The Codex Read Free

suit.
    Fenton gave them another feral twitch of his lips.
    Barnaby took a moment to look them over as potential suspects. The hippie in hemp had an honest, open face; maybe not the brightest bulb in the store but no robber. The one in cowboy boots had real horseshit on the boots, Barnaby noted with respect. And then there was the guy in the suit, who looked like he was from
New York
. As far as Hutch Barnaby was concerned anyone from
New York
was a potential murderer. Even the grandmothers. He scanned them again: Three more different brothers could not be imagined. Odd how that could happen in a single family.
    “This is a crime scene, so I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave the premises. Go out through the gate and go stand under a tree or something and wait for me. I’ll be out in about twenty minutes to talk to you. Okay? Please don’t wander around, don’t touch anything, and don’t talk to each other about the crime or what you’ve observed.”
    He turned, and then as an afterthought turned back. “The whole collection is missing?”
    “That’s what I said on the phone,” said the suit.
    “How much—ballpark—was it worth?”
    “About five hundred million.”
    Barnaby touched the rim of his hat and glanced at Fenton. The look of naked pleasure on Fenton’s face was enough to scare a pimp.
    As Barnaby walked toward the house he considered that he had better be careful—there was going to be a lot of second-guessing on this one. The Feds, Interpol, God knows who else would be involved. He figured a quick look around before the crime-lab people arrived would be in order. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and gazed at the house. He wondered if the collection had been insured. That would bear some looking into. If so, maybe Maxwell Broadbent wasn’t quite so dead after all. Maybe Maxwell Broadbent was sipping margaritas with some piece of ass on a beach in Phuket.
    “I wonder if Broadbent was insured?” asked Fenton.
    Hutch grinned at his partner, then looked back at the place. He looked at the broken window, the confusion of footsteps on the gravel, the trampled shrubbery. The fresh tracks were the sons’, but there were a lot of older traces here as well. He could see where the moving van had parked, where it had laboriously backed around. It looked as if a week or two had passed since the robbery.
    The important thing was to find the body—if there was one. He stepped inside the house. He looked around at the packing tape, bubble wrap, nails, discarded pieces of wood. There was sawdust on the rug and faint depressions. They had actually set up a table saw. It had been an exceptionally competent piece of work. Noisy, too. These people not only knew what they were doing, but they had taken the time to do it right. He sniffed the air. No sweet-and-sour-pork smell of a stiff.
    Inside, the robbery felt just as old as it did outside. A week, maybe even two. He bent down and sniffed the end of a cut piece of lumber lying on the floor. It lacked that just-cut fresh-wood smell. He picked up a piece of grass that had been tracked into the house and crumbled it between his fingers—dry. Clots of mud tracked in by a lugged boot were also thoroughly dry. Barnaby thought back: Last rainfall was two weeks ago today. That’s when it had happened; within twenty-four hours of the rain, when the ground was still muddy.
    He wandered down the huge vaulted central hall. There were pedestals with bronze labels where statues had once stood. There were faint rectangles with hooks on the plastered walls where paintings had once been. There were straw rings and iron stands where antique pots had once sat, and empty shelves with dust holes where treasures had once stood. There were dark slots on the bookshelves where books had been removed.
    He reached the bedroom door and looked at the parade of dirty footprints coming and going. More dried mud. Christ, there must’ve been half a dozen of them. This was a big