Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (20 page)

I said goodbye to Amy
and swiped a cookie from the small stash she’d held onto.

Andrea and Donald
Hammond lived on the northwest side of town in the Poudre River subdivision off
Overland Trail. The houses were like any you’d find in a neighborhood built
within the last ten or fifteen years: small and similar. There were only a
handful of models, and they were all painted various shades of white. Despite
the size of the houses and the out-of-the-way location, the homes in this
development were a bit on the high side, price-wise. When I found the Hammond
house, I saw a Mustang convertible sitting in the driveway and guessed it to be
only a year or two old. I wondered what Mr. Hammond did for a living and if the
Burbanks paid well.

I rang the doorbell
and waited. The sound set off an eruption of barking and then screaming.
Apparently the Hammonds had dogs and children. Finally, a blonde woman opened
the door, with a toddler wearing a pink tutu and pigtails on her hip.

“Can I help you?”

I handed her my card
and gave her my spiel.

“Do you recognize this
woman?” I asked, handing her the photo.

I saw recognition
flash in her eyes as she saw the picture, but an instant later, a boy, about
five years old, came sprinting to the door, screaming, dressed in nothing but a
pair of Superman underwear with a towel tied around his neck. I thought it was
an excellent superhero outfit. His mother told him to go put some pants on.
When she turned back to me, retuning the photo, anything telling in her eyes
was gone.

“No,” she said,
shaking her head. “I’ve never seen her.”

It was fear in her
eyes now. She was a terrible liar. Which, of course, is my favorite kind.

“Mrs. Hammond, let me
explain again who I am. I’m a bond enforcement agent. That means I find people
out on bail who fail to appear in court. All I care about is finding those
people and putting them back into the system. I’m not a cop. I can’t arrest
people. And I’m not in the habit of tattle-tailing to the police.” I held up
the photo. “So, tell me again, have you ever seen this woman?”

She shook her head.
“Nope. Sorry. I can’t help you.”

“Look, I just want to
find this woman. And I’m running out of time to do it. But everyone has
secrets, things they don’t want their spouses to know, their bosses, the
government. You look like you have a happy life here. But I have to find this
woman. I know you’re lying to me, so unless you tell me the truth, I’m going to
have to start digging into you. I always end up finding things people wish were
left buried. And when it happens that way, I can’t always control how far the
information spreads. It’s better just to talk to me now, where it can stay
between you and me. And then I’ll leave.”

“You’re threatening
me?”

I sighed. “No, I’m
explaining a fact to you. I am seriously running out of time to find this woman,
and everyone is lying to me. My patience is wearing thin. Please make a
decision quickly. Tell me the truth or tell me one more time you haven’t seen
this woman, and I’ll get started digging.”

She quickly put the
girl down and stepped out onto the porch with me, pulling the door closed.

“Look, I’ve seen her,
okay?” she whispered. “She was at the Burbanks’ house a few times. One day,
there was an envelope with ten thousand dollars cash and a note inside on the
seat of my car. The note said to leave the alarm off on a certain day and at a
particular time. I didn’t want to lose my job; Mrs. Burbank is fanatical about
the alarm being on. So for a couple days before, I complained about the system
malfunctioning—which wasn’t unusual. Mrs. Burbank doesn’t know how to use the
alarm and is always setting it off, bitching it isn’t working properly.

“That morning, I set
the alarm off and told Mrs. Burbank it had malfunctioned when I tried to disarm
it. She had me call the security company, and they came to the house to work on
it. They were there during the time the note specified and had the alarm off to
work on it. She never suspected I had anything to do with it. It was that
afternoon she discovered that stupid statue missing. I never knew for sure, but
I always thought it was
that
woman who had left the note and the money.”
She pointed at the photo.

“And you haven’t seen
her since?”

“No.”

“Who did you think she
was when you saw her at the house? What did you think she was doing there?”

“I thought Mrs. Burbank
had called her. She had a notepad and a tape measure in her bag; I thought she
was a decorator of some kind. But I asked Mrs. Burbank if she was redecorating,
and she said no.”

“Did you ever catch
her name?”

“No.”

“What about the car
she drove?”

She shook her head.
“Sorry.”

“Thank you for your
help.”

“Hey, you’re really
not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“No. Between you and
me, I don’t really like Mrs. Burbank much.”

I was pretty sure her
involvement in the statue theft would come out sooner or later, but if it did,
it wouldn’t be by my hand.

I got back in the
truck and drove to the address I had for Todd Lindgren. The house, a regular
mansion, was located off Trilby. The main house was three stories and
absolutely huge. The four-car garage was detached, and there was a guesthouse
above it. An enclosed walkway stretched between the guesthouse and the second
story of the main house. There was a small private lake on the property,
complete with a slide and rope swing. There was another small house, presumably
a guesthouse, on the other side of the lake. I couldn’t help but wonder how a
gardener could afford a place like this. I briefly considered that I was in the
wrong line of work.

I went to the door and
knocked. A thirty-five-year-old man in plaid shorts and an Abercrombie &
Fitch t-shirt smiled out at me.

“Good afternoon!” he
said, stepping out onto the porch.

“Good afternoon. This
is some place.”

He grinned as he looked
around. “I love it here. I’ve got places in Aspen and Key West, but this is my
favorite. This is home.”

“It looks like it
might actually be three homes.”

He laughed. “Yes, I
suppose so. But the space never goes to waste. I have regular company, I entertain
here frequently, and I have an open-door policy.”

“Would you happen to
be Todd Lindgren?”

“Oh, goodness no!” He
laughed. “No, Todd is my gardener. He lives above the garage.”

“Todd is your
gardener? He also works for Mr. and Mrs. Burbank. You don’t mind sharing?”

“Heavens, no! No
reason not to. He also works for Frank and Carol down the street here and
another family out near the interstate, I believe. No, there just isn’t enough
work to keep a man occupied full time around here. I assume the same must be
true of the other properties, too. Todd does excellent work, but it can usually
be done in a single day.”

“And you let him live
above your garage?”

He laughed again.
“Like I said, I have an open-door policy. Todd needed a place to stay, and I
had been thinking of taking on a renter who would trade in labor. I pitched it
to Todd, and he agreed. It’s been an excellent arrangement—mutually
beneficial.”

“How long has he lived
here?”

“Oh, a couple years.”

“How long have you
known him?”

“About the same.”

“By a couple, do you
mean ten?” I asked.

“Who did you say you
were again?”

I handed him a card
and told him.

“I know Todd Lindgren
was arrested ten years ago,” I said. “A man named Lyle Young was arrested with
him. You’re Lyle Young.”

I had no idea if that
was true, but I had a gut feeling and decided to gamble. Plus, I was
really
tired of people lying to me.

“And if I am?”

“Then you just lied to
me. That just pretty much puts you on my shit list. I need to speak with Todd.
Is he home?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want
to be on your shit list. Yes, I’m Lyle Young. Yes, I’ve known Todd for ten
years—longer, actually. We grew up together. Yes, we were once arrested together.
And yes, Todd is home. He’s actually in the kitchen.” Young inclined his head
toward the open door behind him. “Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you.”

I followed him inside
and through the enormous house. Everywhere I looked, there was room after room
after room. There was also lots of art: paintings, figurines, pottery. We hiked
through the house to the kitchen, where Young and Lindgren had apparently been
having lunch. A man I assumed to be Lindgren was sitting at the table, a plate
in front of him. The chair beside him was empty, a plate waiting in front of
it. Young returned to his chair as he introduced me. They offered me a chair,
and I sat with them.

“I’m sorry to
interrupt lunch,” I said. “I just have a couple quick questions.”

“She’s sharp,” Young
warned. He had attempted to bring it off as playful, but it didn’t quite come
out that way; it was much more serious. A lot like a warning.

I pulled the photo
from my pocket and passed it to Lindgren.

“Recognize her?”

Young was a skilled
liar. He saw the photo but showed no sign of recognition and casually took a
bite. Lindgren, on the other hand, was not so skilled. After he looked at the
photo, he started to look up at Young before he caught himself and shook his
head.

“No,” he said, handing
the photo back. “I’m sorry.”

“Does the name
Danielle Dillon mean anything?”

I watched them both.
Recognition flashed in Lindgren’s face as he quickly grabbed his water glass
and took a gulp. Young, still casual, swallowed and smiled, lightly shaking his
head.

“Doesn’t sound
familiar,” he said. “Todd?”

“No,” Lindgren said.
“Not to me, either. Who is she?”

“What about the name
Kelly Shultz?”

Again I saw flashes of
recognition in them both, though again Young masked his almost perfectly.

Lindgren shifted
uncomfortably in his chair while Young continued to lounge, sipping his drink.

“No, I don’t think so,”
Lindgren said. “Why would it?”

In my experience, a
person who puts a question back on you like this is trying to hide the fact
he’s lying. A person who really doesn’t know what you’re talking about simply
says so. A person who does but is pretending he doesn’t demands to know why you
think he does.

I wanted to press them
both, but I thought would be it a bad move. I didn’t understand things well
enough, especially how they related to these two men, to be effective. It would
have been too easy for them to run me around. Instead, I decided to take
another crack at them when I had something else to go on.

“I’m sorry I
interrupted your lunch,” I said again, standing.

“Quite all right,”
Young said, smiling and standing with me.

“Thank you for your
help.”

“Shall I walk you
out?” he asked.

“No, I’ll see myself
out. Oh, one more thing. Out of curiosity, who is Andrew Dyer?”

Lindgren shot a look
at Young.

“He’s an associate of
mine,” Young said lightly. “He stays here from time to time.” Then he grinned.
“It’s open-door.”

Shortly after leaving Lindgren and
Young’s place, I noticed my tail was back. I wasn’t sure how the driver had
gotten on me again, but for the moment it didn’t matter. I took Trilby to
Timberline then drove north to the police station. This time I parked and went
inside. I almost waved as the Cadillac cruised by, but I managed to refrain.

“We can do this all
day, buddy,” I said to myself as I watched the car drive past.

I spoke with the woman
manning the front desk and waited while she called Ellmann. Normally Ellmann
gives the okay to this person to send me up. Today, she announced Ellmann would
be right down and I was to wait. It may have simply been because the place was
a zoo between the FBI and the task force, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it
was because Ellmann didn’t want me to catch a glimpse of whatever he was
working on, whatever it was he didn’t want me to know.

Ten minutes later,
Ellmann appeared in the lobby. I noticed several chunks of hair were standing
up. I worried for him, because it was only early afternoon.

“I’m glad you’re here.
I left a message on your phone.”

“I haven’t checked my
messages since I called you at lunch. What’s up?”

“My sister keeps
calling me. She says she’s going crazy and needs to get out of the house. I
told her I was stuck here. She wondered if you could come get her and maybe
take her shopping.”

“I don’t shop.” With rare
exception. I used to shop Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. Now I think
forty bucks is a steep price for a pair of shoes. Funny how things change.

“I know. But I was
thinking maybe you two could do something together. Plus, I’d feel a lot more
comfortable if you were with someone with a phone, and I had a way of getting ahold
of you.”

“Do you want to tell
me what’s going on?”

“I always worry about
you.”

That meant no.

No big deal. I’d
figure it out eventually. I always do.

“Right. You know, I’ve
got work to do today. I only have sixteen more hours to find Dillon.”

He sighed and rubbed a
hand over his forehead. “Okay, then, why don’t you take her with you? I would
really appreciate it if you’d do this. It would be for me.”

I did a mental sigh.

“You know what?” I
said. “I just remembered there’s a sale at DSW this weekend I wanted to check
out.”

I had no idea if DSW
was having a sale, and if they were, I had no desire to check it out.

I could see the relief
in him as a small measure of stress was lifted from his shoulders.

“Thank you.”

I told him I’d take
care of it then left.

I didn’t see any
Cadillacs lurking in the parking lot, but I did keep my eyes peeled. Whoever it
was following me seemed to have a knack for finding me. I wasn’t sure what that
meant, but I thought it probably wasn’t good.

I drove south on
Timberline to Ellmann’s neighborhood. I pulled into the driveway, and before I
could turn off the engine, the front door opened and Natalie hurried out. She
walked to the passenger side, ripped the door open, and jumped in.

“I see Alex finally
got ahold of you,” she said.

I leaned back in the
seat and looked at her. Today she was dressed in a really cute paisley
sundress, and her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. She was certainly a
pretty woman.

“Yes, he told me how
you’ve been pestering him all day. Now you’re going to pester me instead. He’s
stressed out enough as it is with this task force.”

“I want to go
shopping.”

“That’s great,” I
said, backing out of the driveway. “I want to find my FTA. Since I’m driving,
that’s what we’re going to do.”

“And what’s an FTA?”

“It means ‘failure to
appear.’ It’s the term we use for people out on bail who miss their court
appearances.”

“So that’s what you do
all day? You drive around looking for people who missed court?”

“I suppose if you
simplified it, yes, that’s what I do. It’s more complicated than that, though.”

“You know, this isn’t
turning out to be much of a trip.”

“Ellmann told both you
and your father he would be tied up with this task force thing as soon as he
knew you were coming. If you guys came anyway, that’s on you.”

“His name is Alex. Why
do you call him Ellmann?”

I rolled my eyes.
Honestly, I tried to stop it, but it got away from me before I could.

“Would you rather I
call him something stupid like ‘doodlebug’ or ‘pumpkin cheeks’ or ‘muffin pie?’
His name’s Ellmann. All of his coworkers call him Ellmann. All his friends call
him Ellmann. He calls himself Ellmann. The only people it seems to bother are
my therapist, who reads way too much into things sometimes; my archnemesis,
whose opinion doesn’t count based on principle alone; and you, but I think you
just dislike me and would find something else to be bothered about if I called
him something you approved of.”

She was quiet for a
few minutes as I headed back to the McKinnon house.

I pulled to a stop at
a red light and glanced over at her. I saw she was staring at the scar on my
thigh, visible when I was wearing shorts and sitting. It was healing well, but
it was still pretty red and ugly looking. Not nearly so ugly as my shoulder,
but ugly all the same.

“What happened?” she
asked, catching me looking at her.

“Uh, gunshot wound.”

“You were shot?”

That’s how you get gunshot
wounds.

“Yep.”

I didn’t elaborate. I
didn’t explain I’ve been shot more than once. And I certainly didn’t tell her
I’ve done some shooting of my own.

We rumbled on in
silence for several minutes.

“Would you have lunch
with your gardener?” I asked after a while.

She shrugged.
“Depends.”

“Really? On what?”

“A lot of things. If
our relationship came first and our roles second, yes. If we didn’t really have
a relationship outside our roles, then no, probably not. Why?”

I shook my head. “Just
one of many things that doesn’t make sense to me.”

When we arrived back
at the McKinnons’ place, the garage door was shut. The yard work had been
completed. I parked at the curb and pocketed the keys.

“You can wait here or
come along,” I said, getting out.

Natalie got out of the
truck and met me on the sidewalk, then she followed me to the door. I rang the
bell and stepped back. She looked bored by the time the door was answered,
which was probably only thirty seconds later.

“Mrs. McKinnon,” I
said. “Sorry to bother you again. I just have a couple more things to ask you
and your husband.”

Mrs. McKinnon looked
from me to Natalie, whom she’d never seen before.

“Oh, this is Natalie.
Uh, she’s an associate of mine,” I explained, saying whatever I thought would
ease Mrs. McKinnon’s suspicious and cautious mind.

This must have been
satisfactory because she invited us in. Her husband was on the sofa watching
TV.

“Honey, that
investigator is back,” she said.

I considered that I
might need to get new cards. They seemed to confuse everyone about what I
really do.

Mr. McKinnon muted the
TV then got up. He greeted me and then Natalie. Natalie began moving through
the room, studying each painting hanging on the wall, as if this were nothing
more than a trip to the art museum.

“You said you fired
House and Home because you had a lot of trouble with them. What sort of trouble
were you having?”

“Oh, gosh,” he said,
putting his hands in his pockets.

Mrs. McKinnon looked
angry at the memories.

“It was always
something,” she began. “They would come late or have to change appointments at
the last minute. When they did come, I sometimes couldn’t tell if things had
been cleaned. Not like when the Clean Sweep girls come; no, you
know
they’ve been here. Also, I found quite a few things broken. I also had a
diamond necklace go missing. At the time, I thought I’d misplaced it, but now
I’m sure it was stolen. We also had a painting stolen. That’s when I fired
them. I’m just sure one or more of those girls had something to do with it.”

“When was the painting
stolen?” I asked.

“Last April.”

“Can you tell me more
about the painting?”

“It was an impressionist
piece by a French painter named François Brouis,” Mr. McKinnon said. “It was
one of his earliest works.”

“This is also Brouis,”
Natalie said from behind him, pointing to a canvas hanging on the wall of the
living room. “Only this one is much later. His White Period, I’d say.”

McKinnon beamed and
walked over to stand beside her, staring up lovingly at the painting.

“That’s right,” he
said. “Are you a collector?”

“No, I’m actually an
artist. I love impressionism. I’ve studied Brouis, but I’ve never seen anything
in person. This is an honor.”

I took a long look at
the painting. It looked like a woman sitting at a table under an umbrella
sipping coffee and watching two young boys chase each other in the nearby
grass. The entire image seemed slightly blurry. But to each his own.

“How much is the painting
worth?” I asked.

McKinnon turned back
to me. “About five million, depending. A French museum once offered me eight.”

Eight million dollars
for some blurry smears?

“What about this one?”
I asked, indicating the one still hanging on the wall. “How much is it worth?”

“This one is worth
about three million.”

“Why the difference in
price?” I asked. Art isn’t my thing.

“This piece is much
better known and from a much more productive period for the artist.”

“Okay, so whoever
stole the painting knew it was the more valuable of the two,” I said, summing
up aloud.

“Yes,” McKinnon said.

“Is this piece new to
you, Mr. McKinnon?” I asked, referring to the painting on the wall.

“No, why?”

“I’m wondering why the
person who broke into your house only bothered to take one. They’re both very
valuable. If the thief was already in the house, why not take both?”

It was obvious this
was a question neither of them had thought about.

“Brouis is an artist
favored by a very select group of people,” Natalie said. “See, he broke a lot
of the rules of impressionism. Some think he was a genius, a visionary. But a
much larger group thinks his work is trash. In order for a seller to get the best
price on work like his, he would already have to have a buyer lined up. There
is no way you’d get the same kind of money selling it on the open market, even
the black market.

“That’s why so many
art thefts are commissioned. Someone looking for a particular piece will hire
someone to retrieve it. If that were the case here, as I suspect it was, the
thief would have only been interested in the one piece. The other art in the
house would have gone largely unnoticed.”

I was surprised to
hear all of this from Natalie. The McKinnons appeared surprised to hear it at
all. But then I suppose no one likes to think they’ve been targeted. Somehow it
isn’t so scary if you’re the victim of a random, meaningless crime.

“All right,” I said,
thinking. “If the theft was commissioned, as you suggest, the person paying
would have had to know Mr. McKinnon had the piece. Who would know something
like that?”

She shrugged. “The art
community is very large, and at the same time very small. The true collectors
know where their favorite pieces are, even if they’re held in private
collections like this one. As he said, a French museum offered to buy the piece.
Because he turned down its incredibly generous offer, I’m assuming he didn’t
reach out to them. That means someone at the museum would have known where the
piece was. And that person wouldn’t be the only one. This won’t be the best way
to narrow down your suspect pool.”

I was disappointed.
That had been my exact goal.

“Had anyone outside
the museum expressed interest in the painting?” I asked the couple.

Mrs. McKinnon deferred
to her husband. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“Nothing out of the
ordinary. Like she said, the community is a small one. I’ve had other
collectors, other museums contact me about all the pieces I have. Most want to
know if I’ll sell. Others want to come and see them. The interest in the Brouis
was not unusual.”

“It isn’t unusual for
someone to call and ask if they could come see one of your paintings?” I asked.

Both the McKinnons and
Natalie shook their heads.

“True collectors,”
Natalie said, “appreciate the art. Just to see one of these paintings in
person, up close, is the most exciting, genuine experience. Most of the time,
that’s all a collector wants.”