The Witness

  “At least it’s no to most of those categories you mentioned.” She sighed. “There will be others claiming to be Henry’s kids, presenting themselves as also being my relatives?”

  “It’s inevitable,” Connor replied. “Henry names you and Tracey in his will, and you can be sure he knew who his kids really were. So when the letters arrive, the phone calls, just pass them on and don’t worry about it. Daniel and the estate have the resources to deal with all those who will come forward.”

  The thought gave her a pounding headache. “Paternity tests were run for a reason, I guess. Daniel mentioned Henry had already had them done for Tracey and me.” She set aside her coffee.

  “Any past boyfriends to worry about? an ex? the personal kind of trouble?” he asked again quietly.

  She looked over at him and shook her head. Did that make her life boring or simple, that there weren’t troubles in the back of her personal closet? She thought it made her sound like what she was: alone.

  “Family?”

  “Nothing closer than a very distant cousin or two. Tracey and I were all the family that was left.”

  “Then you’ll survive this, Marie. It’s those close to you who can do the hurting—the rest of the world will take care of itself. Marsh won’t get rattled by the money, so Tracey is in pretty good hands. And once the gallery downstairs is secured, and this apartment, your day-to-day routine won’t necessarily have to change much. You’ll still have a business to manage if you want that.”

  “From the sound of it, I’m going to need that slice of normalcy. How long have you and Marsh been partners?”

  “Six years. We started working homicide at roughly the same time.”

  “Marsh doesn’t say much about work.”

  “It’s his nature to leave it behind when he leaves the office; I carry it with me longer, I think. It’s not enjoyable work, but we’re good at it. We’re fortunate the city has had fewer and fewer murders each year to deal with. When I started out it was like getting thrown in the deep end.”

  “This used to be one of those rougher neighborhoods before the downtown-revitalization money came in. It’s one of the reasons I was able to afford this amount of space for the gallery.”

  “How’s the area been recently?”

  “Quiet. Not even a robbery in the area in recent years.” She refilled her coffee from the carafe she had brought over. “What’s the police chief like?”

  He looked surprised at the question. “Granger? Good boss, nice guy, a cop’s cop. He’s on the street more than he’s behind the desk. Why?”

  “Daniel apparently knows him. He wants me to meet him tonight.”

  “That’s smart. Granger is the kind of guy who can smooth things around for you and Tracey without it being obvious. He does a surprising amount of socializing for a man who doesn’t care to be out and about.”

  “He’s networked.”

  “Like very few others are in this town. I think he takes it personally, the well-being of those who live in his jurisdiction, even the upper crust who tend to end up in trouble by their own choices or lack of attention to their surroundings.”

  It gave her a picture of the police chief, and Marie thought she would find it interesting to meet him. Connor admired him: it was there in the tone of his voice. Marie studied the bottom of her coffee mug and wondered how much she could get away with prying. “Are you close to Marsh?”

  “We’re not brothers, but there are days we might as well be.” He smiled. “What do you need to know, Marie?”

  She looked up at him briefly and smiled. “Is Marsh serious about Tracey? Is he the type to want to settle down? So many things that would have played out on their own course are going to get badly disrupted right now.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about Marsh; he’s a selective kind of guy. Your sister chose him, rather than the other way around, and that kind of smoothed the age difference between them. Not that Marsh ever tried to put on the brakes to the relationship. From all I’ve seen they are a very good match together. The money isn’t going to change his opinion about your sister, and I don’t think it changes your sister all that much either—I expect she’ll still finish that degree and then rejoin a medical practice here in town. But this will likely slow down any plans the two of them have been talking about until this situation sorts itself out more, rather than speed up those plans.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right about that.” Marie sighed. “I worry about her, being married to a cop one day. He’s a good cop, and oddly that makes it harder than if he wasn’t so committed to the job.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not going to tell me not to worry?”

  “Marsh and I carry guns; they don’t give them to us because it’s a desk job.”

  “I like you.”

  He laughed. “Because I’m honest?”

  “Because you’re sitting there drinking my coffee and answering my questions and being pretty patient with getting handed this task as a favor for a friend.”

  “Daniel’s an old friend—that does make a difference.” He got to his feet. “But it’s probably best we get on with the task before you need to get changed to go meet Granger. I like my boss, but I do try my best not to keep him waiting.”

  She got to her feet too.

  “Without wanting to invade your privacy, let me glance in bedrooms and the bath, get a count of windows; then I need to see storage rooms and access to the roof, any other ways on and off this floor. Securing the gallery floor will be the easier task.”

  She nodded. “This way.” She wished she remembered how she’d left her bed that morning, how many clothes were still tossed around, if her makeup still sprawled across the bathroom counter. She’d been in a hurry to open the gallery and make the meeting with Daniel, not thinking there would be anyone up here today. Her Saturday had been planned to be her cleanup day.

  Connor glanced around her bedroom, smiled at the mannequin she used to keep her coat and hat and longer scarves, and counted windows. He glanced into the second bedroom. “Does Tracey stay here often?”

  “She rooms on campus when classes are in session. She’ll be here for another ten days or so, and then she planned to head back.”

  “I’ll make sure someone stops by her place on campus next week and gets its security tightened up.”

  “The third bedroom I use as a studio of sorts.”

  The room had the best lighting of all the bedrooms for it faced north and had three full windows. The room was pretty bare. She’d spent the night before setting out new canvases to work on, and her sketch board had been cleared. She’d left the furnishings as a simple arrangement of chairs and open display case for her paint supplies.

  “You spend a lot of time here.”

  “More and more as the years pass.”

  “I like it. Someday I can say I knew you when.”

  She laughed. “I doubt my paintings will ever become collectible works.”

  “You never know.” He added more notes to his pad.

  Connor rewalked the living-room area, and she saw him studying where the heating and cooling came in, counting windows, and checking what doors inside had locks. “Are you particularly attached to any of this woodwork? It really would be good to have better frames on the windows and solid doors put in for the bedroom wing. Someone gets inside or someone’s just hassling you, you’ve still got layers of protection and locks you can throw.”

  “I’m not going to quibble if you think it needs to be done. Daniel gave me a pretty good reality check even before you rattled off that list of risks.”

  He looked over, and she understood the gaze even if she didn’t want to understand it. “Rattling you is okay, Marie—scaring you is not. Sorry about that.” He counted doors. “The more stuff done now tends to mean less trouble later, and the carpenters can do it all as one rush job.”

  He jotted notes. “I’ve got what I need in here. Show me the storage rooms and utilitie
s.”

  She picked up her key ring and led the way.

  “You’ve got valuables stored up here?”

  “I built a room downstairs to be secure storage for the paintings; up here is extra framing and packing materials, Christmas decorations, replacement panels to use when we have a showing, that kind of thing.”

  He walked past the storage shelves to the windows and tried turning the locks. “You open the windows during the summer?”

  “Yes. I don’t think any of the windows will still be painted shut, but a few are tighter than others.”

  He looked at the fire alarm. “Cover your ears.” He reached up and hit the self-test button. “You’ve changed the batteries recently.”

  “First of every month. Fire is the one thing I’m kind of paranoid about.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing to be. Where’s the electrical box for the building?”

  “There are two—one for this floor, one for the gallery.” She opened the utilities room and clicked on the light, then nodded toward the electrical box on the back wall.

  Connor checked it. “Good, there’s room. New lighting for the hall can include emergency floodlights as well as just better fixtures and higher watt bulbs. Someone cuts your electricity, the emergency lights will automatically come on in the halls. Amazing how many times that’s enough to stop trouble in its tracks. And it saves you a lot of time if there is a fire or other reason to be leaving quickly.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job cheering me up here.”

  He smiled. “Daniel gets the bills; just remember that. I’ll have the carpenters replace that stairway handrail for you too; I noticed it was a bit shaky. You’ve got another staircase down to the gallery level, or do you always go out to the street and then back inside?”

  “There’s another stairwell at the other end of the hall. We use it just enough to keep the cobwebs down.”

  She led the way to show him.

  “Nice.” The stair treads were steep and narrow and disappeared with a sharp turn.

  “The building was divided in half until about thirty years ago. This used to be the other entrance, but they bricked the former doorway and turned the direction of the final few stairs when they combined the building.” Accustomed to the narrower treads she walked down first with her hands braced against each wall and turned the corner, stepping into the open storage room at the back of the gallery.

  Connor joined her. “Doors at the top and the bottom and brick on either side of you—it has potential.” He checked the lock. “If you had a fire, Marie, I’d use these stairs rather than try for the main stairway. There are no cooling or heat ducts to carry smoke in. I’ll have them put in a steel-core door at the top—that will give you better security and a final bit of fire protection and emergency lighting.” He jotted down a final note and then looked around where they stood. “Okay, what’s down here?”

  “This is general storage and where we pack paintings to ship.” She pointed to the back wall. “The longer narrow storage room is climate controlled for the paintings and built to not let you get inside easily.”

  “I can see that; it’s the first lock I’ve respected on sight so far.”

  She laughed and led the way into the gallery. “The gallery has four areas, loosely divided into themes, with two main brick walls forming the interior and the main support column for upstairs. I’ve also got my office down here and a more elegant seating area for when I’m talking with buyers over coffee and cake.”

  “I can see I should have been into art a long time ago; car shops might have the coffee but rarely the chance to sit in elegance to drink it.” He walked around, studying the large windows that looked out onto the street, the pedestrians passing by. “You’ve already got a security system down here.”

  “Yes. Once the place is locked up it’s pretty secure—break triggers on the doors, the plate-glass windows, enough for the insurance bill to come down some. The silent alarm contacts the police.”

  “You open and close the gallery most days? Or do you have staff that handles it?”

  “I’m the one most often handling opening and closings. The posted hours are ten to six, and we’re open on Saturdays but not Sundays; it’s also pretty common to have private showings or special evenings with invited guests. I have one assistant who has been with me since I opened the gallery who works about thirty hours a week. She typically works the lunch hours for me and helps when there is a showing to put together or a shipment coming in. When she needs to be out of town, as she is today and I’ve got a meeting, I simply close the gallery for a few hours. It’s not a good solution, but the business doesn’t do enough volume to support more than the two of us.”

  “How do you handle the cash?”

  “There’s a safe on the premises in the office, and I bank at the branch across the street. It’s not been a problem. Most of the sales are by check.”

  He walked through the gallery rooms, and while she wasn’t disappointed exactly that he didn’t comment on the artwork displayed, she was surprised he didn’t seem to even linger to take a second glance at some of the works. The artwork available this month was some of the finest she’d ever been able to afford.

  “Daniel will be after that Denart in the front window and that Gibson on the east wall,” he predicted.

  The fact he’d put the artists’ names to their art without looking at the signature cards startled her. “He already asked about the Denart. You know his tastes?”

  “Someone once swiped four paintings out of his office. This was before he worked at the Benton Group; it’s how I first met him.”

  “I wondered.”

  “I learned enough about art working that case to at least know why he bought the paintings he did. Daniel and I play softball together in a league, and he’s a pretty regular racquetball partner. Your cousin is the kind of friend you don’t think twice about picking up the phone and calling to ask for a favor. Just so you know.”

  “Yeah, that helps. Not too full of himself.”

  “A pretty average guy for all the media attention. Where’s your office?”

  “Back here.” She turned on lights.

  He paused in the doorway. “Comfortable.”

  “I spend a lot of time here.”

  “I’m going to suggest another couple phone lines with at least one of them a very private number you give only to friends. And if you’ve got the power outlets to handle it, we’ll bring one of the security monitors in here and probably another one tucked away near that front reception desk. Cameras on the streets, covering the rooms here, another two for the stairway and hall—they don’t have to be intrusive to give you a lot more information about what is around you than you have now.”

  “I’ll get used to them.”

  He nodded. “In a few weeks, you’ll wonder how you functioned without them. No more deliverymen you don’t recognize before you open the door.”

  He finished his notes and slid his notebook back into his pocket. He leaned back against the front of the desk. “Nothing on the list is going to be particularly hard to get installed. The window locks and frames are probably the toughest job—there are simply so many of them. And at least it’s projected to be good weather tomorrow. Once it’s all in, I’ll walk you around and show you how to take maximum advantage of it all.”

  “I appreciate all this, Connor, even if I am a bit befuddled by it.”

  He laughed. “I haven’t heard that word since about seventh grade. You’ll get used to it, Marie. The changes are going to come in a bunch, but they’ll level off after a while.”

  “How would you handle it, being wealthy?”

  He thought about it. “I’d probably take better vacations.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. What I need, I have, and what I want, I enjoy dreaming about. I like my job.”

  “I wonder if I’m still going to like having this gallery after all the curiosity seekers come by.”

  “You’ve built th
is as a place you love, and you’ll still love it a year from now.” He paused. “May I?” He reached for a photo on her desk. “Your family?”

  “My aunt and the three of us girls: Mandy, Tracey, and me. My aunt passed away in ’95, and Mandy was killed in ’98. That’s one of the last pictures I have of us together.”

  “Mandy was your older sister?”

  “Four years older. She was murdered in New York.”

  His gaze shot up to hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to open old wounds.”

  “It’s okay.” She leaned back against the credenza. “We’ve never been able to give her a funeral; they never found her body.”

  He stilled and looked back at the photo again. “I really don’t mean to pry, but what happened?” When he looked back up at her she didn’t understand the quietness in him, but she did understand the sympathy and appreciated it.

  “She’d had dinner out with her boyfriend; they were on the way back to her place. The car stopped at a stoplight, and someone walked up and shot her boyfriend three times in the chest. They found Mandy’s blood on the passenger seat, and a witness saw a woman being chased from the scene. They never found her body, but the police finally concluded she had been killed that night too. Her apartment was never returned to—pets abandoned, her credit cards never used, her bank accounts never touched, her car where she had left it parked. No one ever heard from her again. She would have called had she been alive. That convinced me more than anything that she was gone. We had a private investigator work with the cops, but what he found just confirmed what we knew—a pendant she never took off showed up at a pawnshop, that kind of thing. I wish her body had been found so we could have had a funeral. It’s like an open sore without the closure. And I’m sure it will get dragged up again now that we are in the news.”