Page 4 of The Perfect Poise

Sergeant Paul Delco, who had worked with them on a case in the past, was a rail-thin officer in his late thirties with crew cut brown hair and a scowl. Despite his expression, Jessie was glad to see him. In their previous experience together, he’d proven to be competent and professional.

“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” Sergeant Delco said as they met him about thirty feet from the silver Tesla where a woman could be seen slumped over the steering wheel. “As soon as the first officer on the scene told me the name he got from the victim’s driver’s license, I knew your team would want to be involved.”

“Who is she?” Ryan asked.

“Her name is Chloe Baptiste,” Delco said. “Her husband is Laurent Baptiste, the CEO of that big French film conglomerate, Groupe Passage. According to the gallery manager over there who found her, she had just purchased two paintings at an auction held here tonight.”

He nodded at a twenty-something woman in a flowing dress with frizzy blonde hair, sitting in the back seat of a squad car. The door was open, and her head was in her hands.

“Should we go talk to her now?” Jessie wondered.

“She’s not much good to chat at the moment,” Delco said. “I only got a few answers out of her before she broke down. She’s pretty messed up after what she saw. I would have been too.

Jessie could understand that. Even from this distance, the collection of blood that had pooled under Baptiste's car was sizable.

“She didn’t take the paintings with her when she left, obviously,” Ryan confirmed.

"Right," Delco said. "Per what the gallery manager said before she lost it—her name is Jane Birkett by the way—the pieces were to be delivered via armored truck later this week. Together, they're worth over a million bucks. Birkett mentioned that Baptiste said her husband would kill her for overspending on them."

“Where is he right now?” Ryan asked, intrigued.

“Apparently Chloe Baptiste told Birkett that he was in Europe for some kind of film festival,” Delco explained.

“We’ll need to reach out to him,” Ryan said, already pulling out his phone. “I’ll text Jamil and Beth ask them to get his contact information.”

While he did that, Jessie continued to pepper Delco with questions. “So Birkett is the manager here, but is she the gallery owner too? She looks young.”

"No," Delco answered, looking at his notes. "The owner is a woman named Lena Ortega. But she left the auction a little early because of a migraine. Apparently, she was upset that she had to leave because she and Baptiste are friends."

“We’ll definitely need to talk to her too,” Ryan said, still typing into his phone. “I’m adding her to the list of folks we’ll need Jamil and Beth to get contact info for. I’d rather get that stuff from our people than bother Ms. Birkett with it in her condition.”

Jessie appreciated her husband’s sensitivity to the matter, but it occurred to her that they would still have to question the woman.

“I know she’s in rough shape, but we need to get a time frame from her—when Baptiste left the gallery, stuff like that.”

Sergeant Delco flipped to the next page on his pad. It was clear that he had gotten that answer too. Jessie remembered again why she liked the guy.

"I actually have that," he said. "Birkett was okay answering straightforward questions. It was only when I asked about finding the body that she fell apart. She said that Baptiste left the gallery just after 9 p.m. The auction had ended, but she stuck around to sign some paperwork related to her purchases. Birkett said that she closed up and left about ten minutes later. That's when she found her in her car like that."

Jessie looked over at the Tesla again.

When is the Crime Scene Unit getting here?” she asked. “I don’t want to get too close to the vehicle until they’ve had a chance to go over it.”

“Last update was that they should be here in the next ten minutes,” Delco said. “Same with the medical examiner. In the meantime, we have officers inside the gallery. The place has security cameras so we’re hoping they might provide something useful.”

“You’ll keep us updated on that?” Ryan asked.

“Of course,” Delco assured him.

Ryan turned to Jessie. “Do you want to see what we can determine about the body from a distance?”

Jessie nodded. They walked over to the vehicle along with Sergeant Delco, stopping ten feet from the driver’s side door. There was a purse on the ground near the door. Delco pointed at it.

“Our first officer on the scene checked the purse to get ID,” he said. “He didn’t do a thorough search but noted that there was over $300 in cash in there, along with multiple credit cards.”

“So likely not a robbery gone wrong,” Ryan surmised.

“I tend to doubt that,” Jessie muttered, looking at the woman in the driver’s seat.

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