She crossed her arms and started to pace around in circles. Her feet were wet and cold, but she didn’t care. “Do you think this is going to work?”
He looked at her and shrugged. “I say we have a fifty-fifty chance.”
“Nope. Not good enough.” She shook her head vigorously. “We’re not doing this.”
Travis cupped his hands on her shoulders and peered into her eyes. “Come on, Christine. The bracelet hasn’t been found. We need to take a risk or it will never be recovered.”
Christine tried to think of another tactic. Nothing came to mind. She growled with frustration. “I’m not sure about this.”
Travis looked down the street and dropped his hands from Christine’s shoulders. “There’s Bonnie.”
Christine saw the older woman in a black baseball cap, hot-pink T-shirt and black workout pants. Her shoes were black with hot-pink shoelaces. Christine curled her toes into the wet grass and fear flowed through her veins. She grabbed Travis’s arm. “Let’s reconsider this.”
“Don’t worry, Christine,” he said as he watched Bonnie get closer. “I’ll do the talking.”
“What will I do?” she muttered. “Interpretive dance?”
“Good morning, Bonnie,” Travis said as the older woman walked past.
“Morning,” she said breathlessly as her ponytail swayed from side to side. Christine noticed Bonnie didn’t make eye contact. She pumped her arms without missing a beat.
Travis watched her take a few more steps. “We know you have the bracelet.”
Christine winced as the panic wrapped tightly around her chest. Bonnie halted and the ponytail fell limp. Her arms went still, but she didn’t drop them to her sides. She slowly turned around. Bonnie stared at them with her mouth sagged open.
This is bad, this is really bad, Christine thought. She closed her eyes and wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. I’m so getting fired.
“How did you know?” Bonnie asked.
* * *
TRAVIS PAUSED. HE WAS used to thinking on his feet. That was part of the fun, not knowing what would happen next. But it was different this time. What he said or did would affect Christine. He couldn’t make a mistake. Too much was riding on his response.
“Do not say lucky guess,” Christine said in a hiss.
He almost regretted approaching Bonnie when he had nothing to back up his accusation. But she had confessed to it. He had to make sure she didn’t take back those words. Travis decided to sidestep the question. “Why’d you do it, Bonnie? Did you need the money?”
“No!” The older woman looked hurt and offended that he would suggest that. “I would never sell Mom’s bracelet.”
“You took the bracelet to keep it safe,” Christine said, her voice rising as she realized the woman’s motive.
Bonnie glanced at Christine. “Exactly. My mom got it into her head that she wants to give all this jewelry to Todd.” Bonnie shook her head and sighed. “But Todd doesn’t care about the bracelet. He has no emotional connection to it. He’s just going to sell it.”
“Your mother has to know that’s a possibility,” Travis said.
“No, she doesn’t. The jewelry that she wants to give Todd has to do with some milestone about him so she thinks they are just as important to him as they are to her. My mom doesn’t wear the jewelry because of its value or its style. They are symbols of my dad’s love.”
“That bracelet costs thousands of dollars,” Christine pointed out.
“So what?” Bonnie replied. “Don’t you have mementos? Something that holds a special memory? Some of those pieces are inexpensive, but they are important to my mother. She wouldn’t understand why another person wouldn’t value them.”
“Do you plan to hide her other jewelry?” Travis asked.
“None of this was planned!” Bonnie insisted. She crossed her arms and looked away. “I didn’t realize the bracelet was missing until Mom noticed. I went back to our safe-deposit box and saw it on the floor. The clasp was broken.”
“You’re in that room every week so you’re very familiar with it,” Christine said. “You know we don’t have security cameras where customers open their safe-deposit boxes. This was your chance.”
Bonnie gave a sharp nod. “I was going to hold it until Todd’s visit was over. You have to believe me. Once he was gone I just thought I would ‘discover’ it in a drawer or something.”
Travis wasn’t sure if he should believe Bonnie. From what he’d seen and heard, the woman was protective of her mother. But perhaps she had been stealing all along and this was just the first time she’d been caught. The woman managed to smuggle the bracelet out after the bank had been searched.