A Fool and His Monet

by Sandra Orchard

  No, I was pusillanimous.

  I slammed the car door and stomped up the stairs to the museum. I had no proof Linda was guilty, I mentally reasoned. Never mind that she and the senator, with his private little calls to Benton, were acting as if she was. Zoe had two dozen more employees lined up for me to interview today, any one of whom could prove to be our thief.

  I strode into Zoe’s office and dumped my coat and bag on her chair. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  I’d called Zoe last night and updated her on the latest developments, but from the bags under her eyes, the update hadn’t helped her sleep. “I’ll get Petra.”

  Right. I’d almost forgotten about my momentary hunch Sunday morning that Malcolm’s finger pointing in Linda’s direction had been a decoy to take the heat off him. Hopefully, his latest conquest—Petra Horvak—could settle the suspicion one way or the other.

  According to her background check, Petra’s parents immigrated to the United States from Croatia soon after her birth. Five years ago she married in Raleigh. Since her subsequent divorce a year and a half ago, she’d worked a variety of unskilled jobs throughout the state. She was a dark-haired beauty who had a few years on Malcolm, although you wouldn’t know it to look at her.

  Zoe’s assistant handed me a mug of coffee. “I can’t believe Malcolm finally convinced Petra to go out with him. He’s been angling for a date with her for months.”

  “Really? What do you suppose tipped the scales?” A sudden influx of cash from the sale of stolen paintings?

  “She must’ve broken up with her boyfriend and Malcolm caught her on the rebound. The guys are total opposites. I’d have personally picked Malcolm from day one. But I’ve never understood women’s attraction to those motorcycle-driving, bad-boy types.”

  Petra shuffled into the room. “Am I being fired?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  She glanced from Zoe to me. “Because Miss Davids is chief of security. Security escorts people out when they’re fired.”

  “No, Miss Horvak, you’re not being fired. Please have a seat. I just want to ask you a few questions.” I waited for her to settle into the chair on the other side of the desk I was borrowing. “How well do you know Malcolm Wilson?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why? Is he a suspect?”

  “Please just answer the questions.”

  “Not well,” she said, ducking her head.

  “But well enough to go out with him Saturday night?”

  She grimaced. “That’s because he’d been pestering me for months. And he’d offered to treat.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Everyone’s got their price, right? I figured he wouldn’t read too much into it, since a bunch of us from here went together. It wasn’t supposed to be a date.”

  “What did you talk about when you were out?”

  “He talked about what he’s studying at college,” she said. “Criminal justice. Kind of ironic, huh? If he’s a suspect, I mean.”

  “What else did he talk about?”

  She looked off into space as if visualizing the evening, then shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t pay that close of attention. We were in a pretty noisy bar.”

  “Did—” I caught myself before asking if they’d discussed the missing paintings. Interrogation 101—don’t ask questions that have a simple yes or no answer. “What did he say about the missing art pieces?” I rephrased.

  “He mentioned you were interested in Linda, probably because I was the one who’d told him she called in on Friday.”

  Okay, that was news. “How well did you know Linda?”

  She shrugged. “Not well. We talked on breaks a few times. We don’t run in the same circles, if you know what I mean.”

  I glanced at her file in front of me. “I see from your résumé that you started here last summer, and in the year or so before that, you bounced through five different jobs across several towns. Why so many moves?”

  “My husband and I split.” She squirmed in her seat, studied her fingernails. “I had a hard time getting past it.”

  “I’m sorry. I can only imagine how difficult that must’ve been.”

  Her head snapped up. “He’s an accountant. So it’s not that I was hurting for money or anything,” she said, clearly concerned that I thought she might’ve been desperate enough to steal a painting. “He pays me alimony.”

  “Of course.” I grilled Petra with the requisite questions about access to the museum vaults without any flags being raised, a pattern that repeated itself the rest of the day.

  At 3:30—which was 10:30 p.m. Paris time—the call I’d been waiting for from the legat finally came in. I waved away Zoe, who’d been escorting in the next employee. “What did you learn?”

  “The dealer who first bought the Monet wasn’t much help. He said the seller was a dark-haired American male who claimed to be an agent of a financier who wished to remain anonymous.”

  “He must’ve gotten the agent’s name.”

  “John Smith.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “That’s what the agent told him. He said he had no reason to doubt him.”

  “Hmm.” More like he saw the opportunity for a sweet deal and didn’t want to doubt him.

  “He said he checked the Art Loss Register,” the legat went on.

  “It wasn’t yet listed.”

  “Yes. He also said the agent gave him the impression his client needed to sell the painting due to financial distress.”

  That could’ve been a ploy to make him feel it would be rude to question the provenance. The old days were long gone when once a painting crossed the ocean, it didn’t matter whether a painting was stolen or not, it was cleansed, which demanded a great deal more diplomacy on the dealer’s part to cultivate the often delicate relationships with clients. I let out a heavy sigh. It didn’t help that too many wealthy collectors couldn’t produce their papers if they wanted to, because they were irresponsible when it came to keeping records of transactions. “I suppose he figured he’d done enough to be able to claim that he bought the piece in good faith.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll be in touch again once we speak to the dealer he sold it to in Nice.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  Zoe must’ve clued in that the call was from my contact in Paris, because when I went to the office door, the next interviewee was nowhere in sight.

  “Well?” she asked excitedly. “Do they know where it is?”

  “Not yet, sorry. A John Smith sold it to the Paris dealer, if you can believe it.”

  Irene, the administrative assistant, joined us. “Did you say Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of our former interns is studying there. Left after Christmas.” Irene slipped past us and sifted through the stack of employee files. “Here he is. Cody Stafford. His application says he’s studying international relations at Wash U, but he was passionate about art. Sounded as if he’d taken a number of art history courses.”

  “Oh, I remember him,” Zoe chimed in. “I didn’t know he was going to Paris, though.”

  International relations and art history were a useful combination for an art thief. Remembering Malcolm’s observation that Cody and Linda had talked a lot, I asked, “Was he friends with Linda Kempler?”

  Zoe looked to Irene.

  “I don’t know.”

  I scanned the information on his application in the file. The address was for a dorm room that would no longer be applicable if he was on an exchange program. I tried the phone number and got a “no longer in service” message. “Do you know where he’s from?”

  “Illinois, maybe,” Irene said. “That’s where he was heading after the farewell party we threw him his last day. I assumed he was going home for a few days before heading to France.” She turned to Zoe. “You were off that week, which is why you probably didn’t hear about his trip. That last week, all he talked about was going to the Louvre.”

  “Do me a favor,” I
said, “and ask around to see if anyone has current contact information or knows where his family lives.”

  “Sure thing.” Irene hurried out as I put a call in to the analyst at headquarters helping me with background checks and asked her to move Cody to the top of her to-do list.

  Zoe skimmed through Cody’s file. “Do you think he and Linda were in cahoots? Or are you rethinking your suspicions of her?”

  I snapped a pic with my cell phone of the intern’s photo from the file. “Too early to say. But hopefully the legat will be able to find out once I get him this photo and an address.” I glanced at my watch. I still had time to visit the registrar at Washington University before her office closed.

  I hurried to my car and sped toward Lagoon Drive. The university’s main campus was only a few minutes west of Forest Park. I snagged a parking spot off Brookings Drive in front of Brookings Hall, and as I pushed open my car door to step out, a pickup truck almost took it off. “Watch where you’re going,” I shouted after him.

  He stopped and hooked his arm over his seat, looking like he might back up and try again.

  Way to shoot off your mouth to Mr. Road Rage, Serena. I veered onto the sidewalk, but that didn’t stop the guy. He revved his engine and reversed toward me.

  “Are you nuts?” I screamed, diving behind a tree. Okay, asking a crazy person if he’s nuts when he was speeding toward me wasn’t smart either.

  The truck lurched to an abrupt stop, the driver’s laughter drifting through his window. He sped off before I made out a single number on his mud-smeared license plate.

  And here Mom was worried my job would kill me.

  11

  I hiked across campus to the Women’s Building where the Office of the Registrar was housed. Clusters of students hurried in and out, backpacks slung over their shoulders.

  Doreen squealed the moment I stepped through the door. Doreen was an institution in her own right at the university. She’d been in the registrar’s office for forty years. Knew everything about everything. She also happened to be a longtime friend of the family. She scurried from behind her desk and drew me into a bear hug. “So good to see you.” Holding me at arm’s length, she surveyed me from the tip of my sensible shoes to the top of my head. “You don’t look any worse for wear. Still pretty enough to catch any boy on campus. You enjoying the job?”

  “Very much.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I chatted with your mom at the Christmas party and she wasn’t so sure you were.”

  I laughed. “I think that might’ve been wishful thinking on her part.” Brits may have a reputation for their stiff upper lip, but the gene seemed to have skipped my mom.

  “She just wants you to be happy. So what brings you here?”

  “I’m hoping you can help me locate a student.”

  Her smile fell. “One of our students is on the wrong side of the law?”

  “I need to question him, but I don’t have a current address. The last address his employer has on file was the dorm room he likely occupied in the fall semester.”

  “Well, I can tell you what’s currently listed in the directory information as long as he hasn’t blocked its public release.” She slid back into her office chair and tapped on her keyboard. “They do have the right to block the information. It’s all about rights these days. We have to be so careful.”

  “I understand.” But based on Jax’s nefarious plan to score me a confidential informant yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else but Doreen had been on duty whether I could’ve gotten more information out of him.

  “What’s the student’s name?”

  “Cody Stafford, studying international relations. He’s studying in France this semester on an exchange, I was told.”

  Doreen studied her computer screen and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I don’t have a current address for him in Paris. But I can call their registrar first thing in the morning and see if they do.” She jotted an address on a memo pad. “This was his home address and phone number at the time of enrollment.” She ripped off the small pink page and handed it across the desk.

  The phone number was the out-of-service one I’d already tried, but the home address would likely score me what I needed. “This is perfect. Thanks. If you do get his address in Paris, please call me on my cell phone right away.”

  “Sure will.”

  The other staff in the office began shutting off computers and gathering their belongings. I reached across the desk and squeezed Doreen’s hand. “It was good to see you again.” As I headed back to my car, I texted the analyst running background checks for me and asked him to hunt down a current phone number for Cody’s old address or for wherever his parents might’ve moved.

  “Serena, what are you doing here?” Dad hurried over, shifting his books to his other arm, and leaned in to kiss my cheek.

  “Tracking down a witness.”

  A smile played across his lips, reinforcing my suspicion that Dad secretly admired my career choice despite appearances to the contrary when Mom was within earshot. Maybe he, like me, hoped that one day I’d solve the mystery surrounding his father’s murder. “Were you successful?”

  I held up my hand, still holding the pink slip of paper. “I think so.”

  “Guess you don’t have time to join us for dinner then?”

  “What’s on the menu?” Almost anything my mom served would be better than what I’d pick up en route to Cody’s last known address, and the driving would be easier if I waited until after rush hour, but it never hurt to ask.

  “Bubble and squeak.”

  Almost being the key word. “Mmm, tempting.”

  Because rechristening leftovers with a cutesy name made them so much tastier. Especially when in Mom’s kitchen, brussels sprouts were inevitably involved in insidious ways.

  British cuisine. World renowned since . . . never.

  Dad laughed. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  I tried to look grateful for the offer, even as the flashback seared my brain: my brother’s earnest face as he told me that if I held my nose while I ate my sprouts, I wouldn’t be able to taste them. Followed almost immediately by sly glee when Mom thought I was insulting her cooking and made me do the dishes by myself that night.

  Which, come to think of it, was probably his goal in the first place.

  Maybe he should have been the agent in the family.

  I’d never wished we had a dog more than the nights Mom cooked sprouts. Although something told me that not even a dog would’ve eaten them. The only thing worse than eating sprouts by themselves was eating a whole plate of mashed potatoes, overdone carrots, and dried-out meat that had been fried with them and thereby acquired their unappetizing flavor.

  I shivered, then kissed Dad’s cheek. “I’ll try to stop by tomorrow.”

  “Before you go, do you really think someone in St. Louis is running a black market in spare organs?”

  “What?”

  “Aunt Martha said—”

  “Oh, right. Well, you know, lots of churches are replacing their organs with contemporary worship bands, but I can’t imagine there’d be much of a market for them, black or otherwise.”

  Dad grinned. “Another of Aunt Martha’s wild theories?”

  “Let’s hope so.” My phone rang and I glanced at the screen. Zoe. “I need to take this. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Dad waved and headed off.

  I pulled up my collar against the rising wind and hurried back to my car with my phone to my ear. “What’s up, Zoe?”

  “Irene was asking around about Cody, and I think you’ll want to hear what one of the staff members had to say.”

  “Is he still at the museum?”

  “It’s a she. And yes.”

  I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to 5:00. “I know you’re closing, but does she mind waiting? I’m only a few minutes away if traffic cooperates.”

  I could hear the muffled sound of Zoe talking in the background, then, �
�We’ll wait.”

  I parked at the curb in front of the museum fifteen minutes later. Rush hour was the ultimate misnomer, since no one got anywhere fast at that time of day.

  Zoe was waiting at the door to let me in. “This is Cheryl. She’s one of our gallery monitors.”

  The young woman looked to be about twenty, dressed in the navy blue slacks and monogrammed polo shirt that identified her as staff.

  “Let’s talk in a conference room,” I said and accompanied them through the empty, three-story-high atrium, our footfalls echoing. My gaze drifted up to the balcony where a night watchman was keeping his eye on us. He nodded and moved on.

  Zoe led us into a small conference room.

  I took a chair opposite Cheryl and pulled out my notebook. “I appreciate you staying late. I’ll try not to keep you long. Why don’t you start by telling me what you told Zoe?”

  “A few days before Cody finished his internship, I heard him and the guard—”

  “Which guard is that?” I interrupted.

  “Mr. Burke. The older gentleman with the sick wife.”

  I recorded the name. “Okay, continue.”

  “They were arguing in the lunchroom. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, except I did hear Mr. Burke tell Cody he was crazy. As soon as I walked into the room, they clammed up. Right in the middle of a sentence. And didn’t say another word to each other.”

  “Did they seem agitated? Excited? Angry?”

  Cheryl seemed to think a moment, then said, “When I first overheard them, Cody sounded like he was trying to convince Mr. Burke to do something. When I walked in, he looked pretty intense too. You know”—she leaned toward me, her posture tense—“like this.”

  “How did Mr. Burke seem?”

  “Upset.”

  “This was the last week of December?”

  “Yes. Cody’s last week with us. I think it was the Wednesday.”

  “Did you notice them talking at any other time?”

  “Yes, on Cody’s last day. We all stayed a little late to wish him well. Had cake in the lunchroom, that kind of thing. Mr. Burke didn’t come. I figured he’d wanted to hurry home to his wife. But when I walked out to the parking lot later, I saw him and Cody talking by Burke’s car.”