LITMIR.BIZ

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idea who I am?” he demanded.

      “Yes,” Kane replied in an even, controlled voice. “You’re a citizen of Aurora who has been robbed and as such you and your wife will get our full attention. There’s nothing to be gained by throwing your weight around. That doesn’t impress us. As a matter of fact, that really doesn’t work in your favor.”

      “Did either one of you get a look at this guy—there was only one, right?” Kelly wanted to ascertain. She was doing her level best to get the couple’s attention back on the robbery and not on some high-spirited exchange between Kane and the male victim.

      Judith bobbed her head up and down, a wreath of carefully salon-dyed brown hair floating about her face. “Yes. One. One horrible man.” She shuddered, running her hands up and down along her arms.

      “Can you remember any physical features?” Kane pressed.

      Judith shrugged. One of her nightgown straps slid down. She nervously tugged it up into place again, glancing in her husband’s direction as she did so.

      Osborn was the one who ran the show, Kelly concluded. Mrs. Osborn gave them a description. “Average build, average height. Around Randolph’s age—”

      “Which is the same as yours,” her husband bit off, taking offense that she had made it sound as if he was older than she was.

      In response, Judith looked down at the rug, avoiding his eyes.

      “Was there anything familiar about this man?” Kane asked. “Anything at all? The way he spoke or held his head? The way he moved around, perhaps?”

      “Familiar?” The haughty inquiry came from Osborn. “We’re not in the habit of fraternizing with common burglars and thieves. Besides, the bastard wore a mask.”

      “What kind of a mask?” Kane asked, hoping to gain some insight into the burglar’s mind-set.

      “It was a clown mask.” Kane noted that the man was most obviously holding himself in check to keep from allowing a shiver to snake down his spine. “I’ve always hated clowns. They’re grotesque.”

      “Can’t argue with you there,” Kane replied almost under his breath as he made a further notation in his notepad. “Have you had a chance to assess what the robber made off with?”

      “Two very rare paintings and an antique revolver I kept on display there.” Randolph pointed to the credenza in the dining room. The stand on top of it was glaringly empty.

      “Were the paintings down here, too?” Kelly asked.

      Judith bobbed her head up and down in response to the question.

      “They were the first thing anyone saw when they came into the house,” Osborn answered bitterly, gesturing to the vacant spaces on the wall. The only things that testified to the paintings’ existence were two nails in the wall.

      “Did he take anything else?” Kelly asked the angry home owner.

      “No.” He shook his head. “Just the paintings and the revolver.”

      She realized the man hadn’t been outside to see his vandalized automobiles. Just as well right now, she told herself.

      Despite Osborn’s answer, Kelly went down a list of popular items to steal—and fence. “No jewelry or expensive bottles of wine or—”

      She didn’t get to finish her list. Osborn was glaring at her as he rudely interrupted. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, Detective?”

      She was tempted to say something cutting that would put the man in his place, but considering the trauma he and his wife had just gone through, Kelly decided to cut him a little slack.

      She turned toward her partner and bounced a theory off him. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to take the paintings and the antique gun and disappear without bothering to wake up Mr. and Mrs. Osborn?” It seemed to her a far easier way to proceed as well as to avoid possibly getting overpowered and caught.

      “Yes,” Kane agreed thoughtfully. After a beat, he added, “Unless—”

      “Unless he wanted them to be alerted to what he was doing. He wanted to rub their noses in it,” she concluded, excited about this possible twist and its implications. Turning back to the home invasion victims, she asked Osborn, “Is there someone who would want to watch your reaction to the robbery? Maybe even take some pleasure in it?”

      “The people at the club are all a bunch of jealous bastards,” Randolph spat out. “Any one of them could have done this.”

      “No.” The nervous denial came from his wife. “They’re our friends.”

      Osborn shot his wife a furious, disgusted look. “If you believe that, you stupid cow, you’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

      “There’s no need to get abusive, Mr. Osborn,” Kane coldly informed the man, stepping between Osborn and his wife.

      “I can get whatever the hell I want with my wife. I’ve just been robbed, and I sure as hell am not going to be lectured to by one of the Keystone Cops.”

      It was Kelly’s turn to step in. She was beginning to realize it was going to be hard narrowing down the list of people who hated Osborn’s guts and wanted to see him humiliated. Undoubtedly, it was a nonexclusive, fast-growing club.

      “I’d be very careful if I were you, Mr. Osborn,” Kelly warned the man in what sounded like a very deceptively mild voice. “Or you just might wind up reaping exactly what you sow.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” Osborn angrily demanded.

      Kelly didn’t bother explaining. “You’re a very smart man, Mr. Osborn. I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own eventually. Now then, we’ll need a list of all these ‘unfriendly’ friends you think might be capable of breaking into your home for the opportunity to torture you by robbing you. Also an exact accounting of everything that was stolen.”

      It was clear that Osborn was about to say something less than cooperative, but Kane cut him off before he could speak.

      “When you finish with the list, you can give it to Officer Riley,” Kane told the man, pointing out the officer to him. He was fairly certain that although the officer had undoubtedly introduced himself to Osborn when he’d arrived on the scene, the latter had taken no note of his name, or even thought the man had a name.

      The officer was now standing guard just inside the foyer.

      “And where are you going to be?” Osborn demanded in less than genial tones. He sounded like an employer wanting an accounting from a lowly lackey.

      “We’ll be off working your case,” Kane replied, the picture of restraint.

      The only telltale sign of inner fury was that Kane’s breathing pattern had grown just a little bit shorter.

      Kelly held her tongue until after they’d taken their leave. The minute they were outside the front door, Kelly’s words came rushing out.

      “Wow. For a minute there I thought you were going to strangle him,” Kelly told him. “Not that anyone in the immediate world would have blamed you. That man was some piece of work.”

      “If I strangled him, I might have done the world a favor,” Kane speculated. In his opinion, Randolph Osborn was a colossal waste of flesh.

      “No argument,” Kelly agreed. “It’s just that you might have had to fight me for the honor of bringing about the man’s demise.” She shook her head as she looked over her shoulder at the twenty-room house. “Makes me think that this so-called robbery was definitely not just a random act of chance.”

      Kane sounded her out. “You think someone targeted him?”

      She couldn’t tell by Kane’s tone if he agreed with her or not. All she could

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