Longarm #399 : Longarm and the Grand Canyon Murders (9781101554401) Read Free Page B

champagne and looked into his gray eyes. “I was offered a very good job at the big jewelry story on Colfax, only a block away from your office.”
    “Johnson’s Jewelry?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “It’s where anyone with money buys their jewelry,” Longarm told her. “I doubt they carry anything in the store that sells for less than a couple hundred dollars.”
    “I suppose that’s true. They want me to be a buyer and appraiser of precious stones.”
    “Did you accept the job offer?”
    Heidi pursed her full lips. “Actually, I was thinking I might take their offer and after a time learn enough about the business to open my own jewelry store next year. I feel that Johnson’s is overpriced for what they sell.”
    “I wouldn’t know about that,” Longarm admitted. “I’ve never really been inside the place.”
    “You don’t like jewelry?” Heidi asked with real interest and an amused smile.
    “Oh, I like jewelry fine on a woman. But I’ve seen men that have worn two or three rings and that looks a little…ah, fey…to me. But I do appreciate a fine pocket watch and chain on a man.”
    “Your watch and chain are very handsome,” Heidi said. “And if you would like to wear a gold or silver ring…I could do that.”
    “Do what?” Longarm asked, not sure if he understood.
    “Buy you a ring.” Heidi laughed. “It would be fun!”
    Longarm laughed too, but it wasn’t all that funny. “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t need to wear a ring.”
    “Suit yourself,” Heidi told him, looking a little disappointed. “But that was why I went into Johnson’s Jewelry.”
    “To buy
me
something?”
    “Why not? You’ve taken me out to dinner several times, and now you’ve bought me a lovely box of chocolates. I wanted to repay you, Custis.”
    “I could probably think of a better way to repay me,” he said, looking straight into her wide-set blue eyes. “And it wouldn’t cost you a thing.”
    Heidi was in her early thirties and not a naïve woman. She smiled and sipped her champagne then turned her attention back to him and said, “I know what you want, and it
would
cost me something. Something perhaps more valuable than a man’s ring.”
    “Your virginity?”
    She blinked, and he immediately regretted the boldness of his question. But Heidi did not get angry or frustrated. “You know, Custis, I never told you that I was married very briefly to a man in New York City.”
    “You were?”
    “It was a sad and short-lived marriage,” she said. “The man I married was handsome and quite wealthy. Arthur came from a prominent family, and I thought we would remain husband and wife for many, many years…until one of us passed. Unfortunately, my love was also seeinganother woman…a married woman…and three weeks after we returned from our European honeymoon tour, he was caught in the other woman’s bed and shot by her husband, who was even richer than Arthur.”
    “Arthur was your philandering husband?”
    “Yes, the late Mr. Arthur P. Buckingham.”
    “How come your name isn’t Mrs. Heidi Buck-ingham?”
    “The Buckingham family was mortified by the circumstances of Arthur’s sudden and unsavory ending. Fearful of a terrible scandal and of their good name being tarnished beyond repair, they offered me a very sizable settlement and a lawyer to effect an immediate annulment of the marriage. In return, I had to sign away any rights to the Buckingham fortune.”
    “So you did?”
    “Not at first. You see, I had an astute lawyer who was paid on a percentage basis, and he squeezed out every dollar that he possibly could from the Buckingham family. I am, Custis, quite a wealthy woman.”
    She swallowed her glass of champagne and went for a refill.
    “I’ll also have another,” he called, draining his whiskey and trying to rapidly process the ramifications of what he’d just learned. He had, of course, known that Heidi had plenty of money, but he now realized that she was far wealthier