Family Jewels

by N.L. Wilson

  I turned up the volume just enough — just barely enough — now I really didn’t want Mrs. P and Mother coming out here to catch me doing my research.

  Yes, volume certainly added to the plot. Not that I’d have been lost without it. Oh, and I got to hear that really cool music you just couldn’t find anywhere else.

  There was a tall, handsome blond guy in the flick, moving to the waw-waw-wawwww music pretty well. That is, pretty well, for someone with such a massive distraction. I half waited for him to stand up and trip over it. And of course tall blond guy got me thinking about the good deputy and our ‘date.’ I still hadn’t decided if technically it was a date. I wasn’t so naive as to think Deputy Almond was only asking me out to get my take on things as he’d professed. And it was more than a straight he/she date kind of thing. I knew he was playing me, or trying to, rather. Hell, he’d played all the parts perfectly in the rec room earlier in the day. Best bud to Big Eddie Baskin. Charming young man to Tish and Beth Mary. Consoling gentleman to Harriet and Wiggie. (So why had he been so stern with my mother? He’d play me to get information, probably on my own mother. Deputy Almond was a looker, but those blue eyes and good ol’ boy charm would only get him so far with me. I’d be playing him right back. I’d let him think I was being charmed while I found out everything he had to know.

  Hee hee hee. I swear that giggle had come from the wine glass.

  And since no one likes to laugh alone, I poured myself a second glass and snuggled down under the thin sheet, my head nestled down into the soft pillow Mom had provided.

  And so there I found myself late that Florida night, cozy in my near nothing, laying back in the darkened living room, enjoying a nice glass of Shiraz with only the glow of the television washing over me as I watched the happy — couple now — on TV.

  I stretched out my legs and wiggled my toes. I played a fingertip around the edge of the wine glass. Slower and slower.

  And I damn near threw the fucking glass across the room when I heard someone outside my mother’s patio door.

  Miraculously, I didn’t scream. Fighting back the rush of adrenaline, I set the wine glass down on the small end table with barely a click. Staying out of the light from the television, I tiptoed my way to the patio doors.

  The jewel thief? God, wouldn’t that be convenient?

  Or, hey, Frankie Morrell, maybe?

  Whatever the case, someone wasn’t using the front door here. Someone was breaking and entering my mother’s apartment. My mind went immediately to our family’s lucky diamond. The one Dad had given Mother all those years ago. If someone was coming in here with a mind to steal that from my mother, they’d be getting one hell of a big surprise.

  I’d be their welcoming committee. Hell, I’d be their worst nightmare.

  The doors were locked, of course. Both Mother and Mrs. P had checked them twice, including the patio’s French door. But a locked door wasn’t much of a deterrent to a determined thief. These condo locks were fairly high quality (I’d checked), but they weren’t the high security jobs with the floating collars that resisted picking and drilling. They wouldn’t thwart someone who knew what he — or she — was doing.

  I stood by the door and quickly looked around for something I could use as a weapon. Mother had deposited a few personal items on the nearby table. Her pierced earrings? Sure, poke him to death with the stems. Her hair brush? Sure I could brush him to death.

  Fuck!

  I hadn’t brought my gun. Guns and border crossings just do not mix. But I was clever and resourceful, Dix Dodd, private eye.

  Shit! Why are there no brass candle sticks lying around when you need them? Why no lead pipes? No wrench? (Clearly I’d been playing too much Clue.) Besides, it was likely a geriatric jewel thief. Old people had thin skulls, didn’t they? And brittle bones. Wouldn’t want to kill anyone by koshing them.

  I heard the click as the cylinder turned and the lock gave. I heard the faint snick as the door opened.

  Show time.

  Fine, I’d use my hands to take down this intruder, and my feet, of course. (I’d long ago learned to never under estimate the power of a well-placed foot.) Oh shit, I’m a woman … I’d use my brains.

  I leaned forward just enough to catch the edge of the sheet from the pull-out and I pulled it in toward me.

  I readied myself in attack mode — crouching down low, ready to spring. I was ready to kick some ass. Gently, if need be. But harder was good, too. The door opened enough so that the culprit could enter. Oh, please God, let it be Harriet Appleton.

  The intruder poked a leaning head into my mother’s apartment, and I jumped into action.

  “Gotcha!”

  It wasn’t a shout, for I really didn’t want to alarm Mother and Mrs. Presley until I had the criminal fully apprehended. Yes, showing off, but if there was going to be a fight here on my hands, it wasn’t something I wanted either of those two ladies getting in the middle of.

  I flung the sheet over the intruder, muffling an exclamation.

  Oh, shit! Male! Definitely male. A shot of adrenaline fueling my muscles, I tackled him onto the sofa with a move that would have made an NFL defensive end proud.

  “What the hell?”

  Okay, that sounded familiar. And so was this physique that I was now straddling on the sofa bed.

  “Dylan?” I asked in a harsh whisper, then pulled the sheet off.

  “Jesus, Dix.” He matched her stage whisper. “Are you trying to give me a freakin’ heart attack?”

  “Give you a heart attack? What did you think you were going to be greeted with when you broke in? A bouquet of flowers?”

  I still held him pinned (yeah … moving must have slipped my mind), but he managed to shrug against the white sheet. “I thought you’d be asleep, and I wanted to practice my technique.”

  “I appear to have taught you well, Grasshopper.”

  He grinned. “Apparently. But I’m disappointed in you, Sensei. This is the best weapon you could come up with. A sheet?”

  “I thought you were Harriet Appleton, or maybe Wiggie Appleton, and I didn’t want to kill them. Besides, it worked. You’re caught.”

  “Yes, but what if I was a real intruder, not a willing captive?”

  Oh, God. Willing captive. The way he said the words — oh, Christmas, it just did it for me. I felt a low hum start deep in my belly.

  I jumped off him fast and sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t the sex that made me jump away. It was the closeness. You know how it is. Once burned…. To a crisp like a goddamn marshmallow in the face of a flame-thrower.

  “Well, if you were a real intruder, you might not be willing, but you’d still be captive.”

  Dylan drew himself up on his elbows. He wore a dark turtleneck, and a dark tuque (perfect cat-burglar material) though of course with his dark hair, the hat was not really necessary. But he was fully prepared for any situation.

  “So Dylan, is that a flashlight in your pocket, or were you just happy to see me?”

  He smiled. Under the glow of the television it looked so damn —

  Glow of the freakin’ television! Ack!

  “What are you watching?” Dylan sat up. Or rather, struggled to sit up. Hard to do with a full-grown forty-year-old woman body slamming you back to the bed again.

  “Hummmf.”

  “I’m watching … I’m watching….” One arm on Dylan symbolically if not actually holding him down, and one hand frantically searching the pulled-apart bedding, I scrabbled for the remote. Mid waw-waw-wawwwwww, I found it and clicked as quickly as I could. “This is what I was watching.”

  Oh God. The Lawrence Welk Show. How uncool was that! How positively geriatric.

  “You like this show?”

  “Duh. Why else would be I watching it?” Certainly not because I was truly watching porn and just about got caught by my hot, hot assistant.

  “Cool.” Dylan looked at the screen. “Man, that Sissy and Bobby sure can dance, huh? I wish I were th
at light on my feet. Hey, remember old Lawrence conducting? A-one-and-a-two-and….”

  I arched an eyebrow.

  “My grandparents used to love this show,” he explained. “They couldn’t wait for Saturday nights to sit down after supper to watch it. Whenever they babysat me, I’d watch it with them. I had a real crush on Sissy. But I was just a kid.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. The mental picture of a young (okay, younger) Dylan Foreman in his jammies with a crush on the dancing Sissy … well, it was just too cute.

  “Hey, remember that theme song? I had it memorized. I used to sing along with it every week.”

  I could literally feel the dilation of my pupils. And it had nothing to do with adjusting to the light. Dylan was the world’s worst singer. He just didn’t know it.

  “Every week?” I asked.

  “Well, every week until my grandmother started turning the television off about two minutes before the show was over. Weird.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Go figure.” I muted the television quickly.

  Dylan spotted the wine. “Mind?” he asked.

  I poured him a glass and refilled my own as I did. We tasted. We sipped. And then it was time to talk shop.

  This wasn’t just a social call. Dylan Foreman wasn’t sneaking about on this fine Florida night to join me in a Lawrence Welk marathon.

  “I retrieved the office voice mails,” he reported.

  “Anything special?”

  We did have a few things on the go, but nothing that couldn’t wait until we got back. And I’d notified current clients of our absence, so I didn’t expect there to be much.

  “Not much. But you won a week at a timeshare in the Dominican Republic. You just have to pay the taxes on the prize.”

  “Gee, what’s the catch?”

  Dylan chuckled. Even in the low lighting of the room, I knew his eyes were sparkling. And chances were mine were too. What was it about this guy?

  “Seriously though, nothing urgent.” He took a long swallow of wine that matched mine.

  I topped up both our glasses. “So,” I said. “Any luck checking on our newfound friends?”

  The look on his face changed instantly. When Dylan Foreman went to work, it was all business. The guy was smart, and I loved that intense look he got when we were working on a case. After his apprenticeship was over, he was going to make one hell of a good private investigator.

  “Where do you want me to start?” No notes, no hand-held gadget to retrieve the information. It was locked solid in his mind.

  “Tish McQueen.”

  “You mean ‘Tish the Dish’?”

  Tish the Dish? I sat up straighter.

  Apparently, Dylan had already gotten an eyeful of Miss Above-the-Law-of-Gravity Tish McQueen.

  “You’ve seen her?” I followed the question with a drink.

  “Nah. That was her stripper name.”

  I almost pffted out my drink out onto my chin. Yes, just almost. This was wine, not coffee.

  “Apparently, our Miss Dish had quite the career in her younger days. Worked from Florida to Toronto. New York to Vancouver.”

  “And all ports in between?”

  “And she not only worked under Tish the Dish. But also Trixie O’Treats. Tish Tush. Oh, and my personal favorite — Tish the Fish.”

  I blinked.

  “Mermaid theme,” he elaborated.

  “And when was this?”

  “Early sixties. I found some posters on the Internet from her stripper days. I tell you, Dix, she was a headliner. Built like a….”

  He didn’t finish the thought. But my shoulders pressed back even farther as I did.

  “Let me guess,” I said, a wee bit snarkily. “She made a mint and put it all into a orphanage for impoverished children?”

  Dylan waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, that’s whores who have hearts of gold, not peelers.”

  “Fine line,” I grumped. “So what did she do with her show-biz money?”

  “Invested it. Property in Northern Alberta, just before things really started booming out there. I’m telling you, Tish McQueen is loaded. And from what I’ve read, she’s one shrewd business woman.”

  “I wonder how she knows Mona. Mona doesn’t look like the stripper type.”

  “Geez, I should hope not. She’s 70 now,” Dylan said. “Even if she had been a stripper once, she’d hardly look like one now.”

  “Huh. You haven’t seen Tish yet,” I muttered. Stomach in, chest out. If it sat up any straighter I’d be leaning backwards. Oh, the hell with it. I slouched back into my normal posture. “What did you find out about Mona?”

  He got that pensive look — that sexy, thinking-man, pensive look that drove me wild.

  Drove me wild? Where the hell did that come from. Suspiciously, I looked into my wine glass.

  “Mona Roberts,” he began. “Age 70. Widow of ten years. Homemaker. Married thirty-two years to the late Theodore Roberts of Brunswick, Vermont. He was in insurance sales and did quite well. Left Mona a tidy sum.”

  “Did they have any kids?”

  “Just one. A daughter. She’s still in Brunswick. Married with a teenage daughter.”

  “So nothing much of interest on Mona, then?”

  Dylan twisted his lips. “Not quite. The tidy sum that Theodore Roberts left Mona? It’s gone. And it went quickly — in the last two years.”

  Interesting. “Where’s it going?”

  Dylan took a sip of his wine. “Hospital bills. Her granddaughter’s been in and out of the hospital a dozen times over the last couple years. Cancer treatments.”

  I felt a stab of sympathy for Mona. When she’d left this evening, Mother had packed her a plate of food for tomorrow. Mona had demurred, of course, but even I could tell it wasn’t real. How hard up was Mona Roberts? Hard up enough to steal?

  Jesus, I hoped not.

  “Big Eddie Baskin? No, wait! Let me guess.” I held up a hand before Dylan could answer. I was after all, Dix Dodd, people-reader, private eye extraordinaire. I’d impress Dylan with my great observational skills here. I scanned my memory banks on Big Eddie — good with the ladies, liked to be in charge, makes his way taking care of the things at the Wildoh…? “Got it! He ran a bordello.”

  “Ah, no, Dix.”

  “Close?”

  “Not a bit. Big Eddie Baskin is retired from the US Army.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. He was a machinist.”

  That of course would explain one of the little dangling charms hanging from the chain around his neck — amongst the ones of golf clubs, half a heart, and the obligatory horseshoe, had been one of a mini screwdriver and mini wrench.

  “Clean record?” I asked.

  “Choir boy,” Dylan responded. “Never married. No kids. Likes to bet on the ponies, but nothing too serious.”

  Dylan proceeded to give me the 411 on the other people I’d asked him to check out.

  Beth Mary MacKenzie, the pup of the crowd, was a mere fifty years old, though she looked a hell of a lot older. Of the group, she was the newest Wildoh resident. She’d taught school in Northern Alberta up until a year ago, when she’d retired and bought into the Wildoh.

  “Fifty is young to retire,” I murmured.

  “Not if you win the lottery.”

  “Did she?”

  “I couldn’t find any records of a win online, but not all winners get the press. If it wasn’t a giant one, who knows? Sometimes they just go for the … um … media friendly types for their promotions.”

  I hated that, but Dylan was right. Beth Mary was one ugly woman. Unless she won a shitload of money, it probably wouldn’t have been newsworthy. A modest win — just enough for a comfortable future — could easily have gone under the radar.

  “Or she might have inherited something. From my cursory search, I’m not seeing anything like that, but give me time. I’ll dig deeper.”

  “Who’s next?”

  I listened with greatest interest wh
en Dylan brought up Harriet and Wiggie. And with the biggest disappointment also.

  “He was a patent lawyer in a small Orlando law firm, and she—”

  “—sucked the blood out of the rest of the clients?” I offered.

  “She was his secretary for many years.”

  “Kids?”

  “Nope.”

  “Financial woes?”

  “Not that I can find.”

  Crap.

  Make that crap, crap, crap!

  I’d been hoping for an ‘aha’ moment. For that one trigger to my intuition that would lead me along. Was I too close to this case? Too much at stake here?

  “And what did you find out about Mom?”

  He took a sip of his wine. “You didn’t ask me to check out your mother.”

  “No, I didn’t. So what did you find?”

  While I’d been sitting on the sofa bed, Dylan had maneuvered onto his side — leaning up on one elbow. Suddenly, he had eyes only for the wine in his glass. “Okay, so I did make some inquiries.”

  “And?”

  “She’s been doing quite well financially lately. Very well, in fact. In the last two months, over thirty thousand dollars has gone into her bank account.”

  Well, that sucked. Mother received a small pension from a plan Dad and she had invested in many years ago. There was insurance money and of course, royalties from songs still trickled in. I racked my brain trying to think of any way in hell that thirty big ones could suddenly start popping into her account.

  And my brain racked back … I didn’t like any of the possible answers.

  By the look on Dylan’s face, I knew there had to be more. “What else?

  “Your mother and Frankie Morrell had been fighting the night he disappeared. Loudly. Threats were uttered, on both their parts.”

  I shook my head. Not good. I knew that my mother was not capable of committing a crime. Well, a serious crime. Katt Dodd was a good person. Honest as the day is long. The salt of the earth. She was my mother, for Pete’s sake! She was not a criminal. Not a thief and certainly not a murderer. No matter where the evidence pointed. But I was far from naive. In the eyes of others, the evidence, circumstantial as it was, did not bode well for Katt Dodd.