“I like it. Someday I can say I knew you when.”
She laughed. “I doubt my paintings will ever become collectible works.”
“You never know.” He added more notes to his pad.
Connor rewalked the living-room area, and she saw him studying where the heating and cooling came in, counting windows, and checking what doors inside had locks. “Are you particularly attached to any of this woodwork? It really would be good to have better frames on the windows and solid doors put in for the bedroom wing. Someone gets inside or someone’s just hassling you, you’ve still got layers of protection and locks you can throw.”
“I’m not going to quibble if you think it needs to be done. Daniel gave me a pretty good reality check even before you rattled off that list of risks.”
He looked over, and she understood the gaze even if she didn’t want to understand it. “Rattling you is okay, Marie-scaring you is not. Sorry about that.” He counted doors. “The more stuff done now tends to mean less trouble later, and the carpenters can do it all as one rush job.”
He jotted notes. “I’ve got what I need in here. Show me the storage rooms and utilities.”
She picked up her key ring and led the way.
“You’ve got valuables stored up here?”
“I built a room downstairs to be secure storage for the paintings; up here is extra framing and packing materials, Christmas decorations, replacement panels to use when we have a showing, that kind of thing.”
He walked past the storage shelves to the windows and tried turning the locks. “You open the windows during the summer?”
“Yes. I don’t think any of the windows will still be painted shut, but a few are tighter than others.”
He looked at the fire alarm. “Cover your ears.” He reached up and hit the self-test button. “You’ve changed the batteries recently.”
“First of every month. Fire is the one thing I’m kind of paranoid about.”
“That’s not such a bad thing to be. Where’s the electrical box for the building?”
“There are two-one for this floor, one for the gallery.” She opened the utilities room and clicked on the light, then nodded toward the electrical box on the back wall.
Connor checked it. “Good, there’s room. New lighting for the hall can include emergency floodlights as well as just better fixtures and higher watt bulbs. Someone cuts your electricity, the emergency lights will automatically come on in the halls. Amazing how many times that’s enough to stop trouble in its tracks. And it saves you a lot of time if there is a fire or other reason to be leaving quickly.”
“You’re not doing a very good job cheering me up here.”
He smiled. “Daniel gets the bills; just remember that. I’ll have the carpenters replace that stairway handrail for you too; I noticed it was a bit shaky. You’ve got another staircase down to the gallery level, or do you always go out to the street and then back inside?”
“There’s another stairwell at the other end of the hall. We use it just enough to keep the cobwebs down.”
She led the way to show him.
“Nice.” The stair treads were steep and narrow and disappeared with a sharp turn.
“The building was divided in half until about thirty years ago. This used to be the other entrance, but they bricked the former doorway and turned the direction of the final few stairs when they combined the building.” Accustomed to the narrower treads she walked down first with her hands braced against each wall and turned the corner, stepping into the open storage room at the back of the gallery.
Connor joined her. “Doors at the top and the bottom and brick on either side of you-it has potential.” He checked the lock. “If you had a fire, Marie, I’d use these stairs rather than try for the main stairway. There are no cooling or heat ducts to carry smoke in. I’ll have them put in a steel-core door at the top-that will give you better security and a final bit of fire protection and emergency lighting.” He jotted down a final note and then looked around where they stood. “Okay, what’s down here?”
“This is general storage and where we pack paintings to ship.” She pointed to the back wall. “The longer narrow storage room is climate controlled for the paintings and built to not let you get inside easily.”
“I can see that; it’s the first lock I’ve respected on sight so far.”
She laughed and led the way into the gallery. “The gallery has four areas, loosely divided into themes, with two main brick walls forming the interior and the main support column for upstairs. I’ve also got my office down here and a more elegant seating area for when I’m talking with buyers over coffee and cake.”
“I can see I should have been into art a long time ago; car shops might have the coffee but rarely the chance to sit in elegance to drink it.” He walked around, studying the large windows that looked out onto the street, the pedestrians passing by. “You’ve already got a security system down here.”
“Yes. Once the place is locked up it’s pretty secure-break triggers on the doors, the plate-glass windows, enough for the insurance bill to come down some. The silent alarm contacts the police.”
“You open and close the gallery most days? Or do you have staff that handles it?”
“I’m the one most often handling opening and closings. The posted hours are ten to six, and we’re open on Saturdays but not Sundays; it’s also pretty common to have private showings or special evenings with invited guests. I have one assistant who has been with me since I opened the gallery who works about thirty hours a week. She typically works the lunch hours for me and helps when there is a showing to put together or a shipment coming in. When she needs to be out of town, as she is today and I’ve got a meeting, I simply close the gallery for a few hours. It’s not a good solution, but the business doesn’t do enough volume to support more than the two of us.”
“How do you handle the cash?”
“There’s a safe on the premises in the office, and I bank at the branch across the street. It’s not been a problem. Most of the sales are by check.”
He walked through the gallery rooms, and while she wasn’t disappointed exactly that he didn’t comment on the artwork displayed, she was surprised he didn’t seem to even linger to take a second glance at some of the works. The artwork available this month was some of the finest she’d ever been able to afford.
“Daniel will be after that Denart in the front window and that Gibson on the east wall,” he predicted.
The fact he’d put the artists’ names to their art without looking at the signature cards startled her. “He already asked about the Denart. You know his tastes?”
“Someone once swiped four paintings out of his office. This was before he worked at the Benton Group; it’s how I first met him.”
“I wondered.”
“I learned enough about art working that case to at least know why he bought the paintings he did. Daniel and I play softball together in a league, and he’s a pretty regular racquetball partner. Your cousin is the kind of friend you don’t think twice about picking up the phone and calling to ask for a favor. Just so you know.”
“Yeah, that helps. Not too full of himself.”
“A pretty average guy for all the media attention. Where’s your office?”
“Back here.” She turned on lights.
He paused in the doorway. “Comfortable.”
“I spend a lot of time here.”
“I’m going to suggest another couple phone lines with at least one of them a very private number you give only to friends. And if you’ve got the power outlets to handle it, we’ll bring one of the security monitors in here and probably another one tucked away near that front reception desk. Cameras on the streets, covering the rooms here, another two for the stairway and hall-they don’t have to be intrusive to give you a lot more information about what is around you than you have now.”
“I’ll get used to them.”
He nodded. “In a few weeks, you’ll wonder how you functioned without them. No more deliverymen you don’t recognize before you open the door.”
He finished his notes and slid his notebook back into his pocket. He leaned back against the front of the desk. “Nothing on the list is going to be particularly hard to get installed. The window locks and frames are probably the toughest job-there are simply so many of them. And at least it’s projected to be good weather tomorrow. Once it’s all in, I’ll walk you around and show you how to take maximum advantage of it all.”
“I appreciate all this, Connor, even if I am a bit befuddled by it.”
