Page 9 of The Woman with the Wallet

She took apart jewelry, broke down the parts, and placed them into new settings. The end product was nothing like the original, so the thief could sell it.

I’d met Lil in my days on the street. She hadn’t been unhoused like Megs and me and countless others. But she’d been a scrappy street kid, nonetheless. With shitty parents at home, she was better off hustling and eking a life out for herself. So that was what she did. Until she realized she had an uncanny ability to both make jewelry, but also spot genuine gems from a fucking mile away.

“What brings you down here?” she asked, walking over toward the side of the room where she had one of those coffee machines that ran in the thousands set up. “Coffee?”

I would never turn down a cup from one of those things.

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Raspberry vanilla latte coming up,” she said, then shot me one of those smirks of hers. “Joking. God, you should see your face. Remind me to invite you to my next poker game,” she said as she stuck a pod in the machine and the rich scent of creamy coffee filled the room.

Lil made bank, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at her office-slash-apartment.

It was a small, dark space, save for the center filled with tables and bright, stark, blue-tinted overhead lights.

To the left was her kitchen. That was used mostly as a place to store condiments and leftover takeaway. To the right, therewas her bedroom with its lush king-sized bed, tables, and an impressively large TV mounted to the wall.

There were two doors toward the back. One, I figured, was the bathroom. The other had to be some sort of storage since there was no wardrobe or dresser to be seen.

Lil brought me my coffee, then cradled her own in both her hands as she watched me for a second. “Whatdoesbring you here? Acting all nervous? Business or… personal?” she asked, green eyes twinkling.

“Lil, trust me, I wish I was interested in girls. Would make life so much easier.”

“Ain’t that the damn truth. So, business, then?”

“I, ah, stumbled upon something today.”

“And by ‘stumbled upon,’ do you mean lifted something from someone’s pocket?”

That was the thing about knowing people for so many years. You knew everyone’s secrets.

“Yeah,” I admitted, putting my coffee down on her desk, reaching for my wallet, unzipping the coin purse, then reaching inside to pinch the little diamond. “Is this real?” I asked, dropping it into her palm.

“First blush says yes,” she said, but she was already moving behind her counter, sticking her hand under a lighted magnifying glass.

“I did the fog test. And scratched my window with it. But I wanted an expert to tell me.”

Sitting, Lil dropped the diamond onto a little diamond scale, then sat back in her chair and nodded at me.

“That’s real, alright. Someone just had one of these in their wallet?”

“No,” I admitted, sucking in a steadying breath as I reached for my cell phone, unlocked it, scrolled to the most recent imageI took of them all on the pillowcase, and turned the phone toward her. “Someone had all of these loose in their wallet.”

“Holy fuckingshit, Max,” Lil said, eyes going wide.

“The one I brought here was the smallest of all of them,” I admitted. “What would that one be worth?”

Lil glanced again at the scale. “A grand, maybe. But what you have there, depending on the clarity of them, obviously, that’s an easy…”

“Quarter million?” I asked.

“More. Most likely more.”

“Half?”

“Half to seven-fifty.”

“Lil… how would someone come across that many loose diamonds?”

---