Page 6 of Skin Game

“What?” Elton said.

“Nothing.”

Up close, the front door also did not look great, which explained the noise he’d heard earlier. Sometime, fairly recently if the newly exposed wood along the frame was anything to go by, the house had been broken into. Or maybe Randy’d forgotten his key one day and decided to inflict violence on the door. Randy or someone else had done a half-assed repair involving a sheet of plywood and a nail gun. Gabe raised his fist and knocked, wincing as the door vibrated in the frame.

“Hello! Anybody home?” Gabe called out. “My name’s Gabriel Karne. I’m here about the vintage glass insulators? The ones you advertised on Marketplace.” That was the story he and Elton had come up with in case anyone was listening.

There was no answer, thank fuck. He was feeling uneasy, but he’d come this far, and he wasn’t going back to Heartstone empty-handed. Althea was depending on him, and he had toadmit he was flattered by the trust she placed in him. Casey, not so much.

What was Gabe supposed to have done? Tell Althea that the heirloom necklace with the only photograph of her daughter was gone forever? When Gabe put it that way, Casey’d done his best glowering and had made him promise to be careful. He’d agreed because Casey’s glowers were almost as sexy as Casey’s biceps.

Gabe suspected that Casey’s definition of being careful and Gabe’s were of opposing origins.Be safeversusdon’t get in trouble. But he’d gone ahead and promised Casey anyway.

Gabe inflicted another healthy knock on the door, listening closely for the sound of someone inside. “Glass insulators? Marketplace? Does this ring any bells?”

Gabe didn’t care much about glass insulators, although they were kind of cool looking. The intel was that Randy claimed to be a picker, one of those folks who went around to garage sales and abandoned barns and “picked” stuff they could sell to collectors for exorbitant amounts of money. Not a very good one though, which was probably why he had a part-time job at the pot shop. But picking was also how Randy found his victims.

“You two are positive about this? The locket is here?” Gabe asked Elton quietly. “He wouldn’t have sold it yet?”

Not that he didn’t trust what he’d been told, but something felt off, and Gabe almost always trusted his instincts. It was thealmostpart that often got him in trouble. Right now, this was starting to feel like trouble. The tale of how Randy acquired the locket was wobbly, but this was Elton’s friend—and she worked at the Twana County Sheriff’s Office—so what could go wrong? Gabe could almost hear Casey’s derisive snort.

“Althea says that Hero thinks not. When the jerk wasn’t mooching off her, taking up space at Hero’s place so he could steal personal items like the locket, he lived in Westfort. It’s the family home, apparently, and she can’t imagine anywhere else he’d take it.”

Picker really did mean taking the pick of things that weren’t his. Huh.

“Nice,” he muttered under his breath, knocking one last time for good measure. There was nothing, no rustles or soft footsteps. Not even the bark of a dog.

“I’m heading around back,” he said. “This key from Althea better work on the back door because I am not breaking the door down. If it does, I’ll be in and out before you can say boo.” He still spoke quietly, just in case. At least the lots at the top of the hill were large, which meant the space between houses was more than just a few feet.

“Remember, Hero?—”

“Told Althea the locket was last seen hanging on a mirror in the downstairs bathroom. But Elton, it could be anywhere by now. You know as well as I do that Randy could have pawned it already,” Gabe said.

He should never have agreed to keep the phone on. But Elton Cox had assigned himself as Gabe’s guardian angel. Angel wasn’t quite the right word, but something along those lines, and Gabe felt like he owed it to him.Itbeing reassurance that Gabe wouldn’t get in too much trouble and there would be someone to call 9-1-1 if needed.

As if Gabe had never been on a job on his own before. As if he hadn’t regularly run high-dollar cons and come out pretty okay in the end.

As if there isn’t an overworked guardian angel watching over you 24/7.

Could a memory scoff? Because Gabe could hear his mother’s special scoff.

“That locket has one of the only pictures Althea has of her daughter and granddaughter together. She doesn’t even have another photo of her daughter,” Elton told him for possibly the hundredth time.

Gabe really did hope it was still in the house.

“I’ve got this.” Gabe reached into his jacket and thumbed hisphone off as he rounded the corner of the house to the backyard. “Oops, lost the connect—Jesus Christ.”

The overgrown backyard was a serial killer’s wet dream.

At least no dog, so things were not going sideways. Yet. Gabe liked dogs—Casey’s dog, Bowie, was a case in point, as were the rescue dogs Mickie Lundin worked with. But the canines Gabe tended to interact with when he was doing something like this were not inclined to play nice. They were a tad bitey and often had anger management issues.

Human-caused, for sure, but anger issues nonetheless.

The backyard was enclosed by four-foot-tall chain-link fencing. A slightly ajar gate beckoned him, and Gabe slipped through it, wincing at the squeak of the hinges. Did everything around here have a complaint?

A sigh of relief escaped him when the provided key fit perfectly.

“Thank St. Fuck.”