He grinned down at me like I was a toy poodle yapping around for treats. “So we’re second choice then?”
“Not second choice,” I said. “We’re just movin’ our way up the ladder to bigger and better.”
He laughed out loud. “You’re funny. I like you. What are you ladies lookin’ for?”
“Jewelry,” Neely Kate said in a gush. “Antique-lookin’ stuff. With real gemstones.”
I cringed inwardly when he looked us over. Even though Neely Kate had on her pink gauzy top, I was wearing a plain, light-pink T-shirt, and we both had on dirty jeans and shoes. Not to mention the fact that my hair had seen better days. We definitely weren’t dressed for fancy jewelry shopping.
But he must have decided to look past our clothing. Smart man. You never knew who had money in southern Arkansas. A man who wore overalls and drove a thirty-year-old pickup truck just might be a multi-millionaire. “Jewelry, I have,” he said, walking around us and leading the way to the case. “But most of it’s newer. There’s not much of a market for vintage jewelry. And what I get, I usually sell online.”
Neely Kate gasped. “You sell it online?” She got an inquisitive look on her face and turned to me. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
I pretended to consider it. “If we can’t find what we want here, we can try that next.”
“Well, hold on there, little lady,” Hugh said, lifting his hands in surrender. “Tell me what you’re lookin’ for. If I don’t have it, I might be able to get it for ya. But why’s a young thing like you lookin’ for old jewelry?”
While he was misogynistic, he seemed genuinely friendly. Could this really be the man who wanted to eliminate James and take over the Fenton County criminal kingdom? In my vision, Jed hadn’t set eyes on Wagner. What if someone else was planning the attack?
I needed to have a vision of Hugh Wagner. It was the only way I could know for sure.
“I’m just an old-fashioned kind of girl,” Neely Kate said. “Some of my favorite memories are of wearing my grandmother’s jewelry. I’m going to a fancy dinner, and I need a necklace to wear with my dress. Besides, older things have better stories.” She gave him a once-over. “Do you know anything about the jewelry you got here?”
“Some of ’em,” he said. When she didn’t protest, he continued, “What are you looking for? Something light and dainty or something big and gaudy?”
Neely Kate snorted as though he was ridiculous. “The bigger, the better.”
Wagner chuckled again. “You got something in mind?”
“I’m looking for something with real stones. My new man says that a real woman deserves to wear real jewels.”
His eyes lit up. “You don’t say. Your man sounds like a keeper.”
She gave a half shrug as she examined the jewelry through the case. “I like to keep my options open, but I ain’t gonna say no if he’s offerin’ to buy me jewels.” She stopped and pointed to a necklace with a large center stone that looked like a ruby. “How much is that one?”
He turned all business. “Anything with stones that big is gonna cost ya.”
“I don’t care as long as it’s what I’m looking for,” she said as she began to peruse the cases. “But I’m wanting something with clear stones. Like diamonds.”
“Something with diamonds that big would run in the thousands. Tens of thousands.” He paused. “And I ain’t got nothin’ like that here. People in Henryetta don’t wear things like that.”
Neely Kate lifted her gaze to his, raising her chin enough to give him a snooty look. “I know, Mr. Wagner, and I’m tryin’ to change that.”
He chuckled again. “I suspect if anyone can, it’s a cute thing like you.”
Resisting the urge to make a face, I moved to the far end of the case.
“I guess it doesn’t have to be diamonds,” Neely Kate sighed out. “Aren’t there other stones besides diamonds that are clear?”
“I’m much more likely to have something like that,” Hugh Wagner said. He bent down and slid the back door of a case open. “What do you think of this?”
Neely Kate slid closer as he lifted out a necklace and draped it over his palm.
It wasn’t the necklace we were looking for, but it sure was gaudy. There were several larger stones at the bottom, centered between ten smaller stones on either side. “What stone is this?” she asked.
“White topaz.”
“It’s kind of yellow.”
“If you’re looking for clear stones this large, they’re gonna have a yellow cast. Unless you go with that cubic zirconia. I have some of that.” He thumbed his free hand toward a case on the other side of the room. “But nothin’ with a vintage look.”
“Does it have a story?” she asked.
“It sure does. It belonged to a woman up in Columbia County. She’s eighty-one years old and has hit on hard times and had to sell some of her jewelry.”
“That’s so sad,” Neely Kate said, and I could tell that she was being genuine.
He shrugged. “Aww . . . she was happy. She said St. Peter wasn’t gonna let her take it past the Pearly Gates, and I paid her good money for it.”
Neely Kate took the necklace and held it up to the base of her throat. “Whaddaya think, Beth Ann?”
I pretended to give it serious thought. “I dunno. It doesn’t seem quite right.”
“You got a mirror?” Neely Kate asked.
“Sure,” Wagner said, fumbling over himself to get to the small round mirror standing on the other end of the counter.
This was the man who was wanting to take over James’ territory?
He brought the mirror back, and Neely Kate feigned giving it serious consideration as I continued to search the cases. I didn’t hold out much hope for finding the necklace here. Raddy’s missing necklace had more stones than the one Wagner had produced, and based on the dollar signs dancing in his eyes, he would have pulled it out if he’d had it.
Neely Kate was handing the necklace back when something in the case caught my eye.
“Can I see this?” I asked.
He returned the necklace to the case, then moved down to where I was standing. “Which one?”
I pointed. “The owl pin.”
Neely Kate’s head jerked up, and she moved closer to get a look. “Oh,” she fawned. “That’s darling.”
He handed me the brooch, and even though I hadn’t seen a photo of Raddy’s piece, I was certain this was it. The gold pin was about an inch and a half tall, with etchings outlining the owl’s wings and face. It had two one-eighth-karat-sized red stones for eyes.
“What’s the story behind this one?” Neely Kate asked.
“Dunno,” he said. “I got it from some guy at the other pawn shop, believe it or not.”
I looked up at him. “You don’t say? Do you do that very often? Swap things back and forth?”
“There weren’t no swappin’, little lady. I bought it from him.”
“Are those garnets?” I asked.
“Nope. Those are genuine rubies. The real kind, not the lab-created ones.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He pulled a little lens out of his jeans pocket and held it up to his eye. “A lab-created ruby is pretty near perfect, but a natural one has flaws. See that line?” He handed me the lens and I cautiously held it up to my eye and looked down at the stone he was pointing to. Sure enough, there was a tiny line within it.
Neely Kate reached for the lens and spent a good twenty seconds looking over the stones. She handed the lens back to Wagner and asked, “How much?”
“Five hundred.”
Neely Kate started laughing. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
“Why would I be kiddin’ ya?”
Putting a hand on her hip, Neely Kate shook her head. “That brooch is worth a hundred tops.”
I looked up at him. “Would you take a hundred fifty?”
Neely Kate shot me a look that told me I was crazy.
He grimaced. �
�Aww . . . I don’t know . . . I can’t—”
“Okay. Thanks anyway. Let’s go, Nancy.” Then I spun around and started for the door.
“Oh, dammit,” he grumbled. “Come back, little lady. Maybe we can work something out.”
I turned around to face him. “One twenty-five. Not a penny more.”
“But you just said—” He groaned. “Fine. One twenty-five. I’ll ring it up.” He picked up the pin and headed to the end of the counter to write up a paper sales slip.
Neely Kate leaned her head toward mine. “What are you doin’?”
“You know this brooch is Raddy’s,” I whispered. “So why doesn’t he want it back?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe he’s focusing on the necklace because he knows it’s worth more.”
“But he specifically said the only thing missing was the necklace. Why wouldn’t he ask for the owl? Does he even know it’s gone?”
“He probably doesn’t give a rat’s petunia about any of it. He probably only wants the necklace because someone’s willin’ to pay him five thousand dollars for it.”
I was about to say more, but Hugh ripped off the sheet, then walked back toward me. “At that discount, darlin’, you’re gonna have to pay me in cash.”
Paying him with my debit card would have raised too many issues anyway—including the fact that my name wasn’t Beth Ann. Besides, we still had four hundred dollars of Raddy’s retainer left. I turned to Neely Kate.
“You’re holding my money, remember, Nancy?” I looked her square in the eye, and even though I could see that she wasn’t one hundred percent on board with this decision, she still reached into her purse. As she handed over the money, I wondered if I’d made the right decision. I suspected Raddy wasn’t going to reimburse us, and brooches weren’t exactly my style. Still, it was evidence, and it seemed important for us to collect any we found.
“You didn’t see anything you liked?” Hugh asked Neely Kate.
She shook her head with a frown. “No, but would you give me a call if somethin’ good comes in?” For a terrifying moment, I thought she was going to give him a business card, but she grabbed the pad of sales receipts and wrote down a phone number I didn’t recognize along with the name Nancy. “I really have my heart set on a necklace with clear stones, and I’m willing to pay for it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said with a grin.
“Here’s your pin,” he said to me, holding out a tiny bag.
I realized I hadn’t had a vision yet. However awkward it was going to be, I needed to make sure it happened before we left the store. Hugh Wagner—James’ arch nemesis—was throwing me for a loop, and I needed to make sure James would survive to the weekend. I shot a quick glance to Neely Kate, then pretended to stumble as I took the bag from Hugh.
As soon as my hand met his arm, I struggled to force a vision of what Hugh would be doing on Friday night. I felt Neely Kate’s hand on my shoulder just before the world around me fell away. I found myself looking at . . . well, myself. Vision Rose was sitting in the kitchen at my farmhouse with a serious look on her face. She was wearing dark clothes and checking her gun. Her mouth was moving, but I didn’t hear my voice. Instead, I heard male voices that didn’t fit with the scene in front of me.
“Why you gotta go stirrin’ up trouble, Kip?” Hugh said, almost in a whine. “I like things just fine the way they are.”
“And that’s your damn problem, Hugh,” a man snarled. “You never wanna grow or expand. This is a golden opportunity we don’t want to miss.”
“But we’re makin’ a killin’ with this stuff.”
“Just do your damn job,” a man said in a gruff voice. “And let me do mine.”
“But people are goin’ to get hurt.”
“That’s the causalities of war, idiot.”
I was slammed back into the pawn shop. “There’s gonna be casualties of war,” I gasped, the blood rushing from my head. I took a step backward as the room seemed to spin around me.
Hugh’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “What are you talkin’ about?”
Neely Kate laughed, but it sounded forced to my ears. “It’s a book she’s reading—Causalities of War. I think it’s an old Civil War book. She’s kind of obsessed with it.” She snatched the bag with the brooch from his hand. “Call me if you get any more necklaces in.”
“Yeah . . .” he stammered. “Sure.”
Looping her arm through mine, Neely Kate turned me around and headed for the door. As she tugged me toward it, I caught sight of a man with short, dirty-blond hair leaning against the doorway to the back. He looked like a harder, rougher version of Hugh. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his dark eyes narrowed as he watched me.
I’d bet money he was Kip.
Kip Wagner.
Chapter 7
Neely Kate dragged me out the door and pushed me into the passenger side, then climbed behind the wheel, which was a good thing since I still hadn’t physically recovered from my vision.
“What made you force a vision?” she asked, snatching my purse from me and digging inside looking for the keys.
I didn’t answer, my brain still addled.
Once she found them, she shoved them into the ignition, started the engine. “Rose. What happened? You’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
I moved my mouth and tried to answer, but only a croak came out. I took a breath and tried again. “I had a vision.”
“I already figured that part out. What made you do it? What did you see?” She’d already driven far enough away from the shop that we were probably out of view.
I leaned over to check the mirror on the door. “Are they following us?”
“Why in the world would they be following us?”
“Did you see the guy in the doorway to the back?”
“Barely. I was too worried about you. You looked like you were about to faint.”
“I saw him in my vision. Or more like I heard him.”
“The guy in the doorway?”
I nodded, swallowing. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding, and I felt dangerously close to throwing up. My visions usually didn’t affect me other than a momentary blackout, but the previous winter, I’d asked to see things that weren’t going to happen, and my questions had plunged me into a gray abyss that had persisted until I’d asked to see something else. I’d ended up vomiting and having a massive headache. Right now, I felt five times worse.
“What did you see that freaked you out so much?” Her voice rose and I knew I’d scared the dickens out of her. “I’m guessing you had a vision for the sales guy?”
I leaned my head back, resting my hand on my protesting stomach. “And you.”
She blinked and did a double take. “I was in the vision you had of him?”
“No. It was weird. I was trying to have a vision of him, but then you touched my shoulder. It was like I had visions of both of you, only they got mixed up.”
“What happened?”
“My vision of you was of me in the kitchen in the farmhouse. I was dressed all in black and checking my gun.”
“Were you saying anything?”
“My mouth was moving, but my voice didn’t come out. I heard the vision I had of Hugh. I’m pretty sure he was talking to the guy in the doorway.”
“But how can you be sure if you didn’t see them?”
“I’m pretty sure the guy in the doorway is Hugh’s brother, Kip.” I paused and sat up, sending a spike of pain through my head. “Neely Kate, I think Kip is the one who’s making a run for James’ position in the Fenton County underground.”
“What?”
I took a breath, wondering how much to tell her.
“But . . . how would you reach that conclusion?” Her shoulders stiffened, and then her voice became sharp and clipped. “Your mysterious afternoon. You saw Skeeter and he told you about that guy.” She shot me a glare. “Is that why you got your gun? Because you knew we were going to
see Skeeter’s competition? Only, you kept it from me?”
“No! We didn’t even know we were going to Ripper. Besides, I had no idea Wagner was connected to the pawn shop. James told me over a month ago that a man named Wagner is after his kingdom, but he refused to tell me anything about the threat. Once—after I pressed him more—he finally told me Wagner works in retail.”
“The pawn shop.”
“Yeah.”
“So what made you decide to have a vision?”
“I was confused. I knew the guy after James is named Wagner, but Hugh seemed too nice to just barrel into the pool hall and start shooting.”
“What? Why would you think he’d start shooting?”
I glanced at her. Time to come clean. “James asked me to meet him this afternoon so I could have a vision. He was worried Wagner’s about to make a move. So I forced a vision of Friday night and saw him and Jed in the middle of a gunfight in the pool hall. Then one of the other guys threw a Molotov cocktail onto a pool table and started a fire.”
“Oh my word. Was Jed—and Skeeter—okay?”
I gave her a startled look. “Yeah, he and James were fine in the vision. But there was a raging fire, and they were trapped. It wasn’t looking good.” I paused. “So when I heard that Hugh’s last name was Wagner, I looked for what he would be doing on Friday night. I couldn’t figure out why such a mild-mannered guy would shoot up James’ pool hall.”
“So in the vision, you were getting ready for battle,” she said.
Well, crap. I hadn’t even pondered that part of the vision yet, but it made sense. I wasn’t about to spend Friday night re-watching Gilmore Girls episodes if I knew James and Jed were in danger. “Yeah, I was. But Hugh was trying to talk Kip out of doing whatever he had planned—without success.”
“So you still didn’t explain why you’re really carrying a gun.”
I sighed, my headache starting to fade. “James was worried. He figures it’s unlikely anyone would associate me with him considerin’ how much time has passed since last winter—we’ve been careful not to be seen together—but just in case, he wanted me to be prepared to defend myself.”
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