She smiled slightly. “I’ve worked at art galleries my whole life. My mother was an artist and I inherited her love of art but unfortunately not her aptitude for it.”
“I’m sure you’re better than you think.” Women like her often were. They were simply too critical of themselves to believe it. Fiona was the same way.
She laughed. “I’m really not, but thank you.” Her smile warmed a few degrees. “Are you interested in art yourself?”
“I appreciate it, but I can’t say I always understand it. I’m definitely not an artist personally. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”
Beside me, Fiona made a sound of disagreement. I nudged her with my elbow, indicating for her to be quiet. I was trying to build a rapport, and I hadn’t lied. I wasn’t artistic. I just had plenty of creativity in other ways.
“We don’t want to put you in a bad position,” I said, lowering my voice. “But is there anything you can tell us about the theft that might help us figure out who’s behind it?”
She shrugged. “You probably already know the basics. We were supposed to have an exhibition opening last night. My assistant, Glen, was checking the layout a couple of hours before opening when he noticed that something was wrong with the Monet. He called me, and I called the police. They sent a team down and took the forgery away for examination.”
Fiona’s quiet intake of breath made me think she’d picked up on the same thing I had. Patience’s assistant had noticed something wrong with the Monet, not that the Monet was missing. Combined with what I knew of the Black Swan Gallery theft, it sounded as though the Monet had been swapped for a forgery. That meant there was no way to know for sure exactly when it had happened.
“Had the Monet been at the gallery for long?” I asked, hoping to get a time frame for the crime without letting on what I was doing.
“It arrived on Tuesday.” Patience rubbed her temples. “It was the real deal. I’d know a legitimate Monet anywhere.”
So, someone must have made the exchange sometime between the delivery on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. I wondered if the delivery company would have a record of what time they’d dropped it off.
“Where was it displayed?” I asked, glad Fiona had remained silent.
“In the special exhibit gallery.” She glanced around the mostly empty foyer. “Would you like to see?”
“That would be incredible.”
Patience’s eyes flicked to Fiona. “You’ll have to stay here. Sorry, Fi. You understand.”
“I do.” Fiona’s tone was light, but I could sense her growing frustration. She’d thought Patience would be on her side and, instead, she was being treated like a suspect. I could see where Patience was coming from though. It wouldn’t be good optics to allow an alleged thief into the gallery so soon after a theft had occurred—especially when that person was the police’s main suspect.
Patience gestured for me to follow her. She led me up a flight of wide marble stairs and turned left. The special exhibition gallery was the second room on the right side of the corridor. She glided in, her heels clacking on the wooden floor, and gestured to the empty wall at the end of the room. A plaque affixed to the wall presumably contained information aboutDaisies, but there was no other sign the painting had ever been there. I scanned the other walls. A series of paintings lined them, most of them flowers or floral arrangements, done in the impressionist style.
A hand curled around my arm and I looked over to find Patience looking up at me.
“It’s not a tiny painting,” I said. “It’s amazing anyone could get it out past security.”
Her fingers curled tighter. I hid a grimace. I wanted to dislodge her, but if I did, she might stop cooperating.
“We don’t have actual security guards.” She sounded embarrassed. “With the security system we have in place, we didn’t think we’d need them.”
“Even for a painting by an artist as famous as Monet?”
She winced. “It’s an oversight that won’t happen again.”
I felt a pang of sympathy. As Fiona had said, if thegallery owner decided Patience hadn’t done enough to protect the painting, she could lose her job. Hopefully we could resolve matters quickly and it would work out for everyone.
“Who designed your security system?” I asked.
Her lips curled in a wry smile. “King’s Security.”
“Ah.” The back of my neck prickled. I had no doubt she was telling the truth, and it would be easy to verify. The problem was, one of our systems should absolutely have sounded an alarm if someone had walked in here and tried to abscond with a painting that was too big to fit within a backpack or under someone’s shirt. I’d designed the tech for our electronic systems myself, and they were virtually unhackable, which meant that either the system had been turned off at the time of the theft or someone had tampered with it. Perhaps an inside person had been involved.
“How many are on the staff here?”
She tilted her head in thought, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders. “Five full-time staff at the gallery itself. There are a few part-timers too. Then there are another handful who work at the café on the ground floor.”
That wasn’t too many. If we’d installed their system, we probably kept a list of their staff too, so we could cross-check anyone behaving suspiciously on the video feeds against their employee register. I could easily dig through a dozen or so backgrounds to see if any of them looked shady.
