“No. We were at the ranch when the theft occurred.”
“Thank God for small favors. When did you leave the hotel to go to the ranch?”
“About two,” Ian said.
“Have you told the desk?”
“No. Most robberies like this are inside jobs.”
“Ain’t it the damned truth. I’ll be there in fifteen. After I get the security tapes and duty roster, I’ll come up.”
“I’ll meet you at the front desk,” Ian said, stepping into the elevator that had just arrived. “I’m reviewing the tapes with you.”
“You trying to say you don’t trust me?”
“Trust you? Sheriff, I don’t know you well enough to exchange Christmas cards.”
Rory laughed. “Do I need to tell you not to touch anything?”
“What do you think?”
“I’ll see you at the front desk in fifteen minutes. And send the ladies down to the restaurant or something so they won’t get in the way of my crime scene technicians.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed. Paranoia quivered. Probably totally unnecessary, but there was always the long shot that made everyone cry. “The women aren’t leaving my sight.”
He cut the connection and called Rarities. He was put through to S. K. Niall very quickly. As head of Security, Niall was technically Ian’s boss, except when Dana stepped in and preempted him for one of her pet projects. When Niall answered, Ian didn’t try to put lipstick on the pig before he shoved it into the spotlight.
“I fucked up,” Ian said. “Susa’s paintings are gone.”
“Bullshit,” Susa said loud enough to carry into the cell phone. “It’s not your fault. I’m the one who insisted on leaving the damn things in the room.”
“Sounds like Susa’s intact,” Niall said. “No damage to her?”
“Underneath her gracious manner,” Ian said, “she’s mad enough to eat steel plate. Otherwise she’s fine.”
“Then you didn’t fuck up.”
Ian said something fully suited to his mood.
Niall ignored it. “You need backup?”
“To help nail shut the barn door? No, I think I can handle that all by myself.”
“Ease up, boyo. If the Donovan had wanted a lock on the paintings, he’d have asked for two of you. He knows his wife. Now quit feeling sorry for yourself and put her on. She can describe the paintings to me and I’ll send out the word right away. We’ll get the bastard when he tries to unload them.”
“Always assuming it wasn’t a commissioned theft, in which case they’ll never hit the market.” With that cheerful thought, Ian handed the phone to Susa. “Say hello to S. K. Niall. Describe missing pictures to him. Pray for the good guys.”
Susa picked up the phone. “It wasn’t Ian’s fault.”
“You know it. I know it. When he gets over his temper, he’ll know it. I’m turning on a recorder. Describe what was stolen.”
Susa started talking.
Savoy Hotel
Friday night
36
Rory Turner walked into the lobby with long, impatient strides. He was dressed in casual clothes except for the badge holder hanging out of his pocket and the weapon harness playing peekaboo beneath his unbuttoned jacket. Two men and two women followed him. They were in uniform and carrying the lights, cameras, measuring instruments, and other equipment that was required to investigate and record the crime scene. Two more uniformed deputies hurried through the imposing lobby doors and across the lobby. Judging from the rolls of bright yellow tape they carried, their job was to secure the crime scene.
“Can the TV cameras be far behind?” Ian muttered. “This has all the earmarks of a class-A cluster job.”
Lacey gave him a wary glance and finished describing her grandfather’s paintings to S. K. Niall.
Giving rapid, concise orders to the deputies, Rory grabbed the night manager and hustled everyone into an elevator. Only after he’d dispatched everyone to the top floor did he acknowledge the three people waiting by the desk.
“Follow me,” he said tersely. “I kept this off the police radios but somehow the damned press always finds out. After the investigators are through, the manager will transfer your belongings to new suites. Unless you want a different hotel?”
Ian looked at Susa.
“Why bother?” she said. “I’m leaving Sunday after the auction is over. I’m sure the security will be tighter here than anywhere else for the next few days.”
“You can take that to the bank,” Rory said grimly.
He led them through a door markedEMPLOYEES ONLY and down a short hall with office doors on either side. In front of the one marked SECURITY, he stopped, pulled a plastic rectangle out of his pocket, and swiped the card through a reader. The lock released.
“Nice,” Ian said.
“I own nineteen percent of the firm that put in the low bid for the hotel’s security contract,” Rory said, “a fact that has been thoroughly aired in the press and ignored by everyone else.”
The room was empty except for TV screens, computers, machines, and a startled man in a hotel security “uniform” of dark suit and tie. The ID badge hanging around his neck was also an electronic key. It said GATEMAN
“Sheriff? What can I do for you?”
“Anyone come into this room on your shift?” Rory asked.
“Not until you. ’Evening, ladies,” he added, nodding to Susa and Lacey.
“When did you start your shift?”
“Uh, two o’clock. Bob wanted an early jump on the weekend traffic, so I said I’d cover for him.”
“So you think it’s an inside job,” Ian said too softly for anyone but Rory to hear.
“I think a million dollars worth of bad publicity is coming down on Moreno County and my ass is going to get reamed for it,” Rory said distinctly. “Anyone call you away for any reason?” he asked Gateman.
The security guard, who had the build of a former linebacker and the gut of a computer jockey who liked beer, shook his head. “No, sir. What happened?”
Rory ignored the question and asked one of his own. “All the systems working?”
Gateman did a fast survey of the status lights. “All green.”
“Show me the top floor from noon until now.”
Gateman’s broad face creased in a frown. “Is something—”
“Just do it,” Rory cut in. “If I want conversation, I’ll tell you.”
The head of second-shift security for the Savoy Hotel shut up and went to work on his computer. Although everyone called the result “tapes,” the images were digital rather than taped. Since most of the cameras were triggered only in the presence of movement, there wasn’t a lot of hard drive storage wasted on photos of blank hallways.
Everyone watched while a bellman went from elevator to hall and stopped in front of Susa’s suite. Moments later Susa, Ian, and Ms. Quinn began loading stuff on a luggage cart.
“Slow it down to quarter time,” Rory said.
Gateman’s hands moved over the keyboard.
Rory watched canvases loaded onto the cart. All of them looked blank on both sides. Still, it never hurt to be absolutely certain. “Again.”
The picture switched to the beginning. Nothing but blank canvases and paint-smeared boxes that were too small to hold the missing paintings.
“Okay. Normal speed.”
Ian smiled slightly. The sheriff probably didn’t expect La Susa and the man from Rarities to be running an insurance scam, but “inside job” had more than one meaning.
On the monitor, the cart and four people vanished into the elevator.
An instant later in the viewers eyes’, and almost three hours by the electronic clock that showed at the bottom of every camera sequence, a bellman pushing a room service cart loaded with big flower arrangements emerged from the elevator. He went down the hallway under the scrutiny of various cameras and never showed his face or any other identifiable part of his body.
Gateman shifted
and narrowed his eyes at the screen playing back in black-and-white. He didn’t like the looks of what he was seeing. “Dude knows where the cameras are,” Gateman said.
“No shit.”
The guard took one look at Rory’s cold eyes and decided that the sheriff really didn’t want—or need—input.
The cart and the unidentifiable bellman stopped in front of Susa’s suite. Ignoring the DO NOT DISTURB sign, he knocked, waited, knocked, and took an e-key from his pocket. A few moments later the lock opened.
“Hold there. Get today’s electronic record for that lock,” Rory said.
Gateman shifted to another computer and accessed the record for Susa’s suite. “Guest, guest, guest,” he read off the screen, “guest…security.”
“When?” Rory demanded.
“Sixteen hundred.”
The exact time the “bellman” had opened the lock.
“Shit. Which security card?” Rory asked.
“Thirteen.”
“Whose is it?”
Gateman checked, grimaced. “Never issued, sir. Nobody wanted an unlucky number.”
Ian bit back a comment about how bloody wonderful it was that the hotel security was a superstitious lot.
“Well, isn’t that just sweet,” Rory said neutrally. “All right, Gateman, show me the rest of the record on the can’t-see-who bellman and the invisible security guard.”
Lacey winced and felt sorry for Gateman, who had been unlucky enough to be on duty when the theft occurred.
Gateman turned back to the computer keyboard and wondered if he would have a job tomorrow. He’d never seen the sheriff so pissed off.
Cart and bellman vanished inside Susa’s suite. Five minutes and forty-one seconds later, they reappeared.
“Hold,” Ian and Rory said simultaneously.
The picture froze.
“Some flowers are missing,” Lacey said.
“The bouquet on my night table,” Susa said. She eyed the sides of the cart critically. “I assume the paintings are beneath the cloth.”
“Would they fit?” Rory asked.
“Unless the bellman is a dwarf, yes,” Lacey said.
Rory looked at her, but it was Susa who answered.
“The proportions of the cart would be large enough to hold the paintings if the bellman was at least of average height,” Susa explained. “Artists are accustomed to viewing things relatively rather than on an absolute metric scale.”
Rory grunted. “Man or woman?”
“Man,” Ian said instantly.
“You sure?” Rory asked.
“I’ve never seen a woman with that flat a butt. Man must have to strap a board on so he doesn’t fall in.”
Rory snickered.
“What are you talking about?” Lacey asked.
“Sex,” Ian said.
She rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”
“Ready?” Rory asked Ian.
“Yeah. Can’t wait to see where he goes. Ten to one it’s the valet parking lot.”
“Sucker bet,” the sheriff said. “It’s the only covered parking around.”
“Cameras?” Susa asked.
“Of course.” Rory’s mouth flattened. “Bet he knows where they are, too.”
“No bet,” Ian said. “But it’s damned hard to hide a vehicle behind a flower cart.”
“Run it,” Rory said to Gateman.
Silently they all watched the bellman enter the elevator. The doors closed and the floor display above the elevator lit up.
“He’s going to the lobby,” Lacey said.
Gateman started working the keyboard, shifting to the lobby record, beginning at the instant the man entered the elevator. The screen divided itself until it was like looking at the lobby through the eyes of a distorting prism that divided the world into squares. Some of the squares were blank. All of them winked in and out of existence in a seemingly random sequence.
“Yikes,” Lacey said. “That’s the stuff of nightmares.”
“Fascinating effect,” Susa said, studying it.
Ian leaned forward. “I haven’t seen a system like this before.”
“It’s not available on the market yet,” Rory said, watching the intricate patterns. “We’re testing the setup for the inventor, along with some other businesses. It’s a pretty flexible program. In the lobby, where there’s too much traffic for motion-sensor activation on the six cameras to be cost-effective in the storage and coverage area, the cameras are programmed to fire randomly. It’s a way to cover a lot of ground without having to buy millions of bucks worth of monitoring, computer, and data-storage equipment. Since it’s all digitized, we can enhance by extrapolation, so the cameras don’t have to have expensive, fancy lenses to zero in on areas of interest.”
“How much coverage?” Ian asked.
“About ninety percent of the lobby over a one-minute period. More than the average hotel requires. And there’s our man.” Rory pointed to one of the screens. “Freeze it and tell the computer to follow him.”
A fine sweat showed on Gateman’s lip as he worked over the keyboard, circling the bellman and cart with the cursor, instructing the computer to extrapolate what those items would look like from various angles, and finding matches in the camera records for other areas of the hotel in the ensuing minutes. He’d spent a month learning this security system backward and forward, but this was like a final exam. He fumbled, backed up, cursed, and entered the correct sequence of commands.
The bellman and cart moved in a series of jerks and stomach-swooping changes of viewing angles.
Gateman almost groaned when the cart vanished through the door marked EMPLOYEES
“Cut to the valet lot, same time,” Rory said. “If we don’t find him there, we can always back up.”
Gateman went back to sweating over the keyboard.
An underground parking lot appeared. The view didn’t divide into six, but it did click around the lot like a fast slide show.
“Got him,” Ian said.
“When he gets to his vehicle, do it in quarter time,” Rory said.
“Bastard knows where the cameras are,” Ian said.
Rory didn’t answer. He didn’t have to—the evidence was in front of him.
The room was silent as the bellman went to a white van, unloaded the paintings, pushed the cart aside, and got in back. When he reappeared in the cab, he was wearing coveralls, a cowboy hat, and a beard.
“This one’s really cute,” Ian muttered.
The last shot was at the hotel gate, where the van turned right onto Pacific Coast Highway and headed south.
“Now what?” Lacey asked.
Ian looked at her with dark, angry eyes. “Now the sheriff runs the van’s temporary plate, finds it’s a yo-yo; runs the stick-on business sign on the side of the van, finds it’s a yo-yo; then thinks about running the white van and decides to call the California Highway Patrol instead, because sure as shit one of those guys will tag the van as an abandoned vehicle somewhere between here and the Mexican border.”
Rory gave Ian a long look. “You a cop?”
“Not anymore, as I’m sure you’ll find out when you run me through your computers. You’ll get a buttload of hits and not a one of them will help you solve this robbery, and you’ll do it anyway.”
“I sure will. You’re a pro. You know security systems. You piss me off. That puts you number one on my hit list.”
“What about your security staff and the hotel staff?” Ian said coolly. “You know, the folks who’d have access to the magic-key machine.”
“They’re tied for second.”
Savoy Hotel
Friday night
37
After the first reporter’s call, Ian told the hotel desk to stop connecting outside calls unless it was Sheriff Turner himself. The last thing Susa needed to deal with were newshounds baying at the heels of a celebrity story. Tell me, World Famous Artist, how does it feel to have a million dollars in irreplaceabl
e paintings stolen from your room? Do you feel angry? Violated? Better yet, Will you cry during the interview? Spill your guts for the bored public? Get the reporter a promotion? Separate ads with juicy sound bites? Give us sensation disguised as the public’s right to know?
Die in Plain Sight Page 22
