Joy to the Wolves (Red Wolf #1) - Terry Spear Page 0,58
she brought her laptop to the end of the dining room table. Taking the jewelry she’d found in the trunk out of the box, she set it on the table. She sat down and began looking up the value of the items on her laptop. “Most of this is costume jewelry, but vintage, so it’s worth twenty to fifty dollars. But these…” She got up from the table and pulled a jeweler’s magnifying tool out of a drawer in a bureau. “Oh, here’s the business card from Mr. Lee.” She pulled it out of the drawer.
“Ethan confirmed Mr. Lee was dead. So did the man claiming he was Mr. Lee give you one of the now-deceased Mr. Lee’s cards?”
“I hadn’t considered that.” She called the number. There was no answer and no voicemail.
Josh was watching her in anticipation.
“No answer. No answering machine. I’ll try again later.” She sat back down and looked at some of the jewelry using the jeweler’s magnifying glass. “Now these are diamonds and emeralds. Some of these pieces could be worth about $300 to $750. I’ll list them on the website. Sometimes I can get more traffic for goods online than I do in the store.”
“That’s a good deal.”
She took pictures of the items and then began listing them on her website. A short while later, the timer went off in the kitchen. “The meal’s done.”
Brooke went into the kitchen to serve up dinner.
Josh joined her and carried the plates to the table while she brought glasses of water.
“It could be something that my great-aunt ordered but that hasn’t arrived yet. Some unusual tapestries my parents bought came from Russia, and they took twelve weeks to arrive in Phoenix. Then there are the shipments from China that take forever. Even Australia. I keep thinking that it’s something delayed in shipment and the thieves are trying to grab it. Though why would they want to look in the trunks?”
“Maybe they thought you’d already had something delivered and had locked it up there for safekeeping. The trunks were locked. Those intruders wouldn’t know that you hadn’t locked something in there recently. You haven’t had any trouble before this?”
“No. Everything’s been fine.”
“Has anything unusual happened? Has anyone made an inquiry about anything lately?” Josh served glasses of red burgundy, then took his seat across from her at the table.
“I’ve got a list of inquiries for different items that have been made since I opened the shop. Most of the items have been sold and collected. I’m certain whoever is involved in this wouldn’t want to leave a paper trail.”
Josh cut up some more of his steak. “The T-bone and the rest of the meal is delicious, by the way.”
“Thank you. You deserve a good meal after all the work you’ve done for me.”
“It was my pleasure.” He wondered about the sleeping arrangements tonight. Then again, she might tell him she didn’t need him to stay the night, now that she had the security cameras in place, just as she’d told Adam he didn’t need to stay.
It was her choice, but Josh still would worry about her, and he hoped she would decide she wanted him to stay.
Then he got a call and saw it was from one of the guys at the police bureau. He hoped nobody wanted to call him in tonight if Brooke wanted him to stay with her for the evening. “Yeah, Jefferson?”
“Hey, we have an update on the case concerning Cerise’s Antique and Gift Shop. At least one of the men won’t be bothering Miss Cerise any longer. He was found in an alley where he’d bled to death, covered in newspapers. Someone stole his boots, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket or gloves. The coroner said she’d get right on it. We have no more details than that, but I wanted you to know one of the men is dead.”
“It was verified that he was one of the men?”
“Yeah. Same description Miss Cerise gave the sketch artist, right down to his knobby nose, the scar over his left eye, and a piece of the glass was still imbedded in the man’s arm—same as the old glass from the window we had as evidence. Adam verified it was him too.”
“Good show. At least that’s one fewer to hunt down.”
“Right. There was no ID on him. Naturally. I would guess he’d been bleeding all the way from the shop, and the other man dumped him before he actually died.”