My cheeks heated at the unexpected praise. “Thank you. I was only the authenticator. But it was pretty cool to be part of the recovery.”
Taking his seat once more, Tanner winked at me.
“Did you know about this?” I asked.
Dad slapped him on the back. “He was my authenticator. Didn’t want your mother to go to all the trouble of making a cake and then find out you’d really been in Des Moines, Iowa, or something.”
I watched the sparklers fizzle in stunned fascination at my parents’ impromptu surprise celebration. Mom had done an impressive job of mimicking a Kandinsky with colored icing. If only I could shake the niggling notion that this was some kind of reverse psychology to get me to quit.
Aunt Martha practically danced in her seat. “Yee! Wait ’til the girls at the hair salon hear.”
“No!” Tanner and I exclaimed in unison. “You can’t tell anyone she worked the case,” he went on. “Or that she’s worked undercover at all.”
A hesitant “oh” dropped from Aunt Martha’s lips.
Not good. Not good. Not good.
Never one to tiptoe around a problem, Mom blurted a tad hysterically, “Who did you tell?”
4
“I only told Mildred,” Aunt Martha said. “She’s a grandmother, for goodness’ sake. It’s not as if she’s going to go blabbing about Serena working undercover to the bad guys.”
“Mildred?” I repeated. Mildred who happened to notice me in the art gallery with my chalked-gray hair? “Mildred who called you the second she got home to tell you, and who knows who else, that she saw me spying on people at the art gallery this afternoon?”
Deflating, Aunt Martha squirmed. “Well, yeah.”
“Mildred,” my dad interjected, “whose niece is married to that biker gang guy?”
My heart hijacked my throat.
“Yes”—Aunt Martha conceded—“but it’s not as if she ever sees them.”
Muttering something about her aunt not wanting to know what nieces were capable of, Mom snatched the sparklers from the cake she’d baked and went at it with a knife. “Isn’t she already in enough danger without you having to go out and blab about her to your cronies?”
“It’s not that bad,” I reassured Mom. And since I was apparently a terrible liar, I convinced myself I believed it too.
“Call her right now,” Dad ordered Aunt Martha. “Tell her not to tell anyone.”
Tanner cleared his throat, snapping everyone’s attention his way. “In my experience, that only makes people talk more. Better to tell her you were wrong. That you couldn’t resist spinning the yarn since you figured no one would be able to verify it, but that really Serena had been attending a training session in Des Moines.”
“She’ll never believe her,” I said.
“Then she produces the receipts.”
“What receipts?”
“I’ll take care of those,” Tanner said.
“Ooh, photographs would be even better,” Aunt Martha chimed in.
Tanner nodded. “I can do photos.”
Okeydokey, if the FBI could make it look like I was in Des Moines, that worked for me. I devoured a piece of Mom’s cake, then sped through thank-yous and good-byes, promising to be back for Sunday dinner.
Stepping onto my parents’ porch, carrying leftover cake, I glanced at the driveway. “How on earth?” I closed my eyes. Gave my head a hard shake. Then looked again. “How’d my car get here?”
“I asked Nolan and Frank to deliver it,” Tanner said, as if it were an everyday occurrence.
“How’d they get it running? Change the battery?”
“Nah.” He started down the steps.
“Well, what then?”
“So,” he said conversationally, completely ignoring my question, “remember that time I had the flu and you forced me to watch The Sound of Music? In my weakened state?”
“There was a price to be paid for my mother’s chicken soup. And don’t change the subject.” Where were the keys? Surely not in the ignition, where anyone could help themselves to a new set of wheels.
“I have to admit, you were right. It was an inspiring movie.” Tanner opened my car’s passenger-side door and rummaged beneath the seat. “At least, there was one part in it that I really liked.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. I have superior movie tastes. Stop de-flect-ing.” I mentally rewound to our exchange in the parking lot and in the office before that. To how Tanner had conveniently driven up to my car at just the right moment. To the call from my mom to his phone.
To Tanner helpfully looking under the hood.
“You did something to sabotage my car!”
Tanner emerged from the front of the car with my keys, not even bothering to hide his grin. “Like I said, the movie was inspiring.” He slapped the keys into my palm.
I stared at them blankly. What was with all the movie talk? Suddenly, the scene from The Sound of Music crystallized in my mind: one of the nuns holding up the severed wires from the Nazis’ car, as the Von Trapp family escaped over the mountains.
Muffling a chuckle, I rattled the keys in my hand. “If you’re comparing yourself to a nun, you are more delusional than I thought.”
Tanner gave me a sympathetic look. “I know it’s got to be confusing for you, since I obviously remind you of Christopher Plummer.”
“Remind me of . . . ?” Oh, brother. Clearly, Tanner had caught on to my habit of associating people with well-known movie actors.
“You know? Because I’m so debonair.”
“Uh-huh. Here, I thought you meant because he’s so old.”
“Ouch.”
If Tanner thought I’d tell him who he really reminded me of, he had another think coming. His head was already big enough without needing to know that he reminded me of the dark-haired, devastatingly dimpled firefighter in the movie Accidental Husband, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Tanner gave me his most innocent look, which naturally I didn’t trust a bit. “My motives for the sabotage were honorable.”
I snorted. “Right. You wanted to bum a free meal out of my parents.”
He chuckled. “Tell me you weren’t going to use the art museum theft as an excuse to bail on them.”
I wiggled under the intensity of his gaze.
“I just did what was necessary to ensure you didn’t miss out on their surprise.”
I squinted at him. “My dad promised you Blues hockey tickets, didn’t he?”
He grinned. “That too. But aren’t you glad you came?”
“Yes, thank you.” I bumped his shoulder with my own. “You know if this gets around it’ll ruin your live-eat-and-breathe-FBI image.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting about those tickets.” He pulled the car door farther open and stepped out of the way so I could set down the cake. It had been a fun surprise and a really nice evening, despite Aunt Martha’s cat-out-of-the-bag confession and Mom’s . . . dating advice.
Tanner hovered so close I almost bumped into him as I straightened. Something about the cover of darkness and the fluffy white flakes drifting lazily from the sky and the niggling thought that Mom might be right made me whisper, “Do you ever have doubts about being married to the job?” before I could censor the thought.
Tanner slung his arm over my doorframe with an exaggerated sigh. “Who has time when there are rookies in need of proof they were in Des Moines yesterday?”
“I’m trying to be serious here.”
His gaze softened. “You know that spinster cat-lady thing is just a myth, right?” He back-stepped toward his SUV. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re a long way from spinsterhood.”
I cringed, not liking that that’s what he thought I was worried about. I was more worried about who might be waiting for me at my apartment that shouldn’t be there. And okay, yes, it was kind of lonely going home to an empty place sometimes.
Tanner was too astute for his own good.
“No way! You’re the FBI agent?�
� the male college student and part-time security guard who’d slammed me into the stair railing yesterday said as he sauntered into the office Zoe had loaned me to conduct my interviews. He spun around the chair intended for him and straddled it with all the swagger of a third-generation chauvinist.
Woohoo, my day was already picking up and it was only 10:30. I set down my coffee mug, circled to the front of the desk, and perched on the corner. “Special Agent Serena Jones.” I didn’t extend my hand. “And you are?”
He tried to appear as if it didn’t bug him to look up at me, if I’d read the tightness around his mouth right. “Malcolm Wilson.”
I made a show of flicking through the screens on my smartphone. “Ah, yes, sophomore at SLU, studying criminology, B student, former high school quarterback”—I tsked sympathetically—“but didn’t make the cut for the SLU team. Currently unattached.” I paused for effect. “Drive a car that’s seen better days, former employment includes flipping burgers at White Castle and hawking hotdogs at Busch Stadium. About right?”
His forehead had scrunched steadily tighter over the course of my recitation. “How do you know all that?”
I assumed my professional, semi-warm smile and turned my smartphone his way. “Social media.”
He leaned back, his expression morphing into disbelief. “No way. You couldn’t have gotten all that from my profile.”
I pulled up his online photo album and flicked through it photo by photo as I expounded on what they told me about him. It was a trick Tanner had taught me to convince the kid he wasn’t going to be able to bluff his way through my interview. “Tell me what you know about the missing art.”
“Don’t you have to read me my Miranda rights or something first?”
I tilted my head. “Why? You’re not under arrest. We’re just talking.”
He jutted his chin and attempted to cross his legs, only to be foiled by the back of the chair he’d chosen to straddle. “Oh, yeah, right. And I couldn’t have taken anything anyway, because I’m only bottom-level security.”
I nodded. Bottom-level security meant he monitored only public rooms and only during business hours. Considering how guys like him couldn’t resist flaunting their conquests, I would have agreed that the likelihood he’d managed to sneak down to the storage vaults and pilfer a couple of paintings, and then have the self-control not to boast about it, was pretty low. Except typically only the guilty offered an immediate reason why they couldn’t have committed a crime.
“What makes you think the art wasn’t taken during business hours?”
He dismissed the possibility with a flick of his wrist. “We scrutinize every person walking out of the place. If someone tried to smuggle something out, we’d have noticed.”
“What about employees exiting by the back door?”
His gaze drifted to the window that overlooked the main office area. “I guess employees would have an easier time slipping something out.”
I followed the direction of his gaze and almost teetered off the corner of the desk. “Excuse me a minute.” I hurried out of the office and through the adjoining administrative area.
Zoe, who’d been reviewing files at a nearby desk, chased after me. “What’s wrong?”
I flung open the door, spying Aunt Martha’s blue-gray curls bobbing past the circular reception desk in the center of the atrium, and tore after her. I caught the sleeve of her wool coat a second before she switched her trajectory toward an unwitting security guard. “No you don’t.”
Aunt Martha yanked her arm from my grasp and turned to glare at me, only . . .
She wasn’t Aunt Martha. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were someone else.” I about-faced and crashed into Zoe.
“Hey!” Zoe rubbed the arm I’d accidentally elbowed. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” Her voice dropped to a hiss close to my ear. “I thought you were foiling a robbery or something.”
I glanced around, and realizing half a dozen staff members had circled the Aunt Martha lookalike and me, I wished I could dive under Monet’s water lilies and pretend it never happened. “I thought I saw my aunt,” I said.
Zoe dismissed the staff who’d run to my aid. “And that’s a problem why?”
I looked at her as if she’d grown two heads. “Are you forgetting about Thanksgiving?” She’d interrogated every household on the street, all but accusing them of heisting our Thanksgiving turkey out of the garage fridge, only to return home to find Dad deep frying it in the backyard.
Zoe’s eyes ballooned. “Are you telling me you told her about the missing paintings?”
“No, of course not. She guessed.”
Zoe moaned.
“The good news is she’s not here.” At least not yet. By the time I returned to the office, Malcolm had reseated himself the right way and was intent on the screen of his phone—an online chat by the looks of it—with his thumbs tapping out a message at lightning speed.
“Aren’t you supposed to leave cell phones in your locker before starting your shift?”
He hit the screen one last time, then shoved the phone in his pocket. “I forgot.”
If every teen I knew didn’t spend every spare minute on his phone, I might’ve been suspicious. I pulled my chair around from behind the desk and sat down. “Sorry for the interruption. Do you have any theories on how the thief got from the vault to the back door without anyone noticing them?” I leaned toward him to convey how sincerely I’d value his input. Okay, the sincerity was smoke and mirrors, but more than once, the line had given me a lead.
“Wouldn’t have happened on my shift.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I do my job. And I want to keep it.”
Okay, so I was asking the wrong question. “Anyone come to mind who might be desperate enough to take the risk?” Last night’s internet searches hadn’t turned up any urgent motives that I could tell.
Malcolm pursed his lips, twisting them sideways. “Yeah, Linda Kempler.” The derision in his voice made me wonder if she was an ex-girlfriend. Spurned partners, or wannabe partners, made for very talkative—if not always truthful—witnesses. “She was helping with the kids’ programs.”
“Her motive?”
“Money. She lives in The Loop.”
The trendy shopping and entertainment area, attracting an eclectic mix of people, had acquired its name from the streetcar turnaround or “loop” formerly located in the area.
“Rent has to be more than what she can afford working here. I figure she only took the job to get her hands on some paintings.”
“What makes you think that? A boyfriend or roommate might help pay her rent.”
“Because from day one she was real nosy. Asked lots of questions like she was trying to figure out who she could trust and who she couldn’t.”
“Did you notice anyone in particular she spent more time talking to than the others?”
“Yeah, Cody Stafford. He was really into the art.”
“Was?”
“He quit at the end of the year. She talked to the receptionists a lot too. Of course, everyone does that.”
“She talk to you?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of questions did she ask?”
“What I was studying in school. If I was interested in politics. If I voted in the last election. That kind of thing.”
“And you found that suspicious?”
“Sure. Then, this morning, her brother shows up looking for her. Only she’s called in sick.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to catch up to her.”
Malcolm’s swaggering smile returned, causing me to take everything he’d just said with a boulder-sized grain of salt.
“What about yourself? Students can always use money, right?”
He tugged at his collar. “Not me. My dad’s a janitor at the university. My tuition’s covered.”
“Yes, I was able to enjoy the same perk,” I admitted, hoping the com
mon experience would enhance my rapport with him. “What about drug money? Are you aware of any employees with a drug problem?” He didn’t strike me as a user, but in the last decade, art crime had become a far-too-popular means of financing drugs.
“Nah, not here.”
“Okay.” I stood to signal the end of our interview. “Thank you for your time, Malcolm.” I offered my hand. “I appreciate your candor.”
His grip was dry and firm, topsy-turvying my sense that he hadn’t been altogether straight with me.
Zoe looked my way as I stepped out of the office behind Malcolm.
I gave my head a tiny shake to indicate that he wasn’t likely our man. After he exited the reception area, I asked Zoe, “What can you tell me about Linda Kempler?”
“She seems nice.”
“Malcolm seems to think she lives beyond her means.”
“She only works here part time, so she might have a better paying job the rest of the time.”
“Malcolm said she called in sick this morning?”
“Oh.” Zoe scanned the schedule posted on the wall behind her. “Yes, her name’s been crossed out. I can get you her contact information so you can reach her at home.”
“Yes, do that. And speak to her closest colleagues. Find out what they know about her.”
“The employees have been doing a lot of whispering amongst themselves since you started interviewing this morning.” She turned to her computer and brought up the employee database.
“Any of them seem nervous about the prospect of being interviewed?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
Irene, the plump, fifty-something, strawberry blonde administrative assistant who’d been gathering employee files for me, appeared at my side. “Henry Burke looked pretty nervous when he told you he had to leave early,” she said to Zoe.
Burke. If I recalled right from my background research . . . “The sixty-four-year-old that’s been here forty years?”
“Yes,” Zoe confirmed. “And my most trusted security guard. If his wife hadn’t already been sick last summer when our former security chief died, Burke would be the one talking to you right now instead of me.”
A Fool and His Monet Page 5