A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery)

by Elkins, Aaron

  “I told him you had a show opening in less than an hour,” Michael told her, “and an appointment before then, and he said if this was an inconvenient time, he could come back tomorrow.”

  “No, no, don’t you let him get away. You go and bring him in right now,” Liz said, putting down her half-empty champagne glass. She wasn’t about to let him swim off and wind up on the end of someone else’s line. Besides, the timing couldn’t be better. She’d just this minute set up Chris’s O’Keeffe on an easel, and it would be bound to impress the hell out of him. She shifted its position a little, moving it off to the side, so it wouldn’t seem as if she were trying to impress him, but that it just happened to be there, an everyday sort of thing for the Blue Coyote. Ho-hum.

  She neatened her desk, gulped the rest of the champagne, put the glass and bottle in the refrigerator, did a quick check in the mirror, dabbed unsuccessfully at a couple of stray, stubborn tendrils with a moistened finger, cleaned up her blurry lipstick line with the same finger, and managed to get back behind her desk just as her office door opened again, and in he came.

  He was still wearing his shades, but he’d changed clothes. At the Santacafé it had been cashmere sport coat, white shirt, and jeans—casual and outdoorsy. Now, with evening coming on, it was still smart and casual, but just a touch more formal: blue blazer, mauve, open-throated silk dress shirt with French cuffs—the gold cuff links peeped out from his jacket sleeve—and gray slacks. The brown Guccis had been replaced by tasseled black Guccis. This, she thought, more or less licking her chops, was one very cool guy…one very rich guy.

  “I won’t take much of your time,” he said. Unfortunately, what came out of his mouth was a bred-in-the-bone Boston Brahmin accent, effete, fussy, and oozing with self-regard. Christ, he sounded like Thurston Howell III, the millionaire character on Gilligan’s Island. “I happened to be speaking with Ms. Goudge this afternoon, and she happened to mention that you might be able to help me find a picture or two that one of my clients would be interested in.” He finished with a quick, flashing smile that could be interpreted a whole lot of ways.

  This guy was not only cool and rich, Liz thought, but just as slick as he looked. The way he’d twice used “happened” in that little speech he’d just made—“I happened to be speaking with Ms. Goudge” and “she happened to mention”—laying an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word both times—it was meant to sound perfectly straightforward if Liz was inclined to take it that way, but to let her know, if her antennae were up and working, that he knew perfectly well that she had arranged with Doris to steer him to her, and it didn’t bother him a bit.

  Not everybody could bring off something like that, she thought admiringly. Here, after all, was a bent dealer who was pretending to be a straight arrow…but managing to send signals at the same time that he was only pretending, that he knew what was up and that he could play it whatever way she chose to go. Damn tricky work, and he’d done it like the pro he obviously was. She sensed—and her instinct for this sort of thing was rarely wrong—that they were going to be able to get along just fine, the annoying accent notwithstanding.

  “Would you care for a glass of champagne, Mr. de Beauvais?” she asked. “I was about to open a bottle. I sometimes have a little before a show opening. After all, why should the guests have all the fun?”

  “I would, yes,” Ted said. “Rather.” I would, yaass. Raahthah.

  “I hope you like Moët and Chandon?”

  “If Dom Perignon is unavailable,” he said, and they both laughed.

  She was somewhere between tipsy and totally snockered, he had determined, and that had made it easier to get down to business in a hurry. They had circled around each other for a few minutes to establish the rules of engagement. Ted had explained that he represented several extremely wealthy foreign clients, all of whom preferred that their names not be revealed. They were interested in American Modernists, he had told her, specifically in Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Liz, taking her turn, had told him that she might, just might, know where to locate a few pictures that would suit their needs, and at attractive prices too. However, there might conceivably be a few “issues”—minor issues, inconsequential issues—with their provenances; that is, with the record of their creation and their ownership through the years, and with their guarantees of authenticity. Was that going to be a problem?

  Problem? Not at all, Ted said; he had never been much of a believer in provenances or guarantees of authenticity anyway. Too easy to fake, and besides, a knowledgeable person didn’t need paperwork to determine if a painting was what it was purported to be. One relied on one’s experience and one’s “aahtistic intwition”; didn’t she agree? Oh, yes, Liz said earnestly, she agreed one hundred percent, couldn’t agree more.

  “Now that O’Keeffe on the easel there,” Ted said. “Would it be too much to hope that it hasn’t been spoken for?”

  “O’Keeffe?” Liz said, her eyebrows going up. She looked over her shoulder. “Oh, that one. I’d forgotten it was there. Yes, isn’t it wonderful, Mr. de Beauvais?”

  “Rollie.”

  “Rollie. But I’m afraid it’s been sold. It’s only recently come to light, you know, so it’s, um, unrecorded as of yet.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yes, interesting.” There was a not-uncomfortable silence while the several possible connotations of “interesting” hung in the air. “It’s one of several, actually,” she continued, “a suite; all from early in her Abiquiu period, but never sold at the time. Possibly, the entire suite was given away as a gift—some gift, huh? Maybe she didn’t feel they were up to her standards. Although that’s hard to believe. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Yes, very beautiful,” Ted agreed, truthfully enough. “So…these others of which you speak—would they happen to be for sale as well?”

  “I think I could arrange that, yes. Of course, I’m being quite choosy as to whom I’m letting in on this. Only my friends…” she lifted her lipstick-stained glass to him and smiled, “…and those I trust implicitly. Discretion here is a must. If word were to get around that a dozen new O’Keeffes were out there, I don’t have to tell you what would happen to prices. Supply and demand. You understand.”

  “Of course I understand.” He touched his glass to hers. “Your friends, and those you trust implicitly. I do hope you include me in at least one of those groups, if not now, then soon.”

  She swallowed the rest of her champagne and pursed her lips together. “We shall see what we shall see,” she said with a secret little giggle, slurring the words a bit. She was edging closer to totally snockered.

  “Liz, can you give me a ballpark idea—say I were interested in acquiring four, or perhaps five of them—what you would be asking?”

  He could practically see the dollar signs dancing on her eyeballs, the way they do in comic strips. Her voice turned husky. “Well, that would depend.” She reached for the bottle and poured them both some more champagne. “Now then,” she said, with an openly conspiratorial smile, “what would you be offering?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Canyon Road. Eons ago, it had been a dusty Indian trail linking the pueblos of the Rio Grande and the Pecos. Later, each in their turn, came the armies of Spain, of Mexico, of the American Confederacy. Then, once the town had settled down, the road became an out-of-the-way burro trail into the low, piñon-studded hills, used by villagers on the hunt for firewood or game. In the eighteenth century modest adobes began to rise under the cottonwoods, to be followed two hundred years later by not-so-modest adobes.

  Nowadays, where once the conquistador legions marched, darkly gleaming Mercedes and Porsches crept along at the pace of the old donkey carts, their richly purring engines barely above idle. To do otherwise would risk running down the ambling sightseers, camera straps slung over sunburnt necks, chattering away and unconscious of spilling into the roadway as they toured what has become one of Santa Fe’s prime attractions.
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  With scores of high-end galleries, many of them in refurbished two-hundred-year-old adobes, and all of them with high-end artwork and high-end prices, Canyon Road’s mile-long length was arguably the swankest Gallery Row in America (a distinction the Old Guard still held out for Manhattan’s West Fifty-seventh Street), and—inarguably—the prettiest. Oh, it was possible to find something cheesy to buy on the Row, but if that’s what you were looking for—a T-shirt with a picture of a coyote on it, a baby cactus in a thimble, a piece of gay cowboy erotica (yes, it existed)—you’d do better going downtown, to one of the storefronts on Palace Avenue or Old Santa Fe Trail.

  On this particular pleasant October afternoon, the street was already blocked off from traffic for the famous Friday evening art walk, and those galleries with new exhibitions had put out their signs, but the crowds had yet to arrive. A few clumps of early birds were sauntering down the street, Alix London and Chris LeMay among them. They had walked briskly from the hotel and had arrived a full half hour before their four-thirty appointment at Liz’s Blue Coyote Gallery, so they stopped at a couple of the openings and wandered through a few of the attractive courtyards that flanked many of the galleries, with their lush, aromatic plantings, bronze sculpture gardens, and tinkling Moorish fountains. If anything, it was all lovelier than Alix had anticipated.

  Liz’s gallery turned out to be in one of the more contemporary buildings, but the architecture blended handsomely with the centuries-old adobes nearby. Stepping into the main showroom, Alix liked the professional, unfussy way the art was displayed, but the variety—Western bronzes, contemporary European paintings, Japanese ceramics, Navajo sand paintings, nineteenth-century American trompe l’oeil—set off a tingle of unease. Nobody, let alone Liz Coane, could be truly knowledgeable about a range that broad. And Alix well knew that an eclectic selection like this was sometimes used by crooked dealers to mitigate potential inquiries into their roles in nefarious doings: How was I to know it was a fake? How was I to know it was stolen? How can you possibly expect me to be an expert in so many different art forms?

  No, wait, she wasn’t being fair. She’d disliked Liz from the first, and what Chris had told her in the Cottonwood Bar had only strengthened the feeling. It had predisposed her to be suspicious of Liz, her gallery, and the O’Keeffe. Enough of that, she told herself sharply; she was fully capable of evaluating the painting on its own merits, and that’s what she would do.

  One of the assistants, on learning they were there to see Liz, took them to a door near the rear of the gallery. A quick double-tap, and the door was flung open for them. The first thing that caught Alix’s eye was what had to be Chris’s O’Keeffe, propped on an easel at the side of the room. A few feet away, Liz was seated at her desk talking to a dark-haired man whose back was to them. There were two half-empty champagne glasses on the desk, one of them smeared with Liz’s lipstick. My God, thought Alix, the woman must live on booze.

  Liz, who’d been leaning comfortably back in her brown leather chair when the door opened, sat up abruptly and stared. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s four thirty,” Chris answered. “You were going to give us a look at the painting, remember? But obviously, we’ve caught you at a bad time—”

  “You’re kidding. Is it really four thirty already?” She stared confusedly, and a little blearily, at her watch. “Jesus, it is! I must have—I mean—jeez, I’m sorry…”

  “It’s my fault, I fear.” The man gracefully unfolded himself from the chair. Alix’s instantaneous reaction was clotheshorse. The look was elegantly casual—studiedly so. This was not somebody who simply threw together what he was going to wear; he planned for it, probably took an hour deciding on whether the cuff links should be gold or sterling silver. And the haircut, now that Alix got a look at it, wasn’t something he’d gotten at the neighborhood Supercuts either. No, this was a guy who put in a lot of time making himself look good. A lot of money, too. For the second time in one day, Alix found herself disliking someone on sight, which was distinctly unusual for her. Maybe it was just her mood; coming within a few seconds of being blown to smithereens probably had some effect on how you tended to view the world for a while.

  “I barged in on Ms. Coane without an appointment,” he went on, smoothly apologetic (but not really). “I know I should have made arrangements to return tomorrow, but the opportunity—”

  While he was speaking, Liz had gotten up as well. “No, it’s my fault. The time just got away from me. This is Roland—”

  “Rollie,” the man corrected.

  “—Rollie de Beauvais, a prominent art dealer from Boston. He was hoping I might be able to help him find some things for his clients. As a matter of fact, he was quite interested in your O’Keeffe, Chris, but unfortunately for him—”

  “Your O’Keeffe?” de Beauvais said to Chris with a visible quickening of interest. “So you’re the lucky lady who’s going to get it. Congratulations, it’s extraordinary.”

  “Yes,” Chris said a little shyly, but with a touch of smugness she couldn’t hide. “I’m in town to look it over. Oh, sorry, I’m Chris LeMay.” She extended her hand. “From Seattle.”

  “Is that right?” de Beauvais said with what Alix thought was a particularly oily smile as he took Chris’s hand. Chris, to Alix’s disgust, practically melted.

  Oh-ho, thought the FBI agent, so you’re the mysterious buyer. Which means your friend here has to be the London woman. Talk about serendipity. Things were getting more interesting by the minute.

  His quick, practiced eye took in Alix in seconds, and he didn’t like what he saw. Well, he liked it in that sense—she was certainly attractive enough: light brown hair with auburn highlights, nicely cut to frame a pretty face; a trim, athletic figure; elegantly simple clothes, unfussy jewelry—but he didn’t like her. It wasn’t that she struck him as a bunco artist, which was what he’d expected, but quite the opposite. What she looked like was the girl next door—if next door was an eight-thousand-square-foot beachfront mansion in East Hampton. Arrogance, condescension, spoiledness, conceit…they all marked her as surely as if they’d been written on that smooth forehead. She’d grown up as a child of privilege—on Geoffrey London’s ill-gotten money—and it showed in everything about her: her posture, her looks, her palpable self-satisfaction.

  Assuming that she was in on whatever knavery was going on, he looked forward to bringing her down. He smiled at her, turning his smooth, seductive, well-honed Roland de Beauvais charm on to its fullest and (to Alix, anyway) most repellent. “And what about you? Who would you be?”

  “Alix London,” she said brusquely, barely giving him a glance. She turned her eyes toward the O’Keeffe.

  Ted might be a professional, but he was also a male, and his masculine pride had just been punctured. A cold shoulder was something he didn’t like and wasn’t used to, either as Ted or as Rollie. In either case—either as a male or as a professional—he didn’t give up as easily as that.

  “I was thinking—” he said, directing his speech to Chris.

  A young man appeared in the doorway, looking harried. “Liz, Gregor’s here and he’s not happy.”

  Liz blew out a boozy breath. “Dammit, now what’s his problem?”

  “He doesn’t like the lighting—too soft, he says. He wants sharper shadows.”

  “Well, it’s too late to do anything about that. He should have said something before.”

  “And he says his Wet Dream Number 3 is hung upside down.”

  Liz rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right, like anybody’s gonna know the difference? Okay, okay, I’ll deal with him. Sorry, Chris, looks like this really isn’t a good time. My bad. How about after the opening? Eight o’clock? You could see the show, do the art walk in the meantime, or get something to eat or something.”

  “Fine,” Chris said. “Very nice meeting you, Mr. de Beauvais. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Thank you. Ah…I was thinking…if you ladies are at leisu
re and would care to join me for a drink and perhaps a bite to eat, I’d be delighted to have your company.”

  “Why, that would—” Chris began.

  “We’re busy,” Alix said curtly. “See you later, Liz.” And off she marched without a glance at Ted, giving Chris no choice but to follow.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Now what in the world was that all about?” a bewildered Chris asked, managing to catch up as Alix strode down the hallway toward the temporary exhibit room. “What did the poor guy do to you?”

  “Oh, he didn’t do anything to me,” Alix grumbled. “He just…I just…I don’t know, I just couldn’t stand him. Brr.”

  “But why? I thought he was cool.”

  “That was pretty obvious,” Alix said with a smile, then shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what it was about him that got to me, Chris.” They had stopped near the entrance to the room, standing to one side, out of the way of the people beginning to drift in. “Yes, I do. That smarmy manner, as if he thought we were going to drool all over him…conceited, arrogant, spoiled, self-centered…”

  Chris was staring at her, laughing. “You got all that in about five seconds? The guy only said ten words.”

  Alix smiled. “It’s that connoisseur’s eye,” she said, relaxing. “Chris, I’m sorry, I apologize for taking over like that. But to put it in a nutshell, he just reminded me too damn much of my ex-husband.”

  Chris stared at her. “You’ve been married?”

  “Yes, why is that so surprising?”

  “I don’t know…I just thought…well, I don’t know, you never mentioned it. I guess I just assumed…”

  “Well, you assumed wrong. Yes, indeed, I’ve been married. For all of ten days I was Mrs. Paynton Whipple-Pruitt.”