Jewels in the Juniper - Dale Mayer Page 0,8

always suspected she couldn’t have any,” Nan said bluntly. “Never really understood that myself.”

“Some people’s biology just doesn’t work the same as everybody else’s,” Doreen said. “Really difficult if she wanted children.”

“I don’t think she wanted children as much as she wanted to have had children,” Nan said with a laugh. “There’s a very fine distinction there.”

“True. Did she ever talk about being married previously or being part of a jewelry family?”

“All the time,” she said. “It was one of the things she always reminded all of us,” Nan said in disgust.

Hearing Nan’s past tense usage, Doreen’s heart sank. “Are you saying she’s dead?”

“Oh, I don’t know if she is or not,” Nan said with a careless attitude. “The woman wasn’t terribly nice. She always lorded it over us that she had more money than we did.”

“But the jewelry company went bankrupt.”

“That was after a robbery,” Nan said dismissively. “She never considered that their fault. Somebody came in and stole a lot of their stock of jewels, and the insurance company refused to pay out on all of it because they just had a shipment brought in, but there was some confusion on just what had arrived.”

“Wow,” Doreen said. “For somebody who you don’t really know, you sure have a lot of information.”

“I didn’t want the information,” Nan said in a snappy voice. “You’ve got to realize she’s the kind of person only interested in making you understand how she’s better than everybody else.”

“Where is she now?”

“No idea,” Nan said with a sniff, her nose probably rising, as if Doreen had insulted her. “However, I could ask around and see.”

It was so unlike her grandmother to be snippy about somebody that Doreen couldn’t help pushing. “Were you rivals for the same man or something?” She wasn’t sure what else to ask. But Nan’s snorted disgust got her laughing. “I guess not, huh?”

“She married that stuffy Hobart,” she said. “That man was a nightmare.”

“But could he keep her in the style to which she was accustomed?”

“I don’t know how they did it,” Nan said, “but she certainly lived in a big highfalutin house. She had one of the first houses up on the Knox Mountain area, with a huge view of the city and a pool and the whole works.”

“Well, good for her,” Doreen said. She didn’t have anything against a woman doing well.

“Yeah, but it’s not like his little insurance company should have done that well.”

“I don’t know,” Doreen said. “It seems like a lot of insurance companies do very well.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “But I’d be more than happy to help you try to find dirt on her.”

“I’m not trying to find dirt on her,” Doreen said gently, not willing to tell her about the jewels because, if Nan thought they would be returned to this woman, it might be the last straw for Nan. “I’m just wondering how that whole jewelry business went under. It seems that a robbery shouldn’t take down a longstanding business like that.”

“That’s easy,” Nan said. “Neither of them worked. At least not well. Neither had a head for business. She was involved in her father’s business, but only in the sense that she was the model used for everything. They had a lot of different rings, and apparently she had gorgeous hands. Her father was very proud of his little girl, so she was in a lot of the advertisements.”

“Which would have gone to her head, of course,” Doreen said.

“Yes. But that still didn’t give her the right to lord it over us.”

“Of course not,” Doreen said quickly. “How often did you see her?”

“Way too often,” she said. “She was here at Rosemoor for a while. And I used to pass her when I was coming back and forth to visit friends. But she hasn’t been here since I moved in. Honestly, I’m not sure if I would have moved in here if she’d been here too. The woman is insufferable.”

“Ah, Nan,” Doreen said with a warm smile. “Please don’t ever change.”

“Not planning to,” she said in a huff. “I’m not like Aretha.” And, with that, she hung up.

“It would be nice if you didn’t hang up on me, Nan.” But her grandmother was gone before those words were spoken.

Chapter 3

Friday Late Afternoon …

Doreen started a file, writing down the information she’d gotten from her grandmother. Then she started looking for Aretha and her new husband. Had Nan mentioned a last name? She frowned at that. Hobart what? And what was the insurance