A Fool and His Monet

by Sandra Orchard

  “Really?” I snatched the magnifying glass back.

  “They’re not from Malgucci’s because the store wrapped the painting in brown paper.”

  “This is good.” Most thieves would’ve been smart enough to wear gloves, so as not to leave behind any fingerprints, but if we could match fibers from, say, Burke’s trunk to those on the painting—I squinted at them for myself—it might be just the evidence I needed to convince him to talk.

  By the time Tanner arrived, I had the painting wrapped back in the paper to transport and met him at the front door, coat on and ready to go.

  “Mmm, smells good in here,” he said, then held up a fingerprint kit. “We might as well collect your aunt’s fingerprints before we go.”

  Aunt Martha clapped her hands like a giddy six-year-old who’d just learned she was going to Disneyland, a far cry from the reception she’d given him Friday night.

  At Tanner’s silly grin, I rolled my eyes and shrugged back out of my coat.

  “By the way,” Aunt Martha twittered, “those photos you doctored of Serena in Des Moines worked like a charm at convincing Mildred that Serena wasn’t in Buffalo last week.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He snuck a wink my way and whispered. “I think I won her over.”

  “You might as well both have supper with us before you go too,” Mom chimed, in her there’s-a-man-in-the-house-don’t-let-him-get-away tone I’d come to recognize all too well. “It’s ready, and your father should be home any minute.”

  “That’d be great, Mrs. Jones. Thanks,” Tanner said without consulting me and proceeded to set out the fingerprinting materials.

  “Anytime.” Mom returned my perturbed glare with one of her own, then bustled off to the kitchen, muttering that if she didn’t take matters into her own hands, the only grandkids she’d ever get would be if she bought them from Auntie’s mobster friend.

  I stuck my head around the kitchen doorway. “Since Auntie’s so tight with Carmen, maybe he’ll give you a family discount.”

  Mom didn’t laugh.

  Dad walked through the door as Tanner was pressing Aunt Martha’s inked thumb to the fingerprint card. “What has she done now?”

  “I did good,” Aunt Martha twittered. “I found the missing painting.”

  Mom rushed out of the kitchen. “And she owes a loan shark $2,000 for it. He probably charges interest by the hour.”

  “More like by the limb,” I muttered morbidly, unable to help myself. Somehow I thought Aunt Martha was right about Malgucci, though. He didn’t seem to be nearly as scary as the stories about him.

  Dad plopped his briefcase on the coffee table and dug out his checkbook. “You can pay him off this minute.”

  “I was kidding, Dad.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Jones,” Tanner added. “I’ll see Malgucci gets his money. The museum or their insurance company would probably be happy to pay it as a reward for the painting’s recovery. If not, I suspect I could persuade Malgucci to consider it a donation to the museum.”

  Dad tore the check he’d written from his book and pressed it into Tanner’s hand. “Well, if that doesn’t work, give him this. I don’t want Martha beholden to the likes of Malgucci.”

  “I didn’t know you cared!” Aunt Martha threw her arms around Dad as Mom, Tanner, and I all yelled, “No!”

  She hadn’t wiped the fingerprint ink from her fingers, and Dad now had a perfect set of her prints polka-dotting the back of his blazer.

  “Oh, no,” Mom wailed. “That’ll never come out.”

  Dad whipped off his blazer, frowned at the black ink, then snatched the check back from Tanner’s hand. “On second thought, let Malgucci do what he likes with her.”

  Mom pried the check out of his hand. “No, dear, you don’t mean that. I’m sure I can sponge it out with my spot remover.” She returned the check to Tanner with a muttered “Somehow.”

  “I’m sure I can find something on the internet that will tell us how to get ink out,” Aunt Martha interjected, wiping the ink from her fingers on a dishtowel as she sat in front of her tablet at the table.

  Somehow we managed to get through dinner with no bloodshed, and Tanner and I made our escape with the hot painting in tow.

  19

  Olsen’s Antique Store was on a quiet side street in the heart of the postcard town of St. Charles. It was the kind of town that in nicer weather tourists would stroll through to soak up the yesteryear ambience and hunt for unique bargains. The store was dark, but Tanner had done a quick search on its ownership before meeting me at my parents’ place and learned that the owners lived above the store. We bypassed its front door in favor of the side one bearing a “Private Entrance” placard.

  A white-haired man who appeared to be in his late sixties answered the bell. “May I help you?”

  “Are you Mr. Olsen?” I asked.

  “Yes?” A hint of trepidation tipped up his voice as I reached inside my coat.

  “I’m Special Agent Serena Jones.” I showed him my badge. “And this is Special Agent Tanner Calhoun. We need to ask you a few questions about the Rijckaert painting you sold this afternoon.”

  His face paled. “Yes, of course.” He pulled the door open farther. “Come in.” He motioned us up the stairs, but we waited for him to lead the way. The apartment was neat and tastefully decorated with an eclectic collection of antique furniture. Crocheted doilies graced the tops of the intricately carved end tables in the living area, showcasing Tiffany lamps and a collection of children’s photographs, their smiles beaming from pearl-inlaid gold frames. “Can I get you any coffee? My wife’s at her book club tonight, but I make a half-decent pot.”

  “We’re fine, thank you.” I perched on the edge of a Victorian chair and pulled out my notebook.

  Mr. Olsen’s gaze appeared transfixed by the notebook as he backed into a chair opposite me and plopped onto the seat. “How can I help you?”

  “We need to know who you bought the Rijckaert from and when.”

  “My son Chad bought it. He scouts estate auctions and flea markets for me. We don’t carry much art, but he has an eye for value.”

  “Where did your son pick up this particular piece?”

  “I don’t know, but I can call and ask him. He could come over. He lives around the corner.”

  “Thank you. That would be perfect.”

  His son arrived in under five minutes, looking frantic. “What’s going on?”

  Mr. Olsen hadn’t asked us why we were inquiring about the painting, but he’d clearly gotten his son worked into a dither over our appearance. My gut told me that neither man was the type to knowingly buy stolen goods. I glanced at Tanner for his take, but he had his game face on. Great for fooling crooks. Not so great for me when I didn’t know how to read it.

  “We need to know where and when the Rijckaert painting was purchased,” I repeated to Chad, after we made introductions.

  “A guy brought it into the store. Said he was cleaning out his parents’ place because they were moving into a nursing home.”

  “And you took him at his word?”

  “Yeah.” Chad nervously rubbed his palms down the tops of his legs. “He seemed honest. I’m guessing from your questions that he was really a thief.”

  “Or a fence,” I confirmed. “Did you get a name?”

  “No, he wanted cash. I offered him fifty bucks. He said it was worth at least a hundred. I figured he was probably right and paid him a hundred.”

  “You didn’t think to check the Art Loss Register first?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a service that catalogs stolen works of art so dealers won’t give these thieves an honest market.”

  Chad shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it. I don’t know much about art, but I figured the thing was old and would look good over someone’s Victorian couch. From my quick web search, I figured we could get as much as five thousand for it.”

  “We’ll give the woman her money back,” his
father cut in. “We don’t want a reputation for selling stolen goods. We never would have if we’d known. I’ll get my checkbook.”

  Tanner rose and followed him, no doubt to ensure that a check was all he was getting.

  “Can you describe the seller to me?” I asked Chad.

  “About my height. Long, sandy-colored hair, scraggly.”

  “How long?”

  He pointed to a point an inch below his shoulder. “He was wearing a black leather jacket. I think he was wearing cowboy boots too. So he’s probably shorter than six feet without them. And he drove a black pickup. I remember that because he parked in a no parking zone across the street and cursed when he saw the parking enforcement officer. Shot out of here like a fox with its tail on fire.”

  I did a mental fist pump. If he got a ticket, we’d be able to get his license plate number from the town, and then he’d be mine. “What day was this?”

  “Monday morning. I remember that much, because I always bring in what I buy for the store at weekend events on Mondays, and then I man the cash register while dad sorts through everything in the back room.”

  “This past Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have security cameras in the store?”

  “No.”

  “Would you be able to identify the man in a lineup?”

  “Um, I’m not sure. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him. But yeah, maybe.”

  I took down his contact information and was thanking him for his time as Tanner returned with a check in hand. “I had him make it out to Malgucci,” he said. “We can drop it off on our way.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” I turned back to the Olsens. “We’ll need your fingerprints for elimination purposes on the painting. Can we do that now?”

  “Of course, whatever you need,” the senior Mr. Olsen said for the both of them.

  Tanner headed for the door. “I’ll grab the kit.”

  The idea of driving to Malgucci’s with a painting worth a lot more than Olsen had figured in the back of the SUV didn’t appeal to me. Not to mention, the outside temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, and prolonged time in the cold wasn’t good for it. We’d wrapped it in a comforter I borrowed from Mom’s, but still. We needed to get the painting to headquarters ASAP. We made short work of getting the men’s fingerprints and even shorter work of dropping off Malgucci’s check at the address Aunt Martha relayed to us.

  He lived in a surprisingly small bungalow on The Hill. If I’d had more time and been about a thousand percent braver, I might’ve asked Malgucci his intentions toward Aunt Martha. Instead, I let Tanner go to the door alone.

  Yup, I was pusillanimous. And I really wished I’d tapped Mr. Sutton for a new word.

  By 9:15 the next morning, the efficient staff at St. Charles’ municipal offices had provided me with nada. It turned out their new parking enforcement officer, Grace, had a tendency to live up to her name and offer a tad too much grace to distracted drivers.

  I called Olsen’s Antiques next. “Do any nearby businesses have surveillance cameras monitoring the street outside your store?”

  “Yeah, the jewelry store has a couple.”

  “Perfect.”

  By 10:15, thanks to Mr. Kaufman, the very cooperative jewelry store owner, I had a picture of my guy and a partial number on his plate.

  “Yeah, that’s the guy all right,” Chad Olsen said, having joined me at the store soon after I arrived. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the driver who’d rammed my car to say for sure he was the same guy. I’d prepare a photo lineup for my aunt to see if she’d pick him out as the man who assaulted her outside my apartment.

  Mr. Kaufman made a copy of the surveillance footage for me, and I headed back to headquarters.

  By 12:15 I’d matched the partial plate number to a black pickup owned by Asher Cook. I grinned at the driver’s license picture that came up on my computer screen for him—a perfect match to the guy in the surveillance footage and, seeing him close up, I was pretty confident he was also Mr. Road Rage from in front of Wash U the other day. “Got you.”

  Tanner came around the corner of my cubicle. “Your pickup driver?”

  “Yup, I’m running a background check now.”

  “I got a call from the St. Louis PD. They pulled an unidentified partial fingerprint off Burke’s car key, so if your guy’s got prints in the system, we might be able to clinch his tie-in to the attack.”

  “Unfortunately, aside from a couple of speeding tickets, it looks like he has a clean record. No known gang associations. No political associations. No online presence.” Same as Cody. “Can you send a digital copy of the partial to the FBI lab? If it is Cook’s, we should find a match on the painting we recovered. He wasn’t wearing gloves when he handed it over to Olsen.”

  “Already on it.” Tanner studied my computer screen over my shoulder. “Where’s Cook work?”

  “The loading dock at a big box store in the south end.”

  “So he’s probably already finished his shift. Those guys start at 4:00 a.m. What are you thinking? You want to wait and watch? Try to find out who his associates are before you tip him off that you’re on to him?”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I told the museum staff yesterday morning that I was looking for the driver of a black pickup.”

  Tanner pointed to the screen. “Cross-reference his school and occupation data with your other suspects.”

  I tried Linda’s first, but nothing popped. Then I repeated the exercise with the info I had on Cody and then Burke, but there was nothing to link them either. I shoved away my keyboard. “This is getting me nowhere.”

  “You’ve got enough for an arrest warrant on trafficking stolen art, and once we verify his prints, the partial on the car key will connect him to the attack on Burke.”

  “But if he doesn’t talk and the search warrant doesn’t turn up any new evidence, I won’t have enough to link him to Cody’s death or to any partners in crime.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  I grabbed the photo lineup I’d prepared of ten blonde museum employees, in case he decided to be cooperative. “Let’s go.”

  Tanner plucked the paper from my hand. “One of these Linda?”

  I plucked the paper back and inserted it into a file folder. “What do you think?”

  Tanner glanced in the direction of our supervisor’s office. “You sure you want to do that?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Sutton’s new word of the day was doughty—brave, courageous—and I liked the sound of it a whole lot better than pusillanimous.

  We secured the arrest warrant and headed to Asher’s address, a small apartment complex in a sketchy part of town. His black pickup was parked at the curb.

  “Look at this,” I said to Tanner, pointing to the lower lip of the truck’s bumper. “That look like blood to you?”

  Tanner scrutinized it more closely. “Could be.” He tapped a number into his phone. “We’d better get an evidence team down here to process it before Cook figures out he didn’t scrub his truck as clean as he thought.”

  We found his second-floor apartment and knocked on the door, identified ourselves. No one answered.

  “Do you feel that?” Tanner held his palm at the door’s edge. Cool air whisped past the frame.

  “Great, he’s pulling a Stan Johnson on me.” I raced down the stairwell and around the building, expecting to find Tanner holding a man dangling from the window. Well, hoping anyway. Instead Tanner was leaning out the window empty-handed, only—I counted windows from him to the edge of the building—he wasn’t in Cook’s apartment.

  “Any sign of him?” Tanner called down.

  The street was empty, and a quick scan of the muddy ground below the open window, ten feet past Tanner’s position, confirmed that no one had just dropped from it. “No. Doesn’t look like he escaped this way.”

  “His neighbor says he went out on his motorcycle to take advan
tage of the warm afternoon. Come back up.”

  Warm? He called 48 degrees warm? I stomped back upstairs. After this, Cook’s neighbor was bound to tip him off, and he’d keep right on riding. I found Tanner standing in the doorway of said neighbor—a long-legged woman who looked as if she might’ve just walked off a photo shoot—taking down her statement, or maybe her number.

  “Do you know where Mr. Cook was headed?” I interrupted.

  The woman tore her gaze from Tanner’s. “His girlfriend’s maybe.”

  My pulse quickened. “Do you know her name?”

  “No, sorry.”

  I pulled the file folder with the photo lineup from my bag. “Would you recognize her picture?”

  “I’m not sure. I only saw her once.” The woman’s gaze dropped to Tanner’s notepad. “Is Asher in some kind of trouble?”

  “We just want to talk to him,” Tanner assured. “And we’d appreciate any information that might help us locate him.”

  “Well, he usually didn’t bring dates to his apartment, but I came home early a couple of days ago and saw a blonde leaving his place. Come to think about it, he acted kind of funny when I asked him about her, though. Like he didn’t want to admit she was his girlfriend, so maybe he has more than one.”

  I opened my file folder and showed her the pictures I’d brought. “Was she one of these women?”

  She ran her finger along the lines of photos and stopped at the photo of Linda. She tapped her perfectly manicured fingernail on Linda’s face. “That’s her.”

  “Thank you,” I said, fighting to rein in my grin. “You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  Tanner gave her a business card. “If you see him come home, please don’t mention our visit, but give me a call.”

  She gave him a coy smile. “I will.”

  Walking out with Tanner, I mimicked the woman’s sultry tone. “I didn’t bring you along to pick up dates, you know.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Can I help it if women like me? That kind of thing just happens when you look like Gerard Butler.”

  “Ha. You haven’t even got the same eye color as Butler.”