by Mary Marks
He raised his eyebrows and placed his hand on his chest. “Me? I don’t get it. Why don’t you go to the police?”
“Because right now, he’s just a thirty-two-year-old missing-persons case. But if we can collect enough new evidence, we might be able to compel the authorities to reopen the file. We’re not asking you to do anything dangerous. We just want you to check your records.”
He took a step backward and frowned. “Why?”
“For one thing, we’re trying to get a picture of Quinn’s finances,” I said. “Do you still have the sales records from when he was under contract?”
Shiffer nodded, disturbing the purple curtain of hair on his face. “Of course. Keeping track of provenance is crucial in our business. We preserve all those accounts. What do you hope to find?”
“On the day he disappeared,” I said, “Quinn was headed for Atlantic City and carried a large amount of cash. We need to know where the money came from and who might’ve known about it. Will you help us?”
“I don’t know . . .” He crossed his arms and looked back and forth at our faces.
Giselle made a face. “One of Daddy’s early landscapes recently sold at auction for two-point-two million. So, if you want to be the one to collect a commission when I decide to sell Daddy’s paintings, you’d better man up, Wolf. Show us the records.”
Shiffer turned and headed toward a door in the back of the gallery. “Follow me.”
I had to hand it to Giselle. She knew just when to throw her weight around. We passed more frenzied Pedro Ayala paintings, each with a six-digit price tag. Two of the labels had a SOLD sticker. Ayala couldn’t have spent more than a day on each of those paintings, a week if I was being generous. Yet, if I were to sell one of my quilts, a work of art that required hundreds of hours to sew by hand, I’d be lucky to get a few hundred dollars—barely enough to cover the cost of materials. I bristled at the thought that women’s art, like everything feminine, went undervalued and unappreciated.
Giselle motioned for me to slow down and whispered, “He said he knew Daddy, and he seems to be the right age. Do you think he’s . . . ?”
“Maybe. But let’s not give too much away right now.”
Beyond the door was a huge work area with a full kitchen.
Shiffer said, “You look surprised. Don’t be. We have frequent events and a kitchen makes it easier for the caterers.” He swept his arm in a circle. “The rest is workspace for framing, storage, and shipping. My office is just over here.” He pointed to another door on our right. “My assistant is working on some brochures.”
A girl with Malibu highlights in her blond hair also wore black from head to toe. She stared at a computer screen, moving text and graphics with a mouse. “Have a look, Wolfie. What do you think?” She pushed her chair away from her desk and looked up. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know we had company.”
Shiffer waved her away with a small gesture of his hand. “I’ll look later, Phee. Right now I need you to bring us some tea and then cover the front.”
Without a word, the young woman popped up and headed for the kitchen.
Shiffer directed us to sit in upholstered wingback chairs arranged around a circular inlaid wooden table, an elegant space to conduct the sale of high-priced art. Some photos and small paintings hung in this private space. A small diorama featuring a tree made out of plastic forks sat in a greasy box from a Happy Meal on a side table. I pointed to a framed head shot of a glamourous blond woman with diamond earrings and scarlet lips. “Is this your mother?”
He smiled sadly. “Yes. She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Very.”
He sat in a third chair and placed a laptop on the table. “All our records have been digitized.”
Giselle nudged me under the table with her foot. I looked to see what she wanted. She jerked her head slightly to the wall behind my chair. I swiveled my head and saw it. A pencil drawing that resembled the woman in the photograph. My pulse quickened.
The assistant carried in a silver tea service with three bone china cups on a chased silver tray. She poured the tea then disappeared into the front of the gallery. Shiffer clacked on the keyboard and didn’t notice me get up from the table to examine the drawing on the wall. The signature was unmistakable.
“Wolf, my father drew this. Is it a picture of your mother?”
“Yes, but it’s not for sale. She cherished that drawing.” He sipped his tea and turned back to the computer. Giselle made a circular signal with her finger.
I nodded, removed the picture from the wall, and turned it over. Written on the back were the now-familiar words, For the love of my life. Your Quinn. I rolled my eyes at Giselle, nodded once, and sat back down.
Shiffer swiveled the screen to give us a clear view of an Excel spreadsheet then picked up his teacup again. “Here it is. A record of every J. Q. Maguire painting sold.”
The spreadsheet recorded the name of the painting, date sold, price, and buyer’s information. We learned that Quinn’s paintings fetched as much money thirty years ago as Pedro Ayala’s did today.
“How was Quinn paid?” I asked.
Shiffer put down the cup. “Don’t let the sales price fool you. He didn’t get all of that. A thirty percent commission comes off the top of everything we sell.” He pointed to a column on the spreadsheet with coded symbols. “Quinn was paid in two different ways. See the letters BA? That’s when his cut was deposited directly into a local Bank of America account. Where you see the dollar sign is when we wrote a check for cash. Where you see both symbols at once is when we split the payment. Part deposit, part cash.”
“Are there any entries around May twenty-fifth, 1980? The day he disappeared?”
“Let me see.” He scrolled down a list and stopped. “It looks like Mother gave him a check on May twenty-fourth for sixty thousand dollars.”
“That’s the day before he disappeared!” What if Quinn hadn’t been killed? He had a cozy deal with the gallery. What if he arranged to receive cash from the future sale of his paintings in order to finance a new life? “Just out of curiosity, were there any sales after that?”
“No. That was the last one. Wait. There’s a note here. It says three remaining paintings were returned to his wife. There were legal problems about who to pay if they were sold. Something about Quinn having to be declared legally dead first.”
“Now we know where the cash came from.” Giselle squinted at the screen. “Does it say what that last payment was for?”
“It was . . . here it is. An advance for a portrait he was supposed to paint of Mrs. Rex Nelson. Of course, the portrait was never done.” He peered at the screen. “It says she was eventually reimbursed. The family had to cover the loss.”
“I don’t believe it!” Giselle snapped. “The wife of the police chief? Where does a cop get that kind of money?”
“Can you print a copy of this document for us?” I asked.
“Sure. But I just want to say that if Quinn was doing something illegal with his money, it wasn’t our fault. It was up to him to pay taxes on the cash we gave him.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody thinks you did anything wrong. Just one more thing. You said you knew our father.” I glanced at Giselle. “What do you remember about him?”
My sister sat at full attention in her chair.
Shiffer closed his eyes and paused for a moment. “Let me see. He had bright red hair. He used to come to our house to see Mother. He gave me money for ice cream and she sent me away with the nanny.”
“Were your parents divorced?” Giselle asked.
Shiffer crossed his arms, looking like a spider in his long black sleeves. “I never knew who my father was. Mother always said conventional families were overrated. She was a free spirit who belonged to no man.”
I stood and began replacing the tea service on the silver tray.
He saw me fussing. “Please don’t bother with that. My assistant will clean up.”
I smiled sweetly. “No
problem. You’ve been quite helpful to us. I’m glad to return the favor.” I carried the tray to the kitchen on our way out.
Back in the Jaguar, Giselle started the engine and pulled into traffic. “You were right, Sissy. Eliza Shiffer turned out to be yet another one of Daddy’s mistresses.”
“Yeah. The pencil drawing on the wall proves as much. And did you notice the color of her lipstick? Red. Just like the cigarettes found in the ashtray of Quinn’s car. Too bad she’s gone. I’ll bet her fingerprints would be a match for one of the sets found in the Cadillac.”
“Wolf Shiffer is looking more and more like our half brother.”
“You might be right, G. But we need to be sure before saying anything. At least now we have a name to give Chief of Detectives Farkas. Hopefully, he’ll be able to locate Wolf’s birth certificate. Of course, we could be absolutely certain if we had a sample of his DNA to compare with ours.”
“Obviously.” Giselle snorted. “We’d just have to figure out a way to persuade him to send a sample to Deep Roots. And, by the way, why on earth did you have to act like the help back there? Nobody ever cleans up after tea. Really, I was quite embarrassed.”
“Calm down, your highness. I’m way ahead of you. I figured we might not get Wolf to agree to Deep Roots, so I took a sample of his DNA.”
She whipped her head around. “What?”
I reached into my large handbag and pulled out a napkin wrapped around one of the bone china cups.
CHAPTER 19
We made slow progress through the afternoon traffic on Wilshire Boulevard.
While we sat at a red light, I called Detective Farkas and put him on speaker. “Giselle and I have a possible lead on our half brother.” I told him about the pencil drawing at the Shiffer Gallery. “His name is Wolf Shiffer.”
“Like I said before, your old man sounds like father of the year.”
“One more thing, Gabe. Wolf doesn’t know it, but I managed to get a sample of his DNA to compare to ours.”
“Jeez. Do I want to know how?”
“I sort of ‘borrowed’ a cup he drank out of. He won’t miss it. Can you send it to the lab to be tested?”
“Hell, no. First of all, that cup is stolen property. Second, he’s not a suspect in a crime. Third, that DNA would have such low priority, it might be months before we get the results back.”
Giselle kept her hands on the wheel but leaned toward my phone. “We’re not giving up, Detective. If you won’t help us, I’ll take the cup to a private lab myself.”
“Don’t say any more!” Farkas barked. “I don’t want to know. Understand?”
“What about Detective Gomez?” I asked. “Have you talked to her yet?”
“What. You think I have nothing else to do than chase your leads? Gimme a break. It’s only been twenty-four hours since you dumped this thing in my lap.”
“It’s just that the longer we wait, the more brain cells she’s losing. I think we should talk to her as soon as possible.”
“There’s no ‘we’ in this equation. Stay away from Meredith Gomez. You agreed to back off and let me do the investigating, remember?”
“Fine. But you will tell us what you find out?”
“When I’ve gathered significant information, yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you have to be patient and trust me.”
There it was again. Trust. My biggest issue. My experience told me that trusting men could be dangerous; but my instinct told me to give Detective Farkas the benefit of the doubt. Hadn’t he always been straight with me? “Okay, Gabe. I’ll try.”
Instead of heading toward Readcrest Drive, Giselle pulled under the porte cochere in the parking lot of Saks Fifth Avenue.
“What are we doing here?” I hadn’t forgotten her previous dig about getting me some new clothes.
She opened the door and tossed the keys to the valet. “Come on. I have to pick up a pair of pants I had altered. It won’t take long.”
Saks occupied a solid, gray stone building on the corner of Wilshire and Peck. Two neatly trimmed palm trees, iconic symbols of Beverly Hills, grew in front. The inside of the store smelled like perfume and hundred-dollar bills. Light glittered off glass and mirrored surfaces, creating a glamorous palace of luxury and style.
My sister knew her way around Saks like I knew the frozen tamale section of Trader Joe’s. She strode straight to the register near the Alexander McQueen display.
“Hello, Mrs. Cole,” said a middle-aged saleslady with an eager smile. “I’ll just go in back and get your slacks now.”
As we waited, Giselle pointed to a bright red jacket on a rack across an aisle. “Look at that! Isn’t it pretty?” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed my arm in a vise grip and pulled me into the plus size section. “This would look great with your coloring. Try it on.”
I yanked my arm away and turned over the price tag, which read $900. “I can’t afford these clothes.”
“Let me treat you, Sissy. Face it. You need a complete makeover, and God knows I can afford it.”
First Jazz, now Giselle was determined to take away my comfortable stretch denim jeans and imprison me in clothes that had tight waistbands and needed dry cleaning. “I appreciate the offer, G. But you already paid for an expensive dress I’ll probably never wear again. I’m not interested in being made over. Grab your trousers and let’s go.” I walked back to the register where the saleslady waited.
Giselle pouted all the way back to her estate on Readcrest Drive. She finally said, “You know, Sissy, if we’re going to hang out together, you’ll be needing that dress we bought in New York. And more. Appearances are everything in my world.”
“So you keep telling me. But what’s important in my world is comfort. Maybe you should try it sometime.”
We got out of the Jag and she walked with me toward my Honda Civic.
She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. “I love you, Sissy.”
Had we come this far in our relationship? To my surprise, tears stung my eyes and I squeezed back. “Come to Shabbat dinner again tomorrow night, G. Six o’clock. You’ll get to meet your niece, Quincy.” I reached in my purse and handed her the napkin with the bone china cup and Shiffer’s DNA. “It shouldn’t be that difficult to find a lab.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
I thought about the hug all the way back to Encino. Our worlds couldn’t be more different. Yet, underneath all that ostentation, my sister was not only smart but canny. She’d managed to pull Eagan Oil back from the brink of collapse and make it hugely profitable again. Her manner was abrasive and tactless at times, but maybe those were the very qualities that contributed to her success.
Nevertheless, I sensed a deep sadness that I could relate to. She’d grown up with an absent father and dysfunctional mother, just as I had. Unlike me, however, Giselle Cole was alone. Her husband had died young and her son lived on the East Coast. I could tell she was starved for a meaningful connection. Since I was her only other close relative, she seemed determined to become part of my family.
I smiled to myself when I realized she already had. And like a good sister, I would fix her the way she wanted to fix me. Only instead of focusing on an external makeover, I’d help her fill that particular hole in her life. After all, she was only forty-four; time to step out of her expensive widow’s weeds.
When I got back to Encino, my heart sped up at the sight of Crusher’s Harley. I parked my car next to the bike and hurried to unlock the front door. “Yossi?” I called out as soon as I entered.
Even though it was only five, my fiancé strolled out of the bedroom wearing pajama bottoms. He grinned and lifted me off the ground in a hug, smelling like lemon verbena soap from a recent shower. “Babe. I just got back.” He gave me a long, searching kiss that tasted like toothpaste and set me back down on my feet.
“What’s that?” I pointed to a huge bruise blossoming on the left side of his bare chest.
“During the takedown, the perp closest to me booked it. I went after him. We exchanged fire.”
“Oh my God!”
“He was a lousy shot but got lucky once and caught me in the vest.” I silently thanked God for inventing bulletproof vests. “Unlucky for him I was a better shot.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? I hate that you have such a dangerous job.”
He took my hand. “I’ve missed you, neshama.”
My heart melted when he used the Hebrew expression meaning “soul.”
He led me down the hall to our bedroom. “Let me show you how okay I am.”
Two hours later we sat in the kitchen eating tuna on rye and potato salad. The hungry giant downed his sandwich in six bites and reached for a second one. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
I reviewed all the facts we gathered from Anna Figueroa and Wolf Shiffer. He laughed at the account of our attempt to interview Detective Gomez.
“We gave all this information to Gabe Farkas, who agreed to unofficially take over the investigation.”
Crusher helped himself to more potato salad. “I know you, babe. Are you really satisfied to sit back and wait for Farkas?”
I shrugged. “We’re not exactly sitting back.” I told him about stealing a DNA sample from Shiffer. “It’s possible we could know before Gabe does whether Wolf is our brother.”
Suddenly I remembered something I’d brought back from Las Vegas. “Wait right here.” I hurried to my sewing room to fetch the pencil drawing of my mother. “I found this hanging in the bedroom of Giselle’s Las Vegas house. She told me to keep it.”
“Who is it?”
“My mother. Read the back.”
He reached for the small drawing and turned it over. “Your father wrote this?”
I nodded. “It seems Quinn liked to leave an artistic calling card for each of his women with the same message on the back. For the love of my life. Your Quinn. Jayda Constable had one, and so did Eliza Shiffer. God only knows how many more are out there. Quinn was a prolific womanizer.”
Crusher looked up, pressed his lips together, and frowned. I knew that look. Something bothered him and he was trying to decide what to say
