“NATE! FOR GOD’S sake, man, wake up! Here, drink this. What the hell are you doing lying in the snow, tell me that. On second thought, don’t. Then I’ll have to tell Oberson.”
He opened his eyes. He was sitting up, leaning back against his car. Harry was holding out a thermos of coffee. He felt cold, colder than he could ever remember being.
“Sorry,” Nathan mumbled. “Must have hit my head. Looking for my keys.”
“Yeah, happens to me, too,” Harry said, his disbelief clear. “Come on, let’s get you into the house. No telling how long you’ve been out here.”
“What time is it?”
“Going on ten. I had a lead and wanted you with me. I figured you’d slept in. Good thing I came by.”
“Probably an understatement,” Nathan said, aware that if Harry hadn’t he could have frozen to death.
In the house, he wrapped himself in a blanket and drank the coffee Harry poured out for him from the thermos.
“I wasn’t there for more than twenty minutes,” he told Harry. “Left the house just after nine-thirty. I’m sure of that.”
“Good. Then we don’t even have to think about frostbite, never mind you turning into a block of ice.”
Harry didn’t say it but Nathan knew what he was thinking. He’d had an episode, and it was pure luck that Harry had found him. His condition was more precarious than either of them wanted to know.
“I can do what you need me to do,” he said. “This is temporary. Trust me.”
“Right. Okay.”
They both wanted to believe his words.
“So what’s going on?” Nathan asked, tossing the blanket aside. He rubbed his hands over his face. He felt better than he had in weeks, though he couldn’t imagine why.
“Okay,” Harry said, pouring himself some coffee and adding more to Nathan’s cup. “Here’s what. A notice came in this morning. One of those fliers we get for the Wanted wall, only this one wasn’t about an escaped convict or someone who’d committed a felony. Not yet, anyway. It’s another Missing Persons, an art dealer in Pennsylvania. Gone missing about four months ago, which makes it close to October. Seems he ran off with several of his own paintings, works he’d bought. They listed the pieces, including two watercolors done by Nora Gray.”
“Why would the notice show up now and not before?”
“Can’t say for sure. We’ll have to check that out, find out who reported it, and why. A man’s entitled to take his own property anywhere he wants, no crime there.”
“He could be the buyer Sela described to me.”
“Could be. That’s what I’m hoping. We can track that, if so. I’ve already made a call to the local authorities, but got the night shift. They said to ring back around eleven to talk to their chief, who’s coming in later from some meeting or other. I’d rather do that in my home office.”
“The police chief answers questions about Wanted posters?”
Harry shrugged. “Maybe he likes a finger in every pie.”
“I know the type,” Nathan said.
“If it pans out, I’d like you to run with the case, take it over.”
YOU ARE READING
The Magic Hour
Mystery / Thriller"It was not exactly dark, but a kind of twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof." -Childe Rowland "T...
