Fleeced: A Regan Reilly Mystery Read Free Page A

anxiously as she straightened up and reached for the phone on the kitchen wall.
    We’re so Irish, Regan thought. What was that line? The Irish have an abiding sense of tragedy that gets us through the good times. Which meant that any phone call before 8:00 A.M. and after 11:00 P.M. could only mean big trouble. It was never even considered that it might be someone who wanted to talk when the rates were cheaper.
    Regan watched the expression on her mother’s face. As soon as Nora recognized the caller, she relaxed and smiled.
    “Thomas, how are you?”
    Thomas who? Regan wondered.
    “That’s all right. You’re not disturbing us at all…”
    Oh sure, Regan thought. Our hearts only skipped a few dozen beats. And that extra surge of adrenaline when the phone rang gave me a needed boost.
    “Yes, Regan is right here. Let me put her on…” Nora handed Regan the phone. “It’s Thomas Pilsner.”
    Regan’s eyebrows raised. “Oh,” she muttered with surprise. Thomas, a lovable eccentric, was the latest president of the Settlers’ Club down in Gramercy Park. He and Regan had become fast friends when she attended a Mystery Writers dinner with her mother there last fall.
    “Hi, Thomas,” Regan said cheerfully, picturing his baby face and mop of light-brown hair that looked like one big wave. It seemed to Regan that he could step into a snapshot from a hundred years ago and not look out of place.
    “Regan! Oh my God, Regan!” Thomas cried hysterically, apparently having kept his real feelings from her mother.
    “Thomas, what’s wrong?”
    “I’ve barely slept all night. Then I saw your picture in the paper when it was delivered at six o’clock this morning, and I waited as long as I could to call you. Oh God!”
    “Thomas, calm down. Tell me what’s wrong.”
    “Last night two of our elderly members died.”
    “I’m sorry,” Regan said, thinking that the Irish intuition about phone calls before 8:00 A.M. had for once proved to be true. She could just hear her grandmother crying triumphantly, “I told you!” “What happened to them?” she asked.
    “One of them had a heart attack in front of a bus and the other slipped in the tub last night. But if you ask me, something smells about the whole thing.” Thomas’s voice was trembling, but his words came tumbling out in a torrent. “Not just smells. Reeks! I just had lunch with the two of them yesterday. They told me they planned to sell four valuable diamonds and donate the proceeds to the club. It would have meant about four million dollars for us.”
    “Well, won’t that still happen?”
    “The diamonds are missing!”
    “Missing?”
    Thomas relayed to Regan the story of everything that had happened the day before. “And the red box with the diamonds is not with the rest of the jewelry. It’s gone.”
    “What do the police say?” Regan asked.
    “Well, I’m not completely sure.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I fainted.”
    “Oh dear.”
    “It was so embarrassing. When I came to, they brought me downstairs to my apartment, and the doctor gave me a sedative and told me to get a good night’s sleep. I was in shock.”
    “But you didn’t get a good night’s sleep.”
    “Lord, no! After a couple of hours I was wide awake again. It’s bad enough to think that Nat and Ben are both gone, but I’m convinced that someone is trying to get away with murder and theft. The police think Nat just hit his head, but I think someone came in here and killed him and stole the diamonds.”
    “You don’t have anything in writing about their intention to give the club the money from the diamonds?”
    “No. This all came up just yesterday. It was going to be made public on Saturday night at our one hundredth anniversary party.”
    “But you saw the diamonds?”
    “They were sitting next to my Cobb salad during most of lunch. Every once in a while they let me open up the box and stare at them. They were so beautiful.”
    “Could Ben have taken the diamonds