The Case of the Artful Crime (7 page)

“What happened here?” he asked.

“I'm not a hundred percent sure,” Nancy admitted, moving into the dining room. All of the restaurant's paintings had been slashed and thrown to the floor. One wall had been badly vandalized with swirling black lines of spray paint. Two uniformed officers were busy making note of the damage.

“Here's what I do know,” Nancy said, turning to Shawn. She recounted all the night's events, from the mice in the kitchen to the empty black sedan at the car wash.

“How did you get into the restaurant?” Shawn asked.

Nancy admitted her ruse.

“You could have suffocated in that walk-in refrigerator, you know,” Shawn scolded. “Not to mention that you were in here with some knife-wielding lunatic. I told you to go home, remember?”

“I'm all right. I was only trying to solve this case,” Nancy defended herself. “At least now we have a few clues.”

Shawn smiled wanly. “Okay. You win. I'm glad you're all right. Now, what clues do we have?”

“Well, I'm almost positive that the guy who let the mice loose is Jack,” she told him.

Shawn raised his eyebrows. “I can't believe that.”

“Sorry. But it sure looked like him,” Nancy said gently. “Either you have two vandals working separately, or Jack is working with the other guy. But I don't think he is. Jack would have told the other guy I was here. Besides, the second guy would have heard the commotion in the kitchen if he'd been here with Jack. He didn't, though, which means he came in while I was upstairs in the office.”

“But why would either one of them do this to me?” Shawn asked.

“Shawn,” Nancy said, “were you honest with me when you said Jack had no reason to be angry?”

“Yes,” Shawn insisted. “I made him an offer for the restaurant, and he accepted it. I even gave him a job. Why should he be angry?”

“I don't know,” Nancy admitted. “Well, at least we have a good chance of finding the slasher. The
police can run a registration check on the license plate number.”

“Don't tell the police about Jack yet, all right?” Shawn urged her. “I don't want to say anything until we're sure. He goes back so far with my family.”

Nancy hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

Nancy told the police about the vandal and how she'd tailed him to the car wash. Immediately, one of the officers, a tall, young, blond man, went to the phone to call his precinct for a check on the car.

“This has been a long day,” Shawn said, stifling a yawn. “Want some coffee?”

“Do you have hot chocolate?” Nancy asked.

“Of course. This is a restaurant, remember?” Shawn said with a smile. “I'll be right back.”

While he was gone, Nancy studied the paintings that the police had laid out on the tables. Five of them had been slashed on a crisp diagonal. But the sixth one—a large oil landscape of a lake surrounded by woods—had been attacked with particular vengeance. Entire pieces of the painting had been gouged out.

Curious, Nancy knelt down on the floor next to the wall that had held the paintings. One at a time, she retrieved the small pieces of canvas that had fluttered to the floor. She continued to collect them until she had a small handful of pieces.

Slowly and precisely, Nancy fit the pieces into the tattered framework of the painting as though they were bits of a jigsaw puzzle.

“What are you doing?” Shawn asked, placing a steaming mug on the table beside her.

“This painting took a particular beating,” Nancy answered without looking up from her work. “I wanted to see if I recognized the location.” Finally, she looked up and took a sip of her hot chocolate. “Thanks,” she said to Shawn. “Did you check your refrigerator? The door has been open for a while, I'm afraid. Sorry. I was about to close it when I spotted the second intruder.”

“The food hasn't spoiled yet, but tomorrow I'm going to have to go through everything and see what the mice have gotten into,” Shawn said grimly. “According to health department regulations, I have to toss anything they've touched. I'll have to get an exterminator in the morning.” Shawn sighed. “Let's just say this is a complete disaster. If this keeps up, I don't know what's going to happen with the auction dinner. What a nightmare!”

“I'm really sorry all this is happening to you,” Nancy said sympathetically.

“You're doing more than I could have expected,” Shawn said. He looked down at the painting. “So? Do you recognize the place?”

Nancy shook her head. “I'm still missing a big triangular piece right here on the lower left.” She went back to the area near the wall and searched some more. “It doesn't seem to be here at all,” she noted.

“It has to be,” Shawn said. He helped her look,
but after five minutes, they'd still turned up nothing. “That's strange,” Shawn murmured.

Nancy returned to the assembled pieces and studied them. “You know what else is strange? Look how precisely this missing piece was cut. All these other pieces are torn and ragged, but not this section.” She outlined the missing shape with her finger. “It looks as though it was cut out with a razor.” She gazed up at Shawn. “Do you remember what was in this section?”

“Not exactly,” Shawn said. “I think it was just more trees. Does this mean anything to you?”

Nancy drummed the table thoughtfully with her fingertips. “Something isn't adding up here. Why can't we find the piece of this painting?”

“You really think it's important?” Shawn asked skeptically.

“Maybe not,” Nancy admitted. “Where did these paintings come from?”

“I bought them from Felice Wainwright,” Shawn replied.

“Felice Wainwright!” Nancy exclaimed, remembering the way the sedan had slowed outside the heiress's estate. “Why did you say you bought them from a friend?”

Embarrassed, Shawn stared down at the floor. “I didn't want to admit I was playing up to Mrs. Wainwright. As you might know, Mrs. Wainwright is involved in all sorts of charity work,” Shawn went on. “Her pet project is an art program for model
prisoners, and she kind of pressured me into buying these for the restaurant.”

“You didn't really want them?” Nancy asked.

Shawn shrugged. “They're okay, I guess, but they don't exactly go with the decor.”

“Then why did you buy them?” Nancy asked.

“Well, we were discussing the booking for her preauction dinner. She was telling me how, if things went well, she'd recommend the Arizona House to all her friends. And then, in the same breath, she asked if I was interested in buying a bunch of paintings by this prisoner named Joseph Spaziente. He's in her art class, and I guess he's her big discovery. She thinks he's some kind of artistic genius. I couldn't say no—and she knew it, too.”

Just then, one of the officers joined them. He was a short, husky man with dark hair. “Here's my report,” he said, placing a clipboard on the table in front of Shawn. “Is there anything you'd like to add?”

Shawn glanced over the report. “I don't think so. The main damage is to the wall and the seven paintings.”

“Seven?” Nancy asked. “I only see six.”

Shawn looked at the paintings laid out on the table. “There's the seventh, over there,” he said, pointing to a large, severely slashed oil landscape still leaning against the wall.

“It looks like it's the same scene as this one with the missing triangle,” Nancy observed.

Shawn shrugged. “I think it is, but it shows a different season.”

Before Nancy could examine the seventh painting, the tall, blond officer returned. “That sedan you followed was reported stolen this morning. It's registered to an elderly woman named Sarah Glass. She says that her car disappeared while she was eating at a coffee shop. Her keys were gone from her purse, too.”

“The thief probably watched her park, then followed her inside to pickpocket her keys,” Nancy said, frowning.

“Good thinking, little lady,” said the policeman. “You should be a detective.”

Nancy smiled politely.

“We can have the car dusted for prints,” the other officer suggested.

“It won't help,” Nancy told them. “He was wearing surgical gloves.”

“So we're at a dead end,” Shawn said.

“We'll be leaving now,” said the blond officer. “Call us if anything new develops. We'll be looking for this guy, but we don't have much of a description to go on.”

“Thanks for your time, officers,” Shawn said, escorting the two men to the door.

Nancy stayed behind to examine the seventh painting. It, too, had taken a worse beating than the other five. It was a summer scene, showing swimmers wading in a lake. As Nancy had noted, it showed the same landscape as the other painting,
rendered from exactly the same perspective, but in a different season. The first lake scene was set in spring, with blossoming trees.

Nancy knelt on the floor and replaced the scattered pieces, smoothing them with her hand. Then she studied her work and gasped.

A perfect triangle had also been cut from the summer scene—in exactly the same spot as in the spring painting. And that triangle, too, was gone!

Throughout the night, Nancy wrestled with the question of the missing triangles. She tossed and turned in her bed, unable to fall asleep despite the late hour.

The triangles had to mean something. It was just too coincidental. Nancy's every instinct as a detective told her there was more to this case than there seemed. But what?

The slashed paintings had all been done by one artist, who was a prisoner. Why would someone want two triangles cut from those paintings? Nancy didn't like the prison connection. It spelled trouble to her.

By ten o'clock Wednesday morning, Nancy had showered, eaten breakfast, and dressed for work at the Arizona House. Part of her wanted to sleep in till the afternoon, but another part was eager to pursue the case.

The night before, Shawn had walked Nancy to her car. On the way out he'd told her he was determined to clean the place up in time for lunch, even if it meant staying up all night.

The Arizona House lunch staff wasn't expected at work until eleven, but Nancy arrived there by ten-thirty. She parked in the back lot, beside Shawn's white compact station wagon.

The back door was locked, so Nancy walked around to the front. The door stood ajar. Nancy entered and found Shawn in the lounge, counting money at the register behind the bar.

When he saw her, he smiled. “I just put two hundred dollars into the register so Roy will have money for change. As long as I have two hundred to put in each day, I'm not going out of business.”

“Good attitude,” Nancy said with a grin. She couldn't help but notice that his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He wore the same clothes he'd had on the night before. “You didn't go home at all last night, did you?” she observed.

Shawn shook his head. “I caught a few Zs in my office, though. I wanted to be here early to let in the exterminator. He's already laid traps for the mice and gone. Come to the dining room. I want to show you something.”

Shawn came out from behind the bar, and Nancy followed him into the empty dining room. Large, bold, framed posters depicting the Grand Canyon and other desert scenes adorned the wall. “I ran down to Poster Corner in the mall and picked these
up when they opened at nine this morning,” Shawn said proudly.

“They look great,” Nancy said. “What have you done with the slashed paintings?”

“I put them into the storage closet,” he replied.

“What will you tell Felice Wainwright?” Nancy asked.

“I don't know.” Shawn sighed. “Maybe I'll tell her my customers loved them so much that I sold all seven of them. She'll probably insist I buy more.”

Nancy laughed softly. “It's not easy being a business person, is it?”

Shawn shook his head. “And you think Jack has something to do with all this?” he asked.

“I don't know what to think right now,” Nancy said honestly. “But I'd like to check him out. Could you give me Jack's phone number and address?”

“They're upstairs in my file,” Shawn told her, heading toward his office. “But Jack's not home. I've been calling him all morning. No one picks up the phone.”

“Is he scheduled to work today?” Nancy asked.

“Tonight,” Shawn said. “We'll have the chance to confront him then.”

“If he shows up,” Nancy added.

As they reached the hallway, Loreen appeared in the front doorway. “You're here early.” Shawn greeted her with a tense smile.

“A little,” Loreen said, casting a frosty glance at Nancy. “Why was the back door locked?”

“I want to see who's coming in and out,” Shawn told her. “I don't want any more fires or secret additions to the food.” Then he excused himself and disappeared up the stairs.

Realizing that this was her chance to talk to Loreen, Nancy stayed behind. Maybe Loreen would reveal something new about the case. Since both intruders had been men, Nancy knew that Loreen hadn't been at the restaurant last night. Still, it wasn't unheard of for a woman to hire someone to work for her. And after Loreen's fit of anger last night, Nancy still considered her a suspect.

Nancy followed the head waitress into the coat-room, where she was hanging up her denim jacket. “Loreen,” Nancy said, “we seem to have gotten off to a bad start. I'm not sure why, but I just want to say that—”

“Don't play Little Miss Innocent with me,” Loreen snapped. “I know what you're up to.”

Nancy took a step back. She had to think fast. What did Loreen know?

“Let me fill you in on one thing,” Loreen continued. “Despite what you may have heard, Shawn is taken. He and I are simply having an extended lovers' quarrel, that's all.”