Sniffing Out a Crime - Dog Fosterer Museum Mysteries

by Vincent Cleaver

  * * *

  I was dressed sharply in a pale blue silk blouse, black slacks, and black low-slung heels. My mother had always counseled on me the value of first impressions in the art world. These were people, after all, who were surrounded by elegant beauty all day long. They had an eye for precise detail.

  A middle-aged woman in a violet dress, her dark hair cut short, was waiting for me in the entryway. She put out a hand with a smile. “You must be Cindy. You look just like your mother.”

  I smiled and shook her hand. “I’ll tell her that. She’ll take it as a compliment.”

  She laughed. Then she waved a hand. “Come with me. I have them all gathered up by the mosaic.”

  We walked past the small, elegant café with its enclosed courtyard. Then there was a knight on horseback - one of the prizes they’d acquired when Higgins Armory sadly closed its doors. Higgins was one of the largest collections of arms and armor west of Europe, but it just hadn’t been able to stay afloat. The WAM stepped in and worked out a deal to showcase the beautiful creations within their own walls. It became a true win-win.

  I glanced left, at the “Samurai” exhibit. I’d brought Diana to the opening for it. It melded old and new in a fascinating way. For example, there was a series of beautifully executed woodblocks which featured modern themes. Nintendo’s “Link” character lounged in traditional samurai armor against an autumn tree, playing an ocarina. Mario from Super Mario Brothers raced along in a rickshaw pulled by a mushroom, trying to dodge a squid thrown by a large turtle. In another scene four Ninja Turtles lurked in trees, watching a progression of samurai bearing banners with a large foot.

  My heart twisted when I remembered how I had danced all night long with Diana. How we had laughed like teenagers without a care in the world.

  I pushed the feeling down, dragging my scatterbrained thoughts back to the present.

  This could be my first real job.

  I brought the image of Duke’s dark brown eyes into my mind as a focus point. Duke never complained about his advancing age. He didn’t whine about the owners who had abandoned him at a shelter because they wanted a new puppy instead. He had simply waited, patiently, for me to come in and take him home.

  If he could do it, so would I.

  I would endure.

  Jocelyn led me down the long marble staircase. The gallery was set up for a wedding reception. To the right, the beautiful eleventh-century Chapter House had rows of white chairs prepared for the ceremony itself. It was stunning. I had often stood meditating in that small room for long minutes, soaking in its peace. The structure had been carried stone-by-stone from France from an historic monastery.

  My eyes drew back to the main hall - to the group of four people standing before the Roman hunting scene mosaic.

  Jocelyn waved a hand. “Cindy, I’d like to introduce you to our interns. This is Betty.”

  Betty was in her seventies with curly white hair and a plump body in a floral dress. She could have been my grandmother, before the sweet woman had passed away a few years ago. Betty smiled and shook hands.

  Jocelyn spoke again.

  “Edgar.”

  He was in his early twenties. College student, I’d guess, with his The Scream t-shirt and stained jeans. He seemed wholly disinterested and he barely gave me a nod.

  “Peter.”

  His eyes lit up and traced down my body. His voice was definitely British as he said, “Brilliant.” Tall, thin, short brown hair, pale blue eyes. There was that glow in his gaze that I’d learned to recognize immediately - and to stand back from. Sometimes men just didn’t understand that I wasn’t interested. His handshake held a little longer than necessary.

  “Nice to meet you,” I murmured, delicately extracting my fingers from his warm grasp.

  Jocelyn’s voice dropped slightly. “And … Wendy.”

  I’d been with the police in Hartford for ten years. I’d encountered enough witnesses to get pretty competent at reading tone. Clearly Jocelyn wasn’t too pleased with Wendy.

  Wendy was perfectly put together. An elegant pink sheathe dress fit her as neatly as the aluminum wrap with which Christo and Jeanne-Claude had enveloped the Reichstag in Berlin. And clearly Wendy knew it. Her manicured nails with Etruscan wolves painted on each one came toward me. “Charmed, I’m sure.” She must have had twelve shades of eye-shadow carefully layered to create the sunset effect.

  Her hands were cold and without any sense of life.

  Jocelyn nudged her head to the right. “Let’s talk in the chapel. The wedding won’t be for an hour yet.”

  I held in a smile. Out of the entire monastery at the Benedictine Priory of Saint John, this was the one room where the monks would release their monastic silence and plan the business of their order. This “speaking room” just happened to be the one room moved, stone by stone, into the educational wealth which was Worcester.

  It was fitting that we would hold our talk here.

  We walked along the Roman hunting mosaic with its tigers, lions, and deer, created over a thousand years ago. It reminded me, as it always did, of how ephemeral life really was. Of how fleeting our joys and tragedies were. In the blink of an eye our lives would become an exhibit at a museum. We would merely present an example of how often the human condition tragically repeated itself.

  The four interns settled themselves in the front row of the neatly arranged white chairs.

  I looked at the four men and women as they eased into place. Edgar fidgeted uncomfortably. Wendy carefully tucked her skirt beneath her legs.

  Soon those very same seats would be reserved for the bridesmaids in their matching dresses – ones they would never wear again. I shook my head. It was hard to believe, but Diana and I had been approaching that wedding point. We’d been hinting at rings and honeymoons. And then through a sheer happenstance of timing I’d used her laptop for a Google search. There, in the history, I’d revealed her cheating heart.

  The wedding bells had never rung for us.

  I looked up at the chapel again with its precisely-cut stone arches. What would tonight’s bride wear? A medieval style dress? Something more modern?

  Diana had been adamant that she wanted a two-thousand-dollar monstrosity in layers, like a giant half-an-onion. I had smiled and humored her, but inside my frugal nature was screaming to be heard. After all, in past centuries the bride and groom would simply wear their “church best” for a wedding. There was no buying of extravagant outfits. Certainly no requiring of best friends to buy them as well.

  I had tried to explain that to Diana. Based on one desperate decision by Queen Victoria in 1840, somehow the entire modern world required weddings to be frosted in white. But poor Victoria had led a life brutally controlled by her mother. Laws mandated that she could not officially inherit the Hanover territories until she pledged herself to a man and produced a viable child. Victoria clung to the one and only choice she had in all of this – what to wear. And her one choice had set the course for millions of starry-eyed girls ever since.

  Like my Diana. My beautiful, flitting butterfly of a partner.

  And now she was gone.

  With a trollop.

  Jocelyn cleared her throat. “Ummm, Cindy?”

  My cheeks burned with heat.

  I’d done it yet again.

  I bit my lip. I had to focus. I had to be Duke the Bloodhound. Carefully attentive to what was before me.

  I looked over to Jocelyn. “Sorry about that. Just getting a read on your interns. Please, go ahead.”

  Jocelyn gave me an encouraging smile. “Of course. You take all the time you need.”

  She stepped in front of us, between the pair of stained glass windows. I knew the artwork was from the 1500s – barely related to the medieval Chapter House. It was sort of like an art gallery trying to pass off traditional impressionist artwork as the latest rage. But I understood the Worcester Art Museum was doing the best it could to set a mood. I wasn’t going to quibble over minor details
like centuries.

  Jocelyn glanced at me.

  I focused again on Duke and brought a smile to my lips. “Yes, I’m ready. Go ahead.”

  She nodded and lifted her head. Her voice fell into that recital quality that many in the industry honed over countless years. “Here at the Worcester Art Museum we have a well-established research wing. We tackle challenging projects like restoring the Portrait of a Man by Anthony van Dyck, which is on display in our Idea Lab. Our reputation is world wide. We often have illustrious museums entrusting us with their most precious treasures. Portrait of a Man, for example, was sent to us by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Many other exceptional pieces are stored in our restoration area, waiting for their chance to shine.”

  I nodded. “My mother has talked often about the amazing results you are able to create.”

  Her cheeks pinkened. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

  I looked across the four interns. “So I assume something … happened … in the restoration area?”

  Jocelyn’s gaze grew serious. “Yes. You might have heard about the tragedy with the Paolo Porpora painting, Flowers. Gorgeous piece. Created in the sixteen hundreds. It’s worth one-point-five million.”

  She paused. “At an exhibit, a child accidentally put his fist right through it.”

  I paled. “You are working on restoring it here?”

  Pride steadied her voice. “Yes.”

  I looked amongst the four interns. A nervous tremor coursed through me. “I’m confused. This is about Flowers? If a painting worth one point five million has been stolen, shouldn’t you call in the FBI?” I swallowed and looked over to Jocelyn. “I’m grateful of your trust in me, but this seems like a theft that more than just one detective should be handling.”

  Jocelyn chuckled. “No, no, don’t worry. The painting wasn’t stolen.”

  I breathed out a deep sigh of relief.

  She crossed her arms. “The issue is that we were handling the repair quietly. For certain political reasons it wasn’t supposed to be known that the Worcester Art Museum was assisting with the repairs. But we found a burner phone with photos of the work in progress. According to our security logs, only these four interns were in the area at the time.”

  My shoulders relaxed. This sounded like something I could handle.

  “Can I see the report of the security logs?”

  She nodded. “I thought you might ask for those.” She reached into her leather purse and drew out a small folded set of papers.

  There was a neat computer printout listing a set of dates and names scrolling down the page, along with zones.

  Jocelyn pointed over my shoulder. “These show when each person entered a new zone. Zone 9 is where the Flowers painting was stored. We know from the timestamps on the burner phone that the photos of Flowers were taken between 15:32 and 15:58.”

  Diana’s voice floated in my thoughts.

  What are you doing? You’re a scatterbrain. You can’t possibly help them with this case.

  I closed my eyes against her taunting. I deliberately replaced her dark green eyes with Duke’s loyal gaze.

  Duke believed in me.

  I opened my eyes again and took a closer look at the papers.

  Zone 6 Wendy 14:42 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 9 Peter 14:48 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 3 Betty 15:13 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 9 Edgar 15:17 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 9 Betty 15:22 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 1 Peter 15:30 8/9/15 EST

  Zone 9 Wendy 15:32 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 4 Betty 15:58 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 5 Wendy 16:12 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 2 Edgar 16:34 9/8/15 EST

  Zone 8 Peter 16:39 9/8/15 EST

  I looked up at Jocelyn. “Are there any videos of this Zone 9 area?”

  Her lips pressed together. “I’m afraid not. Some felt that would be a security risk in and of itself and that they didn’t want any of this restoration process on video.”

  I nodded. “All right, then, is there any way for a person to get into this Zone 9 without an access card?”

  She shook her head. “All of the restoration areas are card controlled. Our security team has thoroughly gone all over the area. There’s no sign that any of the card readers have been tampered with.”

  I wished Duke was here by my side, to lend me strength, and perhaps his amazing nose. He came from an amazing breed. The venerable Nick Carter bloodhound was world famous for having helped close over six hundred cases. I could use some of that stick-with-it-ness right now. But I guessed, with all the interns crossing and re-crossing paths, that there would be no way to know who was where at an exact point of time.

  Jocelyn glanced over. “Cindy?”

  I dug my nails into my palms to stay focused. “Yes, yes. Just evaluating the options.”

  I turned to Betty. “What do you have to say?”

  Betty spoke up, her voice warbly. “I barely know how to turn my computer on, never mind use one of those new-fangled burning phones. I wouldn’t know how to use the camera.”

  Peter smiled fondly at her. He sounded like a softer version of Benedict Cumberbatch. “That is the truth. When we let Betty use the office computer for a project it took me days to get everything back in working shape again.” He turned to Jocelyn. “I know you suspect one of us, and at first glance it seems to make sense. But I still think it had to have been an outside job.” His grin grew. “Undoubtedly some spy from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts wanted to see how we do such a great job.”

  Edgar rolled his eyes, crossing his thin arms in front of Munch’s The Scream. “The MFA is a wanna-be museum. The Met in the City is far superior than anything local around here.” He sniffed. “The moment I graduate from Clark, I’m moving to the City. Probably Hell’s Kitchen. That’s where the real action is.”

  Wendy gave an elegant sniff. “In your dreams, Edgar. You wouldn’t be able to afford even a cot in one of those immigrant slums where they pack ten to a room.” Her eyes flashed. “Maybe you’ll get to sleep on the street and experience an authentic sense of city life.”

  Edgar rounded on her. “Yeah, well, your daddy pays for everything for you, so you don’t have to worry about minor issues like rent or bills. Not all of us can drive around in a Jaguar XXX.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “It’s an XE.”

  Edgar’s scowl deepened. “Whatever.”

  She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at him. “You’re the one who desperately needs money. Wasn’t that collection agency calling here for you just last week? You’d probably strip every last gold leaf off our medieval pieces to pay the bill.”

  His face reddened with affront. “How dare you! I would never harm a piece of art, no matter what the price.”

  She leaned forward. “Yeah, but you’d happily take photos of it, wouldn’t you? Easy money and no real harm done?”

  Peter glanced over at her. His tone became clipped. “While you’d do it just because you were bored. You wanted something to make your cold heart beat a little more quickly.”

  Betty shook her head. “Children, children. There’s no need to fight.” She looked at Jocelyn. “Can’t we just … oh, I don’t know … dust the phone for fingerprints or something? See where it was bought?”

  Jocelyn blushed. “It actually was part of a batch of phones we brought in for field trips,” she admitted. “So the whole staff had access to them. We never imagined something like this would happen.”

  Peter leant back in his chair. “Of course the guards checked for prints. Apparently whoever used it was careful to wear gloves. The security guard who found it said it was lying in a corner of a room, still active. She figured she might have startled the photographer and he –”

  Edgar piped in, “or she!”

  Peter nodded again complacently. “He or she dropped the phone in panic and made a run for it.”

  I tapped a finger to my lip. “Can I see the phone?”

  Jocelyn
drew a baggie with a simple cellphone within out of her purse. “I thought you might want to.” She handed it over to me.

  It was one of the most basic models I’d seen in a while. A keypad, a tiny camera lens, and that was about it. I hit the menu button and in moments I was looking at the gallery of images. Sure enough, it showed a lovely painting of flowers from numerous angles, detailing the restoration effort.

  I tried to carefully judge the height of the photographer from the images, but it was not much use. The shots were taken from a variety of heights and angles and were mostly angled down at the work.

  I held up the security log and compared them with the pictures’ timestamps. “You’re right. The photos on the phone are all stamped from 15:32 to 15:58. And it seems that Edgar, Betty, and Wendy were all in the area at the time. Peter is the only one clearly swiped into a different area. He was nearby but not in the same zone.”

  Peter glanced down the line of his fellow interns. “I still think it’s an outside job. Someone else got in there. And, after all, they didn’t get away with the photos. So no harm, no foul, right?”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “If we have a serious breach in our security, we need to fix it. Yes, it was just photos this time – but the next time they could cause harm to something precious. Or they could steal something.” Her cheeks paled. “If an intern was in there at the same time, the intern might get hurt.”

  Betty drew her arms across her chest. “Hurt?”

  Edgar rolled his eyes. “Nobody’s getting hurt, Betty. God Almighty. They’re just pictures.”

  My phone chirped into life, and I blushed. “Sorry about that. I’ll turn it off.”

  I put the baggie-phone onto a free chair, pulled out my own, and glanced down at it.

  It was Diana.

  I punched the reject button.

  A thrill coursed through me. We’d see how she liked that. Now our roles were reversed. It would serve her right to have to wait until I was free. She would have to work around my schedule now.

  I turned off the power on my phone and jammed it back into my purse.

  Fresh energy coursed through me. I was Duke the Bloodhound. I was at the scene, and I would discover the scent.

  All I needed was a few more clues.

  I lifted up the baggie phone again in one hand, holding the security log in the other.

  Jocelyn gave me a weary smile. “I’ve been over it. And we don’t have any video or anything else. It really could be any of them. Except for Peter, of course.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe we count ourselves lucky that nothing was taken and we set up a few cameras. Use this as a learning experience. After all, we have the phone. We have the photos.”

  She looked across her interns. “The only other solution would be to ask all three of them to stop working with us. That seems a shame. Punishing the innocent with the guilty.”

  Her eyes lingered for a moment on Wendy and I could almost read her thoughts.

  Maybe it’d be worth it.

  I shook my head, my focus coming back to the lists. “To clarify, even though Betty, Edgar, and Wendy were all in Zone 9, they couldn’t see each other to know who took the photos?”

  Jocelyn gave a wry smile. “There are a scattering of separate working areas in Zone 9. It allows each restorer to fully focus on his or her efforts.”

  I blushed. Maybe I could use a setup like that. I definitely needed help with my focus.

  Jocelyn continued, “And I just don’t believe the three interns were all working in a concerted effort. This really seems to be the job of one lone individual.”

  I stared at the security log as if it held the secrets of the universe.

  Diana’s voice corkscrewed into my ear.

  Just as well you left the Hartford PD. You never fit in there. That’s why you abandoned them so easily to come north with me. And now look at you. Can’t even figure out a simple photography case.

  I shook her off. I brought Duke’s loyal warmth into my mind. He had been mistreated by life – and he took each new day as it came. His joy at an afternoon walk was unadulterated and fresh. He could draw just as much pleasure at sniffing at the left side of a rose as its right side. Every angle brought new scents for him to treasure.

  An idea came to me.

  I withdrew a notepad out of my purse. “Jocelyn, can you please get us some pens?”

  “Of course,” she replied. She headed off toward the gift shop. In a moment she’d come back with a collection of stained-glass design pens.

  I handed each intern a piece of paper, and Jocelyn followed suit with a pen.

  Betty frowned at the paper. “What do you want us to write? Our confessions?”

  I shook my head. “Please just write your birthdate, in number format.”

  Betty’s face drew down in displeasure, but she nodded. All four interns finished in moments.

  I looked across them. “Now please hold your piece of paper up for the group and say your birthdate out loud.”

  Betty looked as if I’d asked her to swallow an English Toy Terrier, hair and all. But she obediently raised her paper up with stiff arms. “January 8, 1940.”

  Her paper read 1/8/40.

  Edgar was next. “March 9, 1995.”

  His paper read 3/9/95.

  Peter’s turn. “April 5, 1991.”

  His paper was 5/4/91.

  Wendy arched her brows. “Poor thing. An Easter baby. That must have really sucked for you. Everyone’s already celebrating and you just got a few extra presents.”

  He barely glanced at her. “Where you got presents all year long, because your mommy and daddy gave you everything you begged for.”

  She sniffed and held up her paper. It was written in a neat, elegant hand. “I was born July 22, 1986.” Her paper said 7/22/86.

  I nodded in satisfaction. Then I turned to Peter. “All right, Easter boy. Why did you do it? If I had to guess, you were taking the information back to the British Museum. They’re under a lot of pressure right now to give up foreign treasures such as the Rosetta Stone. If they could offer more in the way of restoration techniques, they might have a bargaining chip to work with.”

  Peter paled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I nodded my head toward Betty. “Peter, you said that when Betty fouled up the work computer that you spent three days fixing it. So you’re good with computers.”

  Jocelyn’s brow creased. “He’s one of the best – we always call him in if we need help with something. But what does that have to do with accessing Zone 9? The logs show he left the area just before the time window.”

  I pointed at one of the entries. “But look at what it does say about him.”

  Zone 1 Peter 15:30 8/9/15 EST

  Peter frowned. “It says I was in Zone 1 at 15:30. That’s far away from Zone 9.”

  I asked him, “On what date?”

  “September 8th, same as the rest,” he countered.

  I looked up at Jocelyn.

  Her mouth made an “O” shape.

  I nodded. “Peter, you’re good with computers, but you have a British view toward dates. So when you created an entry for yourself, to give yourself an alibi as having left Zone 9 just in time, you put the date in properly for an Englishman. Unfortunately, that’s backwards for us Americans.”

  He blinked and stared at the log.

  His cheek paled.

  Jocelyn looked across at the other interns. “I think the rest of you are free to go. Peter and I are going to have a bit of a chat now.”

  Betty, Edgar, and Wendy all rose to their feet. Wendy gave Peter a royalty wave on her way past. “Ta ta, now.”

  Peter’s jaw was tight. “I didn’t hurt anything. Just took some photos.”

  Jocelyn looked up to me. “Thank you for all your help, Cindy. You are everything your mother said you would be. Do you have a card? I’ll make sure they get your check out to you first thing in the morning.”

&nbs
p; I handed over her fresh-off-the-presses card with a smile. “I’m glad I could be of service.”

  I looked around the wedding-decorated medieval room one last time. Diana and I had been so close to walking down the aisle. To becoming wife-and-wife. Perhaps I had been fortunate to find out her true nature before it became too late.

  I glanced down at my purse. She had finally called me. What could she want?

  I shook my head and headed back out to the Roman Mosaic.

  Duke was waiting for me at home, undoubtedly curled up snoozing in his doggy bed. Tonight’s pleasures included caramel popcorn, a romantic movie, and a relaxing night in.

  Diana could wait.

  Thank you for reading Sniffing Out a Crime! Book 2 in this series is Barking Up the Wrong Tree -

  https://www.lisashea.com/artmuseummystery/barkingupthewrongtree/

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  Lisa grew up in an art-loving household. One of her first jobs was as a volunteer at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut. She also worked at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. She adores all forms of art, from photography to painting, from sculpture to origami.

  Lisa goes to each museum to explore it from top to bottom. Then she brings these visits to life for you. Enjoy a virtual tour via the story – and then visit her websites to see photos!

  A portion of all proceeds benefits battered women’s shelters.

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