Remember When

you still have the toy?"
    "I keep it to remind me what he was, what I overcame thanks to my mother's sacrifices. Ironic really. A bulldozer. I like to think I razed and buried the past." He looked over to the shelves, then, frowning, rose. "It should be here. I can't remember moving it. Odd."
    Antique toys, Eve mused while Whittier searched. Gannon's ex had antique toys in his office and an advance copy of the book.
    "Does your son collect this sort of thing, too?"
    "Yes, it's the one thing Trevor and I shared. He's more interested in collector's values, more serious about it than I from that standpoint. It's not here."
    He turned, his face was sheet-white now and seemed to have fallen in on itself. "It doesn't mean anything. I must have misplaced it. It's just a toy."

29
    "Could it have been moved?" Eve studied the shelves. She had a vague sort of idea what a bulldozer looked like. Her knowledge of machines was more finely tuned to urban style. The maxibuses that belched up and down the avenues, the airjacks that tore up the streets in the most inconvenient places at the most inconvenient times, the droning street-cleaning units, the clanking recycler trucks.
    But she recognized models of old-fashioned pickup trucks and service vans, and a shiny red tractor, not unlike the one she'd seen on Roarke's aunt's farm recently.
    There were toy replicas of emergency vehicles that were boxier, clunkier to her eye than what zipped around the streets or skies of New York. And a number of bulky trucklike things with scoops or toothy blades or massive tubes attached.
    She didn't see how Whittier could be sure what was missing, or what was where. To her eye, there was no rhyme or reason to the collection, but a bunch of little vehicles with wheels or wings or both cobbled together as if waiting for a traffic signal to turn green.
    But he was a guy, and her experience with Roarke told her a guy knew his toys very well.
    "I haven't moved it. I'd remember." Steve was searching the shelves now, touching various vehicles or machines, scooting some along. "I can't think why my wife would either, or the housekeeper."
    "Do you have any of this sort of thing elsewhere on the premises?" Eve asked him.
    "Yes, a few pieces here and there, and the main collection upstairs in my office, but..."
    "Why don't you take a look? Peabody, could you give Mr. Whittier a hand?"
    "Sure. My brothers have a few model toys," Peabody began as she led Steve out of the room.
    "Nothing like what you've got here."
    Eve waited until their voices had faded. "How much is this kind of deal worth?" She waved her thumb toward the shelves as she turned to Roarke.
    "It's a bit out of my milieu, but antique, nostalgic, novelty collections of any kind have value." He picked up a small, beefy truck, spun the wheels. The quick smile confirmed Eve's theory that such matters were indeed guy things. "And the condition of the pieces add to it. These are all prime, from what I can see. You're thinking the toy's been lifted."
    "Strong possibility."
    He set the truck down but didn't release it until he'd pushed it gently back and forth. "If Trevor Whittier stole it from his father, if the diamonds were indeed hidden inside it-and that's where you're heading?"
    "Past heading. I'm there. I don't think you should be playing with those," she added when he reached for the tractor.
    He made a sound that might have been disappointment or mild embarrassment, then stuck his hands in his pockets. "Then why kill? Why break into Samantha's house? Why not be toasting your good fortune in Belize?"
    "Who says he knows they're in there?" She watched Roarke lift a brow. "Look at his profile. He's a lazy, self-centered opportunist. I'm betting if Whittier does a check of his collection, he'll find several of the better pieces missing. Stupid bastard might just have sold them, and the diamonds along with them."
    She wandered up and down the shelves, scanning the toys. "Samantha Gannon's ex has a collection."
    "Does he now?" Roarke nodded. "Does he, really?"
    "Yeah. Not as extensive as this, at least not the collection I saw in his office. Put Trevor Whittier together with the ex." She put the tips of her index fingers together. "Point of interest, antique toys and games. Gannon's ex had an advance copy of the book, and might very well have talked about it."
    "Intersections," Roarke said with a nod. "It really is a small little world, isn't it? The ex buys pieces from Whittier's son, or at least