Standing, she cradled her clipboard in one elbow. He pushed himself up with a grunt, and she supported him.
He clasped her hand. “Thank you.”
She felt in his grip the warmth she remembered. The warmth she had dreamed of when he was away and clung to upon his every return.
And her fatherhadreturned. Yes, he’d stayed away too long and at all the wrong times, but he was here now. She could not fulfill her mother’s dying wish to redeem their relationship if she rebuffed him forever.
Here was her chance to do better. To stop pushing away what she longed for most of all. “Do you, by any chance, have plans for Thanksgiving?”
His smile trembled. “I would like to spend it with my only daughter.” His voice was hoarse. “For whatever you have in mind.”
At the police station, Joe tipped the last of his coffee down his throat while perusing the logbook to see what he’d missed during the night shift. There’d been domestic disturbances, theft at a filling station, vandalism, drunk and disorderly behavior. All the usual nocturnal activities. There’d been another raid on a speakeasy, too, but thankfully no murders in the precinct. That was something.
But two phone calls had come in right around the same time, and both had reported a situation for the same address. One mentioned the sound of breaking glass. The address was one of the antique shops he’d visited weeks ago. Yet the owner had not called the police to report anything himself.
Maybe there hadn’t been time. According to the log, Officer O’Neal had called the shop owner after receiving the complaints. That was protocol. A telephone call from the police often sufficed to put a cork in whatever was brewing. The department simply didn’t have the numbers to pay a personal visit every time they received a complaint.
So whatever had happened at the shop to cause the noise, the owner could have filed a report when O’Neal called. Pushing back from his desk, Joe walked over to the clerk.
“Help you, Caravello?”
“Logbook says O’Neal made a call to an antique shop early this morning.” Joe gave him the address. “Did he file a report or any notes from that conversation?”
The clerk flipped open a file folder and thumbed through a stack of papers. “Here’s O’Neal’s paperwork from last night. There’s no report here for that address.”
Odd.
Antique dealers weren’t known for their rowdiness, let alone noise during the night. What he had learned of them so far, however, was that they were meticulous about their property.
“I’m going to check it out,” Joe called over his shoulder, already walking away.
Twenty minutes later, he was parking a police car in the only space available in a three-block radius of his destination. He walked past a bakery, a laundry, and a bookstore before finally arriving at Feinstein’s Antiques. The glass had been broken on the front door. A sheet of cardboard covered the hole.
“Hello?” He stepped inside, the bell clanging overhead. “Mr. Feinstein?”
When there was no reply, Joe stopped and listened for movement. His hand went to the sidearm holstered beneath his jacket. The lights had not yet been turned on, and the windows remained shuttered.
The soft sound of snoring drifted toward Joe as he maneuvered between tables piled too high with old things. There, in a Queen Anne chair, Mr. Reuben Feinstein sprawled with his jaw hanging open in sleep. Mismatched socks peeked from beneath the hem of his trousers. A nasty lump swelled at his temple, a cut slashing through its middle.
“Mr. Feinstein?”
He startled awake, then slid his spectacles up his nose and frowned. “What are you doing here, Caravello?”
So he did remember talking to him before. “It’s good to see you again, too. Your door was unlocked, and it’s normal business hours. I let myself in.”
Gripping the arms of the chair, Feinstein pushed up and squinted at the cuckoo clock on the wall to his right. “I dozed off after opening the shop.” He shuffled off, pulling cords and switching on lights.
“Are you here to shop this time?” Feinstein asked. “Christmas is coming, after all.”
Joe schooled his features not to give away his surprise. The shop had clearly been broken into last night, and Feinstein was injured. He knew Joe was a police detective, and yet he didn’t mention the crime. If anything, Feinstein seemed bent on distracting him.
“Is that right?” Joe played along, allowing him to show brass candlesticks, a silver tea service, a dresser set complete with a button hook made by Tiffany & Co. All of these were valuable.
None of them had been stolen.
Joe was finished playing dumb. “What happened here this morning around two o’clock?”
Feinstein turned away to fuss with some kind of jeweled chess set. “I already talked to the police about that. Officer O’Neal called, and it’s taken care of.”
