As she relayed them, she nodded, gestured to the coffee when Feeney came in.
“The murder weapon. A club-like rock of amethyst.”
“That’s correct.”
“On the job you start thinking you’ve heard it all. Then you hearsomething else. We need to set up monitoring for chatter about the emeralds, any potential sales or auctions, coordinate that with Interpol.”
“Captain Feeney’s with me now, Commander. I planned to request Detective Willowby of Special Victims to assist.”
“Yes, this is in her wheelhouse. I’ll talk to her captain, make it so. I’ll be in touch. It’s a hell of a list, Dallas. Ask Feeney if he remembers the Corot.”
When Whitney clicked off, she waited while Feeney sipped at his coffee and studied her board. With his shirt he wore shit-brown baggies and kicks that looked older than she was.
“So this asshole had a bunch of stolen art and jewelry all locked up in this vault—and that’s an old beauty. Making billions from Zip wasn’t enough for him.”
“Apparently not. And his son paid for it. Both the wife and sister state they didn’t know about the vault, or its contents, until after the old man died and the son and his wife started doing some painting and redoing shit. It actually plays.
“Whitney wants to know if you remember the Corot.”
“This painting here?” He tapped her board. “Bunch of trees and rocks. I don’t get it. Me? If you’re putting something on the wall, it oughta have color. Anyway, yeah, it got boosted right out of the Metropolitan, back in the thirties. Slick job. Not our case, but I remember. Said it was worth about ten million. Bunch of trees and rocks.”
He turned to her. “I remember hearing about those emerald pieces getting boosted. That was big fucking news. Out of London, and worth a lot more than the trees and rocks.”
“Roarke says maybe over half a bil today.”
Feeney whistled through his teeth. “That’s all they took?”
“Either that’s what they came for—most likely—or all they had time for. First, why are you here at Central on Saturday?”
“We’re having a family thing tonight, and Sheila wanted me out ofthe way while she’s fussing around. Figured I’d deal with some paperwork.”
He gulped more coffee. “Looks like you’re saving me from that.”
“Take the desk chair,” she told him. “I’ll bring you up to speed.”
Chapter Six
They had a rhythm going back to her uniform days when he’d taken her off the beat to train in Homicide. That rhythm made briefing him easy and quick.
“So the old man collected like this for decades. Probably easier and cheaper to pull it off during the Urbans and the right after. Then he ends up buying the place that used to be a damn museum. Bet he got a chuckle out of that one.”
“You gotta figure.”
“You looking at his exes?”
She eased a hip on the corner of the desk. “You gotta figure,” she repeated. “Maybe he lets one—or more—of them in on it. I don’t weigh that one heavy. Maybe something slips out, or one of them sees something that puts her onto it. But she waits—and that’s kind of shaky—until he’s dead to go after something. The biggest something in there.”
“Victim show up clean on the run?”
“Yeah, near to squeaky, so there’s that. If they know him at all, they’d figure he’d do just what he planned to do. Return everything.”
“‘Might as well get a little something for my trouble. I married the bastard, and what’d I get out of it?’”
“I’m going to look into that, but no matter what, it didn’t add up to half a billion in emeralds. The mother of the victim and his sister remarried—twice. She currently lives in the South of France with her number three. The first wife just celebrated her centennial. Two other marriages, two other divorces. No offspring. She has an apartment—the pied-à-terre deal on Madison—but her base is Kauai. Second ex, an actress—Barrister was also her second ex—lives in Malibu, second home in Aruba, with her number three. The other ex—that’s number four—lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her second husband and two kids from that marriage.”
Once again, she had to tread carefully. Once again, she didn’t like it.
“Roarke thinks it’s likely a theft like this—something of this value and fame—would be contracted. Like through an intermediary, a kind of broker. So the thief might not know who’s paying him to steal it. He can’t sell it himself, not on the open market, I mean. And it would bottom out the value to bust it apart, reset the stones.”
