A Priceless Find

  Colin had texted him about half an hour earlier to let him know he had the search warrant. Since he’d been just outside Camden Falls, Colin had agreed to wait for him before exercising it.

  Sam felt he could drink a whole pot of coffee, but he’d settle for a strong cup, black, to keep him going.

  “Hey, Kim,” he greeted the evening receptionist. “Colin’s in, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I think the carpet in his office is threadbare from all the pacing he’s done, waiting for you.”

  Sam smiled at her. “Thanks.”

  “Sam?” she called after him.

  He stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

  “Heck of a storm out there today. I’m glad you made it back safely.”

  That was one of the things he’d come to value, living in Camden Falls. People genuinely cared about each other. “Thanks for that. I appreciate the concern.”

  He walked as fast as he could, considering his injuries, through the squad room and straight to Colin’s office.

  “You’re back!” Colin exclaimed when he saw him standing in the doorway, and pushed out of his chair. “You sure you’re up to this?”

  “Darn right I am.”

  “Let’s get it done, then. It’s not every day we get to make a bust to recover a priceless work of art the FBI’s been searching for over a quarter of a century!”

  They left the station soon after, Sam with a take-out cup of coffee in his hands. Colin took the wheel behind his sure-footed SUV. They’d agreed Sam had done enough driving in the miserable weather for one day.

  “You know where the warehouse is?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” Colin glanced over and grinned. “I had to do something to occupy myself while you took your sweet time getting your butt back here.”

  Sam laughed. “Write me up for slacking off on the job.”

  Colin patted him on the back. “I’ll do that. Right after this bust.”

  When they were halfway there, Colin called the division. “Go ahead and contact him now.”

  “What was that all about?” Sam asked when he’d hung up.

  “The desk sergeant is notifying Hadley.”

  “You wanted him to know, but not so much in advance that someone could’ve gotten there before us,” Sam deduced.

  “That’s right.”

  When they pulled up in front of the warehouse, they saw a vehicle already there, blanketed in a thin layer of snow, the engine running.

  Sam recognized it as a law enforcement vehicle. “What’s that all about?” he asked Colin.

  His boss looked over at him as he parked his SUV behind the other car. “With your additional delay because of the accident, Ferguson managed to get here before us, after all. When he called me, I told him to meet us here.”

  Sam tried not to sulk about it, since this was going to be the biggest bust of his career, but he understood that the FBI had a right to be there.

  The road hadn’t been plowed in the last couple of hours, nor had the sidewalk been cleared. The accumulation of snow was at least six inches since the plow had last gone by. Their footsteps left deep troughs as they trudged from their vehicles to the warehouse door. Sam tried to ignore the screaming pain in his hip and knee.

  They went through proper procedure, and as they were about to enter, Hadley arrived in his Audi.

  Sam made the introductions.

  “Can you tell me why we’re here?” Hadley asked. He looked perplexed and a little annoyed, but Sam didn’t detect any nerves or apprehension.

  “We have reason to suspect that there might be stolen property in the warehouse.”

  “That’s just not possible!”

  Hadley’s outrage seemed genuine, but he didn’t hesitate when Ferguson asked him to unlock the door.

  The alarm system let out its audible warning until Hadley disarmed it. That and the locked door told Sam someone had been in the space since Chelsea.

  Using a flashlight, he located the light switches and flipped them on.

  “What the heck?” Sam couldn’t hold back the exclamation, and his words echoed through the warehouse.

  Colin dropped a hand on his shoulder. To placate or to warn him? Sam didn’t know.

  This had nothing to do with Chelsea’s overactive imagination; the authenticated paint sample attested to the fact.

  He slowly turned around.

  Nothing.

  Not a thing in the entire warehouse, other than the workstation and the enclosed room at the back.

  Not a crate. Not a painting.

  The warehouse was empty.

  * * *

  SAM HAD HAD a long day, but it was far from over.

  He rode back to the station with Colin, Ferguson following behind in his own vehicle.

  “They must’ve moved everything out sometime last night or during the day. Either because they’d planned to do it all along, or because they’d been tipped off,” Sam said, once they were all in Colin’s office.

  “Let’s consider the latter first. Who knew about what you did today?” Colin asked.

  “The scientist in Boston who did the testing.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t know where you got the sample, or what we suspected,” Colin responded.

  Sam jerked a shoulder. “No, he didn’t know where I got it, although he had some thoughts about what it meant. I didn’t let him speculate, but I bet he wouldn’t have been far off.”

  “Regardless, we trust him,” Ferguson interjected. “He’s done work for us before.”

  “The fine art community is small, according to what I’ve learned,” Sam responded. “It’s hard to say who he might know and what he might have said.”

  “We trust him,” Ferguson repeated.

  “Is there any chance the results he gave Sam aren’t correct?” Colin asked Ferguson.

  “I don’t think so. What purpose would that serve? If he was playing games, wouldn’t it be more likely that he’d tell Sam there’s nothing remarkable about the sample? Just common current-day paint?”

  Colin nodded. “Yeah. Did anyone else know?” he asked Sam.

  “Chelsea Owens knew where I’d gone.”

  “Reasonable, since she’d given you the paint sample,” Colin said.

  He might as well face the fire, Sam thought. “She also knew the outcome.”

  Colin shot a quick glance at Ferguson, then glared at Sam. “You told her?”

  Sam nodded.

  “What were you thinking?” Colin’s tone was quiet. Emphatic. Sam knew that meant he was angry. “Putting that aside for now,” Colin went on, “because it doesn’t make sense that she’d tell you what she’d seen, give you the paint sample and either be personally involved or tip someone off—was there anyone else?”

  Sam started to shake his head, then thought back. “When I called Chelsea, she was at the gallery. I have no way of knowing whether anyone overheard her end of the conversation. The possibilities include Joel Sinclair, the owner’s grandson, and Adam Rochester, the jewelry store owners’ nephew. I’ve seen him on a couple of occasions visiting Joel. There’s also an admin person, another sales associate and the curator.”

  “Could Sinclair have heard anything? You’re still convinced it was his car that hit you?”

  “It’s possible he did, and yes, I am. We don’t have enough to bring Sinclair in for questioning again, do we?”

  Colin shook his head. “Since he’s alibied for when you were hit and there was no discernible damage to his vehicle, no. And not for this.”

  “Any chance Owens is screwing with us?” Ferguson asked. “Maybe she has an ax to grind with the gallery or its owners?”

  “No way,” Sam retorted. “Not a chance. Her aspiration is to be the next curator. She
’s invested in that place. She wouldn’t do anything to compromise that.”

  Colin glanced at Sam again. “Is it possible she’s been told it won’t happen? That the grandson will take over and this is retribution?”

  “No” was Sam’s immediate denial. “She’s too much of an open book. She would’ve told me if that was the case...” He considered the couple of weeks he’d put things on hold between them because of the Babineux investigation. No. She still would’ve told him in the last few days, since they’d started seeing each other again. Except they’d had a lot of other things on their minds—his injury. Her visit to the warehouse.

  “Sam, talk to me.”

  He couldn’t believe it of Chelsea. “Even if she was told she had no chance at the job, she wouldn’t do something like this. We might not be able to bring Sinclair in, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have another chat with him,” he said. And with Chelsea. Colin didn’t need to know that, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.

  For now, Sam had to sit through the remainder of the painful debrief with Colin and Ferguson, and then they had to formulate a strategy.

  By the time they finished, Chelsea had called him and sent several texts. Responding to her would have to wait until tomorrow, too.

  He had to get some much-needed sleep.

  * * *

  THE MORNING DAWNED bright and sunny. The plows were still at work catching up from the day before to clear the side streets, but the major roads were bare, with large piles of snow on the shoulders.

  The instant Sam walked into the gallery, Chelsea hurried over to him. She took his hand and pulled him to a corner of the showroom. “What happened?” she asked in a hushed whisper. “I tried calling you at home last night and on your cell. I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I had a meeting with Colin that ran quite late,” he replied. “When I got home, I went straight to bed.”

  Her eyes were a stormy green. “I was worried about you. I knew you made it back to town, and then when I couldn’t reach you...”

  “I’m sorry,” he said ineffectually, but he was touched by her concern. No one outside his immediate family had worried about him like that in a long time. It was a nice feeling.

  “Well, did you find it? Did you find the Rembrandt?” she asked, still whispering.

  Sam’s gaze shifted over her shoulder. Joel was walking out of the office area.

  “Excuse me,” Sam said to Chelsea and waved to Joel.

  “Detective,” Joel greeted him as Sam approached.

  “Could I have a few minutes of your time?” Sam asked.

  “For?”

  “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “You’re not going to grill me about your accident again, are you?”

  “No,” Sam assured him.

  Joel nodded and led Sam to his office. Ten minutes later, Sam walked back out. He had no significant new information, but he’d managed to irritate Joel. As much as he would’ve been happy to pin the emptying out of the warehouse on Joel, his answers and body language led Sam to conclude that it hadn’t been him. The one thing of interest to Sam was that Joel claimed the last time he’d tried to go to the warehouse, his key hadn’t worked. That was months ago, and he’d forgotten about it, he said, since he hadn’t had any reason to go there recently.

  Sam was beginning to suspect that if there had been something in the warehouse or if something illegal was going on there, Joel had no knowledge of it. If it was an inside job, that left the curator, Nadine Sinclair, Tina Stevens, the administrative assistant, and the other sales associate, Deborah Grant.

  And Chelsea.

  When Sam returned to the showroom, Chelsea was occupied with a middle-aged woman. She sent him an exasperated look behind the woman’s back.

  Miming to her that he’d call later, he waved goodbye and left.

  He’d just reached his own vehicle, when he decided to have another look at Sinclair’s SUV. Sam had begun to wonder if he might have been wrong about the particulars of the vehicle that had hit him. He was aware that Colin had already had it checked for dents or any other sign of impact and there hadn’t been one. Understandable, since Sam had taken the brunt of the force.

  But since he was here, anyway, he might as well check it out.

  He pulled up the collar of his coat. He’d left his gloves in his vehicle, so he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked around the block to the gallery’s back lot, where the staff generally parked. As he rounded the corner he caught a movement. Stepping back hurriedly, he peered around the edge of the building. The back of Joel’s MDX was open and the movement he’d glimpsed had come from behind the vehicle.

  Sam waited until the person, bundled up in a heavy winter coat and ski hat—not unlike those worn by the person who’d hit him—closed the back door. Then he locked the vehicle and stepped around it.

  The person turned toward Sam and, for the first time, Sam could see his face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ADAM ROCHESTER POCKETED a set of keys as he walked from Joel’s MDX toward the back entrance of All That Glitters and Shines.

  Sam managed to duck behind the wall without being seen. He was tempted to go back into the gallery and ask Sinclair a few more questions. On second thought, he decided to have a chat with Chelsea first.

  That meant he’d have to tell her they’d found the warehouse empty. So be it. He needed some answers about Adam.

  Instead of going back inside, he got into his car and called her from his cell. “Chelsea, I’m sorry I left without more of a goodbye, but you were busy,” he said, trying to explain his earlier behavior when she answered. “Do you have time for a coffee?”

  “Yes. If you can wait a couple of minutes.”

  “Sure. I’ll be outside.”

  While he waited, Sam had someone at the station run Adam Rochester for him. Chelsea’s “couple of minutes” stretched into fifteen by the time she appeared. At least the wait had given him the opportunity to receive and review the report on Rochester.

  Sam drove them to The Coffee Shoppe. They’d barely sat down when she leaned in and started quizzing him.

  He clasped her hands in his. “There was nothing in the warehouse.”

  “What?” The single word sounded more like a squeak.

  “The warehouse was empty.”

  She tugged her hands away. “I saw what I saw, Sam. I wasn’t imagining it,” she stated emphatically.

  “I know. You got the paint sample to prove it.”

  “Then how could it be?”

  She looked so deflated, so sad, he wanted to gather her in his arms. But right now, he needed her help to fill in some of the details about Adam, Joel and their relationship. “First, I’d like to ask you about the box of jewelry you saw at the warehouse. Okay?”

  She nodded rapidly. “Yes. Was that at least still there?”

  He hated to disappoint her again. “No, it wasn’t. But can you describe what you saw?”

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she gave him a detailed description.

  “Have you seen any items like that in All That Glitters and Shines? Anything that you think would resemble them?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She shrugged. “I’m not big on expensive jewelry, so I don’t really look at the display cases when I drop in. I’m mostly there to visit Mr. and Mrs. Rochester.”

  Sam nodded. “You told me that Adam’s lived with his aunt and uncle for most of his life.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Tell me again about his mother, and how that came about, please.”

  “Adam’s father, who was quite a bit younger than Mr. Rochester, was in the military and was deployed overseas a number of times. His mother didn’t handle being on
her own with a young child well. She had a drug and alcohol problem, but when Adam’s father was killed in the line of duty, it pushed her over the edge. I was told that both the drinking and the drugs got worse. Mr. Rochester was already more of a father figure in Adam’s life than his brother had been. The Rochesters tried to help her, but one day she simply disappeared and Adam began living with them.”

  Sam thought back to what he’d learned about Adam’s mother. She’d been institutionalized but she’d been out for a while, with no fixed address. “Do they know where she is?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I gather that she’d contact the Rochesters occasionally, asking for money. First, they’d give her some, but the requests became more frequent, and they suspected she used the money for drugs and alcohol, so they stopped giving her any. Eventually, she stopped asking.”

  “You don’t think she’s had any contact with Adam?”

  Her big green eyes turned sad. “I don’t think so. Adam’s recollections of her are vague at best. In my opinion, he loves her—or at least the memory of her—but I doubt that either Adam or the Rochesters have had any contact with her, or tried to find her.”

  “It must have been tough on Adam.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it was. When his mother’s addiction got worse, frankly I think the Rochesters feared for Adam’s safety and well-being. Not only because of his mother’s behavior, but the people she associated with. When she went to jail for possession with the intent of trafficking—that’s how she tried to make money to support her habit—thankfully Adam was no longer living with her. The Rochesters saw that as the final straw and obtained custody of Adam. He was already living with them, but they wanted to make it permanent and legal.”

  “How old was Adam at the time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten or twelve, but that’s just a guess, because that was also about the time Adam and Joel became friends.”

  “And the mother? Do you know what happened to her after she got out of jail?”

  “I have no idea. It’s not something Adam talks about. I only know bits and pieces because he confided in Joel, and Joel shared some of it with me.”