The Wedding Thief Read online

  “No way. You’re out of your mind. That’s too risky. Something bad could happen.”

  “Or something good could happen. We could get the hand back.” I started to walk away. “I’m doing it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t have you prowling around here in the dark by yourself.”

  We walked the perimeter of the house and I tried pushing up windows and opening the back door, but everything was locked. Then we came to the left side, where I found a window sash that moved a little. “Give me a leg up. I might be able to get in here.”

  “You’re not really doing this.”

  “We’ll be in and out in no time. And, let’s face it, if we could get in touch with the Gwythyrs and we told them we were out here waiting because they’d stood us up and flown to New Mexico, you know they’d tell us to go inside.” I was on my tiptoes, trying to push up the sash.

  David looked across the yard, into the blackness, and rubbed his temples. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He took a deep breath, then laced his fingers together, and I put my foot in his hands. He gave me a boost and I slid the sash up and wriggled through the window into the living room.

  I let my eyes adjust for a few seconds and then went into the kitchen and opened the door. David came inside, turned on his cell phone’s flashlight, and led the way down a hall. I could smell linseed oil and turpentine. We peeked through a doorway and saw a small bedroom with a mural of hot-pink radishes on the wall. We moved on.

  In the next room, the walls were lined with shelves and cubbies that held chisels, hammers, rasps, and blocks of modeling clay as well as books and pads, brushes, jars of liquids, and tubes of paint. David shone the light on a worktable against the wall. And there it was, Alex Lingon’s hand. Every broken finger had been repaired; all stood upright.

  “She did it!” I said. We raced to the table and examined the places where Jeanette had mended the fingers, saw the way she had matched the texture of the papier-mâché and the shades of green paint. “It looks fantastic.”

  David seemed stunned as he ran a hand over the thumb. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I told you she’d do a great job.”

  He gave me an exasperated look. “A minute ago you said she was flighty. Come on, let’s take this and get out of here. How much money do you think we should leave?”

  “I don’t know. My handbag’s in the car.”

  “Don’t worry. I got it.”

  “No, I can’t have you paying. I feel responsible. I’ll go out to the van and—”

  “For God’s sake, Sara. Let’s get out of here, okay? I’ll leave her a check.”

  He sounded frustrated. I was only trying to help. He wrote a check for four hundred dollars, scrawled his name on the bottom, and put it on the table. “If that doesn’t take care of it, she’s got my number. Let’s go.”

  We picked up the hand and carried it down the hall. I wanted to celebrate. Have a party. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. Now David could drop the hand at the gallery; it would be in the show and no one would be the wiser.

  We stepped into the kitchen. His cell phone’s light illuminated something on the counter. It looked like a pie. “Hold on. Let’s put the hand down for a second.” I walked over and took a look. It was a cherry pie with a lattice crust. They’d gone away and left an entire pie. They must have had to leave in a hurry. It seemed like a shame to waste a good dessert. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  “Sara, come on, let’s go. What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” I went back to the hand and was about to pick up one side when I changed my mind and grabbed the pie.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking this.”

  “You are nuts. Do you know that?”

  “They’re gone. Who’s going to eat it?”

  “You can’t take that pie. It doesn’t belong to you.” He had that testy sound in his voice.

  “But it’ll go to waste.”

  David opened his mouth as if he were going to say something. Then he just shook his head.

  We stepped onto the front porch and as I was about to close the door, I heard a voice.

  “Eastville Police. Leave that door open and come out here in the yard.”

  A knot lodged in my throat. Two uniformed officers stood in front of the house, one tall with a shaved head, the other shorter with fiery red hair. They aimed their flashlights at us, voices crackling over their radios. “I’m Officer Madden,” the taller one said. “And this is Officer Barnes.”

  Twenty minutes later, they arrested us for burglary.

  Chapter 16

  The Interrogation

  Burglary?” David glared at me as we sat in the back of the police cruiser on a rigid plastic seat. In handcuffs. With our bodies practically shoved up against the Plexiglas divider between the front and back of the car.

  I swallowed hard, wishing he weren’t mad at me. Who would have guessed the Gwythyrs had a silent alarm? “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “This is a big mistake. I’ll get us out of it.”

  “I don’t need any more of your help.Didn’t you hear all that? They read us our Miranda rights. We’re criminals.”

  I did feel like a criminal when Officer Madden told us we had the right to remain silent, the right to a lawyer, and all those other things I’d always heard on TV. And when they took all our stuff—including our cell phones, my handbag and jewelry, David’s wallet and keys. But we weren’t really criminals, were we? We were just trying to get back what belonged to David. I mean, to Alex.

  Officer Madden pulled out of the driveway, the cruiser’s headlights shining into the blue-green night. Officer Barnes followed in another car.

  “This is crazy,” I said through the partition. “We’re not criminals. I told you we tried to get in touch with the owners, but we couldn’t reach them.”

  “As far as the law is concerned, you burglarized their premises.”

  I knew if they’d been able to reach the Gwythyrs, we wouldn’t be sitting in a police car. Especially after all that Stick it to the man and Viva la revolución stuff. “One of the windows was unlocked,” I said.

  “It’s still burglary.” Something came over the police radio. A woman was trapped in her bathroom.

  “But I told you we didn’t steal anything. We came to get what the owner repaired for David.” I looked to David for support. He was silent. “Sorry,” I whispered, wishing I could make it all go away, watching the darkness snake past us. A lone car turned onto the road up ahead, sped off, and disappeared into the night.

  “We left a check for the work Mrs. Gwythyr did,” I said. “Three hundred dollars. It’s right there in the house. Why don’t you go back and look? Why would we leave a check for something if we were stealing it?” I thought that was a good point, but there was no response from the front of the car. After we’d gone another mile down the road, he made a right turn, and soon I saw lights and a cluster of buildings.

  “What about the hand?” David asked. “What’s going to happen to the hand?”

  “We’ll keep it at the station until the homeowners return,” Officer Madden said. “They can claim it then.”

  “Great. That might be two weeks,” David mumbled as we pulled into a driveway by a white two-story building with a sign that said EASTVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  Officer Madden shrugged. “Sorry.” He pulled the car around the back and drove down a ramp into an underground garage.

  “And what about the van?” David asked.

  A garage door slammed behind us. I felt my heart plummet. “We’re impounding it. We’ll give you a receipt. You can pick it up at the impound lot.”

  “Impound lot.” David groaned. “Super.” I could feel his icy stare. I blinked away tears. I could hear Dad telling me I had to stop being impulsive. That I had to slow down and use my head and not assume I had the answer to everything. He was right.

  Officer Madden led us into the police statio
n, where David and I were put in different rooms. A female officer patted me down, removed my handcuffs, and took my picture in front of a height chart, which I don’t think was accurate because it showed me as five foot five and a half and I knew I was five six. I wasn’t going to argue about it, though.

  I was finally allowed to call Mom, who I knew would rally whatever troops were needed to help me, but my call went straight to voice mail. The night was not going well. I left a message letting her know what happened but trying not to alarm her, which was a challenge. Can you please get me a lawyer? And pick me up? And maybe she could bring a tape measure so I could see how tall I really was.

  I didn’t know if I should wait for Mom to call a lawyer for me or if I should do it. I had no idea where she was or when she’d get my message. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that this was just a big misunderstanding and that it would get straightened out. If the police wanted to talk to me about it, that was fine.

  The female officer led me down a hall and into a tiny room with bare walls, three chairs, a table, and a large mirror I suspected was two-way. Were they recording this? Videotaping? “Have a seat, Miss Harrington,” she said. “Detective Brickle will be here in a minute.”

  A detective? Maybe this was a good sign. Maybe this was someone with more authority, someone who would let us go. I sat down and began to review what I was going to say, the history leading to the night’s event. It all started when my mother tricked me into coming back to Connecticut…Well, that might be too much history. I’d start with the car accident at the inn and go from there. I was getting it organized in my mind when a man walked in. He looked to be around fifty and had a square face, gray hair, gray suit, and gray tie. He closed the door.

  “Miss Harrington.” He took a seat across from me, setting a pad and pen on the table. “I’m Detective Brickle.”

  I said hello.

  He offered me something to eat, something to drink. I declined. I couldn’t eat or drink. I wanted to get out of there.

  “I see you live in Chicago,” he said. “What are you doing in Connecticut?”

  I told him I’d grown up in Hampstead and that I was visiting my mother. He asked about my family. He wanted to know how often I came back to Connecticut. He asked about my personal history, from schools to career to what I’d done since I’d left Hampstead, jotting down notes on his pad.

  Then he put down the pen and set his hands on the desk. “Miss Harrington, how long have you known David Cole?”

  I hadn’t expected that question. “David? I just met him Tuesday. So, I guess five days.”

  “And what’s your relationship with Mr. Cole?”

  Why was he asking me about David? “My relationship with him? We’re friends.”

  “I see. And how did you and Mr. Cole come to be at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gwythyr this evening?”

  “Well, David has this hand sculpture,” I said, not wanting to get into the complexities about it belonging to Alex Lingon. “And I accidentally damaged it, and a few days ago we took it to Jeanette’s—Mrs. Gwythyr’s—so she could fix it. She’s a sculptor. She told us to come back at eight o’clock tonight to pick it up, but when we got there they weren’t home. And then we found out they were away. We didn’t think they’d mind if we went in and got it. We left a check. We weren’t stealing it.”

  Detective Brickle continued scribbling notes. After a moment, he stood up, leaned against the wall near my chair, and crossed his arms. “Tell me about the pie.”

  “The pie?” Was he trying to catch me off guard? I couldn’t believe he was asking about that.

  “Was it in the house when you arrived?”

  Why was he asking me about the pie? “I don’t know. I suppose so. I mean, it was there when we were leaving.”

  “And where was it, exactly?”

  “It was in the kitchen. On the counter.” He hadn’t asked where the hand was, but he wanted to know about the pie.

  He flipped over a page of his pad. “What kind of pie was it?”

  I looked around the room, then peered into the two-way mirror. Who was back there? Was this all a reality-show prank?

  “Miss Harrington? The type of pie?”

  He was serious. “It looked like cherry.”

  “Cherry,” he muttered, writing it down.

  “With a lattice crust,” I added. He wrote that down too. What was going on?

  “And why did you decide to take the pie?”

  Why would anyone take a pie? “To eat it,” I said. “It would have gone bad sitting on the counter. I didn’t want it to go to waste.”

  More jotting of notes.

  “Can I ask why you’re so interested in the pie?”

  He ignored me. “Ever take a pie or some kind of baked goods from someone’s home without their permission?”

  What? He thought I’d done this before? “No, of course not.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Why did he sound like he didn’t believe me?

  “Are you aware that we’ve had other recent burglaries in the area?”

  Other burglaries? They thought I’d committed other burglaries? “No, I wasn’t aware. What are you talking about?”

  Detective Brickle sat down again, leaned across the table, and gave me a long, sharp stare. “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. Angela Calabrese. Eighty-five years old.”

  “Who?”

  “Maybe you don’t know her name. But you’d remember her house. Little white farmhouse? Route 465? Two loaves of banana bread. Stolen right out of her kitchen a week ago. She’s so rattled she hasn’t been able to bake so much as a cupcake since.”

  I couldn’t have heard that right. “Banana bread? You think I took somebody’s banana bread?”

  “You and your partner. Mr. Cole.”

  “My partner? You really think…” I looked at the two-way mirror again. “David had nothing to do with this. He was there, but he didn’t want to go into the house. It was all my idea.”

  Detective Brickle sat back and clicked the button on the end of his pen. “Let me ask you another question. Apple strudel. Taken from the home of Louise and Dusty Wilmott on Orchard Lane. Know anything about that?”

  “Louise and Dusty who?” What would I want with an apple strudel? I didn’t even like it.

  “Or the poppyseed cake that was stolen from Willie and Beth McGregor’s house on Pasture Way last Sunday?”

  “You’re asking me about the disappearance of a poppyseed cake? I wasn’t even in the state until six days ago. And believe me, if I were a thief—which I’m not—I’d never take a poppyseed cake.”

  Detective Brickle narrowed his eyes. “You’ve got something against poppyseed cakes?”

  “No, they’re perfectly fine. I just don’t like getting those seeds stuck in my teeth.”

  “Uh-huh.” He threw the pen on the table. “Well, within the past week, all those things and a few others were taken. Some from right here. Some from other towns.” He clasped his hands. “And I’d like to catch whoever is committing these crimes. We’ve had about enough of it.”

  “Look, I don’t know anything about these thefts, and I’m sure David doesn’t either. I’m not saying another word unless I have a lawyer here.” Where the hell was Mom anyway?

  There was a knock on the door, and Officer Barnes walked in. “I need to talk to you,” he told the detective, and they stepped outside.

  I didn’t like the serious tone of Officer Barnes’s voice. Were there other crimes they were going to try to pin on us? The plastic chair felt so hard; the two-way mirror seemed to glow. I wanted to get out of there and get David out as well. Finally, Officer Barnes walked back in.

  “Miss Harrington, there’s, uh, been a mistake.”

  I heard a phone ring down the hall and the clicking of keys from a nearby computer. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not under arrest.”

  “I’m not?” At last, some good news.

  “We finally got a hold of
the homeowners and they said you did have permission to be in their house and take the sculpture. And the pie.”

  I took a deep breath. We were getting out of there. With the hand. I followed Officer Barnes into the hallway. “What about David? Where is he?”

  “He’s coming.” Officer Barnes’s badge flashed green under the fluorescent lights. “We’ll give Mr. Cole a receipt for the van so he can get it out of impound tomorrow.”

  I’d forgotten about the impound lot. “Tomorrow?” David wouldn’t be happy about that. “Why can’t he get it tonight?”

  “It’s too late. The lot’s closed.”

  He couldn’t get the hand back to the inn without the van. I didn’t think he’d be too pleased about leaving the sculpture at the police station, but it looked as if that’s what was going to happen.

  In a room off the lobby, a female officer handed me a plastic bag with my belongings in it, everything they’d taken from me at the Gwythyrs’ house. I was signing a receipt when I heard Mom’s voice.

  “Well, of course it’s a mistake,” she bellowed. “Anyone who knows my daughter could tell you she’s not a criminal. I’m glad you finally figured that out. Now, where is she?”

  I walked into the lobby. Mom was standing at the reception window talking to the person on the other side, her pink dress a bright spot against the gray interior of the station. I rushed to her and she opened her arms. “Sweetheart. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

  “That’s okay. I’m just glad you’re here now. It was horrible. The police thought David and I were stealing pies and poppyseed cakes from people.”

  Mom took a step back, her hands on my shoulders. “What? You must be kidding.”

  “I’m not. I’ll explain later. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “They told me they’d made some kind of mistake. Thank God they got it straightened out. I had Frank Stoddard lined up to deal with it,” Mom said, shooting the woman behind the counter an angry glance. “He’s a fabulous criminal attorney, even if he has been through four wives. I don’t hold that against him. Anyway, better that we don’t need him.”