Family Jewels: Rose Gardner Investigations #1 Read online

  “You mean her farting issue?”

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

  “Muffy’s perfectly healthy. I see no reason to take her to the vet if there’s no problem.”

  “I call the fact that I’ve considered buying one of those World War I mustard gas masks at the army surplus store a reason,” Neely Kate said. “It doesn’t hurt that Dr. Romano would be the one lookin’ her over.”

  “Neely Kate.” I stopped in the middle of the aisle. “I’m not ready to date yet.”

  “How do you know?” But something in her eyes told me this wasn’t just about my love life.

  “Are you ready to date?” I asked, thinking about that vision I’d had.

  “I don’t know,” Neely Kate said quietly.

  That was new. A month ago she’d said no. “Is there anyone you’re interested in dating?”

  “No.” She said it with so much force I couldn’t help wondering if she was thinking about Carter Hale. He’d made no secret of his interest in her, but I was pretty sure there were rules against him dating a client. Thank goodness. Something told me it wasn’t a good idea for her to rebound with her divorce attorney.

  “I know you’re still married,” I said. “But you’re trying your best to get a divorce. You’d probably be divorced already if he hadn’t taken off.” I gave her a sad smile. “It’s okay if you want to find someone else, Neely Kate.”

  “And the same goes for you,” she said, sniffing and wiping the corners of her eyes. “Let’s go talk to Rayna.”

  She left me in her wake as she started pushing the cart toward the housewares section as if they were giving away OPI nail polish to the first five customers.

  By the time I caught up, Neely Kate had come to a halt. She was studying a thirty-something woman with jet-black hair that extended slightly past her shoulders. It had so many uneven layers it looked like it had been cut by Edward Scissorhands. She had on khakis, a white shirt, and a blue vest and was studying a package of bed sheets as though she wanted to light them on fire.

  Neely Kate took a breath, appearing to center herself, and then her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Rayna? Is that you?”

  “What?” the woman asked in confusion as she hurriedly set the sheets on the shelf. “Neely Kate. Do you need help with somethin’?”

  Neely Kate tilted her head and gently rested her hand on the woman’s arm. “I just heard about Raddy.”

  The woman gave Neely Kate the same scowl she’d been giving those sheets. “Lies! He’s telling lies!”

  Neely Kate nodded sympathetically. “Of course they are, honey. Everyone knows about Randy Raddy’s reputation.”

  Rayna’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Apparently everyone but Rayna.

  Neely Kate leaned closer. “Rayna, you’re ten times better off without him.” A mischievous grin spread across her face. “I heard his clothes burned so hot in your front yard the Henryetta fire department had to send two trucks.”

  Rayna’s mouth twisted into a slight grin. “He was fit to be tied when I burned his lucky bowling shirt.”

  “I hope you kept most of his stuff.”

  “Most of it was mine,” Rayna said with a scowl. “Lazy-ass son of a bitch only got a job about two months ago. Probably so he could pay for those damn hotel rooms.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Rayna, honey,” Neely Kate cooed, rubbing her arm. “Just let him shack up with those other hussies. You’re lucky to be rid of him and find you a real man.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” I said moving closer, “but I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m Neely Kate’s friend, Rose. I really hope you take him to the cleaners.”

  Her sad eyes lifted to mine. “We weren’t even legally married. The damn fool admitted he forgot to send in the marriage license. And since Arkansas’s not a common law state, I’m not entitled to nothin’ of his. Not that he has anything. The house is in my name, and most of the stuff is mine. I held onto his big-screen TV for a week, but it’s one of those monster things that’s about five feet tall and it had funny lines through the screen. I put it out in the garage with all his fishing and bowling stuff.”

  “There wasn’t anything else he wanted?” Neely Kate asked innocently.

  “His grandmammie’s jewelry, but I handed it all over to the old bat.” When she saw our confused looks, she added, “His mother.”

  “That had to have been worth something,” Neely Kate said. “You could have taken some of it and sold it, then bought yourself a brand-new big-screen TV. I bet you get an employee discount here, don’t you?”

  Rayna snorted. “Raddy was always bragging that the jewelry was worth thousands of dollars, but he’s either deluded or he wanted me to be deluded. I took that stupid owl brooch to the pawn shop, and Alberto said the eyes were cut glass.”

  Raddy had claimed he’d only discovered the necklace’s value after the breakup. Had he lied to us or inadvertently told Rayna the truth? I shot a look to Neely Kate, but she plowed on like she wasn’t fazed one bit. “So why would Raddy think it was real?”

  “His momma probably filled his head with lies. She told me that junk was real when she picked it up.”

  I shook my head. “Why would she say that?”

  She pointed a bony finger at her temple. “To mess with my head. Now Raddy’s all worked up and accusing me of hiding it or pawning it, but he can ask Alberto. I ain’t been to the pawn shop since I sold his old trumpet.”

  I made a mental note that we should talk to this Alberto ourselves.

  “Can you believe he’s threatened to sue me?” she asked in disbelief. “Over some stupid costume jewelry.” She shook her head and crossed her arms. “You can’t get blood out of a turnip. They can turn my house upside down, and they ain’t gonna find nothing.”

  My head tingled—a telltale sign I was about to have a vision—and I barely had time to tap Neely Kate twice with my fingertips, a system we’d created for this sort of awkward situation.

  The Walmart bedding aisle faded from view, replaced by a hot tub. The woman sitting next to me in the water looked like she was in her early thirties, but life hadn’t been kind. She had bleached blonde hair piled on top of her head and saggy breasts covered by the smallest bikini top I’d ever seen. There was a glass of wine in her hand, and her wide smile showed chipped yellow teeth.

  “We’ll get your revenge, Rayna. Just you wait and see.”

  I lifted my own wine glass and clinked it with hers. “Here’s to gettin’ rid of the garbage in our lives.”

  The vision faded, and suddenly Rayna was standing in front of me. I blurted out, “You’re gonna get revenge.”

  Her eyes hardened and she threw back her shoulders. “Damn straight, I am.”

  Neely Kate pressed her lips together and nodded. “That’s the spirit. You stand your ground, Rayna.”

  The woman nodded. “I need to head to the back. It was good seeing you again, Neely Kate.”

  “You too. Take care of yourself.”

  “Yeah, I’m trying,” she said absently, then walked to the end of the aisle.

  When she disappeared from view, I grabbed the cart and started pushing it toward the front of the store.

  “You had a vision about Rayna gettin’ revenge?” Neely Kate asked.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to focus on what I’d seen. “She’s gonna cook up a plan with her blonde friend. They were in a hot tub.”

  “But she didn’t say anything specific about her plan?” Neely Kate asked.

  “Nothing other than that Rayna and this other woman wanted to get rid of the garbage in their lives.”

  “I can’t say I blame them.”

  “Yeah, neither can I,” I said. “Do you believe Rayna gave all the jewelry to his mother?”

  “Yeah. But the non-ruby brooch doesn’t fit with the necklace being real.”

  “We need to talk to Alberto at the pawn shop.”


  She nodded. “Agreed.”

  But first I needed to figure out an excuse to go see James in an hour.

  Chapter 5

  It occurred to me that I had the perfect excuse for heading home early. “I should get food for tonight’s dinner while we’re here,” I said. If I got groceries now, they’d need to be refrigerated sooner or later. It would give me an excuse to slip away without having to answer too many questions.

  Neely Kate cast me a questioning look.

  “It’s like you said. Seein’ as how we’re already here, we might as well make the most of it.”

  “At least you won’t think of some excuse to work late again tonight. I know we’re busy, but you work too much.”

  “I’m a business owner,” I said a little defensively as I steered the cart toward the food section of the store. “Besides, I like what I do.”

  “You like paperwork?”

  She had a point, but the work needed to be done, and it kept me distracted . . . something I desperately needed.

  Neely Kate must have sensed my inner turmoil and let it go. “Okay. What do you want to get?”

  I pulled out my phone and opened my Pinterest app. “I found a recipe for this Tuscan chicken dish I’d like to try. How about that?”

  “Sure.”

  We gathered the ingredients we didn’t have at the farmhouse and checked out at the register. There were two pawn shops in town, and Rainy Day Pawn was the nicer of the two. Rayna wasn’t high-class, but Ripper Pawn seemed a little too rough for her. As we walked toward the truck, I called Rainy Day Pawn and asked to speak to Alberto.

  “He won’t be in until four,” the woman on the other end said. “He’s getting another tattoo.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  I was relieved—this would give me time to meet James and then come back—but I tried not to show it as I relayed the information to Neely Kate. “So we’ll need to wait until four to head over there.”

  “We could go talk to Mable Dyer—Raddy’s momma.”

  I pondered it for a second. “Let’s talk to Alberto first and find out if the brooch really was a fake. It would be good to have confirmation of that before we approach her.”

  “So what should we do in the meantime?”

  I glanced at the time on my phone. “How about I drop you off at the office and you can work on those proposals? I’ll grab Muffy and take her and the food to the house. Then we can head to the pawn shop together.”

  She gave me a look that said she knew I was up to something, but she didn’t call me on it. Like I’d told Joe, Neely Kate and I both had our secrets. “Good idea, but you don’t have to take Muffy.”

  “It looks like the rain’s let up for a bit. I can let her run around the yard while I’m putting things away,” I said. “And we won’t have to worry about her if we want to stop by Raddy’s mother’s house after we talk to Alberto.”

  “Good idea.”

  While I drove to the office, Neely Kate pulled out her notebook and the pink fluff-ball pen. She cast me a defensive look. “This is how they do it on all those cop shows. They interview people and write down what they say.”

  “You should give some serious thought to becoming a Henryetta police officer, Neely Kate. Lord knows you’ve got more brains than most of those boneheads put together.”

  She snorted. “No way. Black is not my color, and those uniforms have no shape at all.”

  “So become a detective,” I said. “Detective Taylor never wears a uniform.”

  She glanced up at me, and something flickered in her eyes before she grinned and said, “I like what I’m doin’ just fine.”

  But that reminded me of what she’d told Raddy at the hardware store. “Since when do we have a name for our nonexistent investigation company?”

  She grimaced slightly and kept looking down at her notebook. “We have to have a name if we’re gonna be taken seriously.”

  “Sparkle? You think people are gonna take that seriously?” I shook my head. “If we were to have an investigation agency—and I’m not sayin’ we are—it would not be named Sparkle.”

  “Have you got a better idea?”

  “No. Because we don’t have an investigation agency.”

  She didn’t have a retort, but even a blind bat could see she was biding her time with this one.

  Maybe this whole necklace thing was a mistake after all.

  Anna was in the office when we got there, and thankfully she’d picked up all the files and arranged them into stacks. I was proud to see how many folders we’d accumulated already. Not every folder had yielded a job, of course, but a good half of them had.

  Muffy jumped up on my legs when we walked in, and I scooped her into my arms. “How’s it goin’, Anna?”

  Anna, who was sitting in the middle of the wood floor, looked up at us with her warm dark eyes. “She really did a number on these files.”

  Neely Kate cringed. “But it’s not that bad,” Anna said, smiling at her. “I’ve almost gotten everything back into order. I just need to return them to the cabinets.”

  “Thanks so much for doin’ this,” I said. “You’re helping more than you know.”

  Anna pushed a skinny ringlet of her black hair behind her ear. “It’s kind of nice to have an office job.”

  I tried not to show a reaction. Anna had been invaluable at the nursery while my sister was gone. Was she considering leaving us for an office job somewhere? “Have you and Bruce Wayne settled into your new house?” I asked.

  She gave me a shy grin. She and Bruce Wayne had been seeing each other for four months and had recently rented a house together. They were a cute couple, and I was thrilled Bruce Wayne had found someone who appreciated him. “We’re still unpacking.”

  “It takes a bit to get settled,” Neely Kate said as she sat at her desk, not making eye contact. “You’ll get it done.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking about moving in with Ronnie last summer after her wedding. While she’d brought most of her clothes to my house, all of her furniture and other belongings were still at the house they’d shared.

  “I better get goin’,” I said, moving closer to the door. “I need to get these groceries to the house. I’ll be back in time to head out to take care of our errand.” It was probably best for us to keep our investigating to ourselves.

  Neely Kate nodded, but she didn’t look up from her computer screen.

  Muffy was excited when I set her down on the passenger seat, even more so when I rolled down the windows partway so she could stick her head out.

  I lived on a farm about twelve miles outside of Henryetta. It was part of my inheritance from my birth mother, whose existence I hadn’t known about until last year. Most of the thousand acres to the west were rented to a nearby farmer, but the nearly century-old Victorian house, the big barn several hundred feet behind the house, the horse pen, and several acres of fields to the east were mine to use as I saw fit. Joe rented the house on the property that butted up to the south side of mine, which was sometimes reassuring, sometimes irritating.

  When I pulled up in front of the house, I set Muffy on the ground, and she ran around like she’d been cooped up for days. I carried the groceries into the kitchen, then shepherded her back into the house. She headed straight for her dog bed. Maybe she was ready for something familiar after her morning with Marci.

  I locked up and got back into the truck, my stomach twisting into knots as I headed toward the abandoned Sinclair gas station off of County Road 110. James never asked me to meet during the day. We always waited until dusk or later to lessen our chances of being seen together. I had to wonder what had made him break his own rule.

  As usual, he was already parked behind the station, but he paced along the length of his sedan. Something else that was unlike him. His dark brown hair had grown out a bit, and he was wearing a dark gray T-shirt and jeans today, along with a pair of work boots. His upper body was toned, and his shoulders and arms st
retched his shirt. I always felt safe around the criminals I’d questioned when I was with him. He turned to watch my pickup as I pulled in next to his car, his dark brown eyes filled with concern.

  “Hey,” I said, as I opened the door and climbed out. “Is everything okay?”

  He moved closer. “Have you talked to Simmons lately?”

  I froze. “I saw him this morning. Why?”

  “Did he say anything about me?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know I won’t share his secrets, just like I won’t share yours.”

  “Dammit, Rose. Is he preparing for something?” There was that worried look again.

  I took a deep breath. “He thinks there’s going to be a turf war between you and Wagner.”

  “So he knows that Wagner’s involved?”

  I hesitated before answering, but Joe hadn’t said it was a secret. “He didn’t mention his name, just that there’s a threat. He’s worried.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  He ignored my question. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

  My eyes widened. “What do you want?”

  “I need you to have a vision for me.”

  “Of who?”

  “Me.”

  That was exactly how our partnership had started last November. He’d asked me to force a vision about his bid to become king of the underworld; I’d seen a vision of his death. In fact, I’d seen it again and again—he’d asked me to repeat it until we could figure out how to change the outcome. That whole mess hadn’t been any more fun for him than it had been for me. He had to be really worried if he wanted to risk going through it again.

  “What’s Wagner up to?” I asked with a quaver in my voice.

  He shook his head, his eyes hard. “The less you know, the better.” Then he grabbed my hand and held it tight. “Tell me what you see me doing on Friday night.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to settle my nerves so I could focus on forcing a vision. They were easier to produce on command now that I had more practice, but they were a bit harder to initiate when I was on edge.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  I opened my eyes and shot him a look. “Give me a second. I’m scared to death, so it’s taking its time.”