“Got any suggestions for who we talk to about their commercial enterprise?” Mike asked.
Joan thought for a moment. “Marco Varelli, perhaps.”
“I just heard that name today, but where?” I was tired, and confused as well.
“Sweetest little old guy you’d ever want to meet. He’s a restorer, perhaps the most respected in the field.”
Now it came to me. Marina Sette had mentioned him to me during our conversation at the Four Seasons this afternoon.
“I mean, if I tripped over something like the Amber Room, Varelli’s the person I’d go see to make sure whatever the treasure might be is not a fake. He looks like a gnome-must be well over eighty by now. Varelli might have known some of Deni’s secrets. You’ll find him in a small atelier he keeps in the Village.”
“We expect to be getting as many of the gallery records as we can. With a little luck, maybe she kept notes about her love life, too,” Mercer said.
Joan shook her head. “ ‘Good girls keep diaries; bad girls don’t have the time.’ Tallulah Bankhead, by the way. I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“You said you were going to tell us why Lowell Caxton wasn’t welcome at the legitimate houses any longer,” I reminded Joan.
“The Gardner Museum heist, almost ten years ago. Has that come up in any of your interviews yet?”
“You should stick to your fiction, Joan,” Mike said. “Wanna pour me another glass of that red wine?”
I knew that around the turn of the century Boston socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner had built a Venetian-style palazzo to house one of the country’s most spectacular art collections, which she had put together with the aid of her close friend Bernard Berenson. I had been to the museum many times when I was in college, and even once last year on my way through the Fenway section of the city.
“I remember the break-in, but it was years ago. Hasn’t that ever been solved?” I asked.
“Never. Listen, guys,” said Joan, telling the story of what remains to this day the costliest art theft in United States history, “this is where Lowell may have gotten his hands even deeper in the dirt.
“In March of nineteen ninety, two men disguised as Boston cops presented themselves to the museum’s security officers at the side door of the building, and were let in. The robbers locked up the guards, disabled the unsophisticated alarm system, and made off with about ten paintings. Estimated value? Almost three hundred million dollars. ”
“Are you serious? What was in the place?” Mercer asked.
“A few Impressionists-I think a Manet and a Degas-an ancient Chinese bronze work, a finial from a Napoleonic flagstaff, a Vermeer, and most importantly, the masterpiece that all the fuss has been about. It’s a three-hundred-andsixtyyear-old Rembrandt that hung in the Gardner’s famous Dutch Room. The title of it is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and it was the only seascape that he ever painted.
“Nothing from the heist has ever been found. Not a trace. The Gardner had so little insurance at the time of the theft that the reward they offered was only a million dollars. Just a year or two ago, the FBI upped it to five million. There have been rumors in the art world for years, but not a clue to follow up on. Except the chips.”
“What chips?”
“I’m just being dramatic, Alex. Paint chips, of course. Most of the works were small enough to be taken frame and all. But-maybe because of the way the Rembrandt was fastened to its mountings-the robbers actually cut it out of the frame. Isn’t that awful? Anyway, the varnish on it-and its great age-must have made it so stiff that literally dozens of paint chips fell onto the floor, and that’s all that was left behind.”
“Get me from there to Caxton,” Mike said, licking the chocolate sauce from the profiteroles off the side of his mouth.
“Everyone knows the painting is too hot to handle. Over the years, several mobsters who’ve turned up dead in the Boston area have been linked to the robbery. And each time there’s been a buzz in the galleries and auction houses that the Rembrandt’s at the heart of it. If anyone could hide this kind of booty, or better still, transport it anywhere in the world, it could only be an individual with the means of a Lowell Caxton, or someone who flirted with danger as freely as Deni.
“There was an opening at Lowell’s gallery in the Fuller Building a few months ago. Deni had left before I arrived. Everyone said she was high and kind of mouthing off about this astounding coup she was about to make that would turn the art world on its ear. Be sure and ask Lowell about it when you see him again.”
This time it was Mercer’s beeper that went off before the end of the meal. He rejected my offer of a cell phone and stepped away to return the call from a booth at the top of the staircase.
When he came back down the flight of stairs, he approached the table and tapped on it with his knuckles. “Off to Chelsea, m’man.”
Mike threw back his head and chugged down the La T ‚che ’ 86 as though it were a Budweiser. “More string sculptures at this hour of the night?”
“Nope. Denise Caxton’s car.”
“Where?”
“Right under our noses the whole time. In a chop shop one block away from her gallery. About to be dissected and shipped overseas, from Chelsea Road Repairs, Ltd.”
“Anything in it?”
“Crime Scene’s going over it now for fingerprints. And it looks like there’s blood. Could be she was abducted from her car and then finished off in Omar’s wagon.”
Mike stood up from the table and thanked Joan for the meal. “How about we pick you up in the morning and drop in on Lowell at the Fuller Building?” he asked me. “Be downstairs at nine.”
“Don’t rush off before I finish with the news from the Medical Examiner’s Office,” Mercer said, putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “DNA isn’t in yet, but they did a basic ABO typing from the sperm sample found on the canvas where the body had been. We got a new ball game, ladies and gentleman. Omar Sheffield did not rape Denise Caxton.”
14
“‘Lovers,’ Mr. Chapman? It’s not the term of art I would have chosen,” Lowell Caxton said, standing behind the desk in his office in the Fuller Building and seemingly looking out at the view northward on Madison Avenue. “Personally, I referred to them as Deni’s ‘shareholders.’ Each had a piece of her at some point in time. But it was a very volatile market.”
“You’re not suggesting they were interested in Deni because of her money, are you?” Mike reeled off the names of the men Joan had told us about-Mattox, the architect, and Wrenley, the antiques dealer.
“Come, come, Mr. Chapman. You’re brighter than that. Not her money, certainly. My money. The Caxton fortune has attracted all kinds of maggots to Deni as well as to me.” He turned back to face us. “Something I’ve had to deal with all my life. And no, as I’ve told you, I was spared a proper introduction to either of those gentlemen you’ve mentioned.”
Morning sunlight was beaming in and hitting Caxton directly in the eye, so he came out from behind his desk and gestured for us to sit in the overstuffed leather chairs grouped beneath a pair of Boudin beach scenes.
“How come you didn’t tell us anything about the letters Deni had gotten? The threatening ones, the blackmail?” Mike asked.
“Ah, do I sense the presence of a little guttersnipe?” Caxton groaned.
“What?” “
La povera Signorina Sette, am I right? Poor little Miss Sette, still peddling the same nonsense at the drop of a hat. Let me guess, gentlemen-when you sell the movie rights to your ridiculous fantasy here, you’ll be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Caxton said, grinning at Mike. “You’ll be Denzel Washington, Marina Sette will be some two-bit Shirley Temple look-alike, and as for me-if only they could bring Bela Lugosi or Vincent Price back to life. I’m always to be cast as the villain, am I not? At least, it’s usually such a richly textured role.”
There was a knock on the door and an assistant entered with a tray holding a Baroque silver co
ffee service and a mound of croissants and Danish. Caxton was silent as she put the heavy load on the table in front of us and walked out of the room.
“Why don’t you help yourselves, Detectives?”
“Nah, I’ll just let Sharon Stone over here pour for me. That’s why I bring her along. Not very useful, but sometimes decorative.” Mike jerked his thumb in my direction as I was leaning forward to pour the coffee.
“What made you connect Marina Sette to the letters Deni received?” I asked.
“This isn’t the first time she’s tried to bring me down, Ms. Cooper. Did she take the trouble to come all the way here just to stir the same old pot again? You know why she hates me, don’t you?”
There wasn’t much of a way to protect Sette in all this. “I know what she told me.”
“Her story is nonsense, of course. There’s no way for her to prove it, but sadly, there’s no way for me to dis prove it, either.” I remembered that the woman Marina claimed was her mother, Lowell’s second wife, was killed in a boating accident. “Buried at sea, as it were.”
Caxton flashed one of his more loathsome smiles at me as he said that, and went on. “Even these latest scientific techniques of yours-genetic fingerprinting-are useless in this instance. I can’t convince anyone that this waif was not the child of my wife.”
“So, why does she hate you so much?” I didn’t bother to tell him that the DNA of Marina’s half sister could indeed prove the claim that she was his stepchild.
“I think it has more to do with her husband. He was a substantial client of mine until we had a falling-out over a serious acquisition I made. Richard tried to claim a piece of the profits, but he wasn’t successful. Soon they were coming at me from all directions.”
“But the letters were real, weren’t they? I’ve seen one of them.”
“Quite real. I can give you copies of all of them, if you like.” Caxton removed a microrecorder smaller than a matchbook from his shirt pocket and spoke into it, reminding himself to ask his lawyer for a set of the correspondence.
“They played quite a dramatic role in the matrimonial sparring. Deni’s lawyer tried to use them to show that I had hired someone to take a hit on her life.”
With good reason, I thought to myself. “In the letter I saw, the information was strictly private in nature, Mr. Caxton. It had to come from someone who knew Deni intimately. If not you, then can you suggest who it might have been?”
He looked through me as though I were a complete idiot. “I guess when my attorney charges me four hundred fifty dollars an hour, it’s worth the results. He got to the bottom of it rather quickly. Once you check this fellow out, this-what was his name?”
“Omar Sheffield,” Mercer offered.
“Yes, Omar. You’ll find, as my lawyer did, that Omar had developed quite a scheme for himself in state prison. He’s got a file six inches thick, just up at the jail, blackmailing women the same way. Every single one of them in the middle of a divorce.”
“I know I’m only a dumb cop, but where’d he get his information?”
“The library, gentlemen. The law library. Would you believe, our pen pal Omar is a regular little scholar, though you’d not know it from his crude language.”
We still didn’t get it.
“When the divorce proceedings began, Deni applied for temporary alimony. I don’t know if you’re familiar with these civil actions, but they tend to involve a lot of mudslinging. I was prepared to be more than generous with Deni. After all, she’d given me a great deal of happiness for ten years.
“Either she or her lawyer got greedy. Suddenly her bills for hairdressing and entertaining escalated to ridiculous numbers. She claimed more for facials and massages during the last year than most people in this city spend to eat.”
“So, what book did Omar find in the prison library?” Mercer asked.
“It wasn’t a book at all. It wasn’t even the tabloids. Surely you can guess by now, Miss Cooper, can’t you?”
I was dumbfounded.
“What’s it called?” Caxton went on. “The Law Journal? Have I got it straight?”
All three men looked at me, and finally the lightbulb went on in my head. “Of course, the judge’s opinion in the matrimonial case. It would have everything-details and facts-in it.”
“Thank you. Vindicated at last.”
The New York Law Journal was printed every weekday and subscribed to by most law firms and libraries in the state. It was my daily tool for keeping up with case law in the criminal field; I clipped and filed articles about court decisions and issues related to my work. It rarely interested me to read writeups of divorce matters, but I had seen enough of them to know that every detail mentioned in Omar Sheffield’s letter was likely to have been referenced by the judge in reaching conclusions about the case at hand.
Caxton continued. “My lawyer was furious-even took it up with the editor. After all, there’s no reason not to have redacted some of the confidential information, because of precisely this kind of escapade.”
Mercer had never read any of the decisions. “So, how did Sheffield get your address?”
Caxton seemed almost exasperated by our collective density at this point. “My dear fellow, the judge practically spoon-fed the whole scam to him. You’ll read it for yourself, but I can pretty much paraphrase it for you. ‘The couple live in separate apartments in the matrimonial residence, which is located at 890 Fifth Avenue.’ And so on down the line, chapter and verse, hairdresser, masseuse, pedicurist, and psychic all included.
“Go visit the warden, as my lawyer did. Omar Sheffield is a more prolific letter writer than Winston Churchill. The bastord had done this operation a dozen times. Check with him- he was quite candid with my lawyer.”
“Omar ran out of ink not too long ago,” Mike said.
Our intentions of putting Caxton on edge by confronting him with the threats against Deni that we had assumed would be linked back to him had failed dismally.
Mike was noshing on a cheese Danish and took a swallow as he looked over at Caxton. “So, is there really an Amber Room?”
“You don’t look the gullible type, Detective. Have they suckered you in with all this nonsense, too? Is this another Marina Sette story?” He was looking back and forth at each of us, to see if one of us would make a telltale slip. “Willing to sacrifice one nubile young prosecutor? Legend has it, I think, that once I let a seductress in that secret chamber with me and make love to her, I have to kill her.”
It did sound a lot sillier than it had when Joan told us about it last evening, and I absorbed it on one Dewar’s and two glasses of superb red wine.
“Keep them coming, gentlemen. Your questions get easier to answer all the time.”
“Why didn’t Deni go to England with you in June of last year? What was so important to her that she needed to stay behind, until you went on to Bath?” I asked.
Caxton stiffened noticeably, perhaps because the reminder of the scene in Bath rankled him. “Well, you’re the ones they pay to do the investigation, aren’t you? Suppose you get on about your business and get an answer to that for me. It’s puzzled me for quite some time now.”
He tried to bring the meeting to a close now, but Mike and Mercer weren’t entirely ready.
“Got any Rembrandts in stock, Mr. Caxton?” Mike was on his feet, walking to the far side of the room to study the trait hanging on the opposite wall. “A little something with water in it, for a change?”
“No, Detective, not on hand. But I’d love to buy one from you, should you come across it. The Caxtons, going back a couple of generations, have been known to squeeze every penny worth of value out of a fine painting, but we simply don’t do armed robberies. Not my style.
“ The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, painted in sixteen thirtythree. Probably the most famous missing artwork in the world, Mr. Chapman. And I would be delighted to get my hands on it.”
“Did Mrs. Caxton ever talk to you about it, or about the the
ft at the Gardner?”
“Everyone in my business talked about it at some time or other. Quite frankly, it fascinated all of us. Such a bold undertaking, and then to be stuck with a treasure that no museum would dare touch, despite the fact that eighty percent of the things you see in European collections have been stolen or looted over the centuries.
“Once a year thieves pull off a caper at some institution or other-even the Louvre has had its share of embarrassments. Deni was a free spirit. Not exactly, shall we say, to the manner born. Would it intrigue her to be the one to find the lost Rembrandt and make her mark on the world? No question in my mind. Would she sleep with the enemy to do that? Two years ago I would have been confident in saying no. Now I’m really not sure.”
“Tell us about the opening you gave here a few months back. The party that Deni came to-she might have been high that night.”
“There haven’t been any shows this summer-not enough of my clients stay in town to make it worthwhile. Perhaps you’re referring to the eighteenth-century Italian landscape collection that was installed here in May? Yes, Deni showed up. No problem with that.”
“People have told us she was talking openly about some great thing she was onto, some kind of coup that she was going to have.”
“Nothing I heard. But after all, I was hosting the party and there was a rather large crowd around.”
Mike was expressing his skepticism that Caxton hadn’t observed or heard what Deni was up to. “So busy that you didn’t notice what your estranged wife was saying to your clients?”
Again a snide look. “Well, Detective, I wasn’t out in the kitchen with the Ritz cracker box open, making the appetizers by myself. I simply had no interest in anything she had to say at that point.”
“We located Mrs. Caxton’s car last night,” Mercer said. “She might have been attacked while she was in it. We still haven’t found a witness who knows where she was or what she did from last Thursday on. I realize you were away, but have you heard from anyone who saw Deni?”
Cold Hit Page 14
