Prison could be construed as a respite. Three hots and a cot, sequestered and protected from the world's problems, responsibilities and hypocrisy. A comparative nirvana, as long as common sense sat down and shut its yap.
Jack slashed underlines beneath his latest note. Every criminal had a sob story. Letting Dina Wexler get to him
was
friggin' amateur hour. He snapped, "Where'd these alleged transactions take place?"
"All over town," she said, taken aback. "It depended on the time of day."
"All over town,
where?
"
"Internet cafés. Library study carrels. Bars with live music. The airport. Once at a moonlight madness sale at the mall." Dina's scarcely audible addendum was, "A Sunday church service. A mortuary during a funeral."
Safety and anonymity in numbers, Jack thought, as long as the crowd's attention is directed elsewhere. Smart dude, this fence. The drug trade had rendered obsolete the traditional rendezvous at a park bench at midnight. Hide in plain sight was safer.
"Never in a car? Yours or his?"
"No." Dina anticipated his next question. "I never saw his car."
Chancy though it would be to walk around with sufficient cash for the payoff, a metro bus pass could deliver the fence to most of those meeting sites.
"The jewelry itself," Jack said. "How did you know the genuine article from costume?"
A cord worn like a necklace was reeled up from inside Dina's shirt. The black-cased jeweler's loupe at the end resembled a plumb bob. "I logged onto the Internet at the library to convince myself that burglary wasn't just wrong, it was crazy. I'd never be able to tell a cubic zirconia from a diamond, or any fake from the real thing."
She yanked the cord over her head. The magnifier slapped the couch cushion. "Instead, I learned how to use a loupe and what to look for."
"Such as?" Jack's query was half curiosity, half for future reference. Keeping up technologically with the crooks was impossible, but now and then, you'd nab a Luddite.
"Well," Dina began, aware she now had her mother's and Jack's rapt attention. "Zirconias are synthetic, but different than cultured stones that are graded like mined diamonds. Real and cultured may have lasered serial numbers, but nobody does that to fakes.
"Some stones are fracture filled or clarity enhanced, too. That means cracksflawsare filled with glass. How, I have no clue." She snickered. "Want to impress a wife or girlfriend without blowing your trust fund? Buy her a fracture-filled headlamp solitaire. Want to rip off somebody? Sell a clarity-enhanced stone for the price of a high-graded one."
Her tone now mimicking a bored socialite, she added, "But do avoid chips, scratches and inclusionscarbon or crystal flaws. They
so
decrease the value. The cut can increase it, but the makethe skill used to cut it?
That's
the fire in the ice."
Mrs. Wexler gasped. "I had no idea you knew all that. You should apply for work at a jewelry store. It wouldn't be as tiring as grooming dogs, and it's
legal."
The comment was bemused, albeit complimentary, but Dina sneered, "My on-the-job experience is in breaking and entering, Mom. Not in retail sales."
"That loupe," Jack said. "Did you boost it, too?"
"No." Dina didn't say, "You asshole," but Jack heard it. "The, uh, fence gave it to me. Well, he didn't
give
it, he deducted a percentage of the cost from what he paid me."
Crib-noted contact numbers. A jeweler's loupe on the installment plan. The bad-cop schtick didn't prohibit laughing, but Jack was afraid if he did, he'd lose it completely. "Assuming that's a 10X model, how much did he ding you for it?"
"A hundred and fifty dollars," she said.
Double or nothing, the nameless fence had gouged her, but good. By what she'd said earlier, naiveté had also cost her the difference between an experienced thief's percentage and her take.
Fuzzy math might apply to the stolen merchandise's appraised and insured value, as well. Purchase price aside, every appraisal is subjective. If an owner received more than one appraisal, the higher estimate would dictate the insured value for replacement-cost policyholders. Low appraisals could pare down taxable assets for those less worried about theft than an IRS audit.
Therefore, Dina got screwed, the insurance company probably got screwed to an extent and the fence and the burglary victims were smelling American Beauty bouquets.
Typical, Jack thought. Crime does pay. It just doesn't pay dependably or equally. "This library research of yours," he said. "Why didn't you Google up some jewelry Web sites or eBay for price comparisons before you sold the stuff?"
"I thought about it." A silent standoff eventually prompted, "To go online, I have to use my library card. I was afraid the police could trace the searches back to me."
If only. Jack stifled a grin. The Feds' forensic computer expertise rivaled his own, sad to say. Provided you already knew what to look for and where, it might be found. Otherwise, the Internet was a vast electronic haystack.
"Besides," Dina said, "what if I did find out the fence was cheating me? What was I supposed to do? Threaten to take my business elsewhere?"
Good point, but Jack didn't concede it aloud. "Yeah, well, describe Mr. Loupes 'R' Us for me."
"I never got a good look at his face. He always wore baseball caps and kept his head down a lot." Her teeth sawed across her lower lip, as though mentally formulating an artist's sketch. "Glassesgeeky frames, not wire. Tinted lensesgrayish, maybebut regular, not pop bottles. Clean shaved. The cap mostly covered his hair, but I'd guess it was brown. About your height and weight."
"Tattoos?"
"Um, uh-uh. Not that I can recall."
"How does he dress? Sloppy? Neat? Soccer dad?"
A frown, then, "Soccer dad, if that means like pretty much anybody over thirty you see at the mall."
"Over thirty? As in forty? Fifty?"
"I don't
know,
okay? My impression is somewhere above grad student and below AARP."
Hence, he hadn't disguised his appearance per se, but anything memorable was unremarkable: baseball cap, glasses, no facial hair, no visible tattoos. The bowed head offset Dina's stature. In addition, both of them wanted the transaction concluded as rapidly as possible.
Jack pictured Dina figuratively if not literally wringing her hands, trying to gulp down whatever internal organ was lodged in her throat. Apart from the burglaries themselves, selling the merchandise was the riskiest part of her crimes. The fence needn't have told her to keep a lookout while he examined the loot.
"His voice, in person and on the phone," Jack said. "Did he speak with a drawl, a lisp"
"McPhee?" Mrs. Wexler languidly waved the TV's remote control.
Jack had all but forgotten she was in the room. He smiled and said, "Yes, ma'am?"
"Are you taking Dina to jail?"
He checked a nod. The impulsive decision he'd made in Belle's backyard and what he'd learned since advised a consultation with his attorney first, cop house later.
Reverse that order and based on Jack's witness statement, he was reasonably certain Dina's chargeable offenses began at B&E and ended at trespassing. Explain
how
he'd witnessed both before he ran it by a lawyer could get Jack arrested for everything from trespassing to criminal conspiracy to flight to avoid prosecution.
His notes were essentially a confession. By legal definition, they were hearsay, barring her corroborating statement to the police. Dina had either surmised that, or would tick-a-lock after she was in custody, because she wasn't stupid and neither were public defenders.
Absent her self-implication and any concrete evidencewhich Jack doubted existedand the cops might have probable cause for a twenty-four-hour hold on suspicion of burglary. Him, they'd throw in jail for the forseeable future.
The kennel connection was a shoo-in, but circumstantial. A property-crimes unit's second canvass of neighbors surrounding previously burgled homes might result in someone recognizing a photo of Dina's VW. Could that witness swear the vehicle was seen on a specific date, at a specific time or for a specific period of time?
As the world's worst defense attorney would say, an aircraft carrier was easier to torpedo than hindsighted recall.
Even if it wasn't, it was still circumstantial, not direct evidence that Dina Jeanne Wexler was the Calendar Burglar. The trip wire that investigators would inevitably reveal was Dina's income versus expenditures to close the Medicare doughnut hole. Those mysterious, inexplicable windfalls would trigger the prosecutorial avalanche.
And Jack could play bad cop till his skin turned midnight-blue, without the fence, her conviction and a lengthy prison term were nearly guaranteed. Those who steal from the rich and influential don't receive probation. Not if a prosecuting attorney wants to win reelection.
Given Dina's extenuating circumstances, if Jack collared the fence, along with a few of his other suppliers, her testimony might broker a reduced sentence.
"Tomorrow is soon enough to talk to the police, Mrs. Wexler." Jack's gaze flicked to her daughter. "I don't think I have to worry about her being a flight risk."
"Well, then
" Mrs. Wexler's breathless quaver caught his and Dina's attention simultaneously. "Is it okay
if she calls
911? Think I'm
another
heart attack."
10
"M
y mom had a rough night last night, Gwendolyn," Dina said into the kitchen wall phone's receiver.
A massive understatement for Harriet's finding out about her double life. When Dina was a kid, she'd known those everyday commandments like "I'm doing this for your own good" and "What you don't know, can't hurt you" were monumental lies. You have to be an adult to rationalize that they're true and actively ignore why the proverbial road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
"Is Harriet all right?" Gwendolyn asked.
"The paramedics checked her over and were pretty sure it was an anxiety attack, not a heart attack. They still wanted to transport her to the E.R., but Mom refused."
McPhee voting with Dina and the EMTs contradicted the precept of majority rule. Harriet insisted she'd been excited about "having company," and should have gone back to bed instead of becoming overtired. Her elevated blood sugar she'd blamed on the decaf coffee she'd barely touched. The real culprit, a stress-induced adrenaline spike, has a corresponding effect on anybody's insulin level. Diabetics are just more sensitive to it.
"Mom's up and around this morning," Dina said, "but she's a little shaky."
"You're afraid to leave her alone," Gwendolyn stated, followed by a pensive sigh. "I would be, too, if it was my mother, but"
"You have a boarding kennel to run," Dina finished for her. "And I have a grooming appointment scheduled in a half hour."
The line hummed a moment. Gwendolyn couldn't quite mask the edge in her tone when she inquired, "So, how soon
can
you be here?"
From the living room, Harriet called, "
Di
-na. Come here,
quick.
"
Stretching the phone cord to its limit, she leaned around the corner, saying, "I hope before noon
" Her voice trailed away as she saw what her mother was pointing at on the TV. "Oh, dear God."
Dina dropped the receiver on the counter and rushed into the living room. Aiming the remote, Harriet upped the volume on a local station's breaking-news report.
The anchorman doing a stand-up at the end of a residential driveway looked about sixteen and forcibly grim. "A spokesman for the Park City Police Department has confirmed the city's latest homicide victim is Belle deHaven, wife of nationally known investment counselor Carleton deHaven.
"According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, sometime between early afternoon and midnight yesterday, Mrs. deHaven sustained an execution-style gunshot wound to the head. Death was believed to be instantaneous."
The anchor took a breath. "To repeat," he said, "the Park City police have confirmed"
Dina clapped her hands over her ears. "Turn it down, for God's sake."
The noise level ratcheting down several decibels had no effect on the clamor inside Dina's head. DeHaven. Belle deHaven. The name pounded like a drumbeat. There was no mistaking it or the house with the soaring wall of windows diagonally behind the reporter.
She'd broken into the deHavens' house before midnight last night. Skulked through the eerie, unrelieved darkness as far as the living room, then lost her penlight along with her nervefor lack of a better term.
A dead woman's house. A
murdered
woman's house. Jack McPhee's ex-wife's house.
That's why he was there. Why he'd hustled Dina from the scene, instead of turning her over to the police. He'd shot Belle deHaven and
