Code of Honor by Smartypants Romance

Author:Smartypants Romance [White, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smartypants Romance

24

Darius

“Is the collector of stolen goods more or less culpable than the thief?”

Darius Masoud

I left Anna at the museum talking to the chatty young docent Crystal, who had just come back on duty, and met Dan O’Malley in the lobby of Gray’s offices. The building had likely been a bank at one time, and just as Anna had surmised, there was art.

My art education was limited to the requisite undergraduate art history class, so I wasn’t particularly well-versed in the styles and periods, but even to my untrained eye there didn’t appear to be any particular method to Gray’s collection, other than that everything in it could be attributed to a recognizable name. There was an O’Keefe hanging near a Warhol and what looked like a Miró near something that may have been a Sargent.

“You looking at the art?” Dan came to stand next to me and spoke quietly.

“If they’re originals, they’re worth several fortunes,” I murmured back.

He shot me a quizzical look. “He’s got the dough and the swagger. You think they might not be the real deal?”

I shrugged. “I’ve had some interesting debates about authenticity recently, and what I think is that I don’t know nearly enough about the art world.”

Dan gave our names to the receptionist, who could just as easily have been a model as an economist, and after a hushed phone call we were politely directed upstairs.

Another beautiful woman, this one slightly older than the receptionist, met us at the elevator.

“Mr. Gray is just finishing a call with his son,” she said as she ushered us into an office that contained even more valuable art than the lobby had. To my eye the paintings were more classically European and would have fit right into one of the rooms in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Gray hung up the phone and came around his desk.

“It’s good to see you again, O’Malley,” Gray said as he shook Dan’s hand. With me he was less jovial. I got a nod, not a smile, with my handshake. “Masoud, my son tells me your system failed.”

I could feel Dan bristle next to me, but I kept my voice even and unaffected. “My system did exactly what it was designed to do. The thief exploited a weakness in the type of security it was, not in the system itself.”

Markham Gray was in his late fifties and had the build of someone who still took his fitness seriously. His custom-made suit fit him perfectly, and everything from shoes to watch was designed to project class, elegance, and power. He was not a man who appreciated contradiction, no matter how mildly it was delivered.

He turned his attention back to Dan. “I expect that Cipher Security will find and return my painting to me.”

“I understand the painting wasn’t insured,” I persisted. Gray either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was poking a bear by speaking to Dan as though he were an employee.

“You can’t insure sentimental value,” he snapped at me.

“Wiring and alarming a painting inside a panic room seems a bit more than sentimental,” I said casually.

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