Actually, it would be very soon. But there was something needy in Honey’s voice. Rina said, “Anytime you want.”

“Wonderful!”

Rina could almost see Honey’s smile through the line.

“And don’t you dare put yourself out,” Honey insisted. “Just putting us up is dayenu. It’s enough! I don’t know the flight yet so I’ll call you when we arrive in LA. If you’re not home, don’t worry. We’ll wait at the airport. It’s the first time the younger kids have flown, so they’ll be very excited about everything.”

Rina said, “I’ll be sure to be home all morning.”

“Thanks, Rina,” Honey said. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“A safe?” Orit looked surprised. “Why would he have a safe? He keeps all his loose stones in the vault downtown.”

“Surely your sister-in-law has some nice pieces,” Marge said. “Where does she keep them?”

“Downtown.” Orit walked around the entry hall, rubbing her arms. “When she wants to wear a piece, she calls Arik up and asks him to bring it home. That’s what I always do.”

Decker said, “You keep pieces with him?”

Orit nodded. “They’re family pieces—for me, for my brother, too. If Dalia wants to wear it…okay. Someday my daughter will wear them at her wedding, ken yirbu.”

As Orit smiled, webbing appeared at the corner of her eyes.

“My father is a very clever man. He managed to smuggle out of Europe some beautiful pieces. They are in the family for hundreds of years. What jewelry Papa didn’t use to bribe the border guards, he swallowed stone by stone. On the boat, he had a very bad case of diarrhea.”

She laughed, but it was tinged with sadness.

“They almost didn’t let him into Israel—it was British Palestine back then. But the British were as bad as the Germans. A stone here, a stone there, all of a sudden the guards changed Mendel Stein into Moshe Yalom. They gave him a new identity, a new passport, everything. That’s why my father taught Arik and me to cut stones—a profession to carry on the back.”

Decker said, “Let me ask you this, Orit. You call up your brother and ask him to bring home the piece you want to wear, right?”

“Nachon,” she answered. “Correct.”

“So you go out for the evening, wearing the jewelry. Then you go back home, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you keep the piece until you give it back to your brother the following morning?”

Orit didn’t answer.

Decker said, “You’re going to have to trust someone, Orit, if you want to get to the bottom of this.”

“You think something’s wrong, don’t you?”

“We’re a little concerned,” Marge said.

Orit shrugged. “On my dresser. If I want to hide it I don’t put it in my safe.”