“And if you want, you can always tell them they need to talk to me.”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
“So how’s it going?” I asked, gesturing widely toward the entire area.
“Good. We still have a lot to do.”
“Okay. I’ll let you get back to it. If you want a break, there’s some pizza in Gretchen’s office.”
“In a little while, I might just.” I watched him head toward Paula.
Wes was still standing by the gate talking on his cell phone. There was a chance he could help, if he would, and if I could trust him. I stood and thought for a moment, looking for flaws in my thinking. Hell, I concluded,
He looked up as I approached, and smiled, pocketing his phone.
“I knew you’d see the light. Are you ready to talk?” he asked.
“May I ask you something?” I responded, all business.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“What does ‘off the record’ mean?”
“Why?”
I grinned. “Answering a question with a question, huh?”
He laughed, and said, “Mea culpa. ‘Off the record’ means I don’t quote you and don’t act on what you tell me until you tell me-if you ever do-that something is on the record. Why do you ask?”
“Are we off the record?”
He tilted his head to look into my eyes, squinting a little in the sun. It felt good to stand in the bright light. It was too early in the season for the sun to produce actual heat, but it created the illusion of warmth.
“Okay. I’ll bite,” he said. “Off the record.”
“I don’t know how to investigate something and I’m betting that you do. If you agree to help me-off the record-I’ll promise you an exclusive interview about the entire Grant situation after it’s all cleared up.”
“From what I hear, it’ll be cleared up with your arrest.”
I shook my head and paused, trying to judge if he was baiting me. I couldn’t tell, so I decided to play it straight. “No. I didn’t do it. But regardless, I’ll keep my word. An exclusive.”
“Who decides when it’s all cleared up?”
“We do. I’m not trying to split hairs. We’ll know when it’s cleared up.”
He thought about it for a long minute, his eyes fixed on mine. “What do you want to research?”
“Off the record?”
“You don’t have to keep asking. Everything we’re discussing is off the record until and unless you tell me otherwise, or unless I ask if something can be back on the record and you agree. Okay?”
“Promise?”
He look up, casting his eyes heavenward. “Yes. Jeez. What are you onto? Did Grant steal the Hope diamond?”
“Okay, then,” I said, ignoring his question, which, if he only knew, might be a whole lot closer to the truth than he’d believe possible. “Mr. and Mrs. Grant. I need to know everything about them. Where they were born. How they met. Schooling. Friends. Children. Everything. Starting way back when and continuing to now.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have time to explain now. I will later. There’s more.”
“Go ahead.”
“Can you access phone records?”
“Whose?”
“Mr. Grant’s.”
He made a whistlelike noise. “Maybe you’d better fill me in now after all.”
“Later. Can you? Do you have a contact who can get us the records?”
“Local or long distance?”
“Both.”
He didn’t answer but stayed still, looking at me, gauging I don’t know what.
“Can you do it?” I prodded.
“Maybe. I’ll try.”
I smiled, relieved. “That’s great. When will you have the information?”
“Hell, I don’t even know that I can get it at all, let alone when.”
“Let me know as soon as you have a sense of when you’ll get it,” I told him, ignoring the “if in his sentence.
“Josie,” Eric called from the far doorway.
I turned and shielded my eyes from the sun. “Yeah?” I shouted.
“Gretchen needs you in the office.”
“Tell her I’m coming,” I answered. I pointed to Wes, and repeated, “Call me.”
Gretchen stood with her arms crossed and her lips tightly sealed, a picture of righteous outrage. “Look at this,” she said, handing me a blue-covered folder. I nodded a greeting to Alverez, leaning against the front door, unsmiling.
I opened the papers, and started to read. The documents used legalese to tell me that a judge had authorized a search for stolen goods.
“Call Max for me, will you?” I asked her.
She marched to her desk to make the call, and I turned to Alverez, and asked, “How would you like to proceed?”
“Do you have an inventory listing?”
“Yes,” I answered, “mostly. It’s not a hundred percent accurate.” I shrugged. “We do our best.” I turned to Gretchen, and added, “When you’re done calling Max, please print out all of the inventory listings for Chief Alverez.”
“We’ll need to look throughout the facility as well,” he said.
“Help yourself,” I responded, hating everything about the situation. “We have an auction preview going on, so if you can try to stay out of the way of our doing business, I’d appreciate it.”
“We’ll try,” he answered, and turned to confer with the three police officers who stood nearby.
Gretchen handed me the phone and began punching keys at her computer.
Max said, “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Does the warrant read home and business?”
I opened the folded document and reread the neatly typed words. “Yes. And vehicle.”
“I’ll talk to Alverez in a minute and remind him to make certain they leave everything as they found it. And I’ll ask him if he wants you to accompany them to your house. Okay?”
I swallowed “Okay.”
In addition to Alverez and the three police officers in the warehouse, two more were standing by my car and two were seated in a marked cruiser nearby. Alverez and his team were working inside under Gretchen’s disapproving eyes as I left to join the two officers in the patrol car. I sat in the back, and as we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked over my shoulder and saw that one of the two standing near my car had already popped the trunk.
The two police officers, a middle-aged black man with a pot-belly and thinning hair at the wheel, and a tall, thin redhead in her thirties sitting beside him, spoke so softly that I couldn’t make out their words.
“That’s it,” I called as we approached my house. He pulled in to the gravel driveway.
Never having observed an official search before, I watched with a kind of grim curiosity. They opened closets, drawers, and chests and moved things around a little bit, looking for I don’t know what, maybe a tube containing another stolen painting. They examined the bottom of furniture, poked a long, narrow, needlelike tool into cushions, and lifted mattresses to see what was underneath.
“Any garage?” the woman asked me.
