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MFAs.
    Of course, there were benefits, she constantly reminded herself. The little bungalow down by the beach in Delray. Taking her ocean kayak out in the surf—year-round. And surely at the ten-year reunion get-together for the Columbia MFA class of 1996, she’d be the only one packing a Glock.
    Ellie finally stood up. At barely five-two and 105 pounds, with her short brown hair and tortoiseshell frames, she knew she didn’t look like an agent. At least, not one they let out of the lab much. The joke around the office was that she had to get her FBI windbreaker from the kids’ department at Burdines. But she’d been second in her class at Quantico. She’d lit the charts in crime scene management and advanced criminal psychology. She was qualified with the Glock and could disarm somebody a foot taller.
    It just happened she also knew a little about the stylistic antecedents of cubism as well.
    And a bit about electrical wiring. She stared at the sheared cable.
Okay, Ellie, why?
    The housekeeper had specifically overheard the thieves putting in the alarm code.
But the cable was cut.
Both the interior and outside alarms. If they knew the code, why cut the cable? They had access; the house was shut down. The Palm Beach police seemed to have already made up their minds, and they were very good at this kind of thing. They’d dusted for prints. The thieves had been in the house for only minutes; they’d known exactly what to take. The police declared the three intruders in their stolen police uniforms brazen, professional thieves.
    But no matter what the local cops thought, or how that asshole upstairs, Dennis Stratton, was ranting about his irreplaceable loss, two words had begun to worm their way into Ellie’s head:
    Inside job.

Chapter 19
    THE DENNIS STRATTON was sitting, legs crossed, in a well-cushioned wicker chair in the lavish sunroom overlooking the ocean. Multiple calls were lit up on the receiver and a cell phone was stapled to his ear. Vern Lawson, Palm Beach’s head of detectives, was hovering close by, along with Stratton’s wife, Liz—a tall, attractive blonde in cream slacks and a pale blue cashmere sweater wrapped around her shoulders. A Latino housemaid flitted in and out with a tray of iced tea.
    A butler led Ellie into the room. Stratton ignored them both. Ellie was bemused by how the rich lived. The more money they had, the more padding and layers of swaddling they seemed to put between themselves and the rest of us. More insulation in the walls, thicker fortress bulwarks, more distance to the front door.
    “Sixty million,” Dennis Stratton barked into the phone, “and I want someone down here today. And not some flunky from the local office with an art degree.”
    He punched off the line. Stratton was short, well built, slightly balding on top, with intense, steely eyes. He was wearing a tight-fitting, sage green T-shirt over white linen pants. Finally he glared at Ellie as though she were some annoying junior accountant with a question about his taxes. “Find everything you need down there, Detective?”
    “Special Agent,” Ellie said, correcting him.
    “
Special Agent.
” Stratton nodded. He craned his neck toward Lawson. “Vern, you want to see if the ‘special agent’ needs to see any other part of the house.”
    “I’m fine.” Ellie waved off the Palm Beach cop. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over the list.”
    “The list?” Stratton sighed, like,
haven’t we already done this three times before?
He slid a sheet of paper across a lacquered Chinese altar table Ellie pegged as early eighteenth century. “Let’s start with the Cézanne.
Apples and Pears…”
    “Aix-en Provence,” Ellie interjected. “1881.”
    “You know it?” Stratton came alive. “Good! Maybe you can convince these insurance idiots what it’s really worth. Then there’s the Picasso flutist, and the large Pollock up in the bedroom. These sons of bitches knew just what they were doing. I