Pickled (An Alex Harris Mystery)

by Elaine Macko

  “May we see them now?” Suzanne asked, her eyes sparkling in the glow from the small lamp on a table beside the sofa.

  I knelt down on the floor and gently removed the blanket from around the small paintings I had taken from Humphrey Bryson’s study. I picked up the first one and handed it to Suzanne.

  Alastair let out a small gasp and his hand went to his heart. “Oh, my. It’s exquisite.”

  It was? I hadn’t paid much attention last night to what Sophie was wrapping up, but what Suzanne now held in her hands looked ghastly to me. I guess that’s why Mr. Hildebrand runs a gallery and I own a temp agency. The painting in question was a clash of bright colors depicting what looked like two people copulating, and not just any two people, but two men with oversized heads and bodies consisting of geometric shapes.

  “This can’t possibly be a…could it?” Suzanne looked to Alastair.

  Alastair took the painting gently from Suzanne and studied it more closely and then smiled. “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “It is what?” Clearly they were delighted with the painting and I wanted to know why, because so far I just wasn’t seeing it.

  Alastair put the painting on the table. “I believe this is the work of Aniol Grabowski, an artist of Polish decent. He was also a Jew. He was labeled by the Nazis as being part of the entartete künstler, that is to say, a degenerate artist. Hitler wanted to purge the world of what he considered a cultural disintegration. At the time the galleries were owned by Jews, and even though all artists were not Jewish, well, Hitler didn’t care. He wanted it all gone. And he didn’t stop with art. He went after movies and music and books.” Alastair shook his head in disgust.

  “What we have here,” he continued, “I believe, is, art looted by the Nazis. They planned to sell the art abroad and use the profits to purchase more cultural pieces.”

  “I think I read about something like this. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pieces of art were found in the apartment of some old man in Germany. They were stolen during the war and somehow he had them.”

  Mr. Hildebrand ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a mess. Germany still has laws in place from the Nazis and the works may never be returned to their rightful heirs. Cornelius Gurlitt, that’s the man you’re thinking of, may never be prosecuted, and who knows what will happen to all the treasures that were recovered.”

  “And the artist? This Aniol Grabowski, what happened to him?”

  “Killed. With so many others. May I see the other painting?”

  I picked it up off the floor and passed it to Mr. Hildebrand. This one was a more traditional work of a rough sea, a raging storm and a boat on the verge of capsizing.

  “Ah, yes. A young artist on the cusp of greatness.” Mr. Hildebrand looked at the painting, his eyes filled with sadness.

  “He was killed as well?” I asked.

  “No, he died of a misdiagnosed case of encephalitis.”

  Suzanne shifted on the sofa and turned toward me. “Where did you get these? Is this what that man wanted us to sell?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. But yes, they belonged to him.”

  “But how? Where did he get them?”

  Both Suzanne and I looked to Mr. Hildebrand for an answer.

  “Perhaps his family was related to one of these artists, or he or his family could have come by these pieces legitimately. Most of Aniol Grabowski’s works were taken. At the time he wasn’t well known, but because he was labeled entartete künstler and then killed, the value on anything with his name skyrocketed. I’ve only seen one other of his works, in London.”

  “How much would Humphrey Bryson be able to get for something like this and how could he possibly sell it if it’s a stolen piece of art?” I asked.

  “Again, the laws are very murky. If the Nazis took this and then sold it, well, whoever bought it would own it legitimately, and from there it managed to end up with Mr. Bryson somehow,” Alastair explained.

  “Then why would Humphrey need to be so circumspect and threaten you in order to gain your participation in his plan?” I said.

  “We may never know that answer. But for whatever reason, the man obviously didn’t want to bring attention to himself or the art,” Mr. Hildebrand said.

  “And if he did come back, and if you decided to take on the task of finding a buyer, would you have been able to find someone?”

  Suzanne looked at me and nodded. “Certainly. Most people buy art because they love it or they see it as a good investment, or both. But many just like having things with questionable provenance. They may never display it, they may tuck it away in a vault or cellar, but just having it gives them power.”

  “What’s going to happen to these pieces now?” Mr. Hildebrand asked me with true concern.

  “I guess they belong to the widow, and I have no idea what her plans are.”

  The gallery owner handed me one of his cards. “I don’t want to sound like a ghoul, but I’m not sure she knows what she has here. Please let her know that when she’s ready, I would be happy to help her sort out everything. I’m not trying to make a buck here, Ms. Harris. If she decides to keep them or put them in a museum, I can help. If I’m correct, these are priceless treasures and I just want to see that they get their due respect.”

  I thanked Suzanne and Mr. Hildebrand for their time, wrapped up the paintings, and headed out into the cold, gray day.

  Chapter 62

  I had no idea what to do next. I felt like a gypsy, traveling from town to town with my priceless possessions wrapped up in a blanket. I needed to get them back to Sophie before something happened to them. If what Mr. Hildebrand just told me turned out to be true, then they really were very valuable and I didn’t have that kind of money to pay the widow if something happened to them.

  “Alex, come in,” Sophie said to me twelve minutes later. “Did you talk to your friend?”

  I placed the paintings on the coffee table and shrugged out of my coat. “I did and it seems you have quite the collection here.” I told Sophie what the art dealer had said.

  Sophie leaned back into the sofa cushion and brought her hands up to her mouth. “But how did these paintings end up with Humphrey? Nazi looters, degenerate artists? I don’t understand any of it. Who the hell was I married to all these years?”

  That seemed to be the million dollar question, literally, and from the look in Sophie’s eyes, I had to conclude she truly had no idea at all what Humphrey had been up to.

  I sat there a moment, on the sofa next to her, while the heat of the room warmed my cold body. My hands were stiff from clutching the paintings, but other than that, I was feeling pretty good. I let my thoughts return to Humphrey’s plastic surgery and once again wondered what else he might have changed.

  “Did Humphrey have a passport? A birth certificate?”

  “What are you getting at?” Sophie asked.

  “I don’t know. The man clearly had secrets and I think one of them was that he wasn’t who you thought he was, but I don’t know how to prove it.”

  “Come with me.” Sophie stood up abruptly and walked down the hall to the study with the secret door. She turned on a lamp and rummaged through the drawers of the desk. “Here we go,” she said as she placed a metal strong box on top of the desk.

  “It’s locked. Do you have a key?”

  Once again Sophie pulled open drawers, looking for the key and finally gave up. She grabbed a deadly looking letter opener, which was encased in a sheath, and went to work on the box. The woman worked frantically, as if the box held the secrets of life, and I suppose it very well might.

  She continued to work for another minute and then threw the box on the carpet where the lid popped open and the contents fell out. We both scrambled to the floor and picked up the tossed items.

  “His passport, which expired eight years ago,” Sophie said as she tossed it aside. “His social security card, an old watch and that’s it.”

  I picked up the watch and looked for an inscriptio
n on the back, but found nothing.

  Sophie used the side of the desk to push herself up and then fell into the leather chair she had sat in last night. “Nothing. Any more ideas?” she asked without rancor.

  I took a seat behind the desk in Humphrey’s well-worn chair. “Not a one.”

  The chair had a swivel base and I turned back and forth trying to think what to do next. My eyes dropped down to the open drawer that had held the strong box. It wasn’t very deep. I turned the chair slightly and looked at the drawer from the side. What the heck hell?

  “What is it?” Sophie came and stood by my side.

  “The drawer doesn’t look very deep, but from the side it seems like it should be bigger than it is.”

  Sophie ran from the room and came back with a small hammer. “Hit it. Hit it hard.”

  “Hold on. There might be something valuable in there we don’t want to break. Get me the letter opener.” Sophie handed it to me and I went to work along the inside seams of the bottom of the drawer.

  “Anything?”

  I could feel Sophie’s breath on the back of my neck. “I think so. I can feel it move a bit. If I could only get this opener down a…bit…there!” I pried it the rest of the way with my fingers. I pulled up the false bottom and dropped it on the floor. “Humphrey sure did like his secret panels.”

  “That son of a bitch. What now?”

  “There’s a picture and what looks like some old documents and another passport.” I took everything out and placed it all on the desk. “Do you know those people?” I asked Sophie. I handed her a picture of a man and woman.

  She shook her head. “I have no idea who they are. What are those papers?”

  I unfolded them. One looked like a birth certificate and the other two were death certificates.

  “This is a birth certificate for someone named Hubert Brenchley. Do you recognize that name?” I asked. Sophie shook her head. “He was born in nineteen-twenty-two. That would make him…ninety-two. How old was Humphrey?”

  “Eighty-nine, but look. It says this man’s birthday was November 12. That’s Humphrey’s birthday.”

  I next picked up the death certificates. The first was for a Graham Brenchley, and the other was for Anna, presumably Graham’s wife.

  “They both died on the same day, in a fire,” Sophie read aloud from over my shoulder. “What in God’s name is going on?” She was pleading with me for an answer and I didn’t have one, only a hell of a lot more questions. “And the passport? Open the passport.”

  I did as instructed. The passport was new, British, and issued only a couple of months ago to a man named Ian Pye. Neither Sophie nor I recognized the name, but the picture accompanying it was someone we knew very well. It was a picture of Humphrey.

  Chapter 63

  I had to get back to my office for a meeting and, well, because it was my office and I hadn’t spent too much time there in the last week. I felt I needed to put in an appearance and act like a business owner ,if only for a few hours.

  After assuring me she would be okay, I left Sophie sitting in the living room staring out on a cold, gray ocean. She insisted I take the strong box and the contents of the secret drawer and turn them over to John. I couldn’t argue with that. I definitely needed to turn all this stuff over to the police. I had no idea if it was connected to why Humphrey was killed, but it was just too much information for me to deal with. Of course, no one said I had to call John right away. As soon as my meeting was over, I planned on spending a bit of time on the Internet seeing what I could find out about the mysterious Brenchley family, and then I would give it to him tonight.

  Millie buzzed me shortly after I arrived to tell me my appointment was waiting in the lobby. I called Sam, and, as soon as she was in my office, Millie brought in our newest client.

  The university was doing a study on the general health of the population in New England, and a computer had randomly selected a sampling of the citizens to call. A survey would be conducted live, over the phone, and they needed about ten people who could make the calls. The candidates had to be polite, not easily riled, clear speakers, and able to type everything into a database while talking with the person over the phone. They expected it to take a couple of months to gather all the information after an initial training period of a few weeks. Sam and I spent the next hour going over everything with Mr. Gabriel, and then met with Millie to start the process of bringing in candidates for interviews.

  By two o’clock I was alone in my office with a sandwich Millie picked up. Sam left for a meeting and Millie kept herself busy working on finding ten people for Mr. Gabriel to interview. I took a bite of my turkey and pesto on a croissant and clicked on my Google icon. My initial search brought up several people with the surname Brenchley. I even found a Graham Brenchley, but the age wasn’t right. I took another bite of my lunch and took a few minutes to think over how I could find out about these people who died so long ago.

  I next brought up one of those sites specializing in creating a family tree. I already had an account I had set up a year ago for Meme and I typed in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Brenchley. From the death certificates I already knew they had died in a place called Chelmsford in Essex, not too far from London. After a few false leads, I found a Graham and Anna Brenchley from Chelmsford. They had a daughter, Daisy, who died as an infant, and a son, Hubert. The birth certificate we found in the secret drawer matched up with what I had on the screen before me concerning the son.

  I quickly found copies of the death certificates for the parents, but absolutely nothing else on their son Hubert. I next plugged in the name of Ian Pye, the name on the other passport. Ian Pye must be a very common name in the UK because it got a lot of hits. I finished my sandwich and scrolled through all the Ian Pyes, but none of them matched Humphrey’s age or at least the age on the birth certificate for Hubert Brenchley. According to Sophie, her husband was about four years younger than Hubert. I was beginning to think lying about his age was just another secret Humphrey had kept.

  “What are you doing in here?” Millie asked, scaring the daylights out of me. “You’re so quiet. Do you need help with anything?”

  I brought Millie up to speed with all the bits and pieces I had gathered over the last couple of days.

  “So, the little girl Daisy must be Humphrey’s sister, the one his wife told you died when she was a baby,” Millie said.

  “Yes, and Humphrey is Hubert Brenchley and Ian Pye. But why? Why change his name, several times, and alter his appearance?”

  “Maybe he’s in witness protection,” Millie offered.

  Now why didn’t I think of that? “That actually sounds plausible. But he is obviously a citizen of the UK. Do they have a witness protection program? And why send him here?”

  Millie played with a piece of her dark hair while she thought about this. “Maybe that’s how it works. We send our witnesses to the UK and they send theirs here. It would make them much harder to find and much safer.”

  It sounded like a great idea, but I didn’t think it worked that way.

  “So, does this bring you any closer to finding out who the killer is?”

  I crumbled up the wrapper from my sandwich and tossed it in the trash. “No, Millie, it doesn’t. I don’t have any concrete suspects. It could be any of the pickleball players because they were all sick of his cheating, it could be Marie or Phyllis or their husbands because of the blackmail stunts Humphrey was pulling. Or maybe that Peter Gaffney guy over some deal gone wrong. Or one of the private eyes Sophie hired or any of Marie’s other lovers because they were jealous and wanted to protect her honor. Or it could be the gallery owner and his partner, Suzanne.”

  “Who also happens to be Phyllis’ daughter and might have been avenging Humphrey’s treatment of her mother,” Millie added.

  “Right. Or the calendar boys, which would break Meme’s heart.”

  “Do you really think one of them did it?” Millie looked like she was on the verge of tear
s. None of us wanted it to be Fred or Walter or Howard.

  “I hope not. But I’m beginning to think there might be a European connection somehow what with Humphrey being British and the art work, and two of the calendar boys are originally from Europe, and so are the deli owners and Mr. Hildebrand from the gallery.”

  We heard the front door open and Millie jumped up and went out to the lobby. A few seconds later John walked into my office.

  I got up and walked around to give my husband a kiss. “What brings you here?” I smiled.

  John took a seat and I walked around my desk and sat back down. I reached over for my jar of M&M’s, grabbed a huge handful and pushed the jar toward John. He took a few, put them in his mouth and just stared at me. And it wasn’t one of those aren’t-I-so-lucky-to-be-married-to-this-woman looks. It was more like a why-did-I-ever-marry-this-broad stare.

  “You seem, well, you seem kind of icy, John. Is something wrong?” I was starting to get rather chilly myself.

  “I’ve been talking to Sophie for the last couple of hours.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and popped another candy in my mouth. “Really? Good. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s well. Now why don’t you hand over what you found in Humphrey’s secret drawer.”

  Chapter 64

  Okay, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the papers forever, but I still hadn’t managed to make a copy.

  “Fine. They’re right here. If you’ll just let me scan them to my computer I’ll be right with you.” I got up to go out to where we keep our copier.

  “Sit!”

  I don’t like being shouted at and I can give it back as good as I get. I raised my voice and said, “I just found them this morning and I had to get back here for a meeting, but I was planning on bringing them home tonight. Really.” I put a scowl on my face and folded my arms across my chest. I would have added a so there, but I figured that would really sound childish.