Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  Shocked to see me without forewarning by George, Vivienne stands up fast, her well-bred elegance nicely turned out in a slender gray suit that silhouettes her shapely body, the severely cut jacket open, revealing a black cashmere sweater and a ladylike strand of pearls. “What are you doing here?” she says. “What have you done to George?”

  “I haven’t done anything to George. I’m here to get some straight answers from you.”

  I wish she wasn’t fingering her pearls and looking at me the way she’s looking at me, like a little girl who’s wondering if you’re still mad at her, only sexier. The saxophone crooning behind her enhances the seductive effect, throwing me a little off balance. I’m relieved when she asks, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sure. Chiv—”

  “Chivas. Neat. Yes, I know.”

  I toss my coat and cap on the couch while Vivienne pours drinks from a well-stocked liquor cart near the desk. The couch, like everything in here, has a well-lived-in feel of patrician good taste, the burgundy velvet upholstery shimmering softly in the lamplight.

  I came here determined to press the case with Vivienne, probe every corner and angle of her to get to the truth of her possible involvement with the Jacobson and Stern killings. But when she hands me my drink and looks at me with a touch of sadness, and then awkwardly looks away, my determination cracks. Not completely, not even a lot, but the fissures are there, and feelings I don’t want seep through. I’m not in love with this woman, and never could be—only Sophie claims that part of me—but the passion we shared was a helluva lot more than just sex. Vivienne not only inflamed my body, but her beauty, her lust—for me, for art, for everything in her aristocratic grasp—and those traces of the slums that spice her bloodline inflamed my soul. And maybe so did the thread of craziness, the madness that infects her mother, and maybe Vivienne.

  She takes her drink back to the safety of the desk and sits down. I remain standing. It helps bolster my determination to stick to what I came here to do.

  The whiskey helps fortify Vivienne, makes her less awkward in my company, though only a little. Looking up at me from the desk, she can’t hold the glance and looks away again. “Which straight answers do you want, Cantor?”

  “Well, let’s start with an easy one,” I say. “You called me today, asked me to call you back. So what’s on your mind?”

  Another sip of her drink, another fingering of her pearls, another glance up at me, and another awkward look away. She’s asking me to be kind to her. I want to be. But kindness won’t help me find out if she’s a murderer.

  But neither will badgering her. So I just stay quiet, sip the scotch, and wait.

  I don’t have to wait long. After another swallow of her drink, followed by a deep breath she lets out slowly, even timidly, while looking down at her desk and idly fingering papers, she says, “I wanted to tell you—that is, I wanted to say that what happened between us last night shouldn’t alter our…our professional relationship.”

  “Uh-huh. So it was a business call.”

  “Yes, that’s right. A business call.” Safe behind the big desk, she eventually gives in to an urge to really look at me. “What happened to your face? You look like you were at the losing end of a boxing match.”

  After a last swallow of scotch, I say, “Something like that,” tossing it off as lightly as I can, hiding my ordeal last night at Jimmy Shea’s place. I don’t want to talk about Jimmy Shea. I’d feel a little queasy talking about someone whose body I recently dumped into the Atlantic, so I move the conversation back to where I want it. “Here’s another question for you, Vivienne. Why weren’t you at Hannah Jacobson’s funeral? You’d worked with her for months, grew fond of her, or so you said, and yet you were nowhere to be seen at her funeral. At least, I didn’t see you. Did anyone else?”

  She’s caught the edge in my voice, looks at me now with an awareness she’s being interrogated. “What are you hinting at, Cantor?”

  I wouldn’t mind another drink but figure I’d better not. I need to stay on top of this game, keep my senses sharp, so I just put my glass down on the library table. But I do it hard, let the thump of the glass unnerve Vivienne a little bit, let her know that hiding behind her desk or her social position won’t stop me from pressing her for the truth. “I’m not hinting at anything,” I say, “I’m just wondering. Maybe you had reasons to keep out of sight at Mrs. Jacobson’s funeral. Maybe you’d like to share those reasons.”

  Women like Vivienne, who’ve grown up with the world bending to their every whim, don’t take well to being challenged or having their motives questioned, and I’ve just committed the unpardonable sin of doing both, which causes Vivienne’s well-schooled sense of regal superiority to kick in. Standing up from the desk, slowly, almost imperiously, she has no problem looking at me now. In fact, she looks at me as if I’m just another Parkhurst Trent hireling, easily dismissed. “That’s not what you’re asking, Cantor. You’re asking if I had anything to do with Mrs. Jacobson’s death. Or even her brother’s death. Don’t deny it. I see it on your face. Behind all those cuts and bruises is hard suspicion. Suspicion of me.”

  Denying it would be a losing game. She’s caught me. “All right, then give me a reason not to be suspicious.”

  “Well, because…because…” There’s a slight loosening of Vivienne’s aristocratic spine, a hint of anxiety threatening her regal composure. She gives up fumbling for words she can’t find and comes out from behind the desk instead, stands right in front of me, her hands clenched at her sides as if she’s forcing herself not to reach for me, or hit me. “Because do you really think that the woman who shared your bed last night, the woman who…gave you her body and—” She’s not crying but she’s very near it, choking on words too humiliating to say. Catching her breath, she’s finally able to speak again, throwing out a question that comes at me like a pointing finger. “Do you think that woman could ever kill anybody?”

  “Yes.”

  The little word hits her like a slap, her eyes opening wide with the shock of it. There’s rage in her eyes, a smoldering rage that the more she fights to control, the more it seeps from her and prowls the room, an animal breathing fire.

  But something else is in her eyes: hurt. It fuels her rage. Vivienne’s clenched hands spring from her sides, pound me in a fury of pain. She’s crying for real now and keeps coming at me, lands several blows before I grab her hands. She fights to pull away, and I’m surprised at her strength, then realize I shouldn’t be; if she’s really the crack shot Hagen and Vern hinted at, she’d need all that strength to control the sharp recoil of a hunting weapon, the kind of gun powerful enough to fire from a distance and accurately send a bullet through my car window, and blast Marcus Stern’s head to smithereens.

  With every pull, with every twist, Vivienne’s athletic strength runs through my arms, pushes my muscles, convincing me she’d be strong enough to cut up Hannah Jacobson and be the sharpshooter who aimed a high-caliber weapon with enough control to kill Marcus Stern in heavy traffic.

  Her crying ebbs, the rage draining out of her, but the hurt in her eyes lingers. “How could you, Cantor?”

  “How? Easy,” I say, “because the struggle for Hannah Jacobson’s life didn’t happen near the door. It happened in the living room, meaning she let her killer in, probably knew her killer, maybe even liked her killer, which is a scary idea any way you look at it. Well, she certainly knew you, didn’t she, Vivienne. And I know you wanted the Dürer, maybe needed it to secure your position at the museum, so if Mrs. Jacobson wasn’t going to hand it over, or maybe even gave you a story that she didn’t have it, you had good reason to want her dead. Maybe it drove you crazy that you didn’t get it from Mrs. J and that her brother didn’t have it either. And from what I hear from Hagen about your abilities with a gun—”

  But she’s not really listening to me. She’s just staring at me through tears trickling down her face, mumbling through choked sobs, “Cantor, how could you? You, you
were my first. Did you know that? Do you know how long I’ve been hiding? Hiding my…my desire for you? I know that phone call last night was about Sophie. I know what she means to you. But to just leave, without a word, just walk out like I was never there…”

  Women in tears don’t usually leave me speechless. I can be a cad, and I know it, my patter inflected with a sincerity I don’t feel, my escape plans well rehearsed. But I’m speechless now, as if my tongue’s been cut out with the sharp blade of truth, a blade Vivienne wielded with precision.

  I let go of Vivienne’s hands, prepared to let her start pounding me again, but her hands just go to her face to wipe her tears as she walks away from me.

  The saxophone’s finished its number and a commercial jingle comes on the radio, some guy singing the smile-enhancing praises of Pepsodent toothpaste. Three or four lines of its grating cheeriness is all either of us can take, and Vivienne finally turns it off. The sudden silence is a relief, makes the room feel larger, the emotions filling it less cramped.

  Vivienne picks up the glass she left on the desk and finishes her drink. It steadies her, absorbs some of the pain of her humiliating confession to me. After pulling a cigarette from a pack on the desk and lighting it with the big brass lighter, a deep drag settles her enough for her to face me again. “So you think I’m a murderer.”

  I guess she heard me after all.

  I light a smoke from my own pack, let it do its calming work before I ask her the damning question. “Are you?”

  Her brittle little laugh shreds the wisp of smoke curling along her cheek. “If I were, I’d hardly tell you. Still, maybe I should be flattered you think of me as something more than either a dull and dusty art scholar or a quick one-night stand.”

  “I don’t think of you as either of those things.”

  “Just a murderer.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “And all because Max Hagen told you I’m good with a rifle?”

  “That, and it seems the killer was a woman.”

  That catches her. She escapes into another long pull on her smoke, then says, “I see. Well, what about Stern’s wife and daughter? Do you know their greedy little story? I’m sure they’re set to inherit a bundle from Stern, and they might’ve made a handsome profit from the Dürer if the family inherited it from Hannah Jacobson.”

  “Sure, the wife’s greedy,” I say, “but until Mrs. Jacobson’s death, she’d never heard of Dürer. She had no idea the watercolor ever existed. And the daughter tells me she adored her father and her aunt. Wouldn’t hurt a hair on their heads. So it looks like you’re it, Vivienne, the only woman still in the picture.”

  The hurt and humiliation which ground her down earlier are gone. She’s the aristocratic Vivienne Parkhurst Trent again as she comes back around to the front of the desk, leans against it, and takes a last pull on her cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. Lamplight glimmers on her strand of pearls and on the serenely confident smile that used to intoxicate me, and if I let it, still could. “Is that what that bobby-socks brat told you? That she loved her daddy and her aunt? And did she cry and bat her dewy young eyelashes at you? Cantor, is there a female alive whose line you don’t fall for? Besides mine, that is.”

  I’m not sure which of those shockers to handle first: the icy one about Francine Stern, or the hot coal Vivienne tossed in my lap about not falling for her.

  Necessity insists I take care of the first. And anyway, it’s safer. “What gives you the idea Francine didn’t love her father or Hannah Jacobson?”

  Crossing her arms, Vivienne’s in control of the room, the story, and my attention. She’s enjoying every minute of it. “I have no doubt that colleague of yours, the young Mr. Zane, dug around in the family secrets after Hannah Jacobson died and the Dürer watercolor disappeared. He’s very good at such things, from what I understand.”

  “Yeah, damn good.”

  “So I’m sure he learned that Miss Francine Stern was one hell of a wild child.”

  “If you mean the little episode that got her driver’s license lifted and Daddy had to buy it back, pay off the fines, yeah, Judson found out all about that. But how would you know about it? And why would you care?”

  “About Francine Stern? I don’t care a whit. Or at least I didn’t before the Dürer was stolen and people started getting killed. But I had the goods on Miss Stern even before Hannah Jacobson died.”

  My eyebrows crawl up. No need to add words to it. Vivienne’s got me in the headlights.

  “Don’t be naïve, Cantor,” she says with an edgy laugh meant to dig at me, pay me back for pushing her to the side of the road.

  “Then educate me,” I say.

  She starts with a Sure, why not? shrug, then says, “Look, whenever the museum enters into business with private citizens, even people as worthy and wonderful as Hannah Jacobson—and she was worthy and wonderful, Cantor—we do a thorough investigation.”

  “You hire a shamus?”

  “We don’t need to. Believe me, all those old-money stuffed shirts on the Board of Trustees have connections that rival J. Edgar Hoover’s. They can get details on matters that would otherwise be kept very quiet, even out of the reach of the talented Mr. Zane. We can get information not just on the person we might do business with, but everyone associated with them. We have to be careful. You never know who’s trying to sell a phony sculpture or—”

  “A smuggled painting?” I can’t help jumping on the joke.

  Vivienne gives me a sly smile, sashays over to the liquor cart, and pours us each a fresh drink. Handing me a scotch, she says, still smiling, “Yes, or a stolen painting. Of course, we’re quite, um, selective in our investigations.”

  “Uh-huh. If the stolen painting is one you want, the investigation just provides tidbits you can use for bargaining power. Now I know why you’re always such a tough hondler.”

  “A what?”

  “Hondler. A bargainer. A dealmaker. You should get out of your neighborhood more often, Vivienne.”

  She starts to say something, but whatever she had in mind she ditches in favor of another shrug.

  I say, “All right, tell me what you’ve got on Francine Stern. Why should I believe she didn’t love her father or her aunt?”

  “Well”—she takes her time getting into the telling, enjoying making me wait, enjoying taking control away from me—“that little driver’s license incident? It wasn’t so little. Seems Francine had a knock-down drag-out fight with her father about her allowance.”

  “Don’t all pretty young debs? Didn’t you?”

  She answers with no answer at all, just a raised eyebrow dismissing any suggestion that the Sterns and the Parkhurst Trents could ever be in the same league. She goes on with her story, the interruption nothing more than a nuisance to be swatted away. “Young Francine wanted more money, Daddy insisted on holding the line. To get back at him for keeping her on a short financial leash, sweet little Francine drove Daddy’s car along the street and purposely crashed it into every car parked on the block. But there was a man in one of the cars, getting ready to drive away. Francine’s temper tantrum crippled him.”

  That last bit tears at me, and Vivienne sees it, sees my eyes narrow, my mouth crease, the knifelike scar above my lip no doubt twisting into a jagged shape from my shock at the story and my suspicion of its truth. And that’s when Vivienne says, “And during that whole episode, darling daughter Francine Stern screams that she wished her father was dead.”

  I’m looking at Vivienne. She’s looking at me. My stare is meant to probe for something, anything, that would tell me she’s lying. Vivienne’s stare dares me to deny her story.

  But I can’t, not yet, not until I know why Vivienne would have such a tale and Judson didn’t. “How could something like that be kept quiet, Vivienne? There’d be a police report.”

  “There was no police report, at least, not for very long. Certain parties made certain phone calls to certain other parties and the report was de
stroyed.” She’s having the time of her life putting it over on me, savoring my ignorance of worlds I’m not privy to. “And here’s something else you probably didn’t know,” she says. “Your Professor Marcus Stern was important enough to those parties, in circles very high up, to get the incident hushed up. Actually, it was his chemical and plastics factory which made him important. Let’s just say these certain parties, here and in Washington, would do anything to protect Marcus Stern and his chemicals from scandal.”

  I need more than a stiff drink now. I need a change of story. “Where did you hear this, Vivienne? How do you know it’s true and not someone’s vicious little fable?”

  The trim gray suit Vivienne’s wearing, its severe cut suggesting a woman of authority, is perfect for the woman who stands before me now, her posture easy but commanding, her smile soft but arrogant, the light in her eyes glowing with privilege. “Keep this in mind, Cantor: If you want to know things about who keeps the trains running on time, or the sewers unclogged, or the streets swept, or who’s being paid off to do it, you dig around City Hall. The politicians and their flunkies keep things running in the city. If you want to know where the money flows, whose pockets are lined with all those payoffs, or who died stealing it, you ask your pals in the underworld. They run the money. But if you want to know everything else, you ask the stuffed-shirt men and lace-gloved women in my world, the people who were first off the boat, who’ve been here longest, whose money is oldest and most deeply embedded in everything, everywhere. We run the world.”

  The library suddenly feels very cold, everything in it, including Vivienne, giving me a chill. The only way I’m going to warm up is to get out of here, get away from this vault of hidden power and secrets, get that whole new story. “Let’s go,” I say.

  “Go? Go where?”