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In that moment, another attendant, a middle-aged woman whose name badge said that her name was Caroline, came up to her. She almost sidled up to Paige as if not wanting to be seen doing it.
“You’re the one who’s asking questions about Aiden?” she said.
“I am.” Paige knew better than to push for answers in that moment.
“No one wants to talk, because of the bad publicity it would cause. Aiden got someone fired.”
Thatcaught Paige’s attention. Someone who had been fired by Aiden might have every reason to try to hurt him. “Who?”
“Glenn Harper,” Caroline said. “He used to work here in security, which is kind of a joke, given what happened.”
“What happened?” Paige asked. She needed to hear the full story of this. She needed to understand what was going on in the museum that was so big that people didn’t want to talk about it.
“Glenn thought that he could steal one of the exhibits,” Caroline said. “He had a plan worked out. He tried to pull Aiden into it. Only Aiden went to the head curator. He was there when the curator confronted Glenn about it.”
“What happened to Glenn?” Paige asked. “Was he just fired? No cops?”
Caroline shook her head. “I don’t think there was any real evidence beyond what Aiden had heard.”
Which might have let him avoid jail, but also meant that he knew that there was only one reason he’d been fired.
“Thank you,” Paige said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Caroline was already shaking her head. “Forget that I said anything. You didn’t hear it from me. If Glenn . . . if he’s the one who did this, and he hears that I told you about him . . .”
Paige understood then: it wasn’t just fear about upsetting the visitors; it was fear of becoming the murderer’s next victim.
Paige hurried back through the museum, finding Christopher in conversation with someone who appeared to be one of the curators there. He was a man in his fifties, wearing a dark blue suit and wire rimmed spectacles. Paige could see Christopher’s frustration and guessed that he wasn’t getting the answers that he wanted.
“I’m sorry,” the man was saying, “but your being here is disturbing some of our visitors and—”
Paige walked up, interrupting. “Tell me about Glenn Harper.”
The curator looked shocked at the name. Paige kept going before he could recover. “Or should I tell you? He’s the security guard who was planning to steal one of your paintings. The one whose plan Aiden Martlet told you about.”
“Where did you hear that?” the curator demanded.
Paige shook her head. “That’s not the question. The question is why you haven’t told the police about this already. There’s a murderer out there.”
“But that would . . . the museum’s reputation—”
“Is less important than the lives of the people this killer is going to murder unless he’s stopped,” Paige interrupted. “He’s already killed someone else.”
“I . . .” The curator looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Obviously, if there’s anything I can do to help at this point—”
“There is,” Paige said. “You can give us Glenn Harper’s address, right now.”
CHAPTER TEN
“It looks like a nice place,” Paige said as they pulled up to the apartment building.
It was the kind of apartment building Paige would have been happy to live in—an area of town close to a couple of parks, in what appeared to be a good neighborhood. The building was clean and modern, without any signs of graffiti or damage, while the cars parked outside were mostly expensive ones.
“A very nice place,” Christopher agreed. “It makes me wonder how Glenn Harper affords all this on a security guard’s salary.”
He had a point. Paige might have been able to live here on her FBI wages, but only just. Did a security guard for a museum bring in more than that, or was there something else going on here? Something that had gotten two people killed.
There was something else that was strange too: some of the people hanging around out front. This was the kind of place that looked as though it might attract bankers and lawyers, but the group in front of the building were all dressed in rough clothes, most of them looking around furtively as if expecting trouble at any moment. Paige was pretty sure that she saw a joint being passed around between them, too, which she wouldn’t have expected to be done quite so openly.
