9ddba8405c712dc705f6095a3ea49417

Chase had been going through the archives and gradually getting more and more covered in dust and spider webs. He cursed the genius who’d scrapped the budget to transfer all of these old files to digital format. So far he hadn’t found anything useful, but he had a hunch, and over the years he’d learned better than to ignore those hunches of his.

There was more to this Boyd Baker case than met the eye, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Dolores had asked him if he’d have put in so much effort if the body hadn’t been found in what practically amounted to his own basement, and he’d told her that didn’t matter one bit. A crime had been committed, however long ago, and justice needed to be served.

And then when she’d asked him if he’d have dug so deep if the body had dated back to the eighteen-hundreds, he’d told her there was no statute of limitations on murder, though he had to admit he might balk at investigating a crime that happened over a century ago.

But somehow, for some reason, this case intrigued him. A nice family guy like Boyd Baker, with a loving wife and two kids, cut down in his prime and suffering the indignation of being buried in his own basement. It just wasn’t right, and he needed to find out how he’d died, and by whose hand.

And he’d been wiping a tickling dust bunny from his nose when suddenly he struck gold. Or at least a report on Boyd Baker.

“Bingo,” he said as he read through the report. It wasn’t what he’d expected, though. All he’d wanted to find was the report on the man’s disappearance and maybe the cop who’d handled the case at the time. If he or she were still alive he could have talked to them, asked if they’d had any leads back then. But instead he found a report filedagainst Boyd Baker. By the family of a Mrs. Clifford. For the theft of a brooch…

[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]

Odelia arrived at the offices of Mr. Clifford and announced herself to the receptionist. The young woman, though irked that Odelia hadn’t had the foresight to make an appointment, still showed the kindness to talk to her boss and ask him if he could award a brief moment of his valuable time to a Miss Poole, journalist.

“About…” she said as she placed her hand on the receiver.

“Boyd Baker and Aurelia Clifford’s brooch. He’ll probably know what this is about,” she added when the woman knitted her brows questioningly.

Five minutes later she was led into the office of Nate Clifford and offered the choice between coffee, tea or water. She picked coffee, and took a seat at the man’s desk.

“I’m a little puzzled, I have to confess, Miss Poole,” said Nate Clifford, who was a well-dressed man in his mid-thirties, wearing a power suit and a stylish haircut that must have set him back a considerable amount of money.

From what she’d been able to glean on the internet, Nate now ran the Clifford family trust, though what exactly this entailed was a little opaque. He seemed rich enough, so he probably either did a very good job, or received a very handsome fee for his services.

“I don’t know if you know this, but Mrs. Aurelia Clifford filed a complaint against a Mr. Boyd Baker fifty-five years ago. For the theft of a brooch. Yesterday Mr. Baker was found immured in my parents’ basement, and this brooch was found on his remains.” She slid her phone across the desk and Nate leaned in to take a gander.

He frowned.“That’s it,” he said. “That’s my great-grandmama’s brooch. See the inscription? AC/34? The AC stands for Aurelia Clifford and the 34 is the code given to this particular brooch. The Clifford family have always codified their items of value, so they could keep track—for insurance purposes. I’ll be damned. And where did you find this, you say?”

Odelia told Nate the story of the missing Mr. Baker, and the police report that had been filed against him for stealing Mrs. Clifford’s brooch. All this over half a century ago.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nate repeated, mussing up his nicely coiffed and gelled hair. “Do you know how much this brooch is worth, Miss Poole? Do you have any idea?”

“Um, I’m guessing a lot?”

“Try a hundred thousand,” he said. “But actually it’s priceless. This is a family heirloom. My great-grandmother received it as a gift from the Russian czar—they still had czars in Russia back then—and the idea was to bequeath it to her daughter, my grandmother, who loved the brooch and its history. But then one day it went poof.”

“Do you know the story of its disappearance?” asked Odelia.

“Well, my great-grandmother died when I was a baby, but my grandmother talked about the brooch, for sure, and my parents. Apparently they’d hired a local landscaping company to spruce up the grounds, and when the job was done, the brooch was gone, too. Great-grandmama Aurelia always suspected the gardeners, and filed a complaint with the police. But of course nothing was ever found.”

“So there’s no question.”

“None. This is the stolen brooch. Where is it now?”

“At the county medical examiner’s office in Hauppauge,” said Odelia.