Suspicious (On the Run) by Sara Rosett Page B

Jack punched some numbers in his phone. “I bet there are only a handful of special—i.e. shady—dealers who handle ‘merchandise’ like the Flawless Set. Fortunately, we know someone who knows shady people.”
    Zoe’s thoughts skipped over their list of friends and acquaintances. “Masard?” she asked, surprised that Jack would know the Parisian antique dealer’s phone number off the top of his head. They’d met him last year when they’d run the missing artwork to the ground. “I don’t know if he deals with jewelry much,” Zoe said, thinking of Masard’s shop crammed full of furniture and paintings.
    Jack shook his head. “No, our other friend with shady connections.”
    Her face cleared. “Oh, Nico. Of course.” She went back to looking through the closet. Nico was exactly the right person to call. They knew they could count on him to keep things quiet, and, despite his rather ridiculous manner, his knowledge of underground criminal dealings was vast.
    Zoe finished with the closet and stripped the rubber gloves off her sweaty hands. Nothing. It’s not here , she said to herself. The lack of discovery should have been disappointing, but there was something else, some important thought teasing at the edge of her mind that overrode the setback.
    She stepped back, surveying the room as Jack’s voice on the phone faded to a murmur. There was something off. She scanned the room again. If she could just concentrate, it would come to her…
    Jack appeared in the doorway. “Nico says he’ll ask around. We’re going to meet him at his fiancée’s apartment.”
    Zoe nodded in an abstracted matter and walked slowly into the living room, then snapped her fingers. “There’s no suitcase.”
    “What?”
    “The maid told you there was nothing in Harrington’s hotel room, but there are clothes in the closet in the bedroom, so he was here. That cream-colored suit he wore when we met him at the Pantheon is in there. There’s no mistaking it, so Harrington was staying here, but there’s no suitcase here. Last night, after the exhibit, Harrington must have returned here, packed his suitcase, and left.” Zoe rubbed her temple. “He took the jewels, and he could be anywhere. Some other hotel in Rome, or he might even have left Italy.”
    “Alessi will run down any travel, if Harrington charged it.”
    “But that won’t do us any good. Maybe we could talk to the neighbors, see if he mentioned anything, a city or another hotel.”
    “Better if no one here notices us.” Jack cocked his head to the side.
    “Wait. The trash. There wasn’t anything in the kitchen but empty food boxes, but the desk. Was there a trash can near the desk?” Zoe asked, already moving to the desk.
    Jack didn’t answer, but instead went again to the wall near the window that overlooked the street and carefully looked out, his back against the wall.
    A trashcan was tucked into the footwell of the desk. Zoe fell on it as if it were a treasure chest, scrabbling through a few crumpled receipts and a couple of discarded letter-size pages. The receipts were all for food—pizza and coffee. Zoe flicked through the larger pages. The first ones were mostly blank with only a header or footer, and a few lines of text, the extra pages that print sometime at the tail end of a print job. A small printer rested on the corner of the desk. A laminated card with directions for its use was taped to the side, so Harrington must have had a laptop and printed some documents recently. The receipts had been on the bottom of the trashcan and were dated within the last two days. The printed pages had been on top of them.
    “Zoe, we’ve got to go.” Jack picked up the pliers and screwdriver from the edge of the desk and shoved them into his back pocket.
    “What?” Zoe edged up to the window. She’d been so absorbed in the papers that she hadn’t been listening to the activity on the street, but there were Carabinieri cars parked directly in front of the