Shop Mystery) Page 21