by Stuart Woods
“The man had an orderly mind,” Herbie said, noting each on his pad.
“It looks to me as though Eduardo was preparing to die,” Stone said. He took the last envelope from the shelf. “This is addressed to me,” he said. He sat down at Eduardo’s desk, broke the red wax seal, and removed some sheets of paper. “There’s a letter,” Stone said. He read it aloud.
My Dear Stone,
My life is drawing to an end. I can feel it coming, and this letter is to appoint you as the attorney for my estate, at your firm’s usual fees, and to appoint you as co-executor with my daughter, Anna Maria. Also attached is a letter to Anna Maria, informing her of my decision. You may call upon other members of your firm or outside companies to assist you in the work. Attached to this letter is a list of the other documents in red envelopes in the safe. The attached financial statement is an accurate list of all my holdings, of every kind. I know you will deal with my estate and my heirs impartially, according to the instructions in my will.
I wish to express to you my gratitude for your friendship over the years. Following your life and career helped make my later life more interesting and entertaining, and I always found your company to be most enjoyable.
With affection,
Eduardo Bianchi
Stone couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Shall I ask Pietro to collect the garbage bags?” Herbie asked.
Stone nodded, and Herbie left the room, giving him time to compose himself. Stone took some deep breaths and reflected on the many lunches he had enjoyed with Eduardo, how the man had offered the chapel in his house for Stone’s marriage to Arrington, and arranged for the mayor of New York to perform the ceremony, not to mention the reception that followed.
Herbie returned. “There were only three bags of trash. I emptied them all and found nothing of any import.”
“Let’s continue cataloging the contents of the safe,” Stone said.
They worked through the day, stopping only for the sandwiches Pietro thoughtfully brought to the study.
“That’s everything in the safe,” Stone said, returning the last item to its place.
“Shall we read the will?” Herbie asked.
“I think I will reserve that for dinner tonight,” Stone said. “His family will all be there, except for Dolce.” He made a mental note to discuss her condition with Mary Ann when he saw her. He took the will and the codicils, put them into his briefcase, and snapped it shut. Pietro appeared as if summoned.
“We’re done for the day, Pietro,” Stone said, handing him his keys to the house. “I’ve removed the key to the study, and I’ll lock up. Tomorrow morning several people will arrive to catalog everything in the house. Please do whatever you can to make their work easier, and, perhaps give them some lunch. It may take them a week or two. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Of course, Mr. Barrington,” Pietro said, then left.
Stone closed the safe and spun the wheel, then picked up his briefcase and locked the side door to the study. He stepped into the hall and locked that door, too. As he turned to leave he stopped; six men in black suits were carrying a coffin down the stairs. He and Herbie followed them outside and waited until they had put the coffin into a hearse and driven away.
Fred had returned for them and drove them back to the city.
• • •
Early that evening everyone gathered: Peter and Hattie, Ben and Tessa, Dino and Viv. Fred made drinks for everyone.
“How did it go today?” Dino asked.
“Very well. Eduardo saw it coming—he had put his affairs into perfect order. By the way, I invited Mary Ann to dinner, but I’m not sure she’s coming.”
“Yeah, well, okay,” Dino said. “I’ll prepare Viv, just in case.”
Then Fred showed in Mary Ann, and it was Stone’s job to introduce her to Vivian Bacchetti. That went more smoothly than he could have hoped. They were called to dinner.
After they had dined, Stone put his briefcase on the dining table and opened it. He handed Mary Ann the envelope addressed to her and waited for her to read it. She nodded.
“I thought this might be a good time to read the will,” Stone said, “since everyone concerned is here.” He broke the seal on the envelope and read the will, which was mercifully brief.
Eduardo had left his house and most of its contents to a foundation already set up, with the proviso that any of his descendants and their families could live there, paying a modest rent. He bequeathed each of his descendants twelve pieces of art from his collection: they would draw lots for the order of choosing. The rest he left to several museums.
His liquid assets, after taxes and certain bequests in codicils, would be divided equally among his two daughters and his grandson, this in addition to trusts already set up for them and funded. Then came the codicils: he left generous sums to Pietro and his secretary, Angelina, and to his household staff. To Stone’s surprise, another codicil left the Modigliani portrait to Stone and the two similar paintings, the Picasso and the Braque, to Herbie Fisher. The codicil was signed and witnessed on the afternoon of the day they had lunched there.
“And that’s it,” Stone said. He raised his glass. “I give you a toast: the memory of Eduardo Bianchi, who none of us who knew him will ever forget.”
Everyone drank, then they chatted for a while and took their leave.
Stone saw Mary Ann to the door, where her car awaited.
“I’m relieved to have you as co-executor,” she said. “I worried about the responsibility.”
“I’m very happy to help,” Stone said.
“And thank you for tonight. You’ve relieved some of the family tension, I think.”
And then she was gone, and Stone went to bed. He had a long day ahead the following day. But he had forgotten to ask her about Dolce.
Dolce Bianchi used a medium brush to fill in the colors of the sketch she had drawn on the canvas. She was working in a former storeroom of the convent that she had been given as a studio when she had begun to paint again, after neglecting art for a long time. The light was good, and she had accumulated a collection of her canvases, some of which were hung in the dining hall. There was a rap on wood, and Dolce turned to find a novitiate standing in the open doorway.
“The mother superior would like to see you,” the young woman said. She was eighteen or nineteen and quite beautiful. Dolce resolved to paint her portrait.
“Thank you,” Dolce said, and left her brush to soak. She wiped her hands on a cloth, brushed her hair, and left the studio, walking through the convent’s garden to the small administrative wing. The secretary at work outside the office looked up and nodded for her to go in.
The mother superior, a woman in her early sixties, six feet tall and painfully thin, was working at her computer when Dolce entered. She waved Dolce to a seat without taking her eyes from the screen, then tapped in a few more words, closed the document, and turned to face Dolce.
Her mien was different today from her usual brisk but pleasant self; she seemed sad. “Dolce,” she said. “My dear, I have just received an e-mail from your sister, Anna Maria, which tells me that yesterday, your father had a stroke and passed to God peacefully a few hours later.”
Dolce felt a pang in her chest that she would not have expected in the circumstances. She was unable to speak.
“Your father was ninety-four years old,” the mother superior said. “He lived a long and abundantly fruitful life and was true to himself and his God.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Dolce managed to say.
“Your father and I have had a considerable correspondence since you came to be with us. He was very pleased to hear of your recovery from your illness and hoped he might see you again.”
Dolce managed a wry smile. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. She had her own collection of letters from her father, which h
ad always been warm and affectionate.
“I believe the time has come for you to leave us,” the mother superior said. “I believe you to be in every way fit to rejoin the outside world and to make your way there.”
Dolce smiled. “I think you are right,” she said.
“What do you think you will do?”
“I have given that a great deal of thought,” Dolce replied. “I think I will devote myself to my painting.”
“You have a remarkable gift, and I am glad to hear you wish to make a career of it.” The mother superior rose from her chair and walked into a smaller room, then returned, carrying a suitcase and a purse. “These are the things you had when you came to us,” she said, setting them beside Dolce’s chair. She then went back into the room and returned with a thick envelope. “Your father sent ten thousand euros, in preparation for this day,” she said, handing it to her. “He wanted you to know that your bank and investment accounts remain open, your credit cards, as well, and your apartment in New York has been kept ready for your return, if you wish it. Your sister said in her e-mail that there is to be a high mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for your father next week. Where do you think you will go?”
“I will take a little while to re-accustom myself to the outside world,” Dolce said. “Then decide.”
“As you wish, my dear.” She came around the desk and embraced Dolce.
“Thank you for your many kindnesses, Mother,” Dolce said, then she picked up her case and her purse and left the room.
She stopped in the sun-filled garden and sat on a bench for a few minutes, letting her heart return to its normal beat, then she took a cell phone from her apron pocket and called American Express Centurion Travel.
A few hours later, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes met Dolce at the front gate and the driver put her case into the trunk while she settled into the rear seat. “Take me to the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea,” she said.
After an hour-long drive along the coast, the car arrived at the old castle, now one of Palermo’s premier hotels. Her travel agent had arranged everything: she checked into a spacious and beautiful suite and looked at her spa appointments. She was hungry, and there was time for lunch.
She was given a table on the terrace, overlooking the marina and the sea beyond. She had pasta with seafood and half a bottle of wine and reflected on her time at the convent.
She had been in nearly a catatonic state when she arrived, and it took a week of tender care to revive her. During her second week there a handsome Irishman arrived and introduced himself as Frank Donovan, a priest and a psychiatrist, who had been sent to Palermo for several months to treat a bishop who had been discovered to have a woman and two children in a village outside the city, near the convent. He would be a daily visitor for her first three months, and it took only a short time for Dolce to corrupt him. To her surprise, she found him to be no virgin, and a skillful and affectionate lover. Most of her two-hour sessions with him were, thereafter, conducted in bed.
The mother superior caught on before long, and Father Frank disappeared from her life. He paid one final visit, supervised, and told her that his patient, the bishop, had recovered and that he, himself, was being sent to the Vatican to become private secretary to a highly placed cardinal, who was in charge of the Vatican Bank.
When Father Frank said goodbye, he pressed the cell phone into her hand, along with a note with a phone number, so they had stayed in touch.
Now, over her espresso, Dolce called him. “I’m out,” she said.
“Wonderful! Come to Rome.”
“My father has died, and I must go to New York. Can you come there?”
“Not for at least a week,” he said. “It will take me that long to invent some business there.”
She gave him her address on the Upper East Side. “Bring civilian clothes,” she said.
He laughed. “I doubt if I will need much in the way of clothing.”
“You are quite right, but we will need to leave the apartment sometimes.” She said goodbye and headed for the spa.
Four days later, refreshed and carrying a new wardrobe in new luggage, Dolce arrived at JFK Airport in New York and was driven to her Park Avenue apartment. The doorman greeted her warmly and took her luggage upstairs.
Dolce settled back into her spacious apartment and began to plot her return.
Stone and Herbie arrived at the Bianchi house to find a large team of catalogers and art experts swarming over the place, with the exception of Eduardo’s study, which Stone had left locked. He greeted the team, then unlocked the study door and let himself and Herbie in, then locked it behind him.
“What do you want to do today?” Herbie asked.
“I want to search this room thoroughly for hidden compartments.”
“Why do you think there are hidden compartments?”
“Because Mary Ann was searching the desk for one when we found her here. Maybe she knows something we don’t. Let’s start with the desk.”
They had been at work for, perhaps, ten minutes when Herbie found the compartment in the desk, simply by pressing on a panel in the kneehole that sprang open. “It’s not so hard to find hidden compartments when you know they’re there somewhere,” he said.
“What’s inside it?” Stone asked.
Herbie swept the compartment with his hand. “Nothing,” he said.
The two of them spent the remainder of the morning searching every nook of the study, then gave up and had the lunch Pietro had brought them.
“What did you think Eduardo might have been hiding?” Herbie asked.
“Evidence of holdings not mentioned in his will or financial statement. Eduardo had the house, the art, and investment accounts worth ninety million dollars managed by Mary Ann, nothing else.”
“Ninety million is a pretty nice estate.”
“It wasn’t just about the money for Eduardo. He wanted power and influence, more than ninety million would buy.”
“And you think Mary Ann knows about these holdings?”
“Somebody had to know—she’s the logical guess.” Stone slapped his forehead. “I forgot to tell you the news.”
“What news?”
“You remember when Eduardo gave us the tour the other day, and you admired what you thought were two Picassos?”
“But one was a Braque? Sure, I remember.”
“That afternoon, before his stroke, Eduardo wrote a codicil to his will that left you those two pictures.”
Herbie burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope, and the estate will pay the taxes. He left me the Modigliani portrait.”
“Well, congratulations to us, I guess,” Herbie said.
There was a rap on the study door.
“Come in!” Stone shouted. A woman wearing an artist’s smock and carrying a clipboard came into the room. “Excuse me, Mr. Barrington, Mr. Fisher,” she said, “but we’ve discovered something you should know about. Would you come with me, please?”
Stone and Herbie followed the woman into the large dining room. There were four blank spaces where pictures had hung, and the four were out of their frames and spread out on a green baize cloth over the dining table: a Matisse, a Toulouse-Lautrec, and two Blue Period Picassos.
“These four paintings are fakes,” the woman said.
Stone stepped forward and looked more closely. “Impossible. I know these pictures, they’ve been in the Bianchi collection for years.”
“Nevertheless,” she said. “They are brilliant fakes, but fakes all the same. Look at this.” She turned over the Toulouse-Lautrec, pointed to a place on the canvas frame, and handed Stone a magnifying glass. “Have a look.”
Stone looked at the spot. “I don’t see anything but the grain of the wood,” he said.
“Look more closely. I’ll point it out for you.” Sh
e held a pencil point at the spot.
Stone looked again. “Oh, I see it, it’s a check mark. How does that make it a fake?”
“It is a check mark, from a dye, tapped into the frame’s wood. It is the trademark of an art forger named Charles Magnussen.”
“Why would a man go to all the trouble to forge a painting, then put a trademark on it?”
“Pride, I suppose. Magnussen died last year, but on his deathbed he told the dealer who sold his original works about the trademark. The Metropolitan discovered two Renoirs about a month ago that bore the check marks.”
“First of all,” Stone said, “you are bound by your contract to keep this information confidential.
“Second, I want you to examine every painting and drawing in this house for the presence of that trademark and any other signs that any of the works might be forged.”
“As you wish. I’ll put my people to work on it.”
“And, if you would, please examine that Modigliani and the Picasso and the Braque below it.” He pointed. “Do those first.”
Stone led Herbie back into the study.
“I don’t understand,” Herbie said, “Eduardo willed his collection and the house to this foundation mentioned in the will, so there would be no taxes to pay on the art. Do you think Eduardo was bilked?”
“Possibly,” Stone said. “On the other hand, maybe he had the paintings copied and sold the originals—although I think that is extremely unlikely.”
An hour later, the woman came into the study again. “We’ve carefully examined the three paintings, and it is our conviction that they are all genuine.”
“Thank you,” Stone said. “Please continue with your work.”
“Whew!” Herbie said when she had gone.
Stone had to laugh.
By the end of the day Stone and Herbie had finished examining every object, cupboard, drawer, and book in Eduardo’s study and had found nothing of import. The art expert walked through the open door.
