Jewels in the Juniper (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 10)

by Dale Mayer

  “Apparently, according to Reginald, what arrived didn’t match what was ordered. While that was in a state of chaos, the break-in occurred, so they couldn’t say exactly what was stolen, as they had no receipts and no appraisals for the new jewels. So, when the insurance paid out, it was only enough to cover the cost of the documented main order, without the new jewels added on. The insurance investigation checked with the supply house. It had receipts for what they shipped on the main order, but the add-ons that were phoned in didn’t match what had been shipped. And then, with the insurance claim still unsettled and suspicious, soon afterward the big fire at Johnson and Abelman Jewelers burned up everything.”

  “So, it was a double insurance claim, is that it?” Doreen asked. “Oh, no, the insurance company dropped all coverage until this claim was settled, as they were suspicious of the theft claim—right?”

  “Exactly. When the insurance investigator went to the store, they found the jewelry store didn’t have the proper security or the updated fire alarms which the insurance company demanded, invalidating any coverage. So they got cold feet and dropped all coverage while they were still fighting over the insurance claim on the stolen jewels. Right before the fire happened.”

  “This was your brother’s insurance company?”

  “Yes, but he was only a part owner,” Mangus said. “His silent partner—I forget his name now, but he passed on many years ago—was trying to keep the business afloat after that, and, of course, they wouldn’t pay for anything they didn’t have to.”

  “Which would also explain how he and Aretha bonded,” Doreen said with a nod. “Because he would have blamed his partner for being the difficult one.”

  “Exactly,” Mangus said. “But the truth of the matter is, my brother was very much a hard businessman anyway. And he made good money, but I know that both of his sons ended up in a lot of financial trouble, and he bailed them out. They were part of his first marriage to the wife he adored, so he did anything he could to make their lives easier. And, of course, he was married to Aretha back then, but he took care of his two sons first. I don’t think he funneled much money into Aretha’s pockets.”

  Doreen sat back as she worked away on the banana bread. She was surprised she could still eat so much, but it was so good. “Sounds like a very tragic life for Aretha.”

  “The trouble is, it’s so hard to feel sorry for her,” Nan said, “because she’s not a very nice person.”

  “Particularly where women are concerned,” Mangus added. “I think she’s always seen women as competition. As her circumstances changed, she couldn’t keep up.”

  “What about all the women who surround her?”

  “That’s a good question,” Mangus said. “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s still because she’s one of the older families here, and that’s why they like to hang around with her. Honestly, I’m happy if she does have some friends because she surely needs some.” He frowned as he studied his plate. “So, what should I have next?”

  Nan chuckled. “You haven’t had any of this.” She shoved what looked like small doughnuts toward him.

  He reached out his fingers, hesitating over a couple of them, as if he couldn’t choose. “Oh, what the heck,” he said with a shrug, then picked up both. Doreen smiled. He caught the look on her face and grinned. “Hey, when you get to my age, nothing else matters.” And then he looked at Doreen, reached to the same plate, picked up two more, and dumped them on her plate. “You are a big strapping girl,” he said. “You can eat more too!”

  Doreen stared in horror at the two sugary doughnuts, then chuckled. “I’ll be a big strapping girl if I keep eating like this.”

  At that, he gave a loud guffaw of laughter. “You’re a long way away from hitting that stage,” he said. “In fact, you could use a few pounds.”

  She just rolled her eyes at that. “I had salmon with fettuccine in a creamy dill sauce last night. I’m hardly starving.”

  Nan, her eyes suddenly alight with curiosity, leaned forward. “Did Mack cook that for you?”

  “Yes, and, while I saw what he did, or at least most of what he did, I’m still not sure I could ever replicate it.”

  “Who knew our detective would be such a good cook?” Mangus said.

  “Not me,” Doreen replied, “but I’m definitely reaping the benefits.” She looked back at Mangus. “Did you ever have any theories about what happened with that break-in?”

  “Sure did,” he said. “I was pretty darn certain Reginald had orchestrated it.”

  Doreen sat back. “What an interesting theory,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

  “I suppose it comes from what I’ve heard from Aretha and her parents over the years. Her husband didn’t have a lick of business sense, but he was also a bit of a buffoon. He wouldn’t listen to advice from anyone. Every project he tried to manage blew up into a disaster. He just couldn’t seem to get into the rhythm of what business meant. He had all these big schemes, one of which was to sell everything and then go buy all the lottery tickets he could, saying, No way I can’t win.”

  “Ouch,” Nan said. “Sure they’re rigged, but that just means it’s even more rigged as you buy more. Plus back then lottery was a newish game in town. Nothing secure there.”

  Mangus nodded. “We all know that, but he was always looking for a get-rich-quick scheme.”

  “But he was a partner in a big jewelry company that would come down to him and his wife anyway,” Doreen argued. “Why would he be in such a rush to become wealthy?”

  “Because he didn’t really want to work for a living,” Mangus said. “Not like we did in the old days.” He glanced at Nan, who was busy nodding in agreement as she ate some pastry Doreen honestly didn’t remember seeing on the plates.

  Doreen studied the plates to see if there were any more, then realized how ridiculous she was being because her plate still had a little piece of cinnamon bun, banana bread, and two sugary doughnuts on it. Still, she was up for the challenge. “But, if Reginald had done this,” she said, “surely he would have been caught?”

  “Well, then there was the fire, which pretty much finished the business, and Aretha’s parents died,” Mangus said. “So, even though they inherited, they didn’t inherit anything of any great value.”

  “But the insurance would have paid out,” she said.

  “Not on the jewels, as they didn’t have any proof of the stock value. Only a rider to say the amount they kept on hand on an average day. Not for this extra shipment. And, once the building burned, without any insurance coverage whatsoever, they didn’t have anything left.”

  “Is that when Reginald died?”

  “A few years after that. He had changed. I used to go down there every once in a while, get my watch fixed, get my wife the odd piece of jewelry. After the fire, there was just no other place in town with the same quality. I remember seeing him at a pub, drowning his sorrows. He was rambling on about how his wife wouldn’t let him off the hook and that she blamed him for everything.”

  “Everything?”

  He nodded. “The theft, the fire, the bankruptcy. Everything.”

  “Wow,” Doreen said. And then she thought about Aretha, the cold woman who had suffered so much. “She might very well have blamed him, and, if she ever found any proof, then, of course, that would make it that much harder.”

  “Always,” he said.

  “Did the parents commit suicide? Maybe despondent over the loss of their income, their business?”

  “Don’t think so,” he said. “As far as I understood, it was a car accident.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “But the Abelmans did inherit at that point, right?”

  “Sure, but, like I said, they didn’t inherit much.”

  “Right,” Doreen said. “After all that trouble, everything would have been a big complicated mess.”

  “Unless, of course,” Nan said, “and I’m just wondering here, but maybe the Johnsons were going after their son-in-law
for destroying their business. Then maybe he burned it down in retaliation?”

  “And that would only happen if they had any reason to suspect him,” Doreen said. She kept trying to twist all the parts into their rightful places, but, so far, she didn’t have enough. “What I wouldn’t give to see some of the insurance forms from back then.”

  “I’ve still got a lot of the boxes from my brother’s company,” Mangus said. “You’re welcome to look through them.”

  Doreen stared at him. “Why would you have the boxes?”

  “Because my brother saved everything from the business because he wanted his sons to step in. But neither of them had the interest or the aptitude, and at least my brother was smart enough to understand that.”

  “So why did you end up with the boxes when it was sold? Why didn’t it all go with the business?”

  “This is a lot of historical stuff. He’d already had it all scanned, so digital copies exist in the cloud storage somewhere,” he said, emphasizing the internet way of doing business, as if it were something completely foreign. “I told him not to get rid of the paper files, just in case, and that I could store them, so he had a backup.”

  “But he’s been gone quite a few years now, hasn’t he?”

  “Yep,” he said. “The thing is, I’ve put everything into storage. I have one of those big storage units, and one of these days when I’m gone, my poor family will have to empty it out.” He shook his finger at her. “But, if you want, you can get those boxes and see if you can figure anything out.”

  “I’d love to see if I could,” Doreen said. “Any idea how many boxes we’re talking about?”

  He gave her a fat smile. “A dozen or so.”

  She groaned. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, laughing. “Besides, it’s not like you have anything else to do.”

  “Well, I was trying to finish my gardening so I could get a deck built, but I’m still struggling to get the supplies.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  And, just like that, the entire conversation switched to her deck addition.

  “I think I’ve got it down to about four hundred dollars now,” Doreen said. “But it doesn’t seem like enough material for that much of a drop in my estimate. So I’m not too sure yet. It will probably be at least twice that.”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Mangus said. “Once you start a project like that, the costs just keep rising. Budgets get thrown out the window, and you’re lucky if you even finish the dratted thing.”

  Chapter 17

  Monday Noon …

  By the time the brunch was over, Doreen still didn’t have concrete information, but now she had a dozen boxes to collect. Mangus had offered to have them pulled from the storage unit and sent to her home, and she’d been grateful to hear that. She asked him what she should do when she’d finished with them.

  “Shred them all and put them in the recycling bin.”

  She nodded in agreement. She didn’t know when she would be getting the boxes, but it wouldn’t be a good day for her when she had to go through a dozen or more of them, filled with potentially useless paperwork. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure how to figure out what was going on otherwise. She did like the theory that Reginald had been to blame for all the problems, but, at the same time, that was also a simplistic answer. And the store had gotten a lot of the jewels back, but had they gotten all of them? She didn’t know. It seemed to her somebody who was part of that whole shebang had tried to save a bag of jewels and had put them away for later. Maybe either Reginald or Aretha.

  Would Aretha have been a part of it? Doreen hoped not, but it was possible Aretha’s husband had been—both of them actually. Now if only Aretha would talk to Doreen about it. What were the chances these jewels were Aretha’s? And, if that were the case, Aretha needed them, and she needed them badly. But she wouldn’t get them unless they were really hers. Doreen would have to wait and see just what came from Mangus’s boxes.

  All kinds of information could be there, but Doreen didn’t know what business documents had to be handed over for an insurance policy to cover that level of coverage. Was it just stock to be replaced or was it loss of business? And then you had to prove it.

  She wandered home slowly, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She had barely hit the property line when her phone rang. It was Zachary Winters again. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi. Did you think about my offer?” Zachary asked.

  “No,” she said. “I already told you the answer is no.”

  “Sure,” he said. “But you know what? I drove past your house, and it’s obvious you can use the funds.”

  “I’d like to know how you found out about the jewels,” she said.

  “Oh, you know, great finds are great for spreading information,” he said.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but they’re not very good for building confidence.”

  “Confidence is overrated. As long as I pay the money, what do you care? You could be tens of thousands of dollars richer.”

  “But I’d like to know who they belong to.”

  He stopped and said, “Wait. They’re not yours?”

  And she realized her gaffe. “Yes, they’re mine, but they came from somewhere.”

  “So you don’t know the history of them?” he asked, his voice suspicious.

  “You mean, you’re asking for its provenance now?” she asked in a caustic tone. She’d had more than enough of dealing with provenance after all Nan’s antiques had been uncovered.

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “I understand now that you ended up with them.”

  “Yes, you could put it that way,” she said.

  “Even better reason for me buying them off of you.”

  “And how do you know they are of such good quality?”

  “Because somebody told me they are.”

  “That just comes back to the jewelry store where I took them to be appraised. Who leaked it? Mindy or Jeremy? I could have their businesses collapse over this. Sharing confidential information is unethical.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Besides, if you accept the money, then we’re all happy.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “There’s a price for silence.”

  “What? So now you want a higher price for them?” And it was his turn to get disgusted.

  “And yet you seem to think you’re offering me a fair price,” she said.

  Then his next offer had her eyebrows shooting up.

  “Are you telling me that isn’t enough?” he said. “If you invest that, you’ll be just fine for a while.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but all she could think about was Aretha. Doreen hated the fact she could sympathize with and relate to the woman.

  “We figured these were involved in a robbery from years ago anyway,” Zachary said.

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “Because a lot of high-end jewels went missing many years ago, and they were never recovered. We think these might be part of that haul. As there was no insurance on them, there weren’t any appraisals to go by all these years.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” she said.

  “Insurance companies tend to contact other jewelers, gem setters, and jewelry makers to let them know when things are stolen. Because, once they’re stolen, then they can become a whole different item. And, of course, they should be returned to the police.”

  “Interesting,” Doreen said. “I don’t suppose you have any of those old alerts, do you?”

  “Maybe,” he said, his tone curious. “But they’re yours legally, aren’t they?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “Do you have proof?”

  “I’d like to see your alerts first,” she said.

  “Give me your email, and I’ll send them to you. I really am interested in buying them.”

  “You can get jewels anywhere, so why do you care so much about these?”

 
“I’d like the emerald in particular. I figured I’d have to buy the whole lot to get it.”

  “Why that one?”

  “Because according to the person who told me about it, it looks to be a match to one I have that I bought for my wife a long time ago. We ordered the second one, but it never came in.”

  “Who did you order it from?” she asked calmly, but she waited with bated breath.

  “Johnson and Abelman,” he said.

  “That must have been a long time ago.”

  “Yep,” he said. “We’ve been married a lot of years, and I’ve always wanted to get it for her.”

  “You’ve been hanging on to the first emerald this whole time?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This was supposed to be a match for hers.”

  “Does she care now?”

  “She cares,” he said. “She cares a lot.”

  “Send me the alerts, and let me take a look.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Remember. If it’s one of those, then by rights the police have to be informed.”

  “Don’t worry about the police,” she said. “It’s already been cleared.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “Like I said, I still want it.”

  “I hear you,” she said, “and I want those alerts.”

  “I just sent them to you. Call me.” Then he hung up.

  Chapter 18

  Monday Early Afternoon …

  As soon as Doreen walked into her house, she sat down before her laptop. Overly full, and definitely not needing anything else to spike her energy, like coffee, she brought up her email. Sure enough, she had a new message. As she opened the file, she found a scanned copy of a page from a long time ago. Somebody must have kept them. This was an alert about the Johnson and Abelman Jewelers robbery and quite a few jewels that had gone missing. There was a brief description of the types of jewels and an ugly blurred image on the top of the page. Of which could describe what she’d found—or rather some of it could match up.

  There was no follow-up on it, but then it was possible Zachary wasn’t sending everything to her. Maybe some of these alerts were sent from the jewelry company itself? Hoping to nudge someone into handing over the gems? As she looked at the page, she noted it came from Hobart’s Insurance Company. So, if the boxes coming from Mangus had something similar in its files, there could be one saying some of the jewels had been found.