THE FIRST THING Sam noticed when Chelsea walked out of the back was that she looked…taller. He slid his gaze down and saw the shoes. Unless he was mistaken, they were the same shoes she’d worn the night of the exhibit, but they worked even better with the skirt she wore today.

Caught in the act, he realized when he looked up and saw Chelsea’s amused smile. “Ready to go?” he asked, proud of how smoothly he managed to recover from his lapse of professionalism. He helped her on with her coat and walked her to his vehicle, having agreed that he’d drive her back to the gallery to get her car when they were done. “How was your day?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

She leaned back against the headrest. “Don’t ask. One of the worst.”

He thought of Joel Sinclair and how unpleasant he’d seemed and glanced at her. “Boyfriend trouble?”

“What?”

“Sorry. Too personal.” And where the heck did that come from?

“Oh, no. It’s not that at all. Just something…unusual happened at work today.”

He glanced at her again. She had her eyes closed and seemed unwilling to elaborate.

He drove into The Coffee Shoppe’s parking lot and took a spot close to the entrance, and let her precede him into the cafe.

They both had coffee and Chelsea ordered an enormous cinnamon bun.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him after swallowing a generous bite.

He watched her tear off another sizable portion. “Where do you put all that food?” he asked.

“I get plenty of exercise walking around at work, and I try to do yoga a couple of times a week,” she explained. “Fortunately, I’m also blessed with a high metabolism,” she added with a flash of even white teeth. “But you said this was official police business. Do you know who’s responsible for the robbery at All That Glitters and Shines?”

“I did say it’s police business,” he replied, although he’d nearly forgotten, enjoying her company as much as he was. “It’s about the robbery, although regrettably we haven’t caught the responsible person yet.”

Chelsea had been about to put another bite of the pastry in her mouth but paused. “Does it usually take this long with a robbery of this sort?”

“Generally not. The longer it takes, the lower the odds that we’ll be able to catch the perpetrator. This case is somewhat out of the norm. And that’s part of the problem.” He preferred not to tell her outright what he was considering, for two reasons. He didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily; she looked troubled enough as it was. Also, if he was going to share his theory with anyone, it should be the curator or owner of the gallery. His purpose in meeting with Chelsea was to get her take on whether there’d been anything out of the ordinary that could indicate the gallery might be a target.

Or so he told himself.

* * *