Read Deadly Rich for Free Online

have been there.”
    “And who was that?”
    A moment went by. Cardozo was suddenly aware of a silence threaded through with shadow.
    “A murderer,” Leigh Baker said.
    “She was screaming it,” Tori Sandberg said. “ What is that murderer doing in your kitchen ? How dare you hire a murderer !”
    “Did she have any murderer in particular in mind?”
    “His name is Jim Delancey.” In Leigh Baker’s lap two thumbs with their clear-polished nails began probing each other. “He killed my daughter four years ago.”
    “And did Oona Aldrich actually see him?”
    Tori Sandberg shrugged as though it should have been obvious. “She had to have been imagining it. Jim Delancey was sentenced to—what was it, Leigh—twenty-five years?”
    “I could see into the kitchen from the table,” Leigh Baker said. “He wasn’t there.”
    “Oona had an instinct,” Tori Sandberg said. “She zeroed in on people’s dreads. I’m not saying she did it with premeditation or even consciously. But if she’d wanted to destroy our little reunion, she couldn’t have picked a quicker or more effective way.”
    Cardozo flipped to a fresh page. “And you said Mrs. Aldrich made another scene outside the store?”
    “The man with the boom box was there,” Tori Sandberg said. “She insulted him.”
    “How did Mrs. Aldrich do that?”
    “She said they shouldn’t allow music like that in front of the store. She said next thing they’d be allowing it inside. He heard her and he followed us inside.”
    Cardozo glanced up from his notebook. “This man followed you?”
    “I didn’t see him,” Leigh Baker said.
    “Well, one moment we were outside and he was outside,” Tori Sandberg said, “and the next moment we were on the second floor in the boutique and there he was.”
    “The same man,” Cardozo said.
    “Unless there were two Hispanic men with the same boom box and the same scowl wearing the same gray jogging clothes and red sweatband and red jogging pouch and white Adidas sneakers.”
    “I didn’t think he was scowling,” Leigh Baker said. “If anything, he looked easygoing.”
    “Killing Oona over a stupid ninety-cent battery is hardly easygoing,” Tori Sandberg said.
    “She wasn’t killed over the battery,” Leigh Baker said. “She was killed for the brooch.”
    “Excuse me,” Cardozo said. “What brooch?”
    “Oona was wearing a brooch exactly like this.” Leigh Baker tapped a finger against a small platinum hummingbird pinned to her lapel.
    Cardozo noticed that Tori Sandberg was wearing an identical piece of jewelry.
    “We were all wearing one,” Leigh Baker said, “and Oona’s is gone.”
    “Was she wearing it when she went into the changing room?”
    Leigh Baker nodded. A moment went by and then Tori Sandberg nodded.
    “And when did you realize it was missing?”
    “It was missing when I found her,” Leigh Baker said.
    Cardozo made a note. “How much is a brooch like that worth?”
    “It cost about six thousand,” Tori Sandberg said.
    “Fifteen years ago,” Leigh Baker said.
    Figure forty thousand today , Cardozo calculated. “At the time Mrs. Aldrich entered the store how visible was her brooch?”
    “Extremely visible,” Leigh Baker said. “It was pinned to her jacket.”
    “It was pinned to her blouse,” Tori Sandberg said. “The jacket covered it.”
    Cardozo reflected that if Baker was right, Aldrich’s brooch had motivated the killing. But if Sandberg were right, Aldrich’s behavior had caused the murder.
    Leigh Baker’s hands were in rapid motion, unpinning her brooch, practically ripping it from her blouse. She held it out to Cardozo. Her hand was shaking. “You’re welcome to keep mine for reference.”
    Cardozo turned the brooch over in his hand. It was a beautiful little thing. The sugaring of emerald and ruby chips threw off glints of colored light.
    “I’ll return it as soon as we photograph it,” he said.
    “There’s absolutely no hurry,” Leigh Baker