I will not be at the mercy of the telephone!
—C. S. Lewis (attributed)
“THIS IS RIDICULOUS!”
For going on twenty minutes, I’d been watching Eddie in the side-view mirror, pacing back and forth behind his police car, mobile phone plastered to his ear.
Don’t get your bloomers in a bunch, doll. You’d be cuffed and booked and sitting in stir if that insurance hustler got his way.
“Well, I don’t see why Eddie couldn’t make his call in front of me. If it involves me, I have a right to know, don’t you think?”
What I think is your copper friend figures that “next of kin” address involved him, and he had a right to know.
“You’re saying turnabout’s fair play?”
I’m saying your pal holds all the cards and you’re playing by his rules now. He’ll tell you what he wants to tell you when he wants to tell it—
My conversation with the ghost was cut short when the driver’s-side door suddenly opened, and Eddie jumped behind the wheel.
“Were you saying something just now, Pen?”
“I was . . . talking to myself. Who were you talking to?”
“First I called Ben Clayton—”
“The notary on Cranberry Street?”
“He’s a notary, sure. But Ben is also the biggest insurance agent outside of Providence. He peddles Delaware Mutual, among other products.”
Eddie started the engine and rolled the police car onto the traffic-free rural road.
“So?”
“Ben told me all about Max Braydon. He’s one of the most successful insurance investigators in the business. They call him the Hunter. At last year’s Delaware Mutual Banquet, they gave Braydon an award.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing, so I dug a little deeper,” Eddie replied. “I called Detective Toland—”
“But he’s off the case.”
“Sure, but he knows all about Braydon. That award they handed him was a message that Braydon should retire. In the last couple of years, he’s gotten sloppy—and aggressive. There have been complaints about his tactics, even a lawsuit.”
“Well, he’s obviously messed up big-time if he thinks I’m in on some jewel-heist conspiracy with Norma.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Eddie shook his head. “Braydon’s wrong thinking Norma is guilty, too.”
“Do you have some evidence I don’t know about? Another suspect, maybe?”
“No, but I know Norma. Better than most.”
“You’ve seemed convinced of Norma’s innocence from the start, Eddie. Can you tell me why?”
Eddie sighed. “I guess I can, even though I promised Norma I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Eddie stopped at the junction, then made the turn toward Quindicott.
“Do you remember when Rita Mae Charles retired last Christmas, after thirty years working at Greene’s?”
“I sure do.”
Greene’s was a big-box store up on the highway, a sort of independent Target or Walmart. “My aunt Sadie thought maybe Rita got sick, seeing how she swore many times she would never quit. Rita bragged they would have to carry her out on a stretcher.”
“It wasn’t really her choice to retire, Pen.”
Eddie told me that a couple of days before Christmas last year, Norma came into the station and handed him a manila envelope filled with money—big bills, small bills, all paper money adding up to twenty thousand dollars and change.
“She found it on the counter at the post office,” Eddie explained. “Norma took one peek inside, saw the money, and came directly to me. Inside, I found the register receipts for Greene’s and called the manager.”
“What happened?”
“Rita Mae stopped at the post office to mail some Christmas cards before going to the bank. She got distracted and walked away without the money. She was getting addled, apparently, because she even forgot she was supposed to make the deposit drop at the bank.”
“The folks at Greene’s must have offered Norma a sweet reward.”
“They did. Only Norma insisted that I keep her name out of it. She said she didn’t want the attention, and she didn’t care about the reward. She told me to turn over any reward to Reverend Waterman’s substance abuse program. Norma made me swear to keep her involvement a secret, and I did until just now.”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“You can say that again. That envelope was full of unmarked bills that were untraceable. Norma could have kept that money, easy.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No, Pen. So why, a year later, would Norma steal jewelry? Even if it is worth millions of dollars, I just don’t think it’s plausible.”
“That’s why I went to Millstone, Eddie. I’m sure Norma is innocent, too, but I wanted to hear her say it.”
We rode the rest of the way to Cranberry Street in silence. But after he pulled up to my bookshop, Eddie turned to me for a final comment.
“Braydon may have taken me off the case, but I’m not dropping it. If you find out anything, anything at all, tell me you’ll come to me.”
I wanted to say no. Or cross my fingers behind my back. But Eddie was too good a friend to refuse—or mislead.
“I will,” I said (and meant it).