Mean Woman Blues

they’d been so successful and even how they’d come up with the idea in the first place. New Orleans had acres and acres of unprotected artworks, just there for the taking. There was no way on Earth you could patrol this much property.
    But if the trip was daunting, a couple of good things came out of it. It afforded a sense of where the good stuff was (in the older sections, naturally) and how a thief would likely operate in each one. In some, he could simply drive his SUV down the little streets between the rows of tombs, stop whenever he saw something he wanted, pry it up with a crowbar, and load it in full daylight. Because the cemeteries were so vast it would be easy enough to operate unobserved.
    All that could be helpful if they ever got a suspect. They could probably see a crime in progress from the end of a row without being seen, maybe even photograph or tape it. The catch was, they’d have to know about it to be there.
    The sting itself wasn’t exactly coming together with Germanic precision. However, Hagerty and LeDoux, out on their pavement-pounding missions, were beginning to get a feel for which shopkeepers were honest and which ones could be tempted with a little illicit action. One or two had actually called to report LeDoux when he came in showing pictures of “family heirlooms” he was selling. These were then questioned as to whether they’d gotten other such offers. So far none had, but they said they’d sure keep their ears open.
    Whoopee-do.
    Some of them went all righteous on Hagerty, in her decorator role, saying they’d be the last to traffic in that kind of stuff. But several had taken her cell phone number, saying they’d call if they got anything that looked like what she wanted. These— who had to be either bent or out of it— were a lot more interesting. If one of them did call, the task force could get the kind of break that would solve the case.
    Skip trudged through the days, wishing she could match the other officers’ enthusiasm. She called all the out-of-town antiques dealers on her list, including the ones who’d first been involved— the ones in Los Angeles who claimed they had no idea the merchandise had been stolen. Who they bought it from was a matter of record, but none of the names had rap sheets attached. (Nor true addresses or phone numbers.)
    Then she got a brainstorm about a possible information gold mine— real decorators. If ever there was a group that loved to gossip, this was it. And this was her territory, a place she could go as high-profile as she pleased, and it could only help. Raised as an Uptown, private-school girl, she was the daughter of a social-climbing family that had never quite made it to “socially prominent.” But she still had plenty of contacts from McGehee’s, Valencia, Icebreakers, the Tulane chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and her parents’ old neighborhood, most notably her old Kappa sister, Alison Gaillard. If Alison didn’t know every decorator in town (or where to find him), no one would. Skip’s fingers tingled as she reached for the phone. She was going to rise to this occasion after all.
    “Alison? Skip Langdon.”
    “Why,
Detective
Langdon. We thought you’d forgotten us here at Rumors-R-Us.” Her old gossip-buddy sounded a little hurt.
    “Never! You’ll always be my favorite Deep Throat.”
    Alison chortled. “Skippy, you watch your language, now.”
    “It’s just that I’ve had my hands kind of full with lowlife lowlifes. Last I heard your specialty was high-life lowlifes.”
    Alison’s silvery laugh trilled out. Skip had forgotten how beautiful it was— probably the most attractive thing about the woman, who’d never been Skip’s type back in college. Not that she wasn’t a real knockout in her own way, but she was just a bit too coiffed and manicured and fabulously turned out to resemble a real person. That was how they did things Uptown, which was more or less no-man’s-land to someone whose own father refused to speak to her when she became a cop.
    A strange thing about Alison, though. She’d come through for Skip every time she’d been asked. She did it as selflessly as if they’d always been best friends, when in fact they’d almost been enemies, owing to a few little things like Skip’s “inappropriate attire” (jeans, as a matter of fact) at rush parties.
    “Skippy, you are the
craziest
thing,” Alison said now. “I’m just an old stay-at-home mom anymore.” She paused. “On