Stay Calm and Collie On

by Lane Stone

  “We thought we would find the painting here, but now we don’t know where it is,” I said to wrap it up.

  He stared at me with his mouth open, the way some cats behold certain shows on Animal Planet. “So that’s the real reason you and Lady Anthea are here at the victim’s home?”

  “Yeah, would I lie to you?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Have you asked Ashley where it is?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Then what reason did you give her for coming here? And going through her fiancé’s personal belongings?”

  I sighed in exasperation at having to go into that sensitive area. “She thinks I was Henry’s girlfriend and—”

  His laugh was explosive, and at first I thought he was choking.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I never met the guy and I know he was not the man for you,” he said, his voice lowering with each word. He spoke with a familiarity bordering on unearned intimacy.

  “You don’t know me at all,” I said and walked to get in my Jeep.

  “That’s true.” He had followed me, practically on my heels, like a young terrier. “I just meant, I don’t see him being your type. That’s all.”

  “I don’t date my employees and I don’t date dead guys.” I got in and slammed the door, which unfortunately doesn’t have the level of drama in a Jeep that it does in a car with heftier doors. I wanted to leave but that would mean stranding my partner. Chief Turner raised his hand to knock on the window and realized there wasn’t one.

  “Would you turn around?”

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “Please. I have to get this calendar out of my pants. It hurts.”

  After a startled look, he did as asked. I lifted my shirt and pulled the cardboard twelve-page, not counting the front and back covers, offending item out of my waistband. “You can turn back around now.”

  I held up the calendar. “Henry used to write his scheduled times to see Mary Jane in here. At least that’s who we were assuming he was going to meet.”

  He pointed to the Rick Ziegler’s Raw-k & Roll logo on the cover. “A freebie?”

  “Yeah, to Henry and me.” I opened it to last Sunday. “We know he saw Mary Jane Kerwin Sunday night. And here it is. Boss is written on Sunday and Monday.” Henry had written late by both. “That’s proof that he referred to Mary Jane Kerwin as boss.”

  “We already knew she was his local bit on the side. How does this help us?”

  “According to Ashley, in his checkbook he wrote Boss by the large deposit.”

  “So he was getting money from her? In addition to, well, you know… Thank you for the information.”

  “Are you going to question Mary Jane Kerwin?” I asked without looking at him. Lady Anthea had come out, alone, and was headed for the car.

  “Yes, I’ll bring her in,” he said.

  “I wonder if the painting is at her house,” I said. “Maybe Henry bought it as a gift for her.”

  “Could that painting be valuable enough for someone to have killed him to get their hands on it?” he asked.

  I pointed at Lady Anthea and said, “She’s still researching it, but it looks like it.”

  “I need to know if it’s missing,” he said.

  Rather than walking to the passenger side of the Jeep and getting in, she walked up to Chief Turner.

  “Chief?” Lady Anthea called to him. When she had his attention, she lowered first one eyebrow then the boom. “Tracking her mobile phone is not winning points. She and I are on our way back to Buckingham’s.” She had spoken in a whisper, but she was standing close by, and I would have heard even if I didn’t have ears like a dog.

  “She is sitting right here,” I said.

  He sputtered, looked down, took off his cap, and rubbed his hand over his head, all while Lady Anthea calmly went around to the other side of the Jeep and got in.

  “Look,” Chief Turner said, “I’ll go back in and ask Ashley if Henry brought any expensive purchases home to Albany. Neither of you said anything to Ms. Trent about a painting, right?”

  We both shook our heads, no.

  My phone rang and I saw it was Buckingham’s. Since I didn’t know the subject of the call I pulled onto the road and left Chief Turner standing there. Just in case.

  “Sue, you didn’t find the painting, did you?” Shelby asked.

  “No, we didn’t. Maybe it’s in Mary Jane Kerwin’s house. Or it could already be in Albany, though Ashley didn’t mention it. How did you know?” I asked.

  “I’ll put Dana on since she deserves all the credit.”

  “Sue, it’s Dana,” a young, eager voice said.

  “Hi, kiddo,” I answered.

  “I have some information for you,” she said.

  “Did you find out how much Henry paid for the painting?” Lady Anthea asked. She was leaning forward to the speaker.

  “I found out something much more important. He sold it to a gallery in New York.”

  Chapter 21

  Lady Anthea and I used the rest of the drive back to Buckingham’s rearranging the cart and the horse, and generally smacking our heads with our palms.

  “All along we assumed Henry and Mary Jane came into money—” she said.

  I interrupted, “Probably from corrupt means since he lied to his fiancée when he told her it was from his job at the Pet Palace. After all, if it was on the up and up, why not tell Ashley the truth?”

  She nodded her head as fast as it would go. “When the truth was, he paid Peter Collins a pittance for the paintings.” She stopped to smirk at her sarcastic tongue twister.

  I took my mind off the murder to think about how funny she thought her lame jokes were. I wanted to think that as long as you enjoyed your own humor, that was all that mattered, but even I wasn’t that open-minded.

  “Then he and Mary Jane divided the profits,” she continued. She seemed to feel the need to steel herself for the next part and took a deep breath. “I feel we should apprise Chief Turner of this new development.”

  I looked over and she was biting her lower lip.

  “Okay,” I said. “He needs to know that the killer didn’t steal the painting from Henry.”

  She exhaled a whew.

  “The clock is ticking, what with your brother breathing down your neck and the gala being tomorrow night. I agree with you completely that we should tell him where Henry’s money was coming from. I’ll get him on the phone right now.”

  “I was afraid you might not want to because of this competition you and he seem to fall into,” she said.

  “I want the investigation to move faster, and to put it kindly, he’s methodical.”

  “Methodical is generous. He plods. At least he agreed to use your contacts in town when he needs them,” she reminded me.

  “Oh, I won’t hold my breath until he asks me for help.”

  I was about to place the call to Chief Turner, but stopped again. “It was Peter Collins they were cheating. Shouldn’t he be on the suspect list?” I asked.

  “He was in New York that day.”

  “No one has confirmed that,” I said.

  “He’s only a suspect if he knew he was being cheated,” she countered.

  “Okay, let’s give all this to Chief Turner.” I found his number in my recent call list and told my car to phone him.

  “Suuuuuue!” He bellowed.

  I hung up.

  My phone rang before we had driven a mile and not being petty, I answered it.

  “Did you just hang up on me?” Chief Turner asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Whatever. Did you know that Mary Jane Kerwin came into a large amount of money at the same time as Henry? Is that why you asked me to run a background check on her?”

  “You have the re
sults?” Lady Anthea asked in a masterful stroke of diversion.

  “She was licensed as a registered nurse. Received her training right here in Lewes at Beebe.” His cadence was measured and he was doing a low boil.

  “She was licensed as a R.N.? Past tense?” I asked.

  “She was under review when she left, uh, where she used to work.”

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. He knew where she had worked as an R.N. and he knew I knew that he knew. There was only one reason he wouldn’t want to tell me where that was.

  He laughed, knowing he’d let the cat out of the bag.

  “She worked in a hospital in Albany?” I offered. When would the guy learn he couldn’t elude my rapidly advancing detecting abilities? Sure, I’d only learned this week that I had a super power, but I’d been unconsciously honing it for years. Like the amateur sleuth in Sharp Knives and Dull Neighbors.

  “Yeah, the hospital she worked for was in Albany, New York. The official reason for her departure from the hospital was something innocuous, but a call by a friend of a friend with the Albany P.D. came up with something more interesting.” He paused and for a beat I thought he was going to make me ask him, forfeiting my respect. I was glad when it turned out he was getting a swig of coffee. I had wondered if such a deep speaking voice required extra hydration. “After the second time she was added to a wealthy patient’s will and the family threatened to bring charges, as well as cut off their donations to the hospital foundation, she was asked to resign. Management didn’t know how she was doing what she was doing, and they didn’t want to know. They didn’t want her doing it on their premises.”

  “So, it’s likely she and Henry met in Albany,” I said.

  “Good guess,” Chief Turner said. “I’m on my way to her house now. Having a female officer meet me there.”

  “Good idea. A man’s got to know his own limitations,” I said.

  He chuckled. It made me happy to hear him relax, though I didn’t know why. “A man’s got to recognize, t-r-o-u-b-l-e, when he sees it,” he said.

  “For someone not in the Elvis army you seem to know a lot of his songs,” I said.

  I remembered the way Mary Jane had looked at him and rubbed against him at the Best of the Past. Our chief was no dummy. “Smart,” I said. An idea occurred to me. “Hey, maybe sometime I could escort you.”

  “No.” No mistaking his meaning, but we’d see. “She’s not the first person I’ve come upon who would do anything to get what she wanted,” he said. There it was again, that something in his voice. He was tired. “I’m also having someone do a quick search of her house if she’ll let us without a warrant. Before I hang up, what else have you learned that you’re not telling me?”

  I nodded at Lady Anthea, and she told him what we’d learned from Dana’s research. If I told him we’d called him to do just that, it would have been such a letdown for the guy. We had eliminated the someone-killed-him-to-get-the-painting blind alley.

  Chapter 22

  Once we got back to Buckingham’s, we split up into teams. Dana walked Lady Anthea through her research. They sat on the couch in my office, heads tilted together over Dana’s computer tablet. Abby was perched next to Dana.

  Shelby handled the front desk, with Mason stepping in when her line grew to more than two pet parents. Our other groomer, Joey, finished up the clients getting washed, dried, curled, bandana’d for tomorrow night’s gala.

  I sat behind my desk and reached for Henry’s file. It wasn’t on the corner of my desk where I’d left it yesterday afternoon.

  I went back to reception and waited for Shelby to finish with her pet parent. “Do you have Henry’s file?” I whispered. “I can’t find it.”

  “I hid it from Ashley yesterday. It’s in the bottom drawer of your file cabinet.”

  “Smart move,” I said.

  “I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I’d chased her into your office, she had picked it up and was reading it.”

  “So that’s how she knew where Chief Turner’s misinformation about her being Henry’s sister came from,” I said.

  I returned to my office and woke my computer up. I told Dana and Lady Anthea about Ashley looking at Henry’s personnel file, then they went back to talking in serious, low tones. Finally, Lady Anthea said, “Dana found the missing painting. Another beautiful work of art.”

  “We’ve never seen Henry’s painting. How do you know that’s it?” I asked.

  Both Dana and Lady Anthea looked at me with pity. Lady Anthea took on the onerous task of educating me. “Dana has reconstructed the painting’s trail from the Collins family to Henry to a Manhattan art dealer to the buyer. That’s how we know. And, every step was legal. The others—the two we saw at the antique gallery—are still with the family.”

  Mason stuck his head in the door to my office. “Can I take Abby to be groomed now? I’ve been trying to get her in since Monday.”

  “Sure. Thanks.” I turned to Abby, still sitting on the sofa, intelligently following the conversation on the buying and selling of fine art. “Want to go with Mason, girl?”

  Mason bowed at Lady Anthea, then squeezed in beside her. I saw her eyes widen in surprise but she didn’t say anything.

  Mason, however, did. “Laliberte!” He pointed at the screen of the tablet.

  Every eye in the room was on him, even Abby’s beautiful brown globes.

  “Well?” Mason asked the room. “I’m right, aren’t I? Isn’t that painting by Laliberte?”

  “Yes,” Lady Anthea said. “Are you familiar with him?”

  “No-o-o-o. I’m familiar with her,” he said.

  “That explains—well, everything,” Lady Anthea said. She was still looking at Mason in wonderment.

  “Speak for yourself,” I said.

  Lady Anthea stood and began pacing. “Very few fine art academies admitted women until the mid-1800s. The education would have been incomplete without drawing a nude, which was not allowed. Add to that the fact that those wealthy enough to have their portraits painted refused to hire women artists, and you’ll see how difficult it was a woman to display and sell her art under her own name at the time, even if she was self-taught.” She stopped and turned back to Mason. “These unsigned paintings were by a woman. How did you know this painting was by her?”

  “Sure, it is,” he said. “Look.” He flicked his fingers on the screen to enlarge a section and then pointed at the hunting dog’s straight back.

  Lady Anthea returned to the sofa and I joined her.

  “Can you see it?” Mason asked.

  “There it is!” Dana squealed.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. The dog’s fur curled into lettering, and it seemed to happen as I watched. L-A-L-I-B-E-R-T-E.

  “I’m gobsmacked.” Lady Anthea watched as Mason bounded up from the sofa.

  “Come on, Abby, let’s go,” he said. Then he slapped the side of his leg, and Abby jumped down and stood next to him, with her big brown eyes gazing up at Mason with adoration.

  “How did you know that?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” he said on his way out with Abby.

  After he was out of earshot Lady Anthea looked at me for a translation.

  “Mason has a complicated love life,” I said and left it at that.

  “Dana, how did you find the painting without knowing the name of the artist?” I asked.

  “I searched online databases using the Collins family name, the subject of the painting, and nineteenth century. The two paintings at the Best of the Past had a dog in them, so I put that in as a key word and got lucky.”

  Dana got up to go, and I congratulated her on a job well done.

  “I liked doing it,” she beamed. “I’ll go relieve the daycare counselors for their breaks, but let me know if anything else comes up.” She h
anded Lady Anthea the computer tablet. “I think I’d like to major in something like this in college.”

  “Information technology?” I offered.

  “No, catching murderers,” she said, leaving me wondering about the ethics of a boss asking a teenage employee not to mention something to her protective mother.

  Lady Anthea interrupted my existential quest with an observation. “I think it’s great that a painting by a woman is fetching that much in the art market.”

  Dana was almost at the door when she turned around. “I should check for other paintings by Laliberte to see how much they went for.”

  She picked up the tablet and tapped away. “Hmm. There’s another Laliberte in Lewes.”

  “Delaware or England?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “Delaware, and it’s right around the corner. Dr. Walton has one. Later,” she said.

  Chapter 23

  I opened Google Earth on my laptop and put Henry’s personnel file next to it. He had worked at a veterinary clinic in Albany. I found the address and switched to a satellite view. I zoomed out and I didn’t have to go far.

  “Look at this,” I said, motioning for Lady Anthea to come over. “It’s a hospital. See how close it is to where Henry worked? How much do you want to bet they met in the neighborhood where they both worked?”

  “I’d wager they met at lunch or in a coffee shop,” Lady Anthea said. “Wait, do we know she worked at the hospital at the same time he worked in the veterinary clinic?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Nor do we know the nature of their relationship at the time.”

  My desk phone was ringing. Before picking up, I said, “I think from the way they were abusing our poor van, we can make a pretty good guess.”

  The phone rang again, and I answered.

  “You might want to get that. It’s Shelby trying to warn you I’m here,” said the deep voice. Chief Turner was standing in the doorway.

  Lady Anthea jumped, grabbing her pearl choker.

  “Thanks for trying, Shelby,” I said and hung up.