The Monet Murders

by Josh Lanyon

  In memory of

  Captain JACOB HOVEY

  He died

  Nov. 27th 1950

  in the 82nd year

  of his age

  HULDAH K. GREENLEAF

  His wife

  Dec. 14, 1916 Sept. 2, 1953

  Hope we have as an Anchor to the Soul.

  That was interesting. Not the part about Captain Hovey being a cradle robber. The part where the Hoveys and Greenleafs turned out to be kissing cousins.

  Families did feud. Just ask the Hatfields and the McCoys—or anybody in Scotland.

  The fact that Eric Greenleaf hadn’t mentioned being distantly related to the Hovey/Durrands didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe it was something he preferred to forget.

  In any case, Jacob’s and Huldah’s seemed to be the first and final union between the two families.

  If Havemeyer had died on the island, it didn’t look like his body had been hidden in this graveyard. Granted, there were two other burial grounds to check: the twenty-five military graves on the north side of the fort, and the Native American burial site on the other side of the island.

  Jason took another look around the graveyard. The fog shifted, gauzy white whorls tumbling languidly over gravestones, spilling into urns, winding through bushes. A small building stood revealed.

  A mausoleum?

  Jason’s interest spiked. Was this possibly the so-called “crypt” in which Marco Poveda claimed to have been imprisoned?

  He hiked over the muddy grass and weeds for a better look.

  Yes, a mausoleum. A beautiful example of Gothic architecture with its pointed arches, ornate stonework, stained glass windows. A tall and ornate bronze grate served as the door.

  In fact… Jason moved in closer. The door was slightly ajar, resting lightly against its keeper.

  He gently tugged on the heavy door, and it swung open with silent and suspicious ease.

  Those hinges were pretty well maintained for a building out in the middle of nowhere.

  Jason stepped inside.

  The single room was about the size of a large garden shed—if garden sheds had vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses. A single marble tomb rested beneath a pair of stained glass lancet windows below a trefoil oculus.

  Jason moved closer, peering down at the inscription carved into the tomb.

  On a sunny day visibility would be better. As it was, he could just make out the words.

  Blessed sleep to which we all return.

  The bronze door behind him swung shut with a heavy and decisive clang.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Hey!” Jason sprang for the door. “I’m in here. Someone’s in here!”

  No one answered. He listened hard but heard no sound but his own agitated breathing.

  “Hey!” He tugged fruitlessly on the grate.

  Nothing. No footsteps, either retreating or approaching. No sign that anyone was out there beyond his range of sight. He scanned the copse of nearby evergreens. No movement. No color behind the blue-green branches. Not so much as a fucking squirrel.

  But the door hadn’t closed on its own. There was no breeze, let alone the gale force wind it would take to move those ornate swirls of bronze. Therefore…what the hell?

  He gripped the metal carving, again pushed hard against the grating. Nope. It was locked tight and built to last.

  “Goddamn it.” Jason tried yelling again. “Hey! Can anybody hear me? I need some help.”

  Good luck with that.

  If anyone was out there, they were not coming to his rescue.

  If anyone was out there, they had likely slammed the door on him.

  Jason stopped yelling.

  He pulled out his cell phone and checked for a signal.

  Nada.

  The walls of most crypts around the age of this one were ten-inch thick. The roofs were typically twelve-inch thick. That was another bit of arcane knowledge, courtesy of a degree in art history. He had once taken a course on funeral art and different death rituals. Some things just stuck in your memory. Like what coffin liquor was, for example.

  Anyway, the thickness of the walls and roof were irrelevant. The door was basically a giant grate and the windows… Jason stepped near to get a closer look at the windows—and then a still closer look. He whistled, temporarily forgetting about his plight.

  Unless he was very much mistaken, those stained-glass windows were original Tiffany. The workmanship was unmistakable. The stylized, exquisitely detailed flowers and swans, the rich, luminous blues and greens and golds. If these were indeed Tiffany glass, it would put the value of the windows somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range. For windows that size? A quarter of a million at least.

  At the turn of the last century, wealthy families frequently commissioned valuable art and glass to furnish family mausoleums. Those items—Tiffany glass in particular—were now in high demand with overseas collectors willing to pay just about anything. But because so much of Tiffany’s work was in churches and mausoleums, it never went on sale. Over the past few decades, enterprising thieves had turned to robbing upscale cemeteries where security was guaranteed to be minimal.

  In fact, in 1999, one of the world’s foremost experts on Tiffany glass had been convicted in federal court of knowingly buying and selling Tiffany windows stolen by a career grave robber.

  To stumble over a find like this in the middle of nowhere? It was incredible. In fact, it was a miracle that no one had yet targeted these.

  Jason studied the jewel-bright panels of white snowdrops, ivory roses, and purple and yellow pansies against crystal blue water and blazing azure sky. Tiffany had perfected a technique of layering glass that created a kind of 3-D effect. More real than real. These particular flowers reminded him a little of Monet’s paintings of his spring garden at Giverny. He felt as though he could almost step through the window onto the sunlit grass.

  Monet. He shivered. Yeah. Maybe better not to think of Monet right now.

  He tore his gaze from the windows. Even on this drizzly gray day, they seemed to glow warmly with the promise of life and hope and eternal sunshine.

  No locked doors in that world.

  Jason swore quietly.

  Now what?

  He walked back to the door, took his phone out, and thrust his arm through the grating to see if he could get a signal.

  He didn’t have Shipka’s number, but if Shipka had sent his notes as promised, Jason could check his mail and possibly retrieve Shipka’s contact info.

  But no.

  The two miniscule signal bars that popped up faded out again immediately.

  He’d have better luck yelling for Shipka.

  Yelling for anyone.

  He could try firing a couple of shots in the air, but they would almost certainly be put down to someone hunting—as he’d done the day before when he’d heard rifle shots.

  Or he could try shooting the lock off the door. That’s what he’d do if this was a movie. In real life, he wasn’t eager to risk getting hit by a ricochet, and the chances of damaging the keeper plate and locking mechanism were higher than managing to somehow disable the latch.

  As a last resort he could break the window and climb out, but that really would have to be a last resort. He’d as soon cut a hand off as destroy an irreplaceable work of art.

  The remaining options were even sketchier. Rely on Shipka to come looking for him eventually? Wait for whoever had locked him in to come looking for him eventually? And if no one had locked him in? Wait for Barnaby to take the dog for another walk? Wait for someone, anyone to stroll by?

  What the hell was the point of locking him in? Was it supposed to be a prank? A threat?

  He really couldn’t picture Barnaby tiptoeing back to lock him in the family chapel, and who else would have a motive?

  Was this even the Hovey/Durrand family chapel?

  He went back to the tomb and looked for a name. But there was only the carved inscription on the lid
.

  Blessed sleep to which we all return.

  Yeah, hopefully. And ideally in our own bed.

  He took a couple of frustrated turns around his cell, noting a couple of very large, though apparently abandoned, spider webs over the door.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  One thing he could do, since he was stuck here anyway. He could make sure that whoever was in that tomb—or sarcophagus, to be more precise—was who it was supposed to be, and not a missing German art student.

  Louis Comfort Tiffany had died in 1933, which gave Jason a rough idea of the age of the sarcophagus and its contents. He was looking for a body or, more likely, a coffin dating circa 1878 thru the early 1930s. He knelt down, put his shoulder to the heavy marble lid, and shoved. Lifting it was out of the question, but he could, in theory, lever it—

  The lid scraped a few inches sideways with a grating, stony scrape.

  A peculiar, almost sweet odor wafted out. Not the stench of recent decay, thank God, but Jason’s stomach did an unhappy flop all the same.

  The opening was wide enough to look inside. He turned on the flashlight utility of his phone and shone the light into the stone interior.

  He could make out the glimmer of black lacquer and dull gold fittings. A coffin. An old coffin.

  So far so good.

  The coffin appeared to be firmly sealed.

  Even better.

  Of course, if someone was really determined to conceal a murder, it would be possible to open the coffin and dump Havemeyer’s body in with Great-Great Grandma Ermine or whoever this was. But determining that would require a court order, and no way in hell was that going to happen.

  Besides, why bother desecrating the family tomb when there were so many other, more permanent ways on this island to dispose of a body?

  No. It had been worth checking, but no.

  Jason dragged the heavy lid back into place and settled on the floor leaning back against the sarcophagus and staring out the grating at the fog-obscured world beyond.

  Back to his original question. Now what?

  Okay. If someone had locked him in, it had been with some purpose in mind. Correct? Why not wait and find out exactly what the plan was?

  Jason pulled out his pistol, rest it on his knee, and prepared to wait.

  All you need is a fresh perspective.

  That was a little Art Crime Team joke.

  It was also the truth.

  As frustrated and angry as Jason was—in addition to being curious about whatever the end game was—it was surprisingly useful having time to do nothing but think.

  First there was Kennedy’s—or rather, the BAU’s—case. A series of gruesome homicides by an unsub able to travel across the country. An ice pick had been the murder weapon in all three cases. The victims were all members of the art world, though possibly—probably? —another connection existed. Depictions of the murders, painted in the style of Monet, had been left at each crime scene—indicating premeditation. But more than that. The paintings, bad though they were, indicated a genuine interest in, and likely strong ties to, the art world. That shouldn’t be discounted.

  Kennedy had not yet identified a main suspect—or at least had not shared that information with Jason—but the offender was organized, disciplined, and evolving. Motive unknown. There did not appear to be a sexual element to the crimes.

  Shipka’s investigation potentially connected to Kennedy’s in that Kennedy’s latest victim, Donald Kerk, was one of Shipka’s witnesses. Shipka was looking into the twenty-year- old cold case disappearance of a German art student. Paris Havemeyer had last been seen alive by Donald Kerk and Rodney Berguan.

  Had Shipka managed to interview Kerk or Berguan? He hadn’t said, and now that Jason thought about it, it was an odd oversight.

  Shipka’s working theory was that Havemeyer had been killed by Shepherd Durrand at the Durrands’ remote family estate. There was very likely a sexual element to this crime—if there was, in fact, a crime. That was the first problem with Shipka’s case. There were any number of things that might happen to a young, sexually active gay man looking for a good time in 1990s New York City.

  As a suspect, Shepherd Durrand did not, in Jason’s opinion, fit the profile of an organized, disciplined, and steadily evolving serial killer. But Jason would also be the first to admit serial killers were not his area of expertise. Shepherd seemed organized enough in his professional life. And he had previously been accused of kidnapping, torture, and rape, but those charges had been dropped. Still.

  Shepherd’s movements at the time of Kennedy’s three serial killings needed to be tracked to see if he had an alibi for any or all of the slayings. If so, he could be quickly eliminated as a suspect, and the connection between Shipka’s investigation and Kennedy’s could be dismissed as pure, if tragic, coincidence.

  Which still left a connection between Jason’s case and Shipka’s investigation.

  Jason was investigating charges of fraud and first and second degree grand larceny against the Fletcher-Durrand gallery co-owned and operated by Barnaby and Shepherd Durrand. The motive here was plain and simple. Financial gain. Millions of dollars were at stake.

  The complainants had specifically named Barnaby in their filing, but in Jason’s opinion, Shepherd was as good or even better a candidate for the defrauding of Fletcher-Durrand clients. Although Barnaby had certainly reacted with guilty knowledge when questioned.

  Jason also suspected Shepherd of commissioning and selling forged paintings, though so far that was only a suspicion. He had absolutely no proof besides a single faked painting, the odd, edgy behavior of a trusted informant, and his own gut instinct.

  Donald Kerk again provided a connection, this time between Jason’s case and the BAU’s, in that he had seen the Durrand brothers—or at least Shepherd—twice in the days before his death.

  In conclusion?

  All three cases revolved around the art world.

  The Durrands, through their connection to Donald Kerk, seemed at least peripherally attached to all three cases.

  What else?

  Sitting here locked in a fucking mausoleum was not getting him any further ahead in his investigation.

  His jacket and jeans, though plenty warm when he was hiking through the woods, was not heavy enough for sitting in a stone cell in winter.

  He was starving. He would kill for one of those shriveled, dried-out petroleum-based blueberry muffins now.

  Sam Kennedy—

  No. Do not go there.

  By five o’clock Jason was ready to commit a murder of his own.

  He had now been imprisoned for over four hours, and he was just about ready to try shooting the lock off the gate. Just about. He still vividly recalled what it felt like to be shot, and that was a real disincentive. A ricochet in a small enclosed stone space was a high possibility, and even if he was ready to gamble on his own safety, he couldn’t risk that Tiffany window.

  Repeated efforts to use his phone had failed.

  The good news was the fog had dissipated. The bad news was it had started to rain.

  It was dark, it was cold and damp, he was tired, hungry, and starting to get a little freaked out.

  He needed to pee. Which shouldn’t technically be a problem, but the presence of the sarcophagus had an inhibiting effect.

  What the hell was the plan here?

  Was there a plan?

  Had he been locked in by accident? Not likely, but not impossible either.

  The whole situation was fucking ridiculous.

  He stopped pacing at a faint jingling sound and drew his weapon.

  Keys?

  No. Dog tags. Ambrose was back, sniffing loudly, frantically at the bronze gate and then proceeding to bark at Jason.

  “Good dog,” Jason muttered. “Hey,” he yelled. “Who’s out there?”

  Footsteps approached.

  Barnaby’s voice muttered, “What on earth?”

  A high-powered flashlight
beam spotlighted him, momentarily blinding him.

  If Barnaby noticed Jason was holding a pistol, he didn’t comment on it. “Agent West, what do you think you’re doing in there?”

  The irate tone was almost funny, given the circumstances. Almost.

  Jason holstered his weapon, saying crisply, “Waiting for whoever locked me in to let me out.”

  It seemed Barnaby was ready for this because he charged instantly to the defense. “Locked you in! What nonsense is this? No one locked you in. Who was around to lock you in?” His keys jingled as he unlocked the ornate heavy gate and dragged it open.

  “You triggered the mechanism yourself—while trespassing on private property. You’re just lucky Ambrose wanted a second walk. You could have been stuck in there until tomorrow.”

  Don’t think I don’t know it. Jason didn’t say it aloud. He was convinced Barnaby had come looking for him, had known he was locked in that crypt, and had shown up simply and solely to release him. Who the hell walked their dog in a graveyard at night?

  But that was just a gut feeling. He had no proof. What was the point of doing such a thing anyway? To punish him for forcing an interview? To irritate him? Because if the idea had been to scare or intimidate, Barnaby had missed by a mile and merely succeeded in aggravating the shit out of him.

  Besides, he was pretty sure Barnaby hadn’t—couldn’t have—locked him in, and sneaking through the woods didn’t really seem like Mrs. Merriam’s style.

  Which left two questions: who had locked him in, and why?

  “That was lucky all right. For all of us,” Jason said.

  Barnaby’s stiff figure seemed to grow more rigid. “I don’t think I like your tone, Agent West.”

  “I’m not crazy about yours. No way did I accidentally lock myself in there, but if that’s what you want to believe…” Jason shrugged.

  This was not the time or place to make a federal case out of something. He was on his own out here, standing in the glare of Barnaby’s flashlight, surrounded by the deep and silent woods, Jason was acutely aware of just how alone he was. Someone on this island had no problem tackling an FBI agent—had been willing to risk whatever the consequences to put Jason out of action for a while. What were the odds that person might be willing to put Jason out of action permanently? Not something he wanted to find out.