Alibis and Amethysts

by Sharon Pape

  She glanced around the living room where the decor was an easy blend of Anglo and Navajo cultures. A worn leather couch and chair were arranged opposite a large flat-screen TV while the walls were adorned with intricately woven Navajo rugs, each one as beautiful as a painting. At a right angle to the living room was a smaller area that was probably meant to be a dining room but that was presently occupied by an old sewing machine and a folding table where bolts of fabric lay beside other tailoring miscellany.

  An elderly woman stood in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. Daniel’s grandmother, no doubt. She was dressed in a long, purple velveteen skirt, with a blouse of a similar hue and a wide conch belt at her waist. Her feet were clad in high-top moccasins, and her gray hair was drawn into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck. There was no joy in her expression. Her face was as clenched as a fist, either with leftover anger from the argument with her daughter or because she wasn’t pleased that her grandson had brought company. When Jaye’s eyes met hers, she felt the full weight of the older woman’s scrutiny.

  “Come meet Doli Joe,” Daniel said brightly, as if he hadn’t noticed that Doli Joe didn’t appear to be in a meet and greet kind of mood. When Jaye hesitated, he took her hand and led her over to his grandmother like a parent leading a reluctant child to the first day of school. Doli Joe opened her arms as Daniel approached. Letting go of Jaye’s hand, he stepped into his grandmother’s embrace, at which point a smile softened the stern line of her mouth and rose to twinkle in her eyes.

  Daniel spoke to her in Navajo, and when Jaye heard him say her name she figured it was the right time to step forward. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, not sure if she should offer to shake the older woman’s hand. Undecided, she dipped her head in a little bow. Where had that come from? Doli Joe was Navajo, not Japanese. And why hadn’t she asked Daniel about the proper etiquette for meeting the family matriarch? For that matter, she wasn’t even sure if his grandmother understood English. But since Jaye didn’t speak Navajo, there wasn’t much she could do about that.

  “It’s good of you to make the trip here with my grandson,” Doli Joe replied. Okay—no problem with her English, but her tone made it clear that she was reserving final judgment on this stranger who’d come into their midst. It occurred to Jaye that if Daniel never brought friends home to meet his family, his mom and grandmother might be thinking she were more than just a friend. The odds were Daniel hadn’t even considered that possibility. From what Jaye knew of men, they could be woefully blind when it came to the emotional intricacies of a woman’s mind.

  “Jaye, Daniel, come sit down in the kitchen,” Kyah said, walking around her mother, who seemed rooted to the spot. “I made some iced tea. Or would you like coffee?”

  “The iced tea sounds great,” Jaye said, excusing herself to Doli Joe as Daniel took her hand and led her into the kitchen. The room was galley-like, barely wide enough for a single cook. It would have been claustrophobic if not for the window beyond the workspace and the open area beneath it that was large enough to accommodate a table and four mismatched folding chairs. But in spite of the scarred wooden cabinets, chipped green Formica countertops and out-of-date appliances, the kitchen managed to be warm and homey. White and green café curtains, smelling freshly of lemon and soap, fluttered at the partially open window, and a glass bowl of avocados, bananas and oranges made a colorful centerpiece for the table.

  Daniel and Jaye took the seats closest to the window. After pouring two glasses of iced tea for them, Kyah sat down as well. When Doli Joe appeared in the doorway a minute later, Kyah asked her to please join them. Her tone was deferential, but not apologetic. Without a word, the older woman came to the table and lowered herself slowly onto the last chair, between her daughter and grandson. Whatever had ignited the fiery argument between mother and daughter seemed to have been set aside by mutual, if unspoken, agreement.

  “The arthritis acting up?” Daniel asked his grandmother.

  “What can you do?” she replied in English. “The first hundred years are always the hardest. Your mother said you had something you wanted to show me.”

  “Jaye and I came across a strange animal neither of us ever saw before. We couldn’t even find anything like it on the Internet. We were hoping you might have heard talk of it among our people over the years.”

  Jaye dug in her purse for her smartphone, brought up the photos of Raffles and gave the phone to Doli Joe. After the older woman looked at the first picture, Daniel showed her how to scroll through the rest. A frown lowered over her eyes as she studied them.

  “You’ve seen this creature before?” Daniel asked.

  Doli Joe shook her head and held the phone out for Kyah to see. Jaye thought she caught a look pass between the two women, a look that was hard to characterize. Opponents reunited by a mutual interest? Or was her imagination weaving intrigue out of nothing? If Daniel had noticed anything, he’d obviously chosen not to call them on it. And given the circumstances, Jaye felt she had no choice but to follow his lead. By the time they said their good-byes and climbed back into the Jeep, she was nearly bursting with the need to ask him about it.

  “Did you see—?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Daniel said before she could finish the question, “but believe me, there’s no point in trying to get Doli Joe to say any more than she wants to. We stand a better chance with my mother. I’ll give her a call tomorrow, and if my grandmother’s not around, I might be able to wangle something out of her.”

  Chapter 13

  Theo Brock and Cal Anastos walked into Crystal Clear an hour after Jaye returned from Tuba City. Bryn was ringing up a customer’s purchase, and Jaye had started working on the monthly inventory to see what she needed to reorder. It was her least favorite part of owning the shop, but on a scale of one to ten it still beat out talking to the detectives by a huge margin. Unfortunately, no one had asked about her preference.

  Busy counting the pink quartz, she didn’t see them at first. When she finally looked up, they were easy to spot in their detectives’ finery. Sedona was definitely not a suit and tie kind of town. Jaye had a couple of thoughts in quick succession. They’d either come to impart the good news that she was no longer a suspect or, conversely, to arrest her and bundle her off to jail. As it happened, she was wrong on both counts.

  “Long time no see,” she said, thinking it wasn’t nearly long enough. She checked their hands. At least they weren’t holding handcuffs.

  “Can we speak to you in private?” Brock asked somberly.

  Since that seemed like a far better idea than having her rights read to her in front of a store full of customers, Jaye led the way upstairs. As she unlocked the door, she prayed that Raffles would be out answering nature’s call. It had been a long day, and she was clean out of creative ideas that might explain a not-a-cat.

  Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed. Raffles was in the kitchen, directly in their line of sight, standing as upright as any two-legged mammal and browsing in the pantry. All that stood between her and her society debut was one of the pantry doors. Jaye flew toward her, batting her arms around to further block the detectives’ view. When she was close enough, she sprang at the animal and tackled her to the floor, trying to hide as much of her as possible. Raffles was so taken by surprise that she went into defensive mode. In an instant, the job of trying to conceal her became infinitely harder, and Jaye learned firsthand how rigid those hackles were beneath their fur covering.

  After the initial hectic seconds, Raffles realized that she wasn’t actually under attack, but by then Jaye was sure she’d have some dandy black-and-blue marks to show for her efforts. When she finally had the not-a-cat under control, she picked her up and hurried off to the bedroom. She set her down on the bed and ordered her to stay put with as much authority as she could muster. She really had to buy a lock she could bolt from the outside
. Before leaving the room, she checked to make sure she wasn’t bleeding enough to scare the detectives into calling animal control. Then she planted an embarrassed little smile on her face, stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  The detectives were still in the entryway where they’d apparently remained during the whole kerfuffle. Judging by their expressions, they hadn’t witnessed anything more disturbing than a crazy woman doing battle with a stubborn cat. Maybe the gods hadn’t forsaken her after all. “Sorry about that,” she said.

  “We know,” Brock said dryly. “She’s shedding.”

  Jaye realized she would have to come up with a better excuse for sequestering Raffles whenever they were around or risk courting more than their curiosity. “So, detectives, what can I do for you tonight?”

  “Do you mind if we sit down?” Anastos asked.

  Jaye had been hoping they could conduct their business with her, or issue whatever new threat they’d concocted, right there at the door. “Oh, sure,” she replied, since she needed all the brownie points she could get, being a murder suspect and all. “Is this going to take very long?”

  “Hard to say,” Brock replied as he and Anastos headed to the love seat they’d occupied the last time, leaving Jaye little choice but to follow and sit across from them.

  “Where were you this morning around nine?” Brock asked, forgoing any pleasantries.

  “On my way to Tuba City,” Jaye responded, more perplexed than ever.

  “Can anyone corroborate that?”

  “I was with Daniel Yazzi. In fact, he was driving.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if I called him right now and asked him?” Anastos said. He was looking at her hard, as though with enough effort he might be able to divine the truth.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I have nothing to hide. In fact, I’ll give you his number.”

  Anastos pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and plugged in the numbers Jaye recited. Once he had Daniel on the line, he got right to the point. After a brief exchange, Anastos thanked him and ended the call. “Her alibi checks out,” he said to Brock. Jaye thought they both looked deflated by the news.

  “Exactly why is it I needed an alibi?” she asked, feeling a bit self-righteous.

  “There was a robbery this morning at Crystal Powers,” Anastos told her.

  “So naturally you assumed I was the thief.”

  “No, we thought you might be the thief given the evidence we found at the scene,” Brock said.

  “Evidence?” She’d never set foot in her competitor’s shop. How on earth could they have found evidence that she’d been there unless someone had planted it?

  Brock reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a business card that he held out to her.

  Jaye took it from him even though she knew immediately that the card was hers. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If I’ve never been in there, how . . .” Her mouth snapped shut as she realized the answer was lounging on her bed a few yards away. “I mean, what was stolen?”

  “An amethyst ring,” Anastos said.

  Jaye had a pretty good hunch where she could find the missing merchandise, but she had no intentions of telling them. “You know it’s also possible that whoever took the ring either dropped my card by accident or left it there to frame me.”

  “Again?” Brock sounded bored and annoyed. “First Peggy’s murder and now this? Are you going for the Guinness World Record for most framed?”

  Jaye realized she hadn’t thought that through too well. “You’re right,” she said with a laugh. “It must have been dropped by accident and maybe not even by the thief.”

  Brock stood up with a grunt of disgust, Anastos bobbing up a second later like a tardy shadow. “You might want to remind your friend Daniel that there are serious consequences for lying to the police,” Brock said as they walked to the door.

  “Obstruction of justice,” Anastos tacked on.

  Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Jaye wondered. The detectives didn’t appear to be big fans of the concept. “Any progress finding Peggy’s killer?” she inquired, trailing behind them. She knew it wasn’t smart to ride them about it, but she couldn’t stop herself. After all, she had a vested interest in the case.

  Brock opened the door and turned to her. “We can’t talk about an active investigation,” he said, “but I imagine you and Sierra will be hearing from us sooner than later.”

  Touché. She should have kept her mouth shut. Now she didn’t know whether the detectives had found more circumstantial evidence pointing to them or Brock was just enjoying some payback.

  ***

  Sierra and Frosty arrived at Jaye’s apartment at six o’clock with a mushroom pizza. For the sake of efficiency, the women had decided to combine dinner with a mutual debriefing about the day’s events. Of course, Jaye now had the additional surprise visit from the detectives to add to the agenda. Distracted by the smell of dinner, Raffles and Frosty put aside their lingering distrust of each other to better concentrate on begging for their share of the pie.

  “So Raffles had it?” Sierra asked after hearing about the missing amethyst.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Jaye said. “An amethyst ring in exchange for my business card. A lot of little things have gone missing since she’s come into my life. I should probably be grateful she’s not bigger or my TV and computer might have vanished by now.”

  “Did you check her pouch for the ring?”

  Jaye nodded as she worked on a mouthful of gooey cheese. “No sign of it,” she said after swallowing. “And Raffles took rather strong exception to my rummaging around in there. I’m lucky I still have all ten fingers.”

  “You sound surprisingly calm about this. Are you really okay?”

  “After Brock and Anastos left, I got myself all worked up over it. Then I decided I could only obsess about one disaster at a time—Peggy’s murder won hands down.” Jaye paused long enough to drink her orange soda before launching into a condensed version of her trip to Tuba City.

  “Are you sure you weren’t misreading their reaction to Raffles’s picture?” Sierra asked.

  “No, Daniel saw it too.”

  “You are becoming more and more of a mystery,” Sierra said to Raffles as she handed bits of the crust to her and Frosty. The dog took it with a quick slurp of his tongue, but Raffles used her fingers to transfer the food to her mouth in a ladylike manner.

  “And more and more of a problem.” Jaye pulled another slice out of the box and onto her plate. “Okay, it’s your turn,” she said to her friend. “Tell me about your first day as Nancy Drew.”

  “Interesting,” Sierra said with a coy smile. “I think you’ll be proud of me.”

  “Details—I want details.”

  “Well . . .,” she said, slowly plucking a mushroom off her slice.

  “You’re going to be wearing that pizza in a minute unless you start talking,” Jaye said, making a grab for it.

  Sierra pulled it away in the nick of time. “Okay, okay. First thing in the morning I stopped in to chat with Hallie and Peter.”

  “The jewelry store on the other side of Peggy’s bakery?”

  “Right. I said I was looking for a silver chain for a pendant. That way if I felt obligated to buy something I wouldn’t break the bank.”

  “Would that by any chance be the necklace you’re now wearing?”

  “It happens I really did need it,” Sierra said defensively.

  Jaye laughed as she broke off two pieces of pizza for the animals. “I’m glad I didn’t send you to see Adam Grayson. You can’t touch anything in his gallery for less than four figures.”

  “May I go on?”

  “By all means.”

  “I was saying how awful it was that P
eggy had been murdered and that I hadn’t thought she had an enemy in the world. That’s when Hallie told me that Peggy complained to her all the time about the smells from Finnegan’s kitchen seeping into her baked goods. Seems she’d talked to the landlord about it, but he’d insisted that his buildings were up to code and that he had no intentions of throwing money away to appease a nutcase. Peggy was sure he and Finnegan were ‘out to get her,’ as she put it.”

  “She sounds paranoid,” Jaye said. “She also assumed you opened your shop for the sole purpose of putting her out of business.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I started wondering if she suspected other people of being ‘out to get her’ and what she might have done about it. Which led me to visit our men in blue.”

  “Tan,” Jaye corrected her. “They wear tan uniforms here.”

  “It’s just a saying, professor. Let it go.”

  At that point, Frosty whined softly and, not to be outdone, Raffles produced a soulful trill, as if to remind their humans they still hadn’t had their fill of the goodies. Their performances netted them each another bite of pizza crust.

  “Who did you talk to there?” Jaye asked, wondering why she hadn’t thought of checking the police files herself. Between the two of them they nearly made one decent investigator.

  “Anastos and Brock were unavailable, so I had to make do with the cop who’d pulled desk duty—Bob Coster. He tried to tell me I couldn’t have access to that kind of information, until I told him I’d have my attorney there in five minutes to explain that he was wrong.”

  “We don’t actually have an attorney,” Jaye said, “unless you mean the jelly bean–popping Lasko.”

  “I was bluffing,” Sierra said. “I got the feeling Coster didn’t want to be bothered. As it turns out, I’ve got a better poker face than he does.” She seemed hugely pleased with herself.