A Fool and His Monet

by Sandra Orchard

  “Knew it’d be easier to fence a lesser-known work,” I finished for her.

  “Yeah, but then why take the Monet?”

  “Filling a shopping list, maybe.” I walked from one rack to the next, hoping to see something that would give me a clue why those two paintings in particular were snatched and who did the snatching. Was it a random crime of opportunity? Or had the thief come with a shopping list? “Those were the only two paintings missing?”

  “Yes, I’ve had my team working around the clock taking inventory ever since the discovery.”

  “But they don’t know why you’re taking inventory?”

  “Right. Although if it was an inside job, the thief will have figured it out.”

  My foot hit something metallic, and it rolled under a rack of shelves. Squatting, I shined my pen light in the narrow space and fished out an inch-long section of copper pipe with my pen. “Any idea how this got here?”

  “Must be from the contractors who fixed the leaky water pipe last May. Remember I said we did an inventory in May? The leak was the reason. The paintings had to be relocated while the pipe was repaired.”

  “Were both of the missing paintings accounted for after the men finished the job?” Tradesmen were in a uniquely convenient position to pilfer pieces out of an establishment. Power was often disabled in the areas where they worked, rendering sensors and surveillance cameras useless. And their toolboxes and blueprint tubes offered ample cover to smuggle out a rolled canvas undetected.

  “Yes and no. The correct number of pieces were returned to the vault, but the men continued to work on this level for two more days after that.”

  “Was the vault locked during those days?”

  “Yes.”

  I examined the door’s lock. “There aren’t any scratches. Doesn’t look like it’s been picked. I’ll bring in an evidence team to lift fingerprints from the room. Did the tradesmen have any cause to handle the storage units?”

  “No. But with how many of us have been down here inventorying, I doubt any prints your team finds will prove anything.”

  “Where’s your optimism?” I tossed her a smile, but she didn’t return it. “I guess you’d rather I didn’t draw attention to my investigation by bringing in a team?”

  Zoe winced. “Yeah, that too.”

  “Well, you did the right thing by coming to me.” I squeezed her arm reassuringly. “The FBI takes the theft of our cultural heritage very seriously. First of all, I’m going to need everything you can tell me about the provenance of the pieces, as well as pictures of the front and back, if you have them, so I can get the information uploaded to the Art Loss Register and the FBI’s stolen art database.”

  “We can get all that from the office right now.” She motioned me out of the room, but at the sound of someone trying to open the hall door, I pushed her back inside.

  “Who would come down here now?” I whispered, pushing the vault door not quite closed so I could see who came down the hall.

  “No one should be. But one of the security guards might be checking to make sure the door’s locked.”

  I waited until the tugging stopped, then scooped the lanyard that held the key card from her neck. “C’mon, I want to see who that was.”

  Zoe locked the vault door as I sprinted to the end of the hall and swiped the card over the lock. Bounding out, I caught a glimpse of a sneaker and a denim-clad leg on the second turn of the stairs. “Stop right there,” I shouted and pounded up after him.

  Rounding the landing, he ran past the first-floor door and raced up the next stretch of stairs.

  “Call for backup,” I shouted down to Zoe. As I rounded the landing, the first-level door crashed open and a blue streak slammed me into the stair rail.

  “Got you,” the same young man who’d stopped us earlier spat, then proceeded to wrench my arm behind my back while shoving my upper torso over the rail.

  Zoe raced past us, crying, “Not her!”

  But I didn’t have time to wait for him to put two and two together. Springing away from the rail, I plowed backward and pinned him to the block wall. Then I twisted the wrist he’d caught and jabbed my elbow into his gut. “Sorry,” I said, as he let out a pained oomph. “But I gotta go.”

  The second-floor door clanked open and I sprinted faster. “Native Art exhibit,” Zoe shouted into her radio as I reached her. She’d planted herself at the doorway to the exhibit, hands braced on her thighs, gulping in breaths. “It’s a kid. He can’t be more than twelve or thirteen.”

  Three blue shirts appeared at the door at the other end of the exhibit, and two red shirts closed off the side door that led to another exhibit. The eager-beaver guard I’d elbowed raced up behind us. But the room was empty. “Did you see a kid pass?” I asked the other staff. “He was wearing jeans, a denim jacket, dirty white sneakers.”

  “He’s in the tepee,” Zoe said, still straining to slow her breathing.

  As two guards hauled the kid out of the tepee, an unwelcome thought struck. “Get back to your posts,” I ordered the rest of the staff and raced through the exhibit to the balcony overlooking the main atrium and linking the south wing to the north wing. Our little chase had commandeered the attention of at least seven staff members, leaving who knows how many potential targets unguarded. I scanned the movement in and out of the exhibits flanking either side of the atrium.

  The staff at the entrance seemed to be scanning exiting patrons extra diligently. Zoe had trained them well.

  A few minutes later, Zoe and another guard escorted the kid to the reception desk on the main floor, where a harried parent, or possibly teacher, reamed into him. The man accompanied Zoe and the boy to the back of the atrium to the security office. Staff members congregated in small groups, no doubt relaying their role in the excitement. Except for the guy who tried to take me down in the stairwell—he stood by himself at the Impressionist gallery, west of the atrium. Back in the stairwell he’d been eager to prove himself.

  Or was it that he had something to hide?

  I did a quick circuit through all the exhibits to check out the other staff members.

  One of the blue shirts who’d hauled the kid out of the teepee nodded my way. “This is the most excitement we’ve had since the senator’s daughter had the peanut butter reaction.”

  Most didn’t give me a second glance, which wasn’t surprising since they didn’t know I was a federal agent. By the time I reached the main floor, the kid who’d caused the commotion was being escorted out of the museum, and the security guard who’d mistakenly grabbed me was chatting up a young woman behind the circular reception desk in the center of the atrium.

  “How were you to know?” she said to him. “You saw her running. That’s suspicious.”

  He glanced my way as I passed and nodded sheepishly, then resumed his conversation in a softer voice.

  Zoe joined me halfway across the atrium.

  “What’s the kid’s story?” I asked.

  “He said he made a wrong turn and got lost, then got scared when we chased him.”

  I elbowed Zoe as we headed to her office. “You’re getting out of shape. You should jog with me in the mornings.”

  “No thanks. My knees can’t take jogging, remember?”

  Right. She’d wrecked her knees running for the high school cross-country team. “Take up swimming then. It’s good exercise.”

  “Are you kidding me? Have you looked at a whale lately? All they do is swim and they’re nothing but blubber.”

  I laughed. “Well, if you don’t get your car fixed soon, you might be doing a lot of walking.”

  “Please, don’t remind me.”

  As we stepped into the main security office that housed the monitors reeling the security camera feeds, I said, “Did the security footage corroborate the kid’s story?”

  “Yes—and yes, I checked the other camera feeds for suspicious behavior, since you clearly thought the chase was a diversion.”

  “You have
to admit it would’ve been a good one.”

  Zoe winced, and I regretted adding salt to her already festering wounds. “The boy’s teacher indicated that he was somewhat developmentally delayed and didn’t process instructions well.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I know that hmm. You don’t believe it was nothing?”

  “Could’ve been. But the kid would make a perfect lackey. It could’ve been a dry run to gauge how security would respond.”

  “Well, if that’s what it was, the guy pulling the kid’s strings can count on us being more alert than ever the next time.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Again with the hmms? I’ve got enough stress without you filling my head with more scenarios.” She walked into her office and snatched up a file folder from her desk. Waving me in, she closed the door and handed over the file. “This is everything we have on the missing paintings.”

  I leafed through the folder. “This is perfect. Exactly what I need.” Although not without its critics, the Art Loss Register, a private London-based corporation’s ever-expanding international database of stolen art, was our best hope of recovering the stolen pieces. “If we get lucky, a scrupulous dealer might check out the painting’s legitimacy before buying it and report the seller.”

  Of course, lots of buyers simply chose not to purchase a painting after discovering it on the Register. They wouldn’t report it, because they didn’t want to get involved. But Zoe didn’t need to be reminded of that right now.

  I closed the file and pulled out my notebook once more. “Earlier you said the paintings might have been misplaced. Are you thinking in the haste of moving them for the leak?”

  “Actually, I was hoping they might’ve been loaned to another museum and the record misfiled. But”—she snatched up a memo from her desk—“admin just got back to me on the results of the database search I requested. There’s no record of a request for those pieces, let alone of a loan.”

  “Okay, then next I’ll need a list of all museum employees and contractors from the last nine months. Highlight those who could’ve readily accessed the vault.”

  “We’re talking over a hundred people. Are you going to interview all of them?”

  “Yes.” I’d likely be looking at dozens of potential suspects. Not to mention that by now the paintings could’ve changed hands a few times, growing cleaner with every sale.

  Zoe dropped her head into her hands and moaned. “I’m doomed.”

  “No, you’re not. We’ll get the paintings back,” I said, even though the chances of success looked remote.

  “You don’t understand. The museum hasn’t had a theft in over thirty years. After Len died and, thanks to my seniority, the board appointed me temporary head of security, I had to do some serious selling to convince them we needed to invest in an updated security system.”

  “And clearly they needed it.”

  “Unless it happened after the update. Or because of it!”

  “Hmm.”

  “Serena, you’re really stressing me out with those hmms.”

  “Sorry. Okay, let me get started on putting out the word that the paintings are missing.”

  Zoe lurched for the file folder. “Oh, no, we don’t want any publicity.”

  I pried off her fingers. “Not a problem. After this many months, there isn’t much point in going public. But I’ve compiled an email list of people that it would be advantageous to alert in cases like this.”

  Zoe shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Trust me, Zoe. I’m modeling my approach on the procedures of a couple of successful pioneer art crime detectives out of Montreal and California. They both collected contact information for art galleries, dealers, auction houses, police forces, even criminals. Basically anyone the thief might try to sell the work to. Then whenever they had a new piece they were looking for, they’d send out an email blast.”

  “But we’ve managed to keep the theft a secret from most of our employees. As soon as word of the theft gets out—”

  “Word is bound to leak out, Zoe. It can’t be helped. Not if you want to find out who did this and stop it from happening again.”

  Zoe gulped, the strain of the last few days showing in the purple smudges under her bloodshot eyes. “The board isn’t going to like this.”

  My heart crunched at her misery. “Then send them to me. This is the best way I know to help you. And it’s better that they’re respected for doing everything possible to find the missing paintings than to have word of the theft come out later and be criticized for doing nothing.” I zipped up my jacket, ready to head out and get started on the paperwork. “Trust me, most patrons will respect your efforts and trust that the resulting increased security will make their own loaned treasures all the safer.”

  Zoe gritted her teeth, not looking so sure the board would agree.

  “It’ll be okay,” I reassured. I glanced at my watch—already close to 2:00. I still needed to return to my apartment and shower, but the museum was open until 9:00 on Fridays. “I’ll head to headquarters and take care of the preliminaries, then join you back here after supper to begin interviewing staff.”

  She grabbed her coat and purse. “I’ll drive you home.”

  Recalling the drive over, I held up my hand to stop her. “That’s okay. I could use the walk and fresh air.”

  The FBI’s St. Louis Division serves forty-eight counties in addition to the city, with my jurisdiction for art crime investigations extending into the lower Midwest. But I spent most of my time at the headquarters on Market Street, west of Union Station—a quick ten-minute hop on I-64 from my place, traffic cooperating.

  A couple hours after I left the museum, I climbed the center stairs to the second floor of FBI headquarters. A row of conference and interrogation rooms bisected the level into two open-concept office areas, hemmed in by long walls of vertical filing cabinets to form a hallway on either side of the rooms.

  Tanner leaned against one of the cabinets, his arms crossed over his chest, watching me. When I reached the top step, he steered me toward my cubicle and lowered his voice. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be home.”

  Tanner was hard core. He lived and breathed the FBI, knew every last dot and dash of the handbook. He was the champion for all the innocent soccer moms and dog walkers out on the streets. And until thirty seconds ago, I’d been 100 percent sure he saw me as a kindred spirit.

  I cupped my ear forward with my finger, as if I couldn’t have heard him right. “You’re telling me to take a day off?”

  “Yes.”

  “You . . . are telling . . . me . . . to take a day off?”

  He grimaced. “You’re right. Never mind. You’re probably safer here.” He started to walk away.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s that supposed to mean?” After almost shooting Nate in the litter scoop this morning, I’d more or less managed to talk myself out of my paranoia about Baldy. After all, smart bad guys wanted to stay off an agent’s radar, not make their situation worse by targeting us and earning themselves top billing on our Most Wanted list.

  Tanner did that crooked-jaw slant that meant he’d rather eat dirt than answer me, and my pulse spiked.

  “What’s going on?” I pressed.

  He let out a resigned sigh. “We just got word that the guys you helped bust in Buffalo made bail. And not because they decided to play ball.”

  My pulse escalated into jumping jacks mode, and not the happy kind. “You think they’ll come after me?”

  “They’re bound to think you were working for us. If I’d been your handler, I would’ve made sure you were long gone before the takedown.”

  Translation: he thought I was in deep doo-doo.

  3

  Taking a seat at my desk, I tried to act like the news that Baldy and Sidekick were out of custody didn’t faze me. Thankfully, Tanner seemed to believe me.

  For the most part, I worked my cases like I was self-employed, calling in support s
taff when needed and adjusting my schedule to suit the demands of the case. But given how many months I’d run strategies past my former field training agent, I didn’t think twice when Tanner asked what I was working on.

  “Don’t rush into the interviews,” he advised after I filled him in on the art museum theft. “Get the list of names and do background and internet searches on the people first. The more you know about them going into the interviews, the better you’ll be able to read them.”

  I grinned.

  “I’ve told you that before, I guess?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sorry. You’re a good agent. You don’t need me meddling.”

  “That’s okay. I appreciate you taking an interest, but I really do need to get to work here.” I pointed to my computer, and Tanner returned to his own desk. I prepared my email blast and documented the specs for the Art Loss Register and FBI website. Now and again, I sensed Tanner hovering nearby as if he wanted to say something, but I pretended not to notice.

  Eventually, he stepped inside my cubicle and tapped my desk. “Time to call it a day.”

  “Yes, yes.” I glanced at the clock—5:00 already?—and typed faster before I lost my train of thought. “I told Zoe I’d stop back at the museum.”

  Tanner let out an exasperated sigh but didn’t try to change my mind before walking away.

  My cell phone rang a few minutes later. Zoe.

  “Hey,” she said. “I just emailed you the list of employees and contractors you wanted, but can we wait until tomorrow morning to meet again? I’ve been here since dawn and I’m beat.”

  I stood and peered over my cubicle wall into Tanner’s office space. It was empty. “Did Tanner tell you to call me?”

  “Tanner? Your FBI guy?”

  “He’s not my guy,” I said a tad too loudly, earning me a glance from an agent walking by.

  “Okay, okay, keep your shirt on. No, no one called me.”