thinking it was pretend.”
“It was a good thing it looked as fake as she thought it was.”
“Exactly. The gilded frames on these oil paintings are worth a lot,” Brooke said. “This is an A. F. Tait painting of birds, circa 1865, worth about $10,000 to $25,000. The oil painting of the fox is by William H. Beard, around 1874 and worth about $15,000. This one is a John Haberle painting of the cat and bird in the cage, circa 1885, worth around $23,000. Kittens in a trunk by Charles van den Eycken, nineteenth century, worth around $29,000. That’s the high end.”
“I’ll have to see if we have any old paintings we didn’t think were worth anything that are sitting in storage.”
“You never know. I’ll have to have these cleaned, but I’ll store them in the spare bedroom closet for now. It’s getting late, and we’ve finished all we had to do. Are you ready for bed?” She glanced at Mr. Lee’s business card and picked it up and tried ringing his number again.
“Sure. I’ll help you move these paintings into the bedroom.”
“Thanks. No answer.” Brooke grabbed two of the paintings and carried them into the guest bedroom.
Josh carried the other two into the guest room, and they carefully set them in the empty closet.
She retired to her bedroom and pulled out a pair of pajamas.
Josh followed her into her room. He wasn’t sure she wanted him to sleep in there. “I’ll just take my shower then.” He motioned to the guest bathroom down the hall.
“I’ll take mine in here. Then you’ll join me so I don’t have to jump into the guest bed in the middle of the night?”
He smiled. “You bet.” He was glad she wanted him to join her there.
It didn’t take him long to return to the master bedroom soapy clean, wearing a fresh pair of boxer briefs, and join her under the covers.
She was wearing a pair of tiger pajamas and smelled of the delightful scent of vanilla. She sighed and snuggled against him. “If you thought I was guilty of stealing the calf and had an accomplice, that means the cop is now sleeping with the crook.”
“You’re vindicated.”
“But you haven’t caught the real culprit yet.”
“I had considered it was a prank. Once I discovered the security video had been tampered with, I didn’t believe so. I just can’t figure out why anyone would do that and then drop the calf off at your place.”
“Unless they were about to get caught so they dumped the calf. Maybe they even planned to come back for it, but something happened, and they couldn’t.” She frowned. “You haven’t heard back about the pickup’s tag number?”
“They haven’t been able to discern what the tag number was.”
“Tomorrow, while I’m at the shop, why don’t you check with the stores about their video security and see if you can learn about the men who shot me. You shouldn’t have to worry about me now that I have the security cameras. You can monitor them while you’re off on your quest to learn the truth. If I have any trouble, I’ll call you. You’ll be close by and can be back to my shop in a heartbeat. Besides, I doubt the other intruder will return during the day.”
“You call me if anything seems amiss. Anything.”
“I will. Can you run an announcement about it too? Telling the public that the police are actively investigating the theft of a reindeer calf. Mention animal endangerment. Maybe someone will know something about it and report it.”
“I can. Because he was found safe and sound, it’s not a case that anyone else on the police force is looking into.”
“What about any of the people you employ?”
“All wolves.”
“Did you fire anyone recently?”
“No.” Josh rubbed his chin. “Come to think of it, we did have a disgruntled customer a few days ago. He felt we overcharged him for time on a couple of our reindeer he rented. We had another job lined up right after his, and we needed to get them to the next location. We have built-in time for issues like that, but we charge for it too. Our contract spells out that if the customer delays us, we have to be reimbursed for the time. Otherwise, we’d have issues with a fair number of customers. You know, one last picture. Ten pictures later, one more picture.”
“Which is totally reasonable on your part.”
“True, though I can’t imagine him going to all the effort to steal a reindeer calf