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of here with a handful of my family’s jewels, they’re going to want to sell them.  They’ll either have to do it right away, before the cops get involved, or they’ll have to wait for months, until the investigation settles down or they’re caught.  I’m guessing they’ll want the money as soon as possible, which means we need to pay a visit to the first people a thief would turn to.”
    “What does that have to do with my red coat?”
    He curled his lip.  “I’d prefer not to be spotted eight blocks away while I’m talking to a fence at three in the morning.”  He held up Frau Müller’s jacket again.  “Consider it camouflage.”
    It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.  Why, she wondered, couldn’t he have just said that in the first place?  Ella took the jacket, slipping off her dusty red wool and replacing it with the butter-soft brown leather.  “There,” she said.  “Was that so hard?  But now I have another question.”
    He sighed.  “Why am I not surprised?”
    “Make that two questions.  Why aren’t you calling the cops?  And where is everyone?  Why hasn’t anyone from your security team checked in?  Why didn’t the alarm raise anyone else?”
    “That,” Sébastien said, “is far more than two questions.”
    Ella shrugged.  “They’re all good ones.  You should answer them.”  She was afraid to push him much farther.  After all, she was bound to be suspect number one when he did call the cops and report the robbery.  She knew she wasn’t guilty and that no sane cop would link her to the robbery, but she wasn’t in a hurry to be dragged down to the police station and tossed in an interrogation room. 
    Sébastien narrowed his eyes.  “You’re awfully curious about my security team for someone who is simply here to sign a few forms.”
    “I do much more than that and you know it,” she retorted.  “But it seems strange to me that millions of dollars of jewels have gone missing and you’re standing here, not worried about calling the police.  Why?”
    “The police,” he repeated, laughing dryly.  “You want me to call the police.”
    “Yes!  Is that really so unusual?”
    He shook his head, still laughing in a dry, humorless way.  He held his hands to his forehead and closed his eyes.  “What I want is for this exhibition to go off without a hitch.  I don’t care about anything else.”
    “Figures,” Ella said.
    Sébastien’s head snapped up and his still-violent eyes fixed themselves on her face.  “What does that mean?”
    “It means you’re only thinking of yourself.  You haven’t even thought about how much harder you’re making it for the cops by delaying calling them.  Or about how your mother will feel when she realizes some of her prized possessions are gone.”
    “That’s it,” he said, snapping to action.  He crossed the kitchen, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her out the back door. 
    “Where are we going?” she cried.
    “To solve a crime.”
    Ella left her arm in his grasp, wondering why he thought this was the preferred mode of transportation for her.  They crossed a swath of carefully manicured gardens, filled with box-row hedges and beds of roses.  He pulled her to a separate building behind the gardens, a long and narrow rectangle without any windows.  From his pocket, he pulled out a smart phone and pressed a few buttons.  The roll-up door began to lift itself. 
    “Is this your garage?” she asked.
    “It’s not a petting zoo.” 
    Funny , she thought, realizing he responded to pressure-filled situations the same way she did: using black humor as a defense mechanism.  The thought frightened her.  I’m not like him at all , she argued with herself.  Am I?
    Sébastien pulled her towards a black European sedan with tinted windows.  He came around to the passenger door and unlocked it, then held onto her arm while she slipped into the leather bucket seat.  He waited until she was settled and then