Chapter 7: Go and Cash

Noelle

Gold and Cash sat wedged between a laundromat and a vape shop, its sign missing the LD in gold so it read GO AND CASH in flickering yellow letters, lopsided, felt about right for where my life currently was.

I'd changed out of yesterday's shirt, at least. I showered, swallowed more water than I thought a human stomach could hold, hoping that the nauseating feeling would be drowned out, but bad idea because now my stomach made a sound when I moved too fast. My most nondescript hoodie was the outfit for the day, better to blend in while I attempted to offload evidence of my own personal crime scene.

Because that's what this was, wasn't it. A crime scene. Exhibit A: one engagement ring, obtained under false pretenses, currently residing on the ring finger of a woman who had absolutely no business wearing it.

Had Emeric stolen it? Or was it a mistake?

Exhibit A? Nahhh, more like the victim in all this. A typical example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The bell over the door jingled sadly as I walked in. The place smelled like dust and old velvet, it smelled musty, my guess was that the old velvet chairs oddly arranged around the place got wet and never sunned.

A man in his sixties looked up from behind a counter cluttered with loupes and little felt trays, reading glasses pushed up into gray hair.

"Help you?"

"I hope so." I slid the ring off. It came free easier than I expected, then set it on the counter between us. "I need to know what this is worth."

He didn't reach for it right away. Just looked at it a second, the way you'd look at a weird dessert before choosing to eat it or not. Then he picked up his loupe, screwed it into his eye socket, and lifted the ring toward the one good light hanging over his register.

I waited. Drumming my fingers against the counter, glancing around. Behind me, someone's laundry cycle buzzed through the shared wall.

"Where'd you get this," he said. Not really a question.

"It's a long story."

"Try me."

"A guy gave it to me. Last night. At a restaurant." I heard how that sounded the second it left my mouth and winced.

The man had relapsed in his worn out chair, staring at me.

"It's not what it sounds like."

"Mm." He turned it slowly under the light, and I watched something shift in his face, the mild, practiced boredom of a man who'd seen a thousand engagement rings sliding into something sharper, more careful. "Do you mind if I get a second opinion?"

"On a ring?"

"On this ring." He set it down like it might go off. "I'll be right back."

He disappeared through a curtained doorway before I could answer, and I stood there in the smell of dust and damp velvet, suddenly feeling very aware of every hidden camera that might be pointed at me.

Did he go off to alert the police?

My heart raced through every possible outcome, then the beaded curtain shifted.

I exhaled, half expecting the worst.

He was with another man, younger, thinner, wearing a Rolex that looked considerably more real than anything else in the shop. The younger man didn't say hello. He just picked up the ring, held it to the light exactly the way the first one had, and went very, very still.

"Where did you say you got this?"

"I didn't, really. A restaurant. Someone gave it to me."

"Gave it to you." The man said, boring a hole into my head with his stare, again, not a question.

Why didn't they ask me the question?

He looked at the older man, and something passed between them, some silent conversation I wasn't part of. "You know whose setting this is?"

"No?" I replied.

"This is a Miller Atelier setting." He said it slowly, "This isn't off a shelf. This is bespoke. Custom stone, custom cut, and unless I'm very wrong—" he turned it, caught the light again, and exhaled through his nose "—I'm not wrong. This piece is worth more than everything in this shop combined. Possibly more than the shop itself."

My mouth went dry. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I'm not buying this," the older man said, stepping back like the ring had grown teeth. "I'm not touching it. Not without knowing where it came from.”

He exchanged looks with the other man and the thinner man in cue left through the curtain he'd burst out from.

“you don't have a receipt, an appraisal, something, anything?”

I was too stunned to conjure words, I stared at my fingers and shook my head.

“I don't want a ring like that walking into my shop and walking back out with my name attached to it." He said and returned to the item he'd been cleaning when I walked in.

He dismissed me.

I cleared my throat "I just want to know what it's worth," I said, hearing my own voice climb half an octave. "I'm not trying to sell it, I just—"

"Ma'am." The man pushed the ring towards me very carefully, "A piece like this doesn't get valued over a counter without paperwork proving it's actually yours to have valued."

I looked down at the ring sitting there between us, small and glittering and understood, with a sinking, full-body certainty, that I was in so much more trouble than I had let myself believe.