Sticky Sweet by Connie Shelton

Author:Connie Shelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Secret Staircase Books, an imprint of Columbine Publishing Group

Chapter 26

Beau felt badly, telling Sam not to count on him for her client dinner tonight. The more he thought about the variety of things going on in the Lukinger case and now this pawnshop incident, the more he realized he wouldn’t be good dinner company anyway. He turned back to the interrogation room where young Daisy Ruiz had been shaking and in tears the last time he saw her.

As for Missy Malone, he doubted much of anything brought that woman to tears. She’d gone from fighting wild-woman in the pawnshop to mildly flirtatious when he got in the cruiser and she’d suggested rather than arresting her they could ‘work something out’ if he would only join her in the back seat. As if she were the only female suspect in history to suggest such a thing.

He peered through the narrow window in Room 2 before opening the door. Daisy sat at the metal table, wiping the back of one hand across her nose. Beau grabbed a box of tissues and carried them in with him. He set them on the table before he sat down.

“Okay, Daisy. Want to tell me what happened with you and your friend before I got to the pawnshop?”

The girl mopped smeared mascara from her lower lids, doing a bad job of it; the black mess made her look as if she’d come from the set of a zombie movie. She blew her nose twice and sniffed loudly.

“I don’t know that lady—she’s not my friend. I stopped by Applebee’s to use the bathroom ’cause I was walking to Walmart but I needed to go pretty bad. So, I’m washing my hands at one of the sinks and this woman comes to another sink near me. All at once she kind of breathes like”—a sharp inhale—“and she’s all like ‘Whoa, look at this ring!’ and she asks if it’s mine. Well, no, I tell her.”

“Describe the ring,” Beau said.

“A diamond, like an engagement ring.”

“Go ahead.”

“So she’s holding the ring and is really looking at it. And I tell her we should turn it in at the desk because somebody will come back looking for it. She says, ‘nobody’s been in this restroom for more than an hour. I was sitting nearby. No one’s coming back for it, and if we turn it in, the hostess will just have herself a really nice ring for free.’ And I’m thinking, well, isn’t that what you’ll have if you take it? But I didn’t say that.”

“And then?”

“Well, she starts with the idea of the pawnshop, that she knows a guy who would give us a good deal on the ring and we’d split the money. Sheriff, I know it wasn’t honest but I really, really needed some money to get a ticket for the Adele concert. All my friends are going.”

“So you went to the pawnshop where she knew the guy?”

“Yeah, except the guy she knew wasn’t there and Mr. Nieto was real nice and wanted to wait on us.

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