“My name is Mona, but everyone calls me Nans. These are my friends. And that,” she nodded toward Lexy, “is my granddaughter. The one your associate shoved onto a tile floor this morning.”
Crane’s gaze moved to Lexy, to the bruise on her temple, and his expression didn’t change at all. That was the thing about Crane — his face was like a closed door. Everything happening behind it stayed behind it.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “My associates can be... overzealous.”
Sal shifted his weight but said nothing.
“We’re not here for your diamonds,” Nans said. “We came for a recipe card that your associates stole along with everything else on my granddaughter’s prep table this morning.”
Crane tilted his head slightly. “A recipe card.”
“A family recipe. Handwritten. Irreplaceable.” Nans kept her voice even, conversational, as though they were discussing this over tea. “Your men swept it into a bag along with your flour and your stones. We retrieved it. That’s all we want. We’ll be going now.”
She took a step toward Ruth’s car. Sal moved to block her path — not fast, not aggressive, just a wall of leather jacket and bad intentions shifting two feet to the left. Nans stopped.
“The thing is,” Crane said, “I don’t think that’s all you have.”
“It is.”
“Forgive me if I’m skeptical.” Crane slipped his hands into the pockets of his cashmere coat. “My associates recovered the shipment this morning, and when they counted the inventory, the numbers didn’t match. There are stones missing,Nans.”
“Then your associates miscounted. Or your supplier shorted you. Either way, it has nothing to do with us.”
“Perhaps.” Crane’s voice stayed pleasant, which made it worse. “But my supplier is meticulous, and my associates — for all their faults — can count. Which leaves your granddaughter, who had the bag open and her hands in the flour before my people arrived.”
Lexy’s voice came from behind Nans, tight and angry. “I pulled out one diamond. I was staring at it when your guys kicked in my door. I didn’t have time to hide anything because your friend was too busy shoving me into a counter after snatching that diamond out of my hand.”
Crane looked at her for a long moment. The parking lot was very quiet. Wind moved across the pavement, pushing a scrap of paper against the chain-link fence.
“I’d like to believe you,” Crane said. “But trust is a commodity I can’t afford in my line of work.”
“We don’t have your diamonds,” Nans said. “Search us if you need to. We have a recipe card, a purse full of snacks, and an iPad. That’s it.”
Sal stepped forward, cracking his knuckles — a deliberate, theatrical sound that echoed off the concrete. “Maybe we should check.”
Ida clutched her purse to her chest with both arms. “You are not touching my bag.”
Sal looked down at her. He was nearly twice her size. “Lady, I wasn’t asking.”
“Neither was I,” Ida said.
Sal took another step. Helen moved closer to Ida, her hand going to the other woman’s arm — not pulling her back, just standing beside her. Ruth’s fingers tightened on her iPad, her knuckles white.
Lexy stepped up next to Nans. “I already told you. I don’t have them. I never had them. I’m a baker. I make tarts. I don’t steal diamonds.”
“Everybody steals when the opportunity presents itself,” Crane said quietly. “It’s human nature.”
“Not everybody,” Helen said. Her voice was gentle, the same voice she used with frightened children and nervous animals,and somehow it cut through the tension in a way that shouting wouldn’t have. “Some people just want what’s theirs.”
Crane studied Helen for a moment, and something flickered across his face — not guilt, nothing so useful as that, but perhaps a recognition that he was threatening someone’s grandmother in a parking lot, and that this was not the kind of thing a man in a cashmere coat was supposed to do.
It passed. His expression closed again.
“Sal,” he said.
Sal moved forward. Needles shifted around to the side, his coat flapping, cutting off the path to the facility entrance. They were being boxed in — Crane in front, Sal advancing, Needles on the flank, the SUV behind them blocking the car.
Five women in a parking lot. No weapons. No backup. No way out that Nans could see.
