Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (23 page)

“I don’t—”

“Look,” I cut in. “You
asked me to take care of your squatter problem. That’s exactly what I’ll do,
but I’m going to need that address and phone number.”

He debated for an
entire minute before he finally sighed and reached into the leather zipper
binder he was carrying. He flipped to the page he wanted then made a note on
the back of one of his business cards and handed it to me. I glanced at it then
thanked him and put it in my pocket.

We locked up, and
Leroy put the key back in the lockbox on the front door. I asked him not to
show the property again until he heard from me, and he informed me, rather
crisply, that wouldn’t be a problem. The house had been on the market for ten
months, and I’d been the only one to call about it.

__________

Natalie and I sat in the truck and
watched Leroy speed away, a cloud of dust hovering over the road behind him. I
pulled the card out of my pocket and asked Natalie if her phone had GPS. She
punched in the address Leroy had given me. After seeing it on the map, I knew
where it was. I started the truck and pulled away from the Conrad house.

We were at the
intersection locals call the
Y
, stopped at the light, when Natalie’s
phone rang.

“It’s Susan,” she said
before answering. The conversation was short, and she mostly listened. When she
disconnected a moment later and dropped the phone back in her bag, she turned
to me. “Susan is cooking dinner. You’re invited.”

I looked at my watch.
It was almost five.

“What time?”

“Six. They called my
brother, too, but he wasn’t sure he could get away.”

Even if he could, I
wasn’t sure he’d want to. Although, Ellmann is a better person than that.
That’s something
I’d
do, tell someone I didn’t want to see that I had to
work so I wouldn’t have to spend time with him or her. I decided this isn’t
Ellmann’s style and that he would show up if he could get the time.

Ian Dawson lived in
the subdivision on the south side of Drake, west of Shields, across from the
Steele’s shopping center. Those of us who have been here a while call it the
“Steele’s shopping center” because Steele’s Market used to be in it. Steele’s
had actually closed several years ago and now the building is mostly empty, but
since there isn’t a new store to replace the “Steele’s” part, we’ll probably
keep the name until there is.

I found the address
then jotted down plate numbers before getting out of the truck. Natalie
followed me.

“Why do you write all
that down?” she asked.

I explained my
reasoning.

She seemed satisfied,
because she didn’t say anything else.

I rang the bell, and
we waited. Two minutes stretched into three, and I wasn’t sure anyone was home.
With the way the afternoon sun was shinning on the house, it was difficult to
determine if any lights were on inside. I was just getting ready to take
Natalie and leave when finally the door did open.

“Hello,” I said. “Are
you Ian Dawson?”

He was in his
thirties, average height, average weight, with blonde hair and brown eyes. He
was barefoot, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a t-shirt.

“That depends,” he
said. “Who’s asking?”

I handed him a card
and introduced myself.

“I’m looking for a
woman named Danielle Dillon,” I said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

I dug out Dillon’s
photo and handed it to him. “What about her? Know her?”

He glanced down at the
photo then gave me a dark stare. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, anger
rising in him. “What the hell kind of game are you playing?”

“So you do know this
woman,” I said.

“Fuck you!” he cried,
raising his hand and pointing to the street. “Get the hell off my property!”

I could see his anger
was masking his true feeling: hurt.

He stepped back in the
house and started to shut the door.

“Whoa, whoa, wait,
Ian, wait,” I said. “Please hear me out. Believe me when I say I understand a
lot of what you’re going through, and I didn’t come here to bring it all up
again. I promise that’s not what I want. I just need to ask you about the woman
in the photo.”

His face was still
angry and guarded, but he hadn’t shut the door in my face, either. It is these
little victories in life that I like to celebrate.

“Who is this woman to
you, sir?” I asked, holding up the photo again.

He softened then
stepped forward again, taking the photo from me slowly, reverently, studying it
closely.

“Where’d you get this
photo?” he asked. I could hear he was forcing the words out around a lump in
his throat.

“Her police file.”

“Why is she all … bruised?”
He sniffed back a sob.

“She was involved in a
physical altercation. She got in several good blows of her own, but she didn’t
walk away untouched.”

“When was this? Who
did this to her? I never heard about this.”

“That photo was taken
in April of this year.”

His head snapped up,
and he stared at me, his eyes wide, glistening with tears, disbelieving.

Suddenly he looked
pale, and I thought he might have stopped breathing.

“Let’s go in and sit
down,” I said.

I went inside, took
him by the arm, and steered him to the sofa in the living room. He fell onto
the cushion absently, tears running down his cheeks. My heart broke looking at
him.

“Hey, Natalie, will
you get a glass of water, please?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s probably
a good idea.”

She left and returned
a few minutes later with a glass of ice water. I pushed it into Dawson’s hand
and helped him take several drinks. After a while, he seemed to come around
again.

“Who?” he whispered,
pointing to the photo. “Who … did that to her?”

“A man named Jeremiah
Vandreen.”

“Vandreen?” he asked,
looking up at me.

“Yes. Do you know
him?”

“Yes. My nephew Rusty
is in foster care. The court placed him with the Vandreens. Jerry’s in the
hospital,” he added, looking back down at the photo.

“I know.”

“What? How do you
know?”

“I put him there.”

This earned me another
look from Natalie.

Dawson looked up. “The
social worker called to tell me I won’t be able to see Rusty for a while
because Marci and the kids are in a safe house right now. She said they just
found out Jerry was … hurting her and the kids.” It was hard for him to say
the words.

“He won’t be hurting
anyone else.”

He sobbed, holding a
hand over his face.

“That bastard was
hurting Rusty?” He shook his head. “I didn’t know.” The tears fell again.

After a few more
minutes, he seemed to get himself together again. Sniffing, he wiped at his
eyes.

“I’ve been in court
for the last ten months trying to get custody of Rusty. Mitch and Melissa, they
never put together any kind of will or anything, so they didn’t make me Rusty’s
guardian if something happened to them.” He sniffed again. “But at our age, we
just don’t think anything is going to happen to us—certainly not …
that
.”

There was another
round of tears. I waited him out patiently. When he was ready, he went on.

“Rusty isn’t Mitch’s
son. That’s why the courts wouldn’t place him with me. I’ve had to get a lawyer
and spend thousands in fees trying to get him back. He should be with me, he
should be with family, not …
child abusers
like Jerry Vandreen!”

“This woman,” I said
softly, pointing to the photo he still held. “She’s Melissa Conrad, isn’t she?”

He pinched his eyes
closed, and a stream of tears leaked out.

“Yes.”

This made a lot of
things make sense. Not everything, not by a long shot, and maybe it only served
to further confuse the bigger picture, but some part of the mess was suddenly
ordered.

“How could this have
been taken in April?” he asked, sniffing and wiping at his eyes again. “I was
at her funeral. I’ve been to her grave. How is this possible?”

“How did they identify
Melissa’s body?” I asked as gently as possible.

“Her sister, Heather.
We were both there. They asked us who was willing to do it. I had to … see
… my brother … that way. I didn’t want Heather to have to see it, but I
just coul— … couldn’t look at her, too.”

He was paler now than
I’d ever seen a living person, and I thought for sure he’d pass out. Or throw
up. Maybe both.

Fortunately, he did
neither.

“What’s Heather’s last
name?”

“Neuman.”

“Where can I find
her?”

He gave me her phone
number and looked for her address.

“I know I have it written
down somewhere,” he said as he sat at the desk in his office, shuffling through
papers.

“Do you remember the
street?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. She
lives with her boyfriend in some big place on the south side of town.”

There were a lot of
big places on the south side of town.

“What’s her
boyfriend’s name?” I asked.

“Andrew,” he said.
“Andrew Dyer.”

I thought I knew which
big place he was talking about.

“This place, is it three
stories, with a four-car garage, lake, and waterslide?”

“Yeah,” he said,
looking up at me. “You know it?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

I drove Natalie back to Ellmann’s,
and we went inside. Vince was helping Susan in the kitchen, and Courtney was in
the living room with her feet on the coffee table, watching TV and texting. I
thought about the four of them with free reign over the rest of the house. I
made a mental note to call Amy and have her girls come give the house a good
top-to-bottom cleaning once the Ellmanns were all on airplanes back to
wherever. See, Ellmann’s one of those guys who is pretty neat and takes really
good care of his stuff. And it was more than obvious his family had made
themselves at home.

Natalie gave minimal
greetings to her dad and Susan then ducked into the office. I asked if there
was anything I could do to help and was told no. Susan set me up in a chair at
the bar, with a plate of fruit and cheese in front of me, then chatted to me
while she and Vince worked. Vince intermittently stared darkly at me while
pretending I didn’t exist.

I noticed the two of
them seemed to work well together, able to do so without really talking, like
they were in tune with one another. Susan asked me questions about what Natalie
and I’d been doing all day. I skipped over the part about visiting old crime
scenes and digging into double homicides and instead focused on the happy
parts. Really the only happy parts were the art collections Natalie got to see,
but this worked out fine, because this seemed to really interest her.

“We saw a Russian
egg,” I said. “It was crafted specially for the wife of the last czar of
Russia.”

“Oh, my gosh, I’m sure
it was beautiful,” Susan said.

“Yeah, it was pretty
neat,” I said. “I thought the Indian jade carvings were pretty cool, too.”

“Carvings?”

I told her about them
while I munched on some grapes. I’d always imagined this was how normal
families worked—moms and dads together in the kitchen making dinner while the
kids sat at the counter eating snacks and telling them about their day. For a
minute, I was a little bit sad my life had never looked like this, but I was
glad to know I had imagined right, because I used to do this with my brother.
I’d set him at the table with milk and a snack and listen to him talk while I
made him dinner. My whole goal growing up had been to make sure my brother’s
life was as normal as possible. At least I’d gotten this part right.

“They sound
incredible,” she said.

“Yeah, they were.
There’s a statue that goes with them. It was stolen, though.”

“By whom?”

I shrugged. “I don’t
know.”

“I’m sure whoever it
was stolen from is missing it.”

“The McKinnons seem to
really miss their painting, so that’s probably true.”

“And this has
something to do with the woman you’re looking for?”

I shrugged again. “I
think so, but I’m not sure.”

Natalie said she heard
the sculpture was in the same private collection as the last two carvings. The
carvings were in Dunn’s private collection. Dunn denied ever owning the
sculpture. If it had been stolen from him, wouldn’t he be upset, like the
McKinnons were? I wasn’t sure Dunn had been upset. But I did think he’d been
hiding something. Was it possible he had the sculpture? Perhaps it hadn’t
really been stolen and that rumor was just a rumor.

Natalie said the
painting had probably been stolen for a specific buyer. I wondered if the
Burbanks’ Aphrodite statue had also been a commissioned theft. If so, maybe
that type of thing was common to all art thefts, including statues and
sculptures. That begged the question, “Are art thieves specialized?” Or, would
the same thief steal, say, a painting, a statue, and a sculpture? I excused
myself and went to the office, where I asked Natalie this question. 

“A thief is a thief,”
she said from the desk chair as I settled on the sofa. “They may have knowledge
more specific to one area, like paintings, but stealing is stealing.”

This left me thinking
the person who had stolen the McKinnons’ painting, the Burbanks’ statue, and
the jade sculpture was the same person. I was afraid that person was Danielle
Dillon.

Maybe I was getting
off track. My job was to find Danielle Dillon. I’d started out doing that and
discovered the Conrads’ murder. This was relevant because Mitchell Conrad’s
brother just told me Danielle Dillon was Melissa Conrad, who was supposed to be
dead. I also think it has been her staying in the basement apartment of the
Conrad house. In hunting around town for Dillon, I’d traced her back to three
other residences, all of which had valuable art stolen (I was still sure
something had been stolen from Dunn). But all of this art business didn’t
necessarily get me any closer to Dillon now.

Eric Dunn wasn’t
telling all he knew. Todd Lindgren and his BFF Lyle Young weren’t either. Now
that I was thinking about it, I remembered Lindgren and Young had both been arrested
for theft ten years ago. Young, under disguise of an alias, was suspected of
being involved in a diamond theft from the British Museum. Lindgren worked for
the Burbanks, who had something stolen. Young told me Andrew Dyer was an
associate of his who sometimes stayed at his house. Ian Dawson, Mitchell
Conrad’s brother, told me Heather Neuman, Melissa Conrad’s sister, was dating a
guy named Andrew Dyer and lived with him in a house that sounds a hell of a lot
like Young’s.

And I couldn’t forget
the Cadillac, registered to the name Aaron Shelton, a suspected alias, that
kept following me around, or the fact that Ellmann was worried about me working
this case. When I went to see him at the police station earlier, he’d met me in
the lobby instead of letting me up to his office. He was also very tight-lipped
about the case he was working when I asked questions. He already told me the
Conrad case was connected to his because the method of torture was similar.
That meant his case and mine were connected.

Following that bit of
logic, I thought about the other aspects of Ellmann’s case that I was aware of.
Aside from the Conrads, I knew about Caroline Marks. Ellmann said she hadn’t
been tortured, but her death was somehow connected to the others. I also knew
Grandma Porter had been murdered. Ellmann had been unwilling to say any more
than that. Given the rest of what I knew, I decided to operate for the time
being under the assumption that her case was connected to his other cases. Then
one blaring fact hit me.

Grandma Porter had
been murdered in her kitchen. I’d seen that kitchen. It didn’t look totally
dissimilar from the Conrads’ kitchen, and they had likewise been murdered. The
Conrads had been tortured. It wasn’t a huge leap to think Grandma Porter had
also been tortured. If that was true, that would go a long way in explaining
what had Ellmann so worried.

Something was tickling
the back of my brain, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reach it. I
felt like there was something else, some other piece that would fit together if
I could just see it.

“You look
constipated.”

I was still sitting on
the sofa in Ellmann’s office. Natalie was sitting in the chair at the desk. She
was staring at me like people stare at the animals in the zoo.

“That’s my thinking
face,” I said.

“It looks like
thinking hurts you.”

It does sometimes. I
was disappointed to learn this is obvious.

My brain was still
working over the bits and pieces I had, trying to make them fit together.

“Why did you think the
carvings and the sculpture were in the same private collection? Where did you
hear that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t
know; it’s just one of those things people in the art world hear. Some of that
stuff is just rumors, you know, wishful thinking, bad information, intentional
misdirection. But usually it’s accurate. People in the art community aren’t
really very secretive about their collections, at least not usually. Obviously
those who have stolen pieces are very secretive. But the point is, we tend to
know. Think of it like a big, extended family. Maybe we haven’t met all our
cousins, but we keep up on what their kids are doing.”

“Dunn is the private
collector with the carvings. He says he’s never even seen the sculpture in
person. What do you make of that?”

“It’s hard to say in this
instance, because the sculpture was stolen out of India ten years ago. The person
who has it now, even if he didn’t steal it, is in possession of a stolen piece,
and I can’t believe there is any way he wouldn’t know that. That being the
case, that person would be very quiet about having it. I would think this sort of
situation is a thief’s dream, stealing something from someone who can’t report
it stolen because he shouldn’t have had it in the first place.”

“So you’re saying it’s
possible Dunn did have the sculpture, that it was stolen, and the reason he’s
lying about it is because he doesn’t want to admit having had it to begin
with.”

“Right.”

Well, Dunn
is
a
lawyer. He would know well to avoid self-incrimination. It seemed to me,
though, that a lawyer having a stolen sculpture in the first place was a risky
move. It’s pretty much an agreed-upon fact that lawyers are scum, but they are
still a part of the criminal justice system and have a responsibility to uphold
the law. Possessing a stolen sculpture seems pretty black and white, not the
sort of crime they could talk their way out of. Why risk it? Was the sculpture
so important?

“If he didn’t have
it,” Natalie went on, “I’d guess he’s tried to get his hands on it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He has an incredible
collection of very unique, very rare pieces, like the Russian egg. Especially
with having those two carvings, I could see him trying to put them together.”

“Does Dunn strike you
as the type to commission a theft?”

“You said he’s a
lawyer.”

She didn’t explain her
point.

“And?”

“Well, I guess I like
to think lawyers don’t commit crimes.”

“Okay, let’s just
think of him as a man, not a lawyer. Does Eric Dunn seem like the type of man,
the type of art collector, who would pay someone to steal something for him?”

“Yes,” she said
immediately.

“You didn’t even have
to think about it.”

“Talking about him as
an art collector, he’s very proud of his collection, very protective of it. He
seems possessive and entitled, too. I don’t think it’s about the money with
him; it’s about the rarity and uniqueness of the piece and about having it. The
egg is a good example.”

“The Russian egg,” I
said, thinking. “Like Caroline Marks’s Russian egg. Caroline Marks, the woman
who was recently murdered, presumably by the same person who murdered Mitchell
and Melissa Conrad.”

“What does one have to
do with the other?”

“I’m not sure. How
rare are those eggs?”

“Not extremely, but
close. There are maybe two dozen remaining throughout the world. Why?”

“If they’re rare, like
you say, what are the odds of
two
of the only twenty-four in the world
being in Colorado, and particularly in the same
city
in Colorado?”

She seemed to take my
meaning. Spinning around in the chair, she got on the Internet and searched for
Caroline Marks’s private collection. She found a website dedicated to the
collection, with extensive photos of each piece as well as lengthy descriptions
and histories. In true Caroline Marks fashion, she had made her collection
known to the world so everyone could enjoy and learn about it. And knowing what
I did about her, I believed she was the type of person who would have
personally given you a tour of her collection if you’d asked. I wondered, then,
why Eric Dunn had never seen it, as he claimed.

She scrolled through
the pages until she found the one she wanted. She clicked on the icon, and a
huge photo of Caroline’s Russian egg filled the screen. I was no expert, but it
looked to me like the same one I’d seen at Dunn’s. After looking at the photo
carefully for several minutes, seeing details with her artist’s eye that I
would never see, she finally looked up.

“I say it’s a match.”

“Let’s read the
history,” I suggested, wanting just a little more confirmation.

She scrolled down and
began reading aloud.

“… handcrafted by
a little-known metalsmith and designed specifically for the last czar of
Russian to present to his wife.” She stopped reading and looked up. “Looks like
Eric has Caroline Marks’s Russian egg in his house.”

“I can’t help but
wonder how it got there.”

__________

Susan and Vince,
whatever else Vince was, were good cooks. I knew this just by looking at the
dishes on the table. After only the second dish had passed, I was running out
of room on my plate.

“We were
talking about seeing a movie tonight,” Susan said, smiling. “Would either of
you girls like to join us?”

“Tonight?”
Natalie asked. “Oh, uh, I can’t. I’ve got papers to grade for Monday.”

“I thought
you finished those,” Vince said.