by Sara Rosett
The hatchback pulled away from the curb, revealing a For Rent sign in the front yard.
Zoe clicked another picture, this time of the sign, then crept along behind the black car as it left the neighborhood.
Once on the main road, he headed for the interstate again. He drove for about thirty minutes. Zoe was eyeing her gas gauge, which had dipped below a quarter tank, when he exited and turned into a neighborhood of sprawling houses. Plantings of bright annuals edged perfectly trimmed lawns.
Zoe slowed to a crawl, then parked a few houses back when the hatchback stopped in front of a Mediterranean-style house with a red tile roof. Several other cars along with a pickup and a scruffy white van were parked in front of the house. Young Giacometti joined four other men dressed in white shirts and pants who were gathered around the open doors of the van. They removed paint, rollers, and several ladders. Young Giacometti swung a roll of plastic sheeting onto one shoulder, grabbed the handle of a five-gallon paint can, and walked up the curving, brick-lined driveway along with the other men.
Zoe jotted down the address, then watched the house for thirty minutes. Some of the men went back and forth to the truck, carrying tape, rollers, and a small radio back to the house. Eventually, the movement stopped. Zoe waited another fifteen minutes, then pulled up the image with the rent sign. An online search showed the house had three bedrooms, three baths, and an attached two-car garage.
Zoe called the number on the sign for the listing agent, Julia Lessing.
“Hi Julia,” Zoe said. “I just drove by the house for rent on Hyacinth Drive. I think it would be perfect for us.”
“Great.” She sounded distracted.
“The only problem is that I’m on a tight schedule. I flew into town to look for a place to live. I’ve been at it all week, and I have to leave tomorrow. I can’t believe I didn’t find your house until the last moment.”
Julia’s voice changed, becoming more intent. “You’re leaving town tomorrow, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, there’s still plenty of time.”
“Oh, good. If you could get me in this afternoon, I’d love to look around.”
“I’ll need to coordinate with the current renters, but I’m sure we can work something out.”
Twenty minutes later, Julia called back. “How about two o’clock this afternoon?”
“Perfect.”
2
Julia Lessing was in her forties and had a quick smile, a firm handshake, and a steady stream of questions. By the time she’d removed the lockbox and opened the front door to the rental, she’d already asked Zoe if she was working with another real estate agent, how many properties Zoe had seen, and what Zoe was looking for in a rental.
Julia pushed open the door and called, “Hello?” When no one answered, she stepped back and motioned for Zoe to go first. “I always like to make sure no one’s home in case there was a misunderstanding about the time. We don’t want to scare anyone.”
Before Julia could ask another question, Zoe wedged in a question of her own as she crossed the tiled entry. “The people who live here now, why are they moving?”
Julia closed the front door. “You’ll see when we look at the bedrooms that it’s two roommates who’ve rented the house. I believe one of them got a new job, which has forced them to move.”
The inside of the house was better kept than the exterior. The walls were freshly painted, and the sudsy scent of carpet shampoo permeated the air. Zoe had hoped that once she was inside, she’d be able to pick up some tidbit of information that could help her find out more about the man who’d visited Evelyn’s gallery, but there wasn’t much to see as she scanned the open-plan layout.
A large television dominated the living room, and a mass of game controllers was strewn across an L-shaped couch. A table in pale wood that would seat four looked too small for the spacious dining room beyond the glossy white cabinetry of the kitchen. All the walls were bare, and the only decorative touches were two floor lamps on either end of the couch.
The stark white walls and lack of any décor gave the house a temporary feeling. Either the people who lived here were only alighting for a short time, or they’d already packed most of their belongings. But no moving boxes were stacked in the corners. Zoe hadn’t really expected to see the Venice landscape or Picasso’s swimmers hanging on the wall, especially since the house was being shown to renters, but stranger things had happened.
Zoe already knew the paintings weren’t in the garage. She’d arrived early and peered through the garage door’s small square windows. She’d actually been relieved to not see the canvases in the garage—the heat and humidity in a space without climate control would have been terrible for the artwork. Thankfully, the garage had been empty, except for a mountain bike, a wheeled ice chest, and an old television.
Zoe moved into the living room. “The Dallas traffic can be a killer. Are they moving across town?” She wanted to get as much information as possible about the current residents, especially if Young Giacometti was the resident who had a new job.
“No, moving out of state. Florida, I think.”
“Great,” Zoe murmured under her breath, but she didn’t push for more details. It would look odd to be too interested in the personal lives of the current renters. Zoe went to the kitchen, where a stack of mail rested on the counter.
“Gas oven,” Julia pointed out as she ran her hand over the appliance’s stainless-steel finish. “The refrigerator stays, by the way. Do you have your own?”
“What?” Zoe looked up from the letter she’d been peering at, trying to decipher the name of the addressee without making it too obvious that she was staring.
“A refrigerator,” Julia repeated. “Do you have one of your own?”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, we do.”
“Then you could put yours in the garage.”
“Right. We could.” Zoe took out her phone. “I think I’ll take a few pictures. It’ll help me remember everything.”
“Good idea.”
Zoe snapped a picture of the kitchen as Julia said, “This neighborhood is a great location. Just minutes from the interstate. What do you do?”
“I work from home.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s wonderful. No commute.” Zoe took a couple of pictures of the dining room and living room but didn’t move away from the stack of mail.
“What sort of work do you do?”
“Freelance consultant. The drapes stay?” Zoe motioned to the windows in the dining room. She wanted to get off the subject of herself.
“Yes. Have you—” Julia’s phone rang.
Zoe fanned out the mail and snapped a picture of it while Julia checked her phone. Zoe managed to read the name on one envelope, Bobby R. Greer, but didn’t catch the full name on another bill, only the last name of Lomax. Buoyed up with the thought that she at least had names, Zoe set about looking for any other telltale traces that might indicate where the people were moving, but the impersonality of the rooms defeated her.
Using her cover as a prospective tenant, Zoe opened the pantry and the coat closet. Since she was inside, she might as well look in every storage area big enough to hold either the full-size paintings or the rolled canvases. Zoe hoped the paintings were still stretched across their frames, but thieves sometimes removed the canvases from their frames and rolled up the artwork to make it easier to transport. The smallest, the Canaletto, was two feet wide, so it would be obvious if it was stashed in a closet, even if it was rolled up. But no large paintings or suspicious rolls of canvas were tucked away. The coat closet only had a few lightweight jackets, and the pantry was equally disappointing. It was empty except for rows and rows of canned tuna. “Someone’s laid on a supply of tuna that could outlast the apocalypse.”
Julia put away her phone. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“Nothing important. The master is here on the main floor?”
“Yes, this wa
y.” The room was messy, with the sheets and comforter in a tangle and empty Styrofoam cups from fast-food restaurants scattered around the nightstand and desk. Julia frowned at the mess and quickly steered Zoe to the walk-in closet. It contained nothing more exciting than T-shirts, jeans, and a few button-down shirts, so Zoe assumed the man who was working on the painting crew had the room upstairs.
On the way out of the room, Zoe dropped her keys and managed to kick them under the edge of the bed. She got a quick glimpse under the dust ruffle. No canvases were hidden away under the mattress, only a battered laptop and some file folders.
“What do you think so far?” Julia asked at the foot of the stairs.
Guilt pricked at Zoe. She’d pulled the woman away from her work—it was no small thing to navigate through Dallas traffic—and Zoe had talked her way into the house with a bogus story. She didn’t want to get Julia’s hopes up any higher than they already were. “It’s nice, but it’s just my husband and myself. Now that I’m seeing the inside, I don’t think we actually need this much space.”
“Oh? No kids?”
“No.”
“But there might be kids down the road?”
Zoe laughed. “No plans for that right now.” Zoe loved the only toddler in her life, Nicolas, who was the son of her best friend, Helen. Zoe enjoyed playing trucks with Nicolas and listening to his laugh when she told him made-up stories about silly dragons and plucky gnomes, but she was content right now with her status as an honorary aunt.
One corner of Julia’s mouth quirked down, and she turned to the front door. “Well, if it’s too big, you probably don’t want to see the upstairs.”
The prick of guilt morphed into a stab, but Zoe said, “No, I’m here. I should see the whole place. I might change my mind later.” Since she was inside, Zoe didn’t want to give up before she’d checked every possible space for the paintings. She climbed the stairs, leaving Julia no choice but to follow her up.
Julia said, “Two bedrooms up here, and two full baths on the second story, which is quite a nice feature.”
Zoe murmured an agreement as she scanned the first bedroom. The person who lived upstairs was neater than the roommate. The bed was made, and the bureau’s surface was clear. A few packing boxes stood in a corner. A Marlins baseball hat was hooked on one corner of the headboard. Zoe was happy to see it was a platform bed so she didn’t have to use any ploys to look under it. The closet contained casual shirts and jeans along with several white shirts and pants. The label on one of the shirts read Bobby. So at least she’d sorted out the painter’s name.
After a glance around a fairly spacious bathroom with only a toothbrush on display, they went down the hall. The third bedroom was completely empty. Zoe opened the closet. It held only a discarded curtain rod. She squashed her sigh of disappointment. A closet in an unused room would have been a perfect place to hide the paintings. The only place left was the attic, and she sincerely hoped the paintings weren’t up there. If they were, they’d be ruined. She was trying to formulate a reason for looking in the attic when Julia pushed open a door in the hallway and turned on a light. “This is the third bath. So handy to have it upstairs. Your guests could each have their own bath.”
“Yes, that would be nice.” The narrow bath had a small vanity and toilet on one side of the room, with a tub and slender linen closet opposite. Keeping up her cover as a thorough inspector of a potential property, Zoe checked the cabinet—no rolled canvases.
She peeked behind the shower curtain and caught her breath. A beautiful scene of Venice greeted her, a busy morning on the Grand Canal. From the tiny brushstrokes that created the sun glinting on the choppy water to the expression of the woman holding a basket at the side of the canal, it was obvious it was a masterpiece.
Zoe’s heart, which had fluttered at the initial sight, plummeted. The paintings had been stored in a bathtub! But then she calmed down as she looked closer. The edges of the canvases were pristine. No water had soaked into the artwork. Another canvas, one that was taller and narrower, stood behind the scene of Venice.
Zoe used a fingernail to pull the Canaletto forward and rose up on her tiptoes to peer down at the other painting that was propped against the tile wall. Sinuous figures of women bathers filled the canvas. They were poised on rocks with the ocean in the background. One limber woman tilted sideways, shaking out her wet hair. Her wavy curls seemed to mirror the undulations of the waves behind her.
From behind Zoe, Julia said, “Goodness. What an unusual place to store prints. The tenant must have stuck them in here to get them out of the way during the showing. They’re not water-damaged, are they?”
“No, they look fabulous, but they’re not prints.” Zoe took her phone out of her messenger bag. “They’re paintings—stolen paintings.”
3
Jack opened the pizza box with a flourish and held it out to Zoe. “Celebrated art recovery specialists get first choice.”
“Thanks. I’m starving.” The warm cheese stretched out into thin strings of delicious goodness as Zoe pulled the slice of Margherita away from the box. They were perched on bar stools at the kitchen island, the pizza between them. Zoe had spent the last five hours answering questions, first from the police and then from Special Agent Dirk Sorkensov from the FBI. When she’d pulled into the driveway at their house, she’d been thrilled to see Jack paying the pizza delivery guy at the front door.
Jack had worked late too. Working late was the new normal for both of them lately. Jack still wore a dress shirt, but his sleeves were rolled up. He’d also loosened his tie and undone the top button on his shirt. “So the paintings are real?”
Zoe had only had time to call Jack and share the briefest details with him earlier. “Yes—well, the back of the canvases have the right inventory stickers and markings, which means Ruby is pretty confident that they’re authentic. She’s lining up experts to examine them.” The back of a painting was often the first place authenticators checked. If a painting didn’t have the correct markings on the back, it was a clear giveaway that it was a fake. “Ruby’s ecstatic.”
Jack picked up his own slice of pizza. “I’ll bet.”
“I don’t think you understand. She was over the moon. She said she’s naming her firstborn after me.”
“That’s—”
“Excessive? Yes, I told her I won’t hold her to it. Poor thing. She was so relieved when I called her and told her I’d found the paintings that I think she nearly passed out. She’s been afraid she’d be fired at any moment ever since the paintings went missing. That’s a lot of stress, considering they’ve been missing over six months.”
“So what happened?” Jack lifted the pizza box, looking for a napkin. “How did the painter guy—Bobby, wasn’t it?—get the Picasso?”
Zoe tore off several paper towels and handed them to Jack. “And a Canaletto. Bobby Greer is his name. He worked on a crew that painted the walls when the Westoll remodeled. After I answered all Sorkensov’s questions, he filled me in on what had happened. Remember I told you that the Westoll was also missing lots of smaller items like coins? It turns out that a security guard had been taking them during his rounds at night. He’d rearranged the displays so it didn’t look as if anything was missing. If the Westoll hadn’t done the inventory, they’d probably never have noticed either the paintings or the coins were missing. Bobby was working late, finishing the painting job, and saw the security guard take a coin. Once he’d seen that . . .”
“He knew security wasn’t up to par and he could bribe the guard.” Jack wiped the corner of his mouth with the paper towel. “No matter what bells and whistles you install, the weakest point is usually personnel.”
“When Bobby realized he was caught, he was happy to sell out the guard.”
Jack folded the pizza slice in half length-wise, Italian style, to make it easier to manage. “I wonder why Bobby took two paintings. That’s very different from coins.”
“Apparently they were the b
iggest paintings he could still fit in his car. He figured the bigger canvases would be worth more.” A warm dollop of cheese oozed over the edge of her pizza. Zoe plucked it up and popped it into her mouth.
“Not a well-thought-out plan,” Jack said.
“It was a terrible plan. The Canaletto and Picasso were recognizable and listed in the databases of lost and stolen art. An internet search would show they were stolen. Bobby couldn’t take them to an art dealer unless he knew the dealer was crooked and wouldn’t report him.”
“He didn’t have a fence?”
“Nope. Since he didn’t know any crooked dealers, he was stuck with the paintings while he tried to figure out how to sell them. He’d looked up their value online and knew they were worth over a million, so he didn’t destroy them—thank goodness.”
“So he just put them in the extra bathroom. That’s what I’d do—toss them in the tub. Best place for them.”
“Playing the long game wasn’t his forte,” Zoe said. “I guess he decided to make overtures at Salt Grass Gallery in the hope that Evelyn wasn’t aboveboard.”
Jack took a sip of his beer. “The strangest thing to me is that he left them in the tub when the house was for rent. Any potential tenant could have spotted them.”
“Oh, but the house wasn’t supposed to be shown. Julia fudged a little. The agreement was that the tenants would have at least a day’s notice to prepare the house for a showing. It had just come on the market—I was the first person to see it—and Julia was anxious to get me inside, so she ignored that condition. She let me in when she realized the house was empty.”
“What was she going to do if somebody was actually home?”
“Probably make some excuse and ask if we could take a quick look since we were there.”
Jack balled up his paper towel. “What about the roommate? He didn’t notice the paintings?”
