Murder & The Monkey Band: High Desert Cozy Mystery Series Read Online Free

Monkey
Band pieces, he’d become consumed with wanting to own the entire Monkey Band
set and within a few years he’d been able to collect all of them with the
exception of three pieces: the hurdy gurdy player; the conductor of the band;
and the bagpiper. His Meissen collection was his passion, or as the French
would say, his raison d’être , meaning his reason to be. Ever since he’d
learned that Pam Jensen had the three pieces which would complete his Monkey
Band collection, he had spent almost every waking moment of the day thinking
about how he could get them. He was desperate to own all twenty-two pieces of
the Monkey Band.
    She’s made it very clear
she’s never going to sell them to me, but I hear her son Jim is money hungry.
If something happened to her, I might be able to buy the pieces from him, Henry thought.
    He sat for a moment
thinking about the steps he needed to take to complete his collection, and then
he picked up his phone. “Nick, I have a job for you. It involves a little more
than what you’ve done for me in the past, but I’ll make it worth your time.” He
listened for a moment and said, “Come to my house this evening, and I’ll give
you the particulars.”
    Henry smiled thinking
about what it was going to feel like when he finally owned the complete set of
the 18th century Meissen Monkey Band. He looked at the other pieces of his
Monkey Band collection and visualized how the missing three pieces would look
in his glass-fronted display case.
    It’s too bad, but Pam will
simply be collateral damage, and that happens in the world of high stakes
antiques. She should have taken me up on my offer. At least she would have
lived if she had.
    Henry had briefly
considered having Nick steal the pieces he wanted, but he knew that sooner or
later he might be questioned because everyone in the antique world knew that
Henry Siegelman wanted those pieces to complete his Meissen Monkey Band. If Pam
was murdered and the entire Monkey Band was stolen, no one would point a finger
at him.

CHAPTER 4
     
    “Rosa,” Pam Jensen said as she got
ready to go shopping, “I know I tell you this every time I see you dusting my
Meissen Monkey Band pieces, but it always makes me nervous. You know how much I
trust you, but those pieces are so special to me, and evidently to a few other
people as well. Please be extra careful with them when you’re dusting. As I’ve
probably told you before, Brian surprised me with them many years ago. I’d
mentioned to him how charming I thought they were, and that I’d love to add
them to my collection of other Meissen pieces. Without telling me what he was
doing, he found someone in China who had a set and bought it for me as a
surprise gift on our tenth anniversary.”
    “I know how much you love
them, Mrs. Jensen, so I’m special careful with them. Don’t you worry.”
    When Pam was gone Rosa
took a long look at the Monkey Band pieces. She agreed with what Mrs. Jensen
had said – the pieces were special. In fact so special that yesterday a man had
offered Rosa a great deal of money if she would turn off the security alarm
when she left for the evening, so he could get into the house and steal the
pieces. He’d paid her $5,000 as hush money and told her there would be another
$45,000 for her if she agreed to do it. She liked Mrs. Jensen and didn’t want
to jeopardize her job, but with Julio out of work, money for their family had
really gotten tight. Even though Mrs. Jensen paid her well, it wasn’t enough to
support the two granddaughters she and Julio were raising plus themselves. She
felt her blood pressure rise just thinking about her daughter abandoning her
two little girls to go off with that good-for-nothing drug addict.
    Like he would be any
different from the rest of the men she’d had relationships with over the years.
I don’t think she even knows who the father is of those little girls. No one is
ever going to give me the Mother of the Year award for