item," Ava added, looking as skeptical as I was.
"Oh, yes, Little Joey said he was trying to track down some jewelry for a customer."
Little Joey? I had to bite my lip to keep from snickering. I'm sure Trask loved that nickname.
"I'm happy to help if I can," Al went on. "It was a pair of heart shaped rubies, right?"
Ava nodded. "Trask said someone came trying to sell them to you?"
She nodded. "Yes, a few weeks ago. We don't get a lot of loose gems like that coming in here, so it stuck with me."
"Did you buy them?" David piped up.
"No, no, actually we couldn't agree on a price. You see, without any paperwork or information on them, I felt the asking price was a little high."
I opened Gia's picture on my phone. "Is this the women who brought them in?" I asked, turning the screen so she could see it.
She pulled a pair of reading glasses from her pocket and slipped them on, leaning against the glass case to inspect the photo. "Oh my, isn't she pretty."
"She was a model," David informed her.
"Was?" Al looked up, eyes going from me to David. While she looked the part of the innocent little granny, I suddenly had a feeling not much got past her.
"She passed away recently," Ava said, not elaborating on the how.
"That's a shame." Al's eyes held a note of suspicion still, but she let it go, pulling her reading glasses off and shaking her head. "But I'm sorry, that's not the person who brought in the rubies. For one thing, it was a he."
"He?" I asked. I looked to Ava. That was a surprise. While both Hughie and Costello were two he's we'd possibly envisioned taking the emerald, I couldn't imagine why either would have had the rubies. Gia had been alive and well when they'd been stolen.
"What did he look like?" Ava asked Al. "Can you describe him?"
Al laughed and nodded. "I can do you one better." She pointed up toward the ceiling, and I noticed for the first time we were standing under a small, round black camera with a little red blinking light. "Would you like to see the security footage?"
I could have kissed her.
"Yes please," Ava said eagerly, giving Al a wide smile.
"I cued it up after Joey called me. He said you'd want to see it."
I almost could have kissed Trask too.
Al grabbed a laptop from behind a counter and opened it, clicking around a little before she found the video in question. Then she swiveled the computer so that we could see the screen and let it play.
We watched as a black and white version of the shop came into view. A time stamp in the corner was dated just over three weeks ago. From the angle of the camera, we could see the top of Al's head as she helped a couple who were looking at rings at the next case over. A beat later, a new person walked into the frame. He was wearing nondescript jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt, but other than that, it was impossible to see much from the camera's angle. Honestly, it could have been either Costello or Hughie. Or the Unabomber.
"We can't see his face," Ava said, tilting her head to the side as if that might help.
"Sorry, this is the only angle I have of that spot," Al told her.
The bell over the door jingled as a new customer walked in, and Al excused herself to wait on them. I vaguely heard her repeating the same pleasant "May I help you?" that she'd given us, but my focus was on the man in the video, still angled away from us.
We watched as the Al on the screen moved from the couple looking at rings to the newcomer, and they exchanged a few words. There was no sound, so I had no idea what they were saying. But a moment later, he pulled something from his pocket and laid it out on the counter. Wrapped in a piece of black cloth were two beautiful heart-shaped rubies. It was hard to tell how big they were or what they'd be worth, but he and Al seemed to be discussing price—him talking animatedly with his hands as Al picked up the gems and inspected them through a jeweler's loupe.
"Look up, look up, look up," Ava chanted quietly beside me.
After a couple more minutes of watching the silent exchange play out, Al finally shrugged. Then she shook the