Although Graciela’s back room was even more cluttered than the relatively spacious store, I was just as familiar with its layout, so I was able to duck through the door and dodge out of sight. I scanned the place, frowning. Some people—Evy most definitely not among them—hated for people to see them cry. As shy as Nikki was, she might be one of that number. So where was she?

I headed for the stairs, but as I passed a row of shelves, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.

Nikki was crouched in front of an open drawer, her back to me and her bag on the floor by her feet. Oh, lord. Had she taken advantage of the reaction to Ava’s death to steal something else? Could her nervous timidity be all an act? She’d seemed genuinely affected by the news, but I imagined that successful killers would have to be good actors, wouldn’t they?

I rubbed my damp palms on my skirt. These poor donuts are really getting a beating today. Yesterday—God, had it been only yesterday?—before PJ and I discovered Ava’s body, Nikki had talked about doing something “really bad.” There wasn’t much worse than murder.

Get a grip, Tash. I was starting to see killers under every stack of holiday paper or lurking behind random ink displays. I might have an active imagination—although not as active as PJ’s—but I couldn’t picture Nikki cutting Ava’s throat with a die or bashing poor Dianne with a shovel. Besides, she had no reason to hurt either one of them.

I rose on my toes and crept forward so my heels wouldn’t click on the linoleum. “Nikki?”

She startled, and when she whipped her head around to stare at me, she overbalanced and fell onto her butt. A sheaf of pink glitter paper fell out of her hand and fanned across the tiles. “T-Tash?” She pushed herself to her feet. “This isn’t what it looks like. I swear.”

I moved closer and purposely kept my voice soft. “What do you think it looks like?”

Her hands flopped helplessly at her sides. “You know.”

“I’ve learned that making assumptions about peoples’ actions and intent never reflects well—either on me or on them. So why don’t you tell me?” Even though I maintained what PJ called my “Mother Tashia” calm demeanor, I admit that I checked the nearby shelves for any sharp objects. Or blunt instruments, for that matter.

Nikki hung her head, scuffing the floor with her grubby white tennis shoes. “It looks like I’m stealing. That’s what you thought the other night, isn’t it? That I was taking things from Graciela? Things that didn’t belong to me?”

“Well…” I hedged.

She sighed. “If you did, you’d have been right. But this time, I’m putting things back.” She lifted her chin and met my gaze, her eyes wide and desperate. “I wouldn’t ever lie to you, Tash. Not you. You’ve always been so kind. Not judgmental.” She slid a glance at the door. “Not like some people,” she muttered.

“But Nikki, honey, you shouldn’t do or not do things for me. You should do them for you.”

Her expression turned earnest. “But that’s the thing. I can do them for somebody else, somebody who’s a good person. I want to be a good person too. But sometimes…” She swallowed and stared at the floor again. “Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be any reason to be good. Not when so many other people are bad.”

“Does… does doing bad things”—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what bad things Nikki had done, but in for a penny—“make you feel good? Do you like doing them? Is that why you do them again?”

Her chin shot up. “No! That’s the problem. I don’t like doing them. I don’t even mean to. But sometimes I can’t help myself.” She gestured to the shelves packed with Graciela’s overstock. “I mean, the stuff is just there and then before I know it, it’s in my bag.” Her shoulders slumped, and her mousy hair hung down on either side of her face in lank clumps. “Most of the time, it’s not even something I like, let alone something I want.”

I moved closer and patted her shoulder. “Honey, I’m an engineer, not a psychologist, but don’t you think it might be a good idea to get some professional help? I don’t mind you using me as an incentive, but I might not always be here.”

Panic skittered across her face, and tears welled in her eyes. “Why? Where are you going? Are you moving away? Oh my god, are you dying?”

I couldn’t help chuckling. “Nothing so dire. I just meant I might not always be here.” I pointed to the ground. “Nearby. So I think it’s probably important for you to work through this with somebody who knows how to address the real issues.” I fumbled in my purse for the tissue packet, but remembered I’d left it with Evy. “If your medical insurance doesn’t cover counseling, I can help a little.”

She sighed. “It does. But if I go through with it, if I talk to a therapist, I’ll have to tell them. Admit what I’ve done. What if they look at me like… like Virginia would?”

Virginia as a therapist. Now there was a scary thought. “It’s their job to help you, honey. Not judge you. And if you have the bad luck to land on one who doesn’t treat you with respect? Get another one.”

She gave a watery chuckle. “It would be just my luck to get one like that.”

“I’ve got several friends who are therapists. If you like, I can ask one of them for a recommendation.”

She bit her lip. “Would it have to be somebody you know?”

“Of course not. Not if that would make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s just… When I tell them, I’m afraid they’ll think I’m as bad as those jewel thieves. And I wouldn’t want you to think any worse of me than you already do.”

I gave her a hug. “First, no reputable counselor would divulge client details to anybody, including a friend. Second, I don’t think badly of you. Far from it.” I patted her back, then moved away. “Third, what jewel thieves?”

She blinked at me. “The ones who— Oh, you weren’t there when we were talking about it. You remember that traffic jam on Saturday?”

“And the MAX holdup?” I knelt and started gathering the scattered paper. “Yes. It’s why PJ was late meeting me at the Expo Center.”

Nikki crouched down beside me, scrabbling glittery sheets into a messy pile. “Uh-huh. Well, there was a rock and gem show at the Convention Center that day, and somebody stole some stuff from one of the exhibits.” She handed me her less-than-pristine stack. Graciela’s gonna have to put those on the discount table. “Rubies. Pretty valuable ones, I guess, because there was a big fuss before they caught—”

“Rubies?” One of the sheets fluttered out of my numb fingers.

Nikki nodded. “Kinda big ones. It was all over the news the other night.”

“I haven’t really been keeping up.” Oh, my god. My mind was whirling, and I staggered a step when I stood. Of course! The big blingy red embellishments in Ava’s kit. The crystals in Dianne’s booth. Where better to hide gems than in plain sight, especially in a booth that was tucked out of the way behind a giant macrame screen?

Unless, of course, somebody like Ava came along and bought them before you could retrieve them.

My stomach roiled. This was the connection between the murders. It had to be. When the thief couldn’t find the jewels at Ava’s, he must have believed that Dianne still had them in her stock.

“But how would he know that Ava had them?” I murmured. The only way was if he—or she—witnessed Ava buying them or… I staggered backward, barely balancing on my heels and somehow managed not to twist my ankle. Or if he was in my class and heard Ava griping about leaving them at home.

Nikki cocked her head like an inquisitive sparrow and cupped my elbow to help steady me. “Did you say something, Tash?”

I pressed a hand to my stomach, which was threatening to empty all over Graciela’s back room. “You say they caught the thieves?”

“They made an arrest around dinner time today, yeah, but—”

“I’ve got to go.” I set the papers on a shelf—I could come back and straighten them later—and took Nikki by the hand. “Come on, honey.” I glanced at her bag. “Unless there’s something else in there you need to put back?”

She flushed and looked down. Uh-oh. Guilt reaction. “No.”

“You’re sure? I’m not going to judge you.”

She shook back her hair and met my gaze. “I’m sure. And if you get me that recommendation, I’ll see a counselor, Tash, I promise.”

“That’s all I ask. Now why don’t you go on out and join the other ladies. I’m sure Evy could use a little support.” I squeezed her hand and let it go.

“As long as it’s not Virginia,” she muttered, but she shouldered her bag and marched out onto the sales floor.

I hustled over to the receiving counter to dig through my purse. I know I had Bae’s and Huber’s cards in here somewhere. Normally I keep business cards in an antique silver cigarette case, but I’d been a little distracted lately, what with my friends getting murdered and my best friend being arrested.

The thief had to have been on the same MAX train as PJ on Saturday. He could have picked up the feathers at the Expo Center after PJ bought the boa. Well, he wouldn’t have had to pick them up—they’d have stuck to him like burrs. He could have seen PJ at my class— I froze with my Fenty lip gloss in my hand. Hold on a minute.

There hadn’t been any men in my class.

I huffed an impatient breath. Men came into the store all the time. Granted, the clientele was weighted heavily toward women, but there were enough male customers that one wouldn’t have raised a red flag. PJ had made so many trips back and forth to Ava’s car that day that he’d have made a perfect scapegoat if the thief had been lurking then. In fact…

The guy in the black hoodie. PJ had complained about him at the time—and had mentioned him peeling out of the parking lot after Ava.

“Aha!” I pulled Bae’s card out of the inside pocket. As much as I wanted to spring PJ from jail as soon as possible, I needed proof of the connection.

And for that, I needed Ava’s kit.

I hadn’t seen it in PJ’s apartment when I’d fed Mary Pickford—not that it was easy to see with all the sneezing—but PJ was a systems engineer and his apartment was even more organized than my craft room. Anything that didn’t have a permanent home with him was parked on a table inside his door, and it had been empty.

Moocher.

I crumpled Bae’s card in my fist. Good lord, the kit must still be in the back of PJ’s car. When the police showed up to arrest him, the proof of his innocence was right there.

Wait—would the detectives believe that the presence of the rubies was proof of PJ’s innocence, or would they think it gave him a motive? No, that’s stupid. For one thing, why would he need to kill anybody if he knew he had the jewels? Plus, PJ had been stuck on MAX with everybody else on Saturday when the theft was taking place. Surely MAX had surveillance cameras that would give him his alibi.

One way or another, I needed to turn the gems over to the police, so I pulled out my phone. The card listed both the department number and a personal line. I tried the personal line first, but it went to voicemail.

“Dang it!” I didn’t really want to leave a long involved voicemail, but I also didn’t want to go haring off to retrieve the contraband without letting the police in on the deal—that would be the perfect way to get myself added to the suspect list, especially since I’d been at all the crime scenes.

I tried Huber’s direct line instead. Voicemail. Double dang it. Why did they give out their numbers if they weren’t going to answer? I called the department number.

“Washington County Sheriff’s Office. How may I direct your call?”

“Could I please speak to Detective Bae?”

“One moment.” While I waited for the call to connect, I drummed my nails on the counter, probably harder than necessary, since it prompted a startled look from a customer passing the open doorway. “I’m sorry, but Detective Bae is unavailable right now.”

Blast. “Detective Huber then?”

“I’m sorry, but both detectives are tied up at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

“No, but thank you.” I hung up. If I was going to leave a message—and apparently that was my only option—I’d rather use their direct lines and cut out the possibility of the message going astray or sitting on their desks until the next time they were in the office.

I dialed Bae again. After the beep, I took a breath. “Detective, this is Tash Van Buren. I think I’ve discovered the connection between Ava’s death and Dianne’s, and it’s related to that jewel theft at the Convention Center. I think I know where the jewels are, and I’m going there now to retrieve them. If you could meet me at the Parthenon Apartments on SW Erickson Avenue in Beaverton, unit C10, I think we can clear PJ and return the jewels to their owners. I should be there in about fifteen minutes, but if you can’t make it by then, don’t worry. I’ll wait.”

I left the same message on Huber’s voicemail, then stuffed everything back in my purse. I’d organize it later. Right now, I had places to go and a best friend to spring from the hoosegow.