Having wedged my car into a tiny spot on Market Street, I rushed through the drenching rain. I stood for a moment to catch my breath under the copper roof that shielded the restaurant’s entrance, and listened to the echoing, staccato beat as the rain pounded the metal overhang. I was soaked.
Two hours later, it was still raining, and I was still at the bar, finishing my second martini. I was trying to prepare a cover story for the London dealer. I could tell Shelly that my interest in Matisse was general and vague, and, because we’re friends, she’d accept that story with only a little push-back. No way would a big-time art dealer answer hypothetical questions from a stranger on a lark. I needed to have a credible reason for calling.
Home again, the unrelenting rain feeding my feelings of remoteness, I cooked the chicken I’d prepared earlier, and ate one of my favorite meals in lonely isolation.
I reached the dealer, Ian Cummings, in London as Sasha and Fred sat down to watch the video, a copy of Mrs. Grant’s ledger in hand. When I had Cummings on the line, I introduced myself, referring to Shelly, and thanked him for taking the time to talk to me.
“Right,” he said. “So which Matisse are we talking about?”
“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. My seller is still on the fence about whether to let it go. Of course, if she decides to do so, I’ll call you first.”
“And you want price information?”
“Yes.” I detailed the range of prices I’d discovered, and explained that I was looking for guidance.
“Well, it’s a little tricky without knowing which painting, but let’s see. Is it an oil?”
“Yes.”
“On canvas?”
“Yes.”
“Quite. What subject matter?”
“A cityscape.”
“Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Size?”
I glanced at my notes. “It’s twenty-eight by twenty-one inches.”
“Provenance?”
“Various owners, all private, no one notable.”
“When was it last on the market?”
“I don’t know. Not for at least a generation.”
“Well, I can’t tell you anything for certain. But if I had to set a price right now, I’d probably aim to goose it just a little. I’d set a range of from one-point-three to one-point-six million pounds, and hope that I could persuade my seller to be satisfied with one-point-one million.”
I did a rough conversion. “In U.S. dollars, then, you’d expect it to go for around two million.”
“Yes, with any luck, more. As much as three million dollars.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”
Hanging up the phone, I sat for a moment, then put in a call to Alverez. I left a message on his voice mail.
I was about to head downstairs, ready to go over the protocol with Fred, when Sasha poked her head into my office and asked if they could come in.
“Sure. What’s up?” I asked.
“I wanted to show Fred the catalogues.”
I gestured to the wall of shelves. “Go to it.”
I listened as she explained how we organized them. “We have a lot of catalogues of local dealers. It makes sense, since we all tend to carry similar merchandise.”
“Can you rely on them?” Fred asked. A good question, I thought.
“Well, it depends,” Sasha answered. “Like anything else.”
As they started to leave, I asked if they were done with the video, and Sasha said, “Part of it. Fred wants to study it, so I thought I’d show him how we typically research things while we wait for you. Then he can take his time reviewing the tape.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m ready if you guys are.”
They moved chairs near my desk and I went through the steps I’d delineated as I took him through the binder. He nodded and scanned the pages.
“Is this one of the local dealers?” he asked, pointing to the Troudeaux title page.
“Yes,” I said.
“But we don’t think very highly of their research,” Sasha added, twirling her hair. “I mean we use them, but I’d want additional verification.”
“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “Martha Troudeaux does most of their research, and it’s often sketchy and sometimes just dead wrong.”
“Who’s this?” Fred asked, pointing to the editor’s name: M. Turner.
I was about to say that I didn’t know, when Sasha jumped in. “That’s Martha, too. Sometimes she uses her maiden name-Turner. I think it’s to make the company look larger, you know, not a mom-and-pop outfit with everybody in the firm sharing the same name.”
Staring at the page, my mouth fell open. In a flash of clarity, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Barney, whose wife, Martha, did most of his research. And who sometimes used her maiden name-Turner. I pictured him at the tag sale, deep in conversation with Paula. Paula Turner. I was willing to bet that Paula was Barney’s niece by marriage. That would explain the call that Wes had told me about, the one made from the Taffy Pull to Mr. Grant. No one in the family would think it was odd for Barney to stop by his wife’s family’s store and borrow the phone.
Roy, the picker, had said that Barney didn’t have the cash to buy the books. And a relatively small amount of cash it was. Less than a thousand dollars. Which must mean that Barney was broke. If Barney was broke, how could he afford the Renoir he’d intended to buy from Mr. Grant?
Maybe he hadn’t had any such intention. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted the Renoir for pride of ownership or even for the commission a sale would bring. The Renoir might have represented a second chance, a way of raising enough cash quickly to save his business, to protect all that he had built up.
I realized that Sasha and Fred were engaged in a lively discussion about verifying research, and I’d missed it all.
“I think we’re all set here,” I said. “Any questions?”
“No,” Fred said. “This is all very useful.”
“Great. Well, go and do.”
They left, still chatting. I’d never heard Sasha speak so much, or with so much enthusiasm. Maybe she’d met her match in Fred.
As their voices faded away, I thought of Mr. Grant, and sadness swept over me. In all of our interactions, he’d been jovial, gregarious, and kind. I’d liked him, and he’d liked me. An image of Barney came to mind. I could picture him towering over the older, weaker man.
I shivered, upset and dispirited. How could he have clone such a thing? I began to cry, and I didn’t try to stop myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks and as they fell, I concluded that I needed to speak to Alverez.
To think that Barney had killed Mr. Grant in order to steal the Renoir. I shook my head, astonished that I hadn’t realized it before, and sickened at the thought.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time Alverez called back, about an hour later, I’d remembered what Max had said about not volunteering information, and had thought better of telling him what I knew about Barney. Instead, I simply stuck with the original reason for my call and said that I was done with the research and had the pricing information he’d wanted.
“Can you meet in an hour?”
I glanced at the clock. It was only 9:30. “Sure,” I answered. “If Max can.”
“I’ll expect you here at ten-thirty then, unless I hear otherwise.”
“Okay,” I agreed, wondering whether I was imagining the urgency I perceived in his voice or whether, now that I had the information he needed, he was ready to act.
I reached Max at his office, and he told me that he could meet me at the police station at 10:30.
“Can we meet at ten-fifteen?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to you first.”
“Sure,” he said. “Our usual dune?” he asked in a joking tone of voice. “When we’re not in interrogation room two?”
I laughed. “Perfect.”
Passing through the office, I overheard Gretchen inviting someone on the phone
who had, according to her, “an old set of flatware,” to stop by. An “an old set of flatware” could mean anything from two dozen fifteen-piece sterling silver place settings from Victorian England to a set of sixteen pieces of stainless steel from the ’70s.
Sasha and Fred were absorbed in a discussion about the use of a table’s height to validate its age. Sasha thought height was one of many factors that should be considered, but wasn’t a particularly reliable indicator.
“Not everyone in prior generations was short!” she argued.
“But all standard furniture was made as if they were,” Fred responded.
“So maybe the table was custom-made.”
“Well then, we would recognize that it was a custom piece, and consider whether the owner’s height was a factor.”
“What if someone simply sawed down the table legs?” she asked.
“What if the man in the moon made the table? Don’t be frivolous,” he said dismissively.
Frivolous? I repeated silently. Sasha? I shook my head, braced for her reaction. Not only was Sasha not frivolous-ever-but she took her work so seriously that any implication otherwise was more than an insult, it was an indictment. Tears, I figured. Or pained humiliation marked by long silences and an inability to meet Fred’s eyes ever again.
Instead, she chuckled. I stared, shocked that she’d laughed. “I wasn’t being frivolous,” she said, a bubble of laughter in her voice. “Facile, maybe. But not frivolous.”
Fred laughed, too. They were becoming friends. They shared rapport. Astonished, I shook my head. How little I knew of people, I mused.
“You both all set?” I asked, jumping in.
They turned to me as if they hadn’t really noticed that they weren’t alone.
“Yes,” Sasha said, blushing. “We’ll be going to the Grant house soon. Fred wanted to know if it was all right that he work evenings.”
“I’m kind of a night owl,” he explained.
“Sure,” I said, “no problem. How late do you think? Eleven? Midnight? Or are we talking all-nighters?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked uncomfortable. “I’ve been known to pull all-nighters. But I don’t want to guarantee it. And if it’s a problem…”
“No, not at all. I’m just thinking of how we can arrange to lock up.”
“I’ll be working alongside him, so I can take care of the alarm,” Sasha offered.
“Are you okay with the late hours?” I asked her.
Another blush. “Sure. It’s just for a few days, and that way, the work will get done faster.”
Satisfied that the building wouldn’t ever be left unprotected, I said, “Great. Then I’ll leave it to you to coordinate schedules and hours and lock up each night. Okay?”
Sasha nodded and smiled her little smile. Gretchen hung up the phone and I turned my attention to her. “I’m heading out. I expect to be back by, I don’t know, maybe by noon.” I shrugged and smiled. “Feel free to call if you need me.”
She looked as if she’d like to ask where I was going, but I pretended not to notice. I didn’t want to tell her I was, once again, meeting the police about a murder.
I hugged myself, shivering, as I waited for Max. The rain had stopped, but it was still overcast and the ocean was dark and rippling with two-foot swells. Seaweed had washed ashore overnight, and the sand was pockmarked from the pounding rain. With the gray sky and sharp wind, it felt more like fall than spring.
Max made his way across the street and joined me on the dune.
“Cold today,” he remarked.
“Raw,” I agreed.
“You have the price?”
“Yeah. I had to call New York and London, but I’ve got it.”
“Did you tell anyone why you were asking?”
“No. I stayed vague.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Are you ready for what Alverez is going to ask?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But the research was just part of the plan.”
I nodded, but didn’t speak.
“Well,” Max said, sounding philosophical, “we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
“What?”
“I think Barney killed Mr. Grant, and I think I know why,” I said, rushing to get it out.
Max turned to look at me. “What?”
I explained about Roy’s revelation, the call from the Taffy Pull, and how Barney and Paula were related.
“The Taffy Pull? What call? What are you talking about?”
I stared at Max for a stricken moment, then turned away to look out over the ocean and avoid his penetrating gaze. How could I have forgotten that he knew nothing about the research I’d done? In fact, he’d disapproved of conducting an outside investigation at all. Worse still, I realized I’d completely put my foot in my mouth. I couldn’t reveal anything, no matter how crucial, without betraying Wes’s confidence. And that was not an option.
I shrugged, trying for innocence. “I heard about the call, that’s all.”
“From whom?”
“Rumors spread, you know?” I shrugged again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is that, apparently, no one at the store admits to making the call. And nothing would be more natural than Barney, one of the family, stopping by, and while there, using the phone. No one would think anything of it.”
After a short pause, he said, “You’re going to have to talk about how you learned about the call.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head, still looking out over the water. “I can’t.”
“Be prepared for fireworks. Alverez is going to go ballistic.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say anything about it at all.”
Max thought for a moment. “Let me guide the conversation. I’ll try to share your findings without revealing too much. But you shouldn’t withhold things if they’re relevant.”
“What about what you said about not volunteering information?”
“This is different. Your expertise has revealed a connection he might well have no way of knowing. We don’t know its relevance, but it would be improper to withhold it.”
I swallowed, flickers of fear tingling up and down my spine, causing me to shiver. I hoped Max would think I was chilled, not weak. “What should I do?”
“One-word answers, Josie.”
I nodded, and, resigned to my fate, went slowly across the street.
Alverez greeted us and led the way down the hall to the now-familiar interrogation room. Once we were settled, and with the recorder’s red light aglow, I said, “The highest price I found for a Matisse at auction this year was twelve million dollars, but I don’t think we can count on that amount. Realistically, I think the estimate would be in the one- to three-million range.”
“Why? Why would our Matisse only go for one to three million dollars if another one sold for twelve million dollars?”
“For some reason, there’s a lot of volatility in the market right now. It’s true that one sold for twelve million dollars, but I think it’s an aberration. It could be anything. An overly eager new collector with a lot of cash in his jeans, for instance.” I shrugged. “The fact is that lately most of his paintings have sold for between eight hundred thousand and one million dollars.”
Alverez nodded. “So, for a private sale…”
“Well, for a private cash sale, I should think that you have to discount a lot.” I shrugged again. “I don’t know… I think I’d ask for two hundred fifty thousand dollars cash and hope for a hundred thousand.”
Alverez shook his head and tapped his pen on the desk. “That doesn’t seem like a lot, does it.”
“No,” I agreed.
“In making the request, would you put any restrictions on the transaction?” he asked. “You know, like cash only?”
“Oh, yeah. For sure.” I smiled. “Let me remind you that I have no hands-on experience with this sort of thing. But it occurs to me
that maybe I could arrange to have the money electronically deposited in an offshore account somewhere if paying in cash wasn’t convenient for my buyer.”
Alverez nodded and made a note. While he was writing, Max said, “Josie had an experience that we think you need to know about.”
Alverez tilted his head and looked at me.
I detailed the picker Roy’s revelation, adding, “If Barney is broke, that changes everything, you know?”
Alverez nodded. After a moment, he said, “Thank you for the information.”
“Were you aware of his financial situation?” I asked.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the investigation.”
“Apparently,” Max said in a neutral tone, “Barney is related to one of Josie’s part-time employees, a young woman named Paula Turner. We don’t know if that’s relevant in any way, but we wanted to pass on the information. I gather that Paula’s family runs a candy store called the Taffy Pull.”
Alverez snapped to attention, his eyes boring into mine. “What do you know about the Taffy Pull?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Then why do you think a connection between the store and Barney is relevant?”
“I don’t. I thought it might be, is all.”
“Don’t quibble,” he told me.
“I don’t know.”
He glared at me. “Why?” he persisted.
I stared back, gripping the sides of the chair, afraid I would betray my weakness by crying, determined to hold my own. I reminded myself that I’d done nothing wrong. “I’ve told you everything I can.”
He thumped the table. “Now, Josie. Tell me what you know.”
I jumped, startled by his outburst and the unexpected noise, then took a deep breath. My heart was banging against my chest, and I was having trouble breathing. “Don’t yell at me,” I said in as unruffled a tone as I could marshal.
Consigned to Death Page 23
