Time Thieves (2 page)

“Sure hope the treasures are worth the rest.”

“Me too,” she muttered as he went through her paperwork. Stamping everything, he handed the documents back. “Have a good day.”

Relieved, her smile natural this time, she thanked him, picked up her bags, and walked out of the airport into the late afternoon sun. Now to collect her car, and if she was lucky, she’d be home in a half hour.

It was closer to an hour before she made it inside her front door. She couldn’t resist a wiggle at knowing the old Victorian house with her father’s original shop out front was now hers. Always had been apparently, except she hadn’t found out until six weeks ago when the lawyers contacted her. Damn her mother anyway.

Since finding out that little tidbit, life had been chaotic as she moved across the ocean, all the while maintaining her crazy trips searching out hidden finds to repair and sell. This last trip had been her third since moving back to her old home. So far she hadn’t even connected with her old friends, and she was dying to. And nervous about it. At ten, she’d been sure Ward Preston had been it. The one. He’d been her best friend and she was sure nothing would ever have changed that. Then her mother moved her across the ocean.

Time and distance had finished what the traumatic circumstances of the time had destroyed.

Checking the answering machine, she found a dozen calls from suppliers and clients, but none were urgent. Good thing. She was too damn tired. Tossing her keys on her dining room table, she draped her coat on the back of the closest chair and kicked off her shoes. Home sweet home.

Opening the fridge, she pulled out the single bottle of wine she’d stashed in there before her trip. There was no fresh food, so dinner would have to be cheese and crackers with wine to wash it down. Opening the bottle, she set about making herself a plate to carry into the living room.

Just as she set the wine glass and plate down on the coffee table, the phone rang. Her mother. Of course.

“Hi, Mom. Yes, I’m home safe and sound.”

“Good. Why you couldn’t have come to visit on this last trip I’ll never understand,” Lisbeth said fretfully. “I hate worrying about you in that miserable hellhole.”

“Mom, I’m fine. Nothing is going to happen to me here.”

“You don’t know that.” The thin, critical voice made Sari wince. After her father’s disappearance, her mother had lost the little warmth she’d had as she’d quickly moved her and her daughter back to the part of France she’d been from.

Sari had gone to a succession of boarding schools, then college, and as soon as she’d found out their old home was still theirs and sat untouched in the old part of Victoria, BC, she’d begged to have the use of it. Her mother had refused to discuss it in any way. Sari was ready to have another discussion about it, but then a lawyer contacted her when she’d turned twenty-five and Sari found out it had been left in trust for her all along.

“I’m happy here, Mom.”

“How can you be? The city is small, the people are narrow-minded, and there couldn’t possibly be enough business for you to make a living. Come back to France. You know Pierre and Josiah are hoping for you to return.”

Like that was news. What her mother refused to see was that Pierre and Josiah were perfect…for each other. Neither male was willing to admit where their sexual orientation lay, and she had no intention of getting involved with either of them. They were good friends but nothing more. How could there be? Besides, setting up house and home as her mother’s neighbor had to top the list of things she
never
wanted to do.

“I like it here. I love the ambiance, the water, the weather. I don’t find the people narrow-minded, and my business isn’t dependent on where I live.”
Take that
.

“We have all that here too. Come home. It will be good for us to spend time together.”

Sari couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. Her mother had to be up to something. She never made gestures like this. “Not going to happen for a while. I just got home, remember? And speaking of which, I’m really tired. I need to go to bed and catch up on some much needed sleep. The jet lag hit me hard this time.” A lie, but a perfectly reasonable one.

“Fine.” Her mother gave a haughty sniff. “Then I want you home for my birthday next month.”

Chills ran down Sari’s spine. This was so not her mother’s normal discussion. “What’s going on? You never push to have me home.”

“Can’t I see my daughter for a visit? It’s been years since you spent any time here.”

Flopping her feet onto the coffee table, Sari slouched back onto the old couch. “I was at boarding school, then college.” Although her mother managed to twist that fact to suit her needs any time it came up. “You wanted time to enjoy your men. Not spend time with me.”

“That was then. This is now. I find the men are all boring anyway. But my daughter is growing up and away. I don’t like that.”

Too damn bad. It was a little late to want to have a cozy mother-daughter relationship. Like fifteen years too late. Since before her father’s disappearance, in fact.

“Well, find a new boyfriend and those maternal feelings will fade away again.” Sari knew that for a fact. Her mother’s maternal feelings were dependent on how old she felt. With a new man, she felt younger and therefore had no need of her daughter. When the men left, then she felt older and more dependent on Sari. Or maybe more regretful of the things she’d let slip through her fingers. Like her daughter.

Hanging up the phone, Sari took a healthy drink of wine and settled back to try and forget about her wasted trip, her mother, and once again her failure to find a solution to the one thing that drove every action in her world – finding her father. Or at least finding answers to what happened to him.

And she knew she hadn’t a hope in the world. Obsessed and delusional was what one doctor had called her. After that, she’d shut up about it and continued her search quietly. As she hadn’t found out anything in the last fifteen years, chances were good she’d never find out.

Yet she couldn’t give it up.

Speaking of which, she reached for her bag of treasures. There was one very interesting piece in there. Placing her wine glass down, she opened her leather bag and gently extracted several wrapped up bundles. As a jewelry maker with a penchant for antiques, she’d picked up a large clientele of both suppliers and customers. Unlike her father who focused only on timepieces, she focused on jewelry and of course any timepiece like the one her father held as he’d faded from her sight.

At least that’s what her vague, shocked memory said had happened. Her dear mother Lisbeth had changed the story to him having walked out the door to meet someone and never returning.

Lisbeth knew the truth, but in typical fashion, she’d decided it to be too preposterous and had changed it to suit herself. It had gained her more sympathy and support from her friends and family. As it had been left unresolved, she’d never been pushed to remarry because her father had never been found. She said she couldn’t be bothered to do the paperwork to have him declared dead when in truth, Sari suspected it was a way to keep her men around and not have to commit.

She loved her mother, but like one would a fine piece of china rather than a well-loved mug. Her mother was many things, but warm and caring wasn’t part of her personality.

That had been her father.

And God, she missed him.

She studied the first bundle. It was an old, beaten gold neckpiece that sat on the collarbone. It was a beautiful piece that just needed a little care and attention. Sari knew she could restore it to its former glory. Smiling, she laid it down on a piece of cloth to admire.

She picked up the second piece and opened up a pair of platinum spider web earrings. These weren’t nearly as old as the collar but were fascinating in the fine workmanship that had gone into creating the web of spun metal. A beautiful piece.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the third piece. Her trip to New York had not yielded many pieces, but the ones she’d returned with had been worth the trip. Especially this last one. Carefully, she unwrapped the one timepiece out of several hundred that had been presented at the show. Her colleagues had gushed over several fine pieces and had gone silent when they’d seen her purchase.

The vendor, however, an old English gentleman, hadn’t. It seemed as if he’d recognized the desperation in her actions, the neediness in her voice as she’d searched for the watchmaker’s special mark, hoping against hope to find one that matched her faded memories of her father’s watch and his incomplete notes that she’d spent hundreds of hours poring over.

“It’s reputed to always keep time. Who could ask for anything more?” he’d murmured for her ears only.

She’d lifted a sharp gaze to assess the sly, knowing look on his face. “Indeed, what else could anyone want of a watch?” Coolly, she’d watched as amusement and a knowingness drifted across the old man’s countenance.

That smile of his irked her, but it had been his next comment that had made the decision for her. He’d said, “Nothing at all. We’re always losing things to Time, aren’t we? Now if only we could regain all that we lost.”

She’d frozen, her gaze locked on his face, analytically assessing the truth or gimmick of his voice and presentation. He was not the first to try and fool her. She hadn’t gotten this far without being taken in at least once or twice. Maybe it was the old tweed, the almost dusty clothing, or the faded blue twinkle in his eyes that reminded her of her father, but whatever it was, it seemed as if the old guy knew something. Something that no one else knew. Something that could shed light on the driving mystery in her life.

Or he’d just heard the rumors about her obsession and was playing with her.

It hadn’t been impulse that had made her pick up and study the one old, almost uncared-for piece out of so many he’d had on display. But when she did, it was almost as if he’d given her a magical silent pat of approval on her head.

A great sales technique. Conrad, one of her peers, had loved a more modern piece, laughing at her choice. She’d kept a smile on her face and her hand on the watch. No one would take it from her until she was done with it. And in this case, she thought as she pulled it out from its thick bubble wrap, she might never be done with it.

Getting up, she carried the watch to her desk and turned on the lamp. It appeared to be the same as the one her father had been working on when he’d disappeared, but she’d have to take it to her shop and dismantle it to find out for sure. Not tonight. She wrapped her prizes back up and placed them in the safe in the shop.

What she needed was sleep. She filled her glass with more wine, replaced the bottle in the fridge, and headed for bed. Maybe she’d actually be able to sleep tonight. Lord knew she was beat. Travelling, time changes, and no sleep in the hotel with their too-hard beds and too-stiff sheets all took their toll.

Hopefully the wine would help her sleep…and quickly.

After getting ready for the night, she carried her wine into her bedroom, changed into her cotton cami and pj bottoms, and sat on the edge of her bed to brush her hair. She yawned, and a small laugh escaped. Good. She was exhausted. Tossing back the last of her wine, she crawled under the covers.

It was good to be home.

Within minutes, she’d fallen into a deep sleep.

Five hours later
she woke, a fine tremor ghosting across her skin. The air had chilled, stilled. She couldn’t place what was wrong – just that something was. She rolled over and sat up. She’d left her window open, an unusual event in itself. With a storm brewing outside, the wind was tossing her curtains everywhere.

She threw back her covers and strode over to the window. With more effort than required, she pulled the window down, barely bringing it to a stop before it hit the wooden ledge. She did want a little fresh air. The old house needed big money poured into it. New windows and a better security system were at the top of the list. And the roof. It had sat empty all this time with well over a hundred years on its bones already.

Standing and gazing out into the black night, she realized an old truck had parked across the street at the empty lot. A man leaned against the box, a trail of smoke wisping around on the whim of the wind. He faced her house, staring up at her window – directly into her eyes.

Shit.

She slipped back out of sight.

There was no reason to be bothered; this small corner of downtown wasn’t the best area of town, but she’d yet to have problems. Then why had she just remembered that she needed to upgrade the security system? Her house was bigger than many around, being an older three-story style. It offered lots of room but also lots of opportunity for anyone on the more sinister side of life. Leaning against the wall, she peered out from the side.

The man flicked his cigarette and opened his truck door. As she watched, he reached in and pulled out a takeout cup of coffee. Interesting. Anyone sitting out there with a hot drink must expect to be there for a while. She considered the rest of the street. Mostly old houses, mostly run down, at the edge of the commercial district of downtown but also right on the corner of where the downtown core started. It was a shabby area, but one now caught up in the midst of a big revitalization project. She had the only business here that she knew of, and even then she didn’t use the storefront for the public. She saw the odd client who stopped in that way and had the shop as her workspace, but she hated the distractions of having a door the public could open on their whim.

Her shop was secured. Her safe was connected to a security system as per her insurance. She was a jewelry maker after all, and she stored gems below. Not many and not high grade, as she didn’t have the funds to stockpile, but anyone looking for easy money would find a lot to sell for quick cash downstairs. She walked to her bedroom door and stuck her head out in the hallway.

As it was a split level the levels were confusing. She slept on the second floor, making it almost impossible to hear any activity on the first floor. Not impossible though. She walked back over to the window to find the stranger now talking on a cell phone.