“I’ve seen it once or twice,” she admitted.
I went around and opened her door, and we followed Eddie and Abby inside. They were laughing together, and Eddie sat down beside her about a third of the way from the front. Jennifer and I sat with them.
When church was over, we had the usual buzz of conversation as people lingered to talk. I saw Charlie Emery speaking to Abby, and I craned my neck, looking for Eddie. He was standing near Jeff and Beth, talking to Jeff, and Lydia Hammond was beside him, talking to Beth. I looked to where Jennifer was conversing with Ruthann Bradley, and she met my gaze. I nodded toward Eddie and company, and she looked, then shrugged a little.
When we went out, I collared Eddie and said, “Did you ask Abby out?”
“No.”
“Change your mind?”
He said, “I like Abby, but…”
“Not mate-for-life material?”
“I’m just not sure.”
“Okay, buddy. No problem.”
“Can I do the date thing at your house next weekend?” he asked.
“That depends. Who are you bringing? Lydia Hammond?”
“Lydia?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Not Lydia.”
“Well?”
“Leeanne?”
I stopped walking. “I haven’t talked to Jennifer about this yet. I’d better ask her. And what do we tell Abby? ‘Sorry, Abby, we’ve got a double date with Eddie and Leeanne, and you can’t come’?”
“Oh, Abby could be there.”
“Five people on a date? Get real, Eddie. You want a date with Leeanne?”
“I think so.”
“Why don’t you think a while longer?”
“Okay, we’ll talk in the morning. Running at your house?”
“Yes, we’ll talk then.”
“What’s going on?” Jennifer asked me, as she and Abby got into the Explorer.
“Eddie is not nearly as settled as I gave him credit for.”
Abby said, “Charlie asked me to go to the gem show at the Civic Center with him on Saturday. What do you think?”
Jennifer said, “Gems? Are you interested?”
“In Charlie, or in rocks?”
“Either. Because if you’re not interested in Charlie, I can’t see any point in going on a date you have to study up for.”
“He likes rocks, I guess,” Abby said.
“Maybe he was just trying to come up with something creative for a date,” I suggested.
Jennifer said, “If you like him but not the rocks, tell him you’d like to go out, but not to the gem show. See what he says.”
“I don’t want to insult him.”
“You think that would be worse than just saying you don’t want to go out with him?” Jennifer turned around to look at Abby.
I said, “Who knows, you might have fun at the gem show. It might be interesting.”
“I told him to call me tomorrow night,” Abby said.
“Making Charlie sweat it out for twenty-four hours?” I asked.
“Well, it caught me by surprise. I just wasn’t sure…” I looked in the mirror at her, and she looked a little embarrassed. “Guess I should have just said no.”
“Charlie’s a nice guy,” said Jennifer. “Aren’t you going to give him a chance?”
We were home, and the discussion continued over popcorn.
“What if it had been someone else who asked you to go?” I asked. “Would you have said yes?”
“It would depend on who it was.”
“How about Greg?” asked Jennifer.
“Well, sure,” she smiled a little and looked away.
“How about Eddie?” I asked.
“Maybe. I don’t think Eddie would want to go to a gem show, though.”
I threw up my hands. “Help! This girl isn’t ready to date. Let’s lock her in her room for another year.”
Abby scowled at me as fiercely as my sister Gina ever had.
“Sorry,” I said. “It was a joke.”
“Well, I’m an adult,” Abby said. “If I remember correctly, you were married when you were my age.”
Ouch.
“That’s true, but I hadn’t made a very wise choice.”
“He’s telling you he was young and foolish,” Jennifer said, “and he doesn’t want to see you make the same mistake he did.” She leaned over and kissed me. “This is good practice for you. I think you’ll make an exceptional dad.”
Chapter 12
Monday, Oct. 11
Eddie came at six the next morning. As we stretched in the driveway, I told him, “Whatever you do, if you decide to ask Abby out, don’t ask her to go to a rock show.”
Eddie frowned. “She told me she hates rock music.”
“No, I mean the gem show at the Civic Center.”
“Oh, okay.” He gave me a funny look, and we set off on our new Monday route.
When we had gone the three miles and were cooling down, I told him Jennifer was going to the art club with us that night. “You might want to take a date,” I said. “I’m not sure how conspicuous we’ll be. The v.p. told me about fifty people or so usually go to these things, and there are always some visitors.”
“So, should I ask Abby?”
“Not if you don’t want to date her.”
“She’d like to be in on the case, wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know. Ask a female officer if you want someone to work on the case with you.”
“No, I’m not doing that again for a while.” I wondered if he was still hurting a little from his last relationship, with officer Sarah Benoit.
“Do what you want,” I told him. “We’ll go separately.”
“Do we know each other? At the art club, I mean.”
“Hmm. Probably better if we don’t. Unless we see someone we know. If there’s somebody there who knows we work together, they’d think it was strange that we were ignoring each other.”
“Well, we’ll hope that doesn’t happen,” Eddie said. “We don’t want them to know we’re cops, do we?”
“Not if we can help it. Just mingle and chat and see who’s willing to talk about their collection, and who’s listening.”
At that moment, Abby drove her white Sentra into the driveway, home from work. I went inside, leaving Eddie talking to her. Jennifer was in the kitchen, and I said, “Eddie doesn’t have his head on straight, that’s for sure.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“He’s out there right now, and I’ll bet he’s asking Abby to go to the art club.”
“So?”
“So, last night he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to date her.”
“He slept on it and made up his mind.” Jennifer went into the entry and looked out. “He’s leaving.” She ran into the kitchen and sat down innocently at the table and picked up her English muffin. I poured my coffee and was heading for the table when Abby came.
“Hey. Eddie asked me to go with you guys tonight,” she said.
“Are you going?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah. He said it was for the case, so it’s not a real date, I guess, but he was really sweet.”
*****
At the office, I spent the first hour getting organized, reviewing the crime updates and e-mail, making sure our cases were under control, and talking to Mike. I got the outline for the first computer session out of my briefcase and found a note from Jennifer: Have a great day, Captain! All my love. I smiled and added it to the bundle in my bottom desk drawer.
At nine o’clock, Cheryl, Tony, Joey, and Emily came into the office. I sent Arnie and Clyde out to interview more art gallery owners. We were finding some of the art dealers were very discreet, but other talked more than they should.
The class zoomed through the basics, and I got a feel for what each of them knew and needed to know. They’d all done background checks. Tony was the least experienced of the six. He and Cheryl, as patrol officers, didn’t spend a lot of time on the computer except for report
s. The detectives used it more.
I ran down the first few things I would do when I got a new computer fraud case, showing my students some tricks that could help them track down the people behind those schemes. I detailed the permissions and clearance they would need to access some databases, and the point at which they would need a warrant.
Then I presented the case Mike had given me on Friday. I had them arrange their computers so they could see what I was doing as I worked on my terminal. I explained to them how I traced back the origin of the phony messages. Once I’d backtracked through several servers, I found out where the hacker’s account was registered.
“We’ll get a warrant for that,” I said. “Next we want to close down the account the victims send the money to.”
They were all impressed by how efficiently I managed foiling the scammer. I made out requests for warrants needed to prosecute and sent them electronically to the courthouse.
Several more complaints had come in about email fraud, and I let Tony use my computer so everyone could join in while I walked them through it. Of course, there were a lot of hackers out there, but similar messages convinced me that one person was particularly active in the Portland area.
It was a pretty simple online scam that hacked users’ e-mail contacts and sent messages that looked as though they came from the owner. If the recipients responded, the crooks were able to get personal information from them. I guided my students through tracing back the origin, and in less than an hour we had shut the guy down and notified his server. Most of them weren’t that easy and took you through multiple servers all over the globe. I was glad this one was simple, since it made a good practice problem. The server cooperated in giving us the user’s name, and I had Eddie call the police in Phoenix, Arizona, give them the information we’d gathered, and trust them to pick up the hacker.
After a coffee break, I introduced another case I’d worked on a little bit the previous week. It involved a chat room for kids, where I was pretty sure pedophiles were lurking, posing as youngsters. We talked about the type of information a stalker could gain from a child over the Internet, and how seemingly innocent revelations could mean trouble.
“Most of the kids are in school now,” I said. “Around three o’clock, you all need to log on and see how it works. A molester will pose as a kid and gain a child’s confidence in the chat room, then initiate private e-mail or messaging. I want you to just watch at first, see what the kids are talking about. See how many clues you can pick up as to where they live. That’s your homework for tonight.”
We only had a half hour left, and we moved on to the art case. I handed out assignments, asking for profiles of art dealers and gallery owners.
“We want to know if they’ve had so much as a traffic ticket,” I said. “Somewhere out there is a dealer who is knowingly buying and selling stolen art, maybe even commissioning the thefts. Find me a gallery owner with a record, and we’ll have something to investigate.”
They began their electronic research, and I went from desk to desk, suggesting ways to get at more and more information. Cheryl’s subject had gone bankrupt twice in other states before moving to our area and opening an avant-garde gallery. Nate’s was a woman with a five-year-old marijuana conviction. Other than that, they seemed pretty clean. If you wanted Maine seascapes, Eddie’s and Joey’s dealers were quite expert. For nudes, Cheryl’s man was the one to see. Antique portraits were a specialty at Emily’s shop, and I thought of the former owner of my house. Mr. Bailey had owned an Early American portrait that hung in the living room before Jennifer and I moved in there. I ought to call him at his daughter’s house, where he lived now, and remind him to take security measures.
“I wonder if any of these people would buy a painting if they knew it was stolen,” Joey Bolduc said.
“How could we find out?” I asked him.
“Hmm…”
“Anybody?” I said, looking around the room.
Tony said, “We could take a painting around and say we wanted to sell it, and see if they wanted proof of ownership.”
“Good. That’s one way,” I said. “If we had a valuable painting.”
Nate said, “We could ask informants where to sell something like that.”
Joey nodded. “Maybe we should try that. We have informants who might give us names.”
“Do it,” I said. “If you don’t have a case this afternoon, ask Ron if you can work on this. My unit will work on any clues you turn up.”
Emily said, “How could we get hold of a decoy painting to show dealers?”
“Well, I can think of a couple of ways,” I replied. “I know a few people with moderately expensive artworks. We might be able to borrow something. But I think it would be safer to use something the department owns.”
Tony’s eyes lit up. “You mean we have paintings and things in Property?”
“What, stolen things we’ve recovered?” asked Joey. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. Stuff that’s not claimed by the owners usually gets sold.”
“No, I was thinking of a print hanging on the wall upstairs.” I jerked my head toward the ceiling, and they all stared at me in silence.
“In the chief’s office?” Nate breathed at last.
“Yeah, there’s an old print up there. I checked it out, and it’s worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. That’s not quite in the price range these thieves have been shopping for, but it might be pricey enough to tell us what we want to know.”
Tony said, “Where did the department get this print?”
“Excellent question, Winfield. That’s your next assignment. Investigate the provenance of the Turner print in Chief Browning’s office. Was it donated? Bought with budgeted funds? Recovered as evidence? Left behind by a former chief? Look into that for us.”
It was nearly noon, and I sent them all off to lunch. When I drove out, heading for home, I saw them sitting together at the café down the street. It was cool, but not too chilly for lunch on the brick sidewalk. They looked like excited college students, arguing over a tough assignment.
When I came back after a half hour with Jennifer, Tony was waiting for me. “Sir, I talked to the chief’s secretary. She’s been working in the chief’s office for twenty-five years.”
“Good thinking, Winfield. What did she tell you?”
“The picture of the boat has been there since before she started working here. I mean, it was in the chief’s office in the old police station, before this one was built.”
I said, “That’s great. It’s been out of circulation. None of these dealers is apt to recognize it. Of course, it’s not an original. There are probably more like it. But they wouldn’t take one look and say, ‘Oh, the city bought that two years ago.’”
“Right,” said Tony. “I’m trying to find out how it got to be in the old office.”
“Great. Keep at it when you have time.”
I went up to see Mike and sound him out about the possibility of borrowing the print from his office.
“You want to borrow it?” His eyebrows almost met in the middle. “What for?”
“To show people and ask where we could sell it.”
“I don’t want to sell it.”
“Of course not,” I said. “But we could use it for a decoy, to get the art dealers talking.”
He laughed. “Judith said Winfield was up here looking at it.”
“Yeah, I’ve got him trying to find out how the department came by it.”
“I like that painting,” he said.
“It’s a print, not a painting.”
“But there is a painting somewhere? The original?”
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you were a good cop.”
I sighed. “I’ll tell you before five o’clock.”
“Bet you don’t.”
“Guaranteed.”
I called him at four-fifteen. “The
original Turner painting is hanging in a museum in Boston. It’s currently valued at sixty-five thousand dollars.”
“No kidding. I told you, anything I need an expert on, give you a week and you’re it.”
“So, can we use the print as a decoy, Mike?”
“Take good care of it?”
“Of course.”
“Terry Lemieux was just in here.”
“Back from Fairfield?” I asked.
“Yup. He wants the job.”
“Do they want him?”
“Dunno yet,” Mike said. “They’ll probably call if they do, for a detailed background. I’ll have Ron do it.”
“We’ll miss him.”
“Yeah. Harv?”
“What?”
“Thanks for staying. Come get the painting whenever you want.”
*****
I let Eddie and Nate work on the kids’ chat room after three o’clock. Nate came to me, pleased with his success but troubled by what he’d found.
“There’s a girl named Melissa in the chat room,” he said.
“Might not be her real name,” I reminded him.
“Right. But I talked to her for a while. You know, on the computer.”
“Yeah?”
“She plays soccer at school. Her junior high has a girls’ team. It’s her favorite thing right now.”
“Is she in Maine?”
“Yes. When I first went on there, I took your advice and said I wanted a pen pal in Maine.”
“So?”
“She didn’t tell me where she lives, but her mascot is the Black Raiders. Can we trace that?”
“Sure can.” On my computer, I pulled up a file I’d gotten from the state Department of Education, and searched for “Black Raiders.”
“Winslow,” I told him.
“Wow. I had no idea you could do that so fast.”
I grinned. “I’ve got all kinds of tricks up my sleeve. If the bad guys had what we have, there would be a lot more crime out there. We need more time and manpower to make the most of it, though.”
“I’ve tried not to lie,” he said. “I know you don’t want me to. But I’ve let her think I’m a kid.”
I said, “I understand, Nate. It’s a fine line, and undercover work usually involves deception. The FBI has a whole unit that does this all the time. They pretend to be kids and wait for pedophiles to try to lure them into meeting them. It’s about the only way to catch them.”
Found Art (Maine Justice Book 3) Page 14