Dead Certain (4 page)

An uneasy feeling swept over Amanda as she walked to the front door and peered out. Nothing but darkness all around. The lights on the neighbors’ homes had long gone out. Not unusual. Broeder pretty much closed down by ten every night. She opened the front door, stepped onto the small porch, looked out into the pitch-black midnight sky, and thought about what she’d say to Derek over breakfast the next day.

CHAPTER
THREE

“Manda? You have to come. . . . Oh, my God. Please,” Clark sobbed into the phone at eight the next morning.

“Clark, what is it? What’s happened?” A chill ran up Amanda’s spine. “Have you heard from Derek?”

His reply was unintelligible.

“Clark? What’s happened?”

“He’s dead, Manda. Someone shot him,” Clark whispered hoarsely. “Oh, God, someone’s killed Derek.”

“What?!” She dropped into one of the kitchen chairs.

“Derek is dead. He’s been shot. The police found him in his car—”

“Dear God.”

“He’s dead. Just like that. He’s gone.”

“Clark, is anyone with you?”

“The police . . . the police . . .” He hiccupped. “Please come. Please.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this. It can’t be real. . . .

This can’t be happening. How could Derek be dead?

She tried to stand on shaking legs, but finding she could not, sat back down and began to weep great wracking sobs of disbelief. Then, without realizing she was doing so, she gathered her keys and walked out the door, got into her car, and drove. A half-hour later, she was almost startled to find herself parked outside of the house Derek and Clark had shared for several years. She had no recollection of driving.

Still crying, she got out of the car and ran to the front door, barely noticing the police cars that were parked nearby.

“Clark,” she called as she let herself in.

“Manda, thank God you’re here!” Clark fairly flew from the living room to embrace her, then dissolved into tears all over again. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do . . . ?”

“You’re the business partner?” A tall, dark-haired police officer stood as she entered the living room, her shaking arm draped over Clark’s shoulder.

“Yes.” She sat on the edge of the sofa and guided Clark onto the cushion beside her. “Amanda Crosby.”

“Chief Mercer. Broeder Police.”

“Of course.” She nodded. She’d thought he looked familiar. She’d seen him around town, but she’d had no dealings with him. He’d only been in the job for several months. “Will you tell me what happened?”

“Mr. Lehmann called early this morning to report that Mr. England had gone out last night around eleven. He was on his way to your home, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Clark picked up a needlepoint pillow and crushed it to his narrow chest, seemingly oblivious to the conversation around him.

“Was he in the habit of visiting you at that hour, Ms. Crosby?”

“Generally, no. But he and Clark had been away—”

“Vacationing in Europe.”

“Yes, and they just returned yesterday.”

“I expect he’d have been tired after that long flight home. Jet lag, and all that. Why would he have wanted to pay a visit so late at night, after such a long, tiring trip? What was so important that it couldn’t have waited until this morning?”

“We had some business to discuss.”

“Business that couldn’t have waited until this morning?”

“He’d been gone for two weeks. We had a lot to catch up on.” Amanda searched her pockets for a tissue. Finding one, she wiped the tears from her face.

“So he left here around eleven, but he never arrived at your place?”

“No. He did not.”

“Weren’t you worried?”

“No, but I was a little pissed off. I thought he’d gotten distracted by something on his way over and just lost track of the time.”

“Is this something he did often?”

“Get distracted?” Tears filled her eyes. “At least once a day.”

Clark began to sob again, his head in his hands. Amanda rubbed his back to comfort him.

“What sort of things distracted Mr. England?”

“Anything that caught his fancy, really. It’s just the way he is. He sees something that interests him, he stops to take a closer look.” She wasn’t aware that she was speaking of him in the present tense. “He loses track of time. Is late for work. For appointments. For the most part, people forgive him because he’s charming.”

“So when he didn’t show up, you didn’t think anything of it.”

“Not really. Not at the time, anyway. We—Clark and I—thought maybe he’d stopped off at the home of some friends and maybe they were standing around talking. I told Clark that if he spoke with Derek before I did, to tell him to just go home, that I’d see him in the morning. And I went to bed.”

“When did you first become aware that Mr. England did not come home last night?”

“Clark called at one this morning, then again at three and then around five. At that point, I advised him to call the police. He called later to let me know that he’d done just that and that you were looking for Derek’s car.”

“Was your partner in the habit of picking up hitchhikers?”

“Derek?” She shook her head. “He always said he read too many murder mysteries. He’d never stop for a stranger. Why do you ask?”

“Someone was with him in his car last night.”

“How can you be sure?”

“He was shot through the head, Ms. Crosby. From behind. Whoever shot him was in the backseat.”

Clark collapsed on the sofa.

“Ms. Crosby?”

Amanda emerged from the back of the shop to find Chief Mercer standing near the door. It was close to two-thirty in the afternoon. When Clark’s brother arrived at Clark and Derek’s house to provide support, Amanda had taken the opportunity to leave, suddenly needing some time to sort things out and to grieve alone. That apparently wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“Oh. Hello.” She closed the door to her work space behind her. “Do you have any news?”

“Not really.” He looked around the shop as if assessing it. “I stopped at your house. I’d assumed you’d be closed for business today. I mean, after your partner being murdered like that . . .”

“I am closed for business,” she said stiffly, resenting his assumption. “I just stopped in because I . . . I had to pick up something.”

“Got a few minutes? I have a few questions.”

“Sure.”

“Did your partner have any enemies that you know of?”

“None that I know of.”

“Anyone he’d argued with recently?”

“No. Again, though, not that I know of.”

“Other than yourself.”

“Derek and I were not enemies.” She stared up at him. “We’ve been friends for years, business partners—”

“But I do understand there’d been an argument last night.”

Damn Clark.

“Yes, we argued on the phone over a business matter.” She kept her voice calm. “It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t have been the last.”

“Mr. Lehmann says your telephone conversation was quite heated. That Mr. England was quite upset when he left the house.”

“I imagine he was.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’d just reamed him out but good. He wasn’t looking forward to facing me.”

He smiled. Obviously, he knew all about that.

“Look, Derek has—had—a bad habit of making poor decisions. While he was on this trip abroad, he”—she checked herself—“made another one of his poor decisions. He bought something we couldn’t afford. It hurt the business. I’m sending the item back. As a matter of fact, the courier should be here any minute. I’m surprised he hasn’t been by already.”

“Courier?” His eyebrows raised appreciably. “FedEx won’t do? Must be something of great value.”

She could have kicked herself.

“What’s it cost to send something by courier these days, Ms. Crosby? And just where are you sending it back to?”

“What does this have to do with Derek?”

“Who else might have known that Derek brought valuable items home with him from this trip? I’m assuming these items were valuable, if they have to be shipped by courier.”

“You mean, could someone have followed him to rob him?” Amanda shook her head. “I don’t think he’d have told anyone else. And he didn’t buy anything else on this trip that I’m aware of. Just the . . . the one thing. And he had that shipped back. It wasn’t with him.”

Mercer leaned one hip against the counter. “What was that one thing, by the way?”

“It was a pottery goblet.”

“Where is it now?”

“It’s in the safe, in the back room.”

“May I see it?”

“It’s already wrapped and ready for the courier,” she protested.

“Well, if you’re real careful when you unwrap it, you won’t have a problem wrapping it up again.”

She glared at him.

“The package, Ms. Crosby.”

“Fine. I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll wait.”

Damn Derek. Damn Clark. Damn Mercer.

Damn damn damn.

She unlocked the safe and withdrew the crate. Grabbing a screwdriver from a drawer, she went back into the shop. Chief Mercer was staring at a bronze statue of the goddess Diana that was locked inside a glass case.

“Nice.” He nodded toward the piece.

“Art deco.” She placed the wooden crate on the counter. “It’s an original Zelt. Quite exceptional. She did very few pieces in bronze. Seventeen thousand dollars. For you, maybe we could knock off a few bucks.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.” He was all business again. “Now, let’s take a look at this piece of pottery that needs such special handling. . . .”

He helped her to painstakingly remove the crate. Inside, another wooden box held yet another. When she finally got to the goblet itself, he stepped back as if to appraise it.

“That’s it?” he asked skeptically. “That’s the vase you fought with your partner over?”

“Goblet,” she corrected. “It’s from a site in southern Iran called the Tell i Bakun. Part of an old civilization that—”

“Sorry, but all that means nothing to me.”

“Think very, very old and very, very rare.” She fought hard against the urge to be sarcastic. “Think civilizations that are no more.”

“I’m getting the picture. What’s its value?”

“Whatever someone is willing to pay for it.”

“What was Derek England willing to pay for it?”

“Sixty-five thousand dollars.”

Mercer whistled. “But he must have thought he’d be able to sell it for more than that, though, right?”

“He said he had a buyer who’d pay many times that amount.”

“Who was the buyer?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Any particular reason why not?”

“Because it didn’t matter. It had to go back.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for being dense, but why would you argue with your partner over buying an object that you could sell for such a large profit?”

Amanda hesitated. She had hoped to be able to somehow just get past the goblet without going into detail about its origins and Derek’s involvement—however inadvertent—with the black market.

“Because its origins were . . . questionable.”

“You mean it could be a fraud? A fake?”

“I almost wish it were.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, it’s very, very authentic.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that it was stolen some years ago from a museum in Iran.”

“I see.” Clark apparently hadn’t filled him in on that little detail.

“Then you see how this is not only bad for business, but more important, that my partner could have been arrested for dealing in stolen artifacts.”

He stared at her for a long time.

“I guess that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about now.” He leaned against the counter. “The damage to your business’s reputation, or bailing him out. So what’s the hurry in sending this . . . Where were you sending this, anyway?”

“Back to its owner.”

“Now how were you going to go about doing that? I mean, how would you know
how
to do that?” He paused, then added, “And with your partner dead, who would even know that you have this in your possession?”

It was her turn to stare at him.

“I mean, if it’s so valuable, and no one knows that you have it, why would you send it back? Why not just sell it yourself, pocket that big profit?”

“I don’t deal in stolen merchandise, and I don’t support sales of antiquities on the black market,” she snapped.

“But your partner did.”

“Derek was clueless,” she all but exploded. “He was smart enough to know that what was being offered to him was the real deal, but not smart enough to demand its documentation.”

“Now I’m really curious. Why would you, someone so seemingly savvy about these things, be in business with someone who is, by your account, not very smart.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Her jaw tightened. “I didn’t say he wasn’t smart in general. He knows his American primitives—art and furniture—inside and out. That’s his specialty. He just isn’t all that familiar with items like this.” She nodded in the direction of the goblet.

“And you are?”

“I know someone who is. Look, Officer Mercer—”

“Chief Mercer.”

“Right. Sorry.
Chief
Mercer. Derek was not a crook. He was offered an opportunity to buy something very valuable, and since he’s a dealer and knew he could make a tidy profit on it, he bought it. Once he found out what it was, he was in total agreement that it be returned to its rightful owner. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, as soon as the courier gets here.”

“Ah, I see. Very righteous of you.” He tapped two fingers on the counter. “But wasn’t there a situation about two years ago . . . ? Seems to me I heard something about a Civil War–era uniform.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t really what the papers made it out to be. Derek had a client—”

“And wasn’t there a samurai sword some time back . . . ?”

“Derek—”

“Derek again? Not you?”

“No, of course, not me.” She was becoming exasperated.

“So you’re in business with a man who isn’t really all that concerned with where he acquires his merchandise.”

“That’s not fair. Derek’s just . . . well, sometimes he’s just too trusting. Too naive about people.”

“How so?”

“He takes everyone at face value. I’m sure that the man he bought this piece from looked totally on the level. That would have been good enough for Derek.”

“And what would you have done under the same circumstances?”