by Lind, Hailey
“Good luck, guys,” Annette said and led me to the door, one hand on my elbow.
“Bryan, do you need a ride home?” I called over my shoulder.
“Thanks, baby doll, but Ron’s on his way,” he replied with a loud sniff, a weepy smile, and a hearty hiccup.
Inspector Crawford and I made our way to the grand hall, past a knot of cops questioning the museum’s staff, and headed for the front doors.
“Why are you involved in this, Annette?” I inquired. “You’re a homicide inspector.”
“I was called in to investigate the body at Brazil’s gallery,” she responded. “When the Brock’s alarms went off I thought I’d see if there was a connection.”
“Is there?”
“Don’t know.”
“If you find one will you tell me?”
“Don’t count on it.”
No surprise there.
“You!” a strident voice shrieked.
The grand hall fell silent, and the crowd slowly parted like the Red Sea. I was half expecting Moses to appear when Agnes Brock strode across the foyer like a vengeful Valkyrie and pinned me against one of the massive carved bronze front doors with a bony index finger. I winced as a sculpted eagle took a bite out of my scapula.
“Mrs. Brock, I—”
“That so-called man is a friend of yours? I might have known! Tell him to return my Chagall forthwith. Do you hear me, young lady? Tell him that if he doesn’t return it, I will personally throw the switch on the electric chair!”
“Now, Mrs. Brock,” Annette said calmly, “theft isn’t a capital offense. If you’ll just—”
“Shot by a firing squad!” Agnes railed on, her wrinkled, patrician face flushed with rage. “Drawn and quartered and fed to the seagulls! He should be exterminated for violating my lovely museum!”
“Wait just a minute,” I protested hotly. “Bryan Boissevain is a wonderful person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He may be a little emotional”—I heard Annette snort at this understatement—“but he’s scrupulously honest. Bryan would never be involved in anything criminal, Mrs. Brock. I’d stake my life on it.”
“You may very well have to,” Agnes barked. “I know people, Annie Kincaid! I know people who know people!”
“Mrs. Brock, please,” Annette interjected. “I assure you that Inspectors Woo and Fielding will thoroughly investigate this matter.”
Undaunted, Agnes turned her beady black eyes on me and poked me in the chest. “You listen to me, young woman. That painting is of tremendous”—poke—“sentimental” —poke—“value”—poke, poke.
That last was one poke too many.
“No, you listen to me, old woman,” I snarled, batting away her skeletal hand. “I don’t work for you, I don’t like you, and I don’t think much of your tight-assed museum.” The crowd gasped, and I heard Annette sigh. Never one to leave well enough alone, I continued, “And considering the quality of the museum’s Chagall collection, it couldn’t have been a very important painting anyway.”
Agnes Brock paled. “Why, you insufferable child! That painting was given to my sainted mother by the great Marc Chagall himself! He told her to choose anything she wanted from his studio, anything at all!”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Brock, your mother did not choose very well.”
“I know,” she mumbled, suddenly deflated, and I imagined that she was as chagrined as I to find something we could agree on. Her mother should have selected one of the better-known works Chagall created to celebrate the contributions of Jewish culture to the world. His paintings of upside-down rabbis were both historically significant and worth a small fortune on the open market. “Mother didn’t actually care for Chagall’s modern style. She chose a simple urbanscape, with only a single floating woman.”
“That’s what was stolen?” I asked, recalling the painting. “What an odd choice. I would have taken—”
“Excuse us, please, Mrs. Brock,” Annette interrupted, seizing me by the elbow. “I have police business to see to, and I need to speak with Ms. Kincaid. A pleasure, as always.”
“Annie Kincaid!” Agnes Brock bellowed from the doorway as Annette and I started down the museum steps. “If that painting is returned within a fortnight, I shall ask no questions and will drop any charges against your friend. Otherwise, I shall see that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if the law fails, I have other resources at my disposal. Do you hear me?”
I heard her. The tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf must have heard her. Agnes had an impressive set of pipes for a woman her age.
As Annette and I proceeded down the stairs, I thought about what Agnes’ threats might mean for Bryan. He wasn’t charged with anything, but as I knew only too well a lack of proof would not deter a Brock vendetta. Agnes had enough pull in this town to make his life miserable if she put her mind to it.
Arriving at the bustling parking lot, I sagged against a dusty Ford sedan and looked up to see Annette’s partner joining us. Inspector Wilson was a taciturn man who reminded me of Ichabod Crane: Tall and skinny, he had a prominent Adam’s apple and no discernible personality.
I nodded at him. He stared at me.
“Okay, Annie,” Annette said, snapping open her notebook. “Let’s take this from the top, shall we?”
I described recognizing that the corpse was not a sculpture and trying to convey that information to Anthony Brazil, who had not wanted to hear it. There wasn’t much else to tell.
“Did you know the deceased?” Annette asked. “Tentatively identified as one Seamus McGraw, sculptor?”
“Never met him. What do you mean, ‘tentatively identified’?” I asked. “Could it be someone else?”
“Until the coroner signs the death certificate it’s always tentative. So. Have you heard anything that might suggest why someone would want to murder McGraw?”
“Murder? I thought it was a suicide.”
“People who hang themselves don’t chop their fingers off first,” Ichabod said self-importantly. Annette shot him a glare and he fell silent.
“Chop off . . . ?” I felt bile rise in my throat.
“Any rumors about McGraw owing money, involved in drugs, anything like that?” Annette pressed.
“No, but I’m not exactly part of the City’s gallery crowd, so I’d be unlikely to hear anything. Ask Anthony Brazil. Can I go home now?”
“Not yet,” Annette said, all business. “How closely did you observe the condition of the body?”
“I could tell it wasn’t a sculpture, but I tried not to get too close. Dead bodies aren’t my strong suit.”
“Did you notice that it was covered with powder?”
I nodded.
“Do you have any idea what that powder might be?”
“My guess would be stone dust, from cutting and shaping stone,” I said. “Stone sculptors are usually surrounded by the stuff, like an artistic version of the Peanuts’ Pigpen. We used to tease them about it at school.”
“I thought McGraw sculpted in metal,” Annette said with a frown.
“Most sculptors dabble in a number of media. I saw the manager of Marble World at the show, so I assume McGraw worked in stone as well.”
“Mm-hmm. Anything else about the opening seem odd or different?”
Only that Janice Hewett had hired me to retrieve Head and Torso from its sculptor, but I decided not to share that information. If the police started poking around Pascal’s studio I might lose my seat on the one-hundred-fifty-dollar-an-hour gravy train.
I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know much about contemporary sculptors, and frankly I didn’t much care for McGraw’s work. Death, mutilation, torture . . .”
“I thought you artsy types lived for stuff like that,” Ichabod sneered.
“Not me,” I replied with a big, fake smile. “I only paint happy things. Like rainbows. And clowns. And big-eyed children . . .”
“You paint clowns?” Ichabod asked. �
��Could you paint a—”
“She’s pulling your leg, Wilson,” Annette interrupted, watching me with a ghost of a smile and shaking her head. “Annie doesn’t paint clowns.”
Twenty minutes later I trooped the four long city blocks to where I had parked my old green Toyota pickup truck, rooted around in my black leather backpack for my massive key ring, fired up the engine, and headed for China Basin, an old warehouse district just south of the Oakland Bay Bridge. My studio was on the second floor of a former chair factory that had been converted into artists’ studios. The building had been bought last spring by J. Frank DeBenton, an entrepreneur whose brand-new Jaguar I had promptly rear-ended. This initial encounter set the tone for our occasionally contentious landlord-tenant relationship. Frank could be a real pain in the butt at times, but overall I had to admit he was a decent guy. He’d agreed to hold off on a proposed rent increase in exchange for some decorative painting in several of his commercial buildings, but with the work now completed I feared “double Annie’s rent” had moved to the top of Frank’s To Do list.
Being an artist was hands-down the greatest job in the world, except when it came to making money. After years of my working twelve-hour days, True/Faux Studios enjoyed a steady clientele, but there were still times when I scrambled to pay the rent.
This was one of those times.
For the past five weeks my assistant, Mary, and I had done little else but work on five sweeping, romantic panels in the Pre-Raphaelite style of Edward Burne-Jones for a chic new restaurant in the City’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. The client’s twenty-five-percent down payment went towards the cost of supplies, scaffolding rental, and Mary’s wages. Three days before the grand opening, as Mary and I were working through the night to develop a crackled “aged canvas” effect on the panels, we caught the restaurant’s owner sneaking a shiny new cappuccino machine out of the kitchen. He confessed—under duress, courtesy of Mary—that he had run out of money. A lawyer charged me two hundred dollars for the profound legal insight that I should try to get in line ahead of the restaurant’s legion of outraged creditors and vendors, but admitted that my chances of getting paid were slim to none.
Worst of all, Frank DeBenton had warned me not to take the job because he’d heard the restaurant was undercapitalized. But I had been seduced by the romance of the panels and the ethereal beauty of the Pre-Raphaelite women I was painting.
Too proud to explain my situation to Frank, I grabbed the next paying job to come along, which was how I ended up painting the portrait of a Lhaso apso named Sir Frothingham Snufflebums III for an elderly dog lover in Piedmont. I didn’t mind Sir Snufflebums—hell, I wished all my portrait subjects were as good-natured—but I was reasonably certain this was not how the famous Venetian portraitist Rosalba Carriera had begun her career.
Still, I would be able to pay the rent as soon as Sir Snufflebum’s check cleared. In the meantime I had been avoiding my landlord on the unproven and possibly dubious theory that if he could not find me he could not evict me. Since Frank’s office was located at the foot of the staircase leading up to my second-floor studio, this strategy required good timing, a pinch of luck, and a willingness to work odd hours.
Like at nine o’clock on a Friday night. I pulled into a space in front of the stairs, set the brake, grabbed my bag, and slammed the locked driver’s door before noticing that my keys were lying on the passenger’s seat.
“Dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
Calm down, Annie, I scolded myself. Remember what the yogi taught you. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to picture the ocean with my third eye.
Apparently it had a cataract.
I circled my little pickup, searching for an opening. The passenger’s window was rolled down a quarter of an inch, allowing me to insert the tip of my pinkie finger between the glass and the rubber weather stripping. I wiggled it. It made for a cute shadow puppet but otherwise was not helpful.
I glanced around hoping to spot something I could use to jimmy the lock, but Frank DeBenton kept the parking lot as tidy as he did his office. My black evening bag yielded only a dead cell phone, my driver’s license, a parking ticket, an overextended credit card, and a couple of crumpled dollar bills.
Rats. If only my assistant, Mary, were here. Mary could break into just about anything, a talent she had developed during her stint as a teenage runaway. I sighed. There was nothing for it but to spend the night on the couch in my studio and have Mary do a little breaking and entering in the morning. Too bad the key to my studio was also on the ring lying on the passenger seat, behind locked doors.
I knew Mary occasionally used the rear fire escape to enter the studio through the second-story windows. Skirting the outdoor staircase, I followed the picturesque brick walkway to the rear of the building. As I gazed at the rickety metal ladder high above my head, it occurred to me that my assistant was a full head taller, several years younger, and far more athletic than I. How in the world would I reach the release bar?
Aha! With a flash of inspiration I recalled the paintbrush extension rod in the bed of my truck. It had been there since the Hayes Valley restaurant fiasco, and had been annoying me for days, rolling around at every twist and turn. This is why I never put it away, I thought. It was destiny.
The rod was just barely long enough. After a good deal of swinging and grunting and a few choice swear words I brought the release bar within reach, yanked on it, and the ladder clacked toward me with a rusty screech. I clambered up to the second floor, cringing as my heels rang against the metal. Digging my fingers beneath the frame of one of the double-hung windows that ran along the back of my studio, I gave a mighty heave and the window inched up a crack. I braced my legs against the fire escape and went through a series of contortions that, considering the length of my skirt, would likely have gotten me arrested in half the states of the Union.
At last the window slid open; I threw my legs over the sill and landed in my studio with a triumphant little hop. Brushing the grime from my hands, I felt absurdly pleased with myself.
Until I heard a beeping sound.
What was that? I glanced around at the packed bookshelves, the storage bins, the cluttered worktables, the large easels. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t the telephone. It wasn’t the computer. I would have noticed a dump truck backing up in the studio.
The noise was definitely mechanical in nature, and it was growing steadily louder.
What was that?
In the dusty recesses of my mind a memory stirred. Something about a memo from my landlord. Something about an alarm system. Something about a security code—
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Aw, geez! Swearing at my stupidity, I thrashed through the litter on top of my desk until I unearthed the memo. “Dear tenant: On November 19th the building’s alarm system will be activated . . .” Get to the point, Frank. Get to the point. Skimming frantically, I spotted the alarm company’s emergency number and grabbed the telephone.
“Evergreen Alarm Systems, what is your code?” an exceedingly calm woman singsonged.
“I accidentally set off the alarm in my studio! How do I turn it off?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ll need the code before I can assist you in disabling the alarm.”
“I don’t have the code!” I yelled, the persistent clamor jangling my nerves. “It’s a new alarm system and I don’t have the code!”
“If you are a legal tenant you were provided with the code.”
“I have no code!”
“Then I have no alternative but to notify the police,” the woman declared coolly.
“Listen to me, please,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m calling you from my studio. Would I do that if I were a burglar?”
“Ma’am, if you do not know the security code then you must remain in the building until the police arrive,” Ms. Evergreen replied, sticking to her guns. “Remain in the build—”
I slam
med down the receiver. Remain in the building my ass. If Frank DeBenton found out I’d set off the new alarm he would evict me for sure. I dove out the window and thundered down the fire escape, snatched up the paint rod extension, and raced around the building to the parking lot. I skidded to a halt and tried to hide the six-foot pole behind my back.
My landlord, Frank, was leaning against my truck.
Rats.
Chapter 3
Q: Where can I learn to become an art forger?
A: The best training for art forgery is an apprenticeship with a truly fine art restorer.
—Georges LeFleur, at an impromptu meeting of La Societée des Beaux Arts, Paris
“Mindy at Evergreen Alarm Systems sends her regards,” Frank DeBenton said as the blaring alarm came to a sudden and blessed end. Slipping a sleek silver cell phone into the pocket of his elegant suit vest, he crossed his arms over his chest and nodded his dark brown head. “Good evening, Annie. Is that a paintbrush rod extension or are you just glad to see me?”
I tossed the rod into the bed of the truck, where it landed with a resounding clang. “What are you doing at the office so late on a Friday, Frank?”
“I was having a drink with a client and came by to drop off some papers. I’d just pulled up when Mindy called to say some idiot had set off the alarm and phoned her. Said the woman didn’t sound like a burglar, so she decided to call me instead of the police.”
“More bungling than burgling, wouldn’t you say?” I asked, swatting flakes of white windowsill paint from the skirt of my little black dress, which had earlier tonight been respectable, even fashionable. I was a mess magnet.
“That was my guess, too. How’ve you been lately, Annie? I haven’t seen you around.”
“I, uh . . . I’ve been keeping busy.”
“Business is good?”
“Yeah, sure,” I lied. The self-employed learned to always insist that business was good, especially when it wasn’t. “Business is great.”
