A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) by Fran Stewart

Author:Fran Stewart [Stewart, Fran]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-02T23:00:00+00:00

17

Safe Assumption

Harper moved closer, and I caught another faint whiff of citrus. He’d missed shaving a tiny patch of beard on his jaw, just below his earlobe.

“Excuse me,” he said, and I took a step backward. He ran his finger along the outline. “Does this open?”

“It lifts out,” Sam said as he headed toward the back room. “I’ll get the gloves.”

We’d left the screws in place, and the door came loose more easily this time. Harper whistled again when the safe came into view. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, placed it over the handle, and pushed down. Of course, it didn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” Sam said, and I saw a muscle twitch beside the little patch of beard Harper had missed.

“Anyone know the combination?”

Sam snorted in derision. “If we’d a known that, we’d a had it open by now.”

Harper crouched beside the safe and touched the dial very gently with a forefinger. He brushed some of the cobwebbing away, leaned closer, and placed his ear against the red-filigreed door. He turned the dial to the right a hairsbreadth at a time.

How much safecracking experience had this man had? I held my breath.

After a few minutes that seemed like an hour, he sighed and straightened up. “Old safes like this usually had complicated dialing systems for the combinations. You’d spin the dial to the right first to clear everything and stop on the first number. After that, these Barnes safes required four turns to the left, three turns to the right, two turns back to the left, and a final turn to the right to get to the last number. Sometimes the owners would dial all but that final number. That way, they could open the safe quickly.”

Oh, crapola. I’d wiggled the dial back and forth. Luckily he wasn’t looking at my face.

“So,” Sam said, “you thought you might be able to hear the number click?” He sounded dubious.

Harper rubbed his right hand along his jaw, faltered when he connected with those few stray bits of beard. “Yeah,” he said. “It was worth a try.”

“But it didn’t work,” Sam pointed out unnecessarily.

Harper gave him a level stare, and I could almost smell the increase in testosterone. “Not this time, it didn’t.”

“It wouldn’t have anyway,” Sam snapped. “Peggy played with the dial.”

Thanks, traitor.

Harper whipped his head around and narrowed those beautiful eyes at me. “Is that true?”

“Uh-huh. I’m sorry.”

He positively glowered. I lifted my chin a bit higher. “I didn’t know there’d be a problem. I only moved it a little each way.” And spun it around a couple of times.

“Yeah,” Sam put in. “Enough to ruin the sequence.”

“You don’t have to be so sarcastic,” I grumped at him.

Dirk stepped forward and thrust his face close to Sam’s. “Ye didna know either, and here ye pretend to be so learned.” Sam took an involuntary step back and wiped his face with one hand. Good for Dirk.

If Sam hadn’t been goading me, I think Harper might have stayed angrier longer. As it was, he turned on Sam, much as Dirk had done.

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