Page 22 of Immortal Unveiled

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“You kissed him, and he rejected you?” Jennifer dropped onto the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table. “What’s wrong with that guy? Is he gay? Or impotent?”

“Well, he certainly isn’t impotent,” Kim replied.

“How do you know that if you didn’t sleep with him?”

Kim felt herself blush. If only she hadn’t blurted out the first thing that had come to her mind. “Well, you know, he, uh, he was… he had a…”

Jennifer laughed out loud and almost spilled her wine. “He had a hard-on?” She could barely get the words out amidst her laughter.

Kim sank farther back into the cushions of the overstuffed armchair. “Either that, or he was wearing a codpiece.”

“A codpiece?” That caused Jennifer to have another laughing attack. “Unless he’s a football player, I doubt he’d be wearing a codpiece. Oh, no, hon, I’m sure what you felt was a hard-on. And why not? You’re a gorgeous woman.”

“Clearly not gorgeous enough, or he wouldn’t have rejected my advances.” Kim shrugged though the rejection had stung. “Just as well. It’s another complication I don’t need in my life right now.”

Jennifer chuckled. “That’s exactly the kind of complication you need. And I would call it a distraction, not a complication.”

“Talking about distractions… How about you help me with going through Mom’s stuff?” Kim rose and pointed to a stack of folded moving boxes and trash bags. “Old magazines and newspapers, recipes, and whatever go straight in the trash. If you find anything that’s worth donating to Goodwill, put it in a box. Anything you’re unsure about, just put it on the dining table, and I’ll go through it later.”

“Yes, slave driver!” Jennifer said and got up.

“You’ve got your gossip, time to pay up,” Kim said, turning to the stairs. On the second step, she stopped and looked back at Jennifer. “Thanks for doing this with me. It’s hard, you know.”

Jennifer gave her a kind smile. “I know, hon.”

Upstairs, Kim went to work, starting in her mother’s bedroom. Looking through all the closets, cupboards, and drawers felt like invading her mother’s private space. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t snooping around, looking for Christmas presents like she’d done as a child, but was instead sifting through her mother’s personal effects in order to decide what to keep and what to throw out.

She couldn’t keep all of it, as much as she wanted to. The house had to be sold, and her own condo wasn’t big enough to hold even a portion of her mother’s prized possessions. Much of it would have to be sold at an estate sale. She made a mental note to ask her mother’s assistant at the museum where she’d worked whether she knew anybody reputable to take over that arduous task. Kim neither had the stomach nor the eye for it.

She was in the middle of looking through the boxes on the top shelf of the closet when she heard a sound at the door to the bedroom. She turned on the stepstool, careful not to lose her balance.

“Didn’t you say that the police showed you your mother’s bracelet?” Jennifer asked, walking into the room.

“Yeah, and they kept it in evidence for now. I’ll get it back when they’ve officially closed the case.”

Jennifer furrowed her brow. “Well, then I’d like to know what this is.” She stretched her hand out, palm open.

Kim stepped down from the stool and walked to Jennifer, her eyes zeroing in on the item in her friend’s hand. Her heart started pounding instantly. Instinctively, she reached for it. “That’s impossible.” It was her mother’s bracelet, the very same the detective had shown her only the day before. “Where did you get this?” She lifted her head to stare at her friend.

Jennifer motioned toward downstairs. “I was going through the living room cupboard and dropped that bag of antique marbles your mother loved so much. The bag’s fabric ripped, and some of the marbles rolled under the cupboard. So, I got on my hands and knees, and guess what I found behind there, stuck in a crack?” She pointed to the bracelet. “That.” She braced her hands at her hips. “I thought the bracelet is a one-of-a-kind.”

Kim nodded. “It is. She’d had it made after a drawing she’d seen in one of her antiques books.”

“And she never had a second copy made?”

“No. Why would she?”

“In that case, I think we have a problem.”

Slowly, Kim nodded. She knew exactly what Jennifer was thinking. “The police lied to me. They didn’t find my mother’s bracelet on that dead guy. They planted a replica on him.”

Jennifer nodded fiercely. “And I can guess why.”

“To close the case. They figured I’d never stop asking questions, so to get me off their backs, they made it look like they solved the case.”

“Probably helps their stats too. Another murder case solved and off their desks.”