“Is that . . .”
“Yes. It’s Sylvia Rockfort’s stolen wedding dress.”
“But how did it get here?” He crouched and lifted the bottom of the dress with a closed pen. “And it’s in perfect condition, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t check it over fully. I called you first.”
He stood and patted my back. “Good girl. Why don’t you take a look now?”
I nodded toward Necia. “She doesn’t know what’s going on. I didn’t tell her. But she called to tell me about this.”
Tony pressed his lips together and turned to Necia. “How did you get this dress?”
“Someone left it out back last night. I saw the box first thing this morning. I have no idea where it came from.”
Tony scrutinized Necia until I interrupted. “She didn’t steal it. Why would she call me?”
“I know, it’s just . . .” He hesitated. “This goes no further.” He indicated the three of us, and Necia nodded. “We have a big investigation going on with these dresses. Adri found diamonds sewn into the hem of one of them.”
Necia’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth. Her gaze flicked toward me and then back to the dress. “Diamonds?”
With a nod, I sat in the wicker chair and reached for the hem of the dress, carefully pulling the satin material through my hands. Tony gave Necia a few more details about the rough diamonds as I studied the fabric. There weren’t any odd bulges, and I couldn’t find any damage, not even a broken stitch.
Tony watched me examine the fabric and crouched to look at the hem. “Will you be able to tell if anything has been altered?”
“You mean, like if someone already took the diamonds and sewed it back up?”
He nodded.
“Possibly. Lorea’s the expert on those things. She would definitely be able to tell if there was any inferior stitching going on.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Tony’s forehead wrinkled as he studied the dress.
I started to agree but then stopped and considered the gown again. A thought tickled the back of my brain. A few random bits of conversation from Lorea, Sylvia, and her mother congealed into something suspicious.
Lorea and I always believed that Sylvia’s wedding was set up to make Brock jealous in some insane hope that he’d break off his engagement to Natalie. We’d made bets on how soon after the nuptials an annulment would come about. Lorea had joked that they’d stop at a drive-through annulment office on the way to their honeymoon and then go their separate ways.
“From the viewpoint of the diamond smuggling, it doesn’t make sense, but if we think about it in terms of Sylvia Rockfort, it might.”
He stood. “What do you mean?”
I smoothed the dress back down and put one hand on my hip. “Are you aware of the gossip surrounding Sylvia, Brock, and Natalie?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Yes, that she’s crazy about Brock and hates Natalie, or some such nonsense.”
“That would be correct. But have you also read anything about how Sylvia’s engagement was invented to make Brock jealous?”
“I don’t think she’s that crazy,” Tony said.
Necia made a choking sound, and I could see that she was trying not to laugh.
“I’m starting to wonder if she ever intended to take it this far.” I fingered an embroidered rose on the sleeve of the dress.
“I did ask our perp about this gown, and he acted like he didn’t know anything about it. At first I thought he was lying, but then he gave me quite a bit of intel about the other gowns. I didn’t understand why he would withhold information about this dress unless it had more diamonds.”
He fiddled with the radio clipped to his belt. “I planned on calling you later this morning. I interrogated Jerry—that’s his name—last night and again this morning. He doesn’t know anything about the picture left on your door. Hamilton and I were getting ready to head out to the Grafton residence to check their security footage, but it looks like that’ll have to wait.”
That didn’t help my mood, but I didn’t want to think about the picture and veiled threat. I wanted to figure out why Sylvia’s dress had gone missing in the first place. “What if we’re looking at two separate thefts?”
“Like, someone stole this dress so she couldn’t get married?” Necia asked.
“Not someone. Sylvia stole this dress so she couldn’t get married.” I paced back and forth in front of the dress, watching how the light reflected off the rhinestones. It was exquisite.
Tony shook his head. “That’s a little too far-fetched for me.” He reached for the gown.
“I’m going to take this back to the station—,”
“What? But you—”
Tony held up his hand to stop my outburst. “I want you and Lorea to come help me search every square inch of this fabric for hidden diamonds. Once we know it’s clear, it will be returned to you.”
“Fair enough.” I sighed. “I’ll call Lorea and see if she can meet us there.” Lorea was going to flip her lid if I dragged her to the police station.
For more than an hour, Lorea, Tony, and I examined and reexamined every stitch of that blasted wedding gown. Lorea picked out sections of the hem. There were no diamonds. Tony filled out a report, took some pictures, and lifted a brow. “The dress is yours—or Sylvia’s?”
“We refunded her money,” Lorea said.
“Probably what she planned on all along,” I added.
Tony shook his head. “There’s no proof Sylvia took it.”
“She was there the next morning,” I said. “She’s never that early. Then the first chance she got, she called off the wedding.”
“Not even circumstantial,” Tony continued.
Clenching my hands into fists, I spouted off the thought that had been running through my mind for the past hour. “I’ve invested a lot of time and resources into planning Sylvia’s wedding, and I don’t intend to be cheated out of my work. The Rockforts put down a $25,000 deposit, and I’m not giving one cent of it back.”
“I think that’s fine. They signed a contract with you, didn’t they?” Tony asked.
“Yes, but they
