The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “Ah,” he said, eyeing Chris, “this must be the lady who’s going to make us a lovely, generous offer on our Marsden Hartleys and save herself the risk and effort of having to bid for them against a rapacious crowd of Hartley lovers. Please, sit.” His gesture took in both of them.

  One of the great perks of the museum curator’s life is the opportunity to outfit one’s office with works of art not currently on public exhibit. Most of the curatorial staff at the Brethwaite had taken full advantage: paintings, drawings, desk sculptures, various objets d’art adorned their cubicles. Drew, as curator of Furnishings, for example, worked at a spectacular, silver-filigreed, nineteenth-century slant-top writing desk. But Clark’s surroundings were relentlessly, uncompromisingly utilitarian, more like a chief clerk’s office than a senior curator’s office: steel and Formica desk, laptop, steel filing cabinets, chairs of green vinyl and gray steel, a few books, a few folders, a printer. No art, none at all. It was a subject of debate among the staff as to whether he was making a point, had no taste, or just didn’t give a damn. Alix had yet to form an opinion, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t the second. He dressed too well for that.

  Alix had wondered how Chris would react to Clark. Her friend, while very happily and faithfully married, had an unfortunate tendency to melt when in the presence of a good-looking male face, but maybe Clark was a bit too pretty, or oily, even for her, because she looked about as meltable as a glacier on Mt. McKinley. “No, I’m the lady who’s going to make a conservative but reasonable offer on your Marsden Hartleys that will save you both the expense of insuring and packing them, and the risk of having them go for an even lower price at auction or, worse, fail to be sold altogether.”

  “Whoa,” said Clark, eyes widening. He grinned at Alix. “She’s good. I’ve known her all of two seconds and I’m already impressed.”

  And well he might be. Chris at her forceful, confident best cut a formidable figure. Even sitting, she towered half a foot over the two of them, and the capacious blue-and-black-checked tartan shawl (cape? mantle? cloak?) that swathed her shoulders this morning made her loom even larger.

  “So,” Clark said, “what’s your offer?”

  “What’s your reserve price?” Chris shot back.

  “The estimate, provided by the Endicott Gallery, not by us, is that the lot will go for fifty to seventy thousand dollars.”

  Bracelets jangled as Chris dismissed this with a wave of her arm. “No, not the estimate—the reserve.”

  Unlike the estimate, which is made public and typically appears in the auction catalogue, the reserve price is the real minimum price the seller will accept to let go of the item, and it is kept confidential until that price is actually reached in the bidding. If it isn’t reached, the item is withdrawn.

  “Ah, well, you know,” Clark said playfully, “that’s a secret.”

  But Chris wasn’t interested in game playing. “I’m going to assume it’s the usual: eighty percent of the low estimate. That means it’s forty-four thousand dollars.”

  “Well, you’re not going to get it for that price,” Clark said. “I can tell you that. Damn summer colds, I hate them. Worse than what you get in the winter, why is that anyway?” He’d been sniffling and dabbing at his nose with a series of tissues since they’d come in.

  “And I wouldn’t expect to,” Chris replied. “Here’s what I’m willing to pay: fifty-five thousand. That’s reserve price, plus twenty-five percent.”

  Alix was impressed too. A year ago Chris had known as much about auctions as Alix did, which wasn’t much. Now she sounded like an old hand. And she had come prepared, as the figures that were popping so easily out of her mouth now proved

  “It’s also just five thousand over the low-end estimate,” Clark said. “No, I’m sorry, I think we can do better than that at auction.”

  “It’s fifty-five thousand dollars you can have right now, this minute. Bird in the hand . . .” She gave him her first smile.

  Thoughtfully, he dabbed at his nose. “Well, look at it this way. If you were to bid at the auction and manage to get it at that price, which I seriously doubt, you’d also have to pay the auction house their fifteen percent buyer’s premium, which would bring it to sixty-five thou or so—”

  “More like sixty-three, actually. And let us not forget about the seller’s commission on the hammer price that you’d have to pay the auction house if you sell it through them. I’m guessing we’d be talking somewhere in the ten percent—”

  He held up his hand. “All right, tell you what.” The Smile was back, collegial now, and accommodating. “You up your offer to the sixty-three you were just talking about and we have a deal that I think we can all live with.”

  Chris didn’t hesitate. “Okay, then, I guess we have a deal.” She stood up and extended her hand.

  He shook his head and warded her off. “No offense, but I wouldn’t advise shaking hands with me. I’m contagious.”

  Chris pulled out her checkbook and wrote out the check. Clark said he would have the paperwork ready for her before the day was done and the drawings safely packed for carrying on the plane, and negotiations were closed.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” Chris said.

  “Call again any time,” said Clark, waving the check beside his face as if it were written in old-fashioned wet ink. “I’ll call the printer’s right now and ask them to take it out of the catalogue.”

  Chris frowned. “Could that be a problem?”

  “No, there won’t be any problem,” he said while he dialed, “because they haven’t printed it up into hard copies yet, and with every lot on a full page of its own, all they have to do is to digitally delete this one page and then renumber . . . oh, hi, Sal, this is Clark Calder”—with his fingers he waggled a goodbye to them, and went on talking—“and I have a small change for the catalogue—”

  “I’m glad you got the drawings,” Alix said when they were safely out of earshot, “but I’m not sure I know who came out better. He did a pretty smooth job getting you up to sixty-three thousand, I thought.”

  “Are you serious? Listen, I walked in there fully prepared to pay seventy, maybe even seventy-five. I got away easy. The man’s a pussycat.” She smiled. “He is hot, though, I’ll say that for him. Whew.” She fanned her face with her hand.

  “You really think so? There’s something about that guy that really repels me, something I don’t trust.”

  “Who’s talking about trust? What’s ‘trust’ got to do with ‘hot’?”

  Alix laughed. “Anyway, you could have fooled me,” she said. “Knowing you, I figured you might swoon when you met the guy, but there was never a sign.”

  “I’ll withhold comment on that ‘knowing you’ crack, but I’ll tell you that where money is involved, I do not swoon.” She tugged exuberantly at Alix’s sleeve. “Hey, come on, I wanna look at my beautiful new possessions one more time. Oh, I love being rich.”

  A few minutes later, Alix left Chris mooning over her new acquisitions and went to look for Geoff and Tiny to show them what she knew they were most interested in, namely, the three paintings she would be restoring. Both men made suggestions—not always in agreement—for solvents and methods for the different pictures, which Alix appreciatively and dutifully wrote down. They both supported her decision not to touch the Stubbs, which she also appreciated. Despite the sureness she hoped she’d projected, she had felt all alone and just a little bit out on a limb when telling Mrs. B and the staff about that.

  “Thank you both, that was really helpful, especially on the Cassatt,” she said. “I feel more sure of myself now. And now let’s go see if we can tear Chris away from her new treasures for a while.”

  They found Chris prowling around the second level, peeking into alcoves and corners and looking cross. “Don’t they believe in coffee in this place?” she grumbled. “I just gave them sixty
-three thousand dollars and nobody’s offered me a cup.”

  Alix took them to the break room, where they got mugs off the wall hooks, filled them, and took them out to one of the shaded picnic tables in the atrium.

  Chris’s first sip brought back her usual happy humor. “I like this museum,” she said. “Different. And this outdoor area, this is pleasant.”

  That started Tiny and Geoff off on a string of reminiscences about their favorite outdoor areas at Lompoc, accompanied by much laughter.

  “I guess I better tell you about this,” Alix said as their stories wound down. “I had myself a pretty interesting experience last night. When I walked into my room.”

  She tried to tell it matter-of-factly, playing down the physical part, and Chris remained calm, as Alix knew she would, but Tiny and Geoff were up in arms, pressing for details and bombarding her with questions. Why hadn’t she told them right away? Why hadn’t she called her father last night? What were the police doing about it? Was she sure she was all right? Why hadn’t she gotten herself checked over at a hospital? Had she heard back from the police this morning?

  Warmed by their concern, Alix answered patiently, but when it seemed they were never going to run out of questions, she held up both hands. “Truce. Can we please get off this subject for a while? Through lunch at least?”

  “Yeah, lunch,” Tiny said, brightening. “Boy, I’m ready.”

  “Good, let’s go. You’re going to love this place, just wait.”

  Geoff had his nose in the air, nostrils twitching, like an English hunting dog zeroing in on the fox. Tiny looked much the same, practically straining at the leash.

  “Ah, those aromas,” Geoff said. “Heavenly.”

  “Wow, it smells great in here!” exclaimed Tiny, his eyes closed. “I could be in the Carnegie right now. Somebody, quick, bring me a corned beef on rye!”

  “Well, since the two of you never stop griping about the New York delis you can’t find in Seattle,” Alix said, “I thought you’d enjoy this place.”

  “This place” was Sherman’s Delicatessen & Bakery, which Madge had recommended as the best Jewish delicatessen in the city. It advertised itself as a “New York–style deli” and was obviously modeled on the old-time delicatessens that New Yorkers of a certain age remembered with such fondness.

  The Brethwaite people seemed to like it too. There, a few tables away, sat the curatorial staff, minus Clark—Prentice, Madge, Alfie, and Drew. And Mrs. B’s secretary, Richard. Alix had waved to them coming in, but they’d had their heads together and hadn’t seen her.

  “It sounds like a New York deli too,” Chris said, pointing out that the man standing at the central cash register was yelling to his old customers and ribbing them, and the staff was loud, jokey, and kibitzing with the patrons to the point of rudeness.

  “I detect a subtle difference, though,” Geoff said. “Here, I have the sense that we’re witnessing a sort of genial playacting, not serious, with everybody merely pretending to be raucous and rude.”

  “Whereas in New York you get the genuine article?” Chris offered slyly.

  “Precisely.”

  Alix had dropped out of the conversation. Like the others, she had her eyes on the menu, but she was thinking about that venomous blog again, and only now realizing that there’d been no mention of her father, despite the opportunities to sling more mud at him. Did she have it wrong, then? Was she the object of the blog and the reviews—and not Geoff? But who could possibly be so spitefully determined to stigmatize her, to shred her reputation, her livelihood . . . her life? And why? And what would have prompted the creation—yesterday—of a brand-new blog totally devoted to her wickedness and ineptitude?

  She realized Geoff was speaking to her and tuned back in.

  “. . . just that you seem a bit, ah . . .” he was saying with some delicacy.

  “Just that something’s bugging you,” Chris said bluntly. “You’re a million miles away. What’s up? Still chewing over what happened last night, huh?”

  “Actually, no, something else. I came across this new blog, this website, The “Art Whisperer”, which . . .”

  Three smart phones were immediately whipped out of their hiding places and flicked on. Alix knew better than to compete with smart phones, so she just shut up and sipped water while they read, each of them muttering comments as they went along.

  Geoff: “My word . . . Oh, my . . .”

  Chris: “I don’t believe this . . . You gotta be kidding me . . . How could they? . . . Jeez . . .”

  Tiny (in a rumbling, ominous mutter): “Cavolo . . . Cazzo . . .”

  They were interrupted by their waitress, a short-haired, middle-aged dyed blonde in white shirt and trousers and a black apron. “Get the matzo ball soup,” was her greeting. “Stay away from the stuffed kishke, that’s my advice for today.” She tilted her head toward the man at the cash register. “Don’t tell Airhead I said so.” Her nameplate read Donna.

  “Your secret is safe with us,” said Geoff. “I believe I’ll have a pastrami sandwich, please.”

  “On rye?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good choice,” Donna said, writing. “Anything to drink?”

  “You wouldn’t actually carry Dr. Brown’s celery soda, would you?”

  “We got it. I’d stay away from that too, though.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Geoff politely.

  Donna shrugged. “It’s your stomach.”

  Tiny ordered a pickled herring appetizer, a bowl of mushroom-barley soup, and the knockwurst and corned beef dinner plate. Chris, who was almost as hearty an eater as he was, got an entrée-sized Cobb salad and a Reuben sandwich, and Alix ordered the hot corned beef sandwich.

  “This blog,” Geoff said as Donna left with their orders. “Don’t you have any idea of who’s behind it? Anybody with a reason to bear a grudge?”

  Alix didn’t, and neither did the others. “But even if I did, what would I do about it, sue him?”

  “Damn right!” Tiny said with some heat.

  “Honestly, Tiny, I do not want to upend my life, and spend thousands of dollars, going through a suit.”

  “Actually,” Chris said, “I think you do have grounds for a suit here. I’m no lawyer, but—”

  “Neither am I,” said Geoff, “but I do happen to have some familiarity with the issue. Not everything they said about me at the trial was true, after all, and I looked into the possibility of a suit myself. From what I learned, Chris is right. This is libel, pure and simple: an effort to injure your professional reputation with defamatory, untrue accusations.”

  “So did you wind up suing anybody?” Chris asked him.

  “Ah, no. In the end, I didn’t feel I had a convincing case. I was a disgraced conservator and a convicted felon serving a long jail sentence for fraud. Exactly what ‘reputation’ was I protecting? Alix, however, is not in that situation.” He knocked twice on the tabletop.

  But Alix had a friend who had filed a suit a few years ago under similar circumstances. The suit, rancorous and time consuming, had yet to be resolved, and the friend now bitterly regretted ever having gotten into it. “It’s eating up my life,” he’d said.

  “Sorry, folks, but no thanks,” said Alix. “Anyway, since we have no idea who’s behind it, it’s pointless to even talk about it, so let’s just forget it.”

  Geoff shook his head at her. “My dear, this is important—to you, I mean, to your reputation in this small and highly competitive field. I believe it’s worth every effort to try and find this person, and when you do—when we do—then you must take some kind of action to counteract it. If suing is the most appropriate route, then sue it should be. You know you can count on us for all the support we can give.”

  “Absolutely,” Chris said.

  “Nah, Alix is right, screw this sue stuff,” Tiny s
aid. “Listen, we find out the name of this bum, this cafone, I give my Uncle Guido a call, he whacks the guy the same day. Problem solved.” Tiny had a pretty thick Bronx accent to begin with, but here he’d broadened it to his over-the-top version of Mobspeak. We fin’ ou’ da name a dis bum, dis cafone . . . “Bada bing, bada boom,” he finished, making the appropriate thumb-and-forefinger trigger pull.

  “I like it,” Alix said, laughing. “Case closed. And here comes our lunch. Let’s eat.”

  “’Ey, mangiamo!” cried Tiny, urging Donna on with an expansive wave.

  During the flight from Seattle, Chris had learned that Tiny was a huge Frank Sinatra fan, and to accommodate him she had called from the plane to book a tour of Twin Palms, Sinatra’s famous Palm Springs residence and a major tourist attraction, but had no success.

  “Sorry, Tiny,” she said, turning off her phone, “no openings for the rest of the week.”

  Tiny’s face fell. “Nuts. He’s my absolute favorite singer. Maybe I can come back another time. Thanks for trying, Chris.”

  “They did say we might be able to get into Elvis’s house, though. Interested?”

  He lit up. “That’d be great. He’s my absolute second favorite singer.”

  And so she’d made reservations for the four of them on the two o’clock tour of the “Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway,” where Elvis and Priscilla Presley had spent the first nights of their marriage. As soon as lunch was over, Alix put the address into the GPS and drove off with them to the ritzy Las Palmas District. They got lost on the district’s winding streets near the end, and Tiny, who was also a dedicated movie buff (Alix was learning some surprising things about him today), was in heaven. At the airport he’d bought a guidebook to the old movie stars’ homes, and he ticked them excitedly off as they passed. “Wow, right there, that was Kirk Douglas’s house . . . That was Dinah Shore’s . . . Whoa, that was Edward G. Robinson’s . . . That one right here on the corner? That’s where Donald O’Connor lived . . .”

  After all that, the Honeymoon Hideaway was a bit anticlimactic and more than a little strange. With a dozen or other visitors, they were greeted at the door by their guide, a fully costumed impersonator—not your everyday, ho-hum Elvis impersonator either, but a Priscilla impersonator (the only one in the world, she announced) who was indeed a near look-alike to Ms. Presley. Standing in the entrance foyer, “Priscilla” offered a spirited introduction to the story of Elvis’s time at the house, going so far as to provide different voices for the King, Priscilla herself, Frank Sinatra, and even Elvis’s father.