Baker Street Irregulars Page 4

  “That is obviously of interest to you,” Shirley said, “since your colleague has been unable to end his investigation, but it is of no interest to me.”

  Another page flip. Looked like there was only one page of writing left. “Detective Hopkins has a suspect in the robbery of the pizza place on Broadway and 101st.”

  “Sal and Carmine’s?” I asked. At Shirley’s glare, I added, “Hey, that’s my favorite pizza joint.”

  Lestrade smiled and nodded. “It was one of the regular customers. Apparently he was upset that they put less pepperoni on the pizzas.”

  “That is not of interest, except perhaps to Jack.” Shirley was still glaring at me. I ignored her and drank more tea.

  “One last odd one,” Lestrade said. “Some peculiar cases of theft and vandalism. The first one was four days ago in a small shop on 100th just off Central Park West.”

  “The Morse Shop?” Shirley said.

  Lestrade nodded. “You know it?”

  “My aunt patronizes the store regularly. They specialize in jewelry, works of art, crafts, and other items created by hand by local artisans. I find most of their wares to be vulgar and ugly.”

  “Well, someone agreed with you, at least with regard to one of the items on display. Someone came into the store and stole a dragon figurine, shattering it on the sidewalk outside the store and running away.”

  “No surveillance?” I asked.

  Shaking his head, Lestrade said, “No, it’s a tiny store that’s never been burgled before, and they’re a block from the two-four. They didn’t see much point in the expense of a camera.”

  I snorted. “They might now.”

  “Just the one figurine?” Shirley asked.

  “Yes. And it gets more peculiar. Three days ago, a Dr. Hans Barnicot reported a similar crime. He had two dragon figurines of the same design. One was in his home office in the ground floor of a brownstone on 89th Street between Riverside and West End, the other in the storefront clinic he works at on Broadway and 109th. In both cases, it was only the dragon figurine that was taken, and it was smashed.”

  I stared at the detective while swallowing my scone. “You’re telling me the clinic didn’t have surveillance?”

  “Yes,” Lestrade said, “but also a thief who wore a wool hat and a large coat that covered his face and body type. And Dr. Barnicot’s house had an alarm, which dutifully went off when the thief broke the front window, but all he took was the figurine off the sill, and broke it at the corner of 89th and West End. In both cases, it was only the dragon figurine of that design that was taken. At the doctor’s home, he had several different types of dragons on the sill, but only that one was removed and smashed, while the clinic had several figures of various kinds.”

  Shirley’s head tilted. “These were all three of them by the same artist?”

  “So it would seem. I was not the investigating officer in either case.”

  She finally stopped typing and sipped some more tea. Then she put her hands on the table. “I wish to investigate this case further.”

  I winced. Shirley sometimes helped people out with problems, but sticking your nose in police business was a separate matter. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  Lestrade, though, didn’t seem too worried. “It should be fine. Yes, they are open cases, but there is unlikely to be any further investigation. The officer who took Dr. Barnicot’s statement indicated that the doctor only reported it for the insurance paperwork to get them to pay for his broken window, and also because the clinic requires it.” The detective stood up. “I’ll email you the files on that secure email you gave me.”

  Shirley nodded. “Thank you.” She looked down at the tablet and started typing again. “Jack, would you be so kind as to escort the detective out?”

  “Uh, sure.” I got up and walked Lestrade to the door.

  Once we got into the foyer, Lestrade grinned, showing two rows of perfectly white teeth. “I had a premonition that she would be interested in the dragon figurines.”

  I grabbed his denim jacket and handed it to him. “And you figured it’d give her an itch to scratch?”

  Lestrade shrugged into his jacket. “If I bring her nothing of interest, I receive a rather lengthy harangue on the subject of our arrangement. This way, she remains predisposed to not haranguing me, I continue to repay the debt I owe her, and as an added bonus, she is likely to solve the case.”

  I smiled as I unlocked and opened the door for him. “Thought NYPD frowned on that.”

  “Oh, she will allow me to make the arrest and be the officer of record. In the worst instance, nothing happens, and two cases that were like to remain open permanently stay open. In the best instance, I have two closed cases under my name.”

  “So win-win. Well, it was nice meeting you, Detective.”

  I offered my hand, and he shook it. “The same here, Mr. Watson.”

  After he left, I started to make my way back to the dining room to finish my tea and scone. As I entered, Shirley said, “What do you make of this case, Jack?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno, it’s a weird-ass OCD. Maybe the thief has a thing for dragons?”

  Shirley shook her head. “Dr. Barnicot had numerous figurines in the form of a dragon on his windowsill. No, it would appear to all be dragon figurines by a particular artist. It might be worth investigating the artist in question. One hopes that he or she is identified in the report that the detective will email me.”

  “One hopes he doesn’t get caught,” I said, gulping down the last of my tea. “He’s not supposed to share that stuff with civilians.”

  “Which is why he’s using the secure email server.”

  She’d mentioned that server before, and it had something to do with her brother, about whom I didn’t know a damn thing—not even his name. Shirley didn’t seem to like him all that much.

  Whatever. I was exhausted.

  I got up to leave, now desperately wanting my bed—the tea had helped a little, but ER shifts, especially unplanned ones on a Saturday night, took a lot out of me—but then Shirley said, “What I find most fascinating is that two of the figurines were broken on the sidewalk in front of where they were stolen, yet the one taken from Dr. Barnicot’s home office was broken on the next corner.”

  Her fingers danced over the keyboard to the tablet. I knew that she was looking up a bunch of things. I was about to say good night when she stopped typing.

  “Ah, yes, there is a work order with the Department of Transportation to fix a street light on West 89th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue. It was filled yesterday, but at the time of the break-in the light was out.”

  “Yeah, so?” I shook my head. “I guess he needed to see what he was smashing? Or maybe making sure it was the right statue?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, you have fun with that. I’m goin’ to bed.”

  • • •

  When I came downstairs the next morning, Shirley was in the same spot, the tea stuff all there, though the food was all gone. Ever since her aunt got cancer, they’d hired someone to come in and clean the place every other day, but today was one of her days off. I figured I’d clean up after Shirley, since nobody else was gonna do it, and cockroaches would mess up the nice house.

  I grabbed the tea service, trying not to spill any crumbs, and commented on her having been here all night.

  “I would think, Jack, that even someone of your intelligence would be able to determine that for yourself, given that I am wearing the same clothes, I have eaten all the food and drunk all the tea that was left, and my hair now has the oily consistency it frustratingly acquires when I have not showered in more than thirty-seven hours.”

  “Was just making a comment.”

  “The pitch of your voice went higher on the word ‘night,’ which is indicative of an interrogative rather than a declaratory statement.”

  I honestly didn’t remember if I’d done that or not. “In that case, it was rhetoric
al. What’d you find out?”

  “Quite a bit. The clinic does indeed have security footage, which was appended to the report that Detective Lestrade forwarded to me. The Morse Shop has an Etsy site that shows off its wares, and Dr. Barnicot regularly updates his Facebook page with a near-constant stream of pictures. I have been able to find images of all three figurines.”

  She held up the tablet, which had what looked like a screengrab focused on a red dragon figurine; a picture of a windowsill filled with tchotchkes, one of which was a red dragon figurine; and a picture of a red dragon figurine against a white background.

  “They all look the same to me.”

  Shirley sighed, and I knew I’d said something wrong. “The grooves and lines of the image from the Morse Shop are sharper than those of the one on Dr. Barnicot’s windowsill. The resolution of the security camera is insufficient to compare that level of detail for the one in the clinic. That they are similar enough that your eye cannot determine the difference indicates that these figurines were cast, but not with metal, plaster, or concrete—likely they were resin cast, as those molds tend to degrade over time, particularly ones created by single artisans rather than industrially produced.”

  “Which tracks with stuff sold at the Morse Shop.”

  “Indeed.” She looked straight at me, which was rare. “If you are free, would you like to accompany me to Columbus Avenue?”

  “Wanna get some brunch?”

  “I am sated after consuming the remains of the tea service. No, I was referring to the Columbus Avenue crafts fair that occupies the section of that street behind the American Museum of Natural History. Based on the information in the Etsy shop, the creator of these dragon figurines, one Liese Gelder, has a stand there. Your presence would be useful in questioning her.”

  I chuckled. If somebody wanted Shirley’s help, she could interrogate better than the Army CID guys I served with in Afghanistan, but, when it came to just talking to people, having a doctor-in-training along was a lot more useful.

  “Well, I got today off, so sure. I got some lab notes I need to translate into English at some point, but I can do that later.”

  “I assume that to mean a figurative translation of poor handwriting and abbreviated text into something coherent rather than an actual translation?”

  Some of the doctors who were training me didn’t have English as their first language, as it happened, but I did not want to get into that with Ms. Literal, so I just said, “Yeah.”

  We each showered, and I drank some coffee, and then we took an Uber to Columbus and 81st. Shirley has the Uber account because she got tired of being ignored by cabbies when she tried to hail one. As a large black man, I could relate.

  It was a nice spring day out, partly cloudy and warm, and the eastern sidewalk of Columbus that bordered the Theodore Roosevelt Park behind the Natural History museum was packed with people looking at the little stands that sold clothes, tchotchkes, jewelry, soaps, weird foods and food additives, art, and so on.

  Right at 79th Street was a stall filled with figurines of dragons, unicorns, and gryphons, as well as a few real animals: tigers, lions, cats, dogs, ducks. What surprised me was that they were all different colors. I was figuring all the dragons would be red, based on the three that got stolen and smashed, but the ones here were green, blue, and purple. No red ones, interestingly enough. And only a few of each animal.

  The woman in the stall was a skinny blonde wearing a wool sweater and black leggings. The sign over her head said “LIESE GELDER FIGURINES.”

  “These are nice,” I said while Shirley stared at the individual figurines. “Are these resin cast?”

  She smiled. “Yes, how did you know?”

  I pointed at Shirley. “My friend here figured it out from seeing your stuff up at the Morse Shop on 100th. She’s the brains of the outfit.”

  Shirley let out an exasperated sigh, which helped me to stay in character.

  Gelder said, “I prefer resin casting because they’re transitory. It keeps me from mass producing. After twenty-four castings, the mold degrades too much, so I have to make a new one. It allows me to make multiples of the figurines, so there’s a balance between uniqueness and my ability to put them in the hands of lots of people.”

  “Cool.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  Shirley then said, “You do not have any red dragons here.”

  “Yes, all six of those are—well, unavailable. I usually make six in each color, and I sold three reds to the Morse Shop where you saw them, and two more to my doctor.”

  “That is only five,” Shirley said in an almost accusatory voice.

  Gelder flinched. “Well, the—” She sighed. “It’s embarrassing, really. The other one was broken by one of my interns.”

  “Really?”

  “It was awful. I get interns from several local art schools and they usually work for a semester, and they get credits. I really had hopes for Barry, he had a rough childhood, y’know? But he had talent, and he managed to get a scholarship to Pratt, and I took him on last spring. And then he wound up being arrested halfway through the semester because of a fight he got into. When he got out on parole last month, he just showed up at the workshop and started messing with my computer. He said he was picking up his internship where it left off. He wasn’t even enrolled anywhere anymore.” She sighed. “I felt bad for him, but he’d lost his scholarship, so I couldn’t give him credits, and I can’t afford to pay—that’s why I do the internships in the first place. He got upset and broke the last red dragon I had in the workshop.” Then she smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m babbling. Did you have any other questions about the figurines?”

  “How much are the gryphons? My buddy Shorty collects these things.”

  We talked price, and then she talked about gryphons for five minutes, and I finally wound up buying a green gryphon for Shorty. By that time, Shirley was messing with her smartphone. Once we walked away from the stall, Shirley asked, “Is this ‘Shorty’ person a colleague at Columbia or a fellow enlistee in the armed forces? Or did you simply make him up in order to contrive an excuse to buy a figurine in exchange for the vast stores of information Ms. Gelder provided?”

  I grinned. “What, you can’t tell?”

  She looked up from her phone. “I am not clairvoyant, Jack. You have never made a single mention of ‘Shorty’ in the time of our acquaintance, so I have no data from which to make a determination.”

  “Fair enough. He’s an Army buddy. Used to wear a gryphon pin on his fatigues all the time, he had gryphon stickers on his footlocker, and tons of gryphon stuff all over everything he owned. Honestly, he gets so many of the damn things, it’s hard to find something he doesn’t have, so I figured I’d grab this.”

  “I have sent a text to a former client—who works at the Pratt Institute—for whom I once located a pet kitten.”

  “Really?”

  Shirley nodded. “It was quite a challenge, as predicting the movements of felines is rather difficult. However, I did locate her, and in return, she should be able to provide me with information on anyone named Barry who received a scholarship in the past three years.”

  She summoned another Uber to take us home, and she went straight up to her room on the third floor. I followed while she fired up one of her computers—a purple iMac that was more than a decade and a half old—called up a file, typed a few things, then printed the document on a color laser printer, which had sheets of business cards in it.

  When the sheet printed, she tugged at the perforations and then handed a business card to me.

  I read off the words on the card, which was very professionally designed. “IYS Insurance, Jack Watson, Investigator.” I looked at her. “I’m kinda afraid to ask why you handed me this.”

  “We are about to summon another Uber that will take us to the Morse Shop, once you change into more presentable clothes.”

  • • •

  It was a lot easier than I thought it would be to co
nvince the proprietor of the Morse Shop that I was an insurance investigator. The suit I was wearing made a big difference, and besides, who’d pretend to be an insurance investigator, anyhow?

  The guy was named Samuel Morse, and when he introduced himself, right away, he said, “Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes about codes, thanks.”

  I explained that theirs wasn’t the only Gelder red dragon that was stolen and broken, and that we wanted to contact the people who bought the other two that Gelder had provided. Since Morse got them on consignment, he was happy to cooperate—an insurance report might help him not have to pay Gelder for the figurine. I thought cooperating to help cheat an artist out of income was sleazy, but whatever.

  He wasn’t willing to give out addresses or phone numbers, but he did provide names and email addresses, which was good enough. One of them was a married couple who ran a karate dojo on Columbus and 106th, so we figured we’d just walk there and see what they could tell us. On the way, Shirley sent an email to the other customer, Matilda Sandeford.

  As we walked up Columbus to the dojo, though, we saw sirens and crime-scene tape and such. There was a crowd around the dojo, so we couldn’t get any closer than a few dozen feet past the corner of 105th, but we did see Lestrade, about two seconds after he saw us. He climbed under the yellow tape and made a beeline right at us.

  “Jesus shit, what are you doing here?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

  Shirley just stared at him. “That is a stupid question. We are investigating the thefts of the Gelder red dragons. One of them was sold to the proprietors of this dojo.”

  “Gelder?”

  Rolling her eyes, Shirley said, “The woman who crafted the figurines. We determined that the couple who—”

  Lestrade held up his hands. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, because this is a murder investigation.”

  My eyes went wide. “Who was killed?”

  “A local banger, went by the street name of ‘Step.’ He was not a student of the dojo, nor do the owners have any notion as to why he was here. And that is as much as I may tell you.”