“So where is it? She gave you her master key, and you gave her key to me. Where’s my key? Where’s the master key she ordered for me?”
Charles looked at Jenay. He could look at it either way. He could look at it as if they were desperate, and grappling at straws. Or he could look at it as if they were hopeful, and on to something. “I’ll shower and get dressed,” he said as he got his naked body out of bed. They were on to something, he felt.
“Is this where she lives?” Jenay asked, as Charles’s Jaguar pulled into the driveway of the modest, brown home.
“This is it,” he said.
Jenay looked at the very working-class home and should have felt bad. Beatrice Moynihan was no woman of means. She probably needed that job desperately. But if she had a part in doing to Jenay what Jenay suspected she did, then she had no sympathy. If convicted, Jenay could do twenty years behind this scheme. She had no sympathy at all.
They got out of the car, walked up to the front door, and Charles rang the bell. Jenay looked at him. He had slept in fits and starts last night, the way she had, and that tiredness still hung under his eyes and cloaked his every expression. As if this very busy man had time for this. Jenay hated that it was because of his concern for her. She hated that she had been placed in a position like this.
When Beatrice opened the door, and saw that it was Charles and Jenay, they could see panic suddenly appear on her face, as if she was certain they would never be on to her. Here it was, the very next day, and they already were.
“What do you want?” she asked them. Jenay could hear the nervous quiver in her voice.
Charles pulled out the invoice and put it in her face. “The third key,” he said.
Beatrice tried to deny any knowledge. She even insisted no key was made when she had obviously signed for it. And when it was just as obvious that Charles nor Jenay was falling for her alibis, she gave in. And proceeded to throw her partner in crime, Paige Springer, under, over, and around the bus.
“This was all her doing,” Beatrice said. “She took those jewels! I gave her the key and waited outside. That’s all I did. She took those jewels.”
“But you turned off the cameras,” Jenay said.
“No I did not,” Beatrice insisted. “Wrong again! Edna turned those cameras off.”
Jenay and Charles looked at each other. Then Charles looked at Beatrice. “Edna?”
“She’s the one who let us in through the side entranceway, yes,” Beatrice said. “She and Paige masterminded that heist. All I did was give her my key.”
Jenay pulled out her cell phone, to call the police, but Charles stopped her. And then he looked at Bea. “You know who I want in this?” he asked her.
Beatrice knew. She nodded.
“Mention a word of what we discussed, and it’ll be over for you too. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Beatrice said.
And Charles escorted Jenay back to the car. Jenay was floored. As soon as he got in under the wheel, and drove them away, she pounced. “You’re letting her get away with it?”
“No,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you let me call the chief?”
Charles looked at her. “Because I know this town, Jenay. A powerless woman like Beatrice Moynihan telling the cops what Paige Springer allegedly did, without any proof, is like a murderer accusing a priest. Nobody wants to hear it. I know this town. My only concern is getting you out of this. And Bea’s testimony alone is not going to do it.”
Jenay was disappointed. Her heart soared when Bea confessed. But she had to trust Charles’s judgment. He knew the people he were dealing with. He knew this town. She had to let him handle it.
And she did. He dropped her off at the Inn, only telling her that he had to take care of some business, and he was off. He contacted an acquaintance of his, a man he called on to handle delicate jobs for him, and explained to him what he was to purchase, where he was to put that purchase, and what phone call he was to make after that particular purchase was safely in place.
Paige Springer was at the country club later that afternoon, playing her usual doubles game of tennis with three of her closest girlfriends, when Chief Joffee himself, along with two of his deputies, walked across the lawn in direct violation of club policy, and headed for Paige.
“What does he want?” one of Paige’s friends asked as all of the ladies gathered near the net, where Paige was standing.
Paige’s heart began to pound, but she continued to smile and appear nonchalant. “Beats me,” she said.
But Joffee wasn’t ambiguous in his reasoning for being there at all. He didn’t come there to ask her questions. He came there to arrest her.