Page 16 of Artifacts

He forced himself to breathe, then to talk. “So, you looking for something like this, when you and Daniela move in together?” He nodded at the grounds Sean was turning the police vehicle into.

“Shewould if she could, yeah. This looks like a resort, man!”

It did. Like some place for a beyond-his-paygrade all-inclusive vacation. Sean slowed for the crime scene techs in their van behind them to catch up, then continued past the massive house and round to the casita, a smaller-scale version near the pool. “We couldn’t even afford this,” Sean commented.

A woman was waiting outside the vandalized casita, and Sean went to greet her then drew her away to let forensics get to work. Darrell thought he’d be better employed looking over the scene before he joined his partner and the vic. The damage was minimal. A few windows all in a line had been smashed, as though someone had run past them and hit one after the other, but more interesting was the spray-painted graffiti.

“D’you mind?” The plastic-suited guy elbowed him roughly out of the way to take pictures.

“What’s put a bug up your ass?” Darrell asked, standing his ground.

“Let’s just say Ireallydon’t like being pulled off a more serious, more urgent case for this, just so Miller can say his most experienced crime scene team is on it. Any science technician with field training could work this SOC.” The guy snapped pictures and spared Darrell a glance. “You don’t look like the station’s most senior patrol officer, though.”

“The most charming.” Darrell indicated Sean, who was either consoling or calming down the vic. At least that raised a smile from the technician. Darrell took a few pictures himself on his phone then headed over to Sean and the owner of the house, trying to interpret Sean’s expression.

“My partner, Officer Darrell Williams.” Sean introduced him to the mid-thirties, auburn-haired woman clutching a linen handkerchief. “Mrs. Randa Buckman, Buck Buckman’s widow.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Darrell tried to recall exactly when her husband had died. Not quite a week ago, he thought, recalling the news stories about the real estate billionaire. “And I’m sorry this has happened to you. But we’ll do our best to catch whoever’s responsible, of course.”

“Mrs. Buckman thinks she knows who did it.” Sean’s voice sounded like he was swallowing something.

“Oh?” Darrell flipped open his notebook. Someone or something connected to her late husband, he’d bet. A business rival? Jim ‘Buck’ Buckman had been one of the richest men in the county, making a fortune in real estate. Not just industrial parks for science and IT companies—his company had been one of the groups that had developed the Cultural Corridor, part of the Riverwalk.

Darrell did the math on this woman’s age compared to Buck’s and came up withsecondorthird. As in wife. Meaning predecessors. Randa, left all this by Buck’s death, could have her own rivals too. “Who do you think’s responsible, ma’am?”

“My husband!” Randa buried her face in the handkerchief she’d been twisting in her hands. Darrell looked at Sean, and Sean looked back. “My late husband, I mean. Buck. Did you read the message?”

“It said ‘I want my puzzles’, right?” It had puzzledhim, and Sean shrugged in incomprehension too.

“Exactly.” Randa nodded at Darrell. “He wants to be reunited with his puzzles.”

“His…?”

“That’s his writing, on the wall there!” Randa’s voice rose, but she fanned her face and got herself calm. “It’s my fault. I couldn’t bear to walk into his study and see all that stuff he collected. Oh, not the artwork and priceless stuff for his collections. That’s displayed throughout the house. I mean the little curios and games he had on the tables in his room. He spent so much time tracking bits and pieces down and buying them, and so much time with them when he’d gotten them. I had to get rid of it, just sell it all as a job lot. Seeing it without him, I mean.”

“Which puzzles in particular?” Darrell was making a few notes.

“Boxes. Those little Oriental ones you can’t open.” Randa held her hands a few inches apart in demonstration. “He loved playing with them, trying to get them to give up their secrets, as he called it. He got off on the challenge. Soon as he solved one, he moved to the next. They took up half his desk. He liked all the curiosities he got, but he adored those little wooden Japanese boxes. Any visitors we had, he’d see if they could work out the secret of his latest one, or his favorite one. And I sold them!”

It was awkward, watching her sob, head bent and the handkerchief covering her face. An assistant came up with a glass of water and put it into her hand. Randa swallowed some, then handed it back and raised her head. “I joked that he wanted to be buried with them, that he loved those stupid mosaic wood boxes, and he agreed. I didn’t know he meant it.”

“Well, how could you have?” Sean kept his voice neutral. Darrell could hear already how he’d be recounting this later, laughing it up about how they didn’t need crime scene techs from the lab to catch a criminal, but a priest from the church to lay a ghost to rest.

“What have I done?” Randa turned from one to another. “What if he can’t cross over to be at peace, with his spirit disturbed, and that’s why he’s wandering here, doing this? What’s going to happen next?” She scrunched the handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth, her hand shaking.

“Let’s not borrow trouble, ma’am. I have a few questions, if that’s okay?” When Randa nodded, Darrell took her through the when and how of the vandalism.

“No, the security cameras don’t cover that entrance to the casita,” she told him in answer to a question. “I’ll have some installed there now, though.”

And no one in the main house had heard anything. Interviewing the two members of staff who lived in had confirmed that.

“We taking a look around the house?” Darrell asked Sean, who shook his head.

“Negative.”

Decided higher up.Darrell got it. And yeah, with forensics not finding obvious footprints or traces of an intruder anywhere on the grounds, there seemed little point. Randa thought so too. There’d been no B&E, no robbery. No sign at all that anyone had been there…except for Buck, whose handwriting Randa was sure the graffiti was in, telling them this three times in total.

“Why don’t they have security cameras on this entrance or on this section of the pool house?” he wondered.

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