Alibis and Amethysts (13 page)

“I guess she didn’t care,” Jaye said when Sierra remarked that she didn’t know how
anyone could live in a house so lacking in beauty or serenity. “As secretive as she
was, I doubt she ever invited anyone over for a meal or a cup of coffee.”

“No one’s even started getting rid of all this stuff so they can put the house up
for sale,” Sierra added as they began searching the kitchen for places a paranoid
woman might hide evidence that would lead to her killer.

“They might be having trouble finding her heirs,” Jaye pointed out as she poured dry
cereal into a garbage bag to see if Peggy had hidden a very different kind of prize
in the box. “Talk about irony—it turns out she had good reason to be paranoid after
all.” Jaye reached the bottom of the box without finding anything but stale cereal.

After they’d finished inspecting every nook and cranny in the kitchen, they moved
on to the dining room, proceeding through the house as quickly as they could without
jeopardizing the outcome of the search. It was a tightrope walk. Every passing second
the risk of being caught increased, and now that they were inside, burglary, criminal
trespass and breaking and entering could be added to the charges against them. On
the other hand, rushing through the search could result in missing the evidence they
were after.

While they worked, Raffles was scouting for treasure of her own. She took a red rubber
band from the kitchen counter and dug into her handy pouch for a lipstick to leave
in its place. In the dining room, the not-a-cat took a daisy from a silk flower arrangement,
replacing it with a pacifier. If Brock and Anastos came through the house again, Jaye
wanted to be a fly on the wall when they tried to make sense of these new items.

The morning was well under way by the time they reached the bathroom off the hallway.
It wasn’t large by current standards and was so ridiculously overcrowded with all
three of them in there that Sierra decided to start hunting in the master bedroom.
Raffles quickly discovered the new game of spin the toilet paper holder. Luckily,
there wasn’t much left on the roll, so Jaye let her have fun. At least one of them
was enjoying this adventure.

It didn’t take long to see that there was nothing remotely capable of storing information
in the medicine chest above the sink or in the drawers of the vanity. Jaye even checked
the undersides of the shelves and drawers. She’d had such high hopes, in spite of
Daniel’s certainty that the police had already harvested every scrap of useful evidence.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time hope had let her down.

After the toilet paper ran out, Raffles had relocated to the floor in front of the
vanity, where she was busy pulling everything out of the cabinet section. Jaye squeezed
down beside her to get a good look at the products that were strewn everywhere. There
was shampoo, a package of razors for delicate skin, a couple of unopened toothbrushes,
a box of tampons, sunblock promising full-spectrum protection, a dozen partly used
bottles of nail polish, a box of Band-Aids. Jaye had a sudden epiphany. “Sierra, come
here,” she shouted, forgetting to keep her voice down in case someone happened to
be walking by outside.

Sierra appeared in a flash. “What is it? What did you find?”

“How old was Peggy?”

“Really? That’s why you called me in here? This isn’t exactly the best time for trivia.”

“Fiftyish?” Jaye pursued, ignoring the baffled expression on her friend’s face.

“The obit said she was fifty-five. Why does it matter?”

“What’s a fifty-five-year-old woman doing with a box of tampons?” Jaye asked, grabbing
the box away from the not-a-cat, who’d apparently also decided it was worth further
exploration.

Sierra’s expression changed to wide-eyed interest. “Do you think—?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

Jaye dumped all the tampons out of the box. She gave one to Raffles as a peace offering
for having stolen her loot and a handful to Sierra, who’d plopped down in the bathroom
doorway.

“If Peggy hid something in one of these, she would have had to reseal the paper around
it carefully so it still looked like all the others,” Jaye said, examining one.

Raffles had already torn the paper off the one she’d been given and was busy pulling
the tampon out of its little tube. Jaye kept an eye on her progress in case there
was something else inside, but nothing additional came out. She double-checked that
the tube was empty before going back to the unopened ones. She was so focused on the
task that she jumped when Sierra yelled, “I think I’ve got something.” Apparently
they could both use a course in Stealth 101.

Jaye was on her feet in an instant. She did a neat leap over Raffles, who was in the
process of appropriating another tampon from the pile, and hunkered down next to her
friend. Sierra pulled off the suspicious wrapping with trembling fingers and eased
the tampon out of its tube. A tightly furled paper popped out with it. Jaye’s mouth
went dry as she watched Sierra unroll it.

It was a photograph, but the quality had been badly compromised by the dry air and
the way it had been tightly coiled in the tube. They could see that it was a picture
of Adam Grayson sitting at a desk, surrounded by framed and unframed works of art.
The deep creases and cracks in the faded photo made it impossible to see much of the
detail.

Jaye shook her head. “It looks like a candid shot of Grayson at work, but why did
Peggy feel the need to hide it?”

“There’s got to be something in the picture we’re not seeing,” Sierra said, squinting
at the photo as if with enough concentration the image would become clearer. “We’ll
have to bring it to a photo shop and see if it can be enlarged and enhanced,” she
said, finally giving up. “The important thing is that we found it—how amazing is that?”

“Off the charts,” Jaye said, exhilaration making her feel a bit giddy.

“We’ve got to check the rest of the box to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

“Fast though. We really need to get out of here.”

With Raffles’s help it took less than two minutes to determine that the remaining
tubes held nothing else of value They decided not to bother putting things back the
way they’d found them. It would take too much time; besides, they hadn’t touched anything
without their gloves on. High on their success, they quickly completed the search
of the master bedroom and backtracked to the kitchen. Before walking out, they pulled
off their telltale latex gloves and shoved them into their pockets. Jaye would use
her cloth to wipe down the doorknobs and gate on their way out.

“See, I told you our luck was changing,” she said brightly as she led the way out
the back door and directly into the business end of a rifle.

Chapter 17

“Hold it right there,” the man with the rifle said. He was tall and clean-shaven,
with a receding blond hairline and light blue eyes framed by blond lashes, all of
which gave him a generally washed-out appearance. The ring on his left hand announced
that he was married, most likely to the petite woman half hidden behind him. She was
five feet, tops, her hair and eyes as dark as his were light, the gold band on her
finger further proof of their vows.

Jaye noticed that his hands had started shaking. Either he was as scared as they were
or his arm wasn’t accustomed to the weight of the gun. Chances were his daily routine
didn’t include handling firearms. That realization gave her the bravado to respond
as if she too held a weapon. “Put that thing away before you hurt someone,” she said
with an authority borrowed from the old Westerns she used to watch with her dad. Out
of the corner of her eye she saw Sierra staring at her as if she’d grown a second
head, but she didn’t have the leisure to reassure her right then. Besides, she herself
wasn’t all that sure about what she was doing or how it would pan out.

“Don’t listen to her, Jeremy,” the wife hissed. “She’s just trying to psych you out.”

Jeremy swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down a few times like
a knobby yoyo. “I know, Kelly, I know.”

“Ask them who they are and why they’re here,” she prompted in a stage whisper. “And
for Pete’s sake, hold the rifle still.”

Jeremy repositioned his hands for a steadier grip on the gun as if he were a marionette
and his wife were pulling the strings. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
he repeated—a parrot as well as a marionette.

“Our real estate agent brought us to see the house,” Sierra piped up while Jaye was
still trying to come up with something clever. “My friend here recently opened a crystal
shop near Tlaquepaque, but the apartment she’s renting is too small.”

“There’s no sign out front that the house is on the market,” Kelly muttered to her
husband.

“They’re bringing it tomorrow,” Sierra replied without waiting for Jeremy to relay
his wife’s comment.

“Where’s this agent who supposedly brought you here?” Kelly asked, bypassing her husband
too. She was standing on tiptoe, straining to see if there was anyone else behind
them still in the house.

“She got a call that her son fell in the playground and might have a broken wrist.”

“Well, it wasn’t very responsible of her to let two strangers wander through the house
alone.”

“Oh, we’re not strangers,” Sierra said with a laugh that sounded genuine even to Jaye.
“We know each other really well. I own Cravings!—the bakeshop in town.”

“I can’t eat gluten,” Kelly snapped, as if her malady were somehow Sierra’s fault.

“We actually have a lot of gluten-free products. Come in one day, and I’ll give you
samples to try.”

Jaye was marveling at her friend’s smooth improv. She seemed to be assuming the role
of peacemaker to offset Jaye’s “don’t mess with me” attitude.

“Who’s your agent?” Kelly asked, but with considerably less acrimony.

Sierra didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Betsy Dugan.”

“At Desert Harbor Realty?”

“The one and only,” Sierra chirped, as lighthearted as only an innocent person could
sound.

At that moment a flash of golden fur erupted from inside the house and sprinted to
the back wall, clearing it in one graceful leap. Jaye had been wondering where the
not-a-cat was. She’d been right behind them when they were about to exit the house,
but had managed to stay out of sight when they’d stumbled into their Waterloo. Judging
by their faces, the gun-toting couple wasn’t particularly curious about the animal’s
departure. They probably assumed it was just a neighborhood cat. That was the good
news. The bad news was that without a key the top lock could only be engaged from
inside the house. Raffles was supposed to have taken care of that and then exited
the way she’d come in. But she’d obviously lost patience waiting for them to shut
the door. At least
she
had escaped detection. She’d no doubt be sound asleep back at the apartment if and
when Jaye returned. She couldn’t discount the possibility that Jeremy might accidentally
shoot them or that they’d wind up in jail.

“Then you won’t mind if I give Betsy a call to check out your story,” Kelly was saying
as she whipped her phone out of her jeans pocket. Jaye’s already tense muscles clenched
more tightly.

“Try her cell in case she took her son to the doctor,” Sierra suggested.

Jaye’s eyes felt like they were popping out of her head. Had she just heard her best
friend offer to light the fuse that would blow them to smithereens? What could she
be thinking? Somewhere in that head of hers, a critical screw had clearly jostled
loose. In the name of efficiency, maybe they should just march over to police headquarters
and turn themselves in.

It took less than a minute for Kelly to get the realtor on the line. From her end
of the conversation, Jaye couldn’t tell how it was going, but when Kelly clicked off
the call, the sheepish smile on her face spoke volumes. “Well, your story checks out,”
she told them. “I guess we owe you an apology.”

“No problem,” Sierra said. “In fact, it’s nice to know that people around here keep
a close eye on things.”

Yes, Jaye was thinking, it was just dandy. And it would have been even finer if Sierra
had given her a heads-up about having a plan with Betsy to cover their butts. Her
friend had some serious groveling to do.

Jeremy had lowered the rifle with a sigh of relief. “So, you’re interested in maybe
buying the place, huh?”

Jaye was a little surprised to hear him finally speak for himself. “It’s definitely
a contender,” she said, trying to sound as upbeat and confident as Sierra, even though
her knees had been close to buckling from anxiety two minutes ago.

“I feel really awful that we got off to such a bad start,” Kelly said, “but we’ve
been jumpy ever since Peggy . . .,” her voice trailed off as if she were afraid of
inviting more bad mojo by mentioning Peggy’s death.

“Hey, it’s understandable,” Sierra assured her.

“But now it turns out we might become neighbors. . . .” Kelly’s eyes flitted to her
husband, clearly desperate for a solution to this embarrassing turn of events. He
looked back at her as if awaiting further orders.

That’s what you get for training him to sit and fetch, Jaye thought. He probably doesn’t
have an independent thought left in his brain. But what she said was, “We would probably
have done the same thing in your place.”

“That’s nice of you to say— Wait, I know,” Kelly interrupted herself with sudden enthusiasm,
“why don’t you come back to our house for a cup of coffee? Give us a chance to get
off to a fresh start?”

Jaye cast about for a gracious way to decline. She wanted to get Sierra alone so she
could demand an explanation about the heart-stopping Betsy Dugan episode. And more
important, she was dying to study the photo of Adam Grayson in better light and under
less stressful circumstances. Time was a commodity in short supply these days, and
she didn’t want to waste another minute of it role-playing with people who were never
actually going to be her neighbors. But to her great dismay, she heard Sierra accept
the invitation.

While Sierra followed the neighbors around to the gate, Jaye engaged the bottom lock
on the door and pulled it shut behind her. Then she wiped her prints off the knob
and walked to the gate, where she had another epiphany. She stopped where she was
and waited a minute until Sierra doubled back to see what was keeping her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked when she found Jaye still standing near the gate.

“Are they the neighbors who blamed Peggy for the loss of their dog?” Jaye whispered.

“Jeremy and Kelly Newirth in the flesh,” Sierra said with a grin. “It took a few minutes
for their first names to click with me, because I’d been thinking of them as the Newirths.
You were right—we
are
getting lucky. We just hit two suspects with one stone.”