Read Online The Pandora Box by Lilly Maytree - Free Book Online

reached for her purse on the seat between them and opened the door. “A drunk who hasn’t woken up, yet.”
    “Dee, get back in this car! I say you’ve driven us into a lowlife, dangerous...”
    “I’m just going to make sure he’s all right.”
    “He could be an axe murderer! It’s none of our business!”
    “Of course it’s our business. We saw him, didn’t we? Are we Good Samaritans or aren’t we?” She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder and put her hat back on. “I’ll be back in a few. I need something from this pawn shop right here.”
    “Then, I’m going to turn the car around and keep the motor running.” Marion fumbled in her purse for a moment and came up with a cell phone. “I’ll dial nine-one. And if you aren’t back in five minutes, I’ll hit another one.”
    “You hit someone with that cell phone, Mare, and it would only make them mad.”
    “The number one,” she raised her voice as Dee shut the door. “If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m calling 911!”
     
    ****
     
    Marion slid over to the driver seat and watched Dee walk in front of the car, step up onto the sidewalk, and then cross over to the recessed doorway beneath faded red lettering on the side of the building that spelled out the words Pappy’s Pawn . Dee leaned down to gently shake a shoulder, and the dead suddenly sprang to life.
    It was an old man with leathery brown skin and a surprised but tolerant grin.
    Marion couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the way he quickly got to his feet and opened the door for Dee, she was fairly certain he wasn’t an axe murderer. So she hung up the phone and lowered the window, to sit there and wait.
    It took closer to fifteen minutes by the time Dee came out again.
    Marion turned the car around, parallel parked, watched a young woman several doors down roll a rack of used clothing onto the sidewalk, and kept the engine running, ready to start off at a moment’s notice. Just in case.
    It was so that when Dee climbed back in and closed the door, all Marion had to do was ease the little red Geo out onto the road and head toward the Interstate highway again.
    “Well, it cost me a pretty penny just to have them look, but that was the only kind of place I could think where they could at least tell me if it’s real.” Dee put her sunglasses on.
    “Those places are notorious for cheating people, you know.”
    “Well, I found out what I needed to anyway. I made up my mind before I even went in; I wasn’t going to take any offers.”
    “Believe me, if it was Cleopatra’s wedding ring, they still wouldn’t offer more than fifty dollars.” Marion checked the rearview mirror before changing lanes. “That’s the way those kind of people operate.”
    “They offered eight thousand.”
    “Eight thousand!” Marion jerked the wheel looking over at her, and the car swerved slightly into the next lane before she corrected it. “What did you do? Sell it to pay for the trip? Eight thousand dollars!”
    “Heavens, no! That ring is worth fifty thousand if it’s worth a penny. I wouldn’t even auction it off at Christie’s now. It’s the best insurance we can get for what we’re going to be doing.”
    “Fifty thousand dollars! Do you hear what you’re saying?”
    “It’s a pittance compared to everything all together, Mare. Think about it.”
    “I’m thinking your pittance quotient just went from five thousand to fifty thousand in less than twenty-four hours. Are you sure all this is legal? What if it belongs to some long-lost relative or something and we’re stealing somebody’s inheritance?”
    “According to my research, all the Strassgaards died in the war. I was very careful about that. There were some Kellermans that may have been distant relations...but I couldn’t find any of them, either.”
    “They all died? The whole family just vanished off the face of the earth? Kellerman sounds like a pretty common name, if you ask me.”
    “Well, I’m