Carnal Curiosity (17 page)

“I wonder who’s going to be robbed next?” Dino asked.

Stone took Jeb Barnes’s notes from a pocket and handed them to Dino. “This is a list Jeb made of his richest clients, the
ones with the most insurance. It would be interesting to know about their experience with Steele, if the company recommended Dugan for security system work and who from Steele surveyed their apartments or houses.”

“It certainly would,” Dino said, tucking the list into his own pocket. “I’ll have each of them interviewed by a detective.”

“Barnes is worried about Crane’s being interviewed by detectives,” Stone said. “He believes she might be innocent in all this, and he doesn’t want her unnecessarily disturbed.”

“Let’s see if her name comes up in these next interviews,” Dino said. “If it does, we’ll be talking to Crane whether Barnes likes it or not.”

“Jeb’s greatest fear is that his company will find out he was fucking Crane and fire him. I told him I’d ask you to be discreet in your investigation.”

“Sure, we’ll be discreet—up to a point. Anything else?”

“Nope. Your turn.”

“I talked with a detective who’s our top jewelry theft investigator and dropped the name of Jacob Sutton. He actually knows Sutton, because he’s spent a lot of time at the diamond center investigating cases, but he had no idea that the guy was a fence. I’ve authorized him to have a team look into the man and his business thoroughly. If he’s been fencing for as long as Coulter says he has, he’s probably connected to a lot of robbery cases over the years. We’re concentrating on the ones that the statute of limitations hasn’t run out on.”

“Sounds good.”

“Everybody’s excited about Jake Sutton. Nailing him would be a very big win for the department.”

“And for you, since your predecessors never nabbed him.”

“Yeah, well.”

They ordered steaks and fries and wine and began to enjoy themselves.

After dinner, Dino said, “Viv tells me that Crane is impressing people at her new job.”

“Good for her.”

“Makes me wonder, though.”

“Wonder what?”

“Who is Crane fucking at Strategic Services?”

36

S
tone arrived home and went to his study to check his phone messages. Nothing. That was a relief. He turned the lights off and went upstairs to his bedroom. On the way up in the elevator, he had the odd feeling that something had been amiss in his study, but in thinking about it, he couldn’t imagine what.

He undressed in his dressing room and got into a nightshirt, then he adjusted the bed to point him at the TV and turned on the late news. Again, he had the feeling that something was wrong with the room, but it took him a couple of minutes to grasp what it was. He sat bolt upright in the bed and stared at the bedroom wall facing him. His mother’s four paintings, which normally hung there, were gone.

He got out of bed, raced downstairs, and turned on the living room and study lights. Two more paintings in the study and five from the living and dining room were gone. He had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he had to take a few deep breaths before he could call Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“It’s Stone.”

“You think of something else I should know?”

“Yes. The next robbery has occurred. All of my mother’s paintings, eleven of them, are missing.”

“Holy shit, Stone, those are irreplaceable!”

“I know.”

“I’ll get the art squad on this right away. Are you available now?”

“Yes.”

“How did they get into the house?”

“I don’t know. They must have come in while you and I were at dinner.”

“Any suspects?”

“The first time Crane was in the house she commented on the paintings, paid a lot of attention to them. She knew my mother’s work.”

“Now we interview Crane,” Dino said.

“Okay with me, and you needn’t be gentle.”

“We’re on it.” Dino hung up.

Stone got dressed and poured himself a brandy; he needed it. Presently, the doorbell rang, and two detectives came into the house.

“I’m Jim Connor, this is my partner, Aaron Cohn,” the older of the two men said. “I understand you’ve had a burglary.”

Stone went to his computer and printed out color photographs of the eleven paintings, then he handed them to Connor. “That’s the lot,” he said.

“Do you have any idea of their value?” Connor asked.

“There was an auction at Sotheby’s last month,” Stone said.
“A smallish painting of hers went for a million nine. It wasn’t her best work. My collection was the cream of her career.”

“I know Matilda Stone’s work well,” Connor said, “and I feel for you. Are they insured?”

“Yes, with Steele, who are my law clients, too. I also serve on their board of directors.”

“Did you buy all the paintings?”

“My mother left me four. The others I’ve collected over the years, the most recent acquisition late last year.”

“I understand you feel that a Ms. Crane Hart may have been involved in the theft?”

“Until recently, she was with Steele. We met when she came to adjust a claim I had made. She knew my mother’s work, and made a point of admiring the pictures. I assume Dino has briefed you on her possible involvement in a couple of other thefts—of jewelry, not art. Her former husband, one Don Dugan, is a suspect, as well.”

“I suppose you have a security system?”

“Yes. I armed it when I left the house.”

“Then it must have been bypassed. May I see the main box?”

Stone took the two detectives downstairs and showed them the panel. There was a light representing each sensor—door, window, motion—in the house. All the lights were off.

“I don’t know how the hell they did that without setting off the alarm,” Stone said.

“There are some very clever operators out there. When you came home from your dinner with Chief Bacchetti, did you enter the code, as usual?”

“Yes, and it made the right noises. I had no reason to suspect it had been tampered with.”

“You’d better get your security guy here first thing in the morning and let him diagnose what was done to the equipment. We’d like to know in detail how they switched off the system.”

“So would I,” Stone said.

The two men asked more questions, then Connor said, “We’ll be in touch.”

Stone let them out, and he started to engage the security system. Then remembered he didn’t have one.

37

S
tone slept badly and awoke depressed. He had trouble getting out of bed. He called Bob Cantor, his electronics specialist.

“Good morning, Stone.”

“Hello, Bob. My house was burgled last night and eleven paintings were stolen. The alarm system had somehow been turned off while I was out to dinner.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Stone, but if you remember, your current system was installed by your friends at the Agency last year at the same time they replaced all your windows.”

“Oh, God, you’re right, Bob.” The Agency had done the work to protect his guest Marcel duBois.

“If I can be of any help to them, just call me.”

“Thanks, Bob, I will.” Stone hung up and called Holly.

“You’re up early, Stone,” she said.

“You remember last year when your people installed new windows and a new security system in my house?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Last night, my house was entered while I was out to dinner, and all of my mother’s paintings, eleven of them, were stolen.”

“Oh, Stone, those beautiful pictures of New York?”

“Yes, those. Can you get somebody over here to find out why their system failed?”

“I’ll make some calls immediately and get back to you.”

“Thank you.” They both hung up.

Stone ate half his breakfast, showered, shaved, and went downstairs. The phone on his desk was buzzing as he entered his office. “Yes?”

“Holly Barker on one.”

“Holly?”

“Stone, a technician will be there in an hour or less.”

He thanked her and hung up.

Joan came into the office. “You look terrible,” she said. “Are you ill? Do you want me to call your doctor?”

Stone told her what had happened.

“That seems impossible,” she said “Those Agency people said it was beyond state-of-the-art!”

“So they said. They’ll be here in an hour. Try not to yell at them until they’ve diagnosed the problem and fixed it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Joan said, then went back to her desk.

A moment later, she buzzed. “Mike Freeman on one.”

“Hello, Mike.”

“Good morning, Stone. You sound a little down. Something wrong?”

Stone told him.

“That’s very disturbing. Would you like me to send some people over there to look at it?”

“No, the Agency is sending the people who installed it.”

“If they don’t resolve this to your satisfaction, let me know, and I’ll send over a team.”

“Thanks, that’s comforting to know.”

“I called to see if you’d like to have lunch.”

“Thanks, Mike, but I’ve got my hands full here, How about tomorrow?”

“Usual place, usual time?”

“See you then.” Stone hung up and noted the date on his iPhone calendar.

The Agency had sent a team of three, and they looked grim. “This doesn’t happen to our equipment,” their leader said. “We’ll take a look at the panel.” The man knew where it was, so Stone kept his seat. An hour and a half later the leader returned.

“Here’s what happened,” he said. “While you were out last night, someone snipped a wire to the outside alarm speakers, then picked your front door lock, entered the house, found the main panel, and cut the alarm and phone wires.”

“Why didn’t that set off the alarm?” Stone asked.

“By that time, you didn’t have an audible alarm, but the system should have notified your monitoring service. That’s where the problem is, I think. We’ve made repairs and reconnected everything. We’ve also installed front and rear outside alarms, two stories up, where no one could reach them without attracting attention. We’ve also installed backup circuits that will turn on the alarms if the same thing should be tried again.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Call the police, tell them that you suspect someone at your monitoring service of ignoring the alarm last night, and ask them to investigate. It’s likely that there was only one person on duty after hours. I’ve spoken with Assistant Director Barker,
and she has authorized us to route your monitoring directly to our station. We’re fully staffed twenty-four/seven.”

“So I’m back in business here?”

“You are. The system is up and running, and the monitoring has been rerouted. You should call this number and give them a new cancel code, in case of false alarm.” He wrote down a number and gave it to Stone.

Stone thanked the man, and he and his team left. Stone called in his new cancel code, then found Detective Jim Connor’s number and called him.

“Connor.”

“It’s Stone Barrington. The people who installed my security system were here and repaired everything. They suspect someone at my monitoring service of ignoring last night’s alarm.” Stone gave him the name and address of the service.

“We’ll get over there and investigate,” Connor said. “Are they still monitoring your system?”

“No, the system has been rerouted to a different monitor, a more secure one.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Connor said.

Later in the day, Dino called. “How you doing?”

“Better.”

“You’re not going to believe who owns your security monitoring service.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Dugan bought the service less than a month ago.”

“Then he has a license to steal,” Stone said.

“Just about. I sent two men to see Crane Hart today. They spent two hours with her in a conference room.”

“And?”

“And nothing. The woman has ice in her veins. She knows nothing, she did nothing, she has no idea what Dugan does when he’s out of the house. My guys swear she could pass a polygraph without blinking.”

“I thought she’d crumble under questioning,” Stone said.

“Frankly, so did I. She seemed so delicate.”

“What now?”

“The guy on duty last night at the monitoring service quit this morning at the end of his shift, and we haven’t been able to locate him. Turns out, that service also monitored the apartment systems of the Coulters and Quincy, the guy who lost all the gold.”

“Anything yet on Jake Sutton? I’ll bet he fenced the Quincy property, too. And maybe he handles art.”

“We’re working Sutton flat-out. If we can connect him to some robberies, then there’s a chance he’ll roll on Dugan.”

“Who do you want more, Dugan or Sutton?”

“That’ll be up to the DA on the case. Did the Agency fix your security system?”

“Yes, and they installed backup equipment.”

“I’m amazed that Dugan’s people could get past your system, even owning the monitoring service.”

“It seems that everybody who works for Dugan is the best in the business. They’ve pulled off three big jobs now, flawlessly and without hurting anybody.”

“The older guys around here say this is the slickest work they’ve seen since Eddie Buono and his crew knocked over that currency outfit at Kennedy more than twenty years ago.”

“Dino, can you get a search warrant for Crane’s building? She has a duplex and rents two apartments. She liked my
mother’s paintings so much, I think she might have kept at least one.”

“We don’t have enough for a warrant, Stone, you ought to know that.”

“You don’t have a tame judge on tap?”

“Not that tame.”

“What are you doing to find the paintings?”

“The art squad has a routine. You’re getting the same attention that you would if the pictures were van Goghs and Picassos.”

“Thanks, Dino. You want to join Mike Freeman and me for lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Usual time and place.”

“I’ll be there. Maybe I’ll have more for you by then.”

38

M
ike and Dino were already at Mike’s regular table at the Four Seasons Grill. Stone sat down, and a waiter poured him a glass of Chardonnay from a bottle in a cooler.