“I don’t think so,” she answered, suddenly realizing how frightened she’d been. She looked at her jacket. Miraculously, it hadn’t ripped. “No damage,” she told him. “Is that your dog?”
He nodded, his gaze following the dog. “You’d better get out of here,” he said in a flat tone. “Ly doesn’t like strangers, and he’s trained to attack.”
“You told me to come here,” Nancy argued. “You told me to ask the kingfisher.”
“Forget what I said,” the boy told her in the same emotionless voice.
“Is Mr. Mai the kingfisher?”
The boy gave her a grudging smile. “Very good. Now get out of here before I call the dog back.”
“Tell me what you were doing at Terry Kirkland’s house and I’ll go,” Nancy countered.
He didn’t answer but gave a sharp, high whistle. Not again, Nancy thought as she saw the Doberman loping toward her. “All right,” she said quickly. “I’m leaving.”
The boy stared at her, his dark eyes hard. With the dog growling at his side, he led Nancy out of the alley, past the antique shop, and onto the street. “You’re not only leaving,” he said in a menacing tone, “you’re never coming back.”
This is ridiculous, Nancy thought. I’m taking orders from a fourteen-year-old! But the dog gave her no choice.
Feeling annoyed, Nancy headed once again toward the center of town. There she bought a sandwich and found a grassy spot to sit near the water’s edge.
As she watched the sailboats skim across the bay, Nancy tried to piece together what she’d learned. She now knew that Mr. Mai was the kingfisher and definitely connected to the trunk. Was the boy also connected to its theft? If he was, why would he have sent her here? And how did he connect to the kingfisher?
The more Nancy thought about the trunk, the more she knew it was critical to unraveling the mystery. She wondered if its pieces were still where she’d seen them, or if the boy had removed them. Nancy finished her lunch and made a decision that she didn’t particularly like. She was going to have to go back for the trunk.
Nancy’s pulse was racing well before she even reached the alley. Would the boy and the dog be waiting for her? Nancy had risked many dangerous things as a detective, but even she had to admit that chancing a second run-in with an attack-trained Doberman was among the craziest.
She reached the antique shop, began to turn up the alley, and hesitated. I can’t do it, she realized. She just couldn’t walk in the alley unprotected and take on the Doberman. Then she remembered something she’d seen the day before when she, Bess, and George had been shopping for Joanne’s wedding decorations.
Excitedly she returned to the car and opened the trunk. There it was, just as she’d remembered, an old comforter, which Terry must have kept in the car as a spare beach blanket. It was worn and badly faded but still fairly thick. It was exactly what she needed.
Nancy got into the car and drove to the antique shop. Taking the comforter with her, she returned to the alley. She wrapped the quilt around her arm and slowly approached the garbage bins. The shattered trunk was still there.
She heard the dog’s warning growl as she reached for the first piece of wood. “Just ignore him,” she told herself.
But moments later the dog sprang, and this time Nancy went down under its weight. Pushing her protected arm toward the Doberman’s mouth, Nancy struggled to get up.
The dog’s teeth sank into the quilt. It pulled savagely at the comforter while Nancy reached into the bin with her other arm and grabbed as much of the shattered wood as she could. Then, after slipping her arm out of the quilt, she ran as if she’d never stop.
Nancy jumped into the front seat of Terry’s car, slammed the door, and exhaled a sigh of relief. Waiting for her pulse to slow down, she looked beside her on the front seat at the pieces of wood she’d managed to salvage. In the first moments after she’d slipped her arm from the quilt, the dog had continued to chew on the thick cloth. That had given her the precious seconds she’d needed to outrun it. She shook her head as she recalled her panicked race to the car and her frantic struggle to open the door and lock herself safely inside.
She checked her watch. She’d been sitting in the car for over five minutes and her heart was still beating rapidly. Nancy glanced at the pieces of wood on the seat beside her. “I sure hope that was worth all this trouble,” she said. Then she started the car and headed back to Cherry Creek.
She found Terry still in his studio, assembling a delicate glass mobile. He looked up and brushed a shock of long hair back from his face as she entered. “Any luck with the kingfisher?” he asked.
“I’m not sure luck is the word,” Nancy replied, thinking of her run-in with the dog. “But I did find these.”
Terry took the broken pieces of wood from her. “These look like they’re from Nick’s trunk.”
“That’s what I thought,” Nancy said, then told him what had happened.
Terry listened to the story silently. “What I’d like to know is why this trunk wound up in pieces behind the gallery, and what that kid with the dog has to do with it.”
Nancy sat down on a chair. “The first time I saw him I asked if he was the one who was breaking into your house, and he told me to ask the kingfisher. This time he pretty much admitted that the kingfisher was Mr. Mai. And I found pieces of the trunk behind Mai’s gallery.”
Terry frowned. “I think we can assume the kid knows who took the trunk. But there’s something off about his story. He sounds too eager to blame Mai. Besides, owners of exclusive galleries usually have better things to do than steal worthless trunks.”
“What if Mai paid him to steal it?”
Terry gave her a skeptical look. “That trunk was nailed together from cheap wood in a factory in Saigon. It wasn’t worth anything. No one would bother to have it stolen. Especially someone who deals in real art.”
“That brings us back to the boy and the man in the dark red car,” Nancy said. “Maybe they’re working together.”
“And trying to frame Mr. Mai?” Terry asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I still don’t have enough information.” She nodded toward the remnants of the trunk. “Do you think that will tell us anything?”
Altogether Nancy had managed to bring back nine pieces of various sizes. Terry cleared a space on his worktable, laid out the pieces of wood side by side, and studied them intently. “I wish you’d been able to get more of it,” he said at last. “But leave them with me for a while, and I’ll see what I can figure out.”
“And I’d better get to a library,” Nancy said. “I want a list of halfway intelligent questions I can ask Mr. Mai if he calls back.”
• • •
It was early evening when Nancy left the library with a pad filled with notes on Asian jade. She’d learned that there were basically two types of jade: jadeite, which was often translucent; and nephrite, which usually had a waxy quality. The oldest, most valuable carved pieces were generally from China. And the Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese all valued the stone as a symbol of good fortune. They had all used it to create beautiful works of jewelry and art.
She walked out of the library just as the sun was beginning to set. Perfect timing, Nancy thought. One of the things she loved about northern California was the way so many people pulled off the road at sunset to watch the sun go down over the Pacific. As Joanne had once told her, “It’s definitely the best show in town.”
Nancy got into her car and headed for Route 1. She had noted an overlook on the way to Cherry Creek that would be a perfect place to view the sky.
