Chapter 2 - Mabel Had Seen Something Move
Luciano took Mabel out of the collection room before asking anything else.
He brought her to the smaller morning room across the hall, found her a glass of apple juice, and sat on the carpet beside her instead of towering over her from a chair.
Her hands were trembling.
“She said I steal things,” Mabel whispered.
“She lied.”
“But she told Grant I did it before.”
Luciano’s expression changed.
“Before today?”
Mabel nodded.
That mattered.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“What things?”
“Little things.”
She listed them slowly.
A silver button from an antique coat.
A tiny carved horse.
A brass key.
A miniature pearl clasp.
Each had supposedly gone missing while Mabel was somewhere nearby.
Each had later “turned up.”
Luciano had heard about two of them.
Odessa always described them as childish curiosity.
Nothing serious.
Something a timid six-year-old might do without understanding value.
Now the pattern looked different.
“What happened before the diamond disappeared?”
Mabel stared into her juice.
“I was looking.”
“At what?”
“The things in the back.”
Luciano waited.
Mabel liked the collection room because Luciano’s late mother had once turned it into a game for the children in the family: identify what had moved since the last visit.
A teapot turned the wrong direction.
A miniature carriage placed on the wrong shelf.
A porcelain bird switched with its twin.
Mabel remembered arrangements the way other children remembered songs.
“What moved?” Luciano asked.
“The green bird.”
He frowned.
“There’s no green bird.”
Mabel looked up.
“Yes there is.”
“Where?”
“Behind the black box.”
Luciano pictured the rear display.
Then he understood.
The “green bird” was a small enamel hummingbird mounted on a brass stand. It had once belonged to his grandmother. Its wings were dark green enamel with tiny diamond points around the edges.
It should have been displayed on the second shelf.
Not behind anything.
“What was wrong with it?”
Mabel hesitated.
“It wasn’t Grandma’s.”
Luciano felt a faint chill.
“What makes you say that?”
“The tail.”
“What about it?”
“Grandma’s bird had a crooked tail.”
He stared at her.
She was right.
Years earlier, the original hummingbird had fallen during a move. One tail feather bent slightly inward. The family never repaired it because Luciano’s mother said the flaw made the piece recognizable.
Mabel continued.
“This one was straight.”
A replica.
Or a repaired substitute.
“And then Odessa saw you?”
Mabel nodded.
“She asked what I was doing.”
“What did you say?”
“I said the bird was wrong.”
Luciano understood immediately why the accusation began after that.
Mabel had not been about to steal something.
May you like
She had been about to expose that something had already been switched.
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