Free The Paris Caper by Nina Bruhns Page A

Pierre read. “ I’m thinking San Tropez. After the files are
returned in good order. Hugs, Nicole .” He looked up. “O la la. I’ve hit the
jackpot.”
    “It’s a scam,” Jean-Marc
assured him. “She just wants her damn files back.”
    Pierre chuckled. “Then
she shall have them. And the sooner the better, in my view. Let’s get to it,”
he said, and grabbed the top container, which happened to be Saville’s box of
files on le Revenant .
    After going over the two
dozen or so robberies attributed with fair certainty to the Ghost, they made a
list of the things those cases told them about the thief. The list was topped
by the time of month the thefts had been committed.
    “I’ll bet he’s paying his
mortgage with the proceeds,” Pierre declared when Jean-Marc pointed out that
nearly all of the thefts had occurred within the week before the first of the
month.
    “Or his rent,” Jean-Marc
agreed.
    “Pretty high for the
suburbs,” Pierre said, studying the figures. “About right for a fancy place
downtown, though.”
    “Or, he’s living modestly
but paying all his bills with his robbery proceeds, and just gets it over with
all at once, with one heist.”
    “Makes sense.”
    “What would either of
those options tell us?”
    “That he’s lazy?”
    Jean-Marc picked up the
neat list of columned statistics he’d written, and pondered the bigger picture:
motive. “Or that he’s not doing it for the thrill. If he’s waiting until the
last minute, I’d say stealing is not a lifestyle for him, but a necessity. And
not one he particularly enjoys.”
    Pierre nodded. “I see
what you mean. Thieving obviously doesn’t scare him, but it doesn’t turn him
on, either, or he’d be doing it a lot more.”
    “And yet, he’s very good
at it. So why doesn’t he go for bigger things? Knock over a store, rather than
take one bracelet or necklace at a time? Pay the bills for a whole year in one
fell swoop?”
    “Because he’s smart,”
Pierre said, with a shade of respect. “Staying small-time kept him low-profile
and low-priority with the police for a long time.”
    “Exactly,” Jean-Marc
said, tapping his pencil on the list. “Very smart.” He got the distinct feeling
they’d all been underestimating this guy. “Which makes me wonder...”
    “What’s that?”
    “If he’s been working in
other countries besides France. Maybe he only steals during the last week of
the month here because he’s working the other weeks in Germany, or Belgium, or
Spain.”
    Pierre’s eyes widened. “ Mon
dieu .” He sat up straight. “You mean like that serial killer who was murdering
women for years all along the E50. Different months for different countries.”
    “Well, not quite that
grim, but yes, like that.” Jean-Marc lifted his phone. “Think I’ll put in a few
calls and check it out.”
    By ten o’clock he’d
gotten promises from his contacts in the Dutch, Spanish, German, Belgian and
Swiss authorities to look into things and call him back.
    By lunchtime Jean-Marc
had made his next major discovery.
    “It’s not just jewelry.
He’s stealing other things, too.”
    Pierre looked up from his
fourth box of files and frowned. “How do you figure?”
    “There aren’t many, but—”
Jean-Marc held up several pages of notes he’d made on unsolved cases from the
past two years “—these robberies fit his pattern to a T.”
    “And they’re not
jewelry?”
    Jean-Marc shook his head.
“Paintings and silver. Plus...” He pointed to their master list of le
Revenant ’s known robberies. “The other thefts took place in months when his
jewelry takes were lower than normal.”
    Pierre leaned back in his
chair and whistled. “Paintings and silver. A lot harder to conceal than
jewelry. Sounds like Plan B.”
    “He’s stuck to small
pieces, and he cut the paintings out of the frames. Even so, they’re harder to
get away with and probably tougher to fence than jewelry. So yeah. Plan B. Find
anything like