In the living room, she clicked on the large black flat screen TV and surfed until she found MSNBC. She hadn’t realized it was late enough for Rachel Maddow, but there she was up on the big screen talking about Eliot Spitzer and the Wall Street scandals he had uncovered and prosecuted. Then she showed a clip of Senator Carl Levin blasting some schmuck from Goldman Sachs. Sam opened the fridge and was not surprised to see it was stocked to her usual order. Yogurt, cheese cubes, a large wedge of cambozola cheese, eggs, hot dogs, 12 water bottles, bag-o-salad greens, red and yellow peppers, pine nuts, an English cucumber, Smart Balance, and three bottles of Horse Heaven Sauvignon Blanc. In the freezer there were sugar-free frozen fruit bars and low-carb chocolate ice cream. She looked in the pantry and saw whole wheat, whole grain bread and buns, peanut butter, water crackers, Starbucks Morning Joe, and two cases of bottled water on the floor. She glanced at the Cuisinart Coffee Plus machine on the counter and smiled as she realized everything was stocked according to Green’s Way. That’s what one of the assistants at Heartland had said when Samantha was dispatched to her first job away from Chicago.
“You’ll find everything you need, everything stocked Green’s Way when you get there,” the pretty young assistant had said.
“Green’s Way?” Sam was confused.
“Yes, ma’am. YOUR way. Everything should be just as you requested. Green’s Way.”
Now in Orlando, Sam pulled a corkscrew from a drawer and opened a bottle of the wine. She took a wineglass from one of the cupboards and poured herself a glass. Then she grabbed the Cambozola and the water crackers and sat down at the bar and opened her laptop.
Harold and Missy Brownfield had come home to their mansion on Tavistock Road the evening of October twenty-fifth to find five rare and very valuable paintings missing. The pieces ranged in size from a thirty-six by twenty-four inch painting to a twenty-three by twenty. According to police, there was no sign of forced entry into the mansion and no fingerprints anywhere near where the pieces had been hung. The home security alarm had not been triggered. According to the report from Heartland, the Brownfields were both in their mid seventies and had four children and fifteen grandchildren. It was a very old Orlando family and very old money. Harold Brownfield had been an international financier who had business interests all over Europe. The four Brownfield children, three boys and a girl, had all done well in their own right. The two eldest boys, both in their late forties, were doctors. The other son, forty-two, owned a chain of successful music stores, and their thirty-eight year old daughter was a scientist with some branch of the defense department. The kids and grandkids were scattered all over the country and no one was anywhere near Orlando when the burglary occurred.
“Doesn’t mean they weren’t involved,” mused Samantha. “But unlikely.”
In her experience, Samantha found that successful children of wealthy parents were sometimes involved in this type of crime. But unless there was a lot of family animus or a history of drugs, gambling, or debt among the children, it wasn’t all that common. And there was none of that indicated in the very extensive report from Heartland in this case. Practically every single bloody nose or skinned knee any of the kids had ever suffered was in this report. The family seemed very tight. The whole clan would get together for birthdays, vacations, Christmas. They traveled together, celebrated together, and seemed genuinely close as a family. They all seemed to spend a lot of time together at the family “compound” in the Bahamas. Even though this appeared to be some kind of inside job, Samantha figured she would be looking outside the family for the thieves.
Before going to bed that night, Sam remembered to call Wanda and warn her about the screaming skull on the porch and how it might turn Teddy into a screaming ball of fur on Halloween. After talking with Wanda, she dialed the familiar Chicago number.
“Hello there, Samantha. How’s my ace investigator?” Unk sounded the same as always—awake, healthy, and happy to hear from her.
“I’m good, Unk. I’m in Orlando.” Samantha proceeded to tell her uncle about the call from Heartland and her orders to go to Florida and investigate the case of the missing artwork. Unk was more interested in her work than she was sometimes. They talked for almost half an hour before finally saying their good-byes with Sam promising to keep him in the loop.
Chapter Three
It only took Samantha eight minutes to drive from her townhouse to the mansion on Tavistock Road, but the two places were more than worlds apart. She parked her car in the vast circular driveway in front of the house and was greeted at the door by a man who introduced himself as Charles Austin, the Brownfield’s attorney.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Austin.” Sam knew it was customary for people of great wealth to be represented by an attorney in these matters.
“Please come in, Ms. Green, and I will show you where the pieces were hanging.” He gestured her inside and shut the massive front door. “Please follow me.” Samantha followed Austin to a large sitting room toward the back of the house overlooking the pool and a lake beyond. She was careful as she walked in her pumps not to slip on the marble floors. The image of her sprawled on the floor of this marbled mausoleum made her smile. Austin stopped in front of a fireplace, which Sam immediately recognized as the place where one of the paintings had hung.
She set down her briefcase, opened it, and took out a file with the copies of the pictures Heartland had sent her. In order for Heartland to insure artwork like this, they insisted on pictures of the art where it was placed in the house. Samantha raked through the pictures until she found what she was looking for. There it was—a truly exquisite piece. It was a forest landscape by Ivan Shishkin, a well known Russian painter. This piece alone was valued at close to two million dollars. Just the photograph of the piece was stunning. Samantha could imagine how gorgeous the real thing would be. She put the photo down and pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
“So, Mr. Austin. There was absolutely no one in the house when these paintings went missing?” Samantha wondered about staff in a house this size. She walked over to the fireplace and ran her gloved hand over the area where the painting had been.
“No, Ms. Green. The Brownfields have several employees in the house during the day, but everyone had gone home before the Brownfields left for the symphony that night.”
“And everyone would be?” Samantha had a list of the employees in her briefcase, but asked in case something had been missed. She turned to look at Austin, who seemed irritated at the question.
“Well, I know there’s Mrs. Martinez, who works as Mrs. Brownfield’s assistant. She takes care of the day to day functioning of the house. She’ll be here shortly. She can give you a complete list of anyone who might have been working in the house that day or, for that matter, this past month. She hires everyone and oversees everything that has to do with the house.”
“Well, maybe, if it’s okay, I’ll have a look around until she gets here.” Samantha started to walk into another room and noticed Austin followed her in.
“There are no missing paintings from this room,” he said rather abruptly. “Come out by the pool, why don’t you? It’s a beautiful day.” She followed Austin to a table out by the pool where he pulled out a chair obviously expecting her to sit down. She complied and pulled a legal sized yellow notebook from her briefcase and a pen from her jacket pocket.
“I will send Mrs. Martinez out, Ms. Green.” Austin was beginning to really get under Sam’s skin.
“Thank you.” At that, Austin turned and walked back into the house. A few seconds later, Sam was startled by a voice behind her.
“I hope it won’t bother you if I vacuum along this side of the pool?” Samantha turned and saw a tan, shirtless, and very muscular blonde Adonis crouching