Free The Family Jewels by Mary Kay Andrews Page B

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    Edna held a wad of envelopes in her trembling hand. "Her mail. It's got her social security check. Loudene knew to the minute when that check was coming. She'd had her checks stolen twice, so she always waited for the mailman at the first of the month. Met him at the door."
    I took the packet of mail from my mother, tried to calm her down.
    "Was the house broken into?"
    "It was locked up tight."
    "How do you know she wasn't in there—taking a nap maybe? Or sick?"
    "I have a key," Edna said. "When she didn't answer, I thought she could have fallen or something. But the house was empty. Bed made up, coffee cup rinsed out in the dish drainer. But the mail was in the mailbox. And that's when I knew."
    I thought of that hot, airless house. Of the yellow shades at the kitchen windows. Of the roach spray and the potted meat. And the lard can full of jewelry.
    Edna's eyes met mine. "I checked. The can was there. Empty."
    The police were skeptical, but Edna kept insisting her friend was dead. I could have told them. My mother is never wrong about these kinds of things. Three days later a backhoe operator found the body in a pile of brush and construction rubble near the old mill's foundations, a block away from Miss Loudene's tidy yellow frame house. The back of her head had been bashed in, and she was fully dressed, but missing one shoe.
    The detective in charge of the case was an acquaintance from my days on the Atlanta Police Department He gave me a courtesy call when they found Miss Loudene, and I met him over at the old mill site.
    Miss Loudene's body was just being wheeled away on a gurney when I arrived. The wind swept through the red clay field and I pulled up the collar of my jacket against the sudden, unexpected chill.
    The detective's name was Bayles. Larry Bayles. "No sign of that jewelry your mother told us about," he said, reading over his notes. "No ID found on the body at all. But we did find a pocketbook." He pointed a few yards away, toward a pile of brush and broken bricks. He picked up a large plastic bag containing a cheap brown leather purse. "You recognize this?"
    "Not really," I admitted.
    "She didn't have much. A handkerchief. A little change purse with three bucks. Some Bible tracts. Oh yeah, and a lottery ticket. Be something if the old girl hit, wouldn't it?"
    I gave him a sour look, but I don't think it registered. "Anybody around here see anything?"
    "Girl lives across the street, says maybe she saw a car in the driveway, the day the victim disappeared."
    "A car? That's all? No description of a driver?"
    It was Bayles' turn to look sour. "A white man. Apparently, they're on the endangered species list around here."
    I repeated what Miss Loudene told me about selling her jewelry, about the "fine Christian individual" who was going to get her set up in her new apartment.
    "They set her up all right," Bayles said. "Set her up for a dirt sandwich."
    I took a sketch out of my pocket and handed it to him. I'm a lousy artist, but I'd made a rough drawing of the peacock brooch and the tiger pin. "Maybe whoever killed her will try to sell the jewelry," I suggested. "She said the watch was from Tiffany. Yellow diamond. If it was worth killing over, it must be worth selling."
    Bayles folded the drawing and tucked it into his notebook. "If it was me, I'd just pry the diamonds, sell the loose stones."
    "The antique settings are at least as valuable as the stones," I pointed out. "Let's hope the killer knows that."
    The funeral notice said Loudene Jenkins was survived by her sister, Nell Witherspoon, two nephews and two great-nephews. I showed the notice to Edna. "Did you know she had family?"
    Edna nodded. "She used to talk about a sister. I gathered they weren't close. She said her sister was uppity, sort of a religious fanatic. 'Full of God-talk'. I gather the sister didn't approve of gambling."
    On the second Wednesday night of October, Edna and I drove over to the F.J. Moody Memory Chapel in Scottdale. The