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The sound of an engine revving took me to the window. Kade sped out of the driveway on his motorcycle. Apparently, he'd decided not to work but to take his anger for a ride.
Letting the curtain drop, I walked slowly down the hall, debating my next move. The open door to the guest room and the messy bed reminded me of the passion we'd shared, which now felt like a million years ago. I moved inside, stripped the sheets off the bed and then took them into the laundry room. I started the wash and then returned to the family room.
Kade had left his computer on the coffee table. It was still open, and as I hit the space bar, it lit up with the pages from the police report. I sat down and started reading, eager to see again exactly what the police had found on the scene and where their investigation had led. I was particularly interested in what had been stolen, and I zeroed in on that section.
James Holden had reported the loss of stones that included diamonds, sapphires, and opals as well as several pieces of jewelry, with a combined value of ten million dollars, and that had been more than twenty-seven years ago. It would all be worth a lot more today. The two stolen paintings had been valued at another two million dollars, Holden had reported missing a half-million dollars in cash.
Who kept that much cash in their house?I couldn't even imagine.
If my mom had been involved in the robbery and gotten some or all of what had been taken, she would have never had to work again. Maybe my mother was a criminal and not an innocent victim. Perhaps her shooting had been retribution for betrayal among thieves.
As I thought about that, I had to wonder about Rachel, too. She'd been in New York with my mother.Had she been part of the crew, too? Had they been in on it together? Was that why they'd gone on the run and why they couldn't go to the police now?
Putting those disturbing thoughts on hold, I read through the rest of the report, but nothing else jumped out at me. We'd already found the link between my mom and the Holden brothers. The theory that Kade's father was in on the job wasn't backed up by anything but speculation. There was no link between him and the Holdens. Kade's father had worked for the private security company for more than two years with no incident. The only clue that had led to the speculation was that he'd told the other security personnel he was going to stay behind to take one last pass through the house. They said they didn't know why he'd done that because they'd all done their checks thirty minutes earlier.
Why had he stayed behind? Had he seen something or heard something?
Sadly, I didn't think we'd ever know. I looked up as the sound of bells from the washing machine pierced my reverie. I got up and moved the bedding into the dryer, then I returned to the couch, thinking about what I'd put together so far.
I couldn't begin to figure out who had robbed James Holden and killed Kade's father, but my mother and possibly her sister had had some involvement. Ian had taken my mother into his brother's house a few days before the party. That wasn't a coincidence. She'd learned something while she was there. It was possible someone had used my mom's connection to Ian Holden at NYU to coerce her into helping the robbery crew. But I could be giving her too much credit.
Closing my eyes, I drew in a breath and slowly let it out, my mom's image floating through my brain. I didn't try to chase it away. I wanted to see where it would take me. I wanted to remember not just the good times, but the bad times.
But there weren't any bad times, I soon realized. She'd been a great mother. Maybe she'd used the museum as a way to meet up with her sister, but she'd taken us a lot of places where we could learn about art and history and music. She'd taught me to play the violin. She'd read us stories. She'd watched movies with us. She'd taught us how to garden. Every spring, we would do a new planting. Watching her putter around that garden, tending to each plant with nurturing love, had made it feel magical. The flowers had practically shimmered in the sunlight. I remembered the dirt slipping through her fingers as she dug down deep into the planter box. And then everything was so shiny when the sun hit her hand.
My eyes flew open, and I abruptly sat up, my heart beginning to race. There hadn't just been dirt in her hands—there had been stones, shiny stones. I'd asked her once where she'd found them. She'd just laughed and said she'd gotten them a long time ago. The shiny stones helped the plants grow.
But they hadn't been magical stones to grow plants. They'd been real stones, clear, sharp-edged brilliant rocks that looked like diamonds, blue stones that could have been sapphires, and green ones that could have been emeralds.
I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth, wondering if I could possibly be on to something. As my gaze moved toward the window, I saw the garden on the back patio and the colorful flowers planted along the back fence.
I threw open the back door and dashed down the stairs.
When the person had broken into the house, they'd turned over the patio chairs and tossed around the gardening supplies in the small shed at the back of the property, but they hadn't dug into the planter boxes.
As I stared at the garden options, I wondered if I was crazy.Would my mother have really planted priceless gems in dirt?
I didn't even know if she actually had any of the stolen items. But as Kade had pointed out, she'd paid for things that cost far more than she would make on a teacher's salary.
I picked up a spade from the shed and walked over to the flower garden. Getting down on my knees, I put the spade into the earth and started to dig.
Thirty minutes later, I'd ripped apart most of the flower bed and had found nothing. My hands were dirty, and my knees and arms were aching. I thought about giving up, but there wasn't much farther to go. I might as well finish it.
As I ripped up the last bunch of flowers, my spade hit something hard, and my heart jumped. I dug down deeper, tossing away the garden tool to use my hands. Finally, I pulled out a metal box that was about eight by ten inches in size. I could hardly believe it. There was a small combination lock on the box and for a moment, I thought that would stop me. But I put in my birthdate, and it popped open. I sat back on the ground and opened the lid, my heart beating very fast.
Inside the box was a stack of baby and toddler photos from the first seven years of my life. She must have had them in her wallet when she'd disappeared. There was also a stack of postcards from random places, none of which had been written on, which made me frown. I wondered if my mother had been to those places over the years, but why hide them away?
I set them aside. I'd think about what those meant later. Underneath the cards was about ten thousand dollars in cash, and a large, black velvet pouch. I pulled open the strings on the pouch and poured the contents into my hand, staring in amazement at the beautiful and brilliant stones. There were mostly diamonds, with a couple of sapphires and a shockingly red ruby. There was also a large square-cut emerald ring surrounded by diamonds, a diamond choker necklace, and another sapphire and diamond ring.
I couldn't believe what I was looking at. These had to be from the robbery. I needed to compare what I'd found to the inventory list in the police report. This didn't seem like everything, but what was now in my hand was probably worth millions of dollars.
And they'd been hidden away in a flower bed by my mother.
More realizations hit me. My mother had had these stones when I was a kid. She'd probably had them since the robbery, which happened before I was born. My mom was a thief, maybe a murderer. She was a criminal. Even if she'd done what she'd done in the heat of the moment, that was years ago. And all this time, she'd kept the stolen property. She must have sold some items off to buy this house and to build her life.
I wondered about Rachel.Had my mom been supporting Rachel, too? Had they split the stolen goods? Had they been in on it together?
Maybe that's who they were—thieves, criminals, con artists.
