She got in the car laughing and started to talk about her rookie adventures with some of the hairbags-the stiff oldtimers who never made it out of uniform-that she’d encountered in the four years she’d been on the force.

“Why don’t you take the Sixty-sixth Street drive through the park and head down Ninth Avenue? I’m going to a gallery called Caxton Due, on Twenty-second Street, between Tenth and Eleventh.”

Brigid continued to amuse me with her anecdotes while her partner weaved in and out of the midafternoon traffic on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. Once that cleared, Lazarro drove down to Twenty-first Street and came up Tenth Avenue, about to make the turn into the one-way westbound block on which the gallery entrance was located.

We could all see that it would be impossible to drive into the narrow street. In addition to the cars parked at meters on each side, there were three enormous trucks lined up in a row right in the middle of the pavement. Wooden stanchions were spread from the north corner of the curb to the south.

There didn’t seem to be anyone directing this operation. Officer Lazarro gave off a few whelps, and two men in T-shirts and jeans poked their heads out of the cab of one of the trucks. Since they weren’t moving, Brannigan got out of the car and walked over to them.

She came back and leaned in the window. “They’ve got a permit to block the street off for the afternoon. There’s a place farther down the way called the Dia Center for the Arts. They’re installing a major exhibition today, so this is legal while they’re unloading sculpture for the new show. Want me to walk you into your gallery?”

“This might work even better. There’s a rear door on Twenty-third Street, through the warehouse of the gallery. We saw the sign for it, like a service entrance, the first day we came here. Maybe Daughtry’ll let me in that way. As Chapman said then, Daughtry might even prefer we use it.” Again, I checked the time. “Chapman should be calling soon. C’mon, let’s go around the corner.”

We drove up to Twenty-third and Lazarro signaled left, then made a U-turn to pull up to the curb in front of the spot I pointed out as the garage entrance to Deni’s gallery. Brigid got out of the car when I did and walked with me over to the rusty-colored door frame, which had an intercom system with two buzzers next to a small enamel plate. One was marked caxton due-service, and the other said caxton due- gallery.

I pressed the second bell and waited a couple of minutes.

“Any idea how long we’ll be here?” Brigid asked.

“With some luck, if he lets me poke around the warehouse, I might be an hour or more. If Chapman turns up anything important, be ready to fly out of here with me, okay?”

The gray haze seemed to be lifting, as the forecasters had promised, and the sun was beginning to filter through. I was hot and looked forward to being received in the cool of the airconditioned art display space.

We both heard the sound of the intercom click.

“Yes?” Judging from the crackling quality of its sound, the system was as old as the building.

“Alexandra Cooper. From the District Attorney’s Office,” I identified myself to Daughtry.

“I’ll buzz you in. Come on up-is not-but I’ll-top-”

The entrance led directly up an old iron staircase, which bypassed the storage area to lead into the gallery itself. Before the door swung shut behind us, I heard Lazarro calling Brigid’s name.

“Sergeant Danz wants to talk to you. Needs an idea of how long we’re going be tied up here. Wanna take it?”

Brigid looked at me. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I do the same thing when my boss calls.”

“Can you wait down here a few minutes while I report in? The sergeant’s gonna have to get permission for us to work over the end of the shift at three thirty.”

I pointed up. “You know right where I am. I’ll be out as soon as Chapman calls.”

As I climbed the steps, I could see scores of paintings arrayed in bins beneath, most of them covered in bubble wrap or kraft paper, and all labeled by the artist’s name and some kind of numerical code. They varied in size from tiny objects, not larger than four by six inches, to giant canvases that were best suited for museum walls.

I rang at the door at the top of the stairs and the buzzer sounded to unlock the way into the small lift, which descended to this ground floor area to take me up to the top of the atrium, where Daughtry awaited my arrival. When the door slid back, I was again overwhelmed by the beauty of the open atrium space. Emerging from the elevator on the north side of the building, I was facing the glass wall of the southern exposure and its great view of the city sky.

As I stepped off into the room, I felt the relief of the cold surge of air that I had anticipated. It contrasted with the unexpected brightness of the afternoon sun at the end of a gloomy day, which lit up the gallery space and beamed down on the tracks of the deserted Hi-Line Railroad.

I took my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket for the first time that day.

“Over here,” called a voice that was familiar to me, but it was not Daughtry’s.

I looked around and saw Frank Wrenley sitting on one of the couches in the exhibition area one flight below me.

“Welcome, Ms. Cooper. I’m baby-sitting the art for Bryan. He should be back anytime now. May I offer you a cold drink?”

I remembered that this morning, in my office, Wrenley had told us that Daughtry was going to allow him to look through Denise’s belongings to see whether any of his property was included there. He was holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and a tall glass in the other.

“Shall I come down?”

“Please.”

I followed the catwalk around the bend until I arrived at the metal staircase that led to the level below. I walked down, shook Wrenley’s hand, and accepted his offer to sit on the couch. I could see the documents he had laid out on the glasstopped table between us. He had a red pen and appeared to be going through lists that he was checking against his own.

“Will you join me in a Bloody Mary?”

“No thanks.”

“Ah, the constable doesn’t drink on duty, does she?”

“I’m so exhausted, Mr. Wrenley, that I’d probably curl up and take a nap if I so much as smelled a whiff of the vodka. Your inventory?”

“Bryan’s off trying to solve the mystery of Lowell Caxton’s hasty retreat. He’s been good enough to let me attempt to reconcile some of my records with Deni’s things before I return to Palm Beach.” He waved his receipts in my direction as though to convince me that he had proof of title for anything he needed. “Where’s your sidekick? I was beginning to think you and Detective Chapman were joined at the hip.”

“He’ll be along soon. We were-I was hoping to get Mr. Daughtry’s permission to look around a bit at some of Denise’s things.”

“I thought that first day I met you here you’d gone all through this place with warrants and everything short of commando troops. Bryan was sure he was going back to prison.”

I smiled at his exaggerated description. “That’s one of the problems when you do a search before you know just what it is you’re looking for.”

“But now you do know?”

Not really. But I saw no reason to tell that to Wrenley. We’d try again with some of the information we had picked up after Varelli’s murder and during our conversation with Don Cannon. “Do you have any idea when Mr. Daughtry is due to return?” I didn’t know whether to try to wait it out or get down to my office and face the music with McKinney.

“Pretty soon, I should think. He’s got to lock the place up for the night.”

It was now going on three hours since Mike had left the city. I reached in my bag to get the cell phone to try to beep him. When I turned it on, the failure of the three green icons to light up reminded me that the battery must have run down. I kept the charger set up on my desk at home and plugged the phone into it every evening as a matter of habit, but since I had spent the last two nights at Jake’s apartment, I had neglected to recharge it.