Homeport

weather had turned calm and the temperatures had crept into the sixties. But he’d detoured by the station house on a whim. He believed in following whims, which he considered a short step down from hunches.
    There on his desk, stacked among the files cluttering his in box, was the computer-generated report from pretty young officer Mary Chaney.
    For himself, Cook approached the computer with the caution and respect of a street cop approaching a junkie in a dark alley. You had to deal with it, you had to do the job, but you knew damn well anything could go wrong if you missed a step.
    The Jones case was a priority because the Joneses were rich and the governor knew them personally. As the case was on his mind, he’d asked Mary to run a computer check, searching for like crimes.
    Such information as he had in his hands would have taken weeks, if he’d ever been able to gather it, in his early days at this desk. Now he had a pattern in front of him that made his fishing plans slide out of his mind as he tipped back in his chair and studied it.
    He had six likes over a period of ten years, and twice that many other hits similar enough to warrant a mention.
    New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Kansas City, Atlanta. A museum or gallery in each of those cities had reported a break-in and the loss of one item in the past decade. The value of each item ranged from a hundred thousand to just over a cool million. No damage to the property, no mess, no alarm sounded. Each piece had been covered by insurance, and no arrest had been made.
    Slick, he thought. The guy was slick.
    In the dozen that followed, there were some variations. Two or more pieces had been taken, and in one case a guard’s coffee had been drugged and the security system was simply shut off for a period of thirty minutes. In another an arrest had been made. A guard had attempted to pawn a fifteenth-century cameo. He was arrested and confessed, but claimed that he’d taken the cameo after the break-in. The Renoir landscape and the Manet portrait that had also been stolen were never recovered.
    Interesting, Cook thought again. The profile that was forming in his mind of his quarry didn’t include sloppy trips to pawnshops. Could be he enlisted a guard as an inside source. It was something to check out.
    And it wouldn’t hurt to see where the Joneses had been during the dates of the other thefts. It was, after all, just another kind of fishing.
     
    The first thing on Miranda’s mind when she opened her eyes on Sunday morning was The Dark Lady . She had to see it again, examine it again. How else would she know how she had been so completely mistaken?

    For as the days passed, she had come to the painful conclusion that she’d been wrong. What other explanation was there? She knew her mother too well. To save Standjo’s reputation, Elizabeth would have questioned every detail of the second testing. She would have insisted on, and received, absolute proof of its accuracy.
    She would never have settled for less.
    The practical thing to do was to accept it, to salvage her pride by saying nothing more on the matter until the situation cooled. Stirring the pot could accomplish nothing positive because the damage had already been done.
    Deciding she could make better use of her time than brooding, she changed into sweats. A couple hours at the health club might sweat some of the depression out of her.
     
    Two hours later, she returned to the house to find Andrew stumbling around nursing a hangover. She was just about to go upstairs when the doorbell chimed.
    “Let me take your jacket, Detective Cook,” she heard Andrew say.
    Cook? On a Sunday afternoon? Miranda pushed her hands at her hair, cleared her throat, and sat down.
    As Andrew led Cook in, Miranda offered him a polite smile. “Do you have news for us?”
    “Nothing solid, Dr. Jones. Just a loose end or two.”
    “Please sit down.”
    “Great house.” Cop’s eyes below their bushy gray brows scanned the room as he walked to a chair. “Really makes a statement up here on the cliffs.” Old money, he thought, it had its own smell, its own look. Here it was beeswax and lemon oil. It was heirloom furniture and faded wallpaper and floor-to-ceiling windows framed in a burgundy waterfall of what was probably silk.
    Class and privilege, and just enough clutter to make it a home.
    “What can we do for you, Detective?”
    “I’ve got a little angle I’m working on. I wonder if you could tell