I looked up at Jeff. "I remember now, it's an amazing piece. Did something happen to it?"
Jeff leaned forward, body taut as a spring. "Yes and no. Let me explain. My sister Cindy and I agreed to sell it at auction since there was no other way to divide the estate."
"It's not like you could cut the painting in half, right?" I laughed, but Jeff didn't look amused. "Sorry, bad joke, go on. Did you sell it?"
."No, the auction house rejected it. They said it wasn't a Chagall, just a very good copy, even though we had a certificate of authenticity!" As Jeff delivered this bombshell he tried to keep his anger in check.
I leaned back in my chair. "I don't understand. How did this happen?"
Jeff took a calming breath. "No idea. Here's the kicker, they told us the certificate of authenticity was genuine, but the painting wasn't."
I took a sip of water and wondered what advice to offer. What did Jeff expect from me? I mean, I'm not a magician.
"That's terrible news," I sympathized. "Did you go to the police? Or the FBI?"
He shook his head, embarrassed. "What would I say, that I think my dad got swindled forty years ago?"
"True." I waited a beat before asking the obvious. "So, why come to me?"
Jeff shrugged. "My sister is in meltdown and refuses to deal with this. She spent her inheritance before she got it and now she's in debt up to her eyeballs. The probate attorney is useless and the only thing the auction house could tell me is that the real painting hasn't been sold--at least not through legitimate channels--in the last forty years. I was hoping maybe you took some notes when you prepared my dad's will, or that you might remember something he told you. It was a long shot, but I didn't know where else to turn."
I can't stand it when people come to my office to tell me their tale of woe expecting me to fix it. I hate it because I can't say no. I don't know why that is--either I'm a classic textbook 'rescuer' or a glutton for punishment. My friend Grace would say I'm both.
When I didn't send him on his way, Jeff looked encouraged. "You always have good ideas, Jamie. What do you think I should do?"
I didn't want to get his hopes up. "Beats me," I said. "Unfortunately, I don't keep files more than seven years, so I wouldn't have any notes and I don't remember anything except what I already told you. If you can't find out who sold the painting to your dad, maybe you can discover who owned it before. Was it insured?"
"I thought so--my dad actually told me it was insured--but I can't find the policy anywhere and I've gone through his papers a dozen times. Maybe I should hire a private investigator…"
I nodded in agreement, a big smile on my face. "I know just the guy--he's very good and works for cheap. He doesn't have an office, but you can usually find him at The Big Easy on Harrison Street."
Chapter Nine
Jeff read the business card I handed him and chuckled. "The guy's name is Marmaduke? Like the dog in the comic strip?"
"Yeah, I wouldn't bring that up," I said, "sore subject. Just call him Duke." I paused. "Do you want me to give him a heads-up about your situation? I owe him a call anyway." What was wrong with me? Why did I have to be so damn helpful? It was borderline pathological…
Jeff nodded gratefully. "That would be terrific, Jamie. I've been so upset about this but Tracy said you'd know what to do. That woman is always right, it's uncanny."
"Must be why you married her," I teased.
"Twice!" He laughed. "After the first time, I learned my lesson. She's stuck with me now."
"Celebrating two anniversaries a year must get expensive."
"You got that right," he said, "but she's worth it."
After I saw Jeff out, I sat down at my desk to listen to messages and read e-mail. Nothing urgent or complicated jumped out at me so I went on auto-pilot as I mulled over Jeff's problem. Even if Duke discovered who sold the fake Chagall to Earl (as unlikely as that was), what could Jeff do about it? File a law suit? Press charges? The seller was either a conman or he'd been duped himself; in any case, he was probably dead by now, it had been so long. And locating the insurance policy wouldn't do much good. No way in hell an insurer would pay a claim for a counterfeit painting. Jeff would be better off setting it on fire. Just kidding--an upstanding attorney like me would never suggest anything as illegal as that. Last time I checked, committing arson and insurance fraud weren't on my bucket list.
My mind wandered to my favorite subject, my almost-fiancé Kip. After three months in Australia saving the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat, he was finally coming home--about time, too. Nothing much had happened in his absence, I only took on the biggest case of my career, had a falling-out with my best friend Grace, was blackmailed with pictures of Duke kissing me, threatened with disbarment, helped solve three murders and almost got whacked by the Russian mob. And I thought I'd be bored.
As if that weren't exciting enough, I'd also received a marriage proposal (from Kip, of course), but when he tried to pop the question over Skype (every girl's dream, right?), I had to call a time-out. Face to face means in person in my book, so our happy reunion would be the official kick-off to our happy union. I told Kip I would resist hunting for the engagement ring he'd hidden somewhere in my house but if I happened upon something shiny it wouldn't be my fault, right? Okay, I'll admit it, I looked for it, but Kip hid it too well. At least I'd kept my promise not to move while he was away--as if that would happen. Anyone who knows me knows I don't like to stir things up. In my world, an object at rest tends to stay at rest and if you look up inertia in the dictionary, you'll see my picture. Thinking about my erstwhile high-school beau and almost-fiancé was too much for me. I pulled out my phone and sent him a text.
Hey K, miss you! Hurry home. Love, your secret admirer
To my surprise, he answered right away. Usually the time difference caused a delay.
Hmmm, which secret admirer is this? Is it the sexy one?
You're lucky you guessed right, I texted.
It's the luck of the Irish, Babe.
Shame you're not Irish, I pointed out. By the way, did you lose something shiny in my house?
Tell me you didn't--did you??
Nah, I'm just messing with you, I texted. Can't wait to see you in a week!
Can't wait to see you either, Jamie, but I'm afraid there's been a change of plans.
Always joking around, that's why I love you.
I wish I were joking, he messaged, but there's something I have to do first.
Have to, or want to? Haven't you saved enough wombats already? I didn't need emojis to get my point across, I was ticked off.
Don't be mad and it's not wombats, it's tree snakes.
Dammit, Kip! Why do you need to save tree snakes?
I'm not saving them, I'm eradicating them. They're a menace.
So how many months will this project take? I was ready to bang my head on the desk in frustration.
All it takes is one long plane ride over Guam, two thousand dead mice in parachutes and a whole lot of Tylenol.
And? I texted back.
Maybe another month.
Chapter Ten
Why would you agree to do that? When were you going to tell me? I was texting so fast the words were a jumble but autocorrect had my back.
A long minute passed before Kip responded. I was going to call you tonight, Babe, I swear. I just can't pass it up, when will I have a chance like this again?
I thought my head was going to explode. That's what you said about the wombats! Do what you want, Kip. I can't compete with tree snakes and dead mice.
Jamie, please try to understand. Can we talk about this later over Skype?
There's nothing to talk about. I have to go.
I turned off my cell and shoved it in a desk drawer and then slammed the drawer for good measure. Not the most mature way to handle things, I know, but it was the best I could do. My world was collapsing and I felt like I was about to throw up. Thunderstruck, blindsided, ambushed--three words I'd never understood be
fore that moment. This kind of thing happened to other people, not me. Problem-solving, helpful to a fault, clueless Jamie Quinn, the woman with all the answers. How stupid was I to think that Kip would come home and live an ordinary life after going to Australia? He wanted adventure, he craved it, and I was clearly holding him back. Of course I would wait another month if I had to, that wasn't the issue, but how could I spend my life with a man who dreamt of saving the world only to wake up every day in mind-numbing suburbia? Days spent cleaning out the gutters and fixing the fence, rotating tires and changing the oil, punching a clock and counting the days to retirement--that wasn't Kip. And chasing around the globe saving endangered animals wasn't me. I happened to enjoy mind-numbing suburbia. A good book, a steaming cup of Earl Grey, a purring cat on my lap, and rain pattering on the window was my idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon--the kind of afternoon I'd hoped to spend with Kip. Like I said, I'm an idiot.
I wanted to crawl under my desk and never come out, but it was after five and the office was closing. My being miserable was no reason to give the cleaning crew a heart attack. Reluctantly, I retrieved my phone from the drawer and threw it in my purse. In a haze, I made it to the parking lot and into my Mini Cooper where I picked up my keys but didn't start the car. Instead, I laid my throbbing head on the warm steering wheel and sat there for several minutes in the empty lot, incapable of moving. There was no point to anything. What was my plan now? Adopt a hundred cats and become a crazy cat lady? Right--I could barely handle one cat. Who was I kidding, nothing could replace Kip. Not cats or rain or hot tea or all the books in the world, all I wanted was him. I didn't care if he came with an entire zoo, like Dr. Doolittle, and we had to live in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, wherever that was. If only we could live inside a novel, everything would be perfect. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy together forever.
Being a drama queen was so much easier than I'd thought. All those years, I'd assumed my clients had to work at it but all you had to do was take one mundane life, turn it upside down and shake vigorously. But, unlike my client who had chained herself to the flagpole in front of the courthouse or the one who smashed her husband's prize guitar in his workplace lobby, I wasn't into performance art. I was more brooding, angsty. When my mother had succumbed to cancer four years ago, I was in a rut and for six months I hardly left the house. But that wasn't me anymore. Since then, I'd been through so much and faked it so often I'd convinced myself I had my act together. Like clapping for Tinkerbell, believing in something can make it real--or real enough, anyway. My real fear was that Kip was Peter Pan and he would never grow up while I was Wendy, unimaginative and unadventurous--in a word, boring. It seemed like Kip had finally figured that out; too bad it wasn't before he'd bought me an engagement ring. I wish we could have been more like my dad and his wife, Ana Maria, who were making their marriage work against all odds despite the fact that she was in Florida and he was stuck in Nicaragua. When my dad found a job that sent him on the road, I'd had to postpone my trip to finally meet him in person. Now, after Kip's bombshell, my calendar was suddenly wide open. I could book that flight…
I was still sitting in the parking lot lost in thought when someone knocked on my window and scared the daylights out of me.
Chapter Eleven
Jolted from my reverie, I quickly started the car and shifted into reverse before risking a peek through the window. It wasn't a bad neighborhood or anything but you never know. What I saw was a white guy in dark sunglasses and a black baseball cap turned backwards. He had scraggly facial hair and a thick silver chain hanging halfway down his wife beater t-shirt. Baggy jeans and expensive sneakers completed the ensemble, but it was the fake arm tattoos that got me. After the day I'd had, I found the whole thing hysterically funny.
I turned off the car and opened the window in a fit of giggles. "Oh my God, Duke, what are you wearing? You look ridiculous! Did you lose a bet or something? Wait, don't move!" I pulled my phone out of my purse and snapped his picture. "Oh, this is even better than your pirate costume from the Ren Fest--and that was classic."
Duke took off his sunglasses and struck a pose, flexing his biceps and adjusting his cap. "For your information, Ms. Esquire, I am undercover. A good P.I. has to blend into the crowd, you know, stalking his prey like a ninja."
That set me off into peals of laughter. "You call that blending in? You look like an Eminem wannabe. Let's hear you rap about how the man is keeping you down. Come on, Broussard, blend!
With a sly look on his face, Duke said "Watch this" and laid down some Eminem right there in the parking lot. He transformed himself into a rapper, and a robot--and he was really good, too.
I'm beginning to feel like a Rap God, Rap God
All my people from the front to the back nod, back nod
Now who thinks their arms are long enough to slap box, slap box?
They said I rap like a robot, so call me rap-bot.
When he finished, he dropped an invisible mike while I clapped and whistled my approval.
"You're a man of many talents, Duke!"
He leered. "That's what all the girls say, Darlin'."
I rolled my eyes. "Aw, I walked right into that. When will I learn?"
He laughed, showing off his gleaming teeth, and then gave me a quizzical look. "When I saw your car, I decided to stop by, found you hugging the steering wheel. What's the deal, Jamie? You okay?"
I shrugged, embarrassed. "Rough day, just needed a break. It's all good."
I knew he didn't believe me and he knew I wouldn't tell him the truth, so he let it go, but he couldn't resist being a smartass.
He leaned into my open window, mischief in his eyes. "If Lover Boy isn't treatin' you right," he said in his Louisiana drawl, "I could give him some advice."
I snorted. "You're going to give Kip advice? In the time that I've known you, how many women have slapped you, dumped you, or plastered your face on a billboard? Shall I name them? I'm keeping a list."
Duke laughed. "That billboard was somethin', wasn't it? I sure met my match in Candy Broussard. We had some hellacious arguments, but I still miss that woman."
"Yeah," I said, "real good times." I started my car again. "Well, I don't want to keep you from being a ninja or whatever. I almost forgot, a guy named Jeff Rappaport wants to hire you. I gave him your number."
"Hire, as in pay me money? Yee haw! What's the story?"
I smiled coyly. "Oh, just the usual--art forgery, scams on senior citizens, missing insurance policies, desperate beneficiaries. Nothing you can't handle." I shifted into reverse. "You might want to change your outfit before you meet him, though. Not sure Jeff's into rap." I laughed. "How much are you getting for this gig, anyway?"
"It's a favor."
I nodded. "Of course it is. For one of your barfly friends, I suppose. Maybe he'll buy you a drink."
Duke gave me a salacious wink. "I'm sure she will."
Chapter Twelve
The drive home was short and uneventful in that I wasn't accosted by any more rappers, fake or otherwise. Because my office was just a mile from my house on Polk Street, I made it home in ten minutes flat. At rush hour, it would've been a whopping fifteen. Downtown Hollywood is so small that if you blink you'll miss it, which is why lawyers like me take cases in neighboring cities. It's not that we want to, but it helps us afford the luxuries in life, like rent and office supplies.
I emptied my mailbox straight into the recycle bin and then opened the door to receive my scolding from Mr. Paws. How dare I come home late! Didn't I know he was hungry? This wouldn't have happened if my mother were around. More than once I'd considered buying an automatic feeder to dispense with all the drama, but I knew it wouldn't work. His Highness would only eat smelly canned food served in his favorite bowl by his favorite servant--me. He was twelve pounds of fun and had earned his nickname of Mr. Pain in the Ass. Clearly, I could never be a crazy cat lady, which was a relief, but also narrowed my options.
If you're wondering whether I'd h
eard from Kip, I was wondering that, too, but I refused to look at my cell to find out. With the ringer turned off, my phone was like Schrodinger's hypothetical cat, neither dead nor alive until someone bothered to check it. Impulsive by nature, I normally didn't exercise much self-restraint, but I knew that no good would come from looking at my phone. There was nothing Kip could say that would undo what he'd done and what that meant for the future of our relationship. The bottom line was he didn't want to come home. The fact that I'd been waiting for him for months, dying to see him, didn't seem to matter. If he offered to give up the trip to Guam, I'd know it was only to appease me, not because he wanted to. If he didn't offer, that would speak volumes as well. It was a lose/lose scenario. Doing nothing wasn't really a decision, it was just me burying my head in the sand.
After a glass of Merlot, some warmed up leftovers and a rerun of Castle, I passed out on the couch where I dreamt I was being chased by snakes as dead mice gracefully parachuted onto my head like tiny ballerinas. It was a fitting end to my bizarre day and I had Kip to thank for it.
Eventually, the noise of the television roused me from my stupor and I stumbled to my room knowing that sleep time was over. As usual, I laid in bed for hours, too tired to get up, too wired to fall asleep. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, it occurred to me that I could paint something up there, maybe sheep to count or a "Where's Waldo" picture to help me pass the time. Kind of like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, but without the divine inspiration.
On the plus side, a self-employed insomniac can sleep in without fear of being fired. Although I couldn't avoid early-morning hearings altogether, I could plan for them by setting a cascade of alarms at fifteen minute intervals. If all hell didn't break loose in the morning, I'd know it was safe to keep sleeping. My backup contingency was, of course, Mr. Paws, who had his own schedule to keep. By eight-thirty, if I wasn't awake, he'd start meowing. If that didn't work, he'd walk across my stomach a few times and if that failed he'd start batting me in the face. I wasn’t a fan of his methods but I had to admire his work ethic.
Jeopardy in July: A Jamie Quinn Mystery (Jamie Quinn Cozy Mystery Book 5) Page 3
