The pleasure was warm in his voice. Only her family were allowed to call her by that nickname—her family and the man who’d helped her understand life in the U.S. back in the early days when she’d first arrived from Africa. Stewart Oakes had been her grandfather’s employee and protégé, but at thirty-five, he’d also been young enough and hip enough to introduce a shy fourteen-year-old to grunge music, Thai food and a culture she’d been separated from since she’d been a toddler.
“Got some goodies for you, Stewie.”
“Always nice to know you’re thinking of me.”
“Well, you’re going to love these.”
“I bet.”
“Careful, now, I thought you were giving that up.”
“Hey, I moved to L. A. and left behind my home poker game, didn’t I?”
“And we miss you every week.”
“Nice to know I’m appreciated.”
“And we miss the money we used to win from you.”
“Cheap shot, Chastain.”
She laughed and reached for another catalog even as the intercom buzzed. “Hold on a second, Stewart.” She pushed the button for the intercom. “What do you need, Joss?”
“I’ve got too many people out here. Can you come out?”
“Where’s Jerry?”
“He still hasn’t shown up.”
Gwen gave herself a moment to steam. “Okay, I’ll be right out.” She took Oakes off hold. “Stewart? I’ve got to run help Joss at the front of the store. Can I call you back?”
“I’ll be here.”
Gwen gathered the stamp albums together and slipped them into one of her desk drawers, locking it carefully. Even so, it nagged at her a bit that some one hundred thousand dollars in stamps was protected only by a desk lock that any self-respecting toddler could pick. A hundred grand of the most liquid, easily portable wealth known.
In countries with unstable stock markets—or none at all—stamps provided a relatively safe investment. Gold coins were heavy, they took up space. Mounted properly, a stamp worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars could be slipped into a square of cardboard, tucked into a wallet or the inside pocket of a suit, walked over international borders and converted into cold, hard cash in virtually any major city in the world.
SHE WAS BACK IN HER OFFICE when four o’clock hit. A muted “hallelujah” from the front, followed by the rattle of the steel security gates, told her that Joss was closing up. It had been a good day, all in all, Gwen thought in satisfaction as she stacked up the stamp albums. She’d logged three quarters of the collection, had set aside the cream for important clients and found stamp dealers only too happy to take on the rest. They’d make money out of the deal. It was a small triumph for her.
Joss stuck her head into the room. “The front is all locked up, nice and tight.”
Gwen swung back the white board that concealed the wall safe. She inserted her key and spun the dial of the combination lock. “First thing tomorrow I’m firing Jerry,” she told Joss. “Then I’m going to put an ad in the help-wanted section.” The dial moved smoothly under her fingers.
“You can’t just fire someone out of the blue, can you?” Joss asked. As the day had gone on, her defense of Jerry had ebbed. “Can’t he take it to the employment board? What if something came up?”
“And what, he couldn’t even call? Joss, he’s been late to one degree or another for seventeen of the twenty days he’s worked for us.”
Joss raised her eyebrows. “You kept track?”
“Of course I kept track. I’m an employer, that’s what you have to do. If he wants to protest, I can show cause.” Gwen spun the dial to its final position and opened the door.
And stared in alarm.
2
“DID YOU OPEN THE SAFE WHILE I was gone?” Gwen’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in her ears.
“No.” Joss crowded up behind her to look at the stack of stamp albums in the safe. “What are you talking about?”
“The books have been moved. I always put them in the same way every time. Joss, you swear you haven’t touched anything?”
“Cross my heart.”
Stay calm, Gwen ordered herself. Maybe she’d been careless the last time she’d unlocked the safe door. Maybe she hadn’t put things back the usual way. In her gut, though, she knew.
Someone had been in the safe.
She spilled the albums onto the desk, opened them with shaking fingers. There was no point in bothering with the blue books that held the store inventory or the green book that held some of her own acquisitions. They didn’t matter. Not now. She focused solely on the burgundy albums that held her grandfather’s collection—the books that held his treasures, his pride and joy, bits of his childhood.
The books that held his retirement.
Holding her breath, she opened one and flipped through to the back, made herself look.
And her mouth went dry as dust. “They’re gone.”
“What’s gone?”
Gwen battled the wave of nausea that threatened to swamp her. “Grampa’s best stamps. The Blue Mauritius. The one-penny Mauritius. The British Guiana one-cent. And maybe more.” Definitely more, the voice of certainty whispered to her. She’d seen at least two other blank spots as she’d flipped through.
Gwen squeezed her eyes tight shut and then opened them to stare at the empty squares. Why had her grandfather insisted on keeping his collection close at hand instead of safely in a bank vault? She knew his reasons, knew the joy he got from regularly looking at his holdings, but they didn’t outweigh the risk.
And now her worst fears had come to pass.
Joss stared at her. “Those were his big stamps, right? My god, what are we talking about—forty, fifty thousand?”
“Not even close.” Gwen’s lips felt stiff and cold. “The last Blue Mauritius auctioned went for nearly a million dollars.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER, GWEN stretched to ease the iron pincers of tension. She’d gone through every one of the books meticulously, recording what was missing.
It was worse than she’d imagined.
The four most important issues of her grandfather’s collection were gone: four nearly unique single stamps and one block of twenty, in aggregate worth some four and a half million dollars. The inventory books were missing another thirty to forty thousand dollars in more common, lower-value issues.
“Grampa has other
