Another Day, Another Dali (Serena Jones Mysteries Book #2) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Orchard Sandra

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167 pages

English

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Description

A Fast-Paced, Keep-You-Guessing Whodunit with a Dash of RomanceWhen a valuable Salvador Dali painting belonging to her grandmother's friend is mysteriously replaced by a forgery, FBI Special Agent Serena Jones is called in to investigate. Serena hopes finding the thief will also mean finally measuring up to Nana's expectations. But when the evidence points to members of the owner's own household, it becomes increasingly clear that Serena won't be winning any popularity contests.The Dali isn't the only painting that's fallen prey to the forgery-replacing thief, raising the specter of a sophisticated theft ring--one with links to dirty cops, an aspiring young artist, and the unsolved murder of Serena's grandfather.With plenty of edge-of-your-seat moments, Another Day, Another Dali gives the plucky Serena Jones--and readers--a new high-stakes case to crack.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	18 octobre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493405220
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0230€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Sandra J. van den Bogerd
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0522-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Dedication
To Jed— for inspiring your namesake character and making me smile when I’m stuck
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
A Note from the Author
Sneak Peek of the Next Book
About the Author
Books by Sandra Orchard
Back Ads
Back Cover
1
I tore my gaze from the porch that wrapped around the drug dealer’s house and cringed at the number on my phone’s call display.
Mom said there’d be days like this.
Tanner, still decked out in his SWAT gear, peered over my shoulder as the phone vibrated insistently in my hand. “Good thing you’re a field-hardened FBI agent, so you don’t let little old ladies scare the pants off you.”
I sent him a silencing glare. Ignoring his grin, I turned away from the rest of the team traipsing in and out of the building, and clicked Connect. “Hi, Nana,” I said, injecting fake cheerfulness into my voice. “What’s up?”
“I need you to come see me.”
“You nee—are you okay?” My heart stuttered. If anything happened to Nana . . .
“Of course I’m okay. Stop stammering, girl.”
Tanner, still hovering close enough to hear her strident tones, snickered.
I placed a muffling hand over the phone.
“Excuse me, sir ,” I said sweetly. “Don’t you have a forgery to Bubble-Wrap?”
“Forgery?” His stunned look was so comical I forgave myself for rushing to a verdict before my usual careful perusal. Not that I was in any serious doubt about this particular painting.
“Really?” he said, broad shoulders slumping. When I arrived on scene, he boasted they’d turned up art so hot it was still smoking.
“Yup. Fake.” I, too, felt a pang of genuine regret that the “Renoir” hanging in the drug dealer’s den wasn’t the one on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
But I’d left Nana hanging.
Straightening my shoulders, I put the phone back to my ear. “Sorry, Nana. Um, I have to be at the youth drop-in center by seven to teach the art class, so . . .” I glanced at my watch and cast about for a workable solution, but there just wasn’t enough time. “I’m afraid—”
“Never mind,” she interrupted. “Obviously, you’re at work.” Where you shouldn’t be taking personal calls , her tone implied. “Call me when you get home.”
“Okay,” I said to dead air.
Annoyed at myself for the guilty feeling I couldn’t stop from churning my stomach, I turned to study the front of the house once more. Something was niggling at my brain.
“Um . . . Tanner,” I said, hesitating.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something . . .” I squinted against the dropping September sun, mentally reviewing the interior.
He grinned. “Stop stammering, girl. Spit it out.”
“Ha, ha.” Wait . . . “Oh, that’s got to be it!” I stuffed my phone in my pocket and headed back inside.
Tanner followed me. “What’s it ?”
I stopped at the door to the den and glanced at the window three feet from the side wall.
“Serena? What’s going on?” Tanner pressed, trailing me to the next doorway, this one into a bedroom.
“The window is three feet from the wall, just like in the other room.”
“So?”
“Where’s the attic hatch?”
“Mason checked the attic.”
“Humor me.”
“Don’t I always?” Tanner said. “I’m a funny guy.”
“Uh-huh.” He actually had the quickest wit of any guy I knew, even if he did run to cheesy puns sometimes.
Not that I’d admit that to him.
“Over here.” He steered me toward a stepladder set up near the back door. “But there’s nothing up there except insulation and mice.”
“Mice, huh? Are you trying to scare me out of looking?” I started climbing, and Tanner moved in to hold the ladder steady.
I pushed open the hatch and stuck my head into the attic.
“See?” Tanner said.
“Yes, I do.” I stepped down a couple of ladder rungs and flashed him a grin. “A false wall six to eight feet in from the back of the house.”
Tanner squeezed past me and beamed his flashlight around the vacant space. “Unbelievable. Mason should’ve caught that.”
“The wall’s covered in cobwebs and dust. It wouldn’t have registered unless you were looking for it.”
Tanner muttered something I couldn’t make out, but having been on the receiving end of his displeasure during my FBI training—granted, always earned—I didn’t envy poor Mason.
Tanner hoisted himself into the attic, then balance-beamed his way across a joist to the wall and examined every inch of it. “I don’t see any way to access what’s behind it.” He shone the light over the attic’s insulation-covered floor and then the shoe impressions he’d left in the dust on the joist. “It doesn’t look like anyone else has been up here recently. There must be another ceiling access panel.” He climbed back down, eyeing me with interest. “How’d you know to look for a secret room?”
I shrugged evasively.
Tanner followed me back to the room where the fake Renoir had been found and swept his flashlight beam over every inch of the ceiling. “There’s no other way up there that I can see.”
I maneuvered around the agent photographing evidence. The wall between this room and the next was decorated in wood panels and elaborate moldings that looked uncomfortably familiar. I ran my fingers along the moldings.
Tanner studied me. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a secret panel.”
“Uh-huh. And you seem to know exactly what you’re doing here, Nancy Drew, because . . . ?”
I expelled a breath. “There was one at my grandfather’s house, okay?”
“Your grandfather? The one who was murdered?”
“Yes.” I blew away a strand of long, blond hair that had escaped my ponytail. “Maybe you could be helpful instead of giving me the third degree?”
“Sorry.” Tanner beamed his flashlight at the section of paneling I was running my hands over.
My breath caught as my fingertips made contact with the pressure sensor I’d been seeking. “Tanner, I’ve found—”
“Wait!”
Primed to open it, I tossed a frown over my shoulder. “Are you really going to pull the SWAT-clears-every-room-first rule on this one?”
“No, I thought I’d rock-paper-scissors you for the privilege.” He motioned me to get out of his way.
My finger still on the sensor, I sidestepped two feet so he’d have a clear view as I pulled back the panel. “You ready? I’ll slide it open and you can call the all-clear.” I slid it three-quarters of an inch and froze. “Uh-oh.”
Tanner cursed. “Please tell me you’re messing with me.”
I gulped. “You don’t hear that ticking?”
He crouched down and shone his flashlight through the gap I’d opened. “Blast, Serena, don’t move a muscle.”
Yeah, got that.
“Blast!”
“Tanner, could you stop using that word ?”
“Everybody out!” He shooed away the agents conducting the search. “We’ve got a bomb, people. Move it. Send Douglas in here. And call in the rest of the bomb squad. Now!” Tanner returned to my side. “You okay?”
Sweat slid down my temple and into my eye. My arm was trembling from the strain of trying to hold the panel still. “Do I look like I’m okay?” I said through gritted teeth.
Tanner squatted at my side once more and squinted at the gap. “The panel’s been spring-loaded.” He angled his flashlight in another direction. “And we’re looking at enough C-4 to level the house if you make a wrong move.” An expletive slipped out. “Tell me more about the setup at your grandfather’s house.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, then opened them again and looked Tanner in the eye without moving my head. “There was a secret staircase behind a panel exactly like this one. He figured it was built to aid the Underground Railroad.”
“You mean like the caves under the cobblestone streets at Laclede’s Landing?”
“Kind of, but his led to the attic, not a tunnel.” I closed off the memories before they could—
“Hey,” Tanner said softly, giving me the little half smile that crinkled the laugh lines around his eyes. “It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“I know.” He’d never let me down.
I concentrated on his six feet four inches of solid muscle reassuringly standing between me and the opening, and an idea made its way to my brain. “If you can find something the same width as my two fingers, I think there’s enough back pressure on the panel to hold it in place.”
Tanner shook his head. “If you’re wrong, we’d have less than two seconds to clear that window.”
I squinted at the small slider.
“It’s eight feet away. And painted shut. Not an option, Jones.”
“What about tacky putty? That’ll stay put.”
Tanner looked at the gap and nodded. “That could work.” He shoved a couple of squares of chewing gum into his mouth.
“No, it can’t,” Special Agent Spencer Douglas of the St. Louis Division’s bomb squad said, entering the room. “The spring pressure could make the panel squish it like a raisin. Give me a chance to see what we’ve got before you try any heroics.”
I gulped. Okay, this was worse than I thought. Much worse.
“How are you going to access the bomb if she can’t move?” Tanner demanded.
“Check the next room for another access panel,” I said. I cleared my throat, embarrassed by the quaver in my voice.
“Did your grandfather’s place have a second one?” Tanner asked.
“Yes.”
Tanner shot