Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

steal a thing like that?”
    “Did you bring it?”
    He shook his head.
    “No? Listen, the message made it pretty obvious she wanted it back. Were you going to pretend she never gave it to you?”
    “No!”
    I waited, having no choice but to play dumb to protect the anonymity of my other client—the one whose sticky little fingers couldn’t be explained by M&Ms.
    “I don’t have it,” he whispered.
    “You don’t have it?”
    “Amber took it. I think she lost it. She won’t say what happened to it.”
    “You’re sure she took it? Does she say she did?”
    “She denies it, the little witch.”
    “Why don’t you believe her?”
    “Where I put it, she had to have taken it. Nobody broke into the house. And anyway, it was like that story about the letter, the Poe story; nobody would have looked for it there. The perfect hiding place. But when I looked for it, it wasn’t there.”
    “Tell me something. Were you still drunk when you hid it?” This was mean of me, but I couldn’t stand hearing Amber falsely accused.
    “I’m telling you I know where I put it.”
    “Okay. Tell me what happened when you got here.”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know what I can add. She didn’t answer the door, I heard the dog, and I broke the window.”
    “We’d better call the police.”
    But I was suddenly hit with a very unlawyerly urge—a need almost. A criminal impulse welling up from the subconscious. Well, not criminal exactly, just unprofessional. A little illegal, too, actually. A very, very naughty idea. I wanted to get a good look at the crime scene before the police did.
    It was entirely possible. A rare opportunity to gather information that might help my client’s case had been given to me. There were only two problems. One was a hysterical, yipping, nipping little dog; the other was Ricky. How could I do it without involving him?
    The answer was that I couldn’t. Even assuming I could get in the window without being boosted—even get in the house without letting him know what I was doing—I needed him to quiet the dog.
    “Ricky,” I said, “did you try the door?”
    He looked bewildered. “Try the door?” Clearly the man was a law-abiding citizen at least some of the time—or so he wanted me to believe. Such people did not try to break into houses except when a murdered loved one lay in plain sight.
    “When she didn’t answer.”
    “No.”
    I got up and tried it. It opened. From the doorway you could see that in the living room, a porcelain bowl and a small sculpture had been knocked off the coffee table. I said to Ricky, “We can phone from here. Let Mellors out, why don’t you? He must be dying to go outside.”
    “He already went on the rug.”
    “He might want to go again.”
    Obediently Ricky went to get the dog, never guessing that his lawyer was leading him a bit astray, but I thought this might fly with Jacobson and Tillman. I might take a small unauthorized tour of the house before I phoned, but there would be no need to mention that part.
    I took off my shoes and jumped up on Katy’s sumptuously covered sofa, where I hoped Mellors couldn’t reach. But in a minute Ricky came through with the dog in his arms, crooning to him. “He’s friendly as a puppy now. I guess I looked like a bad guy, coming through the window.”
    I wandered through the house, to Katy’s office-library. A few things were in disarray, knocked down, knocked aside, like the objects on the floor in the living room. Some were small objects. One was a chair. A couple of pictures hung awry. I tried to imagine how it could have happened. Her killer had chased her, perhaps, and one or the other of them had banged into furniture.
    That fit for some things, but not for the coffee table. It was as if he had pushed her, and she had hit it.
    The idea brought up a series of very nasty mental pictures—of her tormentor holding her, perhaps by a wrist, walking her through the house to the study, slapping her around as they went.
    It was about the pearl. It had to be. I could hear him:
    “Where is it?”
    Pop
, as he slaps her.
    She doesn’t answer, falls backward, knocking over a chair.
    He hits her again and she slams against a wall, knocking pictures off balance.
    But why? If Ricky was telling the truth, the pearl was hers—no one else’s—and was locally famous. That meant she hadn’t stolen it from an irate former owner, and it meant anyone might have tried to steal it from her at any time. Why now? Because