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“I wish you good luck in catching your murderer.” With that, Judge Barrington ended the call.
“What do you think?” Connor asked.
“I think he figured his dad knew all along that the painting was stolen. Whether the judge knew ten years ago or just figured it out, I don’t know. But he is a judge. I can’t imagine something like this would look good for him if it came out. It’s possible that he’s cooperating to head off bad press before it becomes a scandal.”
“I thought the same. It’s all about optics at his level. He can’t get voted out, because judges in Colorado are appointed, not elected. But it would cause him embarrassment, for sure.”
“Do you think he’ll really send the documents?”
Connor smirked. “I think he will after he reads them.”
Chapter Eighteen
San Diego PD, San Diego, California
Thursday, November 10, 4:05 p.m.
Connor was right. Fifteen minutes after their call with Judge Barrington, an email was delivered to Kit’s inbox. She downloaded the attached documents immediately.
“We should ask Goddard to check these documents out,” she murmured as she examined the certificate of authenticity. She tabbed to the next document and froze. “What is this?”
Connor frowned. “He bought it from a broker, who bought it from a…charity?”
“Who got it from William Freeman by way of donation to the charity.” Kit enlarged the signature line. “Here’s Freeman’s signature.”
“We need to find out if the signature’s been forged,” Connor said, still frowning.
Kit leaned back in her chair, thinking. So many thefts had been discovered well after the owners’ deaths. Why? Why hadn’t the senior citizens reported their things stolen? Benny might not have known his coins had been taken, but surely some of the seniors had noticed before they’d died.
“What if it’s not forged?” she asked slowly.
“You mean it was actually given to a charity and Roxanne didn’t steal it? Then we’re back to square one and that would suck.”
“I’m not saying that Roxanne didn’t steal them. I’m asking what if she got her victims to sign over their treasures?”
Connor’s frowned deepened. “What?”
“Hear me out. We have twenty instances of missing items. Twenty, Connor. And not one was reported by the senior citizen owner.”
“Only by their families after their deaths.”
She nodded. “Exactly. I mean, I get that a number of them had memory problems, but we have instances where the thefts went unreported for years.”
“Because she didn’t steal the stuff,” Connor murmured. “They gave it to her.”
“Donated, maybe. She’s been at this for fifteen years and has never been caught or even suspected—at least as far as we know.”
“And the black widow business…” Connor pursed his lips as he considered. “If she married them legally and they happened to die, it would be a legal inheritance. If someone pushed for an investigation, the ME would have to know what to look for. Like with Mr. Dreyfus.”
“Yeah, Alicia said if she hadn’t specifically asked about digoxin and diltiazem, the lab would have missed it. They would have assumed a heart attack.”
Connor sighed. “I wonder which scheme Frankie Flynn found out about—the theft-by-donation or that she was a black widow?”
“We might not find out. Frankie didn’t leave anything with anyone.”
Connor held up a finger. “Maybe he did. He went out the Wednesday before he was killed, remember?”
Kit drew in a sharp breath. “Where the hell did he go? He wasn’t gone long enough to go to San Francisco, and Ryland’s CSU team searched the house top to bottom anyway. He didn’t leave information there.”
