Amelia crossed her arms and smiled. “Yes, it did.”
Then it was her boss’s turn to smirk. “Well, thank goodness you’ve solved it.”
As a trained investigator and highly intuitive woman, Amelia heard the dismissal in her superior’s voice, but she chose not to acknowledge it.
“He did it, Artie.”
“Who?”
Amelia placed her palms on the desk and leaned toward him. “Visily Romani.”
Artie huffed. “The Henley investigation is in the hands of the proper authorities, Amelia. Unless the basement archives have a secret passage to London that I know nothing of, I’d recommend—”
Amelia moved a hand to one trim hip and looked down at the man behind the desk. “I really have to thank you, Artie. I mean, do you know what you get when you spend eight weeks going through boxes of dead files?”
Artie craned his neck upward in order to look at her. “Paper cuts?”
“History.” Amelia smiled as if the joke, ultimately, were on him. She picked up the file closest and tossed it onto the end of the desk. “Vienna in 1962. Paris in 1926.” Another file landed on top of the stack, and the man looked physically pained—as if that much dust and disorder were too much for his delicate senses.
“What do they have in common?” she asked like a professor challenging a student.
“Now see here, Amelia, I am a very busy—”
“All high-profile targets. All impeccably planned—almost elegant—jobs.”
“Amelia, really…”
“And in every file you can find one name: Visily Romani.” She rummaged through the files, pulling out flagged pieces of paper and showing them to her boss. “Shipping manifest from Berlin in 1935”—she pointed to a signature—“Romani. Witness statement out of Turkey. The witness’s name—”
“Romani,” Artie Dupree finished for her, then gave an exasperated sigh. “What’s this got to do with the Henley?”
“A dozen high-profile heists in a dozen cities over the course of the past ninety years. And who knows how long before that?”
And then it was her boss’s turn to grin. “Ninety years?” he said, sounding as if he might be considering taking the bait. “Mr. Romani has been a very busy man.”
“But that’s the thing, Artie. What if Romani isn’t a man?” Amelia said, leaning forward.
“Great. We’ll alert Scotland Yard and tell them they’re looking for a vampire. Or a werewolf. I’m assuming you’ve cross-referenced this with the lunar cycles.”
“What if it’s a name?” Amelia said, undaunted. She spread the files across the desk. “A name that has been used by a lot of people for a very long time.”
“Excellent.” Her boss pushed the files aside and returned to his order and his lists and his life. “You cracked it. Great work. I’ll call the Henley right away and tell them Leonardo’s Angel Returning to Heaven was stolen by a name.”
“These are some of the most famous unsolved crimes in history. Don’t you see that?”
“I see that they’re decades old, and the key word is unsolved.”
“It’s a common link. A thread. These crimes are interconnected, and if we—”
“Do you know where the Angel is?” he snapped, and Amelia gave an involuntary backward step.
“No.”
“Do you have information that will lead to the arrest of this Romani…” He stumbled, flustered. “Or Romanis?”
“If we launch an investigation…”
“Bennett! The last time we let you lead an investigation, you swore you would catch one Robert Bishop.”