No one else in the building admitted meeting the Victor sisters, or knowing anything about them. “They’ve always kept themselves to themselves,” one of the doormen said. None of the doormen was willing to comment on their gentlemen friends. “Lotsa people come in and outta here,” one of them growled. “We don’t keep track.” The detectives doubted they’d learn more.
“Too bad neither of the boyfriends sounds like Harrison,” Coleman said. “I was sure his girlfriend at DDD&W would turn out to be Patti Sue or her sister.”
“Me, too,” Rob said. “Next on the agenda is Great Art Management. Their name has been linked to antiquities smuggling, fake art, bogus antiques. They have a stable of artists capable of faking on demand—Impressionism, Realism, Picassos, copies of works by Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, and other contemporary artists. Whatever the client wants. In fact, Coleman, one of your favorite artists is represented by them.”
“Who?” Coleman asked.
“Crawdaddy,” Rob said.
“Oh, that creep. That’s the kind of place where he would be involved,” Coleman said.
“Crawdaddy?” Jonathan asked.
“The photorealist who crashed Coleman’s party, and had his picture taken with Coleman and me,” Dinah explained.
“Oh, him. He was a nasty piece of work,” Jonathan said.
“Anyway,” Rob continued, “apparently whenever a client is unhappy with a purchase, GAM reimburses his money and takes back the object, probably selling it to a greater fool. Nothing negative has been published about them, there’s no record of anyone suing them, and nothing has ever been proved against them.”
“Something’s about to be proved,” Jonathan said, explaining that a Great Art Management employee had confessed and named Patti Sue as the contact at DDD&W. The DA’s office would strike this week. The SEC was also on the move.
“That’s great news, Jonathan,” Rob said. “I wish mine was. I still don’t have a line on the Davidson girls, and it’s wait and see on the Stubbs portraits. If they turn up at DDD&W on Friday, I guess we’ve been on the wrong track there.”
“I’ve been thinking about the latest anonymous note,” Dinah said. “Our informant tried to let us know about the office search, although we didn’t get the note in time to remove my tool kit. I’m sure the portraits won’t be back on Friday, and I have an idea about how to find them.”
“Go to it. I wish you luck,” Rob said.
“What about the stuff you got from the Fry Building?” Coleman asked Rob.
“None of the security guards has a criminal record, but they’re sloppy. If someone they know comes in, they might not sign him or her in; the same if a person they know leaves the building. Their sign-in and sign-out books aren’t as full as they should be, given the number of people on the videos. The videos show what you’d expect—lots of people coming and going, mostly the same people over and over. The DDD&W people are in and out constantly.”
“Did the audio tape of the girl calling in the murder tell you anything?” Jonathan asked.
Rob shook his head. “You can barely hear her. I’d think it was a hoax except that there was a murder.”
Dinah, looking worried, spoke up.
“Uh—I have something to tell everyone about that. I know who the girl was—her name is Ellie McPhee. She was Patti Sue’s assistant. She turned up right after I discovered the body, and I asked her to call the guards downstairs,” Dinah said, looking at Jonathan’s astonished expression. “I know I should have told you. But she’s a sweet little thing, and I didn’t want to hand her to the bullies at DDD&W, or the police. I thought they’d learn she was in the building from the security people—or the tape—or she’d come forward, and I wouldn’t have to tattle on her. But the thing is, I tried to call her, and she’s not there.”
Coleman sighed. Just like Dinah to try to protect someone, even when it wasn’t in her own best interest. She’d done that sort of thing as a child. When a little vase on her grandmother’s dressing table was broken, everyone thought Dinah was the culprit, because dusting that room was her responsibility. Dinah hadn’t told anyone that she’d seen Morton, a neighbor’s child, looking scared, tiptoeing out of the room. Weeks later, Morton, overcome by guilt, had confessed.
“What do you mean ‘she’s not there’?” Rob said.
Dinah shrugged. “Just that. The DDD&W operator said she’s gone.”
“Do you think she was fired?” Rob asked.
Dinah shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.”
“Has Dinah broken the law by not reporting this woman to the police?” Jonathan asked Rob.
Rob shook his head. “I don’t think so. She hasn’t lied to the police. I’ll put one of the detectives on Ellie McPhee right away, see if we can find her. I don’t think we should wait too long before we tell the police about her, and it would be good if we can give them more than the name of a missing girl. Of course, she’s not the only one missing. As I said, the Davidson heiresses are in the wind, too. I’ve got people looking for them. They can try to find the McPhee woman as well,” Rob said.
“We’re not getting very far, are we?” Coleman said.
Jonathan shook his head. “No, but I think we’ll know a lot more when I get back from Boston. I’m looking forward to meeting the chairman of the Prince Charles. I’ve faxed him Dinah’s analysis of the collection—what they have and what’s missing. I’ll be interested to hear his reaction. And I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from the Davidsons’ lawyer,” he said.
“I hope you do better than I have,” Rob said. “I have nothing but bad news. As you guessed, Coleman, Patti Sue denies any fight in the DDD&W ladies’ room, and Mrs. Thornton says she can’t talk to us unless Hunt Frederick clears it, which he isn’t going to do. We’ll have to try to get the police to investigate the fight. Maybe the Cobra can make it happen. Patti Sue’s lying, of course. It’s apparently known inside DDD&W that there was at least one, maybe more, fight between her and another woman. Listen to what the Byrds picked up today.” He clicked on a tiny tape recorder.
Say, Patti Sue dint attack you, did she? Her and one of the other dames here have fist-fights when they think nobody’s lookin’, mostly in the girls’ privy. Y’all better watch out for her. Well, Love Birds, I gotta get back to work. My name’s Michael Shanahan. Folks call me Moose.
“Will he tell us more?” Dinah asked.
Coleman nodded. “Sounds like he will. I doubt if he’d talk to the police, but I bet Bethany or Loretta can chat him up and get what we need. He’s susceptible to beautiful women.”
“Do you know Moose Shanahan?” Rob asked. His tone made the innocuous question sound like an accusation.
Coleman was irritated by the question but kept her response civil.
“I know of him. Big-deal college football player, big-deal investment banker, big-deal ladies’ man. I don’t know if he’s currently married. He’s a serial marryer,” Coleman said.
“Well, whatever he is, he knows what’s going on at DDD&W,” Jonathan said. “Can Bethany and Loretta find out from him who the other woman in the catfight is?”
“They think they know. They think it’s Naomi Skinner, Mark Leichter’s assistant. But it would be good if they can pin it down, and I’m sure they’ll try. If they don’t get anywhere, we’ll try another approach,” Rob said.
He turned toward Coleman. “While we’re on the topic of people at DDD&W, how do you know Theodore Douglas, Coleman?” Rob asked.
Coleman thought he was more interested in prying into her past than in the case they were discussing, but there was no reason she shouldn’t answer him.
“Teddy? I’ve seen him around town for years. Decent manners, pleasant, inoffensive,” she said.
“I’ve known Douglas a long time, too,” Jonathan said. “I’ve always thought he was insignificant—nothing like his father and grandfather. They were both very intelligent, and very successful. Ted barely made it through any of his schools. I was surprised
to learn he’d done so well at DDD&W. His wife’s family’s influence and money must have helped.”
“Getting back to my problems: how bad is it Harrison found my tool kit?” Dinah asked.
Rob looked at her, his expression grave. “I won’t lie to you: I’d rather he hadn’t, because it gives him more ammunition against you. Unless they can prove your tools were used to loosen those shelves, finding them doesn’t help make their case, but it’s another smear opportunity. I keep thinking everything—including the tools—is going to show up in the tabloids.”
Dinah looked so miserable, Coleman changed the subject. “How are the hangers doing, Dinah?”
Dinah’s face brightened. “They’re doing fine. We’re speeding along. By the end of the day Tuesday they’ll have completed the corridors on thirty-three and be halfway through what’s left of the job. The rest of the prints are already coming in. Today I had a batch picked up in the New York area—from New Jersey and Connecticut dealers as well as in the city—and they’re already at the framer’s. They’ll arrive at DDD&W ready to hang Wednesday. If all goes well, Bethany and Loretta will have finished the job by the end of the week.”
They finished dinner a little after nine, and Rob, feeling terrible about Coleman’s coldness and his own less-than-stellar performance on Dinah’s case, returned to his office. Shortly after he arrived, Pete, looking puzzled, appeared in his door. “May I speak to you for a minute?” he asked Rob.
Rob looked up from his papers. “Sure. What is it?”
“I’ve got a weird one: I checked the Internet, didn’t turn up anything on Ellie McPhee. No address in the US, no social security number, nada. Called DDD&W’s human resources department, and the snippy woman who answered the phone says no one named Ellie McPhee has ever been employed by DDD&W.”
Rob frowned. “That’s ridiculous. Dinah knows her. She saw Ellie McPhee often—the woman was Patti Sue’s assistant,” he said.
Pete shrugged. “I hear what you’re saying, but I’m telling you, everybody I talked to said she doesn’t exist.”
“Have you asked Coleman’s friend, Amy Rothman?”
“Did that. Ms. Rothman has a vague memory of a girl sitting outside Patti Sue’s office, but she never met her, and can’t remember what she looked like. She phoned a few others at DDD&W she thought might know her, but no one did,” Pete said.
“Have you asked the lobby guards?”
Pete nodded. “Checked the books. No one by that name has ever signed in or out of the building. The guards never saw anyone like Dinah describes, never heard the name.”
“Oh, God, I hate this case. Nothing ever gets resolved, nothing’s simple. Let’s get Dinah in to look at the security tapes to see if she can spot her friend. But even if she does, I don’t know where that’ll get us,” Rob said. He decided to go home and not think about business until Tuesday.
Rob was reading in bed when the phone rang at eleven thirty. It was his friend at One Police Plaza.
“Bad news for your client, Rob. We examined Ms. Greene’s tools. Her screwdriver and the claws on her hammer were used to bring down the shelves. The scars on the wall and on the wood matched.”
“Oh, hell. Will she be arrested today?” Rob asked.
“No, they still haven’t figured out how she got in the office, and the building has no record of her returning after she left at midnight. They haven’t found a cab driver who took her uptown between one a.m. and five a.m., or anyone who saw her on the subway. They’re still being super careful. But if they get either of those two pieces of the puzzle, they’ll arrest her.”
Rob got up and paced. He wouldn’t sleep tonight. He dreaded telling Jonathan and Dinah about the tools. He’d let them sleep while they could.
Thirty-Seven
First thing Tuesday morning, Dinah watched the Fry Building videotapes. Ellie McPhee did not appear in the tapes for the two weeks before Dinah was given the contract, nor had she appeared since. Dinah told Rob she felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Mystified, she gave up and took a taxi to the gallery. After she’d settled at her desk, she put Ellie out of her mind. She had a theory about the location of the Stubbs paintings, and she was anxious to check it out. She put in a call to Rachel Ransome at her London gallery. She and Rachel had become friends when they met in London last year, and they spoke often.
“Dinah? How lovely to hear from you.”
“Thanks, Rachel. How are you?”
“I think my problems with Simon are about to be resolved, thanks to Heyward Bain,” Rachel said.
Rachel sounded happier than Dinah had ever heard her. Simon Fanshawe-Davies had been a thorn hedge in Rachel’s side. He had been Rachel’s protégé and employee. She’d given him 20 percent of the Ransome Gallery as a reward for what she’d thought was his loyalty and hard work. He’d repaid her generosity by stealing from her and betraying her in every possible way, even trying to implicate her in his unscrupulous transactions. But the legal agreements making him her partner were so binding, she couldn’t free herself from his clutches. Because he’d been seriously injured earlier in the year, he wasn’t around to annoy her. But no matter where he was, he was legally entitled to 20 percent of everything the gallery made, while Rachel struggled to recover the vast amounts of money he owed her. If Rachel had rid herself of that bloodsucker, it was terrific news.
“Wow! Tell me all about it.”
“I cannot yet tell you all the details, but as soon as I can—perhaps later this week—I shall, I promise you. What is your news?”
Dinah had decided not to tell Rachel about her own predicament. Her friend could do nothing to help, unless she could solve the mystery of the missing Stubbs. Given Rachel’s connections as a highly respected dealer and scholar, Dinah hoped she’d be able to discover their whereabouts, if they, as Dinah suspected, were on the market in London.
“Rachel, can you find out if two important Stubbs portraits are for sale in London? Or have been sold recently?”
“Of course, my dear. What are the paintings?”
“Portrait of Lady J and Portrait of Lord J. They were left to DDD&W, a US company, by one of its founders. But we think someone may have stolen them. The logical place to sell them is England—Stubbs is so much admired there, and if they were sold privately, people in New York might never hear about the transaction.”
“How very interesting. I shall make inquiries immediately and telephone you when I know anything.”
Rob reached Jonathan on his cell phone, on his way to the airport, and gave him the bad news about Dinah’s tools.
“When did Dinah take her tools to DDD&W?” Jonathan asked.
“They were messengered to her last Tuesday—a week ago today. She used them that afternoon to hang prints in her office and left them in a locked file drawer, behind a locked door. As you know, Frances Johnson was killed between two and four Thursday morning.”
“Someone had to know they were in that office, and was able to get past the locked door and the locked cabinet to borrow and use them. Now we know for sure that someone at DDD&W is trying to pin Johnson’s murder on Dinah. We have to catch whoever it is before he—or she—hurts Dinah more than she’s already been hurt. I hate seeing her so miserable.”
Thirty-Eight
Jonathan’s flight to Boston was on time. He met Blair Winthrop and Ned Carville in one of the small private dining rooms at the Firm. Carville, a specialist in corporate law, was a senior partner. He was prominent in his field and rumored to be in line for something big in Washington the next time the Republicans were in office. He sounded like a Kennedy when he spoke—he had that ghastly accent. His brown hair was graying at the temples and his hairline was receding, but his light brown eyes were as bright and clear as a boy’s. His face was lightly tanned and healthy looking, and he was thin as a whip.
They chatted about inconsequentialities while the grilled Dover sole and green salad were served, but when the waiter left the room, Carville turned to the sub
ject that interested Jonathan. “Blair tells me you want to know about the Davidsons,” he said. “It was a tragic family. James and his first wife, Sally, were childhood sweethearts who married young. The marriage was fine until their teenage son was killed. Sally never got over it—took pills, was in and out of clinics, became a zombie. James withstood it as long as he could—he’d always adored her—but he was lonely. He had an affair with his secretary, who became pregnant with twins.” He paused and took a bite of his fish.
Jonathan was making notes on the pad the waiter had left near his right hand. Affair? Illegitimate twins? Very un-Boston.
Carville sipped his Evian and continued. “The divorce was amicable since Sally neither cared what James did, nor what happened to her. She died in an assisted-living home a few months after the divorce—heart failure, they said, but it could have been a drug overdose. No one wanted to blacken her name; there was no autopsy, and she was buried quickly.
James insisted that his secretary take a paternity test to make sure the little girls were his, and demanded a rigid premarital agreement. He’d never have married the woman if she weren’t pregnant, and she knew it. He didn’t treat her very well, and she left him. She soon found another husband, less suspicious and more loving than James. She vanished from his and the girls’ lives. I think she and her husband live in Italy. I’m not sure the girls ever knew her; I’d guess that was part of James’s arrangement with her.” He took another bite of fish, while Jonathan waited for the next installment.
“James was crazy about the twins—Elizabeth and Margaret—but they were only three when he drowned while swimming. He probably had a heart attack. There was nothing suspicious about his death, and again, there was no autopsy. After that, the girls lived with James’s sister and her husband in Virginia, who were their only relatives, and they died in a plane crash when the girls were in college. Tragedy of tragedies.
The odd thing is, nobody seems to know where the girls are now. Lucas Parker, the lawyer you’re seeing this afternoon, might know, but he and I don’t travel in the same circles, and I don’t like him, so I’ve never asked him about the twins.”
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