Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [90]
Vince stopped at the newspaper box on the corner and dropped in two quarters, opened the door, and yanked out a paper, curious to see just what it was that Miss Connie had been hiding back there.
The paper under his arm, he walked a block to the one and only coffee shop in Carleton. He ordered a large special Hawaiian blend, cream and sugar, and took a seat nearest the window at the coffee bar. He opened the paper and began to scan each page, trying to figure out what it was that Connie had wanted to keep him from seeing.
“Town Council Votes on New Parking Meters”? Nah.
“Rabid Raccoons Found Near Carleton Park”? Not likely.
“Broeder Police Release Sketch of Stolen Pendant.”
Uh-oh.
With a calm he did not feel, he hunched over the page, reading as rapidly as his eyes could move and his brain could absorb.
Broeder police chief Sean Mercer yesterday released a sketch of a pendant similar to one stolen from For Old Time’s Sake, the antiques shop that was the scene of a grisly murder. Forty-seven-year-old Marian J. O’Connor was found murdered . . . yada yada . . . emerald pendant missing from the scene . . . yada yada . . .
“We believe the killer may have grabbed the pendant on his way out of the shop as a souvenir,” Chief Mercer said in a recent telephone interview with the Broeder Herald. “And the sketch we’re releasing, while not exact, is similar enough to the one stolen that anyone seeing it would make the connection. Of course, there is the chance that the person who has the pendant in their possession could have purchased it from the shop before the killer came on the scene. In any event, we are most anxious to speak with anyone who, within the past week, has seen an emerald and gold pendant that in any way resembles this one.”
Yeah, I’ll just bet you would. Vince drummed anxious fingers on the countertop. When he realized the girl behind the counter was staring at him, he smiled weakly, gathered the newspaper, and walked out of the shop.
Once out on the street, he walked in tune with his thoughts, which were at full throttle.
Connie. She saw the article. She saw the pendant. She put it together.
Yeah. She did. I saw it in her face. She knows.
The question now is, who has she told?
It was a source of concern for him all afternoon. Had she shared her suspicions with Dolores? Because—let’s keep calm now—that’s all Connie could have at this point, suspicions. He’d studied the picture in the paper, and while the general shape was accurate and they’d gotten the circles right, there was enough of a difference between the drawing and the real deal that a case—a very strong case—could be made for them not being the same. Sure. If Connie showed the article to Dolores and Dolores mentioned it to Vince, he’d just say, “Hey, how ’bout that? Must have been made around the same time. They’re both old pieces, right?” And Dolores would believe him, of course, because she’d want to.
But Connie?
Connie could be a problem. Over the past few weeks, as he and Dolores spent more and more time together, Dolores was spending less and less time with Connie, a situation that Connie clearly resented. Wouldn’t she be just pleased as shit to show him up? Even if she did nothing more than plant a seed of doubt in Dolores’s mind, it could prove to be a problem for him.
These days, he had a zero tolerance policy when it came to problems.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Vince gnawed anxiously at a fingernail, the third one he’d chewed down to the quick that afternoon.
“Bitch is just too damned smart for her own good,” he muttered. “Just too damned smart . . .”
He paced a bit in his room, then realized it was way too small for the amount of pacing he needed to do just then. Tucking the newspaper under his arm, he locked the door behind him, then took the steps two at a time. He drove the three blocks to the Cut N Curl and parked in the small lot behind the shop.
Don’t do anything stupid, he cautioned himself. What are the odds