Take Out

by Margaret Maron

  In the attic of the Breul House, Dorothy Reddish pushed back her chair and stood up to stretch and bend. Her joints felt stiff after sitting so long. Determined to try and figure out what Dr. Shambley might have hoped to find, she had gone through the first file cabinet with no success. Nor had the top two drawers of the second one yielded anything. But when she sat down and opened the drawer that was in easy reach of the chair Shambley had used, she immediately saw that something had been crammed into one of the folders. Instead of single sheets of papers listing invoices and inventories and bills of lading, there were more than a dozen thick envelopes. All had “E. Breul” in the return address but with different European cities.

  She laid them on the desk before her and a frisson of excitement ran through her as she realized that this blocked stack might have left that impression on the second embroidered glove case that had turned up around the time of Shambley’s death. Letters from Erich Breul, Junior? Why had Shambley hidden them here in a file cabinet instead of taking them to the director who preceded her here?

  Hardly daring to breathe, she took the pink satin case out of the drawer, freed it from the tissue paper in which Mrs. Beardsley had so carefully wrapped it, and slipped the envelopes inside.

  A perfect fit!

  The fourteen envelopes had European stamps and the 1912 postmarks were consistent with Erich Junior’s wanderjahr after he finished college. His handwriting was quite legible and Reddish skimmed through them until she was stopped dead in her tracks by a letter written in August of that year. That was when the dutiful Erich Junior finally seemed to have strayed from the list of activities set out by Erich Senior. He had bought a bicycle, somehow acquired a monkey, and was cycling along the Rhone River when an enormous white dog popped up of nowhere, barking so ferociously that he had crashed his bicycle into the nearest tree. And who should come to his rescue but two impoverished artists who were spending the summer there. One was French, a cyclist himself and most apologetic about Erich Junior’s twisted front wheel. The other was the dog’s owner, a Spanish animal lover who coaxed the frightened monkey down from the tree.

  Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

  When the village blacksmith said he would have to send to Orange for the parts needed to repair the bicycle, they insisted that Erich Junior come home with them. Upon hearing that it was his birthday, they toasted him with a bottle of wine, then set about creating a portrait of him and the monkey, using what they called papier collé. Dinner that evening sounded like a raucous wine-filled celebration when they presented him with the finished collage. In return, he gave his bicycle to Braque, his monkey to Picasso, and caught the morning train to Lyons with the collage tied up in brown paper.

  Instead of returning to the conventional paths his father had prescribed, however, he seemed to have spent as much time among the artists of Montmartre as in the venerable Louvre.

  Wow! thought Reddish. Could that collage be what Shambley had searched for? Perhaps even found?

  She put the letters back in the satin glove case and went looking for Mrs. Beardsley.

  Sofia DelVecchio looked around the sleek uncluttered great room of the house her husband had given his mistress all those years ago. So much chrome and glass and shiny surfaces, the neutral whites broken only by pots of greenery and the large colorful abstract canvases that hung on the walls. A rear wall of glass flooded the space with natural light and brought the garden into the room.

  She was thrown off balance by the contrast between the traditional middle-class home she had shared with her unfaithful husband and this theatrical setting his mistress had created. “Benito liked this?”

  “He never saw it,” said Charlotte Randolph. “I didn’t tear out the walls and redecorate until after he was gone. But you’re right. He would have hated it. When I painted over the dark wood paneling, he wanted to put it back the way it was.” She gave Sofia a wry smile. “You smashed my records, I smashed your walls.”

  “And you think that makes us even?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sofia, can’t we let it go? Benny’s been dead more than twenty-five years—”

  “Thirty years,” the other woman snapped.

  “Is it that long?”

  “You don’t know? Oh, but then you took another woman’s husband before the year was out, didn’t you?”

  “You were the widow, Sofia, not me. You could follow his hearse to the cemetery and wear black for a year. I had to sing two nights later.”

  “The voice again,” Sofia sneered, stung by the undeniable truth that she had never earned a single penny in her whole eighty-two years, while Charlotte had enjoyed a career that brought her both fame and wealth. More wealth than she herself now enjoyed.

  Money had flowed when Benito was alive and he had lavished it on his wife and daughter, but he had also lavished it on his women and his lieutenants. Those damned Oldsmobiles to ensure their loyalty! Even though she had cut back on servants after his death, very little remained by the time Aria was grown. She’d had to sell some of her jewelry to pay for Aria’s wedding. Without her son-in-law’s sound financial advice, the house would have had to go years ago and she might now be living in an in-law apartment in his and Aria’s house. In Riverhead of all places, not here in Manhattan.

  “Why did you come, Sofia?” Charlotte asked abruptly. They were both still standing. Sofia had refused to sit and Charlotte did not intend to let the other woman tower over her. “Surely it wasn’t just to insult me?”

  “Laura wants me to ask you to give her voice lessons.”

  “What? You ask me? That’s absurd.”

  “She’s under the impression that we’re friends.”

  “Why on earth would she think that?”

  “You came to the house. She brought you something from me. You had her sing for you.”

  “She said she wanted to sing on stage. I was curious to hear if she had a voice.”

  “Does she?”

  Charlotte gave a noncommittal shrug. “It’s on the thin side, but she can carry a tune and could probably learn how to project. She’s a pretty child and with a little luck, she might well have a stage career. Not opera, but maybe musical comedy.”

  “And you’re just the one to help her, aren’t you?”

  Charlotte stared at her old rival in dawning comprehension. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid I’m going to take her from you.”

  “You’re the glamorous one,” Sofia said bitterly. “You’ll charm her the way you charmed Benito. You’ll wave your magic voice and give her a career.”

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Charlotte stamped her small foot for emphasis. “Yes, I could probably get a casting director to give her an audition, but a career takes talent and the willingness to work for it. If you think I want to take her on as a protégée, think again. She’s your granddaughter, not mine, and it’s time you got over thinking I’m your enemy. Yes, Benny and I had three or four good years. Yes, he liked to come to the Met and hear me sing. In the end, though, he was just as unfaithful to me as he was to you.” Her voice softened. “And from the very beginning, I knew that you were the one he would have grown old with if he’d had the chance. I was so jealous of you.”

  “Jealous of me? Really?”

  “Yes, really.” Charlotte’s blue eyes were steady and unwavering and tinged with such sorrow and regret that Sofia felt something loosen in her heart. All these years, she had hated this woman, but now—? She could almost pity her because her words were true—Benito had always come back to her. To her, not to Charlotte.

  “Tell your granddaughter that you tried, but I wouldn’t budge,” Charlotte said. “And that I don’t want to be bothered again.”

  “As you wish.”

  Wrapped in a mantle of proud dignity, Sofia turned to go with the hint of a smug smile on her lips.

  Afterward, Charlotte mixed herself a martini, propped Benny’s picture on a stack of books, and lifted her glass to him. Critics had always praised her acting a
s warmly as her singing and it was gratifying to know that she could still fake sincerity so convincingly.

  How would it benefit Sofia to know that she had become rather tired of Benny as their first passions cooled? That it had not overly grieved her when he was killed? Kinder to let Sofia believe that she had won the battle. He really had been a handsome devil, though, and in the beginning, knowing that he controlled such dark forces only added spice to their affair. Later, her voice and her growing reputation made him jealous and his possessiveness smothered her. It had been too dangerous to look elsewhere here in the city, but those European tours! Tomás, Andre, Kallistos. Their faces tumbled through her memory. But what was the name of that musical director in Vienna? Whose were those long fingers that caressed my body?

  She could see his face, but what was his name?

  “A collage?” Mrs. Beardsley turned from changing Erich Senior’s cufflinks.

  “Early cubism,” Dr. Reddish said encouragingly. “It would have looked something like a human figure and maybe a monkey somewhere. Perhaps on his shoulder or in his lap.”

  “No, it was a monkey face,” said Mrs. Beardsley. “One of Pascal’s posters.”

  “Who’s Pascal?”

  “He was our caretaker here. Such a sweet boy.” The older woman’s voice was indulgent. “His mind stopped growing when he was ten or eleven, but he was a very competent caretaker and janitor. Much more willing and helpful than that Jeb we have now. Just yesterday, I asked him to—”

  “Posters,” Reddish reminded her gently.

  “Yes. Dr. Kimmelshue. Two directors before you. There’s a box of rolled-up posters in the basement. Museums and art galleries used to send them to us all the time. Dr. Kimmelshue told Pascal that he could take any he wanted to tack up on his wall. Most of the ones he chose were representational, but that one must have appealed to him because of the monkey.”

  “Where is it now?” Reddish asked. “Did he take it with him when he left?”

  “I don’t think so. He was moving to Louisiana and he didn’t have much luggage, so when I told him to leave his room exactly as he found it, I think he put all the posters back in that box. He was very literal-minded. Shall I look?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” said Reddish, and headed downstairs to the basement that was surprisingly cool and dry.

  Despite Mrs. Beardsley’s criticism of the current caretaker, this warren of rooms was also quite clean. No musty smell of mildew either.

  Nearest the stairs were Jeb’s quarters: a bedroom, bath, and tiny kitchen galley for making coffee or warming up takeout meals. Except for a laundry room, the rest of the extensive basement was used for storage. Pictures that earlier directors had decided were not of the same quality as the ones selected to hang upstairs were covered in dust cloths. She had examined each one when she first came and was in complete agreement with those directors. Erich Breul had been an ardent collector, but his tastes could, to put it charitably, lead him astray. Too, several of the largest and most bathetic canvases, handsomely framed in gilt and gold leaf, had come from his wife’s childhood home in Zurich and were meant to edify in the most saccharine way possible.

  A large cardboard carton held more than a dozen rolled-up posters from some of the city’s major museums. They stood on end and Dorothy Reddish quickly verified that each one was modern. She was puzzled to find two identical posters of a Léger that hung in the Guggenheim. One of them was still shrink-wrapped and had the Guggenheim’s price sticker attached. No monkey-headed poster, though.

  “Can I help you, Dr. Reddish?”

  She turned to see Jeb Paracha standing in the doorway of his room with a vacuum cleaner in his strong brown hands. “I don’t suppose there are any cubist posters hanging on your walls, are there?”

  “Cubist posters?” He was clearly puzzled, but he stepped back so that she could enter.

  Except for a large landscape with snow-covered mountains, the walls were bare. She described the poster she was seeking and received only a blank look.

  As she turned to continue her search, he held out the vacuum cleaner. “This thing’s pretty much had it. No suction. Any chance we could get a new one?”

  “Speak to Miss Ruffton or Mrs. Beardsley,” she said. “Maybe there’s a little wiggle room left in the housekeeping budget.”

  Steamer trunks, large suitcases, several leather-bound wardrobe trunks along with a couple of hat trunks were stacked in a side room. No flying off to Europe with only one carry-on and a tote bag for the Breuls. Not with such long bulky dresses and all those petticoats.

  According to Hope Ruffton, the luggage stored here held extra clothes and oddments from past Breuls. “Mrs. Beardsley went through them and took out anything worth using upstairs.”

  With rapidly diminishing hope, Dr. Reddish opened the nearest trunk and saw articles of feminine clothing, but the contents of a large steamer trunk took her breath away once she removed the upper tray that held masculine gloves, collars, ties, and socks. Underneath, the first things that hit her eye were four canvases loosely rolled together. Whoever had put them there had rolled them surface side out so to reduce the chance of cracking the paint. With trembling fingers, she laid them flat atop the nearby trunks and read the signatures: three Matisses and a pair of Légers.

  In the letters, Erich Junior had described to his father some of the exhibitions he’d attended before his fatal accident. “I am sure that you, with your deep love and knowledge of pure art, would agree that these Fauves as they are called truly are ‘wild beasts,’ but I find them strangely compelling.”

  Oh, Junior! Reddish thought. If only you could have known.

  These five paintings the son had collected would more than ensure the financial safety of the father’s house for years to come.

  Returning to the trunk, she carefully removed the books and clothes that someone had shipped back to New York after the young man’s death. At the very bottom were two large sheets of white paper. Sandwiched between them so that it lay flat on the floor of the trunk was a third sheet, a collage of papers pasted onto a sheet of drawing paper. Torn pieces of newsprint, wallpaper, and even a wine label formed a roughly human shape, topped with the cubistic face of a monkey.

  It was signed in charcoal on the back in two clearly different hands: “A notre petit singe américain—Picasso et G. Braque.”

  Her first happiness was for the house. Her second was the memory of Elliott Buntrock saying, “Maybe you’ll get to write your own book.”

  She couldn’t wait to tell him how right he was.

  CHAPTER

  28

  While Tillie went to get a search warrant, Detective Gonzalez sprinted after Denny Kapps.

  “He used the restroom and then he asked where the nearest bus stop was, so maybe I can still catch him,” he said.

  Ten minutes later, he was back with a thoroughly pissed Kapps in tow.

  “He was in line at the Sabrett’s wagon,” Gonzalez said triumphantly.

  “What’s with you people?” Kapps complained. “You dragged me down here before I could eat lunch at Martha’s, and now you haul me in again before I can get a hot dog?”

  “We’ll buy you two hot dogs,” Sigrid said, reaching into the pocket of her white slacks.

  Into her empty pocket.

  Hentz grinned and handed her a ten.

  “Just a few more questions, Mr. Kapps. Your car. Was it an automatic or a manual?”

  “Manual,” he answered promptly. “The gears might’ve started to slip a little, but there was nothing wrong with it and that asshole shouldn’t have scrapped it.”

  “Tell us again how you happened to lend your car to Matty Mutone.”

  Kapps rolled his eyes. “What else is there to tell? He came into Martha’s about noon that day. Said he needed a car in a hurry and offered me forty bucks to lend him mine. I gave him the keys and told him where it was parked. He was supposed to bring it back next day, but then, like I said, I got picked up and sent t
o Rikers.”

  “Did he say why he needed a car in such a hurry?”

  “I dunno. Something about having to pick somebody up in Midtown. He didn’t say who. I thought maybe his girlfriend?”

  Sigrid looked down at her notes. “You told us that you got out Saturday before last and went looking for Matty. Where did you look and who did you talk to?”

  He shrugged. “I asked around. They told me at the soup kitchen that he was back on the street, back on speed, and that he’d come in to eat there off and on. They also said that he had people up on Vanderbock across from that diner.”

  “Did you go to the house on Vanderbock?”

  “Didn’t know which one it was, did I? But I asked about him at the diner and one of the guys there said he knew Matty. I asked him if he’d seen him with my car.”

  “Get his name?” asked Hentz.

  “I don’t remember. Al, maybe?”

  “Could it be Sal?”

  “Sal? Yeah! That’s it! Little short guy, big head of hair. Said Matty didn’t have a car, though.”

  “Did you describe it to him?”

  “Yeah. A 1980 white Honda Civic. Said he hadn’t seen it. Hey! That why you asked if it was a manual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “’Cause that’s what that Sal asked. Said Matty wasn’t good with manuals.”

  Sigrid glanced at the timeline again. “What day was this?”

  “Last Tuesday morning. I stopped in for coffee.”

  “Did you go to the house then? Talk to the housekeeper or the woman who was Matty’s godmother?”

  “Godmother?” He shook his head. “When this Sal said Matty didn’t have my car and he hadn’t seen him in a couple of weeks, I decided to wait till he showed up at Martha’s Table again.”