Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 02 - Brilliant Actors (11 page)

I wrapped up my things and got up. “My name is Calendar Moonstone, and I am here in a confidential and personal court matter.”

He looked amused. “Personal
and
confidential. I am pretty busy right now, madam—could handle personal, could handle confidential, but don’t have time for both.”

The last thing I had expected was a joke-cracking policeman, but maybe he was hoping for a breakthrough at Comedy Club’s open stage night. I didn’t dare to pull that retort before him.

He seemed to have guessed my thought from my annoyed and confused face and added, “You don’t have to answer if it incriminates you, though you are incriminated enough, if I remember your file from this morning. Come on in.”

He held up two fingers at Mable, then five fingers, and led me into his office, where I was placed on a comfortable chair.
 

“Excuse my manners. I am Henry Steward, the chief of police of your esteemed town.”
 

I just nodded and waited for whatever.

“Okay, let me get this straight.” He pulled a file from his desk and opened it. “Not often we get one of your kind.” He scanned the few papers.

I leaned forward. “Does it say in there that I plead ‘not guilty’?”

“You did? Really?” He looked at me blandly, took a porcelain savings pig from a shelf at his side, took a quarter from his pocket, and threw it in. He shook it—it sounded heavy—before he put it back with a serious face.

I couldn’t help it and burst out laughing.
 

His brown eyes twinkled at me. “When the pig is full, I am going to get myself a good ‘not guilty’ dinner at Spago’s.”

“Jesus,” I dried my tears. “Are you the Chief of Comedy or what?”

“Sorry, you looked so miserable out there and…,” he interrupted himself and continued, “…I thought it would lighten up your ruined weekend if we introduced ourselves not with the usual formalities between policeman and suspect.”

“I looked miserable because of the terrible coffee I was served,” I said, but it got to me a little that I had looked defenseless and weak out there. And it got to me a little that this man had noticed and had made me laugh for the first time in two days.

As if on command, the door to the office opened without a knock and Mable carried in two mugs with steaming coffee, which she placed in front of us. “The Jeffersons are waiting, Chief Steward.”

“Sure, Mable, I’ll be with them in a minute.” He looked at me. “The coffee issue is hereby solved. This is the chief’s personal brew, steamed on an Italian coffee maker model.” We sipped, and it was perfect—and I mentioned it.

“Chief, what can we do to get this over with?” I asked him after my third sip and no entree to conversation nor accusation by him.

“Ah, yes, that matter of your registration.” He took a Bic pen and hit an invisible gong with it. “Bong. Consider yourself registered. Thank you, you may go. Don’t leave town.”

“What? That’s it? No endless paperwork, no signature, no electronic ankle bracelet?”

“That it is. I believe in a lean administration. You will be docked in my diary, but I won’t add to the size of your court file or the storage estate of my department. I don’t need a signature. I have that coffee cup of yours for fingerprints that prove you were here and you can’t run anyway.”

“I can’t?” I asked, curiously.

“No. You got your shop and your friends here, are a respected and even prominent member of Redondo Beach society. You are on the board of the Children Unreserved Foundation. Your artwork is on display in major museums including your picture in catalogues and on Google. You can’t run anywhere.”
 

None of the things above were mentioned in the court material. The dog had done his homework.
 

“Thank you for the coffee, Chief.” I got up and turned toward the door.
 

“Anytime,” he said and took the first item from his inbox.
 

“I don’t hope so,” I muttered under my breath and made my way out of the office.
 

I was in the process of closing the door when I heard him call, “Oh, and there is a completely different thing, Mrs. Moonstone.”

“Chief Steward?” I turned toward him and saw he had gotten up from his chair, his manner more awkward than commanding.

“Say, is it possible…. Would you consider….” His demeanor was still that of a Chief of police, but his voice had a certain boyish quality to it. He made a brave third attempt. “Would you go out on a date with me?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Case

Fowler Wynn and I met on neutral ground, which meant at one of the seaside fish restaurants on the Redondo Beach pier. I knew the owner well, and he placed us in an inactive part of the restaurant where we could watch the seagulls diving for fish and breadcrumbs in the surf— where we could talk without being overheard.

On the table between us was a stack of files which I browsed while Fowler did most of the talking. The series of thefts had started about nine months ago with the cat burglar style removal of a famed necklace that had been in the hands of several divas of the movie age from the home of the current owner, while she was asleep in the next room. In between then and Monday night’s theft of Swan Collins’ solitaire diamonds were lying ten more burglaries, a nice fruitful series. Always movie stars or movie business people.

“A collector?” I threw in. Collectors were the romantics among thieves, stealing not only for the money but for a certain pleasure, too. In the unofficial “honor of thieves” charts, they ranked probably right behind the Robin Hoods.
 

Fowler nodded. “That’s exactly my thought. Someone out there fancies the beautiful stones of the beautiful people of Hollywood. Another similarity: always at night. Always a well-planned entry and exit strategy. And no clues left that helped us so far. No fingerprints, no DNA, no usable fabrics, nothing accidentally lost. Which to achieve consistently in twelve cases is purely amazing—or a load of luck. Our man—”

“—or woman.” I grinned at him over the papers.

“…is a professional just like you are. And even better than you are.”

I sniffed. “I don’t know what you are talking about, so I cannot feel offended. Though I might be, in case I was actually a cat burglar.” With Fowler, I always had to negate for the record because—truce or no truce—I counted on him recording our sessions with the hope of catching me admitting something. “But why do you think he’s better than anyone? His variety of styles?”

“No, of course not. While you stick to your one-trick-pony show—”

“Now you’re really starting to annoy me,” I stated and folded my arms.

“No, hear me out. This is maybe the most important finding so far: our man is able to imitate several different styles that have been used before in other heists.”

“Like he is a history buff of breaking and entering?” I asked curiously. “Or gets his challenge in reenacting burglaries?”

“Exactly, my dear Calendar.” Fowler loved this statistical stuff. “He showed three individual styles that I could identify so far. One: open the safe door with a blow torch, cut around the lock, and manipulate the mechanics from the hole. Close the mechanic again as if you want to demonstrate your superiority over us.”

The safe burning method was as old as safes themselves, maybe only topped in rough style by blowing the safe up. It was an antique way of opening the safe without touch and feel for the sensitive safe mechanism, and with modern electronic safes, more and more out of fashion because the modern ones featured sandwich-layered ceramic inlets that were blowtorch-proof.

“Second,” Fowler continued, “he hides in the apartment, sounds the alarm, the owner checks for stolen goods and opens the safe herself, gets chloroformed, and the thief has all the time in the world to remove the material from the safe.”
 

Another classic method but a little risky. Physically confronting the owner always bore the risk of a fight, something going wrong, something giving you away.

“Did the thief steal everything from the safes, or did he just remove specific pieces?”

“No, he removed only the best pieces or, in one case, the most famous piece. He left other jewels, cash, expensive watches, a pouch of raw diamonds, and in one case even a stack of stock certificates that have an exchange value of about three-hundred-thousand dollars.”

“So, we are talking about a steal to order scenario,” I stated the obvious, which earned me a pair of rolling eyes from Fowler. “You mentioned a third style.” He had me hooked to this strange series of thefts and his theories.

“Yes, this one I saved for last intentionally. The third method is basically a silent entry at night when the owner is away or asleep in another part of the house. Open the safe with acoustic or electronic skills only, no force or owner’s help. Close the safe again without leaving a calling card and get out without a trace. Well, let us say, the thief leaves traces that are hard to detect.”

I was silent for a minute. “Well, come to think of it … the style you just described is the style of….”

Fowler completed my fine selection of words with an approving nod in my direction. “My favorite alleged villain. Yes, our thief imitates your style, Calendar.”

I let that sink in for a moment. First my ego was bruised by that stupid McAllister necklace affair, and now my arch enemy was telling me that I was being imitated by some cat burglar freak who was into reenacting burglary styles.

“My head is spinning Fowler,” I said. “There are so many consequences to this.”

Fowler leaned back and studied me. “Come on, just spill your thoughts to me. I am interested in your first impression of this.”

I folded my arms and stared unfocused into the Pacific distance. “The initial thing that comes into my mind is: all your yearlong accusations against me were false. Because it was never I who stole all these stones but this ‘impostor.’ It was his style all along.” I looked at Fowler, expectantly.

He snorted. “Nice try, but go on. Let’s assume he imitates you in this series. What else?”

“Not so fast with your assumption of one burglar with various styles. Another logical explanation: it is not a single thief but a group. They select the targets together and maybe even prepare the heist as a group, but one of them has the lead and plans it in his special style. It is even safer that way because you can have two lookouts to watch your back. Plus: your fellow gang members can be used as backups and logistical support, should you need to transport something heavy, like the blowtorch for the safe door, for example. And you are able to select the method of entry according to the site’s circumstances.”

Fowler nodded. “That used to be exactly my thinking for a while. It even makes more sense when you think about the timing factor of the planning. Twelve heists in nine months. A single guy must be pretty active to coordinate the targets, get the necessary information, and then stake out the place so that he knows the comings and goings of the target site.”

“For a while? You don’t buy that scenario?” I asked.

 
“Well, you know my expertise, when it comes to jewelry and art thefts. You may be my favorite villain…,” I stuck out my tongue at him, “…but I studied almost every burglary ever paid for by an insurance company and collected intensive statistics.”

“Numbers beat intuition?”

“Right on,” Fowler gave a rare smile, “and the statistics at least support my hunches. I analyzed six-thousand recorded cases from the nineteen-fifties up until today that are comparable to our cases. Of those six thousand, there were only roughly three hundred performed by groups. All other ones were attributed to single thieves. Even though the facts may point to another possibility, my first instinct still tells me to look for a clever individual who can effortlessly imitate classical break-in patterns.”

“You make him sound like an aficionado, a connoisseur of crime styles. Be glad he didn’t choose to reenact murders.”

“At least it would solve my problems,” Fowler remarked sourly. “I am only in it for the jewels. We are paying ourselves silly right now. My best guess is that our suspect is a spoiled rich kid who grew up in a cultured environment. He possesses a good education in the arts and in aesthetics, not by visiting a school or anything but by experiencing art and jewelry around his parents’ home.”

“You make it sound as if a rich background is a prerequisite for an art specialist,” I said dryly.

“I know that your background is fundamentally different, but you learned a great deal by going through an apprenticeship, a school, if you like. You didn’t live with beautiful art and jewels in your childhood.” He was remarking on my youth spent in a hippie commune with my parents.

“I won’t start a discussion about art fundamentalism and the common man, so go on,” I said angrily. Fowler had me on edge with his stupid theory, but I brushed it off because it was no good. I could always kill him later and blame it on my social background.

“Okay, where was I? Yes, spoiled rich kid. I bet the parents are in the business—”

“The business? Steel?” I asked, slightly confused.