2 Pane of Death (13 page)

Matt glared at me; I glared back. She had asked me, hadn’t she? And then I noticed that Nat was watching the two of us with an amused expression.

“You two have a history, huh?”

Matt tried to look outraged, but I grinned at her. “You
are
good, lady. I’m going to enjoy working with you.”

“Em!” Matt protested. “Can we keep this professional?”

I ignored him and addressed Nat. “He wants me to stay out of this because I’m supposed to be a suspect. My so-called colleague Madelyn Sheffield accused me of killing Peter.”

“Did you?”

“No way.”

“All right, then. Let’s get down to business. What do you know so far? Oh, and I read the summary you sent me, Chief, so you don’t need to repeat all the basics. I’ll ask if I need clarification.”

Matt was looking more and more frustrated, and I couldn’t blame him, since Nat had taken over the discussion—politely, but quite firmly. He began, “Peter Ferguson was stabbed in the chest with a shard of glass sometime Wednesday and bled to death. He also sustained a blow to the back of the head, but it wasn’t fatal. Em found him Thursday afternoon, and the ME estimated he’d been dead twelve to twenty-four hours by then. Em had gone to the house to look at some of his glass art. She’s the one who told us that the glass pieces were missing.”

Nat nodded and made a note on a pad. “Can you narrow down the time of death?”

Matt shook his head. “This is Arizona. There was a lot of blood, but the air is so dry around here that it dried very quickly, which tends to skew estimates.”

“Okay—I didn’t know that. Em, you and this”—she checked her notes quickly—“Madelyn Sheffield were working with Ferguson on installing the pieces?”

“Yes. He wanted to take advantage of the local light to show them at their best.”

“You have a list of the works that have gone missing?”

“Only in my head. I assume he had documentation for them somewhere, but there was no reason for him to share that with me. I’m sure you’ve gotten in touch with his insurance company. Oh, and if you’re wondering, they were definitely authentic.”

Matt interrupted. “Excuse me, uh, Nat, but won’t the insurance company have detailed descriptions?”

Nat sighed. “They will, but it’s really hard to translate a visual medium into words, you know? Same with photographs. Ferguson did all the right things, provided lots of pictures, but it’s not a perfect system. Now, Em here saw the pieces up close, and she’s an artist herself, right? So what she has to say will add to our description of the pieces. That’s why I want her included in this discussion.”

I beamed at her.
Take that, Matt
. The FBI wanted my opinion, and I was going to make sure they got it.

“Okay, moving on.” Nat sat back in her chair and looked back and forth at us. “Why isn’t Madelyn here today?”

Matt and I exchanged a glance, which Nat did not fail to notice. Matt answered first. “Madelyn accused Em of killing Ferguson. I thought it best not to bring them in together. I’m sure you can talk to her on your own.”

“Uh-huh. That the whole story?” Nat addressed me.

“Not really,” I replied. “I know the collection far better than Maddy does.”

“Funny—I did some internet searching before I left DC. I found an article from the Tucson paper about Ferguson and his art collection. But it was all about Ms. Sheffield—I think you got a single line at the bottom.” She pushed a xerox copy of a newspaper article across the table toward me.

I glanced at it briefly, but I had seen it before. “I’m not surprised. Maddy is all about show, not substance. She was using this to boost her business.”

“You don’t like her much, do you?”

I figured I might as well be honest. “No, I don’t. I think she’s an opportunist, which wouldn’t bother me if she backed it up with talent. I mean, we
are
both in business here, and publicity doesn’t hurt. But she is not a good artisan.” I thought I was remarkably restrained in my assessment.

“So why did Ferguson pick her for this?”

“Personal history. He wanted me on board as backup because he knew her weaknesses.”

“He told you that?” When I nodded, she added, “So Maddy might have an axe to grind, eh?”

“Excuse me, but what does this have to do with the missing artworks?” Matt broke in.

Nat flashed him a smile. “Just trying to get the lay of the land. Ferguson moves to Tucson and buys a big expensive place so he can set up his glass collection. He’s been here a couple of months and somebody kills him, and somebody makes off with the collection. Interesting. Who did he know around here? Did he socialize much?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Matt said.

I interrupted. “He seemed to be more or less camping out in the house. There was almost no furniture. He said he wanted to get a feel for the place, get the glass situated, before he cluttered it up. I never saw anyone else out there, not even contractors or carpenters or whatever. Oh, I did see one of the dealers he used there once—Ian Gemberling. But I got the feeling Peter was pretty much a hermit, although he had a phone and his computer hooked up. And a sophisticated security system.”

Nat made a note. “Matt, you checked out the security system?”

“Of course. No breach, so he must have known whoever it was, and let him in.”

“Him?” Nat’s eyes twinkled.

“I apologize—the gender-neutral perpetrator or perpetrators,” Matt corrected himself.

“Gotta stamp out sexism where we can. Right, Em?”

“Matt’s pretty well trained, Nat.” I grinned at her. “But you have to know that it wouldn’t be easy for a woman to move that glass alone, certainly not without damaging it. I’d guess it would take a strong man, probably more than one person.”

“Fair enough.” Nat leaned back in her chair and studied the ceiling.

Matt and I exchanged glances again, and then Matt spoke. “Where do we go from here?”

Nat’s gaze returned to level. “We’ll crank up the standard art-theft procedure.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“First we get the missing stuff into the NSAF, which goes back to 1997. That gives us a framework—a detailed description—to work with and to distribute. There’s a record sheet to be filled out—type of object, material, size, any special features, and, of course, photographs and sketches, when they’re available. You have any of those details, Em?”

I shook my head. “Not really. But Peter must have had something, or his attorney, or his art dealer, or the insurance company.”

“We’re looking into that. Matt, I assume you’re pursuing the usual forensics, alarm system, autopsy, witnesses, yada yada?”

“Of course,” Matt said stiffly. Poor baby—he wasn’t reacting well to Nat’s disarmingly breezy approach. I for one thought it was a pleasant change from my last interaction with the FBI.

“And we’ll pool our information, of course. In fact, here’s my first peace offering: our file on Peter Ferguson.” She laid a manila folder on the table: It was at least an inch thick.

Matt reached for it. “You’ve been keeping tabs on him? Why?”

“Our department hasn’t, but we all share internally. I can even call for backup from the local office, if I need it.” She looked really excited about that idea, and I wondered just how long she had been doing this. She couldn’t be older than thirty, thirty-five tops. “He was a public figure and a computer genius. We like to know what people like that are up to. Would’ve been a thicker file, if he’d taken his company public—then the SEC would have gotten involved. But you’d know that, wouldn’t you, Em?”

I looked at her, startled. I realized that she was signaling, albeit subtly, that she knew that I had once registered as a stockbroker. Not surprising, since somewhere in Washington my fingerprints were on file. All that seemed like another lifetime. “Yes. But he kept it private, until he dissolved the company.”

She nodded. “Interesting choice. He could have made a whole lot more money with an IPO.”

“Looked to me like he did just fine as it was,” I countered.

Matt apparently had gotten tired of taking the backseat, because he interrupted. “Nat, is there anything in his file that jumps out at you? That might have some bearing on his death?”

“Too early to say. He had enemies, and some made threats. You’ll have to see if they were anywhere near Arizona at the right time—there’s a list of names in the file. But I don’t think this was about money. The question is, was he killed because of the collection, or was the theft a handy cover-up for the murder?”

I definitely had an opinion about that. “Nat, that collection was magnificent
and
worth a lot of money. Not to mention physically unwieldy. It seems absurd that somebody would walk in and kill Peter, then decide as an afterthought that he might as well take a couple of tons of art along with him.”

“I agree with you, Em, or I wouldn’t be here. Not that there’s any shortage of people with a grudge against Peter. Maybe the art was taken as revenge by somebody who knew how Peter felt about it. Or by somebody who figured that Peter owed him in some way. I do think that Peter’s death was incidental to the theft. He stumbled into it unexpectedly and he got killed. I mean, who would deliberately choose a piece of glass as a murder weapon? It was already there in the house, right? If you planned to kill someone, you’d come better prepared, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded firmly. “Yes. And it’s kind of an unpredictable way of killing anyone. You do have to be skilled enough or lucky enough to get it through the ribs. It would almost be easier to disembowel someone with glass, rather than stabbing him,” I said.

We all fell silent, contemplating that unlovely picture.

“You have any ideas, Matt?” Nat finally asked.

Matt said slowly, “We think his former business partner may be in the area.”

“Andrew Foster? The one who kept yammering to the press? Good work! Have you tracked him down?” Nat was almost bouncing in her chair with excitement.

Matt shot me a warning glance before going on. “Not yet. We found his flight coming in Wednesday morning, and he picked up a rental car at the airport, but no sign since.”

“So you’ve lost sight of him? You think he’s hiding?”

“I don’t know, but we’re looking for him,” Matt replied.

I had to admit I was pissed that Matt hadn’t mentioned that to me. I tried to reason with myself that Matt had every right not to share this information with me, but I still wasn’t happy about it. What else hadn’t he told me?

I think we both jumped when Nat stood up abruptly. “Chief, can you find somebody to take me out to the site? I want to take a look around, check out access, that kind of thing. Get some pictures.”

Matt rose as well. “Of course. I can have an officer take you.”

“It’s still a crime scene, right? You have anybody stationed there?”

“Yes, I left a man out there. It’s a rather high-price neighborhood, and the neighbors are bound to be a bit upset.”

“No doubt. I’ll need to talk to Ms. Sheffield as well, if you’ll give me her info. Em, where will you be later this afternoon?”

“Uh, in my shop or at home. I live above the shop. You’ve got the address?”

“Yes, great. I’ll probably want to talk with you again, once I’ve seen Ferguson’s place for myself. Oh, you have pictures of the pieces?”

“Sure—I took quite a few, for my own purposes. But won’t the insurance company have better ones?”

“Probably. But I want to see them in context. And maybe you could sketch out a floor plan, show me what was going where?”

“No problem.”

“Great. See you later, then. Let’s see about that ride, eh, Chief?”

I realized I had been dismissed. I glanced at Matt and he shrugged, so I gathered up my stuff and left. Actually, I wanted to think about just where this investigation—or maybe two investigations—was going. I was impressed by Agent Nat—she seemed smart and open at the same time. Of course, the fact that she believed I was blameless didn’t hurt. I hoped she didn’t trample all over Matt, but he was a big boy and he’d just have to handle it. Right now I needed to get back to the shop and get some work done.

I found I was looking forward to seeing Nat later.

I drove home on autopilot, trying to mentally rearrange my calendar. Work on Peter’s commission—gone. That left a chunk of time open for my own glassmaking, but I was still saddened by losing the opportunity to work with his wonderful glass pieces. Tomorrow was Saturday: busy morning for the shop, and I had a beginner’s class in the afternoon. Cam would be around all weekend, but I had no idea what his plans were. Normally I would say that it was none of my business, but since Allison was working for me, I was stuck in the middle. I hoped they figured something out soon. My own relationship with Matt was on hold, at his request. I understood his reasons, since the last time we’d been involved in a murder investigation together, he’d bent quite a few rules to help me and his superiors hadn’t been happy about it. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Maddy’s ridiculous accusation that I’d been carrying on with Peter. Matt knew me better than that. Didn’t he?