Chapter 41

In the museum's gift shop, Cora watched the latest batch of kids from today's field trip as they entered the shop.

The shop wasn't very big. It wasn't at all like the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which she had visited a few years ago, and which was huge by comparison. The SDMA gift shop was of a modest size, and as such, whenever large groups, such as field trips, visited the museum, Cora and her staff restricted how many individuals from the group could come into the shop at one time…especially if those individuals were children.

She loved kids, but too many of them in a confined space was always a recipe for disaster. The gift shop sold many breakable items. What's more, its layout and furnishings weren't exactly what could be called kid-friendly.

"Now, remember…do not touch anything without me or Miss Kierans giving you permission. No running, and stay quiet, please!"

This directive came from a brown-haired woman with a ponytail. She and a shorter redhead had been the ones supervising the kids in the shop, one small group at a time.

As the children began browsing, the woman approached Cora, who was manning the register. The woman had a little girl with her.

"Excuse me," the woman said with a smile, "but Abigail here would like to know where she can find a poster of The Young Shepherdess, please."

Cora smiled at the girl.

"That's a popular poster!" she said. She then pointed towards the rear of the shop. "Do you see the big picture of her on that wall? You can find a poster to buy right beneath that."

"Thank you," Abigail said, hurrying off—without running—in the direction indicated.

When Cora had learned that a field trip was coming to the museum today, she had anticipated that the Shepherdess posters would sell like hotcakes, and so far she had been right. In fact, she already had Donna, one of her staff, put in an order for yet another shipment of them.

The chaperones did a great job and helped their charges shop efficiently—and without breaking anything. More than one of them had opted for the poster of The Young Shepherdess, which cost $15.

Little Abigail was the final child from this group to make her purchase. She handed Cora the cardboard tube so she could buy it.

"I see you found the pos—" Cora began before stopping.

Something wasn't right…

By now, she was used to what the package containing the poster of The Young Shepherdess felt like in her hand—specifically its weight. She had literally handled dozens of these things every day since the museum had reopened following the robbery.

But this one that Abigail had just given her…

It was heavier.

Her training in loss prevention made her consider the possibility that Abigail was trying to hide additional merchandise inside the cardboard tube, but two factors made her disregard that.

One, Abigail was a little girl, and this wasn't a Dickens novel.

Two, the taped seals around both ends of the tube hadn't been tampered with.

After considering it for a moment, she shrugged. The extra weight probably had something to do with the cardboard. She'd moved enough times in her life to know that not all cardboard was the same.

She scanned the barcode on the tube's label, and was about to have the register complete the sale when she stopped what she was doing, her mouth dropping open.

"Um…that can't be right…" the brown-haired chaperone said. She was looking at the price displayed on her side of the register.

The machine wasn't telling them that the poster of The Young Shepherdess cost $15.

It was telling them that the poster cost $2,000,000.

"Sorry about that," Cora said, immediately voiding the transaction and then scanning the barcode again.

Beep!

And again, the register was telling her that Little Abigail owed her $2,000,000!

She voided the transaction once more. And once more, she scanned the barcode.

$2,000,000.

Knowing that repeating the process would officially qualify her as insane, she called out, "Donna!"

"Yes?" Donna responded from the t-shirt section.

"Bring me a Shepherdess poster, please," Cora instructed. "Hurry!"

Donna handed over another cardboard tube in less than thirty seconds.

Cora scanned it.

$15.

She then scanned the first one. Now the register showed a total of $2,000,015.

"Weird!" Donna exclaimed in her Gen Z manner.

"Weird?" Cora replied. "How do I fix it?"

She then thought of the little girl, who was waiting patiently.

"You know what, honey?" she said to Abigail. "Take this one. I'll pay for it. Thanks for being such a patient girl." She handed over the $15 poster.

"Are you sure?" the brown-haired chaperone asked.

"Positive!" Cora told her. "For the trouble."

"Thank you!" Abigail effused.

When they had gone, there was a lull at the register. Cora looked at Donna, and then at the cardboard tube in her hand. She thought of all of the extra messaging she and the rest of the museum staff had been getting from management since the robbery about being more vigilant, and if you see something, say something.

"I'm going to call Security," she decided.

***

This was just what Tom needed: another painting of that fucking girl!

Fifteen minutes ago, he had been called by the director of the museum herself, Lydia Gennaro, and was told that what looked like the canvas that had been stolen had been found in the fucking gift shop!

So he and Andie had hurried over here, and because he wanted to be sure to spread the misery around, he made Emily join them.

Now, they were all in Lydia Gennaro's spacious office at the museum. With them was her assistant director, Amanda Zane, and Jefferson King, the new head of security. He was a tall, and imposing Black man, a retired cop from Philly.

Lydia Gennaro's office not only had a big desk, but it also had a coffee table in front of a sofa. That table had been cleared, and now the painting of the girl was on it, unrolled, each end of the canvas being weighed down by books.

Tom, with gloves on his hands, was holding the green cardboard tube the canvas had been found in. There was no hope of getting any fingerprint evidence from it…it had been handled by so many people already. But perhaps Forensics could do something with the label, as well as find something interesting on the inside.

It was no surprise to Tom that the painting on Lydia Gennaro's coffee table looked just as old and just as real as the ten other paintings at the station house. Even Emily thought so. But this painting had come with something all the others hadn't. And it was a gamechanger.

The painting had come up with a note…

To the men and women of the San Diego Police Department.

The painting you are looking at is the genuine "The Young Shepherdess," San Diego Museum of Art catalog number 1968.82, stolen by me on Thursday, June 10th.

The other paintings you have in your possession are exquisitely well done fakes, part of a larger plan which I unfortunately did not get to implement due to unforeseen circumstances. Nonetheless, it was rather fun watching you scurry all over town to collect them.

To prove that I am the thief, and to lend credence to my claim that this painting is the genuine article, I offer the following:

On the day of the theft, the security cameras at the San Diego Museum of Art were switched off at the following times…

The note then provided a list of timestamps—down to the second—when the security cameras had been switched off. Of course, Tom hadn't memorized when the cameras had been inactive, but the number of timestamps provided matched the number of occurrences when the cameras had gone dark. It would be an easy enough exercise to match the time information the note provided with what the museum's Security department had.

But if they matched, then there was no doubt the author of the note had intimate knowledge of the crime.

Tom looked down at the painting on the coffee table.

"So she's back," he said. He then looked at Emily.

Emily shrugged.

"Geneva Excess will of course want a comprehensive examination of this canvas made," she replied, returning his gaze.

"Of course," he said dryly. Fucking comprehensive examinations…

He'd had enough of these people with their precious artworks that no one had ever heard of, and which only pretentious rich fucks cared about. He wanted this case to be over. As far as he was concerned this was the real stolen painting.

He looked at Lydia Gennaro.

"This needs to come with us," he said, indicating the painting. "Whatever experts you need to call in, call them in."

Lydia Gennaro scoffed.

"Detective, we can take better care of it here at the museum!" she insisted. "And we have equipment that could help us determine if it's real to a relatively high degree of certainty!"

"Sorry, Ms. Gennaro," Tom told her. "This is evidence, and it comes with us. Forensics will examine it for any clues, and then—"

Gennaro put her hands on her hips and straightened to her full height.

"Your people will not touch that painting," she said, "without an expert in the handling of antique artworks present to supervise—"

"Fine, put your team of experts and whatnot together, and have them down at Central Division first thing tomorrow mor—"

Suddenly, Tom was cut off by the sound of alarms blaring.

He shared a look with Andie. Cops always found each other's eyes when alarms started going off.

"What's going on?" Lydia Gennaro asked Jefferson King.

The security boss had two fingers of his left hand pressed against the earpiece that was in his ear. He looked at the museum director.

"Some kind of smoke in Gallery Sixteen," he said.

Gennaro sighed.

"Do we have to evacuate?" she asked as though that would be the most annoying thing she could be asked to do ever.

King pointed to the computer monitors on Gennaro's desk. "May I?" he asked.

"Of course!" Gennaro said.

Jefferson came around her desk, bent at the waist, and started using her wireless mouse.

"I'm accessing the app for the new security system," he told her, "and pulling up the camera feeds for Sixteen."

Tom, Andie, and Emily also came around the desk to watch.

On one of the monitors, an array of security camera footage was being displayed. King clicked on the feed from a camera in Gallery 16. It showed white smoke emerging from all of the air ducts, even the ones on the floor.

"Wait!" Gennaro said, pointing. "It's happening downstairs in Thirteen also!"

"And Four!" Emily said.

Sure enough, white, billowy smoke was starting to fill the air in multiple galleries.

"It doesn't look like smoke, though…" Tom said, leaning closer to the monitor. "It looks more like…"

"The stuff from a fog machine," Andie finished for him.

She was right, Tom considered. That was exactly what it looked like.

"Well, whatever it is," King said, "it's a safety hazard. We're evacuating the museum. That includes all staff. My team has already called the fire department. They'll figure it out. Let's go people!"

As they all started heading out of Gennaro's office, Tom quickly rolled up the painting and tucked it under his arm.

"This is coming with us!" he stated. At this point, considering all the trouble this thing had caused, he was tempted to steal it himself and keep it.

Just outside of the office, he slowed down, taking hold of Emily's arm so that she slowed down with him, and remained right at his side.

"So…Priscilla Kroyn went back to her office?" he asked.

Emily nodded.

"You heard her say so over the wire," she told him.

"Yeah, I heard her say over the wire," he replied. "I think I'll follow up on that, however."

Emily stopped walking. Tom turned to face her. They were still in the administration section, and around them, other behind-the-scenes staff were abandoning their offices or cubicles and hurrying to the nearest exit.

"You don't think she has anything to do with…this?" Emily asked, gesturing with both arms to indicate the museum and, Tom understood, what was happening now in the building. "What are you thinking?" she went on. "That's she robbing the place again?" She scoffed with a dry laugh. "Think about it, Detective…who would attempt to rob the same museum twice, in broad daylight?"

***

Nearly an hour later, Jefferson King was back inside the museum. With him were his two chief assistants—Maven Booker, and Cory Rondell. Everyone else who worked at the museum were still waiting to be allowed back in. That was part of Jefferson's new protocol for situations which required evacuation. He and some of his security team would be the first ones to go back inside to make sure everything was copacetic, and then he would give the all-clear for everyone else to return.

Also with him was the captain of the firehouse which had responded to the emergency call, Captain Graves. As they approached the rotunda staircase, a handful of Graves's firefighters were still gathering their equipment prior to leaving.

"It wasn't smoke," Graves told Jefferson. "In fact, we found no evidence of a fire at all."

"So what was it?" Jefferson asked.

"Technically, water and glycol vapor," Graves replied.

Jefferson stopped at the foot of the stairs.

"What is that?" he pressed.

Graves smirked.

"It's known as ‘fog juice,'" he said. "It's what a fog machine produces. It's also why the sprinkler system wasn't activated."

Jefferson blinked. He remembered Detective Sadowski mentioning earlier that the "smoke" looked like what comes out of a fog machine.

"That's why I want to take you upstairs," Graves continued. He started climbing the steps, the others following him. "You told us you first spotted the fog in Gallery Sixteen, right? Well, we took a closer look up there, and discovered that someone had attached fog machines to the ductwork feeding into the room. My guess is that this whole museum has been rigged with them. Probably some wiseguy's idea of a prank. I mean, that's a pretty elaborate prank, but I've seen stranger things."

The group reached the second-floor landing and turned towards Gallery 16.

"Tell me," Graves went on, "has any extensive work been done in this place over the past couple of weeks? Anything involving contractors coming in and out, and needing to get up in the ceilings and behind the walls?"

Jefferson nodded.

"We had an entirely new security system installed," he answered. "It was a major overhaul of what was here before."

Graves face-shrugged.

"Well then…my guess is that someone connected with that work put the fog machines in," he said. "I have no idea why, though. Probably just to fuck with you guys."

In Gallery 16, a firefighter approached the captain, carrying something.

"Found another one, sir," the firefighter said. "This one was attached to a floor duct."

Graves took the device and examined it. He needed both hands to hold it. It was black, and about the size and shape of a backpack. At one end, there was a round nozzle.

"If I may say so, sir," the firefighter said. "I got a cousin who runs a party-planning business. Before I joined the department, I used to work for him. He uses fog machines all the time." He pointed at the machine Graves was holding. "That one is an industrial-strength model. It could easily fog up this entire room all by itself. But we found seven of them!"

"Jesus Christ!" Graves muttered. "Why the hell would anybody go to all that trouble just to fog up a room in a fucking art museum?"

Jefferson—who had spent two decades as a cop in Philadelphia—started to get a really bad feeling about this.

And that's when he heard Maven Booker give a sharp cry, as though she had just encountered an honest-to-god poltergeist.

"Lord have mercy!" she practically shrieked.

Jefferson first looked at her…and then looked at what she was looking at.

His heart fell.

He hoped that perhaps the fact that he was the new guy at the museum meant that maybe he just hadn't noticed it before.

"Please tell me that frame has always been empty," he said, standing next to Maven.

"No, sir," she replied, her voice quavering.

Jefferson swallowed, and he clenched his fists at his side.

"So you're telling me…" he began, but couldn't bring himself to finish.

"Yes, sir," Maven said. "Someone has just stolen our Rembrandt."