He nodded. “Fine, I’ll do that. And, if I need to come back, I will. You can count on that.”
And she had absolutely no doubt that he would.
“So, the next question is, if you do all this work at your family’s workplace, when did you last see that stolen piece?”
“I brought it here from the funeral home yesterday and was all set to frame it today.”
“And what would that entail?”
She looked at him in surprise. “After preservation, these pieces are almost like parchment paper. They’re a lot more durable and could handle the water in the fountain just fine probably, at least I hope so,” she said, with a wince, as she glanced at him. “How badly damaged is it?”
“It’s got extra holes along the perimeter. But, outside of the fact that I know what it is, it is a beautiful piece of artwork.”
“It is her,” Tasmin said gently. “And most of that artwork was done as part of her journey through this process of trying to fight the cancer that ate away at her body. I wasn’t sure that I could even preserve it.”
“Why?” he asked curiously.
“Because cancer, the treatments, the medications, just the disease, it ravages our body in such a way that people rarely think about how damaged the skin itself can become. Every thirty days your body produces a new skin, and, every thirty days, when you’ve been struggling with cancer for a couple years, that skin is no longer as perfect as it once was. Therefore, the artwork attached to that damaged skin is no longer in prime condition either.”
With that, she knew she’d touched a nerve in a different way. She studied him for a long moment but immediately saw flashes of a woman dying in his arms, somebody he cared about, from the expression on his face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Apparently all this touches a nerve.”
“It would touch a nerve for anybody who’s lost somebody they cared about,” he said quietly.
She nodded and busied herself at the copier, giving him time to compose himself. “Apparently it was something like cancer?”
“It was,” he said, his voice stronger, as he regained control.
Then, in a casual tone of voice, he put the conversation back on professional footing. “You can’t have it back yet.”
“I understand, but can I at least see it, so I can assess the damage, since I’ll have to try and fix it?”
“You can come to the morgue tomorrow,” he said.
She looked up at him and nodded. “Is Dr. Kreimer still there?” The detective nodded in surprise. She smiled. “Because of the industry that I’ve always worked in, I do know some of the people involved.”
“Right,” he said. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“I’m sure some of them can give me a good reference, though whether they would choose to is a whole different story.” At that, his gaze sharpened, and she waved a hand. “You’ll have to go back to that search of my history.”
“Okay, seems I will, as soon as I get back to the office.”
“You do that, but, in the meantime, I have no idea how somebody turned off the alarm, stole that artwork, that memorial art piece, or whatever you want to call it. I’m still trying to come up with proper words that don’t upset people and don’t bring on the tears, you know? Anyway, I’ll plan to head down to the morgue tomorrow morning.”
“Good enough.” He slowly retreated. “I also need to know what security company you had in to fix your system.”
She nodded and asked, “What’s your email?”
He gave it to her, and she fired off a scanned copy of the invoice. “I’ve just sent you a copy of it. The repairman was here for … I think maybe an hour, but I don’t really know.”
“Was anybody else working with you that day?”
“I wasn’t working here that day. My sister was filling in for me. My mother comes in occasionally to help me out too, if my storefront is really busy or if I’ve got lots of customer appointments. They can be time-consuming.”
At that, he raised his brows.
She smiled. “Just think about the subject matter,” she said gently. “And how emotional people get over a loss like that.”
“Right. So you do one-on-one appointments with people?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I mean, sometimes it’s handled over the phone, and sometimes, if they’re local or want to see my work and to decide whether it’s something they really want hanging on their wall, they come in and take a look.”
“And these are all samples?”
“Yes. They are samples.” She looked up at the closest one. “And, yes, that is my uncle’s piece up there,” she said, “but it’s hardly my uncle.”
“And yet it’s a piece of him.”
“Yes, and I, for one, am quite happy to have him up there. He was a good friend of mine, and we were very close.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been difficult.”
“Very, and that’s also what started my passion for this. He was very proud of his artwork, and he definitely didn’t want to die knowing that it was disappearing with him. And there was no need for it.”
“Still, I’m sure a lot of people would think otherwise.”
“Oh, a lot of people did, a lot of people still do, but it’s becoming a little more common. I’m not the only one in the world who does this, you know? Some of these preservation elements—the whole system, the thought process—are thousands of years old. Go do a Google search of some of the Japanese specialists who worked in this field. Some were better than others, and also check out the multiple collections of tattoos that have been stored in formaldehyde in jars. Of course that’s not as pretty and looks much more like a chunk of a person, especially when compared to the pieces that I have.”
She pointed out the beautiful guitar, done in multiple shades of black and white and grays, hanging on the wall. “That was a friend of mine,” she said. “He was killed in a motorcycle accident, and I did that for his family. Unfortunately his mother was absolutely tormented by it, and I ended up agreeing to take it back. He was my friend, and I’m more than happy to be reminded of him in that piece of artwork up there that he did himself.”
As she watched, the cop walked closer and looked at it. “It’s really hard to tell it was part of a person.”
“That’s actually from his thigh,” she said, coming up to stand beside him. “As I said, by the time we’re done, the preservation looks more like parchment paper.”
He nodded. “I did see that with the piece found in the fountain. It’s pretty amazing what people can do these days.”
“Well, I mean, between cryonics and somebody in Germany trying to do a head transplant,” she said, with a note of laughter, “I don’t think many boundaries exist where people aren’t willing to cross them to do what they want to do with their own bodies. We have body art. We have science. We have bodies flayed into one million tiny slices and put on display, traveling around the world. This is really no different. Somebody made a beautiful art piece, and either the owner or the artist or a family member wanted it preserved as a memento. Considering that I agree with them, I really don’t have a problem trying to make their wishes happen,” she said. “So I don’t know who did such a terrible thing to this poor woman and her family, but I hope, for their sake, you find out. And I really need that piece back. In their minds, it’s all they have.”