by Jane Tesh
“Stolen?”
The assistant looked as if he might bolt any minute. I got up, closed the office door, and leaned against it. “Take it easy. I’m not accusing you of anything. What’s your name?”
“Flynn Hardison.”
Flynn? Hold on. Wasn’t that the name of Patricia Ashworthy’s houseboy? “Mr. Hardison, do you work for Patricia Ashworthy?”
He eyed me warily. “What if I do?”
“Richard got you the job there, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Patricia Ashworthy hated Baseford, too, and was determined to blame all the crimes in Parkland on him. Was it possible she was the mastermind behind all this?
Hardison backed away, hands out. “All I know is, Ricky brought me this green box and told me to hang onto it and one day he’d have me hide it in Baseford’s office because it would cause Baseford a lot of trouble, so naturally, I did it. I heard all the fuss the other day, and believe me, I enjoyed every minute.”
“Did he call you Thursday around noon? Did he tell you it was time and to ‘Do it now’?”
“Yes.” His face tightened. “If you could have seen the way Baseford shredded Ricky’s exhibit, you’d understand. Baseford deserves all the grief he can get.”
“But you didn’t want him to die. That scared you.”
“Yeah, it scared me. I thought we’d gone too far.”
“Did you know he wore hearing aids?”
“Only because I had to get batteries for him all the time. No one’s supposed to know.”
“You might have mentioned it to Mason, right?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what difference that makes.”
“Do you smoke?”
The question threw him. “Smoke? What’s that got to do—no, I don’t. It’s a filthy habit. Nobody smokes in here.” He pointed to the No Smoking sign posted on the wall. “This is a smoke-free office.”
“Does Ricky smoke?”
“No, he does not. What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Baseford remembers seeing someone with a cigarette or a lighter in his doorway before he passed out.”
All of a sudden Hardison decided that he, too, could be macho. “I don’t have to answer any more of your questions. If you’ll excuse me. I have work to do.”
He made a feeble attempt to leave. I blocked his way. “Yes, you do have to answer my questions.” But did I really have any more questions for this guy? I’d learned all I really needed to know for now.
Hardison’s plaintive voice brought me out of my thoughts. “Are you done? Can I go now?”
I stood aside. “Thanks for your help.”
He put his nose in the air and stalked out. No doubt he’d call Mason to warn him. But I was going to get to Mason first.
Before I left for the Little Gallery, I looked up Patricia Ashworthy. Husband number three was Reginald Thomas Duvall. So not only did she know about the feud and the mysterious treasure, she probably knew about the last little clue the dragonfly might provide. Richard would’ve told her about Pierson’s parlor set up and how he could easily disarm the alarm system with one of his gadgets. Looking for someone who’d do anything for money, they found the perfect sap in Samuel Gallant. Looking for another sap willing to hide the silverware in their mutual enemy Baseford’s office, well, here was faithful Flynn, who no doubt thought he’d get a cut. Stein had been at Pierson’s that day. He had to go. Nancy had been there, too, and might be next.
But where was Pierson’s artwork? If Ashworthy and Mason had it, wouldn’t they have solved the puzzle, found the twenty-five million, and skipped town?
The main hallway of the Little Gallery was empty of people but crammed full of art with little regard to spacing, type, or theme. It was as if Mason had decided, hey, I’ll put art here, and shoveled it in. I passed old dark landscapes, red triangles, marble cupids, and bronze horses. The effect was dizzying.
I paused by a still life of dead ducks and rabbits, their heads hanging over the edge of a rough wooden table, their eyes staring in disbelief, as if to say, I got killed for a lousy painting? The still life was incongruously placed beside a picture of nearly clothed maidens frolicking in a swing. I went past this jumble to the ugly little metal sculptures I’d seen earlier. They were still ugly.
I pressed one button, and the first sculpture cranked up like a rusty scarecrow waving its arms. I pressed button number two, and the second sculpture shuffled its coat hanger feet. I kept pressing buttons until all the artwork screeched and rustled and clanked.
“Mr. Randall, I didn’t hear you come in.” Mason stood in the doorway. His pale eyes darted from one gadget to another. “What are you doing?”
“Playing around.”
“These are not toys.” He hurried around to each sculpture, switching them off. “You’re meant to experience them one by one.”
“Maybe I wanted to experience the full range of your art. You’re a damn good electrician, Ricky.”
He stiffened at the sound of his nickname. “Did you stop by to return Anguished Fortitude?”
“No, I stopped by to clear up a few things. You can correct me as we go along.”
He folded his arms and gave me a narrow-eyed stare. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s about Samuel Gallant’s pacemaker giving out and Lawrence Stein’s boat exploding. It’s about Leo Pierson’s stolen Art Nouveau. Oh, and Chance Baseford’s hearing aids. I guess your trusty assistant Flynn told you about that. He did what you said and planted the silverware in Baseford’s office. He wasn’t real happy to hear the silverware was stolen, but he seems loyal. Not like Nancy Piper. What does she have on you, Ricky?”
His voice got very calm. “When we worked together at Riverside, I thought she was my friend. I thought we had the same goals in life.”
“To kill everyone who gets in your way?”
“To be in charge of our own museum where we could display whatever we liked.”
“You’re not satisfied with the Little Gallery? Perhaps the huge crowds here annoy you.”
He ignored my insult. “I was a fool to trust her. You want to know why her husband left her? Oh, she’ll tell you it was because he couldn’t handle money. No, it was because she spent all his money, the greedy bitch. It takes money to buy all those fancy outfits she wears. It takes money to send her little girl to that private school. It was never enough.”
“So the two of you hatched this plan to get the Art Nouveau for yourselves.”
“She has it! We were supposed to keep all the pieces together, but she refused to do that. I had the silverware, but she’s got the rest hidden away in the museum basement where she can keep moving it around so no one finds it. But I intend to get it away from her.”
“If she’s the mastermind behind this plot, why didn’t you go to the police?” I knew the answer. Nancy may have been the brains, but Mason had done the dirty work. Even now, he reached into his pocket for his Device of Death.
“I’m sure you’re too young to have heart problems, Randall, but a nice zap of electricity can take care of that. Then I’ll see what I can do for Cousin Nancy—oh, and Patricia Ashworthy, too.”
I took a few steps back. “She’s the one who told you about the money, isn’t she?”
“Double-crossing old baggage! All that talk about millions of dollars if you solve a puzzle. What a load of crap. She was only after the dragonfly.”
I’d hoped to keep him talking, but he clicked on the remote and lunged forward. I fell back over one of the sculptures and landed with a crash on the hard stone floor, my arm entangled in coat hanger. He pounced, the remote buzzing like a live wire. I grabbed his wrist and tried to keep the gadget away from my face while his other fist pounded into my chest. For a skinny guy, Mason was stronger than I expected, plus he was mad as
hell. We rolled over and crashed into another sculpture. Gears and tinfoil flew. I imagined the current zapping through a vital part of me. I tried to shake the coat hanger loose, but the rusty wire had bonded with my arm. I shook Mason’s wrist, but couldn’t dislodge him. He panted like a wild animal, his eyes blazing.
“Damn you! Stop it! My sculptures!”
If I was going down, I was taking those ugly things with me. I rolled into another, satisfied to hear the boing and clang of scrap metal as pieces hit the floor, a discordant jangle that set my teeth on edge.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Mason was distracted by the destruction of his precious artwork long enough for me to swing around with the coat hanger and let him have it across the face. With a shriek, he fell back, and the deadly little remote skittered across the museum floor like an ice cube. As I ran for it, Mason snagged my trouser cuff with a coil of wire from the litter of broken parts. I tripped and landed on my stomach, narrowly missing a sharp-edged piece of metal.
Mason staggered to his feet and ran for the remote. I grabbed the nearest object, a tarnished hubcap, and slung it like a Frisbee. It clipped him at the knee. When he fell, his fingers brushed the remote and sent it spinning further down the hallway.
On my feet now, I raced for the remote but tripped on another piece of that damned artwork, bounced off another of Mason’s sculptures, and fell again. By the time I got up, Mason had retrieved his gadget and stood, gasping in triumph.
I backed up and brushed off the gears and wires that had attached themselves to me. The hallway looked like blow-out day at the junkyard. Where was something I could use? Pieces of pipe, coils of wire, screws, and rusty tools, a chunk of metal with paper clips stuck all over a large curved magnet—wait a minute. Where was Mason’s favorite piece? Where was Last Gasp of Freedom in a Material Society?
There it was, at the end of the hall, still intact, still hideous. I made a run for it, grabbed it, and swung around, holding it out like a shield.
Mason gave a strangled cry. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Put that gadget down, or Last Gasp will be doing exactly that.”
“It’s my finest piece!”
“It’s scrap if you don’t turn that thing off.”
He hesitated a moment, and I flung Last Gasp at him. As I’d hoped, his treasure meant more to him than his homemade taser. He dropped the remote, made a desperate lunge for the sculpture, and managed to become one with his art, falling with a crash. I kicked the remote away.
Mason tried to untangle himself. He was furious. “Do you realize what you’ve done? I’ll never be able to recreate it, never!”
I hauled him up, pieces of wire and tinfoil clinging to his clothes. “Oh, I think you’ll have plenty of time to do that.” I twisted one skinny arm behind his back and marched him to the nearest closet. I shoved him inside, used a few more pieces of coat hanger to fasten the door shut, and called Jordan to come and get him.
Next up, Nancy Piper.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Turn Not, O Queen, Thy Face Away”
The Parkland Art Museum hallway was longer than I remembered. Nancy Piper was in her office and looked up, smiling. “Hello, David. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Oh, that wasn’t going to work on me. “I think I’m on to something. Does this place have a basement?”
“There are some storage rooms downstairs.”
“Would you show me?”
“Sure.” She got up, her expression puzzled. Her outfit of choice was a silky black blouse and a tight gold skirt. Her shoes were leopard-print high heels. I hadn’t thought about it before my encounter with Mason, but all her clothes did look as if they’d come from an expensive shop like Tamara’s Boutique. “Do you have a clue?”
“More than a clue, I hope.”
She led me back down the long hallway to an elevator. We got in and she pressed a button marked “B.” We rode the short distance down.
“David, do you think Pierson’s artwork is in the basement?”
I wasn’t going to let on that her partner in crime had given me the info I needed. “I didn’t pay too much attention in school,” I said, “but there was this one story about a stolen letter. The police looked everywhere for it, and it was right there in plain sight with other letters. Seeing that sculpture by Jon Vass started me thinking. At first, you see what the artist wants you to see, and then your eyes readjust. What better place to hide artwork than in a museum?”
“That seems awfully risky. Why would the thief hide things so close to home?”
“A little farewell clue from Samuel Gallant. ‘Art that’s hidden within art.’”
The elevator stopped. The doors slid open and we got off. We walked down a short hall. Nancy unlocked a large door and pushed it open. We entered a cluttered room full of packing crates, wrapped canvases, and statues covered with cloth. Some ancient-looking spears leaned in a corner next to some Romanesque helmets. Victorian furniture and dressmaker’s dummies in old beaded gowns, feathered hats, and what looked like an old canoe crowded another corner.
I didn’t know where to start. It could take days, weeks, to find Pierson’s art. I walked up and down the aisles, going farther and farther back into history. Then back in a corner in a box labeled “Pre-Columbian,” I found Pierson’s mermaid ashtray, the blue peacock vase, a rolled-up poster.
And the dragonfly.
It was a beautiful piece of glass, shining in the dim light. The white wings had delicate tracings of green veins. The realistic head sported two large Pierson-like eyes. The segmented body in transparent green and white looked like a long fancy Christmas ornament. I cautiously picked it up. No vibrations tingled in the palm of my hand, no visions of death popped into my head.
Nancy looked over my shoulder. “My God. It was here all the time. Why didn’t I see it?”
I carefully set the dragonfly back in the box with the ashtray, the vase, and the poster. Now I knew why the stolen items were conveniently stored together and sitting here in plain sight. After their argument, Nancy must have realized Mason would come hunting for them. She had the artwork packaged up and ready for a quick getaway.
I picked up the box. “That was pretty daring of you.”
She took a step back. “What are you talking about? If I were responsible, this is the last place I’d bring you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve got plenty of nerve. Plenty of charm, too, and it worked on Richard Mason and on Samuel Gallant. You got the guys to rob Pierson and then I imagine it wasn’t hard to convince Mason to get rid of Gallant—I mean, you weren’t really going to share any profits with him, were you? How did Lawrence Stein find out?”
“This is crazy. You’re crazy.”
“Maybe you tried to cozy up to him, too, and he rejected you. As for Baseford, well, I think Mason let his hatred of the man get the best of him. Here were some handy little spoons he could get his buddy Flynn at the Herald to put in Baseford’s office. Then he could stop by later and use his disrupter to zap Baseford and frame him for the crime. Or was that your idea, too?”
“I had nothing to do with any of that. This is ridiculous. Let’s go.”
She marched to the door, her high heels clicking, and waited for me, arms folded tightly across her chest in a classic Ellin Belton gesture. Severely pissed. Her eyes flickered to me as if summing me up, deciding whether or not to confide.
“Not a word of your wild story is true, David.”
“Tell me your version.” I shifted my grip on the box and got out my phone. “Or maybe you’d like to tell it to the police.”
“Oh, I have a better idea. Why don’t you let me call the police? You’re so sure I’m this heartless villain. That ought to prove to you I’m not.”
I wanted to see how she got out of this one. I handed her my phone. But she didn’t call the police. She did some
thing I didn’t expect. She reached into the box, scooped up the dragonfly, and kicked me in the shin with those spiky leopard heels. I almost dropped Pierson’s box of treasures. While I was hopping around swearing, Nancy ran out, slamming the storage room door behind her. I heard the click of the lock. I put down the box and pounded on the door.
“Nancy!”
Great. I had Mason locked up in a storage room, and now I was locked in one, too. By the time I got out, Nancy would be halfway across the country with the one object Pierson wanted most. I looked around. Time to see how strong those ancient spears are.
They were pretty ancient, bending and breaking off in the door. The beaded dresses were no help. I unpacked a few crates, finding only old bones and skulls.
That’s you, if you don’t find a way out, I told myself. Nancy sure as hell won’t tell anyone you’re down here. You better be glad Mason didn’t arm her with one of his remotes.
I made my way to the back where a small window gleamed high in the wall. It looked canoe and Victorian sofa high. I dragged over the sofa, put the canoe on top, and balanced myself on my makeshift ladder. Using someone or something’s leg bone, I broke the window. It was nice to know all this art was good for something.
First, I climbed down and put Pierson’s ashtray in my pocket. I had to leave the poster and the vase, but didn’t figure he’d mind. I made it back up my historic escape route, crawled out into the dirt and bushes at the back of the museum, and ran around to the front steps.
Nancy was gone. Where would she go? Would she leave without Leslie?
I was standing there, frozen with indecision, when Pierson’s Mercedes screeched up to the curb, and Camden called, “Randall!”
I hopped into the car.
“He insisted I bring him here,” Pierson said. “He said you needed help.”
“Nancy locked me in the basement.” I pulled the mermaid head ashtray out of my pocket. “The vase is in the storage room with the poster. They’re safe. But Nancy got away with the dragonfly.”
