CHAPTER 5
Will
Elizabeth Rice, the deputy director, was about fifteen years older than me and had never once used my first name. She was kind, but excruciatingly professional in the way that let you know she cared about your career and didn’t much want to go grab drinks after work.
She greeted me with a smile and waved at me to have a seat in front of her desk. “I have a case for you that I think you’ll find interesting,” she said, pushing a folder over at me. “Do you know who Curtis Loel is?”
I squinted at the name on the folder, but it wasn’t familiar. “Doesn’t ring a bell. But he’s local?” I recognized the address, in a neighborhood I could never afford.
“Yes. A dean at Willowbrook College,” she said, and I opened the folder. There was a photograph of Mr. Loel, a sixtyish-year-old man with a stare that suggested he had no sense of humor. “He reported a Saska stolen from his residence.”
My eyebrows went up at the thought of anyone making enough money in academia to afford a Saska. I studied the documents in the folder, which also included a photograph of the painting, Stormfront.
My immediate thought was that it was insurance fraud, but according to the file, there was no sign of financial distress that would prompt someone to file an insurance claim. I closed the folder, already eager to get to work on this new case. It would take my mind off things that I had no business thinking about, especially at work.
“The police file is on its way over,” she said. “There was no sign of forced entry, and Loel doesn’t have a security camera anywhere on his property. Nothing else of value was taken from the home.”
That definitely sounded like insurance fraud, but time would tell. I went back to my office and made some phone calls, went over the police report that was faxed over and made some initial notes before phoning Curtis Loel and agreeing to meet him at his home later that afternoon.
“It’s absolutely inconceivable to me how this happened,” Loel said for the sixth time, setting my teeth on edge as I made a survey of the room that was now minus a Saska. He was, understandably, more upset about the ease with which someone had broken into his home than the aesthetic lack caused by the painting’s absence. “I heard nothing. Nothing!”
Well, thieves did tend to be quiet.
The police report had been thorough and I saw nothing to challenge their findings that there’d been no forced entry. Someone had simply walked in, taken the painting, and walked out. I completed my examination of the room and we went to the kitchen, which looked as if no one had ever used it. There was a door that led to a covered back porch, and another that led to the garage. Upon further examination, I noticed there was yet another door that led from the garage outside. It was unlocked, and I noted it even though Loel couldn’t recall if it’d been that way for any length of time. There hadn’t been prints found at the scene, but in my opinion, it would have been the easiest way to leave with the painting.
“Can you tell me anyone who might have a reason to take your painting?” I asked.
“The obvious answer is money,” Loel said. “Isn’t it always?”
He had a point there.
“I never thought about someone stealing a painting off my wall,” he said, shaking his head. “It seems like something from a movie. Who’s usually responsible for things like this?”
“The culprits behind most valuable art thefts are generally involved in some way with organized crime,” I pointed out. “They occasionally hire your more common thief to steal art, but you almost always find something else missing in that case—jewelry, silver, other valuables. As long as whatever syndicate it is gets their art, they don’t much care about what else is stolen. Are you positive nothing else of value is missing?”
“Nothing is missing,” he said. “Just the Saska.”
“And you can’t think of anyone who might have a grudge against you? Perhaps at the university?” I asked politely.
“I’m the dean of an art department,” he said wryly. “I’d like to think even if some of the professors took issue with me and my administration, they’d leave the art alone and go for my Rolex collection.”
I gave a brief smile and asked him to go over his schedule for the last few weeks. He’d noticed the Saska was missing a few days ago, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been missing before that.
Most of his schedule sounded like typical academia minutia, including a donor lunch the week before and an upcoming art show.
“Any possibility there’s a student with an axe to grind who might want to steal your painting?” I asked.
“I can’t think of any off the top of my head, Agent Fox. I do have events here for donors, and students are usually in attendance. But only the ones I can trust will behave themselves around donors.”
“Have you had any of those events recently?”
“Not terribly, but I’m happy to send you the guest list from the last few. I’ll have our contact in the development office email it to you.” He snapped his fingers. “You should come to the art show tomorrow night. It’s something of a big deal for the students—important donors, that kind of thing. Any of the students who’ve been to my home will be there, and others besides.”
The others, who I took it were the ones he didn’t trust to be around the bigwig donors at his house. I closed my notebook and rose from the stool where I’d been sitting. “All right. I’ll do that, thank you.”
It wasn’t until I was in my office later, transcribing the notes, that I realized where I’d heard of the Willowbrook College art department recently.
The gala my sister was planning—what had she said it was for? To raise money for an endowment for the Willowbrook art department, on behalf of the Vaughn Foundation.
Following a hunch, I called Loel immediately. “You said you had a donor lunch the other day. Would you mind telling me who that was with?”
He listed off some of the attending staff from the college, and then said, “There was only one donor present, as he’s a fairly major prospect and we like to give them all of our attention. His name is Amory Vaughn. He’s the president of the Vaughn Foundation, and they—”
“Thank you,” I interrupted. “I know who Amory Vaughn is. I’ll be in touch.”
Son of a bitch.