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named Nikki Meyer spoke to Detective Mark Opitz on January 24, saying that she was a friend of Wishart’s and had had dinner with her on several occasions. Wishart had confided in Meyer that there was one particularly valuable work of art in the Provenance, which she did not keep displayed.
    â€œIt was a Renoir etching of a ballet dancer,” Meyer said. “She kept it in a zippered folder.” Wishart said the etching was worth up to $12,000. Meyer didn’t know if Wishart had a customer interested in the Renoir.
    Meyer told Opitz she was optimistic that police would be able to find out if there were customers interested in the etching because “Joyce was compulsive about logging everything in on her computer.”
    â€œDid Ms. Wishart ever express anxiety about being in her gallery alone?”
    â€œNot at all. On the contrary, Joyce felt very secure in her gallery.”
    Meyer knew nothing of Wishart’s romantic life. She’d seen her with men, but some of them were gay.
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    The following day, Sunday, January 25, Officer Stanley Beishline was patrolling Sarasota’s Gillespie Park section—which included a portion of Palm Avenue—when he was approached by a homeless couple in their thirties. They identified themselves as Dennis and Ann Collins and explained they had information regarding possible suspects in a recent homicide. Dennis told the officer that there were four white males who hung out near U.S. 41 and Main Street, two blocks south of the crime scene.
    â€œThey are very violent when they’ve been drinking, and I haven’t seen any of them since Thursday,” Dennis Collins explained, speaking about January 22, not January 15.
    â€œIf you got a victim over there who has been stomped on with boots, then these are the guys you are looking for,” he added. When those guys drank, they beat up people and robbed other homeless people. The leader was a white male by the name of Chris. He was very violent, the most violent of the bunch, and he carried a large folding knife, about six inches long, with serration on the back. Chris had a fat wife and two kids, but the kids were taken away from them before Christmas. Cops caught the whole family sleeping together in the cemetery, and that was why they took the kids away. It made Chris mean. He’d been kicked out of most of the places where homeless people could go for help—Resurrection House and the Salvation Army, to name two—and was desperate. Dennis said he bet there were people at the Resurrection House and Salvation Army who knew Chris’s last name.
    â€œWhat about the other guys in this group?” Officer Beishline inquired.
    â€œThe second guy is named Mike, but they call him ‘Salamander,’” Dennis said. Mike was responsible for robbing a homeless man named Robin and smashing in his face.
    There were two other guys, but Dennis didn’t know their names. One was blond, had a moustache; the other had freckles all over his body.
    â€œIf I need to get in contact with you two, how do I do it?” Officer Beishline asked.
    The Collinses said they could be contacted at the Resurrection House, or on the second floor of the library. That was where they spent most of their time.
    Beishline followed this report up with a few phone calls, but he could come up with no further information on Chris, Mike, and the two other thugs.
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    That Sunday, Officer Cliff Cespedes recontacted the security guard he’d seen lurking in the shadows. He wasn’t willing to let that go until he had some more information. He asked Stephen Garfield for his vital statistics, height, weight, hair and eye color.
    Garfield said that during his shift he jiggled the doorknob to the Provenance Gallery each time he passed. That was part of his job. He’d done that every day from January 16 to January 21; he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He wouldn’t have been able