Chapter 14

Back at the station house, Tom asked Emily, "So what was all that about talking to Priscilla Kroyn?"

Emily shrugged.

"It's a good idea," she stated simply.

He looked at her skeptically.

"You think some society dame is gonna be able to, uh, I don't know…crack this case for us?" he asked in that wiseacre voice Emily had come to recognize. "Flip through her Rolodex and call all of the criminal lowlifes she has lunch with at the country club? The woman probably doesn't even know the name of the person who cleans her toilets!"

Emily smirked at him.

"Nobody uses a Rolodex anymore, Detective," she pointed out. "And it's still a good idea."

Priscilla Kroyn may not know lowlifes in the seedy underbelly of society, but a woman like that, with as many people working for her as she had, not to mention her contacts in the art world…it wouldn't hurt to ask her for some kind of help. She didn't know how to break it to Tom—at least not in a way that he would understand—but this case was not going to be solved by looking at the proverbial scum under every proverbial rock.

And Priscilla Kroyn really was a big deal in the art world. Emily had never met her…now was her chance. Who knew? There might come a day when she wanted to make a change, career-wise. Someone like Priscilla Kroyn could use someone like herself, to help manage her extensive art collection.

It wasn't beyond the pale.

Besides…Priscilla Kroyn was very sexy. Emily wouldn't mind seeing what kind of dress she wore to that party on Sunday night.

Which reminded her…

Wear something incredibly alluring that night.

Mentally, she shrugged. It wouldn't hurt to try…

Everyone knew Priscilla Kroyn was gay, and Emily felt that receiving even an appreciative ogle from the woman would be a boost to her self-esteem.

"So…no luck at the museum?" Andie asked Emily and Tom.

"Not really," Emily conceded. Even with the better video playback equipment at Erwin's disposal, there was nothing she could spot that gave her an idea of who could have stolen the Shepherdess.

"The only women in the place wearing jackets that could hide a painting yesterday were older than my mother," Tom added.

"And we got nada when I ran BCI checks on those names you faxed us," Andie said.

"Then she clearly got it out some other way!" Emily said. She could hear the defensiveness in her voice…and the frustration. A thought came to her, and she quickly pointed her finger at Tom and gave him a stern look. "And don't you dare make a crass comment about where a woman could hide something!"

"I wasn't going to say anything!" Tom protested, holding up his hands. "Look, whoever this woman is, we'll nab her when she tries to sell the painting."

Emily shook her head and sighed.

"She's not going to sell the painting," she stated. "I wish she would because then we might have a chance of getting it back…but she's not!"

Andie and Tom exchanged looks.

"Who steals a painting…" Andie began.

"…and risks jail time…" Tom added.

"…if they have no intention of profiting from it?" Andie finished.

Emily sighed. This kind of thing was simply beyond the capabilities of most cops to understand.

"An art lover," she said patiently. But before her companions could say any other smartass things, she held up her hand.

A thought had come to her, and she needed peace in order to flesh it out…

She took her mind back to earlier, to when she had deduced that it had been a woman who had stolen the painting.

What was it again that had made her reach that conclusion?

That The Young Shepherdess had been stolen out of love. That this had been an emotional theft. That the thief had felt an emotional attachment to the artwork.

An emotional attachment to a not-particularly-valuable artwork which the thief had no intention of ever selling…

In Emily's brain, things were falling into place. She wondered if it really could be that simple.

"A Bouguereau lover," she muttered, still holding up her hand so her train of thought wouldn't be disrupted. She shrugged. "It's worth a shot…"

She looked at Andie.

"That list of names you got from the museum…" she began, "Are you able to run credit checks and financial histories?"

"Sure," Andie said. "It'll take some time…"

"Do it," Emily replied. "I want a list of the wealthy women who entered the museum yesterday…only."

"On it," Andie said, turning to the laptop on her desk.

"It doesn't need to be incredibly detailed," Emily added. "I just want the names of women who have money to play around with."

"What's up?" Tom asked.

But Emily just shook her head.

"Just a theory," she said. She started walking out of the room. "I need to make some phone calls. Let me know when you have that list, Andie!" she called back.

***

It took Andie longer than Emily expected to get the list she asked for, which was fine…

It had taken longer than Emily expected to get the information she had wanted as well.

While waiting, she had managed to go to a seafood restaurant not far from the station house to sit down and have her first meal of the day. At the same moment she had taken the last bite of her swordfish puttanesca pasta, her phone pinged with a text message from Andie telling her the list was ready.

Unfortunately, her own research was still not completed. She was relying on information from two different people, in two different countries, both of whom promised to provide her with what she wanted as quickly as possible.

On the walk back to the station house, she decided to kill time by stopping into a mom-and-pop coffeeshop for more fuel.

Fifteen minutes later, she was once more back with Andie and Tom.

"We have pizza," Tom said, indicating a box on one of the unused desks.

"Thanks, I ate," Emily told him.

"Your list," Andie said, holding out a single sheet of paper.

Emily ran her eyes over the names. There weren't many…only five. Of the five, three were over the age of seventy, and so Emily discounted them immediately.

Another was only nineteen.

Emily considered that one…

Probably the daughter of a wealthy family. Either that or one of those idiot "influencers" who had somehow managed to parlay the ability to talk ceaselessly about how much she liked the absorbency of a new brand of tampon into a lucrative career. Either way, nineteen was too young to have the sophistication, skills, and wherewithal to have pulled off this heist.

The last name on the list—Crystal van Horn—was fifty.

Possible…

The only problem was, Emily had never heard of her. Art was a small world, and she knew the names of every serious collector in every large city from here to New York to London to Berlin. If Crystal van Horn collected art, she did so on a small scale.

Was it possible she had decided to join the big leagues?

No.

Not with a theft she couldn't tell anyone about.

Pursing her lips, Emily sighed through her nostrils, frustrated.

Just then, her phone pinged. Hurriedly activating the screen, she smiled at seeing that it was the email she was expecting from D'Marcus—a member of the team of support staff she used to help with some of her bigger investigations.

Opening it, she found two attachments, both of which were copies of a document called Record of Sale and Provenance, from Sotheby's. One was from the New York house, the other from their house in Tokyo.

Emily opened each document.

"Unbelievable," she muttered after her eyes had automatically gone to the pertinent data contained in them.

Her hunch had paid off in that it had gotten her a name she and the detectives on this case were familiar with. Of course, these documents alone weren't proof of anything. Even she knew enough about police procedures—in multiple countries—to understand that all she really had now was little more than an…interesting coincidence.

But her instincts were telling her she had found their art thief, and the excitement of knowing that the chase was truly on now was arousing. Enough to make her cross her legs.

"You plan on sharing what you got there?" Tom asked impatiently. "Or am I gonna need to get a warrant?"

Emily looked up at him and Andie.

"A lot of Bouguereaus are in private collections worldwide," she told them, "and they don't come up for auction very often. In fact…over the past decade, only two have been available for sale."

She stood up and approached them. She held up her phone and turned its screen towards them.

"And guess who bought them both?" she asked, watching the two detectives read the name she had zoomed in on.

Priscilla Kroyn.

***

Tom looked at her.

"You're crazy," he stated flatly.

Emily could only smile and nod.

"I know!" she replied.

"The woman practically owns San Diego!" Tom went on. "What does she have to steal a painting for?"

"Because she was bored," Emily told him. It was the first thing that had come to her mind, but saying it aloud made her feel as though she had actually stumbled upon the real motive of why Priscilla Kroyn had stolen The Young Shepherdess.

Tom barked a dry laugh.

"Bored?" he ejaculated. "Bored? That's what you're giving me to build a case on? Thank god! I was worried you were gonna pester me with a little thing called…called…"

He looked at Andie.

"What's that thing called again, Detective Fuller?" he asked her. "We use it to convict criminals…?"

"Evidence," Andie answered.

"Right!" Tom exclaimed. "Evidence! But I like your way better, Emily."

Emily laughed at Tom's little joke—that's how good she felt about what her instincts were telling her. She also waggled her phone.

"This is the evidence!" she said.

Tom's eyes widened.

"That?" he asked, pointing at the device. "That is a receipt! A receipt for something legally purchased!" He stuck his right hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a slip of white paper. "See? I got one of those from the pizza guy when he delivered lunch!"

"She's the one," Emily said, not backing down. Using her thumb and forefinger, she zoomed out on the image of the document from Sotheby's New York so that it showed more than Priscilla Kroyn's name. She held the phone up again. "Look at the name of the painting she bought in New York."

"It's in French," Tom said dryly, after reading it.

Emily smiled.

"I'll translate," she said.

"Because you speak French," Tom replied.

"And Italian," Emily told him. "The two main languages of art." She cleared her throat. "Jeune bergère debout…it means Young Shepherdess Standing.

Emily saw Tom do that thing again—the thing where his brow crinkled just a little bit, and his eyes looked away from hers and focused on a point in the middle distance, as though seeing something only he could see. She knew then that she had tickled his instincts also.

"And our painting is The Young Shepherdess," he said, looking back at her.

Emily nodded.

They stared at each other for a few moments. Eventually, Tom shook his head.

"It's too thin," he stated.

"I know," Emily said.

She had no idea yet how they were going to beef up their thin premise.

But there was something she did know.

Priscilla Kroyn had stolen The Young Shepherdess from the San Diego Museum of Art.

And I will get her!