A Fool and His Monet

by Sandra Orchard

  I snatched the paper back and swatted Billy’s arm. “Somehow I don’t think she’d agree to that.”

  “Ah, don’t tell me she’s looking for one of those happily-ever-after kind of guys. Why can’t more women be like you?”

  Jax tugged the slip of paper from between my fingers. “I’ll give your friend a call. Another night of skating sounds like fun.” He strode away with a quick wave.

  I blinked. “What just happened?”

  “Hello?” Billy knocked on my head and made a hollow tapping sound with his tongue against his cheek. “The guy was leaving you notes like a lovesick sixth grader. He wanted to go out with you, not your girlfriend. But you have to admit my happily-ever-after line was pure genius.”

  “Huh?”

  “As soon as I saw his interest perk, I knew pointing out you weren’t the happily-ever-after kind of woman would make him see the light.”

  “But—” I wanted to be that kind of woman. One day. When there wasn’t a maniac in a black truck trying to run me down and my grandfather’s murderer was behind bars. I fisted my hands in my pockets. “Why are you here?”

  He shrugged. “When I heard what happened, I figured I’d make sure the jerk didn’t show up here.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Nah, I’m bored to death waiting for my new job to start. You going to be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give me a call if you want to get rid of any more wannabe boyfriends.”

  Laughing to hide the heat that flooded my cheeks, I saluted and headed inside.

  Harold was meowing at his bowl of kibbles.

  I shook it so the entire bottom was covered again, and he eagerly tucked in. “Are all cats as particular as you?”

  Harold didn’t respond, so I combed the cupboard and fridge for my own comfort food. “I may be as inept at reading a man’s interest as reading his notes, but the pickup driver’s message was loud and clear.”

  Finding nothing that would lift the funk I’d worked myself into, I closed the fridge.

  In those bleak junior high weeks when Bully Betty had been on my case, the one bright spot I could always count on was coming home to Mom’s sympathetic ear and fresh baked cookies.

  And if ever I needed a cookie day, today was the day.

  16

  Mom burst out the front door the instant I pulled into my parents’ driveway. “Are you okay? Lois called and said someone tried to run you off the road.”

  “How on earth did Lois hear that?”

  “So it’s true?” Mom’s voice hit a new high.

  Suddenly, coming home didn’t seem like such a smart decision. Mom would latch on to any excuse to convince me to quit the FBI, and I wasn’t sure my defenses were strong enough to withstand her arguments today.

  She hovered in the doorway, her arms bunched over her chest against the cold winter air, or maybe against my rapidly cooling desire to be here.

  Then the aroma of baking cookies wafted out the door and something inside me melted. Mom hadn’t baked cookies in years, but instinctively she must’ve known I’d come home and need them. I tromped up the porch steps and threw my arms around her. “I’m fine.” If I didn’t count my queasy stomach or the double beat my heart made every other second or that I didn’t want to go back to my apartment, especially now that it was getting dark. Other than that, I was peachy. “But I could really use some cookies and cocoa.”

  We weren’t an overly affectionate family, and the hug threw Mom a tad off balance—psychologically, I mean. But that was okay, because I knew the cookies were her way of saying, “I love you even if you won’t give up this job that will send me to an early grave with worry, or worse, without grandchildren.”

  Aunt Martha caught my hand and dragged me inside. “Was it one of Malgucci’s guys in the truck?”

  “Who?”

  “Malgucci, the gentleman I asked about getting me a kidney when we went to Lou’s Saturday night.”

  Mom’s eyes bugged out. “You what?”

  Aunt Martha waved off Mom’s concern. “I was helping her with her case.”

  “I don’t think so, Aunt Martha,” I interjected before Mom could stop gaping. I’d been so sure the incident was connected to my undercover gig that it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be related to my current case.

  “Well, you must be close to a breakthrough if you’ve got the bad guys nervous enough to come after you.”

  Muttering a prayer, Mom locked the front door and pulled the drapes. “Come into the kitchen and have some cookies.”

  I dutifully obeyed, my spirits lifting at the mere thought of warm, gooey chocolate chips melting in my mouth and the prospect that Aunt Martha could be right about my current investigation. Maybe I was getting a little too close to the truth and black-pickup dude wasn’t happy about that. Smiling, I shrugged out of my coat and helped myself to a cookie. “You might be right, Aunt Martha.”

  She pulled up a chair close to mine and whispered conspiratorially, “Is it the student you were looking for at Wash U?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  Mom set a mug of hot cocoa in front of me. “Your father mentioned running into you there.”

  “That lead turned out to be a dead end. The guy I was looking for was supposed to be studying in Paris at the time the Monet was sold to a dealer there. But according to customs, he never left the States.”

  “According to customs? So you haven’t found him?” Mom asked, passing me a plate of cookies, seeming to have forgotten, for the moment at least, her mission to get me to quit.

  “No, I don’t have a current address for him.”

  “That sounds suspicious, don’t you think? If I had the chance to go to Paris, I sure wouldn’t give it up without a good reason.”

  “Me either,” Aunt Martha chimed in. “Maybe one of his parents got sick and he didn’t want to leave them.”

  “His father’s dead and no one seems to know where his mom is.”

  Aunt Martha’s mouth dropped open, and the cookie bite she’d taken tumbled back to her plate. “That’d make him the perfect pansy for a kidney donor.” She scurried out of the kitchen and came back ten seconds later with her tablet. “When was this student last seen?”

  Oh, boy. “No one knocked him off to harvest his kidney. There’s a waiting list for those things, not to mention no way to guarantee the intended recipient would be a compatible match, let alone get it.”

  “Maybe he stole the painting in cahoots with someone else and his partner killed him,” Mom offered.

  Great, now Mom was sleuthing with Aunt Martha. I nodded, not bothering to mention that there was no record of Cody’s death. I would’ve given Mom my don’t-encourage-her look, but then she might remember that she didn’t want me working these cases either.

  “An unidentified male was killed in East St. Louis on New Year’s Eve,” Aunt Martha said, reading from an online news site.

  “What?” I tilted the screen so I could read it too. “The victim was in his late teens to early twenties. Police believe he lost control of his bicycle and are asking anyone who may have witnessed the accident to come forward.”

  “In East St. Louis?” Mom dipped a cookie into her glass of milk. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “You’re a genius, Aunt Martha. I did an exhaustive internet search on Cody’s name, but looking for something like this would never have occurred to me.” I searched for more recent posts on the incident and found a follow-up. “The victim still remains unidentified. No one has reported any missing persons fitting his description.”

  “Well they wouldn’t, would they?” Mom said. “If his mother’s estranged and his friends all think he’s in France.”

  A mixture of excitement and trepidation welled inside me. I didn’t want this poor victim to be Cody. But if he was, Mom could be right about his cohorts in crime bumping him off. I sprang to my feet and grabbed my coat. “I’ve got to go. Thank you for your help.”
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  Mom handed me a cookie tin. “These are for you to take home.”

  I kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

  “I’ll keep searching,” Aunt Martha called after me. “See if I can find you any more information.”

  As soon as I slid into my car, I called dispatch for the number for East St. Louis PD, then called their headquarters and asked to speak to Officer Davidson, since he was already up to speed on who I was looking for.

  The operator took my phone number and said Davidson would call me back at his first opportunity. Not wanting to wait, I maneuvered through rush hour traffic and hopped on I-64 to Illinois.

  Davidson called me back as I reached the bridge. “I haven’t had a chance to consult the yearbooks yet. I’m afraid last night turned out to be a long one and I got called out as soon as I arrived this afternoon.”

  “That’s okay. I’m calling to find out what you know about the John Doe cyclist who died New Year’s Eve.”

  “You think he might be your kid?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I was one of the first officers on the scene. It wasn’t pretty. The guy hit the pavement face first. No way we could make a visual ID. He had no tattoos, no piercings, short blond hair. I’d say he was probably close to six feet. The coroner’s report would have the exact measurements, eye color, that kind of thing.”

  “Do you think it was an accident?”

  “Could have been. He didn’t have a wallet on him, which if he was only out for a ride makes sense. If it was a hit-and-run, it’s doubtful the driver would stop to steal his wallet, but some other lowlife might’ve before we spotted him.”

  “Were there any witnesses?”

  “You’d be better off talking to Detective Hanes. He drew the case.” Davidson gave me the detective’s number, then added, “Last I heard, all they had was that someone had seen a pickup truck in the vicinity.”

  I gulped. “A black pickup truck?”

  “Not sure.”

  Great, and here I was back in East St. Louis, alone, after dark, when what I should be doing was having my head examined.

  Except I’d already crossed the Mississippi by the time Davidson mentioned the possible pickup connection to Cody’s possible murder, which might or might not be the same pickup that rammed my car. So choosing to ignore my fears, I drove to the police station to give Detective Hanes a rundown on my case in person.

  Hanes sat behind an old metal desk from the days before computers. A computer screen and keyboard dominated two-thirds of the desktop. The half-chewed pens poking out of the pencil cup on the corner suggested Hanes was battling a smoking habit. That and his raspy voice and the telltale nicotine patch peeking out from his rolled-up sleeve.

  “What happened to the victim’s personal effects?” I asked after he filled me in on a few details Davidson had left out.

  “Aside from his bike and the clothes on his back, there weren’t any.”

  “He wasn’t carrying a backpack?” The young woman at the museum, Cheryl, had mentioned seeing him with one when he left the museum.

  “If he was, we didn’t find it.”

  “Davidson said there was a witness?”

  “Yeah, a dog walker on the next street said a dark pickup sped around the corner, tires squealing, and took off. But he never saw the truck actually hit anything.”

  “Make? Size?”

  “Standard size. He didn’t notice the make, although when he looked at photographs of different makes, he said it looked like a Ford.”

  A queasy feeling rippled through my stomach. “A black Ford pickup deliberately clipped the back of my car this morning on the highway.”

  “Before we jump to conclusions about this being the same truck, let’s see if we can make a positive ID on the victim.” Hanes asked his assistant to see if he could track down Cody’s dental records. “Now, if Cody was here to visit a friend, you’d think the friend would’ve called the police when he didn’t show up.”

  “Unless Cody was heading to a New Year’s Eve party. It’d be easy for a host to lose track of who showed up and who didn’t if the party was big enough.”

  “True.” Hanes turned to the shelf behind him and pulled out a couple of high school yearbooks. “Let’s see if we can find your student in one of these. If we do, and the coroner confirms a match on the dental records, I can call the kid’s former classmates to find out who might’ve been expecting him at a party that night.”

  If Cody was our John Doe, what did that say about his involvement in the art heist? The whole reason he’d become my prime suspect was because the Monet had surfaced in Paris where he was supposed to be at university. The fact he never made it there totally unraveled the theory. Unless . . . like Mom had suggested, he’d been working with a partner who double-crossed him—killed him and took the painting.

  The yearbook pictures all started to blur together.

  If Cody’s partner had been someone with no personal connection to the museum, with Cody gone, he had to figure there’d be little to link him to the theft. So maybe when Cody went unidentified after the hit-and-run, the killer deliberately sold the Monet in Paris precisely so we’d chase a ghost.

  Then again, according to Cheryl, Cody and Burke had argued mere hours before Cody’s death. But if they’d been partners, what possible motive would Burke have for running Cody down?

  I nixed the morbid thought that a dead kid made a good kidney donor.

  Burke couldn’t have been in the truck that clipped me on the highway. He’d been at the hospital with his wife. Although if my theory was right that Burke saw Cody snatch the paintings and Cody bribed him to remain silent, Burke could’ve worried that once Cody left the country, his threats to snitch on him would lose their bite and gone after him to demand payment before he left.

  I paused halfway through the yearbook. “Did the witness who saw the pickup get a look at the driver?”

  Detective Hanes scanned his notes. “He said that the driver might’ve been blonde.”

  Like Linda Kempler. “Male or female?”

  “Couldn’t tell.”

  I didn’t like it. Liked even less that my boss had tied my hands from investigating Linda. If only I’d gotten a look at the pickup driver that came after me, I might have some ammunition to fight him. But in both instances, the attacks had happened so fast that the only thing I remembered about the driver was that he or she wore dark sunglasses.

  My cell phone rang and my heart jumped at the sight of my parents’ home number on the screen. “What’s wrong?”

  “Serena!” Mom’s frantic voice confirmed my intuition that something had to be seriously wrong for Mom to risk calling my cell phone when I might be working. “That mobster, Malgucci, just spirited away your Aunt Martha.”

  17

  No, no. No! This couldn’t be happening. “Excuse me,” I said to Detective Hanes, then turned and spoke into my phone as quietly as my spiking blood pressure would let me. “Why did you let her leave with him?” Malgucci was a third cousin, twice removed, on his mother’s side, to one of the most notorious crime bosses in the country, and although he’d never been indicted, every cop in St. Louis knew he had his fingers in the business.

  “I didn’t,” Mom wailed. “It was your father. Said he didn’t know he was a mobster. I was in the kitchen doing dishes when the doorbell rang. By the time I came out, Malgucci and Aunt Martha were out the door.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “I don’t know. A butcher shop, maybe. Malgucci said something about a kidney. But your father says Aunt Martha was as giddy as a schoolgirl, and she’s never liked kidney, not even in steak and kidney pie.”

  My stomach heaved at the thought of the kind of kidney they would’ve really been talking about. Covering my mouth, I shot Detective Hanes an apologetic glance. “Have you tried calling her cell phone?”

  “She left it behind. Your father says I’m getting all worked up over nothing. But I’ve heard t
he rumors about those Malguccis, and your aunt hasn’t dated much. If this is a date.”

  “Okay, Mom, I’ll find her.” I hung up and pulled on my coat. “I’m sorry, Detective. I need to go. Family emergency.” As I hurried to the door, he promised to update me on what he came up with regarding his John Doe.

  Outside, a mix of rain and ice pelted my face. Perfect. I wouldn’t need a pickup’s help spinning off the road in this. I jumped in my car, and as it crawled along the streets toward the bridge, I put the phone on the car’s speaker and dialed Lou’s restaurant. “Hey, Lou, my Aunt Martha wouldn’t happen to be there by chance, would she?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Do you know where I might find Carmen Malgucci?”

  “Try the bowling alley.”

  “Thanks.” I disconnected and called Tanner next. “I need your help.”

  “What’s up?”

  I relayed the short version, and by the time I white-knuckled my car into the bowling alley parking lot, Tanner was sitting there in his SUV and motioned me to join him.

  He didn’t have to ask twice. I grabbed my keys and Mom’s tin of cookies and dove in. Somewhere between the Mississippi River and The Hill, I finally admitted to myself that ten months as an FBI agent hadn’t curbed my fear of danger one iota. Sure, I could do some fancy steering to get out of a tailspin and then pretend I wasn’t scared the jerk would try again, but this was my aunt. What if I froze up at a critical moment, like I did the night that burglar murdered Granddad?

  At least riding shotgun with Tanner relieved me of responsibility for calling the shots. I was clearly the underling of the two of us. In fact, I hadn’t felt this green since my first day on the job. “Is Malgucci inside?”

  “No.” Tanner rammed his truck into Drive and peeled out of the parking lot. “Joe on the organized crime squad said Malgucci was seen entering Barnes Hospital half an hour ago.”

  “They have him under surveillance? Wait! That’s where Burke’s wife is.” I squinted at every pickup we passed as I filled Tanner in on the John Doe that I suspected was Cody and on his accident that I suspected was no accident. At least my chest had stopped squeezing the air out of my lungs now that I was riding with Tanner. No one would dare run me off the road when I was with him.