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all went down. He heard the commotion, looked in the window.”
    “Yes. Vindow I look. KGB come, take. Not lookink. I fraid, because for me, is at very difficult. I vait, then come to find basement Yangie and Garv.”
    “What the f—”
    “Muggers, thieves—bad people—he calls them KGB.
Not looking
means wrong or bad.”
    “You’d think these people come to America, they’d speak American, for chrissake. Okay, so what did they look like?”
    Otto donned an expression of dismay. “KGB always like KGB. Verink black. But!” Otto jumped to his feet. “Boss man, off he take black mask face, eh?” Otto stepped up close to Walker and winked. “I see boss. Teeth big, vood in leeps.”
    “What’s this creep talking about?” Walker pleaded.
    “Big teeth and a toothpick,” Angie translated.
    “Is that it?” Walker poked Otto in the sternum.
    “But of course, eh?” Otto poked Walker in the sternum. “Otto big eyes.”
    Walker looked like he was going to head-butt Otto, but he turned crimson instead. “Renard, I tell you, between this creep and these animals there’s something very illegal here.” Walker rocked on his heels, grinning wolfishly. “And I’m gonna find out what it is too.”
    I cleared my throat. “And when he catches us red-handed with a crate brimming with bald eagles, the police chief himself is going to make him detective sergeant and invite him over for a pool party.”
    Walker took a step forward, and I was ready to do the same—I’d had about all I was willing to take from him. But Renard swung out an arm toward a small brown bird, blocking Walker’s advance.
    “And this.” Renard twinkled an eye in my direction. “A long-billed dowitcher. Part of your collection?” Still with the black-leather trench-coat stuff.
    “That’s a snipe you’re looking at, and this is not a collection. I told you, I’m a dealer, I rent. This is my stock. The numbers at the bottom of that page are my personal tracking numbers.”
    I tossed him a small key and gestured to a file cabinet in the corner. “The files on them are all in there, along with complete records of everything I’ve bought and sold over the last two years, where it was bought, where it was from, where it went, organized
Aardvark
to
Zebra.
Records from before then are in the basement in bankers’ boxes.”
    Angie brought me a breakfast beer, and I rolled the icy bottle along the bruise gracing the side of my head. She ditched her tea for a cold one herself, still holding the ice pack to her swollen cheek. You’d think we were a couple of Canadians the day after a rousing midnight curling match.
    Detective Walker chuckled. “Miss, do you mean to tell me that nobody touched your supply of gold wire and diamonds? That they didn’t even go through your studio, open any drawers?”
    “Left my studio alone, sorry to say. At least my stuff is insured.” Angie sighed, and perched on the arm of a chair.
    “Gimme a break.” Walker snorted. “They came in here just to steal these dusty old dead animals? Maybe these characters were some of Carson’s business partners who double-crossed him, a deal gone bad.”
    “KGB not lookink.” Otto grunted, and he left for the backyard and a smoke. He’d been brooding fitfully all night and all morning about failing to save us from Liberty Valance’s hooligans. Now I think he’d had about as much as
he
could take of Walker.
    Renard was playing with a calculator, his brown eyes shining.
    “Detective, these ‘dead animals’ add up to at least sixty thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. They have a very high resale value, better than most stolen property. And they were highly visible going in, going out, and on display. Thefts from large private taxidermy collections are not all that unusual. By comparison, the jewelry is small, and the diamonds are probably kept in a plain-looking little envelope in what to the untrained eye doesn’t necessarily look like a jeweler’s