The money went in my pocket and became my money, and I started slamming through the other drawers in the little kneehole desk, and several in a row contained nothing noteworthy and then I opened another and right on top were three cases of the sort that good watches come in. The first one was empty. The second and third were not. One of them was an Omega and the other was a Patek Philippe and they were both gorgeous. I closed the cases and placed them in my attaché case where they belonged.

The watches were choice but that was it for the living room and it was actually more than I’d expected. Because the living room like the kitchen was just a warm-up. Crystal Sheldrake lived alone, although she often had overnight guests, and she was a woman with a lot of valuable jewelry, and women keep their jewelry in the bedroom. I’m sure they think they do it so it’s handy when they’re getting dressed, but I think the real reason is that they sleep better surrounded by gold and diamonds. It makes them feel secure.

“It used to drive me crazy,” Craig had said. “Sometimes she left things lying out in plain sight. Or she’d just toss a bracelet and a necklace in the top drawer of the bedside table. She had the bedside table on the left-hand side, but I suppose they’re both hers now so check ’ em both.” No kidding. “I useta beg her to keep some of that stuff in a safe-deposit box. She said it’s too much trouble. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Let’s hope she didn’t start listening recently.”

“Not Crystal. She never listened to anybody.”

I took my attaché case into the bedroom with me and had a look for myself. Earrings, finger rings, bracelets, necklaces. Brooches, pendants, watches. Modern jewelry and antique jewelry. Fair stuff, good stuff, and a couple things that looked, to my reasonably professional eye, to be very good indeed. Dentists take in a certain amount of cash along with the checks, and hard as it may be to believe this, some of that cash doesn’t get reported to the Internal Revenue people.