Jewell
See what others are saying about Jewell—A Second Chance Novel.
“In Jewell, Tina DeSalvo takes us inside our deep fears and fantasies in a tale as poignant as it is innovative and satisfying.” -NY Times bestselling author Stella Cameron
“Tina DeSalvo did it again. What an awesome book! It’s clever, insightful, fun, and sexy.”
-NY Times bestselling author Cherry Adair
“Tina DeSalvo does a masterful job of letting us get to know her characters and you feel as though you know every one of them personally. If for no other reason, Tante Izzy, the Bienvenu family matriarch is reason enough to read these novels. However, there are LOTS of other reasons to read Tina DeSalvo. It is so refreshing to read an author who doesn’t fill their pages with wasted words of over describing and repeating things over and over. Her world-building is amazing and her characters are so relatable that you are immediately drawn in.”
-The Reading Café
“In Jewell, a Second Chance Novel, author Tina DeSalvo explores the ties of devotion between family members, the difficulties of dealing with a dementia patient, and the power of love. Her novel ranges from historic mystery to legal thriller to steamy romance, with a cast of colorful characters sure to captivate the reader. DeSalvo navigates the twists and turns of the plot as deftly as a local piloting a pirogue through the bayou waters.”
Examiner.com critic Mary Beth Magee
Cajuns, antiques, a Bourbon Street stripper, plantation history, scheming old ladies, and a ridiculously handsome nemesis…
Jewell just wants to give her grandmother one final memory before it’s too late…Beau wants to protect his family from the one woman who is capable of scamming them with fake answers to an old family mystery. Complicated by the well-meaning but interfering Bienvenu clan and Jewell’s unpredictable grandmother with dementia, will it be possible to discover the truth?
Get it now in e-book and print at Amazon, Kindle Unlimited and at your local bookstore.
Excerpt
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Chapter One
Cane, Louisiana.
Fall
Hello God, it’s me, Mignon Duet. I hope You don’t mind me speaking to You in my head again. It’s easier to do while the world is going about its business around me. Nobody has to know we’re having this conversation. I guess that’s what a person does when they get old. Have conversations in our head. Come to think of it, I’ve heard some old people talk to You aloud, too. That makes them sound crazy though. And then their families try to excuse it by saying they got religion in their old age. I know the truth, just like You. They don’t even realize they’re talking aloud. They think they’re talking in their heads like I’m doing.
Hmm, I am talking in my head, right?
Yes. I am. Otherwise, the people in here would be looking at me sideways instead of shopping in this old house looking for bargains. My only granddaughter is selling things for the family who owns this old stuff. Junk, mostly. Not that all old stuff is junk. Look at me. I’m quality, even though my brain isn’t so sharp anymore. I’m not junk to be tossed away, even though I’m old. My brain is rusty; the gears in my body don’t work so well. I have a cane and pretty beige orthopedic shoes to help me move along. And I have my granddaughter, Jewell, ma sucrée, my sweet. She helps me move along, too. Best of all, she shares her brain with me.
Jewell is never very far away from me. Thank God…er…Thank You. She reminds me of things I need to do and she finishes my sentences when I can’t. You know, she even takes me with her to work, like she did today. Not that this place is much of a job if you ask me. She used to take me to mansions. Big New Orleans mansions. I liked going to big mansions. I felt special sitting on their fancy chairs, drinking sweet tea from heavy crystal glasses. Now we’re in a dusty bungalow in the country. Not that that bothers me much. I like the country. I’m from the country. At least, I think I am. No…I’m sure I am. Anyway, Jewell isn’t so sure I’m from the country—even though I told her I used to live on a big farm with Twinnie. Ah, I sure miss Twinnie, God.
When I talk about Twinnie, though, it seems to make Jewell sad. Ma sucrée looks sad a lot lately. Why is that? I don’t think it has to do with Twinnie or me getting childlike sometimes and needing her to hold me. I think it has to do with the legal problems she’s having. The ones she says I shouldn’t worry about. But I do. And it makes me scared, God. Really scared.
I don’t want anything to happen to her. It breaks my heart to think she has problems. When I see her eyes look so full and sad and troubled, my insides tremble. I’m so frightened for her that I cry myself to sleep at night. God, can You help ma sucrée not be sad? Can You make her problems disappear so we can be together…so that she doesn’t have to leave me…alone?
Oh, mon Dieu, my heart is pounding so hard now. My hands are shaking. I know that this is what “totally alone” feels like even though there are a few people nearby shopping in this strange place. I don’t know any of them. I don’t know where I am. It’s getting hard to breathe and Jewell’s big brown eyes lock onto mine. She smiles at me…and I feel relief, comfort.
“I know you,” I tell her.
“And, I know you, Mimi.”
I feel peaceful knowing I’ll always recognize Jewell’s chocolate-colored eyes, her straight nose, her rosy lips, and her café au lait complexion that she inherited from her beautiful momma. I miss her momma. I wish she’d visit me more. Even just a little bit. I will always recognize them both, mother and daughter, won’t I?
Oh, God. Look at ma sucrée. She looks scared, too, as she stares hard inside her open cash register as if she can make the money there multiply by sheer will. I can’t tell her how frightened I am now. She has her own problems. She shouldn’t worry about me. She’s young. She has her life ahead of her. Mine is over. She needs to be free to find success again and to find happiness. Maybe even a good man. I should free her from the burden of having to take care of me. That’s the right thing to do…but, if I free her, dear God, I will be totally alone…
…and so will she.
***
Jewell pressed on the gas pedal of her old tan pickup truck a little too hard, throwing both her and Mimi against their seats in an unexpected jolt.
“I know you want to get out of here in a hurry, but you don’t have to give us whiplash in the process,” Mimi told her, speaking the formal French that was her first language and the one she and Jewell preferred to speak to one another.
Jewell eased off the pedal, looking in the rearview mirror to make sure her vintage Airstream camper was still in tow. It seemed fine, so she continued down the bumpy dirt road of the Simoneauxs’ property onto the smooth two-way state highway adjacent to it. She glanced at her fair-skinned, beautifully plump grand-mère who was now staring out of the closed side window. White hair styled with a tight perm and dressed in her Sunday best, she sat on the clean but faded tan cloth front seat as poised as if she was seated on a satin Chippendale chair at a formal dining table in Commander’s Palace restaurant in New Orleans. She didn’t know how Mimi managed such perfect posture after two long days of sitting around the estate sale, especially when arthritis had set painfully in her worn bones years ago. Mimi might complain about a long list of things, but her personal aches and pains were not among them.
She was a remarkable woman. She had been when she was a young, energetic grandmother raising her unwed, rebellious teenage daughter’s child and now, as an elderly, frisky lady fighting to stay relevant in a confusing world. It broke Jewell’s heart to know that her time with the most important person in her life was limited both because of her age and because of advancing dementia. Once Mimi was gone, Jewell would be left alone with only her wonderful memories of this woman. She intended to have no regrets to mar their challenging but loving life together.
Mimi turned, looked directly into Jewell’s eyes. “You’re glad this job is over, huh, ma sucrée? I can see it in your troubled eyes.”
Jewell blinked, refocused on the road in front of her. “Yes, I am, Mimi.” She was pleased to be leaving the Simoneauxs’ property where she’d worked for the last week. The minute she’d walked into the poorly maintained 1920s bungalow, she’d felt like a relic Battle of New Orleans British Naval cannonball had hit her in the chest. This was not the type of estate furniture and household property she would’ve been called to appraise and sell before her career plummeted to the depths of the muddy Mississippi River.
“Me, too,” Mimi agreed. “You know, I don’t like garage sales that much.”
“It was an estate sale,” she sighed. The worst estate sale she’d ever facilitated in her professional career.
“Hmm. I think it was a garage sale.” Mimi crossed her arms over her ample breasts and thick belly. “If you want to have a garage sale,” she insisted, “you can have one closer to home in New Orleans and save us the hour trip into the bayou country.”
“I didn’t want to have a garage sale, Mimi.”
“Then why did you? You don’t make any sense. I don’t understand.”
Jewell looked at Mimi. Her brows were furrowed. She looked puzzled. She really didn’t remember why they were at the Simoneauxs’. “I took the job here because no one will hire me in New Orleans,” she said, keeping her voice even as she started the GPS on her phone to direct them to their next destination.
“You have dirt smeared on your face, ma sucrée,” Mimi said, pointing to Jewell’s chin. “You always have dirt on your face. You did as a child, too.”
Jewell glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Nothing wrong with Mimi’s vision. There was a smudge of bayou dirt on the underside of her chin several shades darker than her complexion. She wiped it with the heel of her hand, quickly inspecting the rest of her face. No dirt. Just her dark hair, already coming out of the ponytail. “Did I get it all?” She lifted her chin for Mimi to inspect.
She nodded. “It’s déjà vu with the dirt.” She smiled. “And, with the way you look.” Mimi shook her head. “You wear your hair the same as you did in college. Maybe if you took it out of that straight ponytail and added that pretty royal purple streak that people are decorating their hair with today, it would be nice. You’re a pretty girl. A little color would look good on you. Change is good. If your memory is good, that is. Otherwise, change can be a confusing.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Now, you could get one of those trendy tattoos. That’s a change that isn’t confusing. It would follow you around. Especially if it’s on your derrière.” She laughed. “You’re too conservative for that. I’m not though. I should get one.” She pursed her lips. “I have to think on what I’d get and where. I don’t want to embarrass you when they go to fix my body at the funeral home, but I sure would like it be something they’d remember. Something that means something to me. Like a heart with black and white yin and yang inside.”
“Clever.” Jewell smiled, placing her hand low to the side of her hipbone just below her bikini line. She doubted the way she celebrated becoming an antiquities expert the night she got her advanced degree would embarrass Mimi, but it sure would surprise her. “You know, tattooing has been around a very long time,” she said. “It’s been in the Polynesian and Native American cultures and it was even found on the mummified remains of ancient Egyptian priests and priestesses.”
“I wouldn’t mind people coming to look at my tattoo in a museum centuries after I’m gone. I like them looking at my ball gowns in the Mardi Gras Museum and in the hotel lobbies.”
She nodded toward Jewell’s shirt. “They won’t be putting your work shirt in any museums, even in a couple hundred years. You don’t know fashion.” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “I do. I can sew well enough to make you a sophisticated white brocade sheath pretty enough to turn every grand Madame’s head for Friday lunch at Galatoire’s. You’d have to discard those jeans, that baby blue company golf shirt, and the rubber boots you always wear, though. Wouldn’t hurt to wear pretty stilettos.”
“As a matter of fact, it might hurt. My boots are fun, practical. They make me smile. Stilettos make me wince.” Jewell tucked a long strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ear. “I’m comfortable in my own skin as I am, Mimi.”
“Skin, yes. As you should. Just does it have to be that shirt?” She winked at her granddaughter making her laugh. “I’ll save you time in my sewing schedule just in case you change your mind. My clients might not like it, but I don’t care.”
Jewell smiled at her, as her heart felt like it was crushing in her chest. Mimi hadn’t sewn for out in years, but she often didn’t remember that. As Jewell adjusted the rearview mirror to get a better view of her dusty camper behind them, A wave of fatigue and a little bit of despair and loneliness swept over her, looking at their home away from home. She suddenly just wanted to stop for a little while, crawl under her favorite patchwork quilt, take a nap and shut out the worries of Mimi slipping away, of rebuilding her career and any one of a thousand things weighing on her mind like a ship’s anchor set in a stormy sea.
Instead, Jewell continued driving along the winding bayou road and negotiated a sharp curve a little too fast. Mimi slid on her seat, causing her safety belt to lock across her heavy breast.
“Oh, mon Dieu.” She tugged on the seatbelt but it didn’t budge. “I’m taking the streetcar next time.”
Jewell checked for traffic behind them. Not another vehicle was around, so she stopped in the middle of the road. She quickly refastened Mimi’s safety belt, then, resumed driving again. “No streetcars around here,” she smiled. “Doesn’t look like there’s any public transportation or even any cars.”
“If you don’t have to wear a safety belt on a streetcar, I don’t see why you have to wear one in an old truck.” She pulled on the belt to keep the extra slack over her folded arms. “If you weren’t already in trouble with the law, I wouldn’t wear this uncomfortable thing.”
“Thank you for being so considerate.”
“So, we’re going to our next job, now, right?”
“Our final interview for it.” Jewell prayed it went well. They needed this job, and it was especially great that the new client was so receptive to Mimi’s coming along. If Jewell wasn’t totally convinced that her grand-mère enjoyed going on jobs with her, she’d find different work that suited both of them. Something that would keep Mimi with her as long as possible.
One look at Mimi reassured her that she was doing the right thing. Her skin wasn’t as supple as it once was, her plump body not as firm, and her blue-green eyes weren’t as clear, but Mimi looked like the same prideful woman who had raised her. Just more faded. Jewell made sure Mimi maintained her weekly appointment to style her white hair at the neighborhood salon she’d gone to for the last forty years. Jewell ironed all of the dresses Mimi wore in just the way her grand-mère liked. She shined Mimi’s tan orthopedic shoes just as she preferred, too. It was why she looked as fresh and styled today as she did yesterday and all the days before. If only Jewell could do something to Mimi’s brain so it would function as it had before.
You have arrived. Destination on your right.
“Now how does that lady know where we’re going or where we’ve been?” Mimi asked, as she always did when the GPS announced their arrival. Jewell didn’t mind hearing the same questions and stories from Mimi over and over again. Sure, she sometimes let her mind drift as Mimi recounted the same story she’d told eight dozen times, but in the end, Jewell appreciated that Mimi wanted to share her thoughts instead of remaining quiet for fear or embarrassment that she was doing something wrong. She had seen in her eyes and in her expressions how difficult not remembering was for Mimi.
“The lady in the GPS is just smarter than us, I guess,” Jewell answered as she turned into the Sugar Mill drive. "We're here." Her old tan pickup truck looked incongruous in front of the locked, glossy white gate of the Sugar Mill property. Jewel shook off the fatigue, looked at the closed gate in front of them—not feeling locked out, but filled with anticipation for what would be waiting for them when it swung open. She looked through her truck window and let the modern world fall away.
“Can you imagine this place if the white vinyl fencing around the property was gone and the asphalt road behind us was just a narrow dirt horse-and-buggy path?” Jewell whispered. The land wouldn’t look very different than it had a hundred and fifty years ago when the early sugarcane crops were standing tall on a similar, warm October day. The post-civil war plantation that she couldn’t see, but knew was down the road, would be welcoming with its windows and doors spread open to the fall breeze.
It would really be good if she got this job at this fascinating historical property, like many of the places she’d worked when her career was arrowing upward. While all of history, even from times and places that carried some of the ugliest and darkest of humanity, was important to study. Sugar Mill offered a historian a chance to explore another side of mankind trying to do better – be better. Here the farm operated post-civil war with a different system, free of slavery. That pleased her to know that there had been a better way.
She shook her head. No, the job here wasn’t a historical research job and she wouldn’t have time for such studies, but she hoped to glean some of that history.
The phone conversation with Elli Bienvenu a few days earlier had sounded promising nonetheless, Jewell thought as she turned off the truck’s well-worn engine. It gave a few extra knocks before it silenced. “You know, Mimi, the owner, Elli, seems friendly, smart—and best of all, in need of our services to appraise and sell her barn full of stored furniture and things.”
All Jewell had to do was have a successful meeting with her today, get her to sign a contract, and begin work tomorrow. The only stumbling block could be if Elli or her husband had heard of how badly the Simoneauxs’ job had gone. The way news traveled in small towns like Cane, that was a real possibility. Even though she’d climbed through the muck under the house and nearly went to battle with a raccoon to recover some cool antiques, she hadn’t been able to sell them for what they were worth. She’d invited the top antique dealers from New Orleans and Baton Rouge to attend, but they hadn’t shown up. Inviting them was a risk since there weren’t many good antiques in the home. Inviting them when they wanted nothing to do with her was an even bigger risk. In the end, what little that did sell, sold undervalue. To make matters worse, she ended up having to donate more of the Simoneauxs’ property to Goodwill than she’d sold.
Jewell just had to hold out hope that even if they had heard of her underperformance, she could reason with Elli about realistic expectations for the Sugar Mill project. If not, Jewell would simply lower her fees and appeal to the fact that Elli was on a tight deadline. She knew Elli needed to have everything cleared out of the barn before the set crew arrived in a week to prepare for the movie being filmed there in two weeks. Even if she wasn’t able to sell what Elli didn’t want to keep, at least she could get the stuff out of the way for the movie crew.
“She’s going to hire us, Mimi.” Jewell blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I know it.”
“It doesn’t sound like you know it,” Mimi said, her tone a little rough. Jewell glanced at her. She was having a bit of a mood swing. She often did that when she got tired, hungry, or bored. Sometimes it happened for no reason other than that she had mood swings. Mimi’s doctors had told Jewell that was all part of life with dementia. Mimi unsnapped her safety belt and sighed. “Just your optimism talking about knowing this and that. Always been your problem.”
Jewell laughed. “I don’t see why optimism is a problem. I’m an optimist, but I’m a pragmatic, logical, methodical researcher, too. Nothing wrong with me wanting to go through Elli’s old stuff, either.”
Jewell’s heart raced, and an excitement danced in her soul as it always did when she thought of being able to explore places where people had tucked away things from long ago. Things too precious to throw away yet, too old or odd to fit into their modern lives. She looked at her grand-mère. The same had been true for Mimi before she came to live with Jewell. She grabbed Mimi’s arthritic hand and squeezed it gently. Her skin felt as dry and fragile as parchment. Sensing her grand-mère’s mortality scared Jewell. Mimi was everything to her. Everything. She was the only real family she had.
“We'll have fun, Mimi. We're on a grand adventure together. It’ll be a treasure hunt.”
“Or a trip to the dump,” she said, still sounding irritated. She shook her head, making the tight curls in her white hair bob. Jewell didn’t let her grand-mère’s attitude bother her. She knew her mood would improve. It always did.
Jewell glanced at her cell phone. They were thirty minutes early. The ten-mile drive from the Simoneauxs’ home had been a lot faster than the GPS directions indicated. It would be okay for her to arrive fifteen minutes early to meet a client, but thirty would make her seem too desperate…which, of course, she was.
“Do you hear it?” Mimi asked, her voice laughing lightly. This was the fastest Jewell had seen her grand-mère’s mood improve, ever. “It’s me and Twinnie giggling as we run through those cane fields.” She leaned her head back and inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes and a tear slipped onto her cheek. “I miss Twinnie. Do you think she remembers me?”
A lump formed in Jewell’s throat. Her body ached with wanting to say yes to her grand-mère but her heart broke with not being able to do it. She just couldn’t say something she wasn’t sure she believed was true.
Twinnie might not exist. If she did, she might be dead or in a nursing home in New York City or right here in Cane. How had Mimi lost touch with this person that was so important to her? Was she her sister? A cousin? A twin? Or had she never existed?
“I’m old. My brain is foggy, but…” Mimi paused and her cloudy blue-green eyes locked onto Jewell’s with such sadness and hope, and some other emotion that Jewell couldn’t identify—for she’d never seen it before. “I do remember things. I also know things, ma sucrée. I know you took that garage sale job because you wanted to come to this area to see if the stories I told you were true. I heard you asking questions about Twinnie.” She sighed. “I might not remember yesterday or today well, but I remember this,” she waved her hand out her window toward the tall cane fields shimmying like a living, breathing thing. Jewell didn’t know if it was the way the sun shone on the dark green blades of cane, the fertile sable soil, or the white puffy clouds in the cornflower sky, but it looked like a picture that was colored with new crayons.
The sunlight also shone on the four rings of imitation semi-precious stones on Mimi’s hand like Mardi Gras beads tossed from a Fat Tuesday float—a reminder that Mimi may appear normal, but dementia had changed her. It had even turned her churchgoing, God-fearing grand-mère into a bit of a kleptomaniac. Jewell had learned through research and discussions with Mimi’s medical team that dementia could distort her grand-mère’s ability to reason. It could cause her to make up stories to fill in the gaps of her memory. As sad as it made Jewell to identify the changes, she had to remind herself that Mimi did not act as she had just a few years before.
A perfect example of that was how she had cased the costume jewelry table at the Simoneauxs’ estate sale for forty-five minutes. She acted like a seasoned thief before executing the heist for the four rings that were jammed on her arthritic right hand and the three rings resting above the thick, bent knuckles of her left hand. Even if Jewel had wanted to deny she had done it, her two workers and about six customers all witnessed and pointed out her poorly executed pilfering.
“If I’m to find Twinnie,” Jewell began, carefully picking her words, “I need more to go on than ‘I lived on a sugarcane farm near a bayou with Twinnie.’ I need a surname or something less ambiguous. I need one solid detail. The name of the bayou would help.”
So, what was the truth with Twinnie and Mimi being raised on a large farm. Those things may or may not have been true, Jewell realized with the logical aptitude that made her a good researcher. The emotional capacity that made her a loving granddaughter had her wanting to gift Mimi with her dear Twinnie while she could still know who she was. It was logic and emotion that Jewell had struggled with over the last two weeks as Mimi spoke with increasing frequency of Twinnie and the places they played together. So her logical side said it was time to expand her business outside of New Orleans where she might get a fresh start, and her emotional side said she should expand it in an area where she could research if grand-mère’s stories were fantasy or truth.
Jewell glanced at her grand-mère who was rubbing her forehead. In an abrupt movement, Mimi rolled down her window and took in a deep breath. “Smells like home.”
Jewell’s mouth went dry. Smells like home? Did it really have her recalling the scents of her childhood? Her grand-mère couldn’t see the Sugar Mill main house that she’d claimed was hers when she saw it in the movie they had watched. It wasn’t visible a mile down the road on the other side of the locked gate. Mimi had never called the mansion she said was hers by name. The sign for the Sugar Mill Dog Training Facility and Kennel would mean nothing to her. So, why would Mimi say this particular land smelled like home, when they had been near, or on, other homesteads with sugarcane nearby?
It was strange. As an American and Louisiana historian and an antiques explorer, it was her job to chase the possible trail to uncover old stories. The research she’d done on the Sugar Mill Property and its history to prepare for the meeting today had not turned up any connection to Mimi’s paternal Duet family or her maternal Tassé family. Jewell had paid particular attention to that.
“Mimi,” she whispered, trying to level her emotions. She wanted logic to calm the buzz she felt from the possibilities Mimi’s long-term memory had triggered in her romantic treasure hunter’s head. She continued speaking French both as a comfort to Mimi and herself. “Is it possible you’re remembering the scents of a childhood visit to the country or here in Vacherie Parish? Or, maybe, it smells the same as you remember when the harvested cane was carried into the New Orleans French Market.”
Mimi shook her head and rolled her eyes but didn’t defend her statement any further.
“This cane looks ready for harvest,” she said. “Ripe. Sweet.”
“When did my urban grand-mère turn into Farmer Brown?”
What does she smell? Maybe it would be familiar to her, too. She rolled her window down. All was quiet except for the shushing sound of the cane waving in the light breeze. She inhaled deeply. The humid, warm fall air eased into her lungs, filling it with the organic scents of earth, cane and open sky.
Wouldn’t these scents be the same on any sugarcane farm? Or did each farm have its own particular nuance? Would a person’s brain store all of the impacts on their senses from a casual visit? Did the mind of a person with dementia tap into places in the brain that others without it did not? Jewell had more questions than she’d had when she started this day and she really wasn’t sure how to get the answers she sought since her dear Mimi was not a reliable source.
Jewell started to consider her options for investigating this mystery but decided it was best to stay focused on the meeting with her client first. She could get lost in the hunt.
“We’re twenty-three minutes early,” she said, glancing at the time. “I don’t care.”
“You’ll look desperate if you go too early,” Mimi grumbled. “Well, a spool of thread is a spool of thread and not a bolt of silk cloth.”
Jewell got out of the car and walked to the speaker and keypad. She pressed the call button. A smooth male voice immediately responded.
“About time. I thought you’d never get here. Come straight in. We’ve been waiting since half-time and the game is almost over.” The buzzer sounded and the gate swung open.
Jewell looked at the speaker for a moment, pretty certain that the man, probably Elli’s husband Ben, thought he was talking to someone other than her. But, then, maybe he did know who was speaking to. “He said to come straight in, Mimi,” she said, climbing into the truck. “I’m not sure he really knows who he let onto his property.”
“Oh, that’s not good.” Mimi looked at her granddaughter. “I bet he’s a mass murderer.” She whispered as if the man she was talking about was listening. “He had a real appealing voice on that radio. I bet he’s handsome, too. Mass murderers are always handsome. It’s how they trick their victims into their snares.” She shifted in her seat to look at Jewell. “You have your gun, right?”
“Yes. Under my seat.” Well out of Mimi’s reach, she thought with relief. Jewell kept a gun for when she had cash from sales in remote locations and when she and Mimi lived in the camper.
Mimi lifted her red nylon handbag. “Mine is in my purse.”
