The Christmas Mystery: A Detective Luc Moncrief Mystery by James Patterson & Richard Dilallo

Author:James Patterson & Richard Dilallo [Patterson, James & DiLallo, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316319973
Amazon: 031631997X
Publisher: BookShots
Published: 2016-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

The cheesy Tudor-style living room—like something out of Disneyland—fills up quickly with lots of local law enforcement.

The New York State police arrive: seven burly men and two substantial-looking women. The local Monticello police arrive: two detectives, two coroners, four police officers. This may be the entire town police department. The local press arrives, as eager and noisy as anything in Manhattan or Paris. The coroners do a quick on-site examination of Rudy Brunetti. Then they begin to transfer the body to an ambulance.

I stand at an open window and watch them speedily move the body to the ambulance. The coroner sees me and explains what I already know: “We need to minimize dermal contamination.”

Why do American officials enjoy using big words? Couldn’t he just have said “skin decay”?

Detective Burke and I are at different corners of the room. We see each other, and I immediately join my colleague, the person who just saved my life.

“So, K. Burke,” I say. “You did accompany me after all.” I squeeze her shoulders, as close to a loving gesture as we have ever shared.

“You probably predicted that I’d be following you,” she says.

I tell her the truth.

“Not this time, I must say. This time I thought our disagreement was too great for it to mend quickly.”

There is a pause. Then she looks at me with intense eyes. Softly she says, “I could never let you down, Moncrief.”

My head turns to the ground. My throat aches with anxiety. I know that I should be lying dead on the icy ground. I shake. My neck hurts. I speak.

“Merci, merci beaucoup. You have saved my life. I am beyond grateful.”

Burke smiles. Her eyes sparkle.

“As you should be.”

I smile. This will not grow any further into a sentimental moment. That is simply not the way Burke and I behave.

And anyway, we must not allow the local police to take over. No. Now we must take control, as all the little puzzle pieces of the investigation begin to fall into place.

The results turn out to be fairly much as we expected. The elegant Sophia and Andre Krane are the masterminds in this grand fraud scheme. They maintain a large basement studio at this home. It looks like a classroom at a university’s fine arts painting course. Easels with half-finished canvases dot the room—a large Picasso here, a tiny Rubens there, a Schnabel that looks like every other Schnabel, a Warhol “Liz Taylor” that looks like a thousand others.

Handcuffs are locked onto the Kranes. Sophia Krane is calm, stoic, almost bored, as she stands with three police officers guarding her.

“Rudy was a fool. I told him all he had to do was steal some goddamn paintings, from her bedroom. He didn’t have to kill the old lady,” she says.

“But he did,” K. Burke says.

Now the Kranes are led out of their gloomy house to join Angel, who is already in a police car.

Burke and I question and Andre quickly admits that they sold the Hockney and Lichtenstein forgeries to Baby D.

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