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She perched a hip on the arm of his sofa “I hate to ask, but could it be a feroupies?” She unsuccessfully tried to hide her smirk behind a notepad

“Wiseass The women in this city are desperate, that’s for sure” He told her about the scented notes and panties he’d dumped in the trash earlier “But if it was one of the my laptop?”

“You’ve got a point We won’t know anythingup,” she said, pointing to the forensic tea, call me You know the drill Sometimes it’s the little information you don’t think is important that can break a case”

He nodded “I think I can handle it” He covered this crap on a daily basis

“Noho’s the wiseass?” she asked, treating hirin

“I don’t suppose we can keep this quiet? The last thing I need is more publicity”

She shook her head “You know better If your paper doesn’t cover it, another one will At this point you’re the closest thing to a celebrity this city’s got Until another big thing co is the news” She slapped hi him in the least

“What about the robbery you foiled?” Sara asked

“You knoell as I do, that’s an open-and-shut case The guy couldn’tin lockup”

Sara glanced at her partner as gesturing toward the door “I’ll check in when I get off duty in theelse”

He nodded “Thanks, neighbor”

After the cops took off, Coop righted the sofa and table, ignoring the rest of the mess for now He sat down, kicked his feet up and pulled on a long sip of soda As he leaned back, soh

The ring

Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner?

Coop took the object fro the puzzle pieces add up He’d just discovered that the ring had value The sa had been flashed all over the local news, the infor And now both Lexie and Ricky were interested in the ring

As forin here, Lexie had been with hi and she’d had no reason to think he wouldn’t work a deal with her to give the ring to her grandmother Not only didn’t she strike hiht And he couldn’t envision her hiring so to their rendezvous

Ricky Burnett, on the other hand, was a big question mark Coop had already turned down his request to return the ring But would a hoarder go to all this trouble just to reclai’s value? Or to its history?

Or had this been just a rando on in Coop’s life at the moment?

Coop hadn’t a clue about that, but he did knoas ti was the real deal First thing in the , he’d call in some favors There had to be so attention to the fact that it had once been stolen Then he’d put the ring in a safe deposit box in the bank