“Have you spoken to Marc?”
“No.” Wainwright stared at me for a beat, then added, “Not yet.”
Good. So he had plans to.
“Calvin also has a younger sister. Ellen. Except her last name is hyphenated. Winter-Brown.”
“Is she in the city too?”
“I don’t know. You should find out,” I answered.
“Why?” Wainwright asked. It wasn’t a simple inquiry. He was digging deep into human connections—untangling and interpreting motivation, reasoning, witnesses, clues—all from the words I said. Or didn’t say.
“Because I find it very strange that his brother, who hasn’t once picked up the phone to ask Calvin how he’s been in twelve months, is suddenly ready to make amends the same morning he goes missing. That’s why.”
Wainwright nodded, made a note on one of the sheets of paper, then asked, “How’s business?”
“Sorry?”
“You mentioned you had a shop.”
“It’s been fine,” I said warily, sensing a trap.
Wainwright clicked the pen again. “Victorian curiosities and oddities, is that right?”
“Do you have my tax returns in that folder too, chief?”
Wainwright chuckled. I was glad someone was getting a kick out of this waste of time. “You’ve been involved with the NYPD a few times, Mr. Snow. We notice things like that.”
“Even here, all the way downtown?”
“Even all the way down here, inside this ugly-as-hell Brutalist building,” he agreed, smiling. “For example, I noticed during your last three run-ins—”
“I’ve onlyhadthree run-ins,” I corrected.
Wainwright continued without amendment. “There were a number of extremely rare, highly valuable artifacts involved.” He regarded me with a very stern, cop-like expression. Calvin had used that same stare on me when he once upon a time didn’t like me so much.
I waited for Wainwright to continue.
“Detective Winter’s investigation notes suggest we ought to expect a similar occurrence again.”
“You mean, stumbling across a valuable artifact of American origin, circa 1837 to 1901?” I asked, feigning clarification.
“That’s right.”
I snorted, laughed dryly, and leaned back in the chair. “Unbelievable.”
“Something funny?”
“No, actually. It’s so far from funny that I want to smack you,” I said automatically and without consideration of the consequences. “I didn’t abduct Calvin. I didn’t kill anyone. And I certainly didn’t threatenmyselfin order to have a viable excuse to steal and profit off some long-lost artifact like it’s found pirate booty. Your little black book should be able to tell you that never once have I profited from these events I’ve gotten caught up in.”
“That’s true,” Wainwright said calmly and with a nod of his head. “But the last one put you in the hospital for an extended period of time. I imagine that was a rough financial burden.”
“You know what else was a financial burden?College. One more implication like that and I’m out the door and hiring a lawyer.”
He held his hands up in an act of surrender. “My apologies. Let’s move on.”
Detective Wainwright asked me more questions. He went over my statement with a fine-tooth comb, sometimes backtracking on my answers to see if I’d answer them the same as before or get caught up in a lie of my own making. If the circumstances were different, if this were a run-of-the-mill murder, maybe I’d have found it amusing, being investigated again. A Snow and Winter Christmas tradition.
