Author's Note: Happy New Year to everyone! I know it has been a few 'days' since I've posted, when I was on such a roll, but the holidays crept in and I've been busy ever since. So, I finally got a chance to sit and relax; I wanted to use the time to finish up this previously started chapter. I love some of the post season finale fics that are coming out, that episode caused me stress! I just don't have a good feeling about the outcome of that one….so hopefully moving this story along will bring a lighter possibility for our two lovely ladies. Enjoy!
Chapter 18
Jane walked at a brisk pace from her parking spot to the front entrance of the Boston PD headquarters. She noted that the usual sidewalk congestion was missing; it was too early for others to be heading into work. Jane entered the station and smiled at the guard who stood post at the entrance.
"Another early body, Detective?" Jane liked Officer Reynolds; even after he refused to let her into the station when she returned after shooting herself, not yet cleared for duty.
"If it were only that easy." Jane scanned her badge and made quick work of summoning the elevator. She hit the button once and when the elevator hadn't instantly appeared, she hit it several times in a row hoping it would speed the process along.
"I actually don't think it comes any quicker if you pretend more people are standing there pushing the button." Jane refused to turn around and acknowledge the overly helpful Officer Reynolds.
The sound of the elevator's bell announcing its arrival seemed to echo through the silence caused by the absence of the usual morning bustle at the station. Jane smiled smugly as she stepped into the elevator and turned to face Reynolds. She let out an exasperated breath as the doors came to a close.
What the hell does he know?
Jane stepped off the elevator on the Homicide floor and walked directly to her desk. She unlocked her bottom drawer and retrieved the few files she had studied the night before, frustrated that they seemed to all be dead-ends.
"Why the random notes?" Jane studied various pieces of paper that were shoved into a manila folder that didn't seem to belong with any of the other files.
Jane pulled out account information from a local bank; it frustrated her more knowing she couldn't use it. Without a reason to obtain a warrant, the bank had already informed her that their obligation was to their account holder and not the police. Patrick Doyle had enough forethought to set the account up in a different name, one that Jane could not produce a death certificate for and without giving up their entire investigation and how they got the information in the first place, she couldn't obtain a warrant to force the bank into cooperating with her. Lacking a warrant to poke around the account forced Jane into facing yet another dead-end.
"Please tell me you haven't been here long?" Frost was surprised to see Jane at her desk so early in the morning. Normally, he beat her to work by at least thirty minutes.
"What time is it?"
"Close to 8:00." Frost sat down and fired up his computer as he regarded Jane carefully. "Any leads?"
"No, not one. All of the people he gave us information on are either dead or already in jail. It's like some sick game from the grave."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Frost agreed as he typed in his password and began to open various programs on his computer.
"There's some pattern to it, Frost," Jane stretched in her chair. "We're missing the logic in what he handed over to us. There's a lead here; he carefully selected these files."
"Where did you run off to yesterday anyway?"
"The Museum of Fine Arts." Jane glared at her partner when he broke out into laughter. Frost finally settled down when he met Jane's gaze, her eyebrow arched and a smile obviously missing from her face.
"Sorry." Frost cleared his throat and fiddled with his tie. "I just didn't expect that answer. What were you doing there?"
"Tracking down this painting." Jane held up the picture of Maura's birth mother's painting.
"The one from the bottom of the box?"
"My gut tells me we need to find this painting. It is more important than we know."
"Any luck?" Frost pushed his chair on its wheels toward Jane's desk and took the photo from her hand, staring at it.
"I've got the Director of the Museum of Fine Arts working on it," Jane lowered her voice as people began to enter into the bullpen. "It's off the record of course."
"Any chance it'll pan out?"
"She made me feel like I had a better chance of staying dry while pissing into the wind of a tornado so I'm trying to figure out Plan B."
Frost laughed as Jane rose and tucked the photo into the back of her black dress pants intent on heading down to the morgue to pay Maura a visit.
"I'll be in the morgue if something comes up. Can you see if there's a chance to use the account information we have to pull up any ATM withdrawals so we can start to plot out any patterns in the withdrawals?"
"Sure thing." Frost realized he was talking to the back of Jane's head while she waited for the elevator, impatiently bouncing on the balls of her feet.
The elevator made the short descent to the morgue and Jane pushed through the doors to the morgue instantly scanning the area for Maura. She saw her in her office, perched on the corner of her desk looking through a file in her hands. Jane quickly made her way through the morgue and into Maura's office, watching her as she frowned at whatever she was reading.
"A body I don't know about?"
"Not one of yours." Maura turned the page and continued reading while Jane flopped down into one of most uncomfortable chairs she had ever encountered. "This is a report from Dr. Pike; it's like reading through a story that's missing half the pages."
"Aren't you going to comment on my punctuality today?" Maura looked up to see Jane beaming with pride.
"You have no coffee."
"Why don't you seem shocked that I'm actually here before 8:30 which is the earliest I've ever been in on a slow day?"
"First, I heard you crash through the doors. Secondly, I heard you walking like a one-woman army across the morgue to my office. Stealth you are not, my friend."
Maura sat down in her chair, closing the file on her desk to regard her friend sitting before her. She smiled, disarming any of Jane's comebacks, and leaned back in her chair content with her small victory over the usually sarcastic and witty detective.
"I didn't realize payment in the form of coffee was required to come visit my LLBF."
"Usually not but, based on your excessive pride over being here on time, I thought today was a good day for firsts." Maura smiled, thankful that their easy banter seemed to be back despite the 'kiss tension' that lingered between them. "Did you have difficulty sleeping, thus making the wise decision to arrive to work on time today, or is this you turning over a new leaf?"
"Perhaps I am turning over a new leaf." Jane couldn't help but smile when she realized Maura was laughing at her weak attempt to explain her unusual behavior. "I didn't sleep well; stop looking so smug."
"Anything you want to talk about?"
"Please tell me this isn't a continuation of the conversation at the Robber last night."
"What would be so bad about that?" Maura smiled to try to keep things light but hoping to build on the small amount of information Jane did share with her last night. Maura waited, seeing the patented Jane Rizzoli exasperated look come over her face and then laughed once more, deciding on changing the subject. "Fine, any new developments on your unmentionable case?"
"I'm not a genius as you are, Dr. Isles, but doesn't the adjective unmentionable actually mean we shouldn't be discussing it?" Jane's voice was soft, intimate, and Maura forced herself to ignore her physical response to it.
"I'd like to help, if there's something that you want me to look over for you."
"Even if I was working on an unmentionable case, and I'm not saying I am, if that case involved someone that someone else could claim had a connection to you that made you less than objective it would compromise anything that you did help us with in terms of leads."
"Jane, I actually am a genius and couldn't follow that grammatically challenged and confusing sentence."
Jane's attention was drawn to the door as Frost and Korsak entered Maura's office. Frost handed Jane a Post-It note with an address scribbled on it.
"That is an address," Frost lowered his voice as Maura's staff began to enter the lab to begin their day. "It showed up in a few arrest files that Doyle put in the box. Since it showed up on a file with one of his chosen few and then there was a disturbance call made to that address, I checked it out. It's titled to a Patrick Selsi."
"It's his house," Maura said quickly recognizing the name. "He used the anagram with me when he came here to say goodbye to Collin. He told me his name was Selsi, which is Isles spelled backward."
"The disturbance call was because it had been sitting vacant for awhile when one of the neighbors saw some activity there. They called in thinking it was being broken into or homeless people were starting to reside there."
"What happened?"
"Officer report stated that they checked it out, but the person they spoke to produced a title with the same name on it. They let it go."
"Let's check it out." Jane felt a surge of hope as she stood quickly and exited the morgue.
The ride to the house was quick; the house was located no more than twenty minutes from the station. Jane marveled as they drove the familiar streets that despite the fact that Patrick Doyle was a known crime boss, he lived relatively close to all the places where cops were known to be. Hiding in plain sight seemed to work for him.
The house wasn't much different than the South Boston home Paddy had died in. The house blended in nicely with the others in the subdivision; Jane walked around the back to see if there was an inconspicuous way to enter the house and not draw attention to the neighbors who obviously took notice given the previous disturbance call. Korsak and Frost followed, signaling with head nods and hand motions that they needed to ensure the house was clear before entering. Jane un-holstered her weapon and signaled for Frost to look into the windows. He saw no movement and they followed Korsak into the house when he kicked in the door. The team made quick work of clearing the house, the upstairs was checked, various rooms downstairs, and finally the basement which proved more difficult to clear given the stacks of boxes.
"Where do we start?"
"Stay together," Jane said as she approached the stairs. "We'll start on the main level and work from there."
Jane climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway, stopping quickly as her eyes rested on a painting hung on the wall. The brush strokes, the bold colors, the details that a photo just simply couldn't pick up were now before her eyes.
"It's the painting," Jane whispered as she dug in her pocket for the photo in question. She took it out, holding it next to the large scale painting to allow her eyes to compare the two side by side.
"It's the same one, Jane."
"I know this is important," Jane said as she lifted up the bottom of the painting to check underneath. "Let's get it down and see if there's anything behind it."
Jane and Frost removed the painting from the wall, setting it on the floor leaned against the wall for support. Frost knocked on the wall, listening for variations in tone, and declaring nothing was in the wall behind it.
"It seems legit, Jane, nothing is behind it unless it's buried in the wall."
"No safe, nothing written on the back of it." Jane's eyes looked at the frame. "Let me get my connection from the artsy community to come take a look before we dismantle it."
"You think something is in covered up by the frame?" Korsak asked. "Maybe painted into the canvas as a clue or something?"
"I actually think that it's Maura's mother's painting."
Jane ignored the look of surprise on Korsak's face as she searched for the number to the Museum of Fine Arts. The automated system proved mildly annoying to Jane as she managed to finally connect to Jennifer Smith.
"Detective Rizzoli, I thought I was supposed to contact you when I had something?"
"I found the painting," Jane announced as she fought to ignore the surge of hope that fluttered in her stomach. "So now I just need someone to come take a look at it and give me their expert opinion."
"Well as previously discussed, I'm not an expert in paintings. Why don't you tell me where it is and I'll ask my friend who was working on this for you to stop by and take a look at it?"
Jane gave her the address, complete with instructions of where her friend was to park and what door to knock at when he arrived. As they waited, they went room to room gathering evidence and taking pictures with their phones. It didn't seem long, despite patience not being a strong suite for Jane, before she heard a soft knock on the door leading to the backyard.
Jane looked outside, hand on her gun, scanning the area to ensure it was only the short gentleman whom Jennifer had described to her. He looked annoyed; he straightened his designer coat and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses while Jane opened the door.
"Are you Martin Jones?"
"Are you expecting someone else?" Martin pushed his way past Jane and into the house, clearly annoyed at having to be there. "Jennifer told me you needed a few moments of my time; just so you know this repays a debt I owe her so I don't have a lot of time."
"I actually don't care why you're here, only that you are. I need you to look at a painting and answer some questions for me about it. Think you can spare the ten minutes that will take?"
Martin forced a smile as he signaled with his hand that Jane should lead the way.
"Have you seen this painting before?" Jane motioned to it leaning against the wall. "I need to know the artist for starters."
"No, and no I don't know the artist."
"I'm going to need more than that I'm afraid." Jane caught Martin by the arm as he turned to walk away. "Anything stand out about this painting to you as unusual?"
Marcus looked at it in silence; he moved the painting away from the wall looking at the back of it as well. He touched his well manicured finger to the edges of the canvas, then running it over the frame taking in the intricate detail, then leaned it back against the wall and met Jane's gaze.
"The canvas is precut," Martin stated with a discernable amount of annoyance in his voice.
"What exactly does that mean?"
"It means that they were bought in bulk, not just for one artist. A single artist buying their own canvas would have it stretched or stretch it themselves. And it would likely be linen, this one is cotton."
"How many places sell precut, cotton canvases, Martin?"
"Only about a million." Martin flashed Jane a sarcastic smile and she had to hold herself back from throttling him right there. This was worse than pulling teeth. "Cotton, precut canvases are usually used to teach classes." He paused looking at it once more, walking back and forth, before speaking again. "Although I wouldn't expect such broad strokes and perfection from a student. The frame is handcrafted; the details couldn't be produced in mass. This is a unique frame, simply for this piece."
"Do you have a way to narrow down where it would have been painted then?" Jane asked. "Anything distinguishing the frame to a certain area?"
"I believe you're the detective, right?"
Jane growled underneath her breath, catching Martin's attention. He stood a little bit straighter, fidgeted with his glasses once more, and then stepped closer to the picture to examine it more thoroughly.
"The frame has a symbol on it; see this lighthouse with the sun shining on it?"
Jane leaned in closer, squinting as she struggled to see it. She had noticed it before, but simply had no reason to believe that it was anything other than another carved design to accent the frame itself.
"I've seen that before when I vacationed in Provincetown. There's a group there responsible for P-Town tourism, it's their symbol."
"I wonder if the other symbols mean something?"
Frost began to take pictures of the intricate details and began tapping away on his iPad to begin to look them up. It didn't take too long for him to show Jane another match.
"That one in the corner, with the paper, is the symbol for the town of Provincetown. You just can't see the incorporation detail or precise detail like you can in this one on their site."
Jane looked at the symbol on the home screen of the official website of Provincetown. She looked back at Martin who quickly spoke up to indicate that he had nothing else to offer; the rest would be detective work.
"I'm done here, nothing much more in the house that will offer us a clue," Korsak said as he stepped toward the group once more. "Anything on the picture?" Jane looked surprised that she hadn't even noticed Korsak step away from the group to process the rest of the house.
"Likely framed, at least, in Provincetown," Jane said as ideas twirled in her head. "Frost I'll need you to take pictures of the rest of the symbols and see if something else comes up."
"Where do we go from here?"
"You're going to see if any of the handful of symbols matches anything else," Jane said. "I'm going to Provincetown to see if I can find Maura's mom."