“Exactly. It’s an empty space in a room otherwise stuffed with furniture. What goes there?”
“The secretary,” Holly said.
“It’s the right size and the right place in the room for it,” Barton said. “It’s where I’d put it.”
Then, from the back of the house, they heard a noise.
“Back door,” Holly said.
They froze in their tracks, then a few seconds later tiny lights began to flash around the corners of the ceiling, and a steady beeping, every second, started. They heard the back door slam.
“The security system is booting up,” Holly said. “We’ve got maybe thirty seconds to get out of the house. Let’s go!!”
She ran out of the study, through the living room and into the dining room. More tiny lights were flashing. “Cameras and motion detectors,” she said. “Hurry!”
They made it to the mudroom and Holly tried the back door. Locked. She reached into her tool kit and began fiddling with the door.
“The thirty seconds has to be up,” Stone said.
“If we’re lucky, it’s set for sixty instead,” Holly replied.
The door came open, they all stepped outside and Holly closed the door behind them. “Run!” she said.
The three of them sprinted back along the path they had come, and as they ducked behind the stone wall, spotlights came on around the eaves of the house, and there were three short sharp blasts from a loud horn.
They huddled behind the wall, panting.
“That noise means the system is now fully armed,” Holly said. “Another second and the exterior motion detectors would have caught us.”
“Why didn’t you disarm the system as soon as we were inside?” Stone asked, panting.
“How could I know the caretaker is a fast eater?” she replied.
“Anyway, it’s lucky I didn’t, or he would have found the system inop and called the cops.”
“Well,” Barton said, “that’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
“Stone, lead the way to the car,” Holly said, handing him a flashlight. “And don’t use that any more than you have to.”
Half an hour later they were back on the main highway, headed for Barton’s house.
“He doesn’t have the secretary,” Barton said. “It’s not in the house.”
“Maybe it’s upstairs in a bedroom,” Stone said.
“No, he’d never put it there; he’d want it on display, for all to see.”
“Well,” Holly said, “he’s made a space for it. My guess is it’ll be here as soon as the painting’s done.”
“It could still be in New York,” Stone said.
“Probably is,” Barton agreed. “There’s nowhere around here he could store it without causing comment.”
“Barton,” Stone said, “we could just wait for his paint to dry, wait for him to move it up here, then report it stolen, get a search warrant and go get the thing.”
“No,” Barton said. “If the police get into this and it makes the press – and it will – then everything will be ruined.”
Stone wondered what he meant by everything.