Deadly Little Secrets Page 0,13
and stuff.”
“So who’s the artist?” she asked Jen, just to keep the conversation going as she dumped the McDonald’s bag on her desk. Pretzky couldn’t slap at her for taking a personal call at lunch. Meanwhile, she was booting up her computers, getting into the system, opening the art fraud file.
Jen rattled out a name and then continued to gush about the high profile of the event. “And maybe meet Carrie McCray, you know, she’s been nearly a recluse since her husband died. She’s only like forty and she looks, like maybe, I don’t know, twenty-eight or nine? I swear she’s got one of those paintings in the basement, you know, the one that ages for you.”
“The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Ana absently supplied the name of the famous book and film. “So what happened to the husband?”
“Oh, really sad, you know? Just dropped dead of a heart attack in a Peet’s Coffee shop right down from the gallery. By the time the ambulance got there, he was gone.”
Ana frowned, switching monitors. One of the dead guys in this cold case had died of an apparent heart attack. The only way the original team had figured the connection was that the dead man, Bob Wentz, had notes on the forgery in his safety deposit box, no history of heart disease, and a foreign substance in his tox screen.
“What did you say the husband’s name was?” Ana opened the files, sifted, and waited for Jen as she muttered through names, searching for the right combo. This was probably nothing, and no connection, but she never ignored that tickle at the back of her brain that said, Check this.
“Oh, uh, Luke Gideon. They had different last names and all, like some people do.”
Ana typed the name in and hit SEARCH.
“So, you wanna go?”
“Go? Go where?” Ana scrambled to tune in. What had she missed?
“To the gallery opening. Jack said he had several tickets and was there anyone I wanted to ask along. So I’m asking you, goofball. There will be, like, serious man action there. Rich man action.”
Ana rolled her eyes. “Let me think about it. Hey, I gotta get back to work. I’ll call you later, okay?” She was about to hang up when another thought occurred. “Wait a sec, what did you say the charity was?”
“Oh!” Jen piled pounds of enthusiasm in that one word. “It’s this totally cool thing, Jack’s really involved. It’s called the Bootstrap Foundation. They do, like, microloans and stuff. They do some here, in South Central LA, and in Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama and stuff. Some in Detroit, he said.” Jen paused, and Ana could almost hear how hard she was thinking. “It’s all about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps or something. Do you know what that means? You know that kind of stuff. What the hell’s a bootstrap anyway?”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed. “It’s the way you get tight boots on, with the loops at the top. Mostly it’s a metaphor for helping yourself, or getting a little help and turning that into something big. I think that’s probably the concept here.”
“Oh, okay. So anyway, this Bootstrap thing is the charity. Jack donates to it and so does Carrie McCray, so he has like, tickets, you know?”
“Yes, I get it. Okay. I’ll let you know, all right?” She was itching to dig into the file. Maybe, finally, a lead she could hook into and fly with.
Ana hung up, snatched up her burger, and began tracking down Carrie McCray, the Prometheus Gallery, and the Bootstrap Foundation. Something was there, she could feel it, and even before the burger was gone, she was beginning to see the shape of it.
“Holy shit!” Ana dropped the last French fry into the trash and let her fingers fly over the keys. The gallery’s patron list read like a close duplicate of her list from the cold case. Turning to the second screen, she pulled up the information on Bootstrap. “Look at that,” she crowed, noting four patrons of Prometheus listed on the platinum patrons list of Bootstrap as well, and every one of them had been scammed out of high-dollar art.
“Something new?” Pretzky demanded, rounding the corner.
Once again, Ana jumped. “Jeez, will you quit sneaking up on me?” she snapped, forgetting whom she was talking to. “You’re gonna take a year off my life at this rate.”
Pretzky smirked her smirk and said, “Keeps you on your toes. Told you to break the habit.”
“I’ll be on