Illicit Artifacts Read online

  “What about illness? Have you called in sick?”

  Mandy frowned. “A couple weeks ago, I caught strep throat. But I went to the clinic on a Saturday morning.”

  “Do you remember the date?”

  Mandy pulled the desk calendar toward herself and pointed out the day to Jil. Two days after Anastasia’s purse was stolen. Now, how could the imposter have known when she might be off work?

  She glanced at the waiting room over the half-wall partition. “Did you talk about your sore throat at work? Mention it to anyone?”

  “She mentioned it to me,” Rochelle said. “Late in the afternoon on a Friday.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Mandy said. “Rochelle told me to get to the clinic if it didn’t clear up because some of the nurses had been coming down with strep. Which is what I had.”

  Jil frowned. “Okay. So on Monday, you were back at work.”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you have any visitors?”

  Mandy glanced at the calendar. “There’s a blue dot on here, so that means we had a visit from a drug rep.”

  “The lemonade bar lady,” Rochelle said.

  “Lemonade bar?”

  Rochelle rolled her eyes. “They’re always bringing treats along with their samples. I guess they think we’ll be more likely to choose their products if they feed us a little sugar.”

  Jil grinned. “Does that work?”

  “No. We’ve got that system beat. We don’t open the samples right away. We save them up and open them all at the same time. By then, all the chocolate bars are a blur!” She smiled, then her face closed up again as she remembered…

  “This drug rep—did you know her?”

  Mandy frowned. “She was new.”

  Rochelle met Jil’s glance—fear flickering across her eyes. “I’d never seen her before either. You don’t think…”

  “Do you remember where she was from?” Jil interjected.

  “Yeah. PharmaTek. It’s a huge company. They send someone every time their company comes out with a new gauze or antibacterial salve for us to try.”

  “What did this drug rep bring this time?”

  Mandy and Rochelle looked at each other. “I can’t remember,” Mandy said. “My throat was still sore and I was distracted by the lemonade bars.”

  “I think it might have been some sort of new non-stick bandage.” Rochelle frowned. “She left a sample. I stored it in the back with all the others.”

  Mandy nodded. “Everything is put in a bucket on the shelf in the supplies cupboard. We keep it in the original bags so we can tell which samples come from which company.”

  “So you never open samples before the end of the month?”

  “No. We have a potluck lunch on the last Friday and open all the bags. It’s kind of fun.” Mandy bit her lip. “At least, it always has been.”

  “Do you remember what she looked like?”

  “She was young,” Mandy said. “Platinum blond hair and lots of makeup.”

  “Tall?”

  “Skinny and tall, yeah. Well, maybe it was just the heels.”

  “She wore tall heels?”

  “Yeah, four inches at least. She had fabulous legs.”

  Jil smiled. “Good thing to notice.”

  Mandy blushed. “Sorry. She was really pretty. I’m not gay or anything, but I noticed.”

  “Not gay? That’s too bad.” She winked.

  Mandy blushed even redder, and Rochelle laughed.

  “One more question.”

  “Yes?” Rochelle leaned in.

  “Who’s in charge of supervising that clinic across the way? Do patients have to register?”

  “Well, the nurse in charge changes every two days, but most of the patients are regulars.”

  “How busy is it there? Could a ‘new patient’ sneak in and sit for a while, unnoticed?”

  Rochelle frowned. Jil could see the skepticism in her face, but after seeing the video, her perspective seemed to have changed about what was possible to miss. “It’s a busy place. Sometimes the nurses see more than thirty or forty people before ten.”

  “Who might be in there? Patients and who else?”

  “Family members bringing the patients in. Personal Support Workers or attendants from the accessible buses. Nurses. The doctor on call. Lots of people move in and out of there.”

  Jil sighed.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Jil leaned in. “Okay, this is my best guess. ‘Anastasia’ walked into the clinic either posing as a patient or as an aide of some sort. She sat in the waiting room to listen in to this side of the clinic. Who knows how many days she came—maybe two or three. She overheard Annie say she was going out for dinner and where. She overheard Mandy say she had a sore throat. She used this information to plan a strategy, and then when she thought Mandy might be away on the Monday after she got strep, she came in, impersonating a drug rep.”

  “But she didn’t go inside.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jil said. “Seems to have been a reconnaissance mission. She wanted time to look around. How long did she stay?”

  “She chatted quite a while,” Mandy said ruefully. “She seemed pleasant and wanted some pointers about getting the nurses in here to like her.”

  “So she chatted you up about who liked which kind of chocolate bar?” Jil guessed.

  Mandy nodded miserably.

  Jil shook her head. “And all the time, she was probably watching people go in and out with their swipe pass, learning how it worked.”

  “There’s a bit of a trick to it,” Mandy agreed.

  “Which would have tripped her up later,” Jil added. “So after watching several attempts, she’d have a pretty good idea of what to do. So the next day, or the day after, while Annie was out on rounds, she dressed up as her, and walked straight through the front doors with her swipe pass, kept her head down, and raided the supply closet. Left with a bag, a uniform, a box of bandages, and whatever else she needed, including Elise’s patient file.”

  Rochelle stared at her, white-faced. “I can’t believe this.”

  Jil exhaled softly. “She’s a professional, all right.”

  “We have to look in that bag.” Rochelle strode quickly up the corridor, Jil close behind her. In the storage room, Rochelle riffled through the big plastic bin until she found a blue PharmaTek bag. She opened it and fished inside for the sample. “Gauze pads.” She held up the box. “We got these same ones last month.”

  Jil took the box from her. “So if you had looked right away, she could have claimed to be new and not to have known you’d already received them. Clever.”

  “Not so clever.” A triumphant smile lit Rochelle’s face. “We have a security camera at the front door. I know exactly when this person was here, and now we can find her on our footage.”

  Jil nodded. It could be a good lead, but probably not as important as Rochelle thought. This woman was a chameleon. She and her disguises would be long gone by now.

  Chapter Seven

  Jil clicked replay and watched the imposter hold open the door for an elderly man who appeared to be coming in alone. This time, she had medium-length brunette hair and wore a skirt and blouse, low heels, and minimal makeup. Totally different from how Mandy had described her. One thing she couldn’t hide, though, was the way she walked. This is how Jil had found her in the sea of video footage—three separate times.

  The man smiled at her gratefully and accepted her arm when she offered it, helping him to a chair right next to the half-wall that divided the clinic from the nursing office.

  She sat with him for half an hour, and when the nurse called his name, she waved good-bye to him, then turned and walked out the door. That was Wednesday.

  Friday, she came again, this time dressed in a set of scrubs and sneakers, holding the door for a younger woman in a power chair. Had she waited for these people outside? Smoking a cigarette? Reading on the outdoor bench?

  She’d seen someon
e alone and jumped up to help them, knowing nobody would ask any questions of a family member or personal support worker.

  Monday, she appeared a third time, only now she wore a business suit, carried a trench coat, and had her blond hair tied up in a neat French braid.

  She’d studied the footage for hours, getting a feel for how this woman looked, moved, talked, and smiled. She saw the distinctive crinkle at the side of her eyes, the way one corner of her mouth tilted up a little when she made initial contact. She was left-handed, had one leg slightly shorter than the other, producing a barely-discernible shift in her gait. Stripped from heels, she stood at five foot five. Her eyebrows were light, which meant her hair tended either toward a natural dirty blond or light brunette. And she had a tiny beauty mark above her lip.

  As Mandy had said, she was exceptionally pretty, which meant she’d be used to people saying yes to her. Brazen didn’t even begin to describe her…

  She now had no trouble at all believing that this woman could pull a Catwoman, straight into the upstairs window of the house. Hell, she could probably scale a high-rise on a bungee cord.

  Jil took several still shots from the video stream, uploaded them as image files, and blew them up as much as possible without distorting the clarity. She printed them off—three different “Anastasias”—and pinned them up over her desk.

  After considering for a brief moment, she e-mailed Detective Fraser the images, with a favor request. “Please let me know if she appears in the criminal database. I’d like to know who she is.”

  Five minutes later, her phone rang.

  “I thought you were going to leave the detecting to me,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Did you? Well, last I heard, you said I didn’t have a case.”

  He sighed. “Is this your home health care aide?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I have superpowers. So, is she in the database?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m running a facial recognition now, but it will take some time. Would you care to explain to me what’s going on in these photos?”

  Jil sighed. “Right now all I know is that this woman likes to play dress-up. Clearly, that’s not a crime, but it crosses the line if she’s actually impersonating others, and that’s what I’d like to know. Meet me for coffee when you find a match. I’ll fill you in.”

  *

  When Jess entered the staff room, the chatter stopped. Teachers looked up from their tables, casting sideways looks at her as she moved past. Gradually, talk resumed, at a lower level. A few teachers left the room.

  Of course the teachers were normally on their best behavior around her, but was this excessive? Was she overreacting or were they looking at her strangely?

  “Morning, Jess.” Rosie McMonahan strode past her into the kitchen, her gym whistle smacking against her chest. She reached to the highest shelf for a travel mug, then turned to Jess. “You want one?”

  “Sure.” Jess took the mug she offered and laid it down on the counter. “How are your outdoor ed courses going?”

  Rosie shrugged. “I like the snow, personally, but my kids are cranky about cross-country skiing.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. I told them we were running out of gym space, and unless they wanted to take another science course to make up their credits, they were stuck with snowshoeing for at least one three-week cycle.”

  As Rosie reached into the fridge for the milk, Jess grabbed the handle of the coffee carafe. She pulled it from the hot plate, but the carafe slipped, thudding down onto the counter and splashing hot coffee everywhere. She leapt back, expecting it to fall to the floor and shatter, but it stopped just a quarter inch from the edge.

  Rosie grabbed the dripping handle and moved the carafe back onto the hot plate while Jess grabbed a stack of paper towels. All eyes had turned to them. Someone muttered something at the back of the room.

  Jess felt her cheeks flaming.

  “You okay?” Rosie asked Jess.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Rosie took the paper towel from Jess and mopped up the mess on the floor, then filled both their mugs.

  Jess muttered a thank you, then took her coffee—carefully this time—and headed back to her office.

  Mary, her admin assistant, nodded to a package balancing on the edge of her desk, and Jess stopped to read the label—the store that sold equipment for students with developmental disabilities. A foam wedge or something that cost upwards of four hundred dollars.

  It was barely Christmas and they were about to blow their entire annual budget.

  “Call down to the D.E. classroom and have someone come pick that up, please.”

  “They just need your signature.”

  Jess looked at the receipt slips, considered the pen and trying to scrawl her name on the page while the entire office staff looked on, and felt her face beginning to flush again.

  “Just use my signature stamp.”

  Mary looked surprised but didn’t argue as Jess went into her office and closed the door.

  *

  “I’m glad you could make it.” Tamara stood up from her large walnut desk and extended a hand. The sleeves of her blazer stopped just below her elbows and cinched in at her waist, buttoned once across a perfect white camisole. Black curls bounced almost to her shoulders, and she smiled with her whole face—from her red-painted lips up to her dark hazel eyes.

  She looked friendly, for a lawyer—not at all what Jil had expected.

  “Nice to meet you as well.” Jil dropped Elise’s folder on the desk and sat in one of the plush wing chairs opposite the desk.

  “You haven’t looked at this?” Tamara seemed a little surprised.

  “What’s to look at? She’s left me everything. I already know. She has no other heirs.”

  Tamara took a whalebone letter opener and slit the will folder neatly across the top. She put on a pair of dark blue glasses, then laid the two papers side by side. “Identical,” she pronounced after several minutes.

  “Unsurprising.” Jil bit back any further remarks. The woman was only doing her job.

  Tamara held her gaze for a moment before speaking. “It seems Elise sold all her investments and transferred them into cash accounts a few months ago, so that makes things a little easier. We still have to apply for probate before we can sell the house or transfer any of the assets.”

  Jil nodded absently. She let her gaze wander out the window to where snow covered the upper branches of a birch tree.

  “What are you planning to do with the island in the Caribbean?” Tamara asked.

  Jil looked back. “What island?”

  “Just checking.” A small smirk tugged at the corners of Tamara’s mouth.

  “Sorry. I am listening.”

  Tamara winked. “No problem. It’s just that most clients hang on my every word, wondering if there’s a hidden fortune their relative kept secret…I guess I’m just used to rapt attention.”

  “Elise wasn’t my relative,” Jil said. “She was a lovely older woman who was kind enough to get me out of a bad situation as a teenager. I don’t deserve to inherit all her assets—whatever they may be.”

  Tamara raised her eyebrows. “Well, you’re going to have to figure out how to accept her generosity, because her assets are pretty damn substantial.”

  Jil frowned. “How substantial?”

  Tamara’s face twitched, like she was trying to hold back a laugh. “Well, including the life insurance policy, about three point five million dollars substantial.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jil leaned back in her chair and stared at the lawyer. “That’s impossible,” she managed finally.

  “I’ve triple checked her financials. Believe me, they’re accurate.”

  “Elise had a modest lifestyle. She owned her home, yes, but she worked up until a few years ago. She volunteered at the library, for Christ’s sake! She only took a vacation once a
year, if that. She couldn’t have been worth three and a half million dollars.”

  Tamara shrugged. “Well, she didn’t really have it all squandered away somewhere. That includes the value of her art and artifacts as well. And a policy she took out when you were seventeen. Not all of it’s yours, but most.”

  “Who else is named?”

  Tamara frowned. “Padraig O’Hannagan.”

  Jil nodded. “That makes sense. They were old friends.”

  “But you still get a pretty large portion of that, so…”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Tamara held her gaze, something flickering behind her eyes—surprise? Indignation that Jil was questioning her?

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with that kind of money?”

  Tamara tilted her head. “Well, you could consider that island in the Caribbean.”

  Jil shot her a withering look. She knew Elise had collected a lot of valuable things, but God almighty.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just going to need a minute here.”

  Jil bolted out of the lawyer’s office, looking for a staircase to the roof. She found it and burst through the door onto the green terrace, or what would be a green terrace if it wasn’t the middle of fucking winter. A brick, dusted lightly with snow, seemed to reside against the wall for the specific purpose of keeping the heavy fire door propped open, so she used it to keep the door slightly ajar.

  Though maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to get locked out here for a few hours.

  She pulled her coat around herself a little tighter. The wind up here ripped through her scarf and set her hair streaming behind her. She reached into the front breast pocket and extracted a package of Elise’s vanilla honey cigars—which she only smoked socially, and even then, only when she’d had several glasses of full-bodied red wine.

  Jil took out the intricate silver lighter Elise always kept with the cigars and flicked it until a flame roared. She inhaled the lit cigar, the smoke stinging her eyes until she turned around. Then her eyes continued to prick from the familiar smell rather than the scented smoke.

  How could Elise keep such a secret from her? Whatever would she do with such a large sum of money? She couldn’t possibly keep it. It didn’t belong to her. How could it even have belonged to Elise?