"It's mine to sell, honest."
"I bet." Trevor turns and walks to a back room. "Hold on, son. Let me grab my loupe. Don't move."
Bryce stands at the counter with his hands clasped together, the way he stands when his teacher calls on him.
In the back room, Trevor doesn't grab a loupe. He grabs his cell phone. He has already, in the four minutes since the brooch hit the glass, opened his computer and typed Whitfield emerald brooch Charlotte into a society page search engine. He is staring at a glittering archive photo of Eleanor Whitfield at a foundation gala wearing the exact piece on his counter.
He dials 911. His voice goes calm and slow, the voice of a citizen doing his civic duty: "Yeah, hi. I got a kid at my counter trying to fence a piece of Whitfield jewelry. Yeah, Whitfield. Real young, eight, nine years old. Real suspicious. Yeah, I'll hold him."
He hangs up. He walks back out smiling. "Almost ready, son. Just got to verify the gold content. Couple minutes."
Two cops arrive in six minutes. Bryce sees the cruiser through the front window first. His stomach drops. He doesn't run. He is too well-raised to run from police; his mother has drilled it into him since he was four. He freezes.
The officers come in, calm. Trevor points. The brooch goes into an evidence bag. One officer crouches to Bryce's eye level.
"Son, I need you to come with us. We need to talk to your mom, okay?"
Bryce nods. His lip is trembling. He doesn't cry. "A lady gave it to me, sir. I swear. She was at a bus stop."
"You can tell us at the station."