I poked my head in the late vice president’s outer office, but it was empty. I called Gabby’s name but didn’t hear anyone in his office. To the right, the bigger workspace seemed unoccupied as well, but I could hear someone moving around even though I couldn’t see anything. I crossed back through the reception area and into Saylor’s office. The place looked like work was in progress. Open files sat on the worktable and the top of the file cabinets, and one of the desk drawers was open.
“Hi,” a voice behind me said as I surveyed the room. Gabby made a face as she took in the mess. She tossed her bike messenger bag on a chair and closed the desk drawer as she passed. Looking at the file tabs as she flipped the open folders closed and stacked them up on the corner of his desk, she said, “I left the place neat when I finished, honest.”
“Did you lock up when you left?”
“His assistant said she’d lock up during the lunch hour. This looks like student workers midway through a project, maybe organizing his files to distribute to the people who’ll be handling parts of his job until they hire a new vice president. Don’t worry, I can round up what you need.”
We took seats at the big table near the window, where Gabby began to sort paper-clipped pages into short stacks. She stopped at one point, frowning at a piece of paper that was buried in one pile. “A note from Mr. Saylor asking me to find out what I can about a new IPO.” She fiddled with her ponytail. “One of the companies Mr. Margoletti’s involved with. I guess they went public recently.”
“Did he send it to you?”
“This is the first I’ve seen it. I’m sure he meant to pass it along the next time we met. It’s so weird. I can’t get used to the idea he’s dead, you know?”
“Did you go to the funeral? That sometimes gives a sense of closure.”
“Yes, but it was sad. His staff came, and some of the faculty, but the president wasn’t there. The church was half empty.” Gabby shook herself, glanced at her watch, and said, “I only have an hour before Dermott comes to get me. We have to meet with his student loan advisor.” She made a face, and sighed.
Shrugging off whatever was bothering her, she pulled over a file folder, and proceeded to walk me through the highlights of her research. Then, she held up something I hadn’t seen, a copy of a page from a Christie’s auction catalog with a color photo of a Sam Francis painting, estimated to sell between one and one and a half million. “We haven’t talked much about the individual pieces of art,” she said, “and this is one thing Larry was worried about.”
“This piece? I didn’t see much about the art in his files,” I said. “There was a list in the development office material, though.”
“Larry’s notes are around here somewhere. This page should have been in the folder with everything else, but I had pulled it to start verifying that the donor still owns it. It’s on the accountant’s list but not on the gift list. He got a phone call and after that, he started looking at them more closely. He told me the lists weren’t quite the same and asked me to check a few pieces, to see what might have happened.”
“There are two lists? I saw one in the files I borrowed from Larry’s office, but I figured it was a copy of the same one, the one that Margoletti’s lawyers made.”
“I did too until Larry explained that he received a second one, this one created by Mr. Margoletti’s accountant.”
“Do you have that list?”
She worked her way through some of the files that had been left on the table and on Saylor’s desk, but couldn’t find it. “Wait, I made myself a copy. I spent so much time here that I kept a work file handy in his cabinet. See?” She had stooped over a low lateral file and now pulled out a folder. “I labeled it with my name, under G.” And rifling through it, she came up with a stapled set of pages and handed it to me.
“Let me understand,” I said. “You were working off two different lists?”
“No, I was working with the lawyer’s list, the one that had on it all the artwork Mr. Margoletti was including in the donation. Larry had the list Mr. Margoletti’s accountant sent him to track where every piece of art was. Most of it was in storage in California.”
“Do you remember the names on the two lists that didn’t match?”
“Not offhand. Larry had highlighted the differences, but I don’t see his copy here.”
Rats, I had missed something. I hadn’t flipped through all the pages on the other list because the entries on the first page were all the same and I had assumed it was a copy of the same list. Damn.
Gabby saw my frown. “It’s easy enough to compare them once you have both lists. There are only a few differences.”
“Does the documentation explain the discrepancies? Maybe these were pieces he intended to hold on to?”
“They’re not marked that way, so I don’t know. For some reason, Larry thought there was a problem. I’m sure that’s why he needed to see the president. I picked that much up from his comments.”
She had been flipping through the piles of papers left out by the student workers. “Aha,” she said, raising her voice in triumph. “Here’s something.” She slid a sheet of paper over to me. It was another page from an auction sale catalog, advertising the upcoming sale at auction of a painting by Roy Lichtenstein, in the style he became most famous for. A stippled cartoon drawing of the close-up faces of an unhappy man and woman, accompanied by a dramatic text in a bubble. I looked my question at Gabby.
“I remember Mr. Saylor being especially interested in this. I had no idea a comic book picture could be so valuable. Read the provenance.”
Sold by the painter to such-and-such gallery for a few thousand dollars. The gallery sold it to a reputable dealer a few years later for many thousands of dollars. The dealer sold it to a collector and the collector turned it around at auction ten years later for a million dollars. Each time the piece sold, the price went up exponentially until, at the sale last year being advertised in the catalog, a handwritten note in Gabby’s writing reported, a new buyer paid twenty-one million.
“Art can be a great investment, but this isn’t unusual. This piece is one of a series that pretty much defined his style. There’s nothing here saying Vince bought it, however.”
“It’s not on the lawyers’ list, but it was one of the ones on the accountant’s list that I remember. All I know is we were working in here when the accountant from Mr. Margoletti’s office called him. I only heard Larry’s side, but he said something about how someone could have given Mr. Margoletti such a big gift, that you don’t pay a lawyer twenty million dollars, no matter how good he is.”
“Someone gave the Lichtenstein to him?”
“Apparently, although I’m only guessing that because of what I heard,” Gabby said.
“It might mean that Vince Margoletti didn’t mean to give it to Lynthorpe,” I said, thinking out loud. “Either that, or the gift list was outdated, although, frankly, this is not the kind of painting one would overlook.” I was thinking of the handful of pieces I had incomplete documentation for.
“If I can find his copy of the list, where he might have made notes, I’ll get it for you to save time. In the meantime, you can keep this because I have another copy in my folder. I’ll copy the Francis sell sheet for you. I’m guessing a lot of the art research has already been packaged up and sent to Mr. McEvoy’s office, or to Dean Anderson.”
Gabby had continued to flip through the papers in her “G” folder, and now she said, “Oh, good, here’s another one I was asked to check on.” She pulled out a copy of another auction house catalog page that was promoting a small oil painting of leaves in autumn colors by Georgia O’Keeffe.
Again, ticked off on an auction catalog page were tracings of the painting’s past to show it was not stolen goods or a fake. The piece was valued between one and two million dollars and was painted relatively early in O’Keeffe’s career, but the style was immediately recognizable. For this latest sale ad, the seller’s name wasn’t listed on the pri
nted page, but that’s not unusual. Not too many people choose to advertise the fact that they may have expensive art hanging in their living rooms. Security systems are good, but art thieves are sometimes better. High stakes auction purchases are frequently made through dealers, middlemen who act for the real buyer and are well paid to preserve their privacy. “The O’Keeffe belongs to Margoletti too?”
“I’m sure this is one of the ones that was on one list and not the other. That’s why he would have asked me to do the research and get the sales information.”
I searched and found the O’Keeffe on Gabby’s copy of the accountant’s list. “Interesting. It doesn’t say how much he paid for it. It says ‘acquired.’ ” I looked up at the young researcher. “If he didn’t buy it, he has some remarkably generous friends or possibly a tax dodge going on, although if that were the case, surely he wouldn’t have approved his accountant giving you the information.”
There were oddities in what Gabby had told me, and I needed time to sort them out. I also needed to check the two lists against each other, maybe with Gabby’s help, first thing tomorrow. I laid the catalog pages out on the table in front of me. Lichtenstein, Francis, O’Keeffe. All offered through reputable auction houses. Could they be fakes? “You said there were others?” I said.
“At least one more. I wish I could think of the artist’s name. There was no auction sheet for it. Mr. Saylor just mentioned it and said he’d look into that one himself. All I remember is the style wasn’t as modern, it was a realistic painting, if you know what I mean.”
“Can you make me copies of these auction sheets?”
“Sure. By the way, there was another one that looked like it fit the same pattern, but Mr. Margoletti sold it two months ago.”
“He confirmed that he’d sold it?”
“His accountant checked with him, no problem. We noted the update and put it in the back of the file to make sure the paper trail was complete. See? Here it is.”
A small painting by Jim Dine, no doubt with a signature heart in it, although there was no photo of the piece included in the documentation Gabby had, only the handwritten annotation “Sold, per V.M.” dated three weeks ago.
I nodded. “Good work. Without a note like that, some future curator could spend a long time looking for a painting that didn’t exist in the collection.”
“I’ll go down the hall and make you copies of everything,” Gabby said. “Won’t be a minute.” She smiled. “I’m relieved that you’re going to help. I wouldn’t feel right knowing how upset Mr. Saylor was, if I didn’t make sure someone but us knew about this, someone who’d be able to make more sense of it than I can.”
“No promises,” I said. “I’m not a detective, and the college hasn’t asked me to do more than help ensure that the valuations are correct, but I guess this fits under that heading, doesn’t it?”
She grinned at me, her dimples blazing. “I guess it does. Be right back.”
I thought again about the pages Gabby had shown me. Taken together, did they hold the answer to Larry Saylor’s uneasiness? Maybe if I called the auction house, I could learn something, although they were notoriously close-mouthed. Might be wiser to call the accountant, whose contact information was probably on the list Gabby was copying for me. If it wasn’t, I’d ask her for it before leaving tonight.
It was late and the building was quiet. I heard Gabby talking to someone, probably that cute husband of hers, their voices inaudible but raised over the sound of the office machine. I glanced at my watch. It was almost six and time for him to pick her up. I gathered up my notes and my briefcase. Outside, a car backfired somewhere. The copier was still churning, but she must be about done. I got up and walked to the office door, looking toward the stairs. Nothing but the copier’s thrum. I figured I’d collect the papers on my way out, so I went back in, picked up my bag and headed down the hall toward the noise, which came from the small, open room right next to the stairs that I’d seen before.
The machine was cranking away, but the top was open. No sign of the young researcher or her husband.
“Gabby?” I said, raising my voice. Maybe she had gone to the ladies’ room across the way. I pushed the door open, but no one answered. There was a room next to it with a frosted glass door and what looked like a chart of office hours on an index card taped to the glass. The door was partly open. The other doors along the hallway were closed. I walked over to the open door and pushed it, hoping I wasn’t trespassing or interrupting a late-day student conference. “Hello?” I called, peering ahead at a wall of books stuffed to bursting. I took another step and my foot brushed against something at the same instant the door stopped in its swing. Looking down, I saw a hand resting on the floor.
“Gabby,” I breathed, dropping to my knees beside the still figure crumpled near the door. Out in the hall, the copier stopped suddenly and the silence was shocking. In the sudden quiet, I heard a door close and the hum of an elevator somewhere. “Help,” I yelled to whoever might be around.
“Gabby, can you hear me,” I said, leaning down and reaching to touch her fingers. She lay on her back, turned slightly to one side, her ponytail splayed out behind her head. Her eyes were shut and there was no movement, no sound from her. One side of her chest was blooming red blood, which had already dribbled to the scuffed wood floor underneath her.
At that moment, a door slammed somewhere, and footsteps came up the stairs rapidly. I looked back to the hallway over my shoulder, ready to yell for help again.
“Hey, Ms. O’Rourke,” Dermott Kennedy said, his mouth in a crooked grin, coming to a halt behind me. The smile evaporated and a crease appeared between his eyes. “Are you okay? Wait a minute—is that Gabby?”
He dropped down, pushing me roughly out of the way, and grabbed the unmoving hand I was hesitantly touching, the one whose third finger wore a narrow, still shiny, wedding band.
CHAPTER 12
The next hour was a blur. I remember Dermott on his knees, crooning Gabby’s name. I was already dialing 911 when he hollered at me to call for help.
“She’s been shot, I’m sure of it,” I told the woman who answered the call. “No, no, there’s no one else here. The two of us, me and her husband. No, of course neither of us has a gun. Hurry, she’s bleeding a lot.”
“Baby, baby, it’s okay. I’m here,” Dermott kept saying, even though it was obvious she was unconscious. It felt like forever, but was only a minute or two before I heard the amplified chatter of two-way radios at the same time I heard someone banging on the door to the building.
“I’ll go,” I said, and ran down the stairs, hanging onto the banister so I wouldn’t fall headlong in my rush. I was shaking so much that moving fast was dangerous. The guy I’d seen on campus earlier, Macho Cop, was peering in the window, a gun in his hand. His partner was kicking at the door. The door opened from the inside when I yanked it and I pointed them up the stairs. “Outside,” the macho one shouted at me, giving me a push to emphasize his instructions. “Get outside now.” He slammed the door open so far it latched into a piece of hardware on the wall. The other uniformed policeman had already disappeared up the staircase. I stumbled out the door and leaned against a railing, my heart pounding and my stomach churning.
The police car, sitting at an odd angle to the sidewalk with its flashers on, was beginning to attract attention even before two more cop cars zoomed up. Two of the cops ran past me while two more fanned out along the building’s front. After a quick, barked conversation on his two-way radio, the male cop turned door duty over to a female in uniform and headed up the stairs at a trot. I heard a siren coming from the back of the building, so I guessed they were trying to cover the parking lot in case whoever shot her was still inside. I didn’t have time to be alarmed by the thought because Dermott was yelling as he was being almost dragged down the stairs.
He was begging the officer who held his arm to let him stay with her, pleading for them to stop the bleeding, and it broke my heart. A fire
department ambulance pulled up and almost immediately a couple of guys in regulation gear and lugging large cases trotted up the sidewalk. The woman guarding the door spoke into her radio, then said, “Okay, all clear,” and waved the firemen into the building.
From then on, there was a steady stream of responders. A fire truck and its crew, an ambulance and two EMTs, a couple of people in street clothes but with IDs that got them right through, a pot-bellied Lynthorpe College security guard, and a few faculty and students drawn by the commotion hung around. Dermott, banished to the lawn like me, peppered me with questions. What did I see? Did she say anything to me? What did I hear? It wasn’t doing him much good since I hadn’t heard or seen anything useful. At other moments, he would insist that he be allowed to go back upstairs to be with his wife, but the cop on door duty wasn’t buying. Lynthorpe’s uniformed cop kept trying to get in too, blustering about his responsibilities.
“Look,” I heard the cop to him say at one point, “you’re an old hand. You know better. It’s a frigging crime scene. No one goes up except the investigators and the EMTs.” The EMTs came into view through the glass, moving carefully toward the front door with their burden, a bright yellow gurney onto which Gabby was strapped and partially covered with a blanket. A mask covered her nose and mouth, and a fireman was close to her, holding up a clear plastic bag of fluids. They hadn’t come down the stairs, because those were partially visible from where I stood, so they must have found the elevator I had heard.
Dermott leapt to the doorway as the EMTs reached it and bent over the free side of the gurney, saying her name over and over as the small band made its way to the ambulance. It drove off without him and he turned and saw me standing nearby on the grass, trying not to cry. I grabbed his hand to say something but he spoke first, panic in his eyes. “They won’t tell me how she is or what happened.”
It was heartbreaking to hear his pain and fear, and I couldn’t think of anything to say that would ease it.
Mixed Up With Murder Page 9
