By John Toler Rappahannock News Staff Writer Persistent police

By John Toler

Rappahannock News Staff Writer

Persistent police work and a lucky break ras resulted in an arrest and the recovery of nost of hand-painted decorative tiles taken Tom the Inn at Little Washington last October.

Jesse G. Solis, of Fairfax, an employee of me of the subcontractors working on the renovation of the Inn’s guest suites last year, has been arrested and charged with grand larceny of the tiles, valued at between $5,000-$10,000.

According to Capt. Jeffrey Brown of the Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office, Solis is accused of taking the unique, imported tiles from the Inn property over a period of time.

After the time the tiles were discovered missing, replacements had to be ordered and sent by air-freight from Portugal, so that the job could be completed.

The first break in the case came when a recent visitor to the Inn commented on the tiles to an employee, and was told of their origin and uniqueness. The visitor remarked that the tiles couldn’t be too rare, since he had recently seen nearly identical tiles at a secondhand store in Charles Town, West Virginia.

The Sheriff’s Office was called and given further information, and Brown went to the “Needful Things” store in Charles Town, where the tiles — minus a few missing and broken — were found.

“From there, we worked the case backwards,” said Brown. And the investigation took an unusual turn. According to Capt. Brown, the second-hand store had bought the tiles from a storage company in Fairfax, which had sold them — along with other contents of a storage unit — for unpaid rental fees.

By tracing responsibility for the storage unit to Solis —1 and establishing that he had the opportunity to take the tiles — they charged him with the theft. According to Brown, Solis is currently free on a $2500 per