Jewels in the Juniper - Dale Mayer Page 0,9
company name? Doreen hesitated calling Nan again to ask. Her grandmother would know she was working on another case, and Nan could be relentless when she wanted information. Doreen researched online first, and it wasn’t long before she came up with Hobart’s Insurance Company.
Not exactly the most professional-sounding business name—and using his first name at that. But it worked. She brought it up only to find the business had been sold ten years ago. Hobart had lasted another three years after that, and then he died. After a little bit more digging, Doreen couldn’t find anything new about Aretha. There was no sign of family, extended or otherwise, and she didn’t have any children, according to Nan. So Aretha was apparently a fairly wealthy older lady who’d been alone now for several years. But where was she?
Doreen studied several more articles online and found that Aretha considered herself a bit of a philanthropist, as she donated to various causes. At the top of her list was always children, animals, and women’s shelters. That made her a more likable woman in Doreen’s eyes. But that didn’t necessarily mean that Nan would like her. But why wouldn’t she? It was so unusual for Nan to have such a pet peeve about somebody. But then, of course, Nan had come from no money and had built up everything she’d had on her own and had enjoyed life with a lot of different relationships. It was quite possible Aretha was a pious judgmental person. Doreen knew that could irritate Nan. It was also quite possible the two women had clashed over something else, like Nan’s gambling, for instance.
There were any number of possible reasons why somebody didn’t like someone else. And, as soon as somebody didn’t like you, human nature being what it was, you tended to not like that person back. And what was it Nan had said? That the insurance hadn’t paid out on a load of jewels that had come in. Were they really lost after that burglary? Or had that burglary been something set up that had gone bad? But then why would you burgle your own store? Particularly if the insurance wouldn’t pay out. None of that made any sense.
But then how much were Aretha and her first husband really into the business anyway? Her parents apparently had built it up from nothing, starting it when her parents were in their early twenties. It wasn’t until after their daughter had married that it hadn’t done all that well. How much of it was Aretha siphoning off jewels and funds, potentially to keep herself in the lavish lifestyle she considered her right? Just because one owned the jewelry store didn’t necessarily mean she was dripping in jewels.
Doreen herself had spent many an evening covered in jewels, but the minute she walked back into the house, her husband had removed them from her neck and ears and wrists and had locked them up in the safe. Even though she had received them as gifts for various anniversaries and other occasions, her husband had never let her have access to them otherwise. So when she left, she couldn’t take them with her.
Annoyed at that, she started a list of all the jewelry her husband had given her, yet kept. Surely that wasn’t right. They were supposedly gifts. There’d been a beautiful pearl necklace, an emerald necklace, a beautiful sapphire pendant, several rings and bracelets. She wrote down as many of the individual items as she could and wondered if she had any pictures of them. She had a lot of photos on her phone and then also on her cloud account, where she had kept them stored away and set aside for memories. Maybe that had pictures of the jewelry.
She would like it if Mack’s brother could get just her personal possessions back. Surely her husband didn’t have the right to keep those too. She didn’t want to go looking online for pictures of him and his lawyer girlfriend, Doreen’s divorce attorney no less, in case the lawyer was now wearing Doreen’s jewelry. That would really suck. It also made her angry. Finally she got so angry that she snatched her phone and sent Mack a text about his brother.
You just contacted me about him today, Mack texted back. I haven’t had a chance to reach out to him.
She sat back and sighed. Then sent a text back. Sorry. I was just getting angry thinking about all my jewelry.
What jewelry?
The gifts he