The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

They didn’t engage you until after the photo had been sent. No one but you and me and Vince knew you had any interest.”

“No, you’re right, Harry. But I’m starting to feel that someone out there knows something about the Bishop kidnapping and thinks that I should visit Marigold Leeks.”

“Why?”

“I’ve no idea. I suppose I’ll find out first thing on Monday morning when her shop opens for business.”

“But Monday is Christmas Eve, what happens if she doesn’t open?”

“Then I’ll call on my favourite lock-picker.”

“Who me?”

I smiled and squeezed his knee under the table.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I arrived outside the shop on Monday morning at about quarter past eight, three-quarters of an hour before it was due to open. I’d canvassed the neighbourhood, strolled past the shop, double-checked the opening hours, and then got back into my car, which I’d parked on the other side of the road.

By quarter past nine, I was beginning to wonder whether they’d decided not to open on Christmas Eve when I saw someone throw open one of the windows of the flat above the shop. A man wearing a singlet put his head out the window and yawned. He lit a cigarette and then stared directly at me, smiled, and then gave me a casual wave.

It wasn’t often I was marked. I was pretty good at looking noncha­lant. I turned my head for a moment and then grinned. All right, he’d seen me, so I waved back. He beckoned me over and then disappeared.

A few minutes later he appeared at the front door of the shop, an unbuttoned shirt thrown over his singlet. He turned the closed sign around to show the side that read “open” and then tucked his shirt into his pants as he opened the door.

“You could have knocked,” he said.

“I thought you might be having the day off.”

“Your car’s been parked on the other side of the street for nearly an hour. I saw you wandering around. Did the butcher tell you about the strange goings on in our shop? Our midnight orgies, our black masses, and the sacrifices of virgins and small children?”

I laughed. “No, he said you were respectable people who asked for different cuts of meat than the rest of his customers.”

“You could have come yesterday,” he said.

“I thought you were closed.”

“We were.”

I didn’t know what to say to that and was about to speak when a woman appeared from the back of the shop. “Good morning,” she said. “We were expecting you.”

I held up the business card that had been sent to the Bishops with my name scrawled across the back. “This came in the mail for me,” I said.

“Clyde Smith, huh? When you find him, tell us where he is,” she said.

“I’m Clyde Smith,” I replied.

“Well, you’ve got a hide, Mr. Smith. Did you get a fit of the guilts and decide to bring it back?”

“Bring what back?”

“My statue of Saint Sarah, I suppose it was you who stole it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs …?”

“Marigold. This is my brother Luka.”

“Marigold is an unusual name. Actually, I think you might be the first one I’ve met.”

“Actually it’s Gălbenele, which is the name of the flower in Romanian, and our surname is Praz, the name for a leek, the vegetable, in our language.”

“Ah, that’s why Marigold Leek is the name you chose for your business.”

She’d been staring at my business card. “For someone whose card says he’s a detective, that wasn’t so hard to work out now, was it?”

Her cheeky look made me smile. “Touché,” I said.

“We have one of these too,” she said, glancing at my business card.

“You do?”

She shook her head. “Follow me, Mr. Smith.”

“Pleastameecha,” the young man said, holding out his hand, which I shook.

“Likewise, Luka,” I replied to his casual, and distinctly Aussie, greeting.

He placed his other hand on top of mine while carefully inspecting my face. “Green eyes,” he said. “Green eyes, Mr. Smith.”

I had no idea what he meant. My eyes were dark brown.

“Clyde—my name is Clyde,” I said.

Normally, I’d never have invited someone I intended to question to use my Christian name. I’d learned, in most cases, surnames were more professional and helped keep a distance between the parties.

There was something about the way he watched me as I followed his sister to the back of the shop. I could see his reflection in a large mirror that covered the wall behind the counter. I recognised it of course—that look of one man appraising another. The way he looked at my shoulders and then the shape of my arse in my strides. I couldn’t help but think if Sam had been there with me, it would have been me with the sister while Sam chatted up the lean, dark-complexioned man with long, as yet uncombed hair, and piercing blue eyes. He was right up Sam Telford’s street.

The back of the shop was nothing like I’d expected—it was a bright, airy room.

“Not what you’d supposed, Mr. Smith?” she said. “No crystal ball, dark curtains, shawls over the furniture, black cats rubbing against your legs?”

“No, I’m afraid I’ve brought my preconceptions with me, Miss …”

“Gal-ben-eh-leh,” she pronounced it slowly, and I mimicked it well enough that she smiled at me.

“Speak the truth,” I said, translating an embroidered framed sampler hanging on the wall.

“Apune adevărul,” she said. “You speak Romanian?”

I shook my head. “A few words.”

She waited, but I didn’t explain that I’d learned not only Italian but a smattering of German, Romanian, and a bit of Spanish and Maltese in the camp.

“I don’t hear any accent in your English. You were born in Romania?”

“No. Our parents were. A lot of Romany people are from there or from Hungary.”

“I’ve never noticed this shop before, and yet I used to get my meat from the butcher across the road when I lived in Judge Street, just down the road.”

“We moved here from Nowra in June. It was empty for years before we took the lease.”

“You said you received a card with my