“Surely, I can.” He checked his contact list on his phone. “I must have it at home . . . Roy’s number. I’ll call up my wife and she can get me Roy’s number who can get you Glenn’s number.” Pellman walked a few feet away to make his calls.

McAdams said, “You want to tell me what you found or are you going to make me play twenty questions?”

Decker said, “I found paint.”

“Paint?”

“Paint flicked off on one of the loops soldered onto the frame. It was painted to make the solder joints look old. And, come to think of it, whoever put those loops on the frames did a sloppy job of soldering. Now it could have been a recent repair. I’m just saying it wasn’t in keeping with the original work.”

McAdams said, “What did the glass look like? The individual pieces, I mean.”

“The glass was beautiful . . . really iridescent.”

“Did you find any cracks?”

Decker regarded him in the shadows. “Interesting you should ask. I remember thinking that the glass was in really good shape. Why?”

“This may not be true for window panels, but my mom always said that the lamps have been around for a while. It’s nearly impossible to find something in pristine shape—without any cracks—that hasn’t been forged.”

“Good to know,” Decker said. “On the other hand, the panels have been hanging in the same place for over a hundred years untouched.” A pause. “On the third hand, the works are hanging in a noncontrolled environment. With all the weather fluctuations, you might expect a few cracks. On the fourth hand, I only looked at one panel so maybe the others have cracks in the glass.”

“So that’s the way you do it. You just keep talking to yourself until you hit on something.”

“Sure, I talk to myself if no one else is around. When I was head of the detectives’ division, I used to talk to my other detectives. We’d bounce stuff off one another and we were right more than we were wrong.”

“You know, I am standing right here, freezing my ass off. You could bounce shit off me.”

“McAdams, I’ve been trying to bounce shit off you for the last six months and all I’ve had to show for it was a face full of crap. S’right. I know I’m a terrific detective. If you want to learn, I’ll be happy to share what I know. And if there’s something that I don’t know but you do know, well, that’s fine with me also. A great detective starts by being a great listener.”

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3