Barbara wasn’t too upset about her loss because the coins can be replaced and she has travel insurance (the rich really ARE different from you and me), but Marie’s necklace was one of a kind and she does NOT have travel insurance. The police were summoned and we all insisted upon being searched. The 2 golden escudos are still missing, but the 4 silver coins were under the front floor mat of the van that Luis has been driving and the necklace was in his jacket pocket!!!
Of course, he swore he had no idea how they got there, and that someone else must have planted the necklace in his jacket, which had indeed hung on the back of his seat for most of the drive. I suppose 1600 euros worth of gold coins is a big temptation to a poor student. Not that he really is, as Mrs. Forbes was quick to tell us when she linked up with us yesterday. He’s the son of her cousin here in Santiago, a middle-class businessman who believes in the work ethic for his children.
Jackie can’t stop crying, but for once, she’s standing up to Jack, who wants to whisk her back to Long Island immediately. She refuses to believe in Luis’s guilt and accused Jack of framing him in order to break them up. But Jack says he would have had no serious objection to the romance if he had noticed, which he swears he didn’t. He claims that he was rather impressed by Luis, that they’d shared a bottle of wine in Oviedo, where he learned that Luis is studying business, but spends his summers driving for Forbes because he likes cars. “He knows Porsches from bumper to tailpipe and he asked some pretty sharp questions about the franchise. Would I rather see my daughter with an American? Hell yes! But if this is the guy she wanted, I would have made him the son I never had. He could’ve doubled our sales to Spanish-speaking customers.”
Jackie didn’t want to believe him, but Marie confirmed that he’d told her pretty much the same when she walked him back to the hotel after the cider festival. And that was before the gold coins went missing. I could just weep for what might have been, but if Luis is a thief, better to know it now. Poor Jackie. She’s still convinced of his innocence but who else could possibly have a motive to discredit him? Roman
From: RTramegra
To: SigridHarald
Date: 26 May
Subject: You were RIGHT!!
Dear, dear Sigrid:
When I read your one-word reply late last night, I couldn’t imagine how on earth you reached that conclusion, and when I got Jackie alone after breakfast this morning and put it to her, she was equally puzzled. Still, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered. She pleaded a headache and told the others to please go away and let her sleep it off. It was my job to convince everyone that we simply HAD to drive both vans down to La Guardia for lunch and then make a quick sidetrip across the Minho River so that we could truthfully say we’d been to Portugal. Even the Brockmans agreed when I reminded them that they could photograph the same scene that Oscar once painted.
This gave Jackie several hours to make a thorough search and when we returned, she was waiting for us in front of the hotel with the two gold escudos clutched in her hand. She had found them in a jar of cold cream in Marie’s toiletries bag.
How clever of you to realize that if Jack was telling the truth, Marie was the only one left with a motive to break them up. Once Jack confided in her that he liked Luis, and once she realized how qualified that young man was, Marie knew she would soon be pushed aside if the match actually came off. She would no longer be Jack’s second-in-command. No more cushy family job with paid European vacations and time off whenever she wanted. Instead, she’d be back among the working wage earners, punching a time clock. An art enthusiast was no threat to her, but an art enthusiast who can read a balance sheet and knows cars?
Jack is mortified and sent her home in disgrace as soon as the Brockmans agreed not to press charges. No trouble with Luis either. He’s certainly not going to sue his fiancée’s aunt — yes, FIANCÉE!!! He formally proposed last night and you should see the beautiful antique ring he gave her!!! You and I are both invited to the wedding next spring out in the Hamptons. Even though I’ve given you all the credit, Jackie keeps calling me Don Tramegra, her knight in shining armor.
Home on Saturday. Still no good plot, although... what do you think about smuggling ancient gold artifacts out of Spain in the hubcaps of European cars? Maybe the smuggler could be a descendant of Aztecs?
R.
Copyright © 2006 Margaret Maron
The Problem of the Shepherd’s Ring
by Edward D. Hoch
The long-running Sam Hawthorne series takes a new domestic turn in the following story. Hawthorne is a reader favorite not only because of his crime-solving ability but because he’s sympathetic — a country doctor, once a very eligible bachelor. He finally married in “The Problem of Bailey’s Buzzard” (12/02).
It was in early December of 1943, just two years after our marriage, that Annabel told me she was pregnant. (Old Dr. Sam Hawthorne paused to refill his visitor’s glass before continuing his story.) Of course, I was overjoyed by the news, even though it meant bringing a child into a world ravaged by war. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had just met for the first time in Teheran, agreeing on a plan for the invasion of western Europe during the coming year, and we hoped the worst might soon be over.
Our good friend and Northmont’s first black doctor, Lincoln Jones, had gone into obstetrics and opened his own office. He’d been slow in building a practice, but Annabel and I quickly agreed there was no one we’d trust more to deliver our first baby. Lincoln examined Annabel on Monday morning, our wedding anniversary, and estimated that the baby was due toward the end of July. She was already making plans for her assistant to take over the veterinary practice at Annabel’s Ark during her confinement. I’d be forty-seven years old when my child was born, but Annabel was ten years younger, still a beauty with her blond hair and hazel eyes.
“I’ll need you, Sam,” she told me. “When it gets closer you’ll have to cut back on your detective work.”
I assured her I’d be happy to abandon it completely if Northmont would only settle down to being a quiet New England town. But that wasn’t about to happen right away.
I arrived at my office the following morning, another anniversary day, but this one far from joyous. It was two years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I knew my nurse April would be thinking of her husband André, still fighting the war in the Pacific. I couldn’t resist telling her the good news about Annabel’s pregnancy and she was overjoyed. I was the godfather of her son Sam, named for me and now a seven-year-old second-grader, living here with his mother while they awaited his father’s return from the war. When I’d finished with my news she told me Sheriff Lens was coming in to see me. I knew it wouldn’t be just a social visit.
“How’s it going, Doc?” he asked as he came through the door a bit after ten.
“Just fine, Sheriff. Annabel and I were out to see Lincoln Jones yesterday.”
“Oh? How’s he doing with his practice?”
“It’s growing. We brought him some new business.”
“Who—?” he started to ask, and then understood what I was telling him. “You and Annabel are expecting?”
“Well, just Annabel actually.”
“Doc, that’s great news. Wait till I tell Vera! When’s she due?”
“Late July, near as we can tell.”
“Maybe by then the war will be over. The invasion’s getting closer.”