Marino sounded as if I had gotten him out of bed.
“Get here now!”
I exclaimed into the phone, my voice an octave higher than usual.
“Stay put,” he said firmly. “Don’t open the door for nobody until I get there. You got that? I’m on my way.”
Four cruisers lined the street in front of my house, and in the darkness officers probed the woods and shrubbery with long fingers of light.
“The K-nine unit’s on the way,” Marino said, setting his portable radio upright on my kitchen table.
“Seriously doubt the drone hung around, but we’ll make damn sure he didn’t before we book on out of here.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Marino in jeans, and he might have looked casually stylish were it not for the pair of white athletic socks and penny loafers, and the gray sweatshirt one size too small. The smell of fresh
coffee filled the kitchen. I was percolating a pot big enough to accommodate half the neighborhood. My eyes were darting around, looking for things to do.
“Tell it to me again real slow,” Marino said as he lit a cigarette.
“I was playing back the messages on my answering machine,” I repeated. “When I got to the last one it was this voice, a white male, young. You’ll have to hear it for yourself. He said something about my hair, wanting to know whether I bleach it.”
Marino’s eyes annoyingly shifted to my roots. “Then he said he’d left a present on my back porch. I came down here, looked out the window and didn’t see anything. I don’t know what I was expecting. I don’t know. Something awful in a box, gift wrapped. When I opened the door, I heard something scraping against the wood. It was looped over the outer knob.”
Inside a plastic evidence envelope in the center of the table was an unusual gold medallion attached to a thick gold chain.
“You’re sure it’s what Harper was wearing at the tavern?” I asked again.
“Oh, yeah,” Marino replied, his face tight. “No question about it. No question where the thing’s been all this time either. The squirrel took it from Harper’s body and now you’re getting an early Christmas present. Looks like our friend’s gotten sweet on you.”
“Please,” I said impatiently.
“Hey. I’m taking it serious, okay?”
He wasn’t smiling as he slid the envelope closer and examined the necklace through the plastic.
“You notice the clasp’s bent, so’s the little ring at the end. Looks to me like maybe it got broke when he yanked it off Harper’s neck. Then he maybe fixes it with pliers. He’s probably been wearin’
it. Shit.”
He tapped an ash. “Find any injury on Harper’s neck from the chain?”
“There wasn’t much of his neck left,” I said dully.
“Ever seen a medallion like this before?”
“No.”
It looked like a coat of arms in eighteen-karat gold, but there was nothing engraved on it except the date 1906 on the back.
“Based on the four jeweler’s marks stamped on the back, I think its origin is English,” I said. “The marks are a universal code indicating when the medallion was made, where, and by whom. A jeweler could interpret them. I know it’s not Italian–”
“Doc–”
“It would have a seven-fifty stamped on the back for eighteen-karat gold, five hundred for the equivalent of fourteen – karat–”
“Doc …”
“I have a jeweler consultant at Schwarzschild’s–”
“Hey,” Marino said loudly. “It don’t matter, all right?”
I was prattling on like a hysterical old woman.
“A friggin’ family tree of everybody who ever owned this necklace ain’t going to tell us the most important thing–the name of the squirrel who hung it on your door.”
His eyes softened a little and he lowered his voice. “What you got to drink in this crib? Brandy.
You got any brandy?”
“You’re on the job.”
“Not for me,” he said, laughing. “For you. Go pour yourself this much.”
Touching his thumb to the middle knuckle of his index finger, he marked off two inches. “Then we’ll talk.”
I went to the bar and returned with a small snifter. The brandy burned going down and instantly began to spread warmth through my blood. I stopped shivering inside. I stopped shaking. Marino eyed me curiously. His attentiveness began to make me conscious of many things. I was wearing the same rumpled suit I had worn on the train back from Baltimore. My pantyhose were biting into my waist and bagging around my knees. I was aware of a maddening compulsion to wash my face and brush my teeth. My scalp itched. I was certain I looked awful.