Crime Spree

I’ve got jewelry missing. A couple of weeks ago, I opened the ring box that I keep in my top dresser drawer to find that my engagement and wedding rings weren’t there. I hadn’t worn them for a while because of the pregnancy, but I couldn’t find them in any of the places I would normally put them had I taken them off anywhere but in my room. However, I didn’t want to panic, afterall, I’m pregnant, I could have misplaced them. Sure, I’m normally so neurotic about losing things that I have a very short list of places where I leave precious items, but given the choices, I usually feel that things are my fault.

I’ve had a woman coming to clean the house periodically for the last few months, as my pregnancy has progressed, and when I asked her if she’d seen the rings, she said no. At the time, it didn’t strike me as odd, but now when I think about it, she didn’t ask me any other questions, such as “what did the rings look like?” or “where do you usually keep them?” She just denied having seen them, and added that she would “look around” the next time she came to clean. So yesterday as she was leaving, she asked whether I had found them, and when I told her I hadn’t, she casually mentioned that her engagement ring was in a pawn shop.

It’s not that I suspected her, really, but I couldn’t come up with any other explanation. I kept looking everywhere for the rings, but they never turned up. Plus, in the back of my mind there was this one incident…after the second or third time she came here, I happened to open my night table drawer, and noticed that the two Tylenol with codeine that I had left in a prescription bottle were missing. I get migraines, and that’s what the dr. gave me to take during pregnancy should I get one. I was pretty sure that I had left two in the bottle, but pregnancy makes you doubt yourself. Maybe I had taken them, or moved them to some other place. But if I had done that, why wouldn’t I have thrown away the bottle since there was no refill on the prescription?

Later in the afternoon, I went to look at my jewelry, thinking again, maybe it’s me…maybe, even though I’ve looked through that drawer half a dozen times, maybe I missed them. I didn’t find them, but I did find that the earrings my husband gave me as a wedding present were gone too. They were pearl and diamond and I haven’t worn them since May when we went to out to a swanky place for dinner. Plus, I know they were there when I took inventory after losing my rings!

So, I called the police, and while they were sending somebody, I took another, broader inventory. Also missing are a little ring that my father gave to my mother when they were dating. I had kept it in another drawer in a box of old memories and other bits of junk. It had four little diamonds and a blue (possibly opal?) stone in the center. It was left to me when my mother died, and I was ten. Also missing, my father’s original gold wedding band, from his marriage to my mother. FUCK!

The police officer was very nice. She seems pretty sure that the items were pilfered by the cleaning lady, and is in the process of tracking her down. She came back today to show me some mugshots, but none of them matched the face. It turns out that the cleaning lady might have given me (and the person who recommended her)an alias. I am so sad right now.

I realize there are bigger things going on in the world today, and that I am lucky to have all the wonderful things I have, the things that really are not replaceable, but I am still bummed. I feel stupid and violated.