The police told him she was probably part of a ring that had hit stores in Dallas and Atlanta that year. They had her on camera, but the camera only showed the back of her perfect blond head. They never caught her. Grant had gone over the footage forty times, and every time, he watched himself turn away. He watched himself trust her. He watched himself decide, in the half-second when she walked through the door, that a woman who looked like that was exactly the kind of woman who belonged there.
He had sworn he would never turn his back on a client again.
And he just had.
He spun around.
The woman in the navy dress was still standing at the counter. Mrs. Reed. He had asked her name himself, five minutes ago, and had nearly forgotten it already. She was standing very still, her hands folded in front of her, looking down at the necklace on the black velvet tray with an expression he could not read. And the necklace was not where he had left it.
He was almost sure of that. He had laid it on the tray in a soft curve, clasp to the left, the largest stone at the bottom center. Now the curve was a little tighter. The largest stone had shifted. The clasp was on the right.
Or was it? Had he put the clasp on the right? He couldn't remember that either. His heart was beating very fast. Sutton's voice was in his ear. Another loss. Anything at all. He walked back to the counter more quickly than he meant to.
"Ma'am," he said. "Did you pick up the necklace while I was on the phone?"
She looked up at him, surprised. "No. I touched it. Just the front stone. I didn't pick it up."
"It's been moved."
"I don't believe it has." She looked down at the tray. "It looks the same to me."
"The clasp was on the other side."
"Was it?" she said mildly. "I didn't notice."
Something in her calm made it worse. If she had been flustered, he might have stopped. He would think about that later too: how her composure, the composure of a woman who had spent thirty years keeping a straight face in rooms full of teenagers, had looked to him in that moment like the composure of someone with practice. The blond woman in November had been calm too. The blond woman in November had smiled at him exactly like that.
"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to step back from the counter, please."
Vivian Reed did not move. "I beg your pardon?"
"Please step back from the counter." He reached across and drew the tray toward himself, and picked up the necklace, and held it up to the light, turning it, looking at the stones. They looked right. They looked exactly right. But the November bracelet had looked exactly right too, until someone put it under a microscope. "This is a sixty-four-thousand-dollar piece. I left it with you for one minute, and when I came back it had been handled. I need to verify it."