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Beth couldn’t take her eyes off it. “This looks really expensive.”
Tony’s lawn chair squeaked as he moved. “Yeah, it does.”
“Mom did make a good income. She might have rewarded herself after a good year. Or…or she and Dad agreed to pick out their own Christmas presents.” Except Dad didn’t own anything comparable, unless you added up an awful lot of books.
“Then why don’t you remember her wearing these?” Tony asked, his gaze on the necklace, too.
“I told you.” Her quick response was…defensive? “I might not have noticed.”
“Your brother or sister might,” he said, soothing.
She bit her lip, hard enough to sting, before she nodded.
He accepted the necklace from her and allowed it to slither through his fingers to lie beside the obviously matching earrings. “Have you at least glanced at everything?”
“Yes.”
“What should be there but isn’t?”
Trying to think, Beth frowned. “Nothing. Except…did you find her rings?”
“Plural?”
“Engagement ring and wedding band?”
“Neither were with her body.” He looked and sounded energized. “So what happened to them?”
“Dad might know. If she left them on the dresser—or, wait, the computer desk would have made more sense—he might have put them away. Her I’m leaving you note would have been more convincing if it looked like she’d taken her rings off, wouldn’t it?”
“It would.” He sat back, frowning a little and gazing ahead as if not seeing anything in the garage. “But, if so, why wouldn’t he have said she had? Why would he let you all think she would be coming home?”
“Because…he wanted to let us hold onto hope for a while?”
Tony looked at her, his eyebrows a little crooked.
“I guess that doesn’t sound like Dad, does it?” And he was right. Nothing like that would ever occur to her father. “Do you think whoever killed Mom thought she’d be harder to identify without the rings?”
“Even then, DNA was commonly known,” he pointed out. “And comparing dental work, which is what we did.”
“If Dad killed her, he’d have made sure she ‘left’ the rings, and that we all saw them. They would have supported his story.”
“They would have,” Tony agreed, some reluctance in his voice. “Although your dad doesn’t strike me as a great planner.”
A spike of anger had her dumping jewelry back in the polished wooden box. “You’re convinced that he’s the killer, aren’t you?”
“He’s still likeliest, Beth.”
She shook her head, glaring at him. “Do you always go for the easy answer?”
Some stiffening of his shoulders and a narrowing of those dark eyes were all that gave away his reaction to her jab. “Do I try to turn every crime into a convoluted mystery, when it isn’t? No. Am I as impartial and thorough as I can be? Yes. Why else am I here with you?”
The backs of her eyes burned, but she wouldn’t let him see that much vulnerability. “Good question.”
He scooted the plastic tote with the diamond jewelry atop to one side, letting her pack the jewelry box away while he brought the next cardboard box, narrow and tall. The last of those Mom’s things that she’d set aside.
“This one is all prints or artwork, I think,” she said, stripping everything she felt from her voice.
Once again, he let her remove them one by one. Most were framed prints, not very interesting. A few looked vaguely familiar; all ran to being pretty or cute. Beth had a niggling memory that this box had once sat on the top shelf of the linen closet. Maybe Mom had traded these out for variety?
The portfolio, however, she didn’t remember seeing before yesterday. Open, she saw that it contained unframed prints, most matted. Curious, Beth pulled them all out.
The first couple seemed to be original watercolors, better quality than the framed stuff. The view in one was across a cove of Frenchman Lake at the curving lines of wine grape vines following the contours of the hills that sheltered the lake. The other was a close-up of a vine, heavy with grapes.
