* * *
“I was just closing up for the day,” Connie said. “Lula told me about Dugan. How’s he doing?”
“He’s in the ICU. I didn’t get a chance to talk to a doctor. His condition was listed as stable. He got lucky. His fall was broken by the café awning.”
Connie Rosolli is a couple years older than me. She’s the office manager, the guard dog for Vinnie’s private office, and like Vinnie, she’s certified to write a bond. She has a lot of black hair, thinks there’s no such thing as too much mascara, and likes bright red lipstick and polka dots. She wears heels to work but keeps a pair of running shoes in her bottom drawer next to her Glock nine. She can shoot the eyes out of a grasshopper a quarter mile away.
She took two folders out of her top drawer and handed them to me. “Two new FTAs came in today. Nothing exciting. Both are low bonds. A repeat shoplifter. Gloria Stitch. And a low-level drug dealer. Hooter Brown.”
I slipped the files into the messenger bag I used as purse and mobile office. “These two FTAs aren’t going to pay my rent.”
Being a bond enforcement agent has its highs and lows. One of the lows is that I don’t get a salary. I get a percentage of the original bond when I make a capture. If I don’t make enough captures, I’m forced to mooch food off my parents and moonlight for rent money.
Connie took a business card off her desk. “This might help. A man came in about an hour ago, looking for you. He said he had a job that required your special skills.”
I took the card from her. “I don’t have any special skills.”
“He asked me if you were good at finding people, and I said you were our best skip tracer.”
“I’m your only skip tracer.” I looked at the name on the card. “Martin Plover. He owns Plover’s Jewelry, right? That’s the store Duncan Dugan got caught robbing.”
“Yeah, small world,” Connie said. “Plover told me he’d be in the store until eight o’clock if you were interested. He also left his cell number on the back of the card.”
I dropped the card into my messenger bag.
“Are you going to talk to him?” Connie asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”
I left the bonds office, got into my Jeep Cherokee, and drove downtown to Plover’s Jewelry. I parked across the street and watched the store for a couple minutes. The “special skills” thing had me worried. I hoped it didn’t involve anything kinky. I needed money, but not that bad.
I crossed the street and entered the store. It was five o’clock and there were no customers in Plover’s. A nicely dressed man who looked to be in his late sixties to early seventies was seated at a writing desk. He stood when I walked in.
“Stephanie Plum,” he said. “Sorry I missed you at the office. Thank you for coming to the store.”
“Do I know you?”
“We’ve never officially met. I recognize you from the Leoni viewing. I was there when you put Bella Morelli in cuffs and hauled her out of the funeral home. That took guts. I don’t think I could have done it,” he said.
Bella Morelli is a Sicilian immigrant stuck in a Marlon Brando Godfather time warp. Her hair is gray. Her dresses are always black. Her posture is vulture on the attack. She’s crazy like a fox, and she’s my boyfriend’s grandmother. She was being her usual disruptive self at the Leoni viewing and the funeral director begged me to take her away.
“Bella wasn’t really all that upset about leaving in cuffs. She loves a dramatic exit,” I said to Plover.
“She scares the heck out of me. She put a curse on Stu Carp, and he got shingles.”
I nodded. “She scares the heck out of a lot of people. Connie said you mentioned a job.”
“Yes. I thought of you because you’re obviously good at finding people and surviving dangerous situations.”
“Like removing Bella from the viewing.”
“Exactly! Like removing Bella from the viewing.”
“About the job?” I asked.
“I want you to find a former employee. I’ve reported him as missing to the police, but nothing has come of it.”
“How long has he been missing?”
“Three weeks. He disappeared on the same day that I was held at gunpoint and the store was robbed in broad daylight by some moron.”
“Did your employee disappear before or after the robbery?”
“After,” Plover said. “Actually, I fired him. He was supposed to provide security. I hired him so I wouldn’t get robbed, and I got robbed.”
“But now you want to find him?”
“Yes,” Plover said. “He stole a tray of diamonds valued at close to a million dollars.”
“Seriously?”
“Duncan Dugan, the moron who robbed the store that afternoon, got low-hanging fruit. He cleaned out the cases. I don’t want to trivialize that. It was terrifying. It was a smash-and-grab without the smashing. He had me dump everything into a garbage bag while he held me at gunpoint. Fortunately, all the pieces he took were insured and he left the cases intact.”
I glanced around the store. “It looks like you got everything back.”
“Unfortunately, no. The bag of stolen jewelry wasn’t in the car when the police finally arrested the driver. Everything you see here is new. My displays are a little skimpy, but at least I’m still in business.”
“How could the bag not be in the car? I thought the police were on him the second he pulled away from the curb.”
Plover shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t in the car. And it gets worse. The real loss was with the unset gemstones that were stolen separately. A large part of my business is in engagement rings. Couples come in and select a setting and a stone. So, like most jewelers, I keep an inventory of gemstones. Mostly diamonds of varying sizes and quality.”
“And you think your security guy stole the unset stones.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Have you told the police?”
“Yes, and they said they conducted an investigation, but nothing came of it. I can’t fault the police. I have no real proof that my guard took the stones. All I can say is that the gems are definitely missing.”
“But you seem sure that the guard took them.”
“After the robbery, when I locked up for the night it was just me and one of the police officers. Andy had left a couple hours earlier.”
“Andy is the security guard.”
“Yes. He always worked from noon to eight. Six days a week. He left at eight o’clock on the day of the robbery, and he never returned.”
“And you haven’t heard from him.”
“Not a word,” Plover said. “My routine is that every night I take the jewelry out of the display cases, and I put the jewelry in the safe. When I open in the morning, I take the pieces out of the safe. The morning after the robbery I opened the safe to get the few items that were left to display, and the diamond tray was missing.”
“The diamond tray always stays in the safe?”
“Yes.”
“Did Andy know how to open the safe?”
“I never gave him the combination, but he was there when I closed every night. If he was motivated, I suspect he could have watched me punch in the numbers. The thing is there’s no other way the diamonds could have disappeared. There were no signs that anyone had tampered with the safe. Someone opened it.”