Neither of them said anything until they were almost in the center of town.
Finally Mary broke the silence. ‘I felt as if I interrupted something back there. Is everything …’
‘All right? Aside from Jerry Lowell being murdered, Marlene dropped a little bombshell on Tommy. She told him she’d asked Jerry for a divorce the day before he was shot.’
Mary jammed on the brakes so fast that Millie flew off the backseat and ended on the floor with a loud yelp of protest. Mary barely heard her. ‘She did what? Why?’
Emma sat back up and loosened her seat belt a little. ‘Why don’t you pull into the police station parking lot and I’ll tell you? This man behind almost rear-ended us and I don’t think he’s too happy.’
Mary glanced in her rearview mirror at the glaring man behind her and did as Emma suggested. ‘All right. Tell me.’
Emma undid her seat belt, rubbed her breastbone lightly and took a deep breath, let it out slowly and turned toward Mary. ‘It came up while we were talking about the funeral. Marlene didn’t seem able to deal with any of it but Tommy said they had to think about it. They didn’t even have plots. Did she want a memorial service? That’s when she broke down.’
‘Was this before or after Mo got there?’
‘Before. She said she couldn’t take it anymore. Jerry had changed over the years. He used to be such a good guy but he wasn’t anymore. He’d tried to cheat the insurance company when Lowell’s was robbed and blame it on Mo Black. He’d lifted money from the store when they were in Sacramento, thinking she’d never find out, but she did. She sold the store, which was her heritage, thinking they needed a fresh start. When they came here, she told him he was to have nothing to do with the store, only his custom jewelry business. That’s when he opened the We Buy Gold shop. She said she became sure something was going on there but she didn’t know what. She’d finally decided she didn’t want to and didn’t want any association with it, or with Jerry. He wasn’t the man she’d married and she wanted out.’ Emma sighed deeply. ‘When she found him, she thought maybe it was her fault. That she’d pushed him over the edge. But Jerry didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered and it had something to do with that shop.’
Mary couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at Emma. That Jerry wasn’t the paragon of honesty Marlene had claimed wasn’t a surprise but that Marlene had been driven to getting a divorce was. Mo Black. He’d tried to blame Mo and it had somehow cost him his job. Why, then, were they on speaking terms? Maybe they weren’t. Or … something that had been a half-formed thought in the middle of the night returned. This had all started with Miller. Why had he come to Santa Louisa? Because he had a lead on who was robbing jewelry stores or a lead on what happened to the jewelry. Maybe …
‘Emma, do you have access to the files on those robberies?’
‘The files … no, that’s not my case, but I can get them. What are you thinking?’
‘I’m not sure, but can you get me the location of each one of those stores and the dates they were robbed?’
‘You have an idea.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘It’s not an idea as much as a possible line of inquiry. Ian Miller had to have a reason for showing up here. There’s a connection somewhere between Santa Louisa and those robberies. I’m not sure what it is but I may have an idea where to look.’
Emma stared at Mary for what seemed like a long time. Long enough for Millie to get bored with the backseat of a car that wasn’t moving. She started to climb between the seats in an effort to get to Mary. Almost abstractedly, Emma picked her up and set her in Mary’s lap. ‘All right, I’ll get you that information on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If anything, anything at all comes of this, you’ll tell me immediately. Promise?’
‘Of course.’ She smiled at Emma, who didn’t smile back.
‘Dan’s told me you’re good at solving puzzles but it’s gotten you in trouble before. Remember. You promised.’ She started to open the door but slammed it shut again and slid down in the seat. ‘Blast and damn.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Mary looked over the top of Emma’s head at the man leaving the police department. Cowboy hat worn low over his forehead, tight jeans and cowboy boots, he didn’t even glance Mary’s way. Gabe Grady. She looked at Emma, who had one arm up blocking her face. Gabe had been trying his charms on the female population again.
‘Gabe came on to you?’
‘More than that. He invited me out to the ranch. Thought I might like to see where my grandparents had lived. He’d show me around. Just him and me. Sure. He knew exactly who I was, knew I was a cop. He thought the whole thing was one big joke.’ She sat up and watched the old pickup Gabe drove leave the parking lot. ‘I wasn’t nearly as amused.’ She opened the door but paused. ‘Give me your email address. I’ll send you the information as soon as I get it. And don’t forget: you don’t go detecting anything outside of your own house.’
Mary smiled, watched as Emma typed her email address in her phone and headed for home.
She really wished people would quit worrying about her. She wasn’t going to do anything dangerous. Only look something up on the Internet. And try to put some pieces of this puzzle together. Dan was more than capable of doing this but she thought he might be handicapped by the state police. They didn’t seem to share information too readily, and she doubted Eric Wilson was any help. He seemed almost determined not to share information. Not so Emma. Her only goal seemed to be finding the killer. What a delight she was. Tommy seemed to think so as well. She wondered if … no. She was getting way ahead of herself there. Besides, she needed to think about all that had happened. Sort out what she actually knew from what she suspected and that was going to take some doing. Maybe, when she and Millie got home, she’d pour herself some iced tea and make a list. She’d done that before and it hadn’t helped much, but this time she’d do it on the computer. She laughed out loud. Millie, who had moved to the front seat, cocked her head as if to ask, What?
‘We’re about to put that expensive black box to good use, Millie, my dear. Right after you have your dinner.’