Читать книгу Shadow of Turning - Valerie Hansen - Страница 9

“You did what with them?”

The thin young woman gripping the telephone receiver cowered even though the man on the other end of the line was behind bars and miles away. “I didn’t know they were so important, Sam. They were just a bunch of old keys in a drawer. How was I supposed to know any of them mattered?”

“If they were mine, they mattered,” he shouted. “Get them back, all of them, you hear.”

“I’ll—I’ll try.”

“You’d better do more than try,” he said with evident menace. “You’d better have every one of those keys in your hand and be waiting for me when I get out of here in sixteen more days or you’ll never do another one of those idiotic craft pictures of yours—or any other kind.”

“They’re three-dimensional collages,” she replied, sniffling. “I’ve sold quite a few of them and it’s a good thing, too, or I’d’ve starved waiting for you to serve your time. I don’t know why you couldn’t have just told them what they wanted to know and cut a deal.”

“Plea bargain?” He cursed colorfully. “Not on your life. I kept my mouth shut for a reason and you had the keys to my future—to our future—until you lost them.”

“But which ones do you want? How will I tell?” She began to sob. “Oh, Sam, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up. Pull yourself together and think.”

“I will. I promise. I only used the keys in three or four pictures and I’m pretty sure I remember who bought them. If they won’t sell them back to me I’ll do whatever I have to do to get my hands on them. I promise.”

“You’d better,” he rasped. “I’m not the only one who’s counting on you. My partners aren’t nearly as softhearted as I am. Understand?”

Nodding, she bid him a tearful goodbye, ran to the shoe box where she kept her receipts and dumped its contents onto her bed where she could spread everything out.

Her fingers flew through the papers, scattering them like dry leaves in a gale. Three pink receipts stood out as possibilities and she plucked them from the jumble. Two of those sales had been to furniture stores in Baxter County and now that she thought about it, a third collage was still sitting in the back of her closet, unsold, so that left only one unaccounted for. It had gone to a woman from right there in Serenity. That address was the closest so she’d go there before driving to Mountain Home and buying back her own pictures.

She had to reclaim all the keys. It was the only way to be sure she had the right ones. She shuddered. Her stomach clenched. Failing to please a man like her husband was unthinkable.

The trembling fingers of one hand clasped the receipts while she gently touched her cheek with the other, remembering previous encounters. She dared not fail.