Consigned To Death Part 10

"Has anyone else talked to you about it?"

"No."

"So all you know is what I told you?"

"Right. I have never touched it. Period."

Alverez nodded. "Any ideas about how it got there?"

I shook my head. "No clue."

"Change of subject," Alverez said. "Have you had time to look through the warehouse and offices and see if anything is missing ?"

"No, I haven't looked everywhere. I haven't had time. I mean, I looked at the auction site, and I'm sure I, or Sasha, who supervised the setup, would have noticed if something was missing. But just looking around won't necessarily help. A lot of my goods are small and grouped in lots." I shook my head and gave a palms-up gesture, indicating that it was hopeless. "There's just too much for me to notice it all right now."

"How do you control inventory?"

"We use a bar-coding inventory-control system. I'll be able to tell you tomorrow if any of the items scheduled to be part of the tag sale are missing."

"Bar codes?" Alverez asked. "What are you, Wal-Mart?"

I shook my head a little, and smiled. "I wish. The software's cheap nowadays, and easy to use."

"You'll let me know as soon as you verify your inventory. All right?"

"Sure."

"And take stock of office equipment, computers, and so on."

"All right."

"Do you have a safe?"

"Yes."

"Have you looked?"

"No, not yet."

"What's in it?"

"Some estate jewelry. I don't sell fine jewelry to the public."

"None?"

"Some costume pieces. That's it."

"How come?"

"It's too hard to appraise and too easy to steal."

"What do you do with the good stuff?"

"I wholesale it to a specialist in New York."

"How does that work?"

"Aren't you getting a little off on a tangent?" Max asked.

Alverez shrugged. "Until we know what's going on, it's hard to know what's a tangent and what's a clue."

"True," Max said, and waved a hand at me, gesturing that I could answer Alverez's question.

"When I have something special, I call him, and he comes up. Sometimes he calls me and tells me he's going to be in the area."

"Then he stops by?"

"Right."

"And?"

"And we go over the pieces and he pays me in cash. Which I declare as income on my tax return."

"I'm sure you do," Alverez said, smiling. "How do you know you can trust him?"

"I've known him for years and years. He's reputable." I shrugged. "Also, don't forget that I know where the jewelry I'm selling came from, so I know which pieces are likely to prove valuable. Plus," I added with a modest half smile, "while I'm not an expert, I know enough so it wouldn't be all that easy to rook me."

Alverez nodded. "When can you let me know if anything is missing from the safe?"

"Later today. When I get back there, I'll look."

"Another change of subject. What size shoes do you wear?"

"What?" I asked, unsure I'd heard correctly, as Max asked, "Why?"

Alverez paused, and Max added, "Come on. You know the drill. Connect it for us."

Alverez nodded. "We might have some physical evidence. A partial on a footprint. I want to eliminate Josie as a suspect. So," he said to me, "what size?"

"What size are the prints?" Max asked.

Alverez answered without hesitation. "Women's nine narrow."

I felt the weight of the world fall off my shoulders. Max leaned toward me and whispered, "What size do you wear?"

"Five," I whispered back, smiling.

"This is good news," he said, and patted my shoulder. "You can go ahead and answer."

I sat up and looked at Alverez. "I wear size five. So I'm in the clear, right?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," Alverez answered, quelling my hopes. "It's unclear what we're looking at."

"What do you mean?" Max asked.

"We know these prints were left by a size-nine narrow shoe. We don't know the size of the foot wearing that shoe." He shrugged. "Maybe Josie put her size-five foot into a size-nine shoe."

I shivered.

"How certain of the size are you?"

Alverez paused, considering, perhaps, how much to reveal. "We found two partial footprints on the far side of the crates and a lot of others that are just a mishmash and useless. The technicians tell me they extrapolated data to calculate the foot size."

"Still," Max insisted, "it looks like Josie didn't leave those footprints."

"Probably not, so yes, it looks as if she's out of it, except that we don't yet know what 'it' she's maybe out of. And maybe she did leave those footprints. We don't know yet."

Max started to argue the point, but Alverez stopped him by raising a palm, and said, "Come on, Max, you know how it goes. As far as I know at this point, those prints could be six months old and unrelated to anything and Josie could still be deep in it." Turning to me, he asked, "With further elimination in mind, do you know what size shoes your female employees wear?"

I thought for a moment. "No, I can't say I do. But nine is a fairly large size, and neither Gretchen nor Sasha is tall."

"According to the tech guys, that doesn't necessarily correlate. Some big women have small feet and vice versa."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

"Do you have a theory as to how someone came to leave footprints?" Max asked.

"Everyone leaves footprints this time of year. It's spring-mud."

"And it was damp yesterday," I said, remembering.

"Hard to tell how long they've been there." Alverez shrugged.

"But you're a.s.suming that it's related?" Max asked.

"We're checking it out," he answered. To me, he asked, "Who mops the floor?"

"A cleaning crew. I use an outside firm."

"Which one?"

"Macon Cleaners."

He made a note. "Do you know when they last mopped that section of the warehouse?"

"No, I don't, actually."

"I'll check," Alverez said.

"You said you only found partial prints. Are any of them good enough to use as evidence of anything besides shoe size?" Max asked.

"Maybe. We can trace the brand and model of the shoe from the markings and match it exactly through the tread patterns."

"What kind of shoe is it?" I asked.

Alverez paused again before replying, "The specifics are pending. But I can tell you it's a running shoe. Do either Gretchen or Sasha wear running shoes?"

"Not that I know of. Sasha wears sensible shoes, tie-ups or loafers, you know the kind. Gretchen wears heels. She's a stylish dresser."

"And you wear boots."

"And I wear boots. Heels sometimes. But even when I wear heels, I'm not a stylish dresser."

Alverez smiled, but didn't speak.

"Any other questions for Josie?" Max asked after a moment.

He tapped his pencil on the notepad. "No," he said. "That's it."

"Okay, then," Max said, and pushed back his chair.

"Still no plans to leave town?" he asked me.

"No," I answered, swallowing. "I'll be around."

Standing beside our cars, facing the blue-green ocean, Max surprised me by saying, "You need to be prepared for a search."

"What?" I objected, offended.

"They found stolen goods-a Renoir-in your possession. They'll want to find the sneakers that match the tread pattern on the footprints. Pro forma," Max responded, his calm contrasting with my spurt of indignation.

Ignoring my protest, he asked, "Do you have anything illegal in your possession? p.o.r.nography? A gun? Cocaine? Anything?"

I stopped objecting, and focused. I thought of the gun in my bedside table. My father had taught me to shoot handguns when I was in my early teens, encouraging me to fear the people who misuse weapons, not the weapons themselves. He hadn't been a collector, exactly, but he'd liked guns, and had respected the elegant simplicity of their design. When I was preparing to leave New York, I'd sold all but one of them, keeping only his favorite, a Browning 9-mm. I'd been meaning to get a permit for it since I'd moved, but I hadn't gotten around to it.

"I have a gun. No permit," I answered.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

He pulled on his earlobe and turned back to the ocean. "They'll be searching both your home and your business."

"What should I do?" I asked.

"It's a funny coincidence. Here you have a gun and I'm thinking about getting one. You know that the legislature is considering allowing people to carry concealed weapons? Well, they are. If they go ahead with it, I'm going to get one for Sally, my wife, to keep in her purse. As you know, I work long hours."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," I answered, impressed at his approach, wondering if I was supposed to play a more active role in this charade.