“Joanna? Where are you?” Paul yelled from the living room upstairs.
Joanna set down the kimono she was inspecting. “In the laundry room.”
Their basement was divided into two sections. The first, at the bottom of the stairs, was a finished room remodeled sometime in the 1950s, with bead board paneling and a built-in bar. For now, this was where Gene slept. They’d moved the pink mid-century sectional sofa into Paul’s shop in the garage, where it now did duty as the dog’s hangout. In its place was a twin bed Gene had neatly made, pulling the sheets up as tightly as if he were a Marine. His clothing was precisely stacked in cupboards.
Through this room was the working part of the house—the furnace, laundry area, and storage. This evening Joanna sat with a stack of stained kimonos she’d bought at auction the week before, sorting the salvageable from the too-far-gone.
Paul’s steps sounded on the stairs, Gemma at his heels. “Hi, Jo.” He laid a copy of The Oregonian on her knees. “There’s a piece in here about Bradley Stroden. In the obits. I marked the page.”
“Thank you.” She reached around his warm neck and breathed in the scent of wood and skin.
“Where’s Uncle Gene?” he said.
“Don’t know. He wasn’t here when I got in.”
“I’ll make a plate for him anyway.”
She opened the paper over the laundry sink while Paul returned upstairs. The sound of dresser drawers opening and the clunk of his work boots told her he was changing out of his work clothes.
Bradley Stroden’s obituary was nearly a full column long. Besides what she already knew—his years with Edith Head, a short list of movies he’d helped on, and his time illustrating newspaper ads—she learned his studio had been upstairs in the old warehouse district now known as the Pearl District, and that he had breakfast most mornings at the counter at Fuller’s Coffee House. It wasn’t easy to reconcile his natty trousers and violet cologne with the fried eggs and working class banter at Fuller’s.
Joanna leaned against the wall and folded down the paper to continue reading. Stroden’s grandfather had had a business ferrying timber and other goods up the Willamette River. The obit dedicated a paragraph to the mansion itself, saying it had been built on the bluff to give Bradley’s grandfather, Edwin Stroden, a prime spot in the tower for watching his ships. Edwin had fathered one child, a daughter, Bradley’s mother, who died in 1958. Bradley was survived by a sister.
A memorial service was planned for next week. She read to the end, and then back again. The obituary didn’t mention that Stroden had been murdered.
Slowly, she refolded the paper and set it aside. She picked up the nearest kimono and ran her fingers down its lining to check for fraying. Stroden’s death was still ruled a homicide, wasn’t it? Perhaps the newspaper hadn’t caught on to it yet. Or the police had kept the information under wraps. She felt sure he’d been poisoned.
But, why? Who stood to gain from his death? Stroden lived in a huge house worth at least a few million dollars. Presumably, he owned it and it would go to the sister mentioned in the obituary. But why would a sister mail pastilles to her brother? She could slip the poison into a tin at any point and give it to him. It would be a lot less suspicious.
The memoir. Likely, most of the people he wrote about were well on in life, if not dead. He’d hinted at having some good stories, including some too hot to tell.
Which brought her back to Starlit Wonder.
Joanna pulled a pale green kimono with long sleeves from the pile. A dragon, embroidered in gold, crept around its hem. She lifted the garment by its shoulders. Yes, this one would command a good price. She knew at least three drag queens who would pull out their credit cards in a hot second. Her eyes lit on a tiny brown spot. She laid the kimono over her arm and examined it more closely. It looked like grease. A sprinkling of terre de sommières should take care of it. That is, if she could find the canister. A French customer had brought her the powder the spring before, saying it was ground to the texture of satin, and it worked miracles at absorbing oil. Joanna hadn’t had the chance to use it yet.
She spread the kimono over her worktable and went to the shelf above the washing machine. Upstairs, the radio nattered the news while the sink ran off and on and the refrigerator and cupboard doors opened and shut.
The terre de sommières canister was wedged behind the jugs of white vinegar and bleach. She popped off its lid and tipped the container into her palm. Something lumpy tumbled from the powder. A chunk of earth?
No. She blew on the object and felt its edges. Metallic. She hurried it to the sink and rinsed the dust from its surface. She gasped as she turned the object in her fingers.
It was an emerald and diamond earring, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, the real thing.
Joanna took the earring to the light. She dusted it with an old washcloth, and grass-green light sparkled. Its fittings were platinum, she was pretty sure. The earring formed a cascading fan of diamonds with five teardrop-cut emeralds dangling below it. From the squared-off shape of the fittings, she judged it as Deco. The value of what she held in her palm could have paid off her house.
She clicked off the light and stared, slack-jawed. Where was the earring’s mate? And why was it hiding in her stain remover? She closed her fingers around the earring. Gene.
“Jo, ready for dinner?” While she’d been absorbed in her find, Paul had come down the stairs. He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Look what I found.” She opened her hand.
He took the earring from her, glanced at it, and handed it back. “Another orphan?”
Paul had picked up a few of her terms of art. “No. At least, not my orphan. I’ve never seen it before.” She turned to him. “I think it’s real. If it is, the stones alone are worth thousands. If it’s Harry Winston or Cartier—and it could be either—it’s worth a lot more than that.”
They both looked through the doorway to Gene’s room.
“You don’t think—” Paul started.
“I don’t know what to think.”
Perhaps curious about their delay to the dinner table, Gemma joined them in the basement. Pepper wound around Joanna’s feet.
“He has been gone a lot,” Paul said.
“And he’s so mysterious about it.”
Paul shook his head. “No. No, I don’t see it. He said he’d gone straight, and I believe him. I mean, if he were stealing again, why would he be living in our basement? He’d have rented an apartment where he could go about his business without us getting in the way. He’d have the money for it.”
“Maybe we’re his cover,” she pointed out. “He can tell his parole officer he’s working for you part time while he’s really off breaking into houses.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In a canister of stain remover at the back of the laundry shelf.”
“The earring was in here?” He lifted the canister of terre de sommières. “Have you looked through the rest?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.”
He set the newspaper on her worktable and tipped the canister’s contents onto it. Another earring tumbled out. They stared at it. Paul drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Come upstairs and eat. We can talk this through over dinner.”
She held up the earrings. “What should we do with these?”
“Bring them both with you.”
Upstairs, Paul had set the table with the wide faience soup bowls Joanna had found at an estate sale. A salad bowl sat between them. Joanna laid the earrings on the red-flowered tablecloth and polished them lightly with a cotton napkin. The gems glowed the color of a lawn at sunset.
Paul took a seat. “You think they’re real, huh?”
“I’m almost sure of it.” She tore her eyes away from the earrings and picked up the salad tongs. “What’s for dinner?”
“One of the guys at the job site suggested this salad. It’s chicken, peaches, tarragon, farro, scallions, and red bell pepper. Sounded odd, but he swore it was great.”
Portland had to be one of the few places where construction workers talked gourmet food and listened to public radio as they worked. Once she’d met Paul at a foursquare he was helping to refurbish, and he asked her to pick up a six-pack of Pellegrino water on the way for the crew.
“It looks delicious. Thank you.” She absently spooned some into her bowl. She began to unfold her napkin, then set it aside. “Do we say something to Gene about the earrings?”
“Do you know for sure they weren’t in there before Gene moved in?”
“This was the first time I’d opened the canister.” The dust on its cap and its position at the back of the laundry shelf were proof. They would also have tipped off Gene that it was a safe place to stash something. “But I’d have noticed if there was something clunky in it like this when I put it on the shelf. No, I’m sure they weren’t in there.”
“Then I guess we’ll need to talk to him about it.”
Joanna pushed a piece of chicken with her fork. “I’m sorry, Paul. Maybe there’s an explanation.” She knew they had the same thought. “I haven’t seen anything in the news about a rash of high-end break-ins, have you? His crimes were a long time ago. Probably only the old-timers remember him, like Foster Crisp.” Before Foster Crisp was in the homicide bureau, he’d worked larceny and played a long-running game of cat and mouse with Gene. “Plus, how likely is it that he’d simply steal one pair of earrings? Wouldn’t he come home with more than that?”
“If he was working with a gang, someone else could have fenced the rest.”
“But not the earrings?” On the street, a car door shutting drew Joanna’s attention. The soprano murmur of a child’s and woman’s voices told her it wasn’t Gene.
“I can’t explain it. Maybe he’s keeping them as a sort of savings account. Or maybe they’re too recognizable to fence.”
“Let’s walk through what we know,” Joanna said. “Gene has a history of robbery. He just got out of prison and is on parole.”
“But he’s clean now,” Paul said. “He swears to it.”
“I know, but hear me out. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to find work. He disappears evenings and is cagey about where he’s been.” She caught his gaze. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m just listing the facts.”
He looked at his plate. “Go on.”
“Someone—almost certainly him—hid a pair of emerald earrings somewhere a casual search would never find them. Chances are high they aren’t Gene’s earrings. He couldn’t have inherited them from anyone in your family, could he?”
Paul snorted. “Not hardly.”
She chose her next words carefully. “If he’s in possession of jewelry that’s not his, and he’s found out, he’s going back to prison.” She drew a long breath. “And if the police learn we knew, and we’d done nothing about it, we could end up in the cell next to him.”
A minute passed before Paul said, “I know.”
“We could have the earrings appraised. A jeweler could tell us more about them. When they were made—they look Deco to me—what they’re worth…”
“That’s risky. I’m not sure what to do.”
Could more stolen goods be hidden downstairs? She didn’t want to raise this possibility and, frankly, didn’t want to know. Neither did she want to be the person to question Gene. How would Paul handle this? They hadn’t been together long enough that she could predict his reaction. To Joanna, the earrings were both of their problem, but Paul needed to take the lead on resolving it.
At last, she lifted a fork full of salad to her mouth. “This is good. Was it the sheetrocker who gave you the recipe? The same guy with the tip on biscuits?”
“Yep.” He sighed. “I’ll set some aside for Uncle Gene. And I’ll talk to him.” He slid a hand up her ring finger, bumping her wedding ring with his own. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”