Free Polished Off by Barbara Colley Page A

who asked all the questions. He questioned me first,” she explained, then she went on to tell Daniel exactly what Will had asked her and Patsy. When she got to the part where Patsy had mentioned that she’d bought the urn at an old warehouse, Charlotte’s voice trailed off.
    What was it about that warehouse? Out of the clear blue, she suddenly remembered. “That’s why!” she exclaimed. “That’s why it sounded so familiar.”
    Daniel’s brow furrowed with confusion. “Why what sounded so familiar?”
    “The address—the address of the warehouse where Patsy bought the urn. It’s the same one—no, wait.” She slowly shook her head. “That can’t be right. Remember back when you got Ricco out of jail? Not long after that, a bunch of stuff—statues and things—were discovered in the back room of an old warehouse. The warehouse had been sold, and when the new owners started their renovations, they found some of the stolen cemetery artifacts there.”
    Daniel still had a blank look on his face.
    “It was in the paper for days.”
    When he finally nodded, she continued. “Well, supposedly the police confiscated all of it. For evidence,” she added. “But if they confiscated it all, then how could Patsy have bought the urn there?” Another thought occurred to her. “Patsy said ‘he,’ ” she murmured. No wonder he sold it to me. So who was ‘he’? Charlotte wondered.
    Daniel shifted and turned so that he faced her. “Look, Aunt Charley, I vaguely remember reading about that stuff being found, but right now I think there are more urgent problems to consider. I’m more concerned about Nadia and what all of this is going to do to her ... and to Davy,” he added in a whisper. “Poor little guy.”
    Daniel’s voice was hoarse with emotion, and Charlotte strongly suspected that he was remembering his own loss so many years ago. Though Daniel and Judith’s father hadn’t died, he might as well have. When he’d divorced their mother, it was as if he’d divorced his children, too, leaving them to forever wonder what they had done so wrong that their own father would have nothing to do with them.
    “Davy still remembers his father, you know,” Daniel continued. “Still talks about him and even dreams about him sometimes.”
    Charlotte’s throat tightened with sympathy. “Oh, honey, you’re right. I’m so very sorry.”
    “No, it’s okay,” Daniel assured her. “But tell me, Auntie ...” He paused. “How do you explain to a three-year-old that his father is dead?”
    “Not very easily, I’m afraid,” she murmured. Like Daniel, Charlotte also knew about loss, knew what it felt like to lose someone you love. Unlike Daniel, her loss had been permanent. She’d been eighteen when Hank’s father had died. Then, only two years later, her own parents had been killed in a horrible accident. But Charlotte had been old enough to understand about death. Davy ... Davy was just a child, a very young child.
    Daniel stared past Charlotte for several moments. “No, not easy at all.” After a moment he drew in a deep breath. “Right now, though, I need to break the news to Nadia—prepare her for when the police show up. And they will show up,” he added. “You can bet on it. If, in fact, those bones do belong to Ricco, there’s a good chance that Nadia could end up being their number one suspect. We might have some time, though, depending on how long it takes them to confirm the identity. But not much.”
    “Daniel, I’m sure they will want to question Nadia, but what about those people he ran around with, the other thieves who were arrested with him? Seems to me that they’d be a lot more suspect than an upstanding citizen like Nadia?” Charlotte hesitated, her mind mulling over the events. “Of course, there’s another possibility as well. Maybe, just maybe, the skeleton isn’t Ricco,” she suggested. “It’s possible it could be someone else.”
    After a moment, he gave a