“This is Professor Tidwell,” Darwin explained to the detective. “He’s the one who knows our catalog backwards and forwards. He prepares all our insurance claims.”
“Yeah, I read about that forklift accident,” the detective said. “Weird that it happened when these thefts happened, huh?”
“Yeah,” Myron said, and timidly stuck out his hand.
Detective Keating flashed a warm grin and grabbed his hand, shook it so hard that Myron feared something tore in his shoulder. “Good to meet you, Professor,” the detective said cheerfully. “Mr. Richter here says you’ll be able to help us make sense of all this stuff,” he said, pointing at a file he held.
“Yes, anything I can do to help,” Myron said.
“Yeah,” the detective sighed, shaking his head. “When someone steals from a museum, he’s got to be scum. I mean, you need money, you hold up a bank or something, right? You don’t take from a museum. That just hurts everyone.”
Myron found the detective’s affinity for museums a little odd. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“I wonder why they do it,” Darwin said. “It’s not exactly easy to fence this stuff, is it?”
“I guess some people still feel disenfranchised,” Myron opined, positioning himself on the corner of the desk in his cubicle. “They see stately homes from a bygone era, figure that society owes them somehow, and think there’s no harm in taking a trinket here or there.”
“Right,” the detective said thoughtfully. “But it’s really more than trinkets, wouldn’t you say? From what Mr. Richter was telling me here, some of these things might look pretty ordinary, but in actuality, are really very valuable. You know that—you did the insurance work. But I wouldn’t think the average Joe would know how valuable they were.”
Myron shrugged. “I think you underestimate the average Joe, detective. Many art thieves are highly educated people.”
The detective nodded, seemed to ponder that for a moment, his gaze intent on Myron. And then he cocked his head to one side and asked, “Do you think we’re dealing with art thieves, Professor?”
A strange heat filled Myron’s collar, and he laughed and stood up. “Who knows? I’m just theorizing, that’s all. So when do you want to start looking at the catalogs?” he asked.
Detective Keating smiled. “Now, if that’s all right with you.”
“You bet,” Myron said. “Maybe we could go down to the library. There’s a lot of ground to cover and my desk is really small.”
“That would be great,” the detective said, and smiled in a way that made Myron flush hotly.
Chapter Thirteen
Great, it was middle school all over again, like anyone needed to go back there, and especially not Miss Fortune. Yet after that toe-curling kiss, Rachel could hardly hear the autopsies being piped into her head over the Dictaphone for all her thoughts shouting at her. So she typed fast and furious so that she could hurry home to see if he called.
So what if that was a little on the juvenile side? Rachel was certain that sophisticated women like her sisters had, at least once, anyway, lived and breathed each moment wondering if some guy had called back during the day. And even if they hadn’t, that didn’t care, because she could not seem to think of anything but Flynn, the complete antithesis of Myron.
When she’d finished up for the day (having typed an astounding twelve autopsy reports), she drove straight home, did not pass Go, did not collect two hundred dollars, and even waved at Mr. Valicielo as she pulled into the drive. And again, as she stepped out of her car, when Mr. Valicielo instantly appeared beside her, rake in hand, she cheerfully assured him that she’d do something about that tree.
“This is hurting my fence,” he said for the umpteenth time. “I’ll have to pay to have my fence repaired.”
“No you won’t, Mr. Valicielo,” she brightly assured him, “because I have a job. I mean, it’s only a temporary one, but still, I should earn enough to move the tree before long, and if the fence needs to be repaired, I’ll do that, too.”
Mr. Valicielo gripped his rake so tightly that his knuckles went white and he looked back to the fallen tree. Reluctantly, he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
Rachel bounced up the porch stairs to her kitchen door.
Once inside, she dropped her bag and went straight to the answering machine, certain there would be a blinking light . . . but there was no blinking light. No blinking light.
Rachel gaped at the answering machine. How could that be? She’d been so certain. They’d really hit it off, hadn’t they? She’d given him her number; he’d said he would call her. And that kiss! Her toes had curled, dammit! A small kernel of fear—not the scary kind of fear, but the kind of fear that comes with realizing that you are an absolutely clueless moron—sprouted in her belly.