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course of history. And apparently now this interest extended to items she meant to return to their proper owners as well as those she relocated to other interested parties.
    "Gardening ideas?" Rick asked, indicating the book across her lap as he strolled into the room. He carried his cell phone in his hand; his chief assistant, John Stillwell, was in Los Angeles working on a plan to make Addisco the main subcontractor in an LAX computer upgrade project.
    She shook her head. "Samurai and shogun armor," she replied. "Some of these pieces are amazing. You don't have any books on Japanese history, do you?"
    "Probably. Check the list on the computer."
    He sounded a little sour, but she ignored it. She liked this part of a theft, and he wasn't going to spoil it for her. "Okay."
    Rick nodded. "Have you gotten the packet from the Met?"
    "Not yet. Sometime today, though, according to Viscanti."
    "So you're just doing some advance research."
    Again she heard something in his tone that said he wasn't happy about something, but if he wasn't going to say, then she wasn't going to ask. "Can't be too thorough, I guess."
    "Perhaps you can make time to talk about your garden plans at brunch tomorrow."
    "Sure."
    His phone rang, and he glanced down at the display. "Then I'll leave you to it," he said, vanishing down the hallway again.
    As he left the library, Reinaldo, the head housekeeper, came in, a thick manila envelope in his hands. "Good morning, Miss Sam," he said in his light Cuban accent. "This just arrived for you."
    She took the bulky envelope from him. "Thanks, Reinaldo."
    "Of course. May I get you a fresh Diet Coke?"
    "That would be great." All of Rick's employees knew she liked Diet Coke and detested coffee. There had probably been a memo or something.
    Once he'd gone to fetch her soda, she took a moment to enjoy the abrupt feeling of anticipation, then opened the envelope from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Joseph Viscanti had enclosed a letter restating the circumstances of the theft, not very helpful but at least pretty concise.
    He'd also included some crime scene photos, the police report, the book of the samurai exhibit, and a CD of the surveillance videos taken the night the theft had likely occurred. It actually amazed her how little the Met and the cops knew about what had happened.
    Viscanti wanted her to figure out who'd pulled the job, where the loot had gone, and where it was now. Well, actually he only cared about the last bit, but she needed to know all of it if she meant to solve it. And she did mean to solve it. Otherwise Viscanti and the other museums who respected his opinion would figure it wasn't worth the trouble to hire her to recover their missing goodies, and she'd be back to security inspections and upgrades and finding elementary school property full time. And she really didn't like doing that.
    The last—and only other—job Viscanti had asked her to take a look at had gone exactly nowhere. A small, portable urn, no surveillance, no prints, no signs at all. Probably some very lucky small-time hood. This theft didn't look any more promising, but it hadn't been luck that enabled somebody to get away with the goods; to manage a full suit of shogun armor and two priceless swords, all belonging to the same guy and packed in different crates, somebody had known what they were doing—and they'd been paid well to do it. A low skitter of adrenaline flowed into her muscles as
    she settled at the library work table. Finding out where something had got to and retrieving it wasn't as flat-out-hair-raising as a straight-up theft, but it was close. And today, close was good enough.
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Chapter 4
    Saturday, 12:15 p.m.
    "Remind them that I own Computech."
    Richard said, shifting the cell phone from his left to his right ear. "Zellman likes the Computech system, and anyone else offering to install software from my company is a glorified middleman."
    "Right," the crisp, upper-crust London accent of John Stillwell