The Marquesa's Necklace (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (7 page)

I’m a loner by nature. I try to hide it, but sometimes I need to get away from everyone and commune with Mother Nature. Guess I got that from my mother.

I put the top down, leaned back in my seat, and stared at the stars. The silver crescent moon hung in the sky. Although I’m not a religious person, nights like these I think I could worship the old gods—the moon, the sun, the wind. For a moment, I felt wild and free and safe.

A dark cloud moved past the moon, reminding me I wasn’t safe. Even with all the time I spent with Freddie, the fear never totally went away. My luck would run out eventually. I sent a plea for help to whatever spirits might hear me, hit the switch to raise the roof, and watched as the stars disappeared. I was alone. And lonely.

As I pulled back onto the dirt road, a few drops of moisture rolled down my cheeks.

Still lost in thought, I pulled up to the garage. Before opening the overhead door, I took another long look at the moon riding high now, and thought about taking off and leaving everything behind. That’s when I realized Piper was going nuts in the house. With my engine still running, I locked my doors—the soft top wouldn’t be much of a deterrent against a determined attacker with a knife, but the move would buy me some time. I had my cell phone in my hand, ready to dial as I looked around.

The back porch light provided just enough light for me to see a shadow where it didn’t belong at the base of the stairs. My imagination shifted into overdrive when it floated up the first two steps. Maybe it would have made more sense to call the police or Freddie, but I dialed Luke instead.

Chapter Nine

“Let Piper out,” I told Luke without as much as a hello. Good thing I’d entered my name into his contacts and it showed up on his phone. He didn’t even ask me why. Watching in my mirror, I saw the narrow stream of light as the back door opened just enough to allow a forty pound ball of fury to hurl himself through the narrow space—and not inside the fence either.

A guttural scream told me Piper had found his victim. A moment later, spotlights burned the darkness away. Luke had talked about installing them, but I didn’t know he’d already finished the project. The light revealed a man curled into a ball, trying to protect what he could from the threatening teeth of the overly-excited dog. Piper was joined by Luke wielding a baseball bat and Joe with his shotgun.

I turned off Dolores and eased the door open, in case the intruder had a companion. Cautiously I walked over to join my landlords, mentally reviewing some of the more effective self-defense moves. “You know this guy?” Luke asked, poking him with the end of the bat.

I studied the face. “Don’t recognize him, but he’s seen better days, don’t you think?” The guy looked like the poster boy for meth—sunken eyes and cheeks, sores on his face and half of his teeth missing. The slobber dripping from Piper’s mouth into the guy’s hair added to the picture of misery.

When Luke poked him again, the man whimpered. “What are you doing here?” Luke asked. The man’s silence elicited yet another thrust of the bat, and Joe cocked the shotgun.

“Don’t shoot! I’ll talk!” The intruder struggled to sit up, but Luke forced him back down. “He paid me to scare the lady and grab her necklace, that’s all! I wasn’t going to hurt her.”

My hand moved instinctively to my throat to the turquoise necklace I’d owned for years and wore almost daily. Luke, Joe, and I exchanged glances. “What’s so special about her necklace?” Joe asked. “And who paid you?”

The wail of a siren broke the quiet of the night. Luke poked the trespasser again. “Don’t know who he was,” the man blurted. “Never saw him before. That’s all I got to say,” he added. “I got rights.”

“We don’t care about your rights. We’re not the cops,” Luke snarled. “With us, you’ve got no rights. Now what’s so special about the necklace?” But as the police car squealed to a stop on the street, the man curled back up into a fetal position and turned his face away.

The “alleged attacker” was being transported to the police station and I sat on the sofa, tucked between Luke and Joe in their living room. Officer Clearmont sat across from us. I wondered why he kept showing up whenever it was me. He was as bad as Freddie, and, to add to my misery, Freddie was on his way.

Officer Clearmont flipped his notebook closed and stood. “You’re sure there’s nothing unique about your necklace?” he asked again.

I fiddled with it, letting it flow back and forth between my hands. Everyone had examined it and reached the same conclusion. “I bought it years ago at a flea market. It’s just your basic turquoise necklace, there’s not even any silver in it. Not worth assaulting me to steal it.” But I wore it all the time, and it was a part of me.

“If you think of anything else, give the station a call. Or just give Detective Thomason a buzz.” I caught the faintest hint of red in his cheeks. What stories about me had Freddie been spreading? We all stiffened when the doorbell rang. Joe got up and looked out the peephole, while Officer Clearmont moved so he was in a better position to control the room.

Joe glanced at me and grinned. “It’s your boyfriend,” he said. “Should I let him in?”

My boyfriend? I didn’t think of him that way, but I guess that’s the way it seemed to everyone else. Besides, what choice did I have? I nodded, and Joe flipped the lock and opened the door.

Freddie took a look around, nodding in satisfaction when he noticed Officer Clearmont’s stance, and walked over and kissed me on the cheek. Marking his territory, I guess. There was far too much testosterone in the room for my comfort. “Are you all right?” he asked, pushing a stray lock of hair from my cheek. He sat by me in the spot abandoned by Joe and put his arm around my shoulders. A sweet supportive gesture, but it made me uncomfortable.

“You get everything you need, Bill?” he asked looking at the officer.

“Yeah, I was just wrapping things up.”

“If you’ll put a copy of the report on my desk, I would appreciate it.”

Officer Clearmont, understanding he had been dismissed, slid the notebook into his pocket, adjusted his duty belt, touched his hat, and headed for the door. “Good night, Ms. Duprie, gentlemen,” he said, and closed the door behind him. Joe locked it before perching on the arm of the sofa next to Luke.

“So are you really okay?” Freddie asked, running his fingers through my hair. I had let it down for my night with the girls.

“Yes, thanks to Luke and Joe. And Piper.” That hero was behind the closed kitchen door, gnawing on a fresh rawhide bone.

“You’ve never ever seen this guy before?”

I shook my head. After retelling the story to Officer Clearmont several times, I didn’t want to tell it again. “I’m tired,” I said, to stop the predicted rush of questions. “I’d like to go home and get some sleep.”

Bad move. The three men started arguing about where I was going to spend the night. Freddie wanted me to go stay with him—he had been trying to get me into his bed anyway, and Luke and Joe offered me their spare bedroom. It gave me a headache. All I wanted to do was go back to my own place, and be by myself.

So I stood and stretched, and pretended to yawn. “I’m sure nothing else will happen tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I picked up my purse from the coffee table, dropped my necklace into it, and pulled out my keys.

“I’ll walk you upstairs,” Freddie said, jumping up. How was I going to stop him? I let him take my hand, but I dropped a kiss on both Luke and Joe’s foreheads before I left. I would have liked to pat Piper one more time, but I was afraid he would attack Freddie after the excitement.

He insisted on doing a quick walk-through of my apartment. I was only allowed inside once he was convinced it was safe. And when he offered to stay, I was tempted. But I knew what he was hoping for, and I wasn’t ready to give it to him. So I sent him home, after a passionate kiss. Or two.

I fell asleep curled up on the loveseat, covered with one of my crocheted afghans and listening to an old John Denver CD playing softly in the background. My mother was a big John Denver fan and playing his music made me feel close to her. Almost safe again. Morning would be time enough to figure out my next move. As I dozed off, I wondered if my ghost was a good kisser or not.

After a restless night, my morning routine soothed my frazzled nerves. Start the coffee pot, shower, towel dry my hair, slip into a comfortable pair of jeans and a random blouse from the closet, pour myself a cup of coffee, one sugar, no cream, run downstairs to grab the newspaper, and sit on the bottom step to glance through it. That was my summer routine anyway. I didn’t sit outside in the winter naturally. The local paper,
The Herald,
tried hard to cover local news, but not much happens in Oak Grove anymore. I’d been in it too much.

Piper came to greet me, sticking his nose through the chain-link face. Most days, I brought a doggy-biscuit with me, but he doesn’t care on the rare days I forgot. He was happy to have me scratch the top of his head. Some days I swear he purred when I got it just right.

While I sipped the coffee and watched the sun rise, I tried to formulate a plan. I was over waiting for the next pin to drop. It was time to make some noise of my own, and the attempted robbery gave me my first clue. First step—find out what was so special about my necklace.

Two hours of digging around the internet later, and I still didn’t have any new information. Next stop—a local pawn shop with a specialty of used jewelry. The owner, Gary, dabbled in short story writing—he really was quite good—and I would get a straight answer from him.

He tried hard to keep it neat, but the amount of inventory in his shop made it an obstacle course. After navigating through used bicycles and eccentric yard decorations, I browsed the used books while he checked out a customer. Once in a while I’d find a collectable edition of an old book, but he didn’t have anything particular interesting in stock at the moment. He quirked one eyebrow when I took off my necklace and handed it to him.

“You aren’t pawning this, are you, Harmony?” he asked. It touched me to see the concern in his eyes, and I rushed to put him at ease.

“No, I just want to get some information about it.” I hesitated, deciding whether to mention last night’s incident, and realized he would find out one way or the other by the end of the day. Ye olde gossipe network would be working overtime, and I might as well tell him the truth.

“So I want to find out if there’s anything special about it,” I concluded.

He took it in both hands and ran his fingers down its length, twisting and turning the various pieces of turquoise. Next he held the necklace up to the light and did some more studying of the strand, then flipped down his jeweler’s glass and examined it. He glanced at me once or twice during the process, but I couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he laid it down on a soft cloth on his counter and shook his head.

“Some nice hunks of turquoise, but it isn’t anything special.” He looked at me and pursed his lips. “Not worth paying someone to steal it. Are you sure this is what the guy wanted?”

“That’s what he said.” Gary handed the necklace back to me and I fastened it around my neck. “Surprised me, too.”

“Maybe you better put it somewhere safe for a while,” he suggested. “Until this mess gets straightened out.”

“With my luck, the day I put it in my safe-deposit box would be the day the bank got robbed.” I grinned. “No, I’m going to keep wearing it. The guy was so drugged up he probably went to the wrong address.”

I called and left Freddie a message while I was sitting in the pawn shop’s parking lot, hoping for an update on the investigation. I even invited him to come to my place for supper—I felt bad about sending him home the night before.

Then I hit the library. A few years back, a patron donated a large collection of books about jewelry. Sure, most of them featured masterpieces by Tiffany and Cartier, but I might get lucky and find something similar to my necklace in one of them.

Mid-afternoon, I left several books opened on the table while I took a rest break. When I came back, something seemed out of place, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Nothing was missing, but it seemed as if the books had been moved. It could have been my imagination, or the result of lack of sleep. Whatever. I pulled out the chair, sat, and selected the top book from the stack.

Diamond jewelry has nothing in common with what I wear, but the pictures were gorgeous and a girl can dream. About the time I put that book down and chose another one, I noticed the corner of a piece of thick paper sticking out from between two other books. I moved the top one, and picked up the rectangle.

It was a picture of me and Jake.

Chapter Ten

I remembered that night. Jake had taken me to the fanciest restaurant in town, The Grove. Hardly original, but I’m not the one who named it. I wore a long-sleeved, low-cut, silky red dress that clung in all the right places and ended just above my knees. I felt gorgeous in that dress, and from the look in his eyes all night long, he thought so too. The dress hasn’t been worn since. I should donate it to a charity.

I’ll never wear it again.

That was the night he gave me the necklace. It seemed as if he’d bought it to match the dress. An arrangement of rubies and diamonds mounted in white gold, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. When he fastened it around my neck, I felt as if I’d transformed into Old World royalty.