“It’s good to hear your voice,” said Winston Castle.

Quinn sat forward, the cane and all chair legs on the floor. “How have you been, Winston?”

“Fine, of course.”

“And Maria?”

“Also fine.”

“Now that we’re all fine,” Quinn said, “let’s get to why you called.”

“You sound angry with me, Detective Quinn.”

“I’m not,” Quinn said, surprising himself by realizing that was true. “I’m just befuddled.”

“I’m calling from Mexico,” Castle said, though the caller ID on Quinn’s phone said the call originated in some place called High Wind, Texas.

Quinn decided to let it go. Nothing else was genuine about Winston Castle, so why should this be? “I heard the restaurant’s closed.”

“Temporarily,” Castle said. “I sold the business, though I continue to own the building. I’ll simply be renting out restaurant space.”

“How does Maria feel about that?”

“She’s the reason we’re doing it. It’s for her well-being.”

“Part of the reason, anyway,” Maria said. On an extension phone in High Wind. “Winston and I have chosen the life we want to live, and right now the restaurant doesn’t fit into it.”

“Apparently,” Quinn said, “neither do English accents.”

“You noticed that, old thing?” Castle said.

“Difficult not to.”

“It seems to me,” Castle said, “that there was a reason for the substitution of Bellezza busts in the restaurant garden. This whole thing was planned.”

“What whole thing?”

“Everything from the fake Bellezza to D.O.A.’s escape.”

Quinn was surprised, then wondered why he should be. “D.O.A. is dead,” he said. “I saw him die.”

“Somebody in a bulletproof vest was shot and killed.”

“Yes. A man named Dwayne Oren Aiken. I chased him for years.”

“Can’t you admit, Detective Quinn, that there is the slightest possibility that this Dwayne Oren Aiken survived. I mean, wouldn’t he want to be officially dead?”

“Why?”

“So you’d stop hunting him. And he could sell Bellezza to a dedicated but dishonest collector.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I think it’s possible. That’s why I’m in Mexico.”

“You’re in Texas.”

“Very near the border.”

Quinn agreed with Castle that there really were such art connoisseurs, who would be content simply to own but never show such a wonder. Quinn also knew there were people whose joy was in searching for the unattainable. Classics had been written about them. Movies had been made. At least Castle, whom Quinn had come to like, was a seeker and not a hoarder. Apparently Maria was the same. That kind of dogged optimism and persistence seemed to Quinn to be a healthier, happier existence than most people led. So let Castle, and his entire crazy family, the quasi or real descendants of the Kingdoms and Douglasses and Tuckers, roam the world and seek. It wasn’t a bad thing to nurture and chase a dream. For some, it was the only thing.

“I understand now how the case became so complicated,” Quinn said. “The precious object it revolved around never existed.”

“That’s a possibility,” Castle said. “But you must understand our quest for the art treasure gives our family its raison d’être. Its reason for being. And the family needs me to keep it out of trouble. This is the only family I have, Quinn. And for some of us, our search is the only meaningful thing in our lives.”

“I do understand,” Quinn said, thinking Michelangelo would be pleased by such a constructive fancy.

“I knew that you would.”

“Good luck to you and to your family,” Quinn said.

But there was no answer. Winston and Maria Castle were gone.

In the wind again.

Quinn told no one other than Pearl about the conversation. They agreed that Q&A would never be for sale.

The new owner of the Far Castle continued to operate the restaurant under the terms of the lease. Nothing appeared to have changed.

On stormy days, one gargoyle on the building’s concrete cornice, shielded from immediate view by the restaurant’s canopy, emitted no water but seemed to glory in the rain. It was a bust of a woman with her eyes closed and a slight smile on her face, basking in the downpour. Knowing there would be another sunrise. She was a thing of beauty.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With special thanks to Marilyn Davis.

Don’t miss John Lutz’s next exciting thriller featuring

Frank Quinn

JIGSAW

Coming from Pinnacle in 2015!

Exclusive Bonus Content – First Time in Print

Keep reading to join Frank Quinn and Pearl Kasner

as they are hired to solve a jewelry heist that

leads murder . . .

SWITCH

by John Lutz

Prologue

May 9, 10:40 a.m.

“There’s a finger in her,” Nift said, watching Pearl Kasner’s face for a reaction.

She didn’t show much of one.

Quinn and Pearl watched Medical Examiner Dr. Julius Nift, crouched low near the woman’s body, move his shoulders and arms, probe with what looked like long, thin tweezers, then stare and shake his head. Before him, lying between the corpse’s widely spread legs, was a small, bloody object.

“What do you mean,” Pearl asked, “a finger?”

Nift held up his rubber-gloved left hand, fingers spread. “One of these.” He made a fist except for his extended forefinger. “This one, to be exact. Or one like it.” He grinned. “It was lodged in her vaginal tract. Wanna take a look?”

Pearl did. So did Quinn.

Quinn said, “Man’s finger?”

“Almost certainly. Right size for a man’s. Nail’s trimmed close. No polish. Lots of stuff under it. Maybe rich with DNA.”

“Fingerprint?”

“Should be discernible. Once we get it cleaned up.”

Quinn nodded, standing with his fists propped on his hips, and glanced around Alexis Hoffermuth’s luxurious penthouse apartment, amazed anew by the vastness of the room they were in and the obvious wealth that showed in every facet of the place.

He had met Alexis Hoffermuth here just two days earlier, when she was alive.

Her body had been discovered scarcely an hour ago after she didn’t show up for an eight o’clock appointment (so unlike her), and failed to answer either her cell or land line phone.

The doorman had admitted the woman she was scheduled to meet in regard to a political fund-raiser, and there Alexis Hoffermuth was, in her altered state.

Pearl and Quinn looked at each other, each knowing what the other was thinking: money and murder were such close friends.

“Strange calling card,” said Nift, who liked to play detective, “a forefinger in her twat.” He glanced at Pearl to see if he’d gotten a rise out of her. “Whaddya make of it, Pearl?”

“If he’s a serial killer, he’s limited to nine more victims.”

“Unless—” Nift began.

“Shut up,” Pearl said, and he did.

“She was over fifty,” Quinn said, nodding toward the victim. “You’d never know it, even like this.”

The dead woman stared wide-eyed back at him, flecks of blood visible in the white around her pupils, the way eyes were after someone’s been strangled. In this instance, strangulation appeared to have been caused by the Burberry scarf around her neck. Yet the expression of pain and bewilderment frozen on her face wasn’t quite like that of a strangulation victim.