Rubies and Revelations: A Tiffany Black Travel Mystery by A.R. Winters

Author:A.R. Winters [Winters, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I was gaining an appreciation for Dunkin’ Donuts. We had them in Las Vegas, but I usually hit up the neighborhood café for a brew. And made my own coffee. And accepted a cup wherever offered. Good to have another option just in case.

After staying up all night, eyes burning from video footage, the chain café was a lifesaver. I burned my mouth trying to get caffeine in my blood. It was going to take a minute to get my brain running. But it was cold and drizzly this morning. I needed to warm up.

“That’s crazy,” Rosie said. “Hoodie dude, plus a clue in the recycling bin? What do you think it means?”

I should’ve gone for an iced coffee. But the early morning was chilly. Maybe if I opened the window, held the cup outside in the slipstream for a while it would cool off… I went with blowing on it.

“We’ll have to put that together. I don’t know if the two things are connected. At least we spotted the guy last night. That made it less of a surprise,” I said.

“Spooky,” Rosie said. “But you didn’t see him break in?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just snoop around. But as far as I saw, he stayed outside. The timing was almost impossible to track, but the prowler was on the property around the same time as the murder.”

Stone drove us toward the large house in the woods. At this hour, there was little traffic. We were on the back road when I saw headlights approach. My Spidey sense started tingling. Sure enough, we passed a red BMW headed the opposite way.

“I’m going to drop you off at the driveway,” Stone said. “We need to hide the car. I’m going to park it in that development down the road. Then I’ll run back. You’ll have to look for signs of a burglar alarm.”

We headed into the shelter of the trees surrounding the driveway. I watched the rental’s taillights disappear. Rosie nodded up the hill. “Let’s go.”

Climbing up the winding driveway, I braced myself for a motion detecting light. But even as we came within sight of the gate, the path stayed dark. “Okay, probably no security camera.”

“Let me check. Might be a night vision camera or something.” Rosie took out her phone. She had a camera detecting app. Don’t ask me how it worked, or if it worked. “Looks all clear. No Wi-Fi out here.”

The gate was our first obstacle. On first inspection, it looked like a standard remote opening garage door. Click a button, gate opens. The mechanism was sideways, of course. While I knew there were ways to hack the remote signal, we weren’t that high tech.

I approached a man gate set into the bars. This was locked. But this was more of a convenience feature as opposed to security. From my purse, I grabbed my wallet. Then I took out the credit-card-sized spring steel tool. The latch on the door was way too basic. I quickly opened the cheap lock.

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