Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

Looking over Brenda’s shoulder, Johnny grimaced slightly at the thought of keeping up the charade with her. His sour mood quickly evaporated when Brenda unzipped his pants and dropped to her knees.

Police headquarters sat on the outskirts of the city at the edge of a business park, in an area that had experienced explosive growth over the past decade. To the southwest residential subdivisions, strip malls, apartment complexes, town homes, fast-food franchises, and trailer parks had filled up vast tracts of once-vacant land along a four-mile stretch of road that led to the municipal airport.

For a city that touted its romantic charm, unique architecture, beautiful setting, and rich cultural and artistic traditions, the area had become Santa Fe’s version of tasteless urban sprawl, featuring ill-proportioned faux-adobe pueblo and territorial-style buildings with no character.

Fortunately, few tourists saw it, so the city’s reputation as a lovely four-hundred-year-old Spanish village at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains remained mostly intact.

In his second-floor office at headquarters Kerney read through the art-theft case files. The most recent rip-offs had occurred when two pieces, a small bronze and a miniature oil painting, had been found missing after exhibit openings. They carried a combined value of twenty thousand dollars.

Prior to that a ceramic sculpture and an unframed, signed photographic print had been taken from galleries with no security systems in place. Each item had retailed for over two thousand dollars.

But the rash of art thefts, as the morning headline reported, had all started with the theft of a woven Panamanian basket and a handblown glass vase, both valued in the thousand-dollar range. To date the total amount of the stolen loot exceeded twenty-six thousand dollars.

Kerney read the follow-up supplementals Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino and her team had prepared on the cases. Everyone in attendance at the gallery openings who could be identified on the video surveillance had been interviewed, but attempts to ID all the participants had failed. Statements taken from past and present employees, delivery persons, landlords, gallery owners, and customers who’d made purchases on the days of the thefts had yielded no creditable leads.

Pawnshops, flea markets, and art resale galleries had been visited, collectors of the various artists’ works had been contacted, art appraisers had been telephoned, and experts consulted, all to no avail. They had no suspects, no real motive, and no physical evidence.

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.”