Free Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties) by Jenn Bennett Page B

Is her father still buying this from you?”
    “Even better. The man claims he found the crossbars that fit into the top. His dead wife hid them around the city years ago. He wants me to track them down and sell him this so he’ll have the whole thing.”
    Adam looked at him above his magnifying spectacles. “How much?”
    Lowe told him.
    “No.”
    “Oh, yes,” Lowe confirmed. “And God willing, if I find them, I want you to copy each piece exactly.”
    “It’ll take me a couple of weeks to forge this one.”
    “That’s fine. The crossbars will be smaller. Less detail.” Lowe slipped his friend an envelope with a rather hefty wad of bills he’d pilfered from Winter’s petty cash that morning; he’d have to replace it when Bacall’s check cleared. “Money to purchase the gold. And keep that thing in the warded vault, Adam. Just in case anyone comes sniffing around.”
    “Why would anyone have reason to?”
    “Well, for one, Monk is furious about the paperwork for the statue.”
    Adam raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Your uncle and his schemes. Are we in trouble?”
    “Maybe, I don’t know. I made sure I wasn’t followed here, but watch yourself.”
    “Hold on a minute. Am I making the amulet copy for Monk? To repay him for the statue? Why would he trust you again if you’ve cheated him once and got caught?”
    “He wouldn’t. You’re making the forgery for Dr. Bacall. I’ll give Monk the real thing.”
    “Damn. Sure you’re confident enough to pass off a forgery to an expert?”
    Lowe leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Dr. Bacall is blind.”
    “Ah.” Adam smiled. “That helps, I suppose.”
    “If those crossbars really do exist and you can forge the entire amulet, we’ll be rich. Still, worse case scenario is no crossbars, Monk gets the real base for no charge, and we get fifty grand from Bacall for the forged base.”
    “Fifty grand. Even
that’s
a fortune.”
    “Your cut’s half.”
    “Lowe—”
    “Half,” he insisted, nodding to Stella. “For her, if not yourself. All I did was dig the thing up. Besides, Miriam would whip your ass from the Beyond if you didn’t take it.”
    Adam sighed and removed his eyeglasses. “It’s so much more than the statue. Maybe you should just clear your debt with Monk, sell Bacall the forged base, and be done with it.”
    “But if I can find the pieces, it’s fifty a piece, Adam.
Fifty
.”
    “If you find the pieces.
If
.”
    “I found part of a mythical object buried in a flooded room halfway across the globe. Searching the city for a few more will be as easy as duck soup.”

SIX

    LOWE WAS AN EXCELLENT schmoozer, as Adam would say. But several days later, when he climbed the white marble steps of the Beaux Arts–style Flood mansion and passed his things to the doorman—invitation, hat, white gloves, and overcoat—an old loathing resurfaced. Tailcoats and evening gowns thronged the Grand Hall and the adjoining rooms spilling into it. Old money. Prestige. San Francisco high society.
    Everything Lowe was not.
    Sure, his family home was in the same prestigious neighborhood, and his telephone number started with the same exchange name, but the Magnussons weren’t exactly on the same level. To start, he doubted any of them had spent the week avoiding Monk Morales’s telephone calls, completely paranoid that the man’s goons were watching him. Nothing so far, but the shoe had to drop sometime, didn’t it?
    And even though no one here suspected Lowe owed a gangster fence a fortune for a forgery, everyone
did
know his family’s money came from bootlegging. Hell, the entire police department knew: his brother dutifully paid them off every month.
    So, yes. The champagne these partygoers were all tossing back might very well be Magnusson stock, but Lowe wasn’t one of them. They knew it. He knew it. So he pasted on a smile as Dr. Bacall, walking with a gold-tipped cane, was steered in his direction by a much younger man.
    “Mr.