Nothing But Trouble

by Michael McGarrity

  They stayed locked together for a moment, then slowly he lowered her to the floor. She patted his cheek, turned, and walked out of the bedroom.

  As he dressed, the thought struck Andy that Crystal had never kissed him on the lips. Not once. He shrugged it off as a meaningless curiosity. He was a twenty-three-year-old bartender from Minnesota boffing a hot young heiress who made up her own rules as she went along, and he was having the time of his life.

  After Andy left, Crystal slipped on a pair of thong panties, sat at the small desk in the corner of the living room, and called Benjamin Cohen, a semiretired New York City shrink who’d been her therapist for the past ten years.

  “How are you feeling, Crystal?” Cohen asked after he’d picked up.

  “Tense, and I just had sex and that didn’t help at all. I’ve been taking things again.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Crystal sighed. “Why? You’ll just tell me to increase my medication, and I don’t want to. It stops me from feeling horny.”

  “There is that,” Cohen replied. “But let’s talk about what you’re really feeling.”

  Crystal giggled. “Guilty, but I’m not giving anything back.”

  “Care to tell me why?” Cohen asked.

  Crystal sighed. “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Sometimes, in the past, you’ve returned the things you’ve taken, or given them away as gifts.”

  She opened the locked desk drawer, looked at her new possessions, and caressed each of them. “These are too beautiful to give away. I’m going to display them in my Paris apartment. No one there will ever know I stole them.”

  “What else are you feeling?”

  “Alive, euphoric, irritable, sexy, depressed. The usual stuff.”

  “Have you stopped taking your medication entirely?” Cohen asked.

  “It turns me into a zombie.”

  “It helps to stabilize your mood.”

  “How boring.”

  “I think it would be best if you came back to the city for a time so we can talk about this in person,” Cohen said.

  “I can’t stand New York. I’ll never live there again.”

  “You need to think about what you’re doing, Crystal.”

  “I hate it when you judge me.”

  “I’m judging you?”

  “There’s always that undertone, at least that’s what I feel. Crystal doesn’t need to steal. Crystal is a rich girl who can buy anything she wants. Crystal is so uncooperative and difficult. You don’t say it, but it’s there.”

  “Why have you decided to go back to Paris?” Cohen asked.

  “Because Daddy’s returning to Santa Fe next week and I don’t want to see him. Besides, Paris is fun and sexy. The French are so accepting.”

  “Do you think Paris will ease your guilt?”

  “Why not? I got a gun last week. A pistol. It’s very small, so I can keep it in my purse.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Protection,” Crystal replied. “Women get raped in Santa Fe all the time.”

  “You sound pleased about having a gun.”

  “In a strange way, I am. It gives me a feeling of control.” She opened the expensive, imported crocodile handbag she’d stolen last year from a Fifth Avenue department store and took out the pistol, a small nickel-plated .22-caliber semiautomatic. It was Daddy’s gun that he kept in a nightstand next to his bed. The weight of it felt good in her hand.

  “Tell me some more about feeling in control.”

  “The world is a dangerous place.” Crystal had never fired a gun. She wondered what the sensation was like.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m not hiding anything,” Crystal said defensively. There was a switch or something above the trigger. What was it? She flicked it back and forth a couple of times and decided it must be the safety catch.

  “Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But soon?” Cohen asked.

  Crystal pointed the gun at her reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the desk. “Maybe.”

  “I know a very good psychiatrist in Santa Fe, Dr. Candace Robbins. I think it would be wise for you to call and ask to see her immediately.”

  “So she can hospitalize me? No way.”

  “So you have someone to talk to face-to-face. Let me give you her name and number.”

  “I suppose I could call her.”

  “Good,” Cohen said.

  While Cohen paused to look up the name and phone number of the local shrink, Crystal pushed a lever at the top of the pistol grip and the magazine popped out. The bullets in it looked small, not dangerous at all.

  She reinserted the magazine as she pretended to write down the shrink’s phone number that Cohen gave her.

  “I’ll consult with Dr. Robbins,” Cohen added, “and tell her to expect your call.”

  “Okay.” Crystal disconnected, put the gun back in the handbag, and went into the bedroom to dress. Yesterday at the post office, when she’d picked up Daddy’s mail, she’d seen an invitation for a preview of an art-and-antiquities show this evening.

  Crystal decided she would go. Perhaps something would catch her eye. She shivered with anticipation.

  Five minutes after Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino returned to her office, Chief Kerney stepped through the open door and sat in the chair next to the desk.

  “Anything new on the art-theft cases?” he asked. Pino’s desk was unusually tidy, and the framed snapshot of Ramona and her boyfriend, a vice cop with the Albuquerque PD, taken while they were on vacation together last year, was missing.

  “Not that I know of, Chief. I’ve been working a commercial burglary case today. Somebody broke into a construction trailer at a building site last night and took a couple thousand dollars’ worth of power tools. We’ve got a suspect. All we’ve got to do is find him.”

  Kerney stretched his legs, crossed his feet, and nodded. “I’m sure you will. I’ve noticed a pattern to the art thefts that I wanted to mention to you.”

  “Are you talking about how more expensive items are being taken each time?”

  Kerney smiled approvingly. Pino had a razor-sharp mind and great cop instincts. “Exactly. Do you think it’s one person?” he asked.

  “If it is, based on what’s been boosted, I’d bet she’s female, and not your ordinary garden-variety shoplifter either. It’s all quality stuff, which shows a certain degree of sophistication and knowledge about art.”

  Kerney examined the bulletin board on the far wall of Pino’s small office, where she’d thumbtacked photographs of the stolen art. “All the objects could have easily been hidden in a large tote or a handbag,” he observed. “But is she stealing on impulse or is it planned?”

  Kerney paused to see if Ramona got his drift. Planning a crime was not what a kleptomaniac would normally do.

  “I think it’s impulsive, Chief. But she seems to be putting herself at a greater risk of discovery each time out by stealing more expensive items.”

  “Do you think she has just been lucky?” Kerney asked.

  Ramona settled back in her chair. “Yeah, and maybe not even aware of it.”

  “How so?” Kerney asked.

  “Both galleries where the opening receptions were held have good surveillance systems. But when they arranged the exhibits, nobody thought to reposition the cameras. The bronze statue and the miniature oil painting were on display in blind spots within a few feet of the entrances. Easy in, easy out.”

  Ramona pulled two videocassettes out of a desk drawer. “We’ve been over these tapes a dozen times, looking for people who attended both openings, looking for anybody who might have disguised themselves, looking for any sign of suspicious behavior. We’ve had the gallery owners identify as many people as they could who were in attendance, and then we followed up with interviews.”

  “Did you check the mailing lists the galleries used to send out notices and invitations?”

>   Ramona nodded. “There was no overlap of names. But remember, these were public events, Chief. Besides the mailings that went out, there were ads in the newspaper and announcements on the radio. Plus, gallery hopping on a Friday or Saturday night is a Santa Fe tradition.”

  The telephone rang. Ramona picked it up, listened, said, “Okay, I’ll be there in a few,” and disconnected.

  “Let’s go with the theory it’s a woman who’s stealing for the thrill of it and unable to resist the impulse,” Kerney said. “If she’s true to form, she’ll place herself at risk again, and I’m betting it will be at another exhibit opening or show.”

  “Why is that?” Ramona asked.

  “Because she’s stealing for the pleasure, not profit, and has upped the excitement for herself by doing it in plain view, surrounded by other people. There are six gallery openings tonight, if we include the preview of the art-and-antiquities show at the convention center. Let’s put a detective at each gallery, and two at the convention center, which should have the biggest draw.”

  “Consider it done, Chief.”

  Kerney stood, pointed at Ramona, and tapped his chest with a finger. “We’ll cover the convention center together.”

  “I’ll set it up.”

  Kerney nodded and left. Ramona stared at the empty spot on her desk, where the photo of herself and the ex-boyfriend had once stood. The one consolation of finding out he would never get serious about their relationship was that she could once more work double shifts without feeling guilty about it.

  She went looking for Detective Matt Chacon, who’d called while she’d been talking with the chief. He was in his cubicle at the far end of the bullpen, scribbling notes on a yellow pad.

  Over the past several years Chacon’s thin frame had filled out and he now sported a bit of a potbelly. He looked up from the tablet, smiled good-naturedly, and pulled the ever-present toothpick out of the corner of his mouth.

  “What have you got?” Ramona asked.

  “Dispatch routed a call to me from Dr. Candace Robbins, a shrink. Apparently there’s a young woman named Crystal Hurley who might be suicidal.”

  “Might be?”

  Matt consulted his notes. “Yeah. What Robbins knows she got from Hurley’s primary psychiatrist, who called her from New York City. Seems Hurley has made several suicide attempts in the past and has been hospitalized twice for emotional problems. Hurley called her New York City shrink, a guy by the name of Benjamin Cohen, earlier in the day, and told him she had a gun and might—underline might—hurt herself with it. Robbins wanted to report that, based on what Cohen told her, Hurley might be a danger to herself.”

  “Has Hurley contacted Dr. Robbins?”

  “Negative, although she was supposed to. I just got off the phone with Dr. Cohen. He says Hurley could be high risk. She’s five six, one hundred fifteen pounds, brown and blue, age twenty-eight. She’s been staying at her father’s guesthouse in one of the those foothill mansions off Bishop’s Lodge Road. Father’s name is Robert. He’s out of the country. I’ve got an address, and the phone company gave me Robert Hurley’s unlisted numbers. The housekeeper answered and said she had no idea where her employer’s daughter was. It sounded like she didn’t care either. I sent a uniform out to do a welfare check, and he reported nobody at home.”

  “Have you done a motor-vehicles records search?” Ramona asked.

  “Robert Hurley owns a Lexus SUV and a BMW. There’s nothing registered under his daughter’s name. The cars could be garaged, as far as we know. There’s no way of telling, according to the uniform who tried to make contact. He did note two different sets of tire tracks on the parking area near the guesthouse.”

  “What else did you learn about the woman?”

  Matt shook his head. “Other than she’s rich, has been living in New York City until recently, and is about to move to Paris, not much. Cohen wouldn’t give an inch when I asked for more details about her psychiatric history.”

  “Is Hurley a danger to others?”

  “Cohen doesn’t think so.”

  “Does she have any friends or other family members in Santa Fe?”

  “No, she grew up in Silicon Valley before the dot-com bubble burst, went to college in New York City, and until recently divided her time between Manhattan and Paris. Her parents are divorced, and her father built the Santa Fe house three years ago. As far as Dr. Cohen knows, this is the first time she’s ever been here.”

  “How long?” Ramona asked.

  “A little over two months.”

  “Get out an advisory with full specifics to all units, the county sheriff, and the district state police office. Make sure our shift commanders are apprised, and ask for close patrols at the Hurley residence through the rest of the day and night.”

  “Will do.”

  Ramona stepped away and Matt got busy writing the advisory.

  After he had it finished, he contacted the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, gave them Hurley’s identifying information, and soon had a driver’s-license photo of the woman on his computer screen.

  From the neck up Hurley was a beauty. Her wide, round eyes and small nose gave her an innocent, schoolgirl look. Her smile showed a row of perfect white teeth above a dimpled chin.

  Chacon printed the photo, made copies, and put them in the shift commanders’ cubbies for distribution. Then he called dispatch and gave them the advisory.

  After a body wrap and a facial at a downtown spa, Crystal Hurley wandered through the jewelry shops on San Francisco Street, looking at watches, earrings, necklaces, and pins. Her urge to steal grew as she tried on some lovely pieces, but the clerks were much too attentive for her to risk it.

  Frustrated by the lack of opportunity, she bought a single strand of turquoise and draped it around her neck. It went well with the white blouse, black slacks, and floppy straw hat she’d chosen for her outing.

  She left the store and walked up the street to the Plaza, where a country-and-western band was playing an early-evening concert on the gazebo across the street from the Palace of Governors Museum. Under the portal of the museum a number of Indian vendors had their wares spread out on blankets. A stream of tourists wandered slowly past them, examining the Native American jewelry and pottery for sale.

  Crystal listened to the band for a time as she watched the dancers in front of the gazebo two-stepping, twirling, and circle-dancing. Everyone in the crowd around her seemed to be having a good time, but Crystal found it all rather boring.

  A smiling man with a ponytail, dressed in flashy cowboy boots and tight jeans, tried to pull her onto the dance area. She yanked her hand away, shook her head, and left the Plaza. Although he was cute and sexy, Crystal had a rule: only one lover at a time, and right now that was Andy.

  The boutique hotel where Andy bartended was just off the Plaza. Crystal went inside and settled on a stool. Without needing to ask, Andy brought her a vodka on the rocks.

  He grinned, leaned toward her, and whispered, “Can we hook up later?”

  Crystal sipped her drink and studied Andy’s face. He was the all-American boy, towheaded, blue eyed, square jawed, and forever eager to get laid. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Andy squeezed her hand. “Come on.”

  “You’re such a baby, Andy.”

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  Crystal finished the drink and stood. “Call me on my cell when you get off work.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Crystal opened her crocodile handbag and put a twenty on the bar without replying. The glint of the gun inside the purse gave her a rush of excitement, and Andy’s presence faded from her mind. The preview of the art-and-antiquities show at the convention center was about to begin and she didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

  She left before Andy could question her further and headed quickly in the direction of the center.

  Santa Fe’s convention center fell far short of the mark for a city that thrived on tourism. In
fact, it was nothing more than a renovated public-school gymnasium located within a few steps of city hall. On the outside, the center had been fixed up to look like the real deal. But inside, the dimensions of the space gave away its architectural roots. Stairs from the lobby led to a partial mezzanine that looked down on the hall below and opened onto a few large meeting rooms off to one side. In the back, behind the stage, were kitchen facilities. Stark, small, and uninviting, the center failed to draw many conventions and was usually put to use for dances, regional trade shows, art fairs, and an occasional banquet.

  Kerney stood on the mezzanine, watching Ramona Pino circulate among the booths that filled the hall. Petite, slender, and easy on the eyes, she blended in easily with all the well-groomed trophy wives and trust-funders.

  There were sixty-five dealers set up on the convention-center floor, displaying a wide array of Western art, estate jewelry, rare books, collectible memorabilia, exquisite old Native American pottery, and antique Spanish colonial furniture.

  After the doors had opened, people flooded in, some making a beeline to a particular booth, others wandering slowly down the aisles, pausing to examine a tray of jewelry, an oil painting, or a Navajo rug. Kerney left the mezzanine, wondering if he should have told Ramona to assign more detectives to the event. Given the size of the crowd, the two of them would have a hard time covering the floor by themselves.

  He joined the throng, moving from booth to booth, stopping to glance at a pre-Colombian effigy pot, a nineteenth-century Apache woven basket, a Charles Russell pencil drawing, all the time watching the people around him.

  It was a well-heeled crowd. Women in broomstick skirts wearing heavy turquoise-and-silver jewelry cruised by. Gray-headed men in designer jeans and expensive boots trailed along. Flashy matrons with big hair, dripping with diamonds, chatted up dealers with Texas twangs.

  He strolled down an aisle and squeezed past a cluster of people who’d stopped to look at a glass case filled with vintage wristwatches. Some of the dealers appeared watchful, while others seemed distracted by the crowds. All in all there were easy pickings for any good shoplifter in attendance.