Read Online Shooting Gallery by Hailey Lind - Free Book Online

restorer and I was a lowly faux finisher.
    â€œWell . . .” Her voice lowered and she forgot the British accent. “There was a group here. Adult Education types, so I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.”
    I bit my tongue to keep from reminding Naomi that her father, a gifted auto mechanic in Modesto, had gotten his GED at adult night school.
    â€œThey’d been touring the galleries when suddenly they got all worked up and fainted in a heap on the floor. It was just awful , so tacky . Afterwards, Carlos in Security noticed a Chagall was missing. But you would know all this if you read the newspaper, Ann.”
    In college Naomi had fancied herself a policy wonk and hung out in cafés ostentatiously reading the New York Times . Just to annoy her I had started hanging out at the next table, reading Le Monde . Naomi had a tin ear for languages, and it drove her nuts that I could outsnob her. Too bad I always stopped reading as soon as she stomped out.
    â€œWhy do the police think the faintings and the theft were related?” I asked. “Maybe someone noticed that Security was preoccupied, grabbed the Chagall, and took off?”
    â€œIt wasn’t that simple. The Brock installed an electronic sensor system last year, which should have triggered the alarm when the Chagall was removed from the gallery. But the system had been disabled. Whoever committed the theft knew what he was doing.”
    â€œWhat do the surveillance tapes show?”
    Silence.
    â€œNaomi?”
    â€œThe, uh, the cameras weren’t exactly hooked up.”
    â€œNot hooked up?” For an art museum to disable its video monitoring system was an appalling breach of security that, unfortunately, was only too common. “What moron decided that?”
    â€œMrs. Brock thought, and the curators concurred, that the video system cost too much to maintain. It just didn’t seem necessary. The cameras themselves should have been enough of a deterrence.”
    â€œSo the museum has cameras but no videotape?”
    â€œThe gift shop and entry cameras are still monitored. And an eyewitness reported a man wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, a hat, and glasses coming out of the gallery about that time. But the painting was small enough not to be obvious in all the confusion.”
    â€œSurely the Brocks don’t think the people who fainted were in on the theft? They’re a bunch of folks taking an Adult Ed class, for heaven’s sake.”
    â€œI’m just an art restorer, Ann. It’s not up to me,” she pointed out. “And speaking of which, if we’re done with our little chat I need to get back to work.”
    â€œOne more thing. Who was the Adult Ed tour guide?”
    â€œThat sort of thing is handled by Community Outreach. Art restorers are far too busy in the workrooms to attend to all that.”
    I gritted my teeth, thanked her, and hung up. I wouldn’t trade places with Naomi for all the art in Florence, but the constant references to her flourishing career at the Brock rankled nonetheless. Naomi had a respected role in the fine-art world, as well as health insurance and a pension plan. I had squat. Every once in a while I was tempted to cave in to my grandfather’s pleas to join him in creating brilliant forgeries and making fools of the establishment.
    Too bad I hated prison so much.
    According to Naomi, someone had disabled the Brock’s security system and taken the Chagall in the confusion surrounding the Stendhal faintings. I had once been told by a highly impeachable but thoroughly knowledgeable source that many electronic sensor systems could be turned off remotely by someone with the technical know-how. But to stroll out of a museum in broad daylight with a painting tucked inside one’s bomber jacket took a cool head and an abundance of self-confidence.
    The very qualities possessed by a certain art thief I knew only too well. An art thief who once