Art and Arsenic (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 2)

by Valerie Murmel

  And with that, I got right to it. True, it was the weekend – but in my line of work, one frequently worked weekends anyway. That was in exchange for being able to come in late (many of my colleagues rarely rolled in to work before 11 am, and one actually worked 8 pm to 6 am, leaving his days free for mountain-climbing and skiing), or take off early on other days.

  I called Detective Johnson at the number on the card he gave me, and left him a message offering my help in gathering any digital evidence, and mentioning that I was going to head over to the gallery to help them out, if they needed it.

  I pointed my car towards Kirkland. I figured that, if I had just called the gallery, no-one might want to answer the phone. But in the physical gallery space, there would be the office manager, some police and so on. And I could try to take a look at the crime scene.

  It was raining again, and I looked into the dark clouds ahead when the Seattle skyline above Lake Washington came into view. As I drove, I thought about what I had avoiding thinking about since the morning – poor Pauline, being told that her father is dead. And the suspicion that he might have been murdered, that someone hated him enough to kill him, to end his life on purpose…

  The entrance to Nordqvist Fine Art had yellow police tape across, and a couple of uniformed police officers in front. On the other side of the street, people stopped to watch for a bit and then went on their way – the rain didn’t predispose one to quiet contemplation of the scene.

  One of the policemen barred my way in. I tried to seem friendly, non-threatening, but not too chipper, under the circumstances.

  “Hi. I work for the gallery. I support their website.” Technically, it was true. He raised a skeptical eyebrow, then turned around and asked no-one in particular: “Does she” – gesturing at me – “work here?”

  I peered into the gallery space through the window behind him and saw Pauline. I caught her eye and waved to her. The thin tall long-haired girl looked tired and lost in the daylight, with dark circles under her eyes matching her dark-grey t-shirt. Her face looked very white and very puffy. She didn't have any makeup on.

  She waved back at me limply and replied listlessly: “Yes, she fixed our website a couple of days ago.”

  Detective Johnson appeared by the entrance and said: “Oh, it is you. What are you doing here?”

  “Working. I left you a message.”

  He looked at me appraisingly, his brown eyes squinted – probably judging how much this was just being a busybody and hunting for some newsworthy gossip, and how much was a genuine desire to help. I had a strong inclination to fidget under his gaze, but forced myself to stand still and look directly at him.

  He finally nodded. “OK. Come in.”

  I crossed the threshold and looked around.

  Inside, the space had traces of the mess left by the party yesterday, by the people going in and out today – as well as by the death last night. I suddenly wondered whether Fred knew that he had been poisoned, and tried to fight against his killer – or the impending death – in some way. The air smelled stale and seemed acidic– perhaps the leftover smells of the party. Or possibly vomit, I involuntarily thought to myself, and shuddered.

  In the corner, talking to another uniformed police officer, was the thin blonde woman I saw the day before at the party, and at the Sounders game before that. Her mouth was thin and tense, and in the morning light there were prominent lines around her nose. She looked upset but in control. Still a shark. She was saying something, and the policeman took down notes on his notepad. I wondered, again, who she was.

  I came up to Pauline.

  “I… I am so sorry. Please accept my condolences…” I did not move to give her a hug, because I didn’t think she’d want one from me at the moment. Instead, I stood there, clasping my hands behind my back.

  Her eyes filled with tears, she tried to blink them away and said. “Thank you.”

  I was feeling intense pity for her, and awkward just standing there. My impulse to do something practical, to fix things like an engineer would, took over.

  “I came to check on the website, to make sure … things are OK with it.” It sounded stupid, even to my ears. “I can update it, if you’d like?..” She looked at me quizzically. “To set whatever hours you are going to be open in the next couple of days – I assume that everyone will need a little time a way to… process all this”. Pauline’s black eyes were wet again, and she nodded. “I can mention Fred’s death, or omit it, however you’d like?” She bit her lip and shook her head. I thought I’d better move to a less-emotional topic, and added:

  “I can also take back-ups of your computer system, and help you with any computer related stuff that needs fixing.” Yes, I would be playing ‘tech support’, but I didn’t mind under the circumstances. And likely someone among the gallery staff could do all of this, but I doubted it would be on anyone’s mind as any kind of a priority under the circumstances. “What shall I put on the site? Closed until further notice? Closed for a week? Something else?”

  Pauline stuck her hands in her pockets. The relatively mundane topic of opening hours appeared to have given her a momentary distraction from her emotions. She turned and called out towards the blonde thin woman.

  “Connie? What are going to be our hours for the next week? Are we going to be closed?”

  The woman looked across the room at us, then said something short to the officer she was speaking with, and crossed the open space till she was standing at Pauline’s left elbow. The policeman followed a step behind.

  “What’s going on? Who are you?” She asked me, her gray eyes appraising and narrow on me. She had a New England accent, and sounded like the headmistress at a very exclusive East Coast boarding school. I got a whiff of her perfume – subtle flower notes. It seemed incongruous to me under the circumstances, and I wondered whether she put on the perfume before, or after, she learned that Fred Nordqvist was dead.

  I tried to appear business-like but friendly. “Hi, I am Veronica Margreve.” I stuck out my hand and she ignored it, still eyeing me. So much for trying to be friendly. I let my hand drop and changed the tone of my voice to the other I used with CEOs and CTOs when investigating and fixing security breaches. “I am a computer security consultant. I was hired by Fred Nordqvist to defend the gallery’s website from an external attack. As I am still technically under the consulting engagement with the gallery for the next couple of days, I offered to update the website to say that the gallery will be closed for the near future, or anything like that. I could also back up your systems and Fred’s records while I am here, if that is needed.” I tried to keep calm and not get defensive under the shark gaze that seemed to be evaluating me for nutritional value. At least she wouldn't bite me and leave me to bleed to death, like a real shark. Would she?

  “I see. Well, say that we are closed till Tuesday, and then open regular hours after that. I assume all that”, – she waved her hand at the police tape across the entryway, – “would be gone by then. No mention of Fred’s death.”

  With that, she turned on her pastel heels and went to the far corner of the space to continue whatever lecture she was giving that police officer.

  Pauline rolled her eyes.

  “That’s Connie for you. So full of her own superiority.”

  I inwardly agreed with that.

  “Who is Connie, exactly? She was here last night at the opening, but I didn’t see her at the gallery before that.”

  “She’s… was… his soon to be ex-wife. They were separated and almost getting a divorce.”

  Ah, the third wife. And now, technically, his widow.

  “So does she inherit the gallery then? Or you do?” The tactless question came out before I realized what I was saying. Internally, I was kicking myself for bringing up inheritance so soon, and in front of the obviously-grieving daughter who just hours ago found out about her father’s death.

  Pauline didn't seem to notice the faux-pas of my inquiry. She nodded.

/>   “Fifty-fifty. Half of it goes to her, half to me.”

  9

  “Ok, well…” Even after my etiquette breach, I didn’t want to discuss the topic of Fred Nordqvist's estate further with the daughter of the deceased. I mumbled, looking down: “I’m sorry for your loss… I’ll go update the website now.” For some reason, I noticed with extreme clarity that Pauline had a tattoo at the top of her right foot – a sort of a circular design that reminded me of electron orbitals from college physics. “And… you know, I will do anything that I can to find the truth about your father's death.”

  Pauline blinked at me through the tears in her dark eyes. “Thank you. I really want to know what… what actually happened. You can call me or email at the gallery address if you want any info, or anything that you think will help.”

  I hugged her, and told her that I would.

  Then I started walking to the back office. Detective Johnson called me over when he saw me heading there.

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I offered to update their website, to say that they’ll be closed. Connie” – I indicated the woman with the back of my hand – “said closed till Tuesday. Is that OK? Do you need to take a back-up of what’s on that computer, before I do anything?”

  He thought for a second.

  “Yes. I’ll watch you take it, just to make sure you don’t do anything funny.”

  The yellow police line was up across the office door. I paused in front of it, and turned back to Detective Johnson.

  “Would it be possible for me to go into the office? I need to connect to the computer that’s in there.”

  He scrunched up his nose – he was not fond of the idea, then sighed:

  “OK. We already got the prints from everything in there.”

  With my escort, I ducked under the police tape. While doing that, I looked down to watch where I was going, and remembered what Detective Johnson had told me in the morning. That Alex had found Fred’s body here. There was a chalk outline of the body behind the desk and to the side of it – as if he fell when trying to get up. I stepped around gingerly, under the watchful eyes of the policeman, and instinctively tried not to look at the floor at that spot.

  Johnson made an involuntary movement forward when I sat down. I realized that I was sitting in the same chair Fred sat last night – essentially, the place he died. Inwardly, I froze – and then, intently and deliberately, promised myself to help figure out what happened to him, in any way I could. Outwardly, I opened my laptop and logged in to the server.

  With Detective Johnson standing over me, I took a back-up of the system as it was, compressed it, copied it to a thumb drive and handed it to him. He pocketed it, and motioned a young policeman over his shoulder to come to the office – to keep an eye on me in there. I tried to smile at the officer, introduced to me as Martins, reassuringly, and continued with my work.

  I checked the website – still up, and no attack traffic coming in. So Linda didn’t start the tool running again. Because of my conversation with her yesterday – or because that there was no need, as Fred was dead?

  I noticed that there was slightly higher traffic today than yesterday – perhaps people heard about the death? Or maybe art lovers or just people in search of something different to do on the weekend, looking to check out some galleries on a Saturday afternoon? I backed up the previous versions of the website files, made the changes to the opening time, reviewed them again and published them.

  When I was done, I thanked Officer Martins, who seemed to not let his eyes off me for a second, and got up. I was relieved to leave the scene of the death.

  As I walked out, Connie was talking to Detective Johnson, standing with her back to me, very straight. I nodded to him, passing by. Pauline was in the far corner and talking to the other police officer. I caught her eye and did a small wave goodbye.

  As I ducked out the door, I saw Linda Raven in a small crowd of onlookers on the other side of the street. I was looking straight at her as I thought of whether to cross the road to talk to her. She recognized me, saw the policeman escorting me out of the gallery, and her face contorted into a panicked look. I thought that, if Johnson read my report and thought it was related in any way to Fred’s death, he would pay Linda a visit himself; and in any case, I did not want to be part of the local gossip chain and give Linda any info about the death. I did not go towards her. She watched me as I headed to my car.

  When I came home, Bitty jumped up on my lap and together we settled in to do some research on fatal poisons. Apparently, there were plenty to choose from, and none too pretty: cyanide, arsenic, strychnine. Yes, it was possible that Fred was killed, deliberately.

  Why?

  When?

  By whom?

  10

  My phone rang about 16 hours later, on late Sunday morning. It had been another cold and drizzly day, which I had spent thus far on research.

  I hadn't been able to sleep the night. It rained hard outside, and I felt like I could hear each drop of rain, falling directly into my brain and splashing there in a puddle. My thoughts kept returning to who might have killed Fred. After what felt like a stretched-out black eternity of that, I gave up and got out of bed. That woke up Bitty, who was curled up at my side, and prompted a questioning “Urr?” from her. She was wondering why her human was up in the middle of the night.

  “No, little one, it’s not breakfast time yet.”

  I turned on the light and headed to the kitchen. She followed me and got comfy in her box on the floor, yawing and looking at me.

  I did a web search on Christopher’s uncle. Calvin Willembauer had worked in the wine business, and did some wine importing, mostly from France, back in the 1960s-1990s. He liked wine and art, and had apparently amassed a nice collection of paintings. I came across an article about his wine collection, from 2000, in the local newspaper of Walla Walla – tens of cases of old Bordeaux and Burgundies, some old and rare wines. In addition to the producer of the bottles that were opened at the party, Domain Leflaive, big names like Ponsot and Georges Roumier were mentioned. The article said that Mr. Willembauer bought most of it in the 80s, before the prices, particularly for Burgundies, had gone sky-high. Those wines were not particularly popular with American collectors at the time, so he likely bought his picks at reasonable cost. He also worked in the wine industry, and I assumed tasted the stuff and could find the good vintages and producers, and excellent values. That must have been quite a wine collection! I day-dreamed for a moment about trying some of those celebrated wines.

  Coming out of my reverie, I did a web search for that varietal and the vintage year, curious about how much the wine would sell for – it came to around $1700 a bottle! A brief item from a Vegas newspaper a couple of months years ago talked about a case of this wine going for auction, and being bought by a prominent Nevada wine collector, for a round sum of $25000 for a 12-bottle case. Not bad at all! If Christopher was indeed selling his uncle’s wine collection, at these prices he would be getting a lot of money.

  As I sat in front of my laptop with a steaming cup of tea, Bitty was busy napping in my lap after her breakfast, her soft black fur warming me up. This was the activity that the loud ring of my work phone interrupted. The number was local, and my phone told me that it belonged to Linda Raven, courtesy of caller-id software.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, hello, is this Veronica Margreve?” The female voice on the other end was rising in pitch and sounded out of breath. Linda was obviously panicked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “This is Linda, Linda Raven. We met the other day.”

  “I remember. What can I do for you?”

  “The police talked to me yesterday, and today again for hours! They just left. They suspect that I killed Fred!” Her words were tumbling out fast. “Asking all those questions. I didn’t have anything to do with his death, I swear!”

  “Why do you think they suspect you?” I asked, even though I knew
at least part of the answer to that.

  “They showed me your report, that you wrote for Fred Nordqvist. The one about IP addresses. So they know about the website.” I heard her swallow. “And the security video picked me up exiting the Nordqvist Fine Art building at 9 on Friday night.”

  Ah. That was new.

  “They also probably got my fingerprints from his office. But I promise, I didn’t have anything to do with his death!”

  “Why were you at Nordqvist Fine Art?”

  “Fred called me, told me about your report. I went over there to talk to him. We argued, but I didn’t kill him. Please believe me!”

  Before I could do that, I needed to understand her motivations better.

  “Why did you try the DoS?”

  She sighed. “I was very, deeply upset at Fred. His gallery was stealing my business by means I thought were... questionable. The art – you know, he had another exhibit of David Cox paintings from the same collection, a couple of years ago. It was what really helped raise his profile, and I started losing customers to him. And back then, at the first exhibit, I thought that some of the art looked a little suspicious. So when this second exhibit was being put together, I started thinking about what I can do to prevent it from taking more business away from me.”

  Ok, business jealousy. To be expected, given that Ravenswood sold the same type of art as Nordqvist Fine Art – 19th and early 20th century European.