Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  “I have no idea about surveillance tonight. Listen, Rannie. Since your friend Ellen was killed, yes, I’ve tried to learn what I can. But it’s not like I get instant Twitter updates; I don’t know a quarter of what you think I do. . . . Let me ask you something. What was in the envelope the sergeant took?”

  A minute later he said, “You are out of your fucking mind, you realize that.” He wasn’t angry; in fact, he almost sounded amused, which Rannie didn’t like, not one bit. Not becoming enraged meant Tim was no longer emotionally invested in her, not past the point of seeing she remained alive.

  “Listen, mister, you were the one who called about Larry going to Ret’s apartment building the day of the murder. Remember? And I had my own suspicions about Larry. Someone told me Ret was troubled over something ‘sinful’ she’d done just a short time before she was murdered.” Then Rannie explained her earlier erroneous theory that Larry had murdered Ret to keep his job at Dusk.

  “So let me get all this straight. Ret Sullivan wrote her own life story under a fake name that Larry Katz’s company published. And Larry Katz helped her write the new book, the one about Charlotte Cummings. And he used a fake name too.”

  “Well, I don’t know if he or Ret came up with the Audeo name. It only appears in the acknowledgments.”

  “You’re quibbling, Miranda.”

  “I figured out Audeo was Larry because that’s the brand of hearing aids he wears—oh, God!—wore.”

  “What is it with you publishing people? Everything has to be an in-joke.” Tim paused. “Wait. Just before, you said Ret was feeling guilty about something. How’d you find that out?”

  Rannie let herself take some small pleasure in anticipating his reaction to hearing her say, “When I was at the Sisters of Mercy convent.”

  Tim sat up and guffawed. “I take it you’re not considering the novitiate.”

  Rannie told him about Ret’s childhood and her close friendship with Sister Dorothy Cusack. “I wondered why Ret chose Charlotte Cummings to write about. It turns out Silas Cummings purchased a painting from the sisters at the time the convent was in terrible financial shape. Sister Dorothy calls him their guardian angel. She also said Ret harbored this fantasy in which the Cummings would end up adopting her, like Little Orphan Annie.”

  Tim lay back down. “You have had one busy week.”

  “You haven’t heard the half of it. . . . I have a theory.”

  “No, Rannie, I’m beat. This theory of yours can wait.”

  “Okay.” In actuality, that was totally un-okay since sleep for her was not even a remote possibility. So she threw out a little bait and hoped Tim would bite. “Let me just say that all along I’ve thought the killer had to be a man . . . but what if it’s a woman? I have a candidate.”

  “Sorry to blow your game changer, but it’s a man.”

  “How can you be so positive?”

  “Because of semen, semen found on Ret Sullivan’s body.”

  Chapter 26

  The next morning Rannie shambled out of bed and found Tim by the hall closet, stowing the sleeping bag and deflated air mattress in the front hall closet. His head swiveled toward her. “Jesus, you look like hell.”

  “Good morning to you, too.” Rannie croaked. She felt like hell. It hurt to move her eyes, which burned in the same way they used to after pulling all-nighters at Yale. Yet she must have fallen asleep at some point or at least dozed off because she had jolted awake, the memory of the previous night walloping her with full force.

  “You just missed Nate. He went to meet friends.”

  “He didn’t see you putting away that stuff!” she exclaimed.

  “Relax. I waited till he was gone. I saw him for all of two seconds. But I made sure to have a big satisfied smile on my face.”

  “Go ahead. Make fun.”

  “It’s just not many mothers try to fool their sons into thinking they’re doing the dirty deed. I made coffee.”

  Those were the magic words. Rannie plopped on the couch. Her glasses were still on the night table, but for now remaining unfocused seemed preferable. In some way it kept what she wasn’t ready to think about at bay. When Tim returned with coffee as well as toast, he glanced at the jumbled Scrabble tiles on the coffee table. “FRANTIC HOE ORGY???”

  Rannie, squinting, reassembled the letters into FOR GERY ANTIOCH and explained. “He—or she—since it could be Gery for Geraldine, is the only other person besides Larry who gets an acknowledgment in Portrait of a Lady. I hoped scrambling the letters might reveal a name, a clue, a something.”

  They sipped and munched in silence, Tim scanning stories in the Sunday paper, Rannie allowing the caffeine to do its job. Then they each repaired to separate bathrooms to shower, Rannie finishing in record time because it was simply too unnerving knowing that directly on the other side of the tiled stall, with no more than a few inches separating them, an identical shower head, circa 1970, was fitfully spitting water down on a stark naked Tim.

  She got dressed, donned glasses, and returned to the living room feeling as if she almost qualified for membership in the human race. “I know what you said last night, about the semen on Ret, but can I tell you my female murderer theory anyway?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Barbara Gaines. Bibi.” Rannie wasn’t positive he’d immediately connect the name with the woman he knew from AA meetings. And if he did, she half expected a dismissive retort, something on the order of “No way, Rannie.” Instead he put down the newspaper and waited for more.

  “It’s nothing concrete. Just a feeling. I told you I think Ret was blackmailing somebody. What if it was Bibi?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not there yet. . . . Will you tell me this? Has she been in AA long?”

  “I’ve seen her around for years.”

  Rannie needed a more specific time frame. “Longer than three years?”

  “Way longer.”

  If what Daisy said was true, about Bibi’s shenanigans at the one-hundredth birthday party, that meant Bibi was having “slips” while in the program.

  Tim was frowning now and looked uncomfortable. He never discussed anybody in AA by name—it was always the generic “a person in the program”—yet Rannie could tell from his expression that something else was bothering him, something besides breaking AA confidentiality. She backtracked to what he’d said before about “seeing Bibi around for years.” For Tim, showing up at meetings wasn’t necessarily the same thing as truly being in AA, which involved a steadfast daily commitment to the program and its principles. Without ever naming who, he’d occasionally dismiss certain people in AA as being uncommitted. A few had to attend, a stipulation of probation. Others constantly fell off the wagon.

  “Is Bibi serious about the program?”

  “I’ve been known to be wrong. But no. I don’t think so.”

  “She used to be a very serious drug addict.”

  “Rannie, there are no unserious drug addicts. That’d be a what do you call it? Oxymoron.”

  “Two points for you.”

  “Don’t be condescending.” Then Tim said, “The thing is, Barbara Gaines’s problems with drinking and drugs were no secret. I heard her qualify once and remember her saying that Vanity Fair or one of those magazines wrote all about her. So Ret Sullivan couldn’t threaten Barbara with what was already very stale news.”

  “Okay. I get that.”

  “Then what’s the motive?”

  “I told you. I’m not there yet.”

  “And are you thinking she also murdered Ellen Donahoe and Larry Katz?”

  “Not sure,” Rannie said lamely.

  “So you’re without motive. What about opportunity?”

  Rannie shot him a dirty look. Tim was making her feel like the student who comes to class totally unprepared and gets hammered by the teacher when Rannie had always been exactly the opposite, one of those obnoxious, smarty-pants kids whose hand was perpetually raised, bouncing in her seat, “Ooh, ooh. Call on
me! I know the answer!”

  A chorus of dings on her cell phone alerted Rannie to several e-mails that had popped up from S&S old-timers. News of Larry’s death—“suicide,” all the messages called it—was circulating. Ellen’s assistant, Dina, had contacted Rannie too. “You think Larry was overcome with grief? He and Ellen never seemed a big thing, but if he was in love with her, it’s so tragic.”

  Dina had punctuated the end of the e-mail with a teary-eyed emoticon. Rannie let out a groan—Larry deserved better than email-ese—and leaned back against the couch. Then something else occurred to her and made her groan again. “And what am I supposed to do now with the manuscript I copyedited for Larry?”

  “Send it back with a bill. You finished the job and are owed the money.”

  “Yeah, but send it to whom? Larry?”

  “Yes. It’ll get to the right person.” Tim was growing impatient. He stood. “I should get to the bar. Come on. You can drop the manuscript at UPS on the way.”

  “You’re serious about this buddy system?” Serious seemed to be the word of the day.

  At the Offbeat, Rannie made herself useful. She swabbed down the hexagonal tiled floor, laid out table settings, and corrected a misspelling on the chalkboard, which had advertised “dally specials.”

  Tim treated her to an early lunch—a decent chopped salad with chicken and a Diet Coke that he hosed up at the bar. That was where they ate. Although badly scarred, the bar was made of mahogany, had a brass foot rail, and faced an enormous gilt-framed mirror. Rannie caught their reflection in it; they looked buddy-buddy without giving off that “couples” vibe, not like Bibi and her art restorer guy.

  Afterward while Tim caught up with paperwork, Rannie took some orders to help out the sole waiter, a retired cop whose customers had to endure a lot of corny banter. She could spot cops now, guys in windbreakers and khakis who, an hour from now, would be in uniform at the precinct two blocks away. Were any of them Tim’s sources? The only way to find out would be to try some tough-waitressy banter of her own. . . . “So, big fella, got anything to spill on the Ret Sullivan case? That poor dame sure caught a raw deal.”

  By two forty-five the place was empty again; Rannie had pocketed almost thirty-five dollars. Cops were generous tippers. By three, Tim’s car, almost as if it were holding its breath, squeezed into a tiny space within twenty feet of the Dolores Court.

  Rannie shook her head. “You can wipe that self-satisfied smile off; the title is yours for keeps. Grand Poobah of Parking.”

  Nate was home, en route from the kitchen to his room with a plate of microwavable mac and cheese. Rannie and Tim resumed their former places on the living room sofa, and Rannie began tackling the Sunday crossword while Tim, legs stretched out on the coffee table, one sweat-socked foot rubbing against the other, skimmed the copy of the Sunday Daily News that he’d brought from the bar.

  “Help me out here,” Rannie asked. “The clue is ‘Native New Englander?’ There’s a question mark, which means the answer’s got a little spin, a pun or something. . . . Like it could be the name of a Native American tribe. It’s long. Nine letters.”

  Rannie glanced up and realized Tim hadn’t been listening to her. His eyes were fastened on the Scrabble tiles.

  “What?”

  “I don’t even know what made me look again.” He leaned over and nudged the R and G tiles closer to each other.

  “Oh!” She clutched his arm, which sent all the tiles scattering. It didn’t matter. She’d seen the same thing he had.

  FORGERY ANTIOCH

  “A forged will? Maybe Charlotte Cummings’s will?” Tim said.

  Rannie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” The photocopied manuscript for Portrait of a Lady still lay stacked on the console behind the sofa. Rannie reached for it and read aloud the complete acknowledgment. “ ‘For Gery Antioch. I have come to appreciate how artful you are.’ I think Ret chose the word ‘artful’ very purposefully. I think she was referring to an art forgery.”

  It had to involve the Cummings collection. Rannie decided to rule out the famous altarpiece. Ret’s clue was Forgery Antioch. Even if Antioch turned out to be yet another scrambled word, Rannie felt sure it would bear no connection to the altarpiece. Why would Ret keep such major art world news a secret, buried in a cryptic book acknowledgment? She would have gone public as soon as her agent had secured a whopper of a deal—The Counterfeit Masterpiece—with Simon & Schuster. Yet not once had Ellen hinted about any other book from Ret.

  “What’s going on in that twisted mind of yours?”

  “Shhh. I’m thinking.” No, it was more reasonable that the forgery involved one of Silas’s lesser paintings. The one purchased from the convent? Acknowledging the crime within a book acknowledgment seemed like a sadistic wink, an in-joke that only Ret and the forger would understand.

  “Is there a St. Antioch?” she asked Tim.

  “Not that I ever heard of.”

  “I’m calling the convent,” Rannie said. The 914 Westchester number was long erased from her phone log, so she suffered through the prompts from the digitized voice and then punched in the numbers. But her hand had started trembling so badly, she misdialed twice. On the third try, she got through, only to hear another recorded voice saying that because Sunday was a day of prayer and silence for the sisters, to please call back on Monday.

  “What about your mother? Might she know?”

  According to Tim, Mama Butler was a font of religious trivia, crushing all competition in the annual Catholic Jeopardy Tournament held at her parish church.

  Tim didn’t answer. His own cell had started moaning. “Hey! How are you, man?” he said, nodding, and then a sudden clap to his forehead. “Good you called . . . No, it’s fine. I’m there.” He stood. “Rannie, I promised I’d lead a three thirty meeting down in the Village. I gotta go.”

  “Now? Right when we have a lead!” Still, abiding by the buddy system, she tossed the magazine and got up.

  “No. You can’t come. It’s a closed meeting, strictly for us alkies.”

  “Swell. That means I stay locked in your car till the meeting’s over?”

  “No. You can stay here. But think of it like house arrest, Rannie. I mean it.” He checked his watch. “I should be back no later than six. I’ll take you and Nate for Chinese.” Tim got his parka. At the front door, he turned. “Promise to stay put?”

  Rannie crossed her heart.

  First order of business: Google “St. Antioch.” She didn’t remember seeing a St. Antioch painting in the Cummings mansion, but that didn’t mean one didn’t exist. The search results showed numerous sites for a St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred at the Colosseum in Rome by hungry leopards whose favorite dish was Early Christian Tartare. Ignatius’s end met the required yuck factor common to all the paintings Silas owned. Rannie searched Google Images for paintings of Ignatius of Antioch. None belonged to Silas Cummings.

  Bummer.

  The setback necessitated the consumption of a perfect PB&J, and while confirming to herself yet again that Planet Earth offered no finer source of nourishment, Rannie considered whether she might be coming at the question of FORGERY ANTIOCH from the wrong starting point. What she needed was a checklist of all the paintings that Silas owned.

  Back online, Rannie located a catalog of the Cummings collection, publication date 1976. By Rannie’s calculation, the year postdated the visit from the Cummingses to the Sisters of Mercy. Whatever painting Silas had purchased from the nuns should be listed in the catalog.

  A short preface written by a Met Museum curator in Northern Late Renaissance Art waxed eloquent on what Rannie already knew: the gem in the collection was the Crucifixion altarpiece by the Master of the Agony. Upon the death of Charlotte Cummings, it would become part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum, as would the rest of Silas’s paintings, everything to be exhibited together in one gallery.

  Rannie skipped past more stuff on the altarpiece and began scrolling
more slowly through small-sized reproductions of martyred saints until—glory be!—she found her.

  St. Margaret of Antioch. Ret had been born Kathleen Margaret Sullivan. The painting depicted a young girl in the clutches of not one but two Roman soldiers. Rannie recognized it. The St. Margaret painting had been partially visible in one of the photographs Larry had taken of the hearth, the dupes of which were in Grieg’s possession now. Ret had seen the photo too.

  The accompanying text explained that Margaret, an early convert to Christianity, had hailed from Antioch—present-day Turkey—and had been “grotesquely tortured.” In addition to being strangled, she’d been plunged in boiling oil, beaten with clubs, and raked from head to toe with red-hot iron combs. Rannie enlarged the image. One of the soldiers had a club in hand while the second soldier had Margaret’s head wrenched back by the hair, a great fistful of it in each of his hands.

  The image of Ret’s corpse, two hanks of hair tied to rungs on the bedstead, would stay with Rannie for the rest of her life. Now it made gruesome sense, sort of. But why bother replicating a martyrdom, as if Ret’s murder was a copycat crime, only a millennium later?

  Rannie minimized the reproduction and read that Silas Cummings had purchased the painting of St. Margaret of Antioch in 1973 from the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pound Ridge, New York.

  Yes! Yes! Yes! A match. No doubt St. Margaret was little Kathleen Margaret’s name saint. This was the painting that had fascinated a morbid little orphaned girl. Rannie stared at the computer screen, stunned by this eureka moment. Had Ret tried to buy the painting? Was this the “important piece of art” she boasted about owning but kept hidden in her bedroom? If Ret had tried to purchase the painting, it seemed reasonable that she might contact Bibi Gaines.

  The big stumbling block, of course, was Silas’s will, which forbade the sale of any paintings. Rannie imagined a conversation between Ret and Bibi going something like this:

  Ret: For very personal reasons, I want to buy the St. Margaret of Antioch painting.

  Bibi: I’d love to help you out. The museum doesn’t even want it but I’m afraid my hands are tied.