Drake Sisters 03 - Oceans of Fire

turning her head this way and that to study the rather smallish endowments. “Pathetic if you ask me. Seriously, this thing should be illegal. Where the heck would you put it? In your garden?”
    Abigail dragged her away from the statue. “You’re such a pervert, Joley. You would find the only naked man in the room.”

    Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    Joley hung back. “I think I’m in love. Well, almost. I’ll need Frank to do a little work on him. Can you imagine Frank’s face if I asked him to add to the proportions?” She snapped her fingers. “Give me the camera.”
    Abigail exchanged the camera for the plate of food. “What have you found?”
    “I’m going to give Aunt Carol a preview of what her life might be like if she chooses the wrong man.”
    Joley began snapping pictures of the statue. “You never know, Frank may have used himself as a model, in which case Aunt Carol should definitely give old man Mars, as fruity as he is, a chance.”
    “Joley!” Abigail tried to sound stern. “This is serious business. Aleksandr says a shipment of stolen art from Russia was off-loaded from a freighter to a fishing boat. It had to go somewhere and Frank’s name came up a couple of times. Chad works here unloading freight and packing boxes to ship to other places.”
    Joley skirted around two opened crates on the floor, peering into them to see what they contained. “I don’t get any respect,” she groused. “I’m learning to be an art connoisseur. Do you know how many times some man has asked if I wanted to see his etchings?”
    Hannah stifled her laugh with her hand. “You’re going to make me choke.”
    “You wouldn’t he choking if you weren’t stealing my olives, you thief.” Joley peered under the table.
    “There’s a lot of packing stuff here, Abbey. Some of it has watermarks on it. If they were taking something off one ship and putting it on a fishing boat, it would probably get wet, wouldn’t it?”
    Abigail hurried around several boxes to look under the table. “Even if we find evidence, how are we going to know if it’s Chad or Frank or if both are involved?” She crouched down to get closer to the paper. “It definitely has watermarks, but it’s just a plain brown wrapper.” She took a picture anyway, zooming in on the stain. “This is probably a total waste of time, but it gets us out of the party for a few minutes.”
    “You didn’t bring us anything to drink,” Joley complained. “Looking at art stuff that isn’t deemed good enough to be on display is hard work.”
    Abigail turned around and looked at her. “Why isn’t this on display? Is it being shipped? Did someone purchase it already? Frank must have ordered it, right?”
    “Maybe someone commissioned him to sell this stuff.”
    “Abbey,” Hannah said, “come over here. It feels different.”
    Abigail immediately crossed the room. She wasn’t nearly as sensitive as Hannah to changes, but even she felt the strange shifting surrounding a small corner of the room. Her heart began to accelerate and her mouth went dry. “What do you think it is?”
    “Can’t you feel it? Violence. Not death, but definitely violence.” Hannah searched the floor and walls, careful of her clothes. “Look around, see if you can see anything that indicates a recent fight. It has to be very recent to be so strong.”
    Joley stood beside Hannah. “In the last couple of hours.” She shivered. “It was definitely a physical fight Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    of some kind. Did either of you get a look at Frank’s knuckles?”
    “Frank has to be in his late fifties. I can’t imagine him in a fistfight an hour before the press and a roomful of people and celebrities show up,” Abigail said. “He just isn’t the type.”
    “Chad is,” Joley said. “In school, any altercation with anyone he wanted to settle with his fists.”
    Abigail crouched down to examine the floor. “There’s blood here. Spots of it. A few on the table legs.”
    She ran her hand over the floor, “feeling” for the aftermath of a violent encounter. “There’s even blood on the cabinets.“ She pulled open the bottom one and stared at the four paintings inside. They were stacked upright, the frames facing her. ”Hannah, look at these.“
    Hannah, using two of the napkins Abigail had provided from the buffet table, carefully removed one of the