The Stolen Kiss (2 page)

Dean Jarvis cut in. “Dr. Morrison and I did. After dinner Geoff—Dr. Morrison, that is—offered to give me a preview of the show. We discovered the burglary and called the police.”

“I see,” Nancy said thoughtfully. “But, Debbie, didn't you hear anything? You were in the museum.”

“No. Nothing,” Debbie insisted. “I told Sergeant Weinberg that.”

Skirting the shards of glass, Nancy walked back under the skylight. She ran her fingers up and down the rope. “George, you've done rock climbing. Isn't this a climber's rope?”

George nodded, then fingered the rope gently. “A new one. You can see the tracks the jumars made—the gadgets you use when you climb up the rope. Otherwise the rope's barely been used.”

Nancy studied the little marks closely and turned to George again. “Would it take an experienced climber to manage this height?”

“To make the climb
fast?
You bet.”

“My frat brother Bryan is an experienced climber,” Ned offered. “He may be able to give you some leads, Nancy.” Suddenly Ned became worried. Nancy knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Where is Bryan?” she asked quietly.

Dr. Morrison gasped. “Bryan? The security guard. He's gone!”

“We'd better find him,” Nancy said urgently. “He could be hurt.”

Sergeant Weinberg and his partner set off to search the interior of the museum. Nancy, George, and Ned headed outside. Nancy and Ned went in opposite directions on the stone path that snaked through the museum gardens, while George circled the building.

The moon was full and high in the sky, so Nancy could see quite clearly. As she scoured the well-tended flower beds, she found no sign of the missing guard. She met Ned by the rosebushes at the far end of the garden. “Not a thing, Nan,” Ned declared.

Just then a scream pierced the night.

Ned grabbed Nancy's arm. “It's George!” Nancy cried.

“Nancy! Ned! Help me!”

N
ANCY AND
N
ED RACED
toward the sound of the screaming. “She's behind the museum!” Ned shouted over his shoulder.

A tall young man had George pinned against the building, trying to wrestle her to the ground.

“Let her go!” Nancy yelled.

“Bryan!” Ned shouted. “Leave her alone. She's a friend, George Fayne.”

The young man peered at Ned but didn't let George go right away. “Ned?” He squinted into the shadows. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for
you,
Barbour!”

Bryan finally loosened his grip on George and stepped out of the shadows. He was breathing hard from the struggle, but he was muscular and very fit. Under other circumstances Nancy would have found him very handsome.

George bent forward and placed her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath. Nancy stared daggers at Bryan Barbour. He caught Nancy's eye and quickly shifted his gaze back to Ned.

When George straightened up, she glared at Bryan. “Don't bother to apologize.”

Bryan smoothed back his ponytail and fingered the small gold earring he wore in his left ear. His hand was shaking, and Nancy noticed that one of his fingers was freshly cut. “Sorry I freaked out that way—I really could have hurt you.” He sounded confused and upset. “But what were you doing creeping around outside the museum storeroom?”

“I saw an open window into the room and thought it might have something to do with the way the thief got out. So I tried scaling the wall as the thief had done to get in.”

Nancy looked above George's head. Decorative bricks poked out from the concrete. Convenient hand- and footholds for George—or the burglar.

“Thief?” Bryan gaped at George. “What thief?”

“Someone broke into the museum,” Ned told him.

Bryan suddenly slumped back against the wall. “So
that's
what happened.”

Before he could say more, a flashlight beam bobbed around the corner. At that very moment someone inside the museum flicked on the back floodlights, the sudden glare blinding them all.

“What's happening back here?” Sergeant Weinberg's voice preceded him around the corner.

“Everything's fine!” Nancy yelled quickly as the wiry officer came into view, his hand on the gun holstered at his side.

Behind the sergeant the other officer led the group from inside the museum: Debbie, Dean Jarvis, and a scowling Dr. Morrison.

“Barbour!” Dr. Morrison shouted. “Where have you been? We were robbed and
you
weren't around to call in the alarm.”

“It wasn't my fault,” Bryan said.

Sergeant Weinberg spoke quietly. “Then perhaps you can explain where you've been since you last checked in with the security company.”

“Locked in a shed.” Bryan motioned toward the back of the garden. “I was on my rounds when I noticed the shed door was open. I went in to check it out. Next thing I knew someone had pulled the door closed behind me and locked it.”

“It has a padlock, which needs a key,” added Dr. Morrison ruefully. “The thief probably knew that.”

“Right.” Bryan looked relieved that the curator backed up his story.

“How'd you get out?” Ned inquired. Nancy, her arm around Ned's shoulder, listened to Bryan's answer.

“With this—” Bryan produced a small Swiss army knife from his pocket. “I pried off the door hinges, which luckily were on the inside. I didn't bother to yell. I figured no one would hear me—except whoever had locked me in.” He gave a nervous laugh.

“Which shed?” Nancy asked.

Bryan led them to a shabby wooden structure beyond and half-hidden by the garden. The door was fastened on one side with a metal latch but had been pried off on the other side. Bryan's story checked out. Nancy asked Sergeant Weinberg, “May I go in?”

“Be my guest,” he said. “Everyone else stay on the path. I'm going to check for footprints. Though with the dry weather we've had this past week, I doubt we'll find any. Andy,” he said to his partner, “go get the fingerprint kit from the car. Let's dust the shed for prints.”

“You'll find mine.” Bryan sounded nervous again. Nancy motioned Ned to stay outside. She stepped through the doorway, careful not to touch anything. Except for a few plastic bags of fertilizer, the shed was empty.

“Is the door usually locked?” she asked, rejoining the others.

“Yes,” Dr. Morrison answered for Bryan. “Even though there's nothing valuable inside, we don't want students hanging out on museum property.”

“The thief probably knew Bryan's routine,” said Nancy. “And he—or she—had cased out the museum facilities like the shed.”

“Considering the thief made off with the most valuable painting in the collection, I'd say this was the work of a pro,” Dr. Morrison added.

Bryan's eyes went wide. “You mean Jared's
First Kiss
? They stole that?” Bryan looked at Debbie for confirmation.

Nancy followed his glance. Debbie was hovering near the wall of the storeroom. She nodded bleakly. “The one I showed you yesterday after hanging the show.”

“Bryan, how do you get past the security system?” Nancy inquired.

“With this.” Bryan fished a little plastic card out of his pocket. “It deactivates the system.”

“The system was off,” Dean Jarvis explained to Bryan.

“Not when I made my last rounds,” Bryan said firmly. “The security company will vouch for that. Whoever turned off the alarm and opened that window did it after I was locked in the shed.”

Dr. Morrison broke in. “When you were in the storage room checking the inventory, Debbie, did you open the window?”

Debbie was so pale Nancy was sure she would faint. “I don't remember—really.”

“We'll check the storeroom for prints, too,” said the sergeant, taking the fingerprint kit from his partner and starting for the shed.

“Why bother with the storeroom window?” asked George. “Isn't it too small to get a painting through?”

“The painting's small, too.” Debbie sounded weak. “It's only nine by twelve inches.”

So they couldn't rule out escape through the storeroom, Nancy realized. That meant Debbie really could have been involved. The window was tiny, but so was Debbie. Though in that suit she could scarcely scale a wall to the skylight. She could have handed the painting to someone outside, though. Bryan? But why bother with breaking the skylight and going through windows, if Debbie could get in and out of the museum by turning off the security system?

“If you don't need me,” Dr. Morrison said, “I should put in a call to the insurance company.”

“I'll come with you, Geoff,” Dean Jarvis said. “Debbie, I want to speak with you inside.” Dr. Morrison's tone was curt.

“Things don't look too good for her,” murmured George, so only Nancy could hear. Nancy nodded. George had worked with Nancy on enough cases to know that everyone was a suspect until the real culprit was found. So far the evidence was strongly pointing to Debbie—with or without an accomplice.

Nancy tried to organize her thoughts. “The roof,” she said out loud. “Sergeant Weinberg, okay if we check out the roof?”

“Sure, Nancy. Just keep me posted.”

Nancy motioned Bryan to join their search of the roof. “You know the building, so you might spot something that we'd miss.”

A moment later they had ascended the narrow staircase leading from the back hall of the museum to the emergency exit on the roof.

The tarred flat roof was littered with branches, twigs, and other debris. Nancy stooped down to inspect the broken skylight. Glass shards jutted out from the edge of the frame, the points glittering in the moonlight. Bryan aimed his flashlight on the skylight. “Don't touch anything,” Nancy warned. “There might be prints, and that glass looks dangerous.”

Lying beside the window were some climbing gear and a hammer. Using a tissue, Nancy gingerly picked up the hammer, careful not to smudge any potential prints. George identified it as a climbing hammer, used to scale rock walls.

Nancy reached down through the skylight with it and was just able to snare the rope. She lifted it up and into the beam of their flashlight.

As the climbing line came into view, Bryan caught his breath. Nancy turned around. Bryan looked shocked—but only for a moment.

“Is something wrong?” Nancy asked.

“No, nothing. It's just that it's a new rope,” Bryan said casually. “I'm surprised someone left it and the other stuff behind.”

“Maybe Dean Jarvis and Dr. Morrison arrived just as the thief was making his getaway. He'd have to leave the gear then,” George suggested. “It's pretty expensive to replace, though.”

Nancy rested the rope on the edge of the skylight and shifted back on her heels. She noticed a small scrap of paper she hadn't seen before. It was a ticket stub from a campus concert given by the rock group EC, Environmental Confusion, the Friday night before.

“Ned,” she began thoughtfully, “have you had any very windy days since Friday?”

Ned laughed. “No way. It's been dead calm.” She showed Ned the ticket stub. “How would this blow up on the roof with no wind?” she asked.

“Maybe the thief dropped the ticket,” George suggested.

“Just what I'm thinking.” Then she added cautiously, “Or a worker who had reason to be on the roof.”

“Still, it's something,” Ned said.

“We'd better tell the sergeant what we found. He'll bag the evidence and dust for prints later. Actually we've gotten some pretty good leads,” Nancy said. “The ticket stub, the climbing apparatus, the new rope.”

When the group returned to the entrance hall, they found Dr. Morrison confronting Debbie, whose face had gone from pale to beet red. “I can't believe you're firing me. It's not fair. I didn't steal the painting.”

“That's not the point. You were working late without permission. You forgot to reset the alarm. The thieves probably got in from the roof, not the storeroom, but you did leave that storeroom window open. Until this is cleared up I don't want you in this museum. So get your things and leave now, please.”

Debbie glared up at him, then turned and stormed down the hall to her office.

Nancy felt sorry for the girl.

Sergeant Weinberg came up to Bryan and asked him to retrace the route of his security rounds. Before Bryan left he asked Ned to wait for Debbie and walk her back to the Theta Pi house. “She doesn't have a car here and it's pretty late.”

“No problem,” said Ned.

Soon Debbie returned carrying a cardboard box. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, but she held her head high as she marched past Dr. Morrison. The foursome walked out of the museum and headed for Greek Row.

They had just reached the Theta Pi house when a beat-up green sedan screeched up the drive, heading for the sorority parking area.