by Dale Mayer
“Do you know how many gems were in the last bag?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t remember. Only that this last group had an emerald he didn’t dare sell because it had been specially ordered by a friend of mine for his wife.” She shook her head. “It was so hard to hold my head up in society.”
“Was it helpful when your husband died?”
“I don’t know about helpful, but it allowed me to close a chapter. A long and sordid chapter I was desperate to be done with.”
“And even if some jewels do show up,” Doreen said, “there’s no way to prove whose they are, is there?”
“No, probably not. The whole thing was a mess with many clerical errors, which is why the insurance wouldn’t pay on that group of stones, as they couldn’t be proven to have been part of the shipment or that they were in our possession. The only way would be if the emerald happened to be with them.”
“Why is that?”
“It was a very specific emerald that was custom ordered. Records exist for that. But not that it was ever received.”
“Do you know who ordered the emerald?”
The older woman smiled and nodded. “Yes, I do,” she said. “It was an old friend, like I said. His name is Zachary. Zachary Winters.”
Bingo.
Chapter 19
Monday Afternoon …
Doreen left soon afterward. She hadn’t told Aretha about the jewels Millicent had found. Still, too many unanswered questions were here. Not the least of which was the question of whether any crimes had been committed that mattered today. If those jewels were from the store, did they belong to Aretha? Did they belong to the insurance company? Or did they belong to Millicent because she had turned them in to the police and then had them returned again? Doreen just didn’t understand enough about how that worked. She would have to talk to Mack. But she realized for the first time that she and her animals had found no dead bodies related to this case. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change? She skipped along the road with the animals, quite cheerful at the thought of making so much progress.
As she walked toward her driveway, she saw a strange vehicle, which looked like a Lexus, parked in front of Richard’s place. She frowned at that, but, as she got closer, a man stepped out, and she recognized Jeremy, the appraiser from the jewelry store. With her hands on her hips, she glared at him. “Aren’t you a lousy piece of work?”
He flushed. “This friend of mine has been looking for that emerald for a long time,” he said.
“Interesting,” she said, “and I get that. But you should not be leaking information. Confidentiality is everything in the jewelry business.”
“It is,” he said, “and Zachary told me that he’s contacted you several times.”
Doreen nodded. “That’s correct. And?”
He hesitated and said, “If you ever want to sell it …”
“You didn’t even tell me what it’s worth,” she said. “Not that I can trust anything you say now. And, by the time I’m done letting everybody know what you did—”
“Wait,” he said, holding up his hand. “It was only in this extenuating circumstance.”
“Why is that?” Doreen sneered. “It was forty years ago.”
“Zachary and I knew each other back then. He was my best friend’s father.”
“How do I know you didn’t steal them to begin with?”
“Look. I didn’t know him when all this happened, but he told me that he’d been hunting for the emerald a long time. He contacted the company it was ordered from and learned it had been shipped to Kelowna. So he knew it was here in town and just hoped it would show up one day.”
“So, why is it so important, even after all these years?” she asked. “It’s just an emerald.”
He smiled. “Just an emerald to you maybe. But you have to understand his wife was everything to him.”
“Past tense?”
“Will be soon,” he said. “She’s got cancer, and he’s afraid she won’t live too much longer.”
“So what difference does the emerald make then?” she asked curiously.
“It’s been eating away at the two of them all this time. If nothing else, they want closure.”
“And, if he can,” she said with a nod, “he wants to buy it and finally give it to her. Is that it?”
“Well, the treatments are ongoing, and he’s hoping she’ll pull through, and they’ll have another twenty years. Either way, he would like to finish something he had promised her way back when.”
“Does she have the other one?”
He nodded. “He had it set in an earring, and it’s waiting for this one.”
“And you think that’s the one I had you take a look at?”
“I’m positive,” he said. “I’ve identified and appraised the other one several times. I know they’re a matched set.”
“Interesting,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
He hesitated.
She glared at him. “Don’t pressure me.”
“They’ll pay a good price.”
“I heard you,” she said, “and I said I’ll think about it.”
“Already more lives have been damaged than we ever realized from this.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, when the store had the break-in, then the fire, and then going belly-up, it impacted not just the Johnsons directly but everybody else too.”
“Meaning, the people who had ordered the jewelry had hopes and dreams of their own.”
“And a lot of the creditors took a hit.”
“It sounds like the Johnson family took the biggest hit,” Doreen said. “They lost everything.”
“I know. And for that I’m sorry.”
“I think everybody’s forgotten about Aretha.”
He nodded. “That’s possible. She did remarry, so everybody assumed she was okay. The problem is, the theft is so old that not many people care anymore.”
“I don’t think anybody can assume that,” Doreen said quietly. Inside her head, Doreen was screaming, I care. I care. “Like I said, don’t push me.” And she turned and walked up to her house, letting herself and the animals inside. Then she walked to the living room window to watch him drive away. She released her pent-up breath. “We really need to talk to Mack about this one.”
That we do, she answered herself. She headed into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of ice tea. Sitting outside on the deck with her notes, she tried to focus. Some of it was pretty self-explanatory, and it appeared all the culprits were dead. And maybe that was all that mattered. Maybe all that remained was that people needed to deal with their losses.
Then she thought about the Johnsons, wondering if they had committed suicide with their car accident. And then she thought about Aretha’s husband. Had he died on his own?
She had been sitting here only twenty minutes or so when the doorbell rang. Mugs, already tired and frustrated, was busy barking at the front door, letting the world know there was an intruder.
Doreen opened the front door, surprised to see an older man. “Zachary Winters, by any chance?”
He beamed. “That’s me.”
“Well, I’m not inviting you in,” she said.
His face fell. “I can understand that. It’s not that I’m trying to rush you—”
“But you’re trying to rush me,” she said. “I need to talk to the police about this.”
“Oh.” He stopped and stared at her.
She shrugged. “I like to do things properly, so go away and leave me alone for now. As long as nothing criminal is involved, then I’ll be happy to consider your request.”
“I don’t know much about it, but I doubt anything criminal was done,” he said. “I know the Johnsons died in a car accident a long time ago. Even if somebody did try to kill them, that person is probably not around anymore.”
“If somebody did, my vote would be for Reginald Abelman, their son-in-law.”
He snorted at that. “Slimy
little bugger, yes,” he said. “I’d have voted for him too.”
“I’m still figuring it out.”
He shrugged. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
Pulling out her phone, Doreen hit Record. “You can start by telling me exactly what happened.”
Lifting his eyebrows, he said, “Not a whole lot to say. We ordered the twin emeralds, my wife and I. It was so great when we were called in. I was so excited. In the end, we approved one, but the second emerald had a flaw in it. It just wasn’t good enough. That’s why they wanted me to come in again. So they sent it back and ordered a replacement. We waited and waited, and finally we got a phone call, saying it was in. The next morning we arrived to find the police there and the business shut down, due to a break-in the previous night. At that moment, I knew it was gone.”
“Did you talk to anybody about the emerald?”
“Just my wife and I,” he said. “Well, and Abelman, of course. He’s the one we’d talked to before.”
“Interesting,” she said. “And then what happened?”
“We left. We had hoped the jewel thief would be caught, and the jewels recovered, and then, the next thing I know, a week, maybe two weeks later, the business burned up. That was followed by bankruptcy, the tragic car accident, and then sometime later, Abelman died as well.”
“Any idea how Reginald died?”
“I believe he committed suicide,” he said.
She nodded. “Like I said, I’m not ready to make a decision on that emerald yet, so you can head out.”
He replied with a bark of laughter. “If it wasn’t for that emerald separating you and me,” he said, “I think I’d like you just fine.”
Chapter 20
Monday Late Afternoon …
Doreen closed the door after speaking with Zachary Winters but stood to the side of the big window in her living room, so she could watch him leave. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him; it was just that everything was blowing up in her face, and she wasn’t sure who was involved and what everybody’s agenda was. All she knew for sure was that she had one agenda, and that was to solve the mystery Millicent had given her. But Doreen still wondered who really did own those jewels. There was money involved, apparently a decent amount of it, but she wasn’t sure how much. But for anyone who was broke, any money was a boon.
Millicent didn’t appear to want anything to do with it, but that didn’t mean Mack wasn’t interested. And then there was Aretha.
Shaking her head, Doreen wandered into the kitchen and outside onto the deck. Enough of the afternoon sun was still out for her to sit and relax, as she pondered the big slash of dirt in her backyard where tarps had yet to be placed and where cinder blocks were to be laid down. She wondered if the blocks should go first.
She had a lot of things to consider with her deck expansion, and what she didn’t want was to end up with long grass coming through her deck boards if they let just-enough light through for things to grow underneath.
And then she had to wonder about lights and shadows and deception.
Was Reginald Abelman really that foolish? If he was overeager, young, and ambitious, then, yes, potentially. If he’d engineered the theft, what had happened to all the other jewels? Who had he sold them to?
She almost wished the brothers who had been involved in Crystal’s kidnapping were available to talk to. She bet they would know who could have fenced the jewels. Or at least might have known what direction to point her to. This all happened before their time, but she felt they’d have some idea, being in the B&E business. It was all such a mystery to her. And, of course, Crystal’s father had run a pawnbroker business. He might have fenced them. But would he even have anything to say? Then again, he probably wasn’t close to old enough. She was grasping at straws. Looking for someone to talk to. And coming up empty.
As she sat down with another glass of tea and pondered all of what she had learned, Mack called. She filled him in on her conversations with both the appraiser and with Zachary Winters.
“So it was the emerald from that burglary?” he said, his voice thoughtful. “And, of course, the case file wasn’t very extensive.”
“A lot of jewelry here is listed as part of the insurance claim, but Abelman didn’t have it on their store inventory.”
“And apparently it wasn’t insured enough anyway. I did check into some of the notes we have here. The insurance they were supposed to have was an extra rider covering jewels that were in shipments, and they didn’t have that.”
“The Johnsons also weren’t expecting the large order coming in,” she said. “Apparently Abelman ordered it all without their knowledge.”
“It’s almost as if he was trying to make the business go under.”
“And yet he was benefiting from the profits. So how does any of this make sense?”
“It doesn’t yet,” Mack said, “but I’m sure, with a little more digging, you’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I’m a little tired and, well, frustrated.”
“Of course you are. It sounds like you had a pretty big day. How did your breakfast with Mangus go?”
“It was tea and treats,” she said with a laugh. “And I had way too much sugar, among other things, but Mangus is a fascinating guy.”
“Anything else come out of those boxes?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at the other eleven boxes. I scanned and emailed you a bunch of stuff earlier. But now? Well, now I’ll spend the rest of the day just thinking about all this and hoping I can find a way to fit it into a puzzle that shows a picture. At the moment they’re disjointed odd shapes.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.
“Wait,” Doreen said. “What about your case? Anything new on the old women?”
“Still waiting on the autopsies.”
“Anything else interesting happening?” she asked hopefully.
“For you, no,” Mack said, his tone allowing no argument. “For me, lots, so I better get back to it.” On that note he hung up.
She snorted down at her phone. “Of course for you,” she said. “You just don’t realize how lucky you are that I’m not in the same office. Imagine if we worked together.” She gave a short laugh.
At that moment, Mugs plunked himself down on her feet. She reached down to scratch him. “Not too sure what’s going on, buddy,” she muttered. He gave a light woof and rolled onto his back, as if to say the only thing that mattered was that his belly got scratched. She gave him several moments of attention, then realized Goliath was wandering through the garden, stopping to sniff all the plants she’d gotten from Heidi. And that was a good reminder. They probably needed more water.
As soon as she stood, Mugs jumped onto his feet, and the two of them walked to the garden. Thaddeus somehow had ended up on the pile of rocks she’d cleaned out when she had been weeding. His perch was precarious at best, but he was watching Goliath steadily. She stepped up closer to the plants, checking how they were holding up. Then she got the hose and gave them more water.
In the heat, transplants always suffered. It was much better to transplant in the spring or the fall, on a cool cloudy day, but beggars couldn’t be choosy. She’d take what she could get for free right now. As it was, she’d gotten a lot of beautiful plants for nothing but a little sweat equity. At least one side of the garden was now flush. She could wait a couple years and just move things over and match it all against Richard’s side of the property, but it would be nice if she had some things over there now. And, of course, a few older things were there, and that side was planted more heavily than the side she had put all the new plants in. Maybe she had enough now.
She pondered that as she wandered up and down the garden, gently soaking it all. She still wanted the big patio blocks to get down to the garden, and maybe a little square down there at the end, where she could put a chair and watch the creek. There was room.
Closer to the creek, she eyed the heigh
t and noted it was back up to the highest point she’d seen it yet. It was fascinating to watch the ebb and flow of water. It wasn’t an ocean with a moon affecting its tides. Instead, it was water melting up in the mountains and other tributaries flowing into her little creek to make it the river it was just a few blocks away, but still the ebb and flow of majestic motion just fascinated her. As long as it stayed well below the height of her basement or down below her garden level, she was okay with it doing its own thing. She shut off the water to her hand nozzle and walked to the creek to see if the pathway was still clear. And, of course, it was.
She smiled and looked from the creek, staring back at her gardens, her eye critical as she studied the health of the plants, the layout of the planting, as well as that of the other side. Though she did get that other side weeded, she hadn’t done any transplanting yet. She’d figured she would divide and conquer those big perennial masses come fall. And that would give her a little more time to decide on a better layout. What she should do was map what she had planted in the ground now, while she knew what it was, because, if the transplants suffered, she would have to cut them off a few inches aboveground and wait until they came out next spring. So it was quite possible she would completely forget what she had put in the ground.
Chapter 21
Tuesday Early Morning …
Doreen woke up the next morning with an odd question in her head. How had Aretha found out her husband had stolen and was selling the jewels? She whispered it to herself out loud in the quiet room. All the animals were still sleeping in an array around her. She checked her watch to find it was only six. But that one statement kept playing in her head, over and over again.
It was possible her husband had told her. But, if that were the case, why leave her that letter at the end of the day? Doreen frowned, not sure whether she should contact Aretha and ask for clarification or just assume it was her husband taunting her with the information. And, if she did know, why hadn’t she done anything about it? Why hadn’t she gone to the police? Or had he been paying her to keep quiet?