Hidden Fire, Kobo (32 page)

Puzzled, she sat and hooked her purse
strap over the back of the chair. It wasn't even eight a.m. and Pine Hills was
three hours away. "Hi," she said. "Fancy meeting you here?"

Kovak chuckled. "Glad you could join
us."

Randy sat next to Laughlin and set up his
laptop.

Okay, this was getting too far into James
Bond territory. For about a nanosecond she thought about excusing herself.
No
way
. This was obviously a police meeting and they were letting her sit in.
She caught Randy's eye and he winked at her. Damn her transparent face. She
tried to adjust her expression to that of a composed professional. Like heck.
The grin escaped. This was going to be exciting. She browsed the menu on the
table.

A waitress came by and set food in front
of Chief Laughlin and Kovak. "You need a few minutes?" she asked
Randy.

"No, I'm ready." He grabbed the
menu, glanced at it, pointed and handed it to her.

She nodded and jotted something on her
pad. "Southwestern omelet. Thank you." The waitress turned to Sarah. "And
for you?"

"Wheat toast with a side of berries,"
Sarah said. "And some orange juice." She looked at the menu again to
see what Randy was getting. She kept it in front of her face until she knew her
irritation had passed, then handed it to the waitress.

"Coming right up." The waitress
shuffled off, carrying the menus.

Smothered in salsa, it had said, with
three red peppers next to it. Hot. Well, it was his stomach and damned if she
was going to give him any sympathy.

Chief Laughlin was tackling a stack of
pancakes and Kovak had two fried eggs staring at him. Randy was doing something
on his computer. She couldn't stand the silence.

"Did you enjoy your anniversary?"
she asked Kovak. "I thought the bowls Janie picked out were perfect."

His ears turned bright pink. "Yes,
we had a nice weekend." He busied himself mopping up some yolk with a
piece of toast. "I understand you helped with the gift selection. Thank
you," he mumbled.

"I like to help my customers find something
special, you know. It goes with the territory."

She noticed Randy and Chief Laughlin
giving Kovak a questioning look. More than his ears were pink now.

"All right," Randy said. "Are
we ready to start?"

"Almost," Chief Laughlin said. "Sarah,
I guess you're wondering what this is all about?"

Ya think?
"It does seem a little strange,
yes."

"We're going to review some police
cases and have a brainstorming session. One of the drawbacks to a small town,"
Chief Laughlin said, "is the lack of privacy. Not to mention the constant
interruptions. I had to be in this area for a cousin's wedding and I thought we'd
be able to work away from curious eyes and ears. Since you're involved and I
know I can trust you to keep things confidential, we're including you."

Delight filled her, then questions. What
was going on in Pine Hills that they didn't want to meet there? "Oh, yes,
sir. Thank you. I won't say anything." She toed Randy's leg under the
table to get his attention. "So, I'm thinking this wasn't really a trip to
walk on the beach and commune with the redwoods."

Kovak raised his eyebrows in Randy's
direction. "There will be time for that after we're done here. After all,
the big guy's still on vacation."

"All right, then," Chief
Laughlin said. "There are multiple jurisdictions involved, between the
Washington cops, the Oregon County Sheriffs and the Pine Hills PD. And if we
add Garrigue to the mix, that brings in California. Not to mention the
possibility of the feds on the smuggling end. Communication within agencies is
bad enough, never mind between them. Let's see if a few small-town cops can
untangle this mess."

Randy pulled a legal tablet from his
briefcase and wished for a whiteboard. But the chief's decision to keep this
under the radar precluded anything like that, especially in a public venue.
When Laughlin laid out his plan after the lunch meeting with Eldridge, Randy
couldn't believe the chief was venturing into such gray areas. Kovak had driven
down this morning and the chief had spent the night about an hour away. All he'd
said was he smelled a rat and so, for the time being, they were into the world
of cloak and dagger. Beat spinning his wheels.

"Sarah," he said. She looked at
him, a smile on her lips, her eyes sparkling. An eager puppy. "What we're
going to be doing here is brainstorming. That means we're going to toss out
ideas. Any ideas. Nothing's too off-the-wall."

Kovak put down his fork. "And we're
also going to play devil's advocate with everything we say. Doesn't mean an idea
is good, bad, right or wrong. We toss them all around."

"Feel free to jump in," the chief
said.

Sarah's eyes lit up even more, if that
was possible. "Me?"

The chief smiled. "Of course. You've
got a lot of information we don't have, especially when it comes to your
customers and what they purchased."

She nodded, her smile diminishing. Her
expression was solemn, businesslike. Randy knew she'd realized this was more
than a party game.

"Go for it." Randy nodded to
the chief.

"Okay. From the top. We have our dead
John Doe. We have a burglary. We have diamond smuggling." Laughlin drew
three circles on a page and set it in the center of the table. "How are
they connected?"

"If we knew that," Kovak said, "then
we'd probably have solved the case by now."

"Pottery," Randy said. "Clay
under the victim's nails, pottery in Sarah's shop, diamonds in the pottery."

"The mugs at Saint Michael's,"
Sarah said.

"Right." The chief drew another
circle and wrote "Saint Michael's" inside. He took a red pen and
surrounded the John Doe, burglary and Saint Michael's with a colored border. "These
three are all within our jurisdiction, even though they're spilling into
others. Let's start with Sarah's shop."

The chief stopped talking and Randy
sensed the waitress' approach. He moved things around, making enough room for
his plate. The heady aroma had his mouth watering. "Enjoy," she said.

"You're a glutton for punishment,
aren't you, big guy?" Kovak said.

"What are you talking about?"

"I know your stomach. Salsa. Hot
salsa, if I remember the menu correctly. Hope you brought your Tums."

Randy saw the sideward glance Sarah threw
at Kovak, as if thanking him for bringing it up. "I don't need you telling
me what I can or can't eat, okay. And I like salsa." Which he did, but if
he
had
bothered to read instead of picking the first egg dish on the
menu, he'd have chosen something else. Keeping his eyes on his plate, he forked
up a huge mouthful of his salsa-covered omelet. He swallowed it, refusing to
reach for his water glass when his tongue caught fire. Instead, he spread some
strawberry jam on a slice of toast and bit off a mouthful. The sweet jam
counteracted the spicy salsa and he went on eating.

"Back to work, children," the chief
said. "Sarah, the special pottery seems to be central in this case. Let's
think about it. Your potter—"

"Hugh Garrigue," she said.

"Right, Garrigue," the chief
continued. "He receives smuggled diamonds. Bakes them into pots, or
whatever he does. So he's a distributor, not a fence."

"Why?" Sarah asked. "And
how did I get the pots?" She chewed her lip. "You said to toss out
any ideas, right?"

"Right," Randy said. "You
have something?"

"I don't know. But Hugh Garrigue was
out of town. His associate shipped me the pottery. She said he's usually
particular about handling that himself. What if she sent me the pots with the
diamonds by mistake? What if they were supposed to go to his fences, or
smuggling ring, or whatever?"

"Good thought," Kovak said. The
chief wrote "mistake?" on the sheet. Randy started his own notes, noticing
Kovak doing the same.

"Looking at the other side,"
the chief said. "What if it wasn't a mistake? That Sarah is a distributor?"

She stopped drinking her juice and put
her glass on the table. Emphatically. "That's not true."

"Relax, Sarah," the chief said.
"While we don't consider you a knowing participant, to anyone else there's
enough evidence to investigate. It adds a layer of distance from Garrigue."

"But this is the first time I've had
more than a couple of Garrigues to sell," she said. "What about all
the other shops?"

"Right," Randy said. "A
sweet gimmick, if you ask me. He pops this stuff all over the country, a little
at a time. More layers."

"More complications," Kovak
said. "More people involved, more chances something will go wrong."

"Have we checked with the other
shops?" the chief asked.

"I was investigating," Randy
said. "I've been waiting on customer lists. Most of these businesses are
small, like Sarah's. They don't all keep records as detailed as hers. I can
call and hound them some more, but County's on it."

"Here's what I think," Sarah
said. "It doesn't make sense that someone would go to all the trouble of
hiding diamonds in pottery without a way of getting them to the right people. Constructing
the mugs is way beyond normal pottery making. So if the smuggler does all that,
why would he put the pottery for sale where anyone could buy it? Unless it's
not a smuggler at all. Some rich fruitcake's idea of a joke. You know, random
acts of kindness." She pulled a face. "Which is totally crazy."

"Especially since someone would have
to break the pot, yes, it's totally crazy. I think we can rule out an anonymous
philanthropist," Randy added.

"But wait," Sarah said. "People
came into the store requesting specific pieces. So maybe there's some way that
Garrigue—if he's the smuggler—tells them which pieces to buy."

"Risky," Kovak said. "What
guarantee does he have that the pots or mugs or whatever would still be in the
shop? That a totally innocent customer didn't buy them first?"

"Mr. Pemberton," Sarah said,
her hands fluttering like butterflies.

"What about him?"

"He came into the shop
before
I got the shipment." She looked at Kovak. "That was one of the things
the cops used against me. That I shipped those mugs to Mr. Pemberton before
they were on sale to the public. But he knew exactly which ones he wanted. Even
had a sketch."

"So someone tipped him off,"
the chief said. "Kovak, find out if the other shops had advance orders and
if so, what they were for." He looked at Sarah. "I'm assuming he can't
bake these diamonds into any old piece of pottery."

She shook her head. "No, I'm amazed
he can do it at all. It's not the normal way to construct a mug."

"All right, Sarah," Randy said
around a bite of sausage. "What can you come up with as reasons Mr. Pemberton
came into your shop? Three for starters. Remember, nothing is too crazy to
consider."

She moved her berries around in their
bowl. "Okay. One, it was exactly what he said it was. His wife collects
Garrigues and he wanted to surprise her."

"Good. Two."

"You don't think that's true, do
you?" she asked.

"Doesn't matter," Kovak said. "We're
brainstorming. Ideas first. We'll analyze them later."

She forked a berry into her mouth and
chewed it, looking thoughtful.

"Two," she said. "He knows
about the diamonds and he gets to the store early to buy the pottery before it
goes on sale."

Randy nodded. "Keep it up."

She frowned. "Why doesn't someone
ask Mr. Pemberton?"

"He's disappeared. Nobody knows
where he is," the chief said. "Someone must have tipped him off."

Her lips curved upward. "Ah, but he
gave me his card. One of those fancy-sounding English addresses." She
knitted her brows. "Shropshire. Some kind of a tree. Larch? No, laurel.
The Laurels, Shropshire. There was something else in there, but that's a start.
I should have his address on my spreadsheet." She beamed with delight.

Randy took another bite of toast, washing
it down with coffee, avoiding Sarah's eyes when he spoke. "No such place."

"What?"

"The Washington cops have been
following up," the chief said. "Doesn't exist."

Her face fell. "I can't believe it.
I thought I was a pretty good judge of character, but I've been so wrong
lately."

Despite the fact he was sitting at a
table with two of his colleagues, one of whom was his direct superior, Randy took
her hand, small, warm and soft, in his. He loved the way it disappeared, as if
she'd become part of him. "It's your nature to believe people. To trust
them. Take them at face value. And until recently, there was no reason not to.
Most of Pine Hills' citizens are exactly what they seem to be. High-profile
crimes like these don't happen there."