Author's note: Once again, thank you all for reading and following this story! Thank you especially to max2013, BMSH, Cherylann Rivers, and EvergreenDreamweaver for your reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter VIII

Fifteen years earlier

Carson stared at the young woman, dumbfounded. For a moment, he felt like the dingy pawnshop was part of another dimension that he had unsuspectingly wandered into. "Your ring?" he managed to say after a long pause. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said," the girl replied. "That's my ring. I'll bet anything on it. I lost it a week ago. Where'd you find it?"

"Do you have a phone?" Carson asked. "I'm going to have to make a call."

"I only got a phone if you got an answer." The girl placed her hands on her hips and stared at him stubbornly. As Carson hesitated, she narrowed her eyes. "You found it at some crime scene, didn't you? I should have known."

"Why? Do you think someone in particular took it?" The question came out before Carson even had time to think about it.

"No. Why'd you ask a dumb question like that?" The girl shrugged, but the gesture was a little nervous. "It's just, if you'd found it just anywhere and you were trying to find the owner, you would have put an ad in the paper or taken it to the cops. Are you a cop?"

"No, I'm not," Carson replied quite honestly. "I – Well, I –"

"You're a cop." The woman sighed. "Okay. Just go ahead and arrest me. It's not the first time I've been arrested even though I didn't do a thing."

"I can't arrest you," Carson told her. "I couldn't even if I was a cop. You're right, though. This ring was at a crime scene. I'm going to need your name, though."

"If I give you my name, do I get my ring back?" The woman eyed him suspiciously.

"I'm afraid not," Carson replied. "The police are holding it as evidence. You might be able to be a big help in the investigation, though, and so we'll need to be able to get hold of you."

"That's not hard these days." The woman sighed. "The name's Joy Moriare." She chuckled bitterly. "It sure doesn't fit."

"Carson Drew." Carson held out his hand to shake, but she ignored it. Feeling awkward, he asked, "Can I use your phone?"

"To call the cops?" Joy asked.

"Well, yeah," Carson admitted. "But just to see if they have any questions for you. They won't arrest you, especially not if you haven't done anything."

"Okay, sure, whatever." Joy shrugged listlessly. "I should just let the cops keep that ring. I'd rather if they'd just take the husband and not give him back, though. The phone's over there." She pointed at a telephone.

Carson went to pick it up, trying to decide what to make of Joy Moriare. He checked the notebook in his pocket and dialed the number that Lieutenant Hardy had given him.

"Hello. This is the Hardys," a woman's pleasant voice said in answer.

"This is Carson Drew," Carson replied. "Can I speak to Lieutenant Hardy, please?"

"Just a moment," the woman said.

As Carson waited, the door to the shop opened and a man strode in. He glanced at Carson with a scowl and then got into Joy's face.

"What's going on?" he demanded. "That phone's not for personal use."

"This isn't personal use," Joy told him. "The cops found my ring and they've got some questions about why it was where it was. I've got some questions of my own on that account, too."

The man's face contorted with mixed rage and surprise. He turned on Carson. "You're a cop?"

Carson squirmed uncomfortably. He didn't trust the situation, unsure whether it would be better to tell the truth or not. "That's close enough," he said finally, deciding to split the difference.

"What's that supposed to mean?" The man practically shouted it.

Before Carson could reply, he heard the voice of the woman on the phone return. "Hello? Are you still there? I'm afraid my husband's still asleep. Is it something important?"

"Yeah," Carson told her. "Tell him I'm at the last pawnshop on the list and I could –"

The man ripped the phone from his grasp and slammed it down on the cradle. "Whaddya think you're doing? Calling in reinforcements?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake, you're only making things worse, Dan," Joy broke in. "You're such an idiot sometimes."

"Shut up!" The man turned his attention away from Carson just long enough to slap her pale cheek hard enough that it flushed bright red.

"Look, buddy," Carson said. "That's no –"

Sneering angrily, the man caught the front of Carson's shirt. "As for you, cop, you're not going to tell nobody about this." Before Carson could protest, he felt a heavy blow hit his stomach.

"Stop it!" Joy shrieked. "Dan, what do you think you're doing? Cut it out or I'm through! I'm leaving."

"Don't mean nothing to me," Dan said, cuffing Carson's ear.

He must have let go of Carson's shirt, because the blow sent him reeling backwards, and he fell against one of the shelves. Several heavy objects tumbled off of it. Just as he blacked out, he heard Joy scream again and somehow got the impression that Dan had turned on her now.

NDNDNDNDND

"He's coming around now." The voice cut into Carson's consciousness, rattling around his head like a kettledrum. "We might not need that ambulance after all."

"I'm still calling for it," another voice replied.

"Wait. I'm fine." Carson blinked his eyes, trying to focus on what was happening and remember what had happened.

"Hey, slow down." Someone gently held him down as he made a feeble attempt to sit up. Carson tried to concentrate and realized that it was Sergeant Johnson.

As Carson's head cleared, he realized that he was half-sitting, half lying on the floor of the pawnshop, pieces of broken merchandise all around him. Johnson was kneeling next to him, and Hardy was standing at the phone, holding it in his hand but he had evidently not placed the emergency call yet.

"You've got some cut on your head," Johnson went on. "One of those glass knick-knacks must have hit you. You probably have a concussion and you're definitely going to need stitches."

"I don't need an ambulance," Carson insisted, his mind growing clearer. "I'm fine."

"You mean stubborn," Hardy corrected him. "What happened? My wife said you tried to call me and then got cut off."

"Ugh," Carson groaned as he tried to sit up again. This time, Johnson let him.

"From the looks of things, you must have cracked the case wide open," Johnson said with a grin.

"Maybe." Carson took another moment to straighten out his thoughts. "There was a woman at the desk. She said the ring was hers."

"So she slugged you?" Johnson asked.

"Not her. Her husband, I think," Carson replied. "She let me use the phone to call the lieutenant. He came busting in her while I was on the phone. He hit her, and then he thought I was a cop, so that's when he hit me."

"Did either of them give you a name?" Hardy set the phone in its cradle and looked at him intently.

"Uh," Carson said, "yeah. She said her name was Joy Moriare. She called the man Dan."

"Moriare?" Hardy repeated incredulously.

Johnson whistled. "Well, if that's a coincidence, I'll eat my badge."

Hardy rolled his eyes, but he said, "If that wasn't such a corny way to say it, I'd agree with you. If you haven't just solved the case, Carson, this has to be a major clue."

"Sorry," Carson said. "I think I'm missing something. Should that name mean something to me?"

"If you've really read the Sherlock Holmes books like you say you have, it should," Johnson replied. "Moriarty? Sherlock's arch-enemy?"

"This guy wasn't really the Moriarty type." Carson flinched as he rubbed his ear where Dan had hit him.

"We still need to look into it," Hardy said. "It's pretty tough to believe it's not important."

"First we need to look after Carson here," Johnson told him. "You sure you don't want an ambulance?"

"I'm fine." Carson struggled to his feet. He swayed for a moment, but then he regained his balance. "See?"

"You're still going to need stitches, man," Johnson said. "If he doesn't let us call him an ambulance, we're going to have to take him to the hospital ourselves, Fenton."

"Good idea," Hardy agreed. "We can call his wife to have her pick him up."

"She's at work," Carson told them.

"I'm sure they'll give her the rest of the day off when they hear that her husband's in hospital," Hardy told him. "We'll just need to wait a few minutes for our back-up to get here."

NDNDNDNDND

Hardy and Johnson had asked a lot of questions on the way to the hospital. By the time they arrived, Carson had told them every detail he could remember about what had happened.

After the examination, the doctor confirmed that Carson had a mild concussion. He recommended that Carson stay in the hospital for observation, but Carson insisted on going home. Reluctantly, the doctor allowed it.

When he came out into the waiting room, Carson found Kate talking to Hardy and Johnson. Kate practically came running toward him when she saw him, an expression partially of worry and partially of reproach in her eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Carson assured her. "A couple of stitches and I've got a mild concussion. It's no big deal."

"Even a mild concussion can be a pretty big deal," Johnson told him. "Back when I was playing football in high school, I got a concussion and had to sit the rest of the season out. There were only a few weeks left, but still."

"That must be what happened to you," Hardy said, looking serious. "It's a good thing that at least one of can still think."

"You've got a terrible sense of humor, you know that," Johnson told him.

"What's this all about?" Kate asked, going back to the matter at hand. "You get called into work and the next thing I know the police call me and say you're in the hospital because you've been beaten up by a mobster."

"We don't know that he was a mobster exactly," Carson replied.

Kate crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Does that really make a difference?" She retained her stern posture. "You're playing amateur detective again, aren't you? And the police approve this time?"

"Mrs. Drew," Hardy tried to appease her, "we realize there's danger involved in this, but we'll make sure nothing like this happens again."

"That's good, but that's not what I'm getting at." Kate's stern expression melted into a smile as she shook her head. "This is so not fair. I'm stuck in a cubicle while Carson gets to chase down mobsters. If I would have thought you were going to get to do things like that, I would have applied for law school."

Present day

Carson rubbed his head where the scar still was, trying to focus on the briefing he was supposed to be writing. Between that old case and the danger the Nancy was in and now George's disappearance, focusing was not one of his strong suits just now.

"Chris," he said, going to the door into the outer office and addressing his assistant. "Could you cancel my appointments for the rest of the day? Tell them it's a family emergency."

"Did something happen to Nancy?" Chris asked, looking up from his work.

"Not yet," Carson replied.

Chris gave him a curious look, but then he shrugged. "Okay. I've been around here long enough to figure out that disaster is always following the Drew family around."

Carson tried to fake a smile, but his assistant's words hit a little too close to home.