Chapter 29
After Megan left, Charlie said, "As long as it looks like you guys are wrapping up for today, why don't you give me anything interesting you have for me? I'll input it and hopefully have some results tomorrow morning. Colby? You have anything?"
Data for the Whiz Kid!" Colby grinned and handed Charlie a stack of folders. "The Boston FBI interviewed these people, and I think they're people I'd like to have a talk with."
"Tingling Spidey Sense?" Charlie said as he opened the top folder.
"I'd prefer to think of it as my professionally trained intuition," Colby said with a shrug. "But Spidey Sense works for me, too."
David handed Charlie a stack, "These are interesting too. But this one," he held up a single folder, "really deserves a second look. She's a Boston art historian with underworld connections."
Farnsworth's head snapped up, and I could swear all the blood rushed out of his face. "What's her name? It might be someone I know."
"Ruth Ann Seeloff," David said without looking at the folder.
Farnsworth blinked, then shook his head. "No. Sorry. Never heard of her. There are a lot of art historians in Boston, and I don't pretend to even know half of them. She could have moved, gotten married, retired, died..."
David looked amused. "It's okay. I didn't expect her to be anybody you knew. Charlie's program will find out who she's connected to, if anybody. And I'll do a background check to make sure she's still among the living."
"Okay," Charlie said, "I'll input her first. Should be interesting. How about you, Jason? Did you find any interesting suspects for me?"
"Just these three. Of course, I'm not a professional at this, so I may have missed something."
"That's okay," Charlie said, taking the folders. "At this point I'm taking anything I can get. We'll let the algorithm sort 'em out. Emma? You have anything?"
"Well, Don's had me looking at the drug bust, and not the Gardner stuff. Here's the file on that Antonio Cruz kid, along with the information my office faxed me. He is the same guy who showed up in Boston and met with the mobster. My office also sent me information on the mobster. I figured you'd need it for your algorithm."
"Thanks, Emma. This is great. Other than the painting, this is our only real connection between the drug case and the Gardner," Charlie put her folder on the top of his stack.
Ben and I had just given him the files we had selected when Don and Megan returned. Don looked tired, but he smiled as he spoke, "Thank you all for coming in today. I think we've made a big dent in all this..." he waved at the boxes of files ... "stuff. I don't want you wasting your whole Sunday in here, especially since Megan tells me I'm driving you too hard. I'm going to stay for a little while, and you're welcome to stay..." he paused as Megan shot him a warning glance, "No you're not. I want you all to leave now."
"Don," Charlie said, holding up his stack of folders. "I'm going back to my office to enter this information. Okay if I take the folders with me?"
"Sure. Just don't lose them." Don grinned. "Hey, I've seen your office! If it's okay with Megan, why don't we get back together tomorrow sometime. Your classes don't start until Wednesday, right?"
"Sounds good to me," Charlie said, "Do you mind meeting in my office? I have meetings on and off all day, starting at ten. It'll be hard for me to leave campus."
"How about we meet you in your office at nine? Or would eight be better?"
"Eight?" Charlie shook his curly head. "No way. Nine will be a struggle. I'll probably be up until four in the morning entering this stuff. Hey, boss," Charlie added, grinning slyly, "We get double time for nights and Sundays, right?"
Don laughed. "Thanks, buddy. I needed a good laugh today. You professors read your contracts. The rest of us are on salary, so forget about it. Besides, you're all taxpayers. If you make too much, your taxes will just go up."
Colby shook his head, "I never thought about it that way, Don. No wonder I never seem to get ahead."
When Ben and I reached the car, I finally asked him, "What did you and Don talk about?"
"Farnsworth," he said. "He wanted to know if I'd come up with anything implicating Farnsworth in this mess."
"And had you?"
"Not really. Though his reaction to the name of that Boston art historian was odd, to say the least."
"It was. He obviously had heard of her. I wonder if the agents will push to find out what he knows."
"I hope so. I don't like him very much," I added.
"Really?" Ben said, raising his eyebrows. "I didn't notice."
"You know, when we were walking back from lunch, he was on the phone telling someone about the Manet."
"You don't think he was bold enough to leak the information while we were all standing there?" Ben asked.
I laughed. "Of course, you're right. I don't think even Farnsworth would have that much nerve. But we know it's not us, and I can't picture anyone on Don's team or Emma doing it. They're too professional, and it wouldn't benefit them."
"I'll keep checking when we get home. Maybe I can turn something up."
"And you should Google Ruth Ann Seeloff, too. Maybe we'll find one of Charlie's connections."
"He is amazing, isn't he? He sees everything in terms of maths, and it seems to work for him. I've tried to follow his train of thought, but I just don't see what he sees," Ben said, shaking his head.
"And, you know, he comes up with stuff using his numbers that I could see Don and the other agents coming up from their training."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, his idea of checking the connections between the people involved with the different crimes. It seems like that is a basic part of investigating a crime. But he sees it as numbers, where the mathematically challenged among us would see it as something that would just make sense. I mean, if you're investigating two crimes, it makes sense to see if they're connected."
"Right, but he actually comes up with a way to quantify the information so he can plug it into the computer. I wonder why people's brains work the way they do."
I laughed. "I don't know. But I have a feeling that if anyone can solve the Gardner theft, it will be this group of people. Wouldn't that be amazing?"
"It would, but let's not get our hopes up, love. There's a lot of work to be done first."
We stopped at the sushi bar around the corner from our apartment and picked up sushi and miso soup to go. Ben had introduced me to sushi a couple of years ago, and I've loved it since then. I'm not quite as adventurous as Ben is, but give me a good California roll, a couple of crabmeat nijiri, and I'm good to go.
After we had set up our laptops on the dining room table, brewed a pot of tea, and gotten out plates, spoons and chopsticks, we were ready to get back to work. I googled Ruth Ann Seeloff, and found a few news articles about her, but the most recent was from 1998. That article listed her age as 62, and no obituaries popped up, so I assumed she had retired. I told Ben what I'd found, and he suggested I google "Seeloff" and "Boston" to see if I could find anything else. What I found amazed me. "Ben, look at this." I turned my computer so he could see the screen.
"The Museum of Fine Arts? In Boston? Isn't that where Farnsworth works?"
"Yep. This is the staff directory. Farnsworth is the curator of the American art collection, and one of his employees is Anna Seeloff Singleton. No wonder he looked strange when David mentioned Ruth Ann Seeloff's name."
"We should call Don," Ben said. "This could be the source of the leak." He went to one of the bookshelves and pulled out the phone book. "I'll just try the FBI office, unless you have his number."
"No, I don't. He might still be there."
Ben called, and learned that Don and the rest of his team had left. He left a voice mail telling Don what we had discovered, and promised to have more information when we met at Charlie's office.
Meanwhile, I was printing what we had found, and was doing further searches on Anna Singleton. None of the articles I found mentioned Ruth Ann Seeloff, but then again, if I were related to someone with mob connections, I wouldn't put that in my resume either.
At nine o'clock we turned on the TV to watch "Mystery!" on PBS. They were showing an "Inspector Morse" episode. Not only were the mysteries very good, but they also took place in Oxford, and we both enjoyed watching the familiar landmarks of Ben's alma mater. Nothing like drinking tea, watching Inspector Morse and finding clues to solve our very own mystery.
