"I left this client with an estate piece for a moment and when I came back it had been handled and repositioned. She's declined to open her bag. I'd like her to wait while I verify the piece."
Marcus looked at Vivian. "Ma'am. Are you all right?"
It was not the question Grant had expected. Vivian seemed to find it unexpected too. For the first time, something in her composure flickered.
"I am not all right," she said. "But thank you for asking."
"My name's Marcus. I'm going to ask you to be patient with us for just a minute, if you can. Nobody's going to touch your bag. Nobody's going to put a hand on you. Okay?" He turned back to Grant, and his voice was still quiet, but it had gone very hard underneath. "Grant, did you see her take anything?"
"I was on the phone. I didn't..."
"So that's a no."
"The necklace was moved. The clasp is on the wrong side."
"Okay." Marcus took a long breath through his nose. "Then let's get it under a scope and settle it."
"I'll take it to the back," Grant said, and turned, the necklace in his hand, and found himself face to face with a woman in a gray suit coming down the last three steps of the curving staircase.
He had not heard her. He had not seen her. Ruth Kessler, general manager of the Chicago flagship of Whitcomb and Hale for the past sixteen years, had a way of appearing on the floor as if she had been there all along, and she had a tablet in one hand and an expression on her face that Grant had seen exactly once before, on the day she had walked a salesman named Kevin out the front door for stealing commissions.
"Put the necklace back on the tray, Grant," she said.
"Ruth, I was just going to..."
"Put it back on the tray, please. Right where it was. In front of Mrs. Reed."
He did. His hands were not quite steady. He laid the necklace on the black velvet in a soft curve, and as he did it, he realized, with a sick dropping feeling in his stomach, that his own hands had just put the clasp on the right.
Ruth Kessler had been watching since the moment Vivian Reed walked through the door.
She did not watch every customer. She did not have to; she had cameras for that, sixteen of them, feeding a bank of monitors in the security office behind the mezzanine that Marcus checked on his rounds. But since November she had made a habit of standing at the railing for an hour or two each morning, tablet in hand, pretending to review inventory while she watched her floor. She watched the way her salespeople moved. She watched how they greeted people. She watched who they hurried toward and who they let wait.