Using the new computer system Ramona and her team had analyzed the thefts, looking for a pattern. Other than the fact that they were clustered in the downtown area there wasn’t much to go on. There was no consistency to the times and dates of the crimes, and nothing had surfaced from the fieldwork that could tie the thefts together. The detectives had checked into the possibility of insurance fraud, but all the gallery owners ran legitimate, profitable businesses. They’d visited nearby shops to learn if any suspicious persons had been seen hanging around before the thefts had occurred. Nada.
Feeling as stymied as the headline in the morning newspaper alleged his department to be, Kerney left his office and went looking for Sergeant Pino. Her office was empty and she had signed out to the field until midafternoon.
He returned to his desk and went through the paperwork again, hoping for inspiration. Were the crimes isolated incidents or connected? If the motive wasn’t money, what was it? Had six kleptomaniacs with good taste in art suddenly descended on Santa Fe all in one month? He doubted it.
What were they missing?
Andy Talbot wasn’t in love with Crystal Hurley, but he sure was having fun with her, at least most of the time. It didn’t matter that she was slightly crazy and could get real bitchy, especially when she sank into one of her bouts of depression. When she was happy, no woman he’d ever known could match her, especially when it came to sex.
She had long legs, a tight ass, perfectly proportioned tits, and hips with just the slightest bit of padding that felt like soft pillows in his hands.
Andy waited for Crystal outside the guesthouse where she lived on her father’s Santa Fe hilltop estate, hoping today she’d come home from her noon workout at the gym feeling chirpy. If she was, it usually meant he could count on a quickie before heading off to work at the hotel where he tended bar from two to ten.
Eagerly, he watched her car come up the long driveway, only to be disappointed when she parked and walked past him without a glance or a word, her silky skin glistening with sweat from her workout, her moist brown hair tied up in a loose clump.
Andy followed her inside and watched silently as she ate a bowl of yogurt sprinkled with wheat germ, drank a bottle of water, and stared out the kitchen window as though he wasn’t even there. She finished her meal, left the bowl on the counter for the housekeeper who came down from the main house to clean up every afternoon, and went off in the direction of the bathroom. Feeling sulky at being ignored, he plopped down in a living-room easy chair and listened to the sound of the shower through the closed bathroom door. With Crystal he never knew what to expect. One day she’d want him, the next day he was nothing more than an annoyance. Worse than that, her mood could change from minute to minute. Still, Andy was a complete sucker for her, would do anything she wanted.
She took some sort of prescription medication to control her mood swings, talked twice a week by telephone to a shrink who lived out of state, practiced yoga, meditated, and exercised religiously. But as far as Andy could tell, none of it made a difference when Crystal decided to tune out the world.
The sound of the shower stopped and after a few minutes Crystal padded into the living room in her bare feet with a towel wrapped around her torso. She nodded in the direction of the bedroom and dropped the towel on the floor. “Come on,” she said without a flicker of emotion on her face.
Aroused and grinning with anticipation, Andy followed her down the hallway. In her bedroom she stripped him naked where he stood, put her arms around his neck, and curled one leg around his waist. He pulled her up by the buttocks and held her firmly while she rode him, staring into his eyes, breathing heavily into his face, her wet hair tangled against his cheek, until they climaxed in unison, both of them gasping in pleasure.
They stayed locked together for a moment, then slowly he lowered her to the floor. She patted his cheek, turned, and walked out of the bedroom.
As he dressed, the thought struck Andy that Crystal had never kissed him on the lips. Not once. He shrugged it off as a meaningless curiosity. He was a twenty-three-year-old bartender from Minnesota boffing a hot young heiress who made up her own rules as she went along, and he was having the time of his life.
After Andy left, Crystal slipped on a pair of thong panties, sat at the small desk in the corner of the living room, and called Benjamin Cohen, a semiretired New York City shrink who’d been her therapist for the past ten years.
“How are you feeling, Crystal?” Cohen asked after he’d picked up.
“Tense, and I just had sex and that didn’t help at all. I’ve been taking things again.”
“Tell me about it.”
Crystal sighed. “Why? You’ll just tell me to increase my medication, and I don’t want to. It stops me from feeling horny.”
“There is that,” Cohen replied. “But let’s talk about what you’re really feeling.”
Crystal giggled. “Guilty, but I’m not giving anything back.”
“Care to tell me why?” Cohen asked.
Crystal sighed. “Because I don’t want to.”
“Sometimes, in the past, you’ve returned the things you’ve taken, or given them away as gifts.”
She opened the locked desk drawer, looked at her new possessions, and caressed each of them. “These are too beautiful to give away. I’m going to display them in my Paris apartment. No one there will ever know I stole them.”
“What else are you feeling?”
“Alive, euphoric, irritable, sexy, depressed. The usual stuff.”
“Have you stopped taking your medication entirely?” Cohen asked.
“It turns me into a zombie.”
“It helps to stabilize your mood.”
“How boring.”
“I think it would be best if you came back to the city for a time so we can talk about this in person,” Cohen said.
“I can’t stand New York. I’ll never live there again.”
“You need to think about what you’re doing, Crystal.”
“I hate it when you judge me.”
“I’m judging you?”
“There’s always that undertone, at least that’s what I feel. Crystal doesn’t need to steal. Crystal is a rich girl who can buy anything she wants. Crystal is so uncooperative and difficult. You don’t say it, but it’s there.”
“Why have you decided to go back to Paris?” Cohen asked.
“Because Daddy’s returning to Santa Fe next week and I don’t want to see him. Besides, Paris is fun and sexy. The French are so accepting.”
“Do you think Paris will ease your guilt?”
“Why not? I got a gun last week. A pistol. It’s very small, so I can keep it in my purse.”
“Whatever for?”
“Protection,” Crystal replied. “Women get raped in Santa Fe all the time.”
“You sound pleased about having a gun.”
“In a strange way, I am. It gives me a feeling of control.” She opened the expensive, imported crocodile handbag she’d stolen last year from a Fifth Avenue department store and took out the pistol, a small nickel-plated. 22-caliber semiautomatic. It was Daddy’s gun that he kept in a nightstand next to his bed. The weight of it felt good in her hand.
“Tell me some more about feeling in control.”
“The world is a dangerous place.” Crystal had never fired a gun. She wondered what the sensation was like.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Crystal said defensively. There was a switch or something above the trigger. What was it? She flicked it back and forth a couple of times and decided it must be the safety catch.
“Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”
“Not yet.”
“But soon?” Cohen asked.
Crystal pointed the gun at her reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the desk. “Maybe.”
“I know a very good psychiatrist in Santa Fe, Dr. Candace Robbins. I think it would be wise for you to call and ask to see her immediately.”