Stolen Heritage: Gripping Crime Thriller (Private Detective Heinrich Muller Crime Thriller Book 3)
STOLEN HERITAGE
By Robert Brown
© Robert Brown 2018 All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction, any names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are purely from the imagination of the author or used for fictitious and entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to real people living or dead and actual events is purely coincidental.
No parts of this book may be reproduced. Reviewers may quote small passages in the book for reviewing purposes.
Dedication
For Graham and Christine, with your kind words of support I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. Thank you both so much xx
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Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
Joshua J. Marine
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
About the Author
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CHAPTER ONE
Heinrich Muller hated it when work interfered with pleasure, especially when it happened at the high point of his collecting year—the annual Big Apple Collectors Fair.
Celebrating its fifteenth year, the Big Apple Collectors Fair was bigger than any other collectors fair in the country except for the one in Los Angeles, but they were a bunch of West Coast pussies and didn’t count. The fair took place in a huge convention center in Yonkers, with a giant main floor filled with stalls. It made for a small, temporary town of collectibles and memorabilia. More stalls were crammed in the wide gallery that encircled the main floor.
Heinrich was there on a group outing with the local chapter of the Old Farts Who Love Old Tunes group. The Old Farts collected the oldest music they could find. A record that ran on 33 or 45 RPM was too new, and don’t even talk about CDs. It had to be a 78 or nothing at all. Some of the richer members even collected Edison cylinder recordings dating back to the 1880s. With the money from one of his recent cases, Heinrich had bought himself a fine Edison cylinder player from the 1890s, in perfect working order. In the deal, he’d gotten some scarce jazz recordings from the turn of the century. Now he was on the prowl for some more cylinders, plus any choice 78s he could find.
It was proving harder than it should have been. The organizers hadn’t clustered the vendors by type of collectible. This was partly because many vendors sold a variety of stuff, making their stalls look like a high-end yard sale, and partly because the organizers wanted everything jumbled together, knowing that most collectors had more than one obsession or might buy gifts for their friends.
It worked. Heinrich had just picked up a classic Airfix model of a British World War Two Spitfire.
“I didn’t know you did modeling,” said Neil Balfort, an attorney with a taste for old ethnographic recordings.
“It’s for Jan. I got him into making models to teach him patience.”
“You sure he isn’t sniffing the glue?” Neil asked.
“The staff at the halfway house lets him do the models only under close supervision. They lock up the glue when he’s done.”
“Smart move,” said Thornton Bell, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. The man had an eagle eye for choice classical and opera 78s and already toted a big stack under his arm. “Couldn’t you just get him any old model instead of plunking down fifty bucks for a kit as old as you are?”
“I’m hoping he’ll catch the collecting bug.”
“Hanging out with you, he probably will,” Thornton chuckled.
They strolled along the aisle, glancing to their left and right at all the vintage toys, eighteenth-century books, Shaker furniture, and baseball cards. The crowd was big that day. Mostly guys, of course, and mostly middle-aged like they were. The other two members with them were Jordan Carter, a beefy, greying African-American who was the richest guy in the group, and Avram Davidson, a forty-something municipal bureaucrat. He was new to collecting and his eyes were as wide as a teen’s in a porno shop.
“Damn, look at all this stuff!” he kept saying.
A table selling gramophones grabbed their attention. Each of them already had one or more of the old 78 RPM players, but they stopped anyway to admire the delicate Japanese-style painting on the horn of a circa 1910 Edison phonograph, and the fine preservation of a rare 1902 Victor Model R. That model had a plain, undersized oak casing and a simple brass horn. When it came out, it had been intended as a budget model. However, the run was so limited, it had become the most expensive machine on the table.
“Hey, Heinrich,” Neil called from another table.
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