The biker was running odds in his head. “Tell me what he said, and I’ll tell you if it’s bull.”
“Like I’m going to do that.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? Confess?”
She shrugged. “Let’s call it cooperate.”
“Yuh, right.”
“Hey, your call, Doc. But the smart man would get out ahead of this. Prosecutors are going to want a head on a pole. Whose is it going to be, yours or Buckley’s?” She picked up the file. “Maybe Buckley’s the smart man today.” Then Nikki stood. “See you at the arraignment.”
The biker thought that one over but not for very long. He shook his mane of hair and said, “All right, here’s the God’s truth. We didn’t steal any paintings. When we broke into that apartment, they were already gone.”
“I believe the dude,” said Raley. He was slouched back in his chair with his feet up on a two-?drawer filing cabinet in the middle of the bull pen.
Heat was standing at the whiteboard tossing a marker from hand to hand. “Me, too.” She uncapped it and circled the arrival of the truck and its departure on the burglary timeline. “No way they could move out all that art in a half hour. Let’s suppose Henry is off in his timing and it’s an hour. Still no way.” She tossed the marker into the aluminum sill on the bottom of the board. “And not be seen or heard doing it in a building full of people? Un-?uh.”
From his seat, Rook raised his hand. “May I ask a question?”
Heat shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“I need the practice,” added Raley, chuckling. Nikki suppressed her own smile and nodded for Rook to continue.
“Do Penn and Teller have a burglary crew? Because somebody sure as hell took all those paintings.”
Across the bull pen Detective Ochoa hung up his phone and said, “Madre de Dios.” Then he shoved off his desk with his foot, launching himself the length of the room on his chair rollers, coming to a stop at the group. “This is big. Got back the VIN result off that Volvo from the impound.” He looked down and read from his notes, which is what Ochoa did when he had news and wanted to get it right. “The vehicle was registered to a Barbara Deerfield. I made some calls including Missing Persons. Barbara Deerfield was reported missing by her employer four days ago.”
“Who was her employer?” said Heat.
“Sotheby’s”
Nikki cursed. “The art auction house…”
“That’s right,” said Ochoa. “Our dead woman was an art appraiser.”
Heat Wave
FOURTEEN
Raley came back into the bullpen dangling his sport coat on one finger. His powder blue shirt was two-?tone from sweat. “Brought you a present from Sotheby’s.”
Nikki rose from her desk. “I do love presents. What is it, a Winslow Homer? The Magna Carta?”
“Better.” He handed her a folded sheet of paper. “They let me print out a page from Barbara Deerfield’s Outlook calendar. Sorry it’s all buckled and everything. Humidity’s a bear out there.”
Nikki held the page like she would catch something from it. “It’s damp.”
“It’s only perspiration.”
While she unfolded the sheet and read it, Ochoa swiveled in his desk chair and covered his phone. “Never saw a dude sweat like you, man. Shaking your hand is like squeezing Sponge Bob’s ass.”
“Ochoa, I believe that’s a think, not a say.” Rook stepped over to surf the page over Nikki’s shoulder.
“All right, we have our…” Nikki seemed to feel that Rook was standing a little too close, so she handed him the page and created some distance. “We have our confirmation that Barbara Deerfield had an art appraisal booked at Matthew Starr’s apartment the morning he was killed.”
“And the morning she was killed,” added Rook.
“Likely. We still need confirmation on time of death from the M.E., but let’s call it a safe assumption.” Nikki used the fine tip of the marker to squeeze Barbara Deerfield’s appraisal appointment with Starr into the timeline on the whiteboard, then capped the pen.