him at the thought. Had the solution to their problem already slipped through their fingers because they’d misplaced their trust in Marvin?
Marvin gave him an offended look. “If you don’t trust me, then there’s no reason for me to continue working here. I’m handing in my resignation effective immediately.”
“So you’re quitting before the auditor gets a chance to tell us what he’s found.” Gabriel fixed Marvin with a hard, angry gaze.
Marvin turned and stalked out of the store, and let the door slam behind him.
* * * * *
Back in her room, Kelly logged on to her laptop. She was curious about Gabriel’s snide comment about the Rossi family, so she started searching for information about them. She knew that they’d owned the Dragonsblood since the early 1940s, and that her family’s firm had insured it, but she hadn’t bothered to do much research into the family themselves other than to run a criminal background check to ensure that they’d never been accused or convicted of any felonies, especially insurance scams.
A regular Google, Bing and Yahoo search turned up nothing. They didn’t have social media accounts, and they didn’t own any businesses that she could find. Not surprising; they were an obscure, independently wealthy family. Not every rich person lived their life in public like reality TV stars.
She turned to a news archive database that she had access to. To her surprise and dismay, she saw that the Rossis had collaborated with the fascists in World War II and had been accused of stealing the belongings of political prisoners. Unfortunately, the Rossis had only stolen from people whose entire families had been wiped out, so there had been no one left to reclaim their looted goods or press charges against the Rossi family after the war was over.
They’d been poor before the war, and then after the war they’d been rich – with stolen paintings, jewels, antiques and money.
Well, now she just felt gross. She was trying to get a jewel back for a bunch of slimebags – or their descendants, granted, but still. They were living off looted and pillaged wealth that should never have been theirs. Treasured family heirloom, my ass , she thought. It had been somebody’s treasured family heirloom, and now they were dead.
Glumly, she closed her laptop, and spent the rest of the afternoon casually wandering through the areas of the castle where she was allowed to go and concentrating on mentally scanning for power gems until her head hurt so badly she wanted to cry. She found a few when she wheedled an excuse to visit Tabitha’s room, and Tabitha cheerfully showed off some of her jewelry collection. Her collection was enormous, and the power jewels that she owned were very mild. There were garnets that would make a dragon shifter mildly sleepy, and there was some ebony that could cause nausea.
Kelly finally gave up and went to take some more aspirin. If this case didn’t give her an ulcer and a permanent migraine, nothing would. She’d never had to spend this much time using her powers before; it was getting to the point where as soon as she started scanning, her head started throbbing right away. She was going to have to take a break from it.
She was probably wasting her time searching the entire castle anyway. She was pretty sure that the ruby was in the south tower, but until she could get close to it, she figured she might as well eliminate all the other possibilities.
Teresa had gone off to sulk; when Kelly checked on her, she was sitting outside in the rose garden berating Winthrop about how terrible the Kingsleys were, and he was gloomily agreeing.
When Teresa finally finished with her tantrum, Kelly called her over.
“Did you get anything useful from him?” she asked.
Teresa scowled at her in annoyance. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s complaining about the Kingsleys. Did he give you any useful information?”
“They have no respect for tradition; Tabitha
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