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“I’m sure it is, darling. Guinevere wouldn’t find anyone else’s jewelry lying around.” Cyn finally glanced at the chunky necklace. “Yes, that’s one from your father.”
“How did Guinevere come across it?”
“I don’t know,” Aunt Cynthia said. “I asked Walden at the front desk to bring everything up from the vault, and the pieces I’m not wearing are still in my bedroom, most of them back in the lockbox. I tried on most of them. I thought I’d make the effort to look extraniceforyourPrinceCharming.”Hersmilecould have frozen the East River in July.
Van couldn’t bear to look at her, so he stood there, staring at the finally clean and dry necklace. “Guinevere, how did you get from here into Aunt Cynthia’s apartment upstairs? Why the devil would you be sniffing around her jewelry with that acre of a nose of yours? How did you get at the stuff, anyway?”
“None of this makes any sense,” Aunt Cynthia said. “Even if she got upstairs and into the apartment somehow, she couldn’t have wrapped her jaws around that necklace. It was still in the box Walden brought up from the vault.” Distaste crossed her face. “I didn’t try it on. Things from my brother — I don’t like them touching me. I’m sorry, Van. I know he was your father, but I suppose you’ve known for some time how I felt about him.”
“Don’t worry. My feelings for him aren’t much different.” Van took a mental moment to make himself feel nothing, as he had trained himself to do whenever he had to think about his father.
He grasped Guinevere under her jaw and turned her head up so she had to look at him. “How did you get this, girl?”
She whined and pranced, jarring his hand loose. She closed her jaws gently around his hand and tugged.
“She wants to take you somewhere,” Aunt Cynthia said with the first real animation he had seen on her face in weeks. It wasn’t exactly the active engagement in life he wanted to see, but it would have to do.“I’llwagerithassomethingtodowithmyjewelry. I’ll come too.”
“I don’t think dogs try to take people to the scene of a crime anywhere except in movies, Aunt Cynthia.” He pulled his handkerchief back out of his pocket with one hand, detached his other hand from Guinevere’s gentle mouth and cleaned himself up.
“I’m going with her, whether you do or not. My jewelry isn’t a big thing in my life, but my curiosity is.”
“Okay, okay.” Van put the necklace in his pocket and turned toward the Saint Bernard. “I feel like I should be proclaiming, ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ but that’s a misquote of Shakespeare, and you’re not Macduff anyway, are you, Guinevere? Never mind. Let’s go.”
The dog whuffled happily and danced as though she itched to take off at a gallop but was exercising greatrestraintsothepoor,pitifulhumanscouldkeep up. She nudged Van’s hand so it slipped over her head and came to rest on her collar.
Van did as he’d been oh so politely told and clicked his tongue as though telling a horse to gee-up — which,cometothinkofit,wasn’tthatfarfromreality, considering the size of Guinevere.
Pausing for frequent sniffs, she led them down the hallway, into the elevator and on to Aunt Cynthia’s apartment. In the foyer, Guinevere circled and sniffed, then raced ahead, nose still to the floor, to the bedroom. At the doorway, she stopped and pranced, impatient with the slow humans.
Vancaughtupwithherandflippedonthebedroom light as Aunt Cynthia crowded against his back. She peered around him. She gasped. He rumbled in surprise.
Aunt Cynthia’s jewel chest, with its rich applewood casing and plush velvet interior, lay sprawled in pieces on the bed, the lid snapped off and the drawers pulled out. Scattered over the bed and on thefloorbesidethebedwerecopiousamountsofher more ostentatious jewelry, the “snooty sparklers,” as she sometimes called them. She never wore themunlesssheneededtoimpress“someonestupid enough to be impressed by them.”
The most “impressive” of all were the sapphires around her neck tonight in a silent insult to the very Royal Highness Mary had been warning Van about. If anything was worse than one woman in your life being right, it was two. Now that he paid attention to the necklace Aunt Cynthia was wearing, he reluctantly crossed the pain of a princeling off the husband list.
The necklaces, bracelets, and brooches on the bed and around it gleamed in every high-definition color of the rainbow. The gems included diamonds, of course, but also rubies and sapphires. Then came the much cheaper and less splashy stones Aunt Cynthia preferred, from amethyst and opal to garnet and amber. The fun, chunky costume jewelry Aunt Cynthia liked most of all was probably in one of the dresser drawers, where she could get at it frequently and easily.
Asforthejewelsindisarray,didGuineveredothis? It wouldn’t be like her.
But if it wasn’t her, it was a burglar, maybe even oneinterruptedintheact.Maybeevenonestillhere.
“Stay,” Van ordered.
Guinevere whined, but stopped in her tracks and sat down.
“Not you,” Van told the dog.
“Not me, either.” Aunt Cynthia tried to push past him.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said. “I want to make sure we don’t still have a robber lurking in some dark corner.”
He did a quick survey of the room, including into the closet and under the bed. He stood back and examined the bed. It didn’t look right.
Aunt Cynthia’s bed usually stood ready to weather inspection by the most persnickety of neighbors traipsing around on the annual tour of homes for charity. She could spot a sham pillow one-eighth of an inch out of position at fifty yards. Pristine perfection in your surroundings was something he had absorbed by osmosis as he grew up with Aunt Cynthia,althoughMarywasswiftlychangingallthat. She’d introduced him to the joys of rumpled jeans, not to mention the still greater joys of rumpled beds —
He frowned. There he was, thinking about sex again, and this wasn’t exactly an appropriate time. What was it they said about men? They thought about sex every seven seconds? He hated being predictable.
Hmm. On second thought, maybe he was different. Thinking about sex every seven seconds was a gross understatement since he’d met Mary. But who wouldn’t want to keep his mind on her soft, sweet, and savory lips and the smooth, silky curve of her breasts —
