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“Are you buying gold?” Connie asked.
“No. I’m helping Susan Cubbin clean house. I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow.”
Forty minutes later I was in Susan’s kitchen.
“It’s worth more than he stole,” I told her. “Gold has risen in value since Geoffrey bought it. All you have to do is take the gold to Cranberry Manor and tell the residents it was a misunderstanding, that Geoffrey was actually making smart investments on their behalf. They’ll probably name a wing after him.”
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it would go down like that but it was the best I could do.
Susan had sheets draped over the stacks of gold. “How am I going to get this moved? Do I need to hire an armored truck?”
“I have a friend,” I said.
I called Ranger and told him I needed to transport 133 kilos of gold.
“Now?”
“Now would be good.”
“I’ll send Tank with a couple cars. I have a client meeting in five minutes. I assume I’m not necessary.”
“You’re desirable, but in this case not necessary,” I told him.
“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
Two Rangeman SUVs arrived, we loaded the SUVs and headed out. I led the parade in the Buick, and Susan brought up the tail in her van. We parked in front of Cranberry Manor and I told Tank to stack the gold up in the lobby.
“This is from Geoffrey,” Susan Cubbin said to the room filled with gawkers. “It was all a misunderstanding. I found a note from him, and it turns out he was investing your money in gold and now you’re all rich.”
There was stunned silence and then a cheer went up.
“It worked,” Susan said to me. “Let’s get out of here before they start asking questions.”
“We’ll need a receipt,” I said to Carol, the facility’s tour guide.
She counted the bars and wrote out a receipt. “One hundred and thirty-two bars,” she said.
I looked at Susan.
“I might have left one in the kitc
hen,” Susan said.
“One hundred and thirty-two bars is correct,” I said to Carol.
I stopped at Pino’s, got lasagna with meat sauce, extra bread, and tiramisu for dessert, and took it to Morelli’s house. He was on the couch, watching television with his leg propped up on the coffee table. Bob was by his side, offering sympathy, standing guard.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“It’s going good. And it’s even better now that I have you here with dinner.”
I went to the kitchen and got knives and forks and napkins and beer and brought it all back to Morelli.
“I hear Cranberry Manor had some good fortune today,” Morelli said. “Apparently a photographer and a news guy arrived shortly after you left.”
“Geoffrey had the bars buried in his backyard. Susan found a landscape plan and dug them up. When I got there she had them stacked up in her kitchen.”
“Why did she give them back?”
