“In due time,” the captain said.
So it went. I spent another hour stomping my feet to keep warm, yelling my fool head off about making a call.
“No chance,” the freezing cop kept saying.
“I’m entitled to a phone call.”
“After you’re questioned.”
“What’s happened to Cassone?”
“Later.”
“At least let me get back inside my car and run the heater.”
“It’s a Jeep,” he said finally.
I must have looked confused.
“Not a car,” he added.
“It’s certainly not a truck,” I said, ripening for any warming confrontation.
“It’s not a truck,” he said.
By then, I’d deciphered the rhythm of his logic. “Because it’s a Jeep?”
He nodded.
“You’re crazy. You know that?”
He shrugged, accepting. I gave him credit for not succumbing to self-doubt.
Twenty minutes later, incredibly, Jarobi showed up.
He barely acknowledged me as he went in the house. Fifteen minutes later, he came out with the captain, who ordered the deputy to remove my handcuffs.
Jarobi motioned for me to get in the Jeep. “If you don’t stay right behind me, I’ll have squad cars surround you in less than five minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ll stop, have coffee.”
“What’s going on?”
“Coffee,” he said.
Forty-one
Jarobi led me to a Denny’s just north of Rivertown. After he parked, he came up to peer between the strips of silver tape keeping my back window together.
“I noticed this painting, back at Cassone’s,” he said.
“What’s going on, Jarobi?”
“Is it Leo Brumsky’s painting?”
I looked at him, a cop in a green coat, short and gray and too wise to what was going on in my life. “Why is Cassone’s house crawling with sheriff’s deputies?”
“How about I lock it up while we eat?” He fingered a loose curl of tape. One soft tug and he’d have the painting in his hands anyway.
I nodded; anything to speed him up. I got it out, he aimed a remote to pop his trunk and locked it up, and we went into the restaurant.
The hostess asked where we wanted to sit. I said any damned place. She gave me a harsh look and led us to a booth by the window.
“What’s going on, Jarobi?” I asked again.
“Amanda,” he said.
The waitress came over with a Thermos pitcher.
“Leave the coffee,” I said to her, keeping my eyes on Jarobi.
She banged down the Thermos.
“We’ll eat,” Jarobi said.
“Cheerios, then, small bowl, skim milk,” I said.
Jarobi took too long to tell her that no, we’d have pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, and thick Greek toast.
“You must keep your strength,” he said, after she huffed away.
The blades were out now, fencing inside my gut. “What about Amanda?”
“And calm,” he added. “You must be calm.”
He looked around. Midway between the breakfast and lunch rushes, the restaurant was practically deserted.
“She’s been kidnapped,” he said.
I pushed up out of the booth fast, going nowhere but needing to tower over him.
“Sit down, or you’ll hear nothing.” He lifted his coffee cup like he had hours to kill before catching a bus.
I dropped back down. “Everything. Now.”
“Near as we can figure, she was grabbed just a few minutes after she left your place. Someone bumped her car, left a scrape. Most likely, he got out, waving what she must have thought was insurance information. It’s an old carjacking trick.”
I wanted to smash his face. “You came to me yesterday morning, just hours after she was abducted, and said nothing?”
“Mr. Phelps is running the show. You’re broke; you live in a turret. He thinks you’re involved. I came to check you out.”
“She’s my wife-” I stopped myself. “My ex-wife, but we’re on good terms. She’s safe? The kidnapper’s called? Why the hell are we just sitting here?”
“I just got the painting, Elstrom. Now we’re going to think.”
I must have slumped back in the booth. For sure, I remember going blank for a moment, unable to think. He was talking gibberish.
“The painting?” I asked, finally. “Amanda wasn’t grabbed for her father’s money?”
“Money? Sure, two million, but the bastard’s endgame is a painting.” He cocked a thumb toward the parking lot. “He didn’t specify, but it’s that painting? That purple barn? Those pink cows? Really?”
“Camouflage. Why are we here if the cops are at Cassone’s? He’s your man.”
“Because we’re going to think. Go slow. Don’t talk in riddles.”
“Cassone’s your man.”
“It’s a voice on the phone that wants two million in cash and that Brumsky painting. For now, we consider everything.”
“You’re sure Amanda’s not at Cassone’s?”
He nodded. “We don’t know where she is, which is why we’re going to think. Tell me about the picture, from the beginning.”
The waitress came with our plates. She set Jarobi’s down carefully. Mine, she dropped from an inch up. Jarobi dug right in.
When she left, I said, “A punk named Snark Evans stole the painting from Cassone years ago. Evans gave it to Leo Brumsky. Not knowing it was stolen, Leo kept it down in his basement ever since. Leo’s away. I’ve been watching his house. I stuck signs in the lawn, advertising residential security systems, to see who got nervous. Cassone came around, sniffing. I played along, gave him a tour, telling him about a system I was supposedly installing. He left, but not for long. Middle of the night, day before yesterday, I drove past Leo’s house and saw someone prowling inside. I waited by the back door. A burglar came out carrying something. I clubbed him and took what he had. It was that painting.”
“It was Cassone you clubbed?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“What does it matter?”
“With what?”
“A baseball bat.”
“Go on.”
“We’re wasting time, Jarobi.”
“Just go on.”
“I called Amanda because she knows art.”
“And because you knew she’d come to your place without question.”
“Yeah, and then I followed her to abduct her on the street, instead of just holding her at my place. Man, if I had that kind of genius I could be a cop.”
“Continue.”
“Later on, that evening, Amanda came over to my place. She’d already been working with Leo, researching the painting. She studied it, told me it was valuable, and left around ten. And none of this makes any sense.”
“Why?” He’d paused with a forkful of sausage halfway to his mouth.
“Because your people saw Cassone and me last night, talking calmly, having a beer. Cassone wanted his painting back and told me to deliver it this morning. No muscle, and no gun, and sure as hell no mention he was holding Amanda hostage.”
“Maybe you made it so easy he didn’t need any of that. Why cave so quickly? You clubbed Cassone to take the painting away, then overnight became willing to give it up? All before you knew Ms. Phelps was kidnapped?”
He’d cleaned his plate. He pushed it away. “Boy, if I had that kind of genius, I could live in a stone… whatever it is.”
“I had second thoughts. I realized I was in over my head with a guy like Cassone. I wanted to be rid of the painting and rid of him.” It was a lame lie, the best I could think up without telling him about Leo or that I wasn’t yet ready to trust an arrogant peacock like Wendell Phelps to engineer the safe return of his daughter. For now, Jarobi could think the painting in his trunk was the real thing.
“You’re lying, Elstrom, about a lot of things.”
“Go back to Falling Star, help the sheriff sweat Cassone, and keep your eyes open for somebody else. You know Cassone doesn’t need two million. He only wants the painting.” I made to get up. “Let’s go back to Falling Star.”