Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

I?
    All right. So he let me go. So what?
    So I’ll look around very carefully before I try any other switches.
    No problem with that. She hadn’t found another of the Seven Sins, and those were the only stones that were worth the risk involved in switching. Those were the only stones that could lead her to the truth about her missing brother.
    Don’t think about Lee either. Not now. Crying or being afraid will tank your act. Suck it up.
    With a brisk tug Kate straightened her lightweight brown leather jacket over her pink shirt and faded blue jeans. A casual dark plastic clip kept her hair out of her face but let the waves of black tumble freely down her back to her shoulder blades. Simple sneakers replaced the expensive leather shoes she’d worn earlier.
    Sam will never recognize me.
    Yeah, and I can leap over tall buildings.
    But none of that mattered. She wouldn’t find any clues to Lee’s disappearance hiding in her home.
    “Katie? What are you doing here?”
    Her stomach clenched in the instant before she recognized Gavin Greenfield, Lee’s godfather and lifelong friend of her father. In the months after Lee’s disappearance, Gavin and his wife, Mary,had been a blessing to the Mandels. Gavin’s younger brother had been a deputy sheriff before he retired, so Gavin had handled a lot of the official details, sparing the Mandels.
    “Hello, Uncle Gavin,” she said, smiling and opening her arms to her honorary uncle. “What brings you to Scottsdale? Why didn’t you call and tell me you’d be here?”
    “Because it’s all business from early breakfast to midnight drinks. Not a second to myself. Summit meeting of furniture manufacturers. A few days and then I’m right back to Florida to help Mary. Her bad ankle is giving her fits.” He gave Kate a big hug. “How about you? Last time we talked, you were up to your eyebrows in new things to cut.”
    “Oh, I decided that it was time to pull my nose away from the grindstone and see if there was anything new in the gem trade.”
    Gavin’s eyes didn’t miss the lines of sadness and tension that hadn’t been on Kate’s face before Lee disappeared. “Good idea. You need to get out more. Fine young woman like you, I’ll never understand why you haven’t married and given your parents grandchildren.”
    Two men yapping into cell phones stepped out of the elevator and nearly ran over Gavin, which saved Kate from having to make her usual reply— They just don’t make them like you anymore .
    Gavin stepped out of the way of the men and said, “Damn things should be banned.”
    “Cell phones?” Kate asked, hiding a smile.
    “Curse of the twenty-first century.”
    “You still don’t have one, do you?”
    “No, and I never will.”
    Kate didn’t doubt it. “What’s the summit meeting about?”
    “Furniture-making is going overseas, like so much else.” Gavin shook his bald head. “It’s my sad job to inform my colleagues that the Chinese make pretty damn good furniture for a third what it costs if it’s made here.”
    “Better wear armor.”
    He sighed and changed the subject. “How’s your gem-cutting business going? You being driven out by machines or foreigners yet?”
    “So far, so good.”
    “You ever finish that job Lee mentioned you were so excited about?”
    Kate tried to ignore the wave of sadness that tightened her throat and made her eyes burn. “Yes, I finished it. Have the police—” Like Gavin earlier, she broke off in midsentence.
    “Nothing new,” Gavin said. He hesitated, breathed deeply, and told Katie what her parents should have told her months ago. “And there won’t be. Lee was a grown man with his own way of looking at the world. For whatever reasons, he disappeared with a packet of goods valuable enough to require a courier.” Gavin put his well-manicured hand under her chin. “You’ve got to let go of it, Katie,” he said sadly.
    “Has anyone?”
    “Your parents are getting better at it every day that goes by without a call or a card or an e-mail from Lee. It’s time for all of us to pull our lives together again.”
    Damn it, Uncle Gavin. Can’t you see that Lee wouldn’t ever do this to the people who love him? But all Kate said was, “You’ve been talking to my mother.”
    “Your dad’s worried about you too.”
    “I’ve been living on my own since I was twenty. I’m thirty-three now. While I appreciate everyone’s concern…” She shrugged.
    “We all should butt out, is that