Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (25 page)

He shook
his head. “No. That isn’t necessary.”

“I
appreciate it. I’m sorry things turned out this way.”

“Me too,”
Ellmann said. “But they usually do with him. I have no idea what you see in
him, but I hope it’s worth all this.”

Susan
sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, that’s something I need to
think long and hard about.”

Then
Ellmann turned and looked at me. He walked over and stopped beside me. Then he
slowly reached down and took my hand, kissed it, and held it tightly as he led
me out of the house. Neither of us looked back, and we didn’t speak a word.

Ellmann pulled my truck door open.

“Zoe, I am
so
sorry. I had no idea.” He jerked a hand back through his hair. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I said, wrapping
my arms around his waist and laying my head against his chest. “But I will be.”

He squeezed me tight
and held me for a long minute, maybe two. I wanted to let him hold me for a
while longer, but we were standing in the street outside his house. Vince would
be leaving any time, and I didn’t want another encounter so soon. He might not
escape a second time, and things were bad enough as they were.

“I have to go,” I
said, gently pulling away from Ellmann. “I’m sorry about tonight. I should have
dropped Natalie off and left. I didn’t know.”

“It’s my fault. I
should have listened to you. You said you didn’t want to push it. You were
right. I know how badly he hurt you.”

“No, it’s Vince’s
fault. Let’s be clear about that.”

Ellmann nodded.
“You’re right.”

“Incidentally, that
part about the warrant, was that accurate?”

“I really don’t know.
I’ve been holed up in a conference room with three FBI agents and six other
cops all day. I know Vandreen pressed charges, but I have no idea where Simmons
is at with things.”

“Guess I better mind
the speed limit then,” I said. “Just in case.”

Ellmann gave a half
smile then stepped into me again, this time pinning me against the truck. And
he kissed me. Deeply, possessively. When he released me sometime later, I was
perfectly content to blow off Danielle Dillon and drag Ellmann home.

Instead, we each got
into our own vehicle and went back to work. Which wasn’t nearly as much fun.

I took Trilby to Lyle
Young’s house. The apartment above the garage was dark, but there were lights
on in the main house and the guesthouse. Someone was home. But with so many
people living here and Young’s “open-door” policy, I had no idea who I’d find.

I pulled my hair back
into a ponytail then stuffed cuffs and capture paperwork into my pockets. I got
out and opened the tailgate, opening the toolbox and pulling out the Glock .45
I kept there. In the state of Colorado, you need a permit to carry a concealed
weapon. I’d never felt it necessary to carry a weapon until I’d had people
trying to kill me on a regular basis. A few weeks ago, I’d applied for a
permit. My application was denied. The state thought it was too dangerous, my
history being what it was, but I was told I was welcome to reapply in five
years. Of course, this just meant I carried a concealed weapon illegally.

I clipped the holster
onto the waistband of my shorts at the small of my back. Then I put on a light
sweatshirt to help cover the gun. I didn’t normally go around carrying a gun,
but I didn’t normally get mixed up in murder cases either. In fact, the only other
one had been the one in which I’d met Ellmann. I made it a point to leave those
FTAs to the other agents. Had I known Danielle Dillon was mixed up with
murders, I would have told Amerson to go fly a kite when he asked me to take
her file.

I got out of the truck
and walked to the door. A short time later, Young answered.

“Back again?” he
asked, smiling. “I’m sorry, but Todd isn’t here at the moment. I saw him go out
earlier. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Actually, I need to
speak with Heather Neuman.”

I could see in his
eyes he knew the name, but he did another almost-perfect job of concealing it.

“Heather Neuman,” he
repeated. “Sorry, I don’t know who that is.”

“Heather Neuman is
Andrew Dyer’s girlfriend, and I was told by a reliable source she’s living in
this house with him. Given your ‘open-door’ policy, I find that highly likely.”

“Sure, Andrew stays
here sometimes, but I haven’t seen him in months. Your reliable source isn’t
very reliable.”

Last time I called him
out on lying to me, he fessed up. It wouldn’t hurt to try it again.

“That’s two lies since
you opened the door,” I said. “And maybe three, since I suspect Todd really is
home. Lying seems to be a bad habit of yours.”

He burst out laughing.

“You really are
something else, you know that?”

“I get that sometimes.
Where’s Heather?”

He pushed the door
open and stepped back. “All right,” he said, still smiling. “Why don’t you come
in?”

Something didn’t feel
right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it’s these gut feelings of mine that
have saved my bacon more than once. I can’t ignore them, even if I don’t
understand them at the time.

“Is there a Heather
Neuman living here?” I asked, not moving.

“She’s stayed here in
the past, like Andrew.”

“Is she here now?”

“Why don’t you come in
and see for yourself? That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

“Please ask her to
come to the door.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do
that.”

“And why’s that?”

He just laughed and
walked away from the front door, leaving it standing wide open.

Deciding there was
something wrong with Lyle Young, I walked off his porch and returned to the
truck. As I drove away, I didn’t have a clear sense of whether Heather was in
the house or not. And I had no idea what Young had been up to.

I decided one of the
only reasons I wanted to talk to Heather was because I wanted to know what was
going on. But that was my inability to accept questions with no answers. All
that really mattered was locating Danielle Dillon. Technically, I thought I’d
already done that. I didn’t know where she was at this moment, but I knew where
she’d been hiding, probably for the last ten months. Bringing her in was the
whole point, and it should have been my only objective.

With that thought in
my head, I drove away from Young’s house and over to Lemay, which I took all
the way north to Willox. I cut across Willox to Highway 287 then made a right
on Highway 1. I knew where Danielle Dillon had been very recently, and since she
probably had few other places to go, I thought chances were good she’d go back
there. Plus, I didn’t know where else to look. And as Amerson continued to remind
me, my time was running out.

I returned to Douglas
Road, finding the woodsy neighborhood didn’t have any streetlights. The only
light came from the half moon and the scattered porch lights. The Conrad house
was dark. I parked across the street and sat a moment, surveying the area. Out
of habit, I jotted down nearby license plate numbers and scanned for any faces
pressed to windows, particularly in Bonnie Matheson’s house. When I found none,
I got out of the truck and hustled to the front door. While Leroy had been
chatting to Natalie, I’d watched over his shoulder as he punched the code into
the lockbox. I’d thought it might come in handy.

Working mostly by
touch and the faint light of the moon, I punched in the code and retrieved the
key. Then I closed the box and went around to the side of the house. There had
been no other doors out of the basement aside from the one that led up to the
kitchen, but from trying the handle when I’d been inside earlier, I knew it was
locked. It would take Dillon some time to get out that way.

I switched on the
flashlight and held it in my left hand as I descended the stairs. I used the
key and opened the door, shining the light around as I moved through the apartment.
I found it empty, and from what I could tell, no one had been here since Leroy
had showed it to us earlier.

I went back to the
front door and shut it. Since I was here, I wanted to have a look around. I’d
done so briefly earlier, but with Leroy and Natalie around, it had been
cursory. I started in the bedroom, working only by the beam of the flashlight.
This seemed to be where the occupant spent most of his, or more likely
her
,
time.

At the desk, I looked
through the papers and folders. One was stuffed with newspaper clippings, all
detailing some kind of art theft. Most of the articles were in English, but not
all, though there were a few translations of those that weren’t. Some
identified suspects, a couple of them names I’d already seen, while others said
there were no suspects.

The next folder was
full of information on Russian eggs. There were half a dozen photos and pages
of information that included details and histories. Half the photos looked
familiar, and I thought they had likely been printed from a website Natalie and
I had viewed ourselves only a few hours earlier. I was positive they were
photos of Caroline Marks’s egg. But why did that matter to Danielle Dillon? Why
was she researching Marks’s egg?

A third folder held
research on other familiar objects: the jade carvings. There were several dozen
photos. One group of photos was clipped together, and a yellow sticky note on
the front read
private collection
.
I removed the paper clip and shuffled through the photos. Toward the bottom of
the stack, there were three photos of a jade sculpture. Another sticky note
read
same
private collection
.

So the rumor Natalie
had heard was accurate; the carvings and the sculpture had been in the same
private collection. Why had Dunn lied? Was it because the sculpture had been
stolen from him? Or because he wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place?
More interesting was why Dillon was interested in any of this and who had
stolen the sculpture.

I selected one of the
sculpture photos and tucked it into my pocket. I wanted to ask Natalie for
confirmation before I jumped to any more conclusions. Probably it was the
sculpture we’d been talking about earlier, but I wanted to be sure, and it was
easy enough to find out.

As I reached for
another folder, I heard a car stop outside, the brakes squealing slightly. It
seemed close. Had I been in any other house, I would have ignored it, but this
house was a plague on this neighborhood—everyone avoided it. No one would have
parked right outside.

I stood and switched
off the light, moving silently through the hall to the living room. Maybe it
was whoever had been squatting here, which I seriously suspected was Danielle
Dillon. I didn’t think I’d get that lucky, with ten hours left until the
deadline, but I could dream.

Outside, I heard
heavy, hurried footsteps, first on the front steps and then on the dead lawn,
as someone moved around to the back door. Finding it locked, too, the person
hurried back through the lawn and around the house. When he or she spotted the
basement door, the person stopped. Then there were heavy footsteps on the
concrete steps, and I could see a faint shadow on the other side of the door.

On the off chance
Dillon did come home, I’d locked the front door. But this person didn’t have a
key. Whoever was out there was trying to pick the lock.

Shit.

I realized at this
point I only had two questions: Did this person drive a silver Cadillac? And
could he or she pick a lock?

I still had the gun on
my belt, but I wasn’t interested in using it. In fact, I didn’t want to fight
at all. I thought it better to slip away unseen. I could have been wrong, but I
guessed whoever this was had come here for me. The list of reasons for doing so
was short and largely negative. I wanted to delay our confrontation as long as
possible.

I turned and went back
down the hall to a closed door at the end, near one of the unused bedrooms. I
pulled it open, stepped inside, and flipped on the flashlight, pulling the door
closed behind me. The passageway was dusty and dank. I climbed the wooden
stairs then tried the door at the top, even though I figured it was locked.

Having been in the
kitchen earlier, I knew the door was not barricaded or braced. It was a simple
interior door with a basic lock. I pulled my hairpin out, my bangs falling
free, and stretched it open, stripping the plastic end off. I knelt and slipped
the pin into the lock.

I’d recently spent a
lot more time practicing on handcuffs than doors, I realized. Too much time.

Behind me, I heard the
heavy footsteps inside the basement apartment. Then light poured into the
stairway from the crack under the bottom door. It wasn’t going to take long for
the visitor to figure out the apartment was empty. But would he leave when he
did? Would he believe there was no one else here?

I got the answer to my
question when the bottom door ripped open. I shot to my feet and glanced back.
The figure was big, obviously male, but strongly backlit by the light in the
hallway, appearing only as a silhouette. I didn’t need to know who he was to
know I was in trouble, though.

I gripped the railing
on both sides then lifted my left foot, bringing it down against the door. The
frame splintered and the door swung open as the visitor charged up the stairs.
I burst through the door and bolted for the patio door. I reached for the lock
with one hand then lifted and held the Charlie bar with the other. I slid the
door open enough to slip out, letting the Charlie bar rest against the door.
When I stepped out, I closed the door, and the Charlie bar fell back into
place.