Fleeced: A Regan Reilly Mystery

front parlor. I guess I should bring them down there sooner rather than later.”
“When did she die?” Regan asked.
“Three years ago. They’d been married for forty-five years.”
Regan sighed. “That’s tough. He must have been lonely.”
“Nat didn’t change a thing around here after she died. Her dressing table in the bedroom still has all her perfumes and knickknacks, just as she left them. He said he kept expecting her to come out of the bathroom and sit down at that table like she used to and brush her hair before going to bed.”
“He did have good friends, though.”
“The group he played cards with were his best friends.”
Regan walked over to the antique desk. “This is where the jewelry was left out.”
Thomas looked pained. He just nodded.
“Where is the safe?”
“Behind these books.” Thomas removed several old volumes from one of the lower shelves and placed them on the desk. He then pushed the paneling aside to reveal the safe.
“That’s pretty well hidden,” Regan said. “My mother has a safe in the closet of her bedroom, but it’s in plain view. A couple of years ago the house was burglarized and the safe was bashed in. All of her good jewelry was stolen. She always said it was safer when she hid it in a box in the attic.”
Thomas nodded. “My grandmother was always hiding her jewelry, but then she could never remember where it was. After she died we had to be so careful about throwing anything out. We found jewelry hidden in secret compartments in books.”
“You know, Thomas, one of the things I do want to do is make a preliminary search of the apartment to see if the diamonds are here.”
“Okay, but I still say he kept them in a red box in the safe.”
The doorbell rang.
“Who on earth?” Thomas asked rhetorically as he hurried to the door.
Regan waited, making a mental list of all the things she had to do to get started. And look at all these books, she thought. That red box could be hidden in any one of them.
A sound not unlike a lone dog’s howl in the wilderness echoed through the apartment. Regan ran to the front door. Thomas was leaning against the wall, a small red velvet box in his hands. A fiftyish woman dressed in a maid’s uniform was standing in the hallway with a sympathetic look on her face and “tsk tsks” coming from her mouth. She reminded Regan of Edith Bunker.
“What happened?” Regan asked.
“I heard all the talk this morning about the red box that was missing. Well, I found it! I knew Thomas was up here, so I ran up as fast as I could.”
“It’s empty!” Thomas cried.
“Where did you find it?” Regan asked.
“In the wastebasket in Thomas’s office.”
Regan looked at Thomas, who seemed as if he were about to sink through the floor.

10
The world headquarters of Biggest Apple Productions was based in the apartment of Stanley Stock, president, founder, and sole employee of the organization. The apartment was actually a drafty old gas station on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, but it did have a nice view of the Hudson River. Stanley had converted it into a home and office with two kitchen chairs set up in the corner for use when he interviewed studio guests for his weekly show on free-access television. Right above the set was a rack of spongy-looking tires left over from the good old days. A faint scent of gasoline still hung in the air, and there were those who said it affected Stanley ’s power of reason.
The station had actually belonged to Stanley ’s father, and over the years, Stanley had worked there on and off. Because he hadn’t inherited any of his father’s mechanical ability, Stanley had spent most of his fifty-eight years working in various out-side sales jobs. He’d sold everything from Fuller brushes to magazine subscriptions over the phone. An affable fellow, he didn’t mind being hung up on hundreds of times a day. He’d just dial the next number and go into his spiel until he heard the click in his ear. His coworkers always liked Stanley and usually ended up telling him their problems. Stanley always took their side, agreeing with everything they said.
“Right,” he’d say emphatically as they stood around the water cooler or coffee machine. “You’re so right!” Every conversation usually included a “That’s terrible.”
After his father’s funeral a year ago, Stanley decided that he had had enough. He’d quit his latest job, which he must have had for at least a month, and ceremoniously closed the garage doors of his inheritance to the broken down cars of the world, and moved in. He considered it to be a pretty hip move, the first hip move he’d made in his life. Other people in downtown New York lived in trendy lofts that had formerly been warehouses. What’s wrong with a gas station?
The question that hung in the petrol-smelling air was, Now what? What do I do with the rest of my life? Stanley asked himself over and over. He had enough money to get by, but he still felt he hadn’t made his mark on the world. He was certainly right about that.
Stanley discovered something that up till now had been totally unfamiliar to him. Ambition. It awakened in his soul when he finally discovered his true calling.
At night he’d lay his portly body on the slipcovered couch and aim his remote control at the television that he’d rigged to the lift that formerly raised sickly cars into the air. But no matter what was on, he’d always find himself switching back to the shows on Free-Speech television. It was a cable station that by law had to be made available to anyone who wanted access. As a result, many programs made their way onto the air that were astonishingly bad, with their poor production values, lame content, and wacky hosts. So bad they made you stop and look,