Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [40]
“How much time are we talking?” Keane asked.
“An hour at least, probably longer.”
“And a noisy hour at that,” Max said.
Morgan nodded. “Yeah. Problem is, you could be standing on the floor above this room and never hear a thing, especially during the day with visitors wandering around. And we never had guards really patrol down here, just do routine checks of the exterior doors and main corridors.”
“Great,” Gillian said. “That's just great. So we have no way of even establishing a window of opportunity—except the one we already have. Sometime in the last few weeks.”
“And we're still working from a couple of giant assumptions,” Keane said. “That this is the knife that killed Jane Doe, and that she or her murder is really connected to the museum or the exhibit.”
“Assumptions somebody obviously wants us to make,” Wolfe said. “I don't believe in coincidence.”
“No,” Morgan said, unknowingly echoing the cat burglar awaiting her upstairs, “that all this is connected is a lot more likely than not. Somebody has gone to a great deal of trouble to give us some nice, clear clues—and a whole bunch of puzzle pieces. Anybody else getting the feeling we're being led around by our noses?”
She found Quinn waiting patiently for her in the lobby, standing several feet from the watchful guard. The last of the day's visitors had gone, and the huge room had that hollow, stark feeling of too much cold marble and stone and too few warm bodies.
It was hardly an ideal place to talk, so when she reached him Morgan wasn't surprised to find that he didn't even bring up the subject of what was going on in the basement.
“Morgana, I'm in the mood for Italian food, I think, and I know of a great restaurant near the bay with the best cook this side of Naples. Will you join me?”
Bluntly, she asked, “Business or pleasure?”
He answered that readily and with a smile. “Your company is always a pleasure, sweet.” Then he lowered his voice. “However, I'll admit there is a possibility that someone I'd like to keep an eye on will also be at the restaurant.”
“Who?”
“That, I'd rather not say.” When she frowned at him, Quinn added, “Suspicions are not facts, Morgana, and they're a long way from evidence. I'd prefer not to name names—to anyone—until I'm sure.”
“You mean not even Max or Jared—or Wolfe—knows that you have an idea who Nightshade really is?” She kept her own voice very low.
“They know I have an idea,” Quinn conceded, “but they don't know who I'm watching.”
There were a number of questions Morgan wanted to ask, but she knew this was not the time or place for a long discussion.
“Italian food sounds great,” she said. “I'll just go check on a couple of things and get my jacket.”
“I'll wait here for you.”
Since she was a responsible and efficient woman, Morgan made two brief stops before reaching her office, checking with the guards in the security room and then with Storm in the computer room to make certain all was well as the museum went into a night-security mode. One of the guards watching the security monitors asked her if the blond man in the lobby was supposed to be on his “sheet”—meaning the list of persons with special clearance to enter the museum at will—and Morgan had to pause for thought before answering.
“No,” she said finally out of a sense of caution, but then qualified the reply by adding, “Not unless Max or Wolfe says so. But he'll probably be around most days. His name is Alex Brandon, and he's a collector. Ask Wolfe what his clearance is, will you?”
“Gotcha,” the guard replied, writing himself a note.
When Morgan stopped at the computer room where Storm spent her working hours, it was to find the petite blonde leaning back in her chair, booted feet propped on her desk and her little cat asleep