Meghan wished he would come with them, but she understood his desire to stay and see family while he was in town. If they were more than just friends, maybe he’d invite her to join him… She pushed aside the disquieting thought and forced herself to smile. “Thanks for what you did, Stephen. It helped having you there.”
“Anytime. See you around, Meg.”
Stephen asked around the police central building until someone could direct him to the robbery and fraud group. He finally located Kate’s new office on the third floor down the hall from the water fountain.
Stephen paused at a door that had Kate’s name stenciled on the glass and smiled. His sister had arrived. He knew she must already hate the bureaucracy of it. He tapped on the door and opened it. She looked up from some paperwork. Her concentration turned into an instant grin. “This is a surprise.”
The speed at which she dropped the papers had him laughing. “A pleasant one I hope.”
“Always.”
“You look really good.” He entered her office and did a 360-degree turn to study it. “I’m impressed. Four walls with actual artwork and not a lot of paper clutter. A calendar turned to the correct month. And if I’m not mistaken, that plant is not plastic. Are you sure you’re not borrowing someone else’s office?”
“Dave helped me decorate. I drew the line at accepting an autographed football from Dave’s famous brother-in-law for the credenza. What brings you back to town? Not that I’m not thrilled, but I figured we would have to drag you back.”
“Neil Coffer, the jeweler in Silverton, had a heart attack. He died a short while ago at the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Stephen pushed his hands into his pockets, not sure what he thought about the loss other than disappointment that it happened. His first time back as a paramedic and his patient died after arriving at the hospital. At least the time away from his profession had given back a sense of perspective—he wasn’t carrying the weight of this loss home with him. “He was a long-term smoker and had already had one heart attack last year. It wasn’t likely that he’d die getting hit by a bus.”
“Without meaning to downplay his death, will it complicate your life and the property sale?”
“It shouldn’t. All the paperwork is signed and the land sale is contingent only on the final loan approval, and that’s in process with the bank.” Stephen finally stopped walking and took a seat in the chair across from her. “You’re looking good, Kate.”
“I’m feeling better.” She swiveled her chair back and forth with her foot as she studied him. “You didn’t go to the trouble to find my office because you were at loose ends for the afternoon.”
“No.” Stephen thought about what it would mean for the reputation of a man not able to defend himself if he answered Kate’s question. He sighed and did what he had to. He unzipped his jacket pocket and pulled out the pouch. “I’ve got a mystery for you. I found this under a floorboard in the barn. Neil has owned that farm for over thirty years; he owns a jewelry store with a walk-in bank vault. Somehow I don’t think this was in the barn by accident.”
Kate took the pouch, opened it, and let the ring fall into her hand. She studied it and then looked back up at him. “Is it real?”
“You tell me. The man had a heart attack before I could even mention it to him.”
“Did you find anything else?”
He started to say, “not so far” but stopped himself. “No. As an honest jeweler, realizing someone he knew sold him something stolen, he hid it and hoped to bury the incident rather than report it. The man just died, Kate. From everything I hear, he was a decent guy.”
“Yet you didn’t go to the local sheriff.”
Stephen inclined his head, conceding. He wanted for now to keep this in the family. He had a suspicion he knew what would be found, and he didn’t want the news spreading around Silverton until the implications were fully understood. “I don’t know him. I know you.”
“I’ll look into it. Quietly,” Kate promised.
“Thanks.” He thought about staying to chat but his mission for the moment was over. Besides, Kate would start to look into that ring as soon as he left. He got to his feet.
“Are you in town for the evening?”
“I’m heading to the house to pack up another load. But I’ll take an hour of your time tonight to look over some furniture sketches if you’re free.”
“I’m free. In this job the pager rarely goes off. Say about seven?”
“Perfect.” He pulled out his keys.
“Stephen.”
He stopped at the door to look back at her.
“Neil just died. If this isn’t a one-time innocent thing, if there are more pieces, someone else may know that and try to find them. Watch yourself, okay?”
“I don’t like the way you think.”
“Sometimes I don’t either.”
He jiggled his keys and nodded. “I’ll take care.”
Craig searched carefully through the desk drawers in Meghan’s home and found many receipts but not what he sought. She kept a neat house. Where were her credit cards, her checkbook? She hadn’t had a purse with her when she left with her father for the hospital—he’d slipped quickly into her office at the clinic, and it hadn’t been there. She might not carry a purse because she wanted her hands free for the dog harness, but she would still have the contents of a purse around.
He moved into the living room to check the path she would take when she came home, looking for the natural place she would set a bag. He found a large coin purse set beside the cookie jar on his second walk-through and unzipped it. Bingo. He sorted credit cards and chose the one with the longest expiration date. A stolen credit card would sell for some instant cash, and he needed fast cash.
He’d lifted forty dollars from the cash in the cigar box on her desk, and one of the two diamond earrings she left on the dresser. He had to be careful in his choices. He couldn’t risk taking something so obvious she noticed the theft right away, and he had to make sure she had reasonable doubt that there really had been a theft. Having a blind lady move into town was a gift; he didn’t want to spook her into installing an alarm. He planned to be back.
Craig needed to get into Neil’s store, but a cop was watching the place for the night. And Craig had to have a fix to calm the jitters before he tried to rob the place. He didn’t have long—a few days, a week—before Jonathan would hear that Neil was dead and came looking for jewels too. Craig would make sure he had them first.
Maybe during the funeral there would be a window of time to slip into the store. If the stones were in the vault, he was out of luck. But he suspected Neil had simply moved the hidden gems from his house to the second-floor apartment. The cop probably wouldn’t think to check the apartment, so if Craig could get in, he’d find what he was after. With the number of gems stolen over the years, it would pile up into a fortune.
“Blackie, are you coming in?”
Craig froze. Meghan was home early. He looked toward the back door but couldn’t get to it in time. He eased a step back toward the living room as the front door opened, reaching out for something to use as a weapon. His hand closed over a tall thin statue.
He hated dogs. He slid a hand across his mouth to quiet his breathing as she turned in the doorway less than twenty feet away and waved to someone at the street. She closed the door and moved into the room, humming softly. She paused at the closet to hang up her jacket and disappeared into the kitchen, sorting the mail she had carried in with her.
He took a breath. No dog—she’d left Blackie outside. He relaxed his grip on the statue and placed it silently back on the piano. He eased toward the back door at a snail’s pace, wanting to run but not able to afford so much as a board creaking.
She turned on the faucet, and he turned the doorknob and eased open the back door. He slipped through and closed it slowly. That had been too close. He took two steps away from the house and let himself breathe a
gain.
He’d have his fix tonight, he’d plan the robbery, and in a few days he would leave this town rich, and set for years to come.
The pesky dog growled at him as he walked around the side of the house. It began barking furiously and lunging at the fence. Craig walked away. Next time he’d bring something to handle the mutt.
Meghan opened her closet and sorted through her clothes to find the dress she would wear for Neil’s funeral tomorrow at 10 A.M. She had a simple black dress that would be perfect with her pearls. She located the dress, relieved to find she had sent it to be dry cleaned before putting it away. She laid the dress out and looked for her shoes.
She picked up her pearls and felt around for her diamond earrings. She found one but as she kept searching she wasn’t finding the second one. She knew she had put it here in the jewelry box. Meghan took the box over to the bed and carefully emptied it. She felt along the lining and every compartment. How did she lose just one earring?
She checked the other jewelry to see if it had become stuck in a brooch or tangled with a necklace but didn’t find anything. If she’d snagged the back of the post on her clothing and lost the earring, she would have noticed when she removed them. She had put two earrings in the box but there was only one here.
Meghan went through the box again.
She was misplacing things; it had to be that simple. She lifted her head as Blackie rambled down the hall, trailing something of interest to him. The random noises in the house were suddenly not innocuous. She went to the dresser and opened the first drawer, systematically beginning a more thorough search.
Seventeen
Stephen leaned against the door to the clinic office and watched Meghan work, her concentration on the document in front of her complete. She wore earphones, moving the cursor around on the screen and typing in spurts at a furious pace. She was so incredibly pretty… He wished life wasn’t so complicated.
Taking her to dinner, inviting her to the next O’Malley basketball game—in the past he would have done so without a second thought. Now his actions would be clouded with how it would be interpreted. How did you just be friends when you wanted to be something so much more? The puzzle had no easy answer. She leaned over and replaced something on the scanner, then hit the button to activate the scan.
Stephen knelt and greeted her dog.
“Who’s there?”
He looked up, startled to realize she’d slipped off the earphones and heard him. The anger and fear in her voice shook him. “I’m sorry, Meghan. You were working or I would have said something.”
Her gaze dropped to focus toward him next to Blackie.
She was pale. He rose slowly. “Are you okay?”
She turned back to her work. “You just surprised me.”
Meghan wasn’t normally so spooked about being surprised by someone. And she had never been very good at lying. “I came to ask if I could take you to the funeral.”
She took a deep breath and paused what she was doing, then glanced back at him. “Sure, just give me a moment and I’ll be ready to go.”
He leaned against the door again and waited as she shut down her equipment and reached for her bag. “Okay.”
She was wearing the bracelet he had given her. With the elegant black dress and pearls, it looked good. He would have to buy her earrings to match. “You can leave Blackie off duty and walk with me to the church if you trust me for the details.”
“I’d like that.” She came around the desk.
He guided her hand to his arm and felt how cold her hand was. “Is there anything I can do to help you out today? Funerals aren’t easy.”
She glanced his way as they walked. “I was just about to ask you the same thing. This will resonate with Jennifer’s funeral.”
“And Peg’s…and my parents’.” Stephen set his hand above hers and squeezed it. “It’s okay. I’m getting pretty good at knowing what funerals are like. I didn’t know Neil more than casually. I’m sorry he didn’t make it, but at least he had a full life before he died.”
“I’m likely to need some Kleenex. I’ve known him all my life, and I’m going to miss his gruffness even if I didn’t know him all that well.”
Stephen patted her hand. “I came prepared.”
Meghan moved around her mother’s kitchen loading the dishwasher after dinner, thinking about the funeral. It had been so hard to listen to them lower Neil into the ground and wonder what else she could have done. Her hand touched something sharp and she jerked back. Don’t get distracted when handling knives.
She finished loading the dishwasher and looked out where she knew the window was toward Stephen’s property. What was he doing tonight? He’d been quiet after the funeral. The pastor had been talking about heaven and she picked up on Stephen’s discomfort. He had walked her back to the office, then left to go back to work on his house. “What’s the time, Mom?”
“Ten till seven.”
Meghan dried her hands. She wanted to see the changes Stephen had made to the house. He invited her to stop by, but it looked like it would have to be a late visit. Neil’s lawyer had asked to see both her and Dad tonight. There would inevitably be final items for the estate to settle up surrounding how he died. Meghan wished it could have been put off for another night.
“Walter’s here, honey. Could you bring in the coffee?”
“I’ll get it, Mom.”
They settled in the living room, and Meghan listened politely to Walter as he talked over business items with her father. Meghan picked up the baby blanket squares her mom was putting together to make a quilt for Kate’s baby shower. A teddy bear embroidered in each fourth square was within her skill level. The outline was already made and she simply needed to count stitches to fill the circles.
“Let me get to the reason I’m here,” Walter said. “As you know, Neil had no surviving family members. I asked him what he would like to do with his estate, and he wanted the proceeds to go toward expanding the health care clinic of Silverton.”
“That was generous of him,” Dad remarked.
“He appreciated your help through the years, Bill. Since you already have the clinic structured as a nonprofit, it won’t be that difficult to arrange in terms of complying with the trust bequest. After talking about a number of ways to make that wish happen, Neil went for simplicity. Meghan, Neil left you in charge of the jewelry store.”
She stopped counting stitches. “He what?”
“The business and property are now in trust for the clinic, and they’re yours to liquidate. The sale of the house and grounds to Stephen will go through, for the contracts are valid, but the proceeds will simply flow into the estate at settlement.”
She couldn’t get past the simple fact that he’d entrusted his jewelry business to a blind lady. “Why me?”
“Several reasons,” she heard Walter smile as he explained. “He liked you, and he knew you’d care that it was done right and that you’d oversee the funds to get the best return possible. He also knew you would have the time this was going to take.”
“But what do I know about jewelry?”
“Enough to ask good questions,” Walter replied. “The problem won’t be getting offers of help but in choosing the right people. Neil empowered his banker and me to help you with the details. He kept his own books, and from what I’ve seen they are meticulously maintained. You should have no problem following them. It is a very simple business at its heart.
“The trust provides for the immediate needs of the business, the chief one security. You may notice there have already been private security officers stationed at the store, taking over for the deputy who watched the store the first day. Neil had that already arranged and he hired a good firm. You’ll have no worries there.
“The business will have to be closed and pieces that were on consignment for sale or for repair returned to their owners. That’s the immediate concern. For the inventory owned outright by the business, you can either hold onto the
pieces, reopen the store under your own name to facilitate their sale, or you may wish to sell the pieces to other dealers and accept the discount prices you’ll get. Then you’ll have to decide on the building and whether to sell the property or maintain it and rent it out.”
“Did Neil use an accountant?” Meghan asked.
“A tax accountant. I have copies of the last several years of filings. I know this sounds overwhelming, Meghan, but it won’t be. I have the keys at my office, and I can walk you through bank accounts and such. Come down when you feel ready. Feel free to bring along anyone you like to hear the details.”
“When this estate is wrapped up, how much money are we talking about, Walter?” her father asked.
“I’m guessing a million, a million plus.”
“Oh, my,” her mother said into the silence.
Meghan felt shock to her toes at those kinds of numbers. And she was responsible for it?
“Neil had simple tastes, he reinvested in the stones he bought, and he did it for decades.” Walter got to his feet. “I’ll leave you to talk among yourselves. Meghan, call me when you’re ready and I’ll answer any questions you might have.”
“What happens if I say no, if I don’t want the responsibility?”
“He asked Stephen to do it.”
She slowly nodded. Her third surprise of the night. “I’ll call you.”
Stephen left his workshop in the barn and strode back to the house, unable to focus on the task at hand. The funeral had been for someone he only casually knew, but it had been enough to make the memories return. Jennifer’s funeral was too fresh in his mind. Stephen changed his shirt to one that didn’t smell of varnish and set aside his work shirt to be laundered.
He sat on the bed and picked up the liniment he was using on a new blister. He applied it and a new Band-Aid. The funeral remarks had been close to a sermon on heaven. He sighed and picked up Jennifer’s Bible from the bedside table. Jenny, I wish you hadn’t sent me this. He had read the book of Luke from beginning to end, then had started the book of John. The more he read, the heavier his heart became.