“A thriller.”
“Thrillers are the only type of book that really grabs me. My wife only reads romance novels, which is rich, considering romance is what she seems most incapable of in our marriage.” Getting all worked up, the cop motioned us closer and leaned in to whisper. “If you agree to name one of your characters after me, maybe I can help you out with this thing, huh? Not necessarily the main character, but somebody with a big role, and one of the good guys! Like a really smooth operator, you follow me? I mean, just imagine my wife listening as I read her passages of a book with me in it!”
George-Harrison and the officer sealed the deal with a firm handshake. The cop then peppered us with questions about what exactly it was we were seeking. He disappeared into a room down the hall and emerged a half hour later, a manila folder in hand, all dusty and worn with age. He summarized the details for us out loud, as though the report were an excerpt straight from our nonexistent novel and he were playing stand-in narrator.
“Your burglary took place on October 21, 1980, between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m.,” he said, scratching his chin. “It’s a cold case. They never found the perp. The events transpired at a party thrown by one Robert Stanfield and his wife. Apparently, the thief mingled with the guests and then robbed the family blind, stealing bonds from the house safe. A hundred fifty thousand dollars, all told, which could be worth as much as 1.5 mil today—and that’s a ballpark figure. You gotta be brain-dead to keep that kind of money sitting at home. I mean, it’s just not the brightest move, even if people used cash more in those days. Ah, interesting. It says here the lock on the safe was intact. No forced entry. In my opinion—professional opinion—the guilty party must have known the premises inside and out. Probably had help from someone on the inside. And what do you know? I see here that all the house employees were questioned, temporary and permanent, including event staff and caterers. There’s a good thirty or so eyewitness accounts in here. And as usual, nobody saw or heard a single thing out of the ordinary. Quite the caper. An impressive sleight of hand.”
The cop kept reading, nodding eagerly here and there as though he were a sleuth hot on the trail of an elusive master villain. “The theft was first discovered around midnight, when Mrs. Stanfield went to return her jewelry to the safe. Police were called at 12:45 a.m., which probably left just enough time for the victims to recover from the shock and take stock of what had been stolen.”
“Jewelry in the safe . . . but she couldn’t have been wearing all her jewelry,” I interjected. “Were any of those items listed as stolen?”
“Nope, not as far as I can see,” the officer replied, punctuating his certainty with a firm shake of his head. “Not one item of jewelry reported missing, only the money—those bonds.”
“And does that seem normal to you?” asked George-Harrison.
“Normal doesn’t happen too often in my line of work. But this I can tell you for sure: this job was done by a pro. He wasn’t going to bother with things he couldn’t manage to sell. I’m going to let you in on a real insider tip, a nice touch that’ll make your story as real as it gets. Maybe even, if you can manage, have my character be the one who makes a speech about it, huh? If possible. A good cop always uses deduction. See these notes here? The eyewitness accounts? I count fifteen employees working full-time with these people. Housekeepers, cooks, butler, private secretary, and even a live-in presser? Just for ironing, I guess. That’s wild. I didn’t even know that existed. So, you know, it’s not too far a leap to conclude that the . . . what’s their name, again? The, uh, the Stanfields . . . Sorry, lost my train of thought. Ah, right . . . so, calling the Stanfields a ‘wealthy family’ would be an understatement. You still with me, right? I don’t gotta slow down? Okay, so. For folks as rich as them, the lady of the house probably doesn’t own even one piece of run-of-the-mill jewelry. And for a burglar, that’s a real snag. Think: Rolex, pearl necklace, even a reasonably sized diamond ring can all be pawned relatively easily. But when we’re talking jewels with values pushing five, even six figures? It’s impossible to hock that kinda stuff. Only way to get rid of something that hot is through a specialized underground network. Stones have to be pulled from their settings, mostly recut to make them unrecognizable, and then, presto! Back on the market. But if you don’t have those connections, you’re out of luck.”
“Wow. Have you worked on cases like this before?” I asked.
“No! Never. But like I said, I’m a big reader.” Despite his lengthy and colorful monologue, the bottom line was crystal clear: the thief had taken only the bonds because everything else in the safe was too tricky for him to fence.