Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(52)

“The marshal here wants to show you some pictures,” Mallow said.

Lucas called up the photos of Toni Wright’s jewelry on the iPad and spun it around to show Alvin. She looked at them carefully, then said to Mallow, “That’s way high-end. We wouldn’t handle that. Of course if we did, we’d want a good provenance. There’s so much fake Loloma out there that you can’t sell it if you can’t prove where it come from.”

Mallow said, “Right,” letting the skepticism ride on his voice.

“Don’t believe me?” Alvin said. “Look at the stuff we handle.” She rapped on the glass top of the jewelry counter. “Most expensive thing in here is five hundred and forty-nine dollars, and we could be talked down. We don’t handle no twenty-thousand-dollar Loloma.”

“How about that princess necklace?” Mallow asked.

“Shoot. We didn’t handle no princess necklace.”

“Well, I know you did, and you know I know. You sold it to that Fitch guy up in Denver and he sent it along to Baltimore. What’d you take out of that? Fifty K? Is that where the ranch came from?”

She sneered at him, a rim of ragged teeth showing beneath her thin top lip. “You must not have checked the real estate market lately. You don’t buy no Colorado ranch for no fifty K.”

It was starting to sound like a lover’s quarrel, so Lucas jumped in. “Mrs. Alvin, I’m a U.S. Marshal and I’m trying to track down a killer. That cannibal from Louisiana, you probably heard about him on television?”

She said, “Maybe,” which meant yes.

“He’s with this bunch who stole the Loloma jewelry,” Lucas said. “If it turns out you or your husband handled it, and if you lie about it and we find out we’ll put you in prison. We’re not talking about thirty days for handling a stolen bracelet. We’re talking about being an accessory to murder, which is the same as murder, and that’s life in prison.”

She twitched, maybe showing a little fear. “I’m telling you, we never saw that stuff. I’d know and we didn’t.” To Mallow she said, “You know who’d handle it, if anybody did.”

Mallow said, “We’re going there. We’re watching your phones and theirs. If you call them, we’ll be back. Like the marshal said, we’re talking murder here, Louise.”

“I hear ya.”


LUCAS FOLLOWED MALLOW to the next stop, five minutes after the first, at a dusty storefront called Loco’s Consignment & Furs. “This isn’t the place Louise was talking about, that’s next,” Mallow said. “Thought we might as well stop since we’re going right past it. Loco does some light fencing.”

Inside, a young woman with close-cropped black hair, black eyeshadow, black lipstick, and black nail polish, with lots of silver rings piercing her earlobes, cheeks, and lips, looked at them and said, “If you’re not from New Jersey, you gotta be cops.”

“We’re cops,” Mallow agreed. “Where’s Loco?”

“Dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead. Funeral was last Saturday. Obit was in the paper.”

“Then who are you?” Mallow asked.

“His daughter.”

“We’re looking for some stolen jewelry . . .”

The woman waved a hand at the store, which was heavy on leather furniture, gilt picture frames, and old but nonetheless high-end women’s clothing, and said, “No jewelry. Not that I found anyway. I been in the store only since Monday. I wanna sell this junk and cancel the lease and get back home.”

“Where’s that?” Mallow asked.

“Oakland. California.”

“How did your father die?” Lucas asked.

“In a bar. St. Arnold’s Craft Brewery. The bartender told the cops that he was sitting on a barstool, grabbed his chest, and fell off. When he didn’t get up, they went around and looked at him, and he might have already been dead. He definitely was dead when they got to the hospital.”


OUTSIDE, Lucas put his sunglasses back on and asked Mallow, “Who was Louise talking about?”

“The Eli brothers. I was going to ask her what she thought about them, but she brought them up herself. They’re downtown.”

Lucas followed, a ten-minute ride. When they’d parked, Mallow pointed down an alley to the back end of another low stucco building with an open garage door instead of a normal entrance. “That’s the legal front end of the Eli business. Somewhat legal—most of it fell off a truck somewhere. Walk down there and go in. Be cool. Pick up an item or two. Hang out at the back of the store, in the electronics. There’s a black steel door on the left side; it goes into the back room, where the real hot stuff is. The door’s always locked. When somebody comes out, grab the handle and yell for me. I’ll be right outside. I can’t come in, they know me.”


LUCAS AMBLED DOWN the alley, walked through the garage door, and found a store with piles of crap and the stink of truck exhaust and diesel. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the crap. Stacks of slightly crushed rolls of Bounty paper towels were piled next to heaps of car wax bottles, with boxes of peanut bars on top of it all; cartons of nails sat next to a hill of tattered books; bottles of Softsoap sat on top of a couple of battered-looking speakers. The store itself was the size of two double garages, and the merchandise went to the ceiling. The shoppers seemed to be more browsers than people looking for specific items.