“I love you,” Rachel said. “You’re the best friend a person could ever have, and I violated our trust.” She started crying all over again.
Olivia handed her one more tissue and rose from the couch. “I’m making us something to eat, and you’re going to stop crying long enough to eat it.”
“Okay . . .” She sniffed. Blew her nose. “Let me help.”
Olivia lifted an eyebrow at the wadded tissues in her lap. “Wash your hands first.”
That elicited a watery smile. Rachel headed for the bathroom, and Olivia went to the kitchen. She’d had groceries delivered that morning, although she wasn’t sure why since she was too miserable to eat.
Thinking about Thad led her into a painful, fruitless spiral, so she thought about Eugene instead. She’d spoken to Brittany again this morning. Kathryn still wasn’t cooperating, but the details Norman had provided about Swift Auctions were checking out. In addition to its legitimate operation, the company had been smuggling artifacts, only a few at a time, but each one highly profitable.
The investigators didn’t have a timeline yet, but as Olivia had predicted, it looked as though the illegal activities had begun several years before Eugene died, after he’d turned the operation over to his wife and her son. Only when Norman was questioned about Olivia and the bracelet had he clammed up out of self-protection. Smuggling was one thing. Attempted murder another.
She reminded herself she was safe now. Norman and Kathryn were in jail without bond. Marsden faced federal charges of interstate stalking and harassment. No one was threatening her.
But she’d lost Thad, and what would happen when she took the stage again tomorrow night? Her body had survived its icy plunge. She had no sniffles, no sore throat. But her heart wasn’t in nearly as good a shape.
She wanted to see Thad. Talk to him. See how he was doing. To understand why they couldn’t be together again. Why they couldn’t take their relationship day by day. Why they couldn’t stop worrying about the future.
Which was exactly what he’d asked of her and she’d rejected him. She was the one who’d put a stop to their relationship because her work always had to come first. Even before love.
She opened the refrigerator. Nothing appealed to her except the tub of raspberry sorbet in the freezer. As she dished it up, Rachel reappeared and sat on one of the counter stools. Olivia stayed on the other side of the counter, holding her glass dish and a spoon. Rachel gazed at the sorbet. “You got any chocolate syrup?”
“No. Would ketchup do?”
“Never mind.” Rachel poked the end of her spoon into the dish without taking a bite. “I think Dennis and I need to separate for a while.”
Olivia’s head shot up. “You’re not separating from Dennis over this! He should never have told you.”
“It’s not only this.” She impaled her spoon. “My life isn’t my own anymore.” Rachel regarded her with stricken eyes. “He’s suffocating me!”
Olivia set down her bowl, the sorbet untouched. “Rach . . .”
“I hate feeling this way. He does everything for me. I never have to pay a bill or make a plane reservation. He plans our meals, keeps the apartment clean. He buys birthday presents for my family. Calls my father every week. I don’t have to do a thing. He takes care of it all.” Her eyes started leaking again, although this time without the noisy sobs. “I feel like it’s his career instead of mine.”
“Rachel, you need to talk to him.”
“I’ve tried to, but he gets so hurt. He wants to know what he can do so I feel better, and I want to scream at him to start having his own life and stop living mine!”
A wave of vertigo made Olivia grab the edge of the sink. Her world had flipped over. A man like Dennis was everything Olivia had dreamed of in a life partner, everything she’d believed would make her happy. But Rachel was miserable. Olivia took in her friend’s blotchy face and red eyes. “I never suspected . . . I thought . . . You love each other so much.”
“I need space!” Rachel stuffed a spoonful of sorbet into her mouth followed by another, and then pushed her bowl away. “Don’t ever get married, Olivia. Look at what happened to Lena.”
“Dennis is not Christopher Marsden. Not even close. Marsden was threatening and abusive. Dennis is a good man.”
“But maybe not good for me. Don’t ever marry a man who doesn’t have a life of his own unless you want him to take over yours.”
Olivia sank onto a stool. “You’ve never told me any of this. You and Dennis are what I’ve always wanted for myself.”
“I know and telling you this makes me feel like a complaining, entitled, ungrateful bitch.” She grabbed her spoon and pointed it in Olivia’s face. “You’re going to sing the hell out of Amneris tomorrow night. Do you hear me? You’re going to own that stage. You’re not going to let anybody—not Marsden, not Dennis, not me—steal your voice for one second longer. You’ll sing like you’ve never sung before or I won’t ever speak to you again.”
Rachel wasn’t exactly in a position to make threats, but Olivia understood and gave her a weak smile. “I’d love nothing better, but—”
“Then do it! Don’t you dare let the assholes win.”
*
Rachel drove back to Indianapolis, and Olivia alternated between absorbing the bombshell news about Rachel and Dennis’s marriage, agonizing over tomorrow night’s performance, and obsessing about Thad. When she couldn’t stand the tumult in her head any longer, she settled in front of her computer, something she’d been doing periodically when she should have been sleeping.
Her bracelet obviously wasn’t the costume piece Eugene had assumed or the copy that the Las Vegas jewelers had declared it to be. But stolen artifacts did occasionally show up at an auction house. All the management had to do was plead ignorance and attempt to return it to its owner. Why hadn’t Kathryn done that? What was so special about her bracelet?
Although she wasn’t a trained Egyptologist, she’d studied Egyptian history the same way she studied the historical background of every character she sang. She’d already googled Egyptian jewelry, ancient Egyptian jewelry, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom jewelry. She’d checked out Pinterest boards and followed links to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but she’d found nothing.
Both men and women in ancient Egypt wore jewelry, and before Rachel’s arrival, she’d begun a search of pharaohs. Now, she took a detour into the pharaohs’ wives, looking for images of any pieces that might be connected to the most obvious queens: Hatshepsut, Nefertari, and Nefertiti. She found nothing. Cleopatra was more Greek than Egyptian, but she also searched for her and found nothing.
And then . . . Olivia sucked in her breath. “Oh my God . . .”
*
Brittany wasn’t on duty that evening, but she wanted to hear what Olivia had uncovered, so instead of making the drive to the station house, they met at a local coffeehouse with brick walls, lots of dark wood, and wing chairs upholstered in worn green and gold velvet.
“Your bracelet was looted?” Brittany said, after they’d ordered their drinks and settled in a quiet corner.