The Case of the Purloined Painting

by Carl Brookins

  “Door to the basement apartment,” Fran Murchison supplied.

  The old man sighed gustily and stared at me from under thick bushy white eyebrows. “If you hadn’t started poking around, none of this would have happened.”

  “None of what?”

  “I’ve always known my boy was a little high strung. He just went out of control here.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Look, I’m trying to return the painting. Eventually it’ll get back to the people it belongs to. Isn’t that enough? God damn it!” Murchison slammed his hand onto the counter making a sharp loud crack. I flinched.

  I stared at him. “Do you know who killed Mr. Gottlieb? And who’s trying to take me out? It’s your son, isn’t it? We better call the cops.”

  “Hell you say! I’m going around the back to the outside door,” said Murchison. “I’ll get him out of there if I have to drag him.” He barely glanced at me as he went by, hurrying through the house toward the front door.

  “His relationship with Clem was always mixed. Sometimes he was protective, others he seemed to want to disown him,” Fran muttered. “Now he’s afraid what may have happened, of what Clem may have done.”

  “Have you talked with your husband since you called me?” She shook her head and swallowed a healthy portion of whatever she had in the glass.

  “It was Clem who shot at me in the diner, wasn’t it.”

  She shrugged. “Call the police if you think that.” It wasn’t an admission but I could see the truth of it in her face. Fran took another drink and looked me in the eyes. “Wait, please. Let Clem’s father try to talk to him.”

  “You said he has a phone?” Getting through to her was becoming more and more difficult.

  “Want some coffee?” her words were becoming a little sloppy.

  “I want to call your husband.” She reached behind her and brought out a small bright red cell phone, tapped in a number and handed it to me. “Just press send,” she muttered. I did that.

  The phone rang twice in my ear and then connected. “What?”

  “Mr. Murchison. It’s the detective, Sean Sean. I’m here at the house. Upstairs. Don’t you think it’s time we talked?” in the background I heard a faint banging. The old man must be hammering on the outside door.

  Murchison didn’t say anything, but he didn’t hang up either.

  “Mr. Murchison? Clem? Why don’t you come up and unlock the door? We really should talk. Things have a way of working out, don’t you agree?” I wasn’t sure what I was saying, or what things were going to work out, but I knew if Clem Murchison would talk to me, we might resolve the situation.

  In the background there was the sound of glass breaking, a sharp rise in the volume of shouting. What I heard was no. No. And then the sounds of gunfire from two different weapons slammed through the phone and from the basement. I dropped the instrument, ran to the door off the kitchen and slammed my foot against the panel beside the knob. The door flew open and I pushed in, almost falling down the stairs to the basement. I went down two steps at a time, the acrid smell of burned gunpowder filling my nose. There was another shot.

  I dropped to my knees. The stairs went straight down to a cement block wall so I had to make a right turn to see the whole basement. When I turned, I crouched lower, then dropped flat to the cold floor and rolled into the basement. Looking up past a counter, I saw old man Murchison slumped against the outside door frame. He was holding a snub-nosed revolver and there were two large spots of bright spreading blood on his white-shirted chest.

  My inclination was to jump to his aid but where was his son? A harsh coughing-gurgle reached my ears from close above my head. Then there was a scraping sound and a shiny double-barreled shotgun slid off the counter overhead and fell to the floor. I stood up. Directly in front of me, half sitting on a stool and bent over was Clem Murchison. The shotgun had obviously fallen from his hands. I reached to his carotid artery. He had no pulse.

  “Mrs. Murchison,” I hollered up the stairs. “Call 911 right now.” There was no response. I stepped around the son and went to the old man. Again the carotid artery and again, no pulse. The holes torn by the shotgun slugs had stopped oozing blood. Two Murchisons, father and son, both dead. Right then, I felt responsible.

  I stared at the scene until I had the details burned into my brain. Murder suicide? I’d narrate a set of notes when I got back to the office sometime.

  Then I went upstairs to a nearly drunk widow. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “Your husband and father-in-law are both dead down there. It looks like they shot each other.” I left her there at the kitchen counter, clutching a glass now mostly empty of the clear liquid she’d been drinking. Through the muffling snowfall outside I could hear approaching sirens. Mrs. Murchison had apparently had the wit to call for help. I glanced into her office as I went toward the front door. On her desk among files and scattered papers, directly under the light from a banker’s green-shaded lamp, was a small frayed book. It lay face-down and appeared to have had some hard handling. I took out a pen and flipped the book over. Embossed on the cover was the word “Beschlaghmen.” It was identical to the word on the empty slipcase Aaron and I had found in his granduncle’s attic. I slipped the book under my belt at my back and shrugged into my coat. Then I went to the door and opened it to the first responders.

  Chapter 39

  It was early February and colder than the proverbial. I was standing with my friend in a secure location at the Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport. From floor to ceiling in front of us were rows of high definition television screens. They were fed by cameras located throughout the building. This room was not part of the public terminal.

  We watched as passengers and workers flowed back and forth from inside the secured section of the terminal.

  “There,” said my friend who’d pulled a number of strings to get me clearance to this room. He pointed at one screen high up near the ceiling. A tall slender man walking deliberately appeared from the direction of the terminal security wall operated by TSA. He headed down the concourse toward the International Terminal where passengers destined for overseas locations would gather to be screened again by immigration authorities. He carried a top coat and a small travel case slung over one shoulder. Just before he left the camera view, Robert Gehrz turned and stared upward, as if he’d become aware of our scrutiny. When he stopped, a woman walking behind him seemed to stumble against him. Gehrz put out a hand and took her elbow. She turned her head and said something. So, Robert Gehrz had finally found the woman he’d told me he’d lost for a time, Ann/Anne/Tiffany Market.

  I watched and wondered which of them had been responsible for the death of the Nazi criminals who murdered Manfred Gottlieb. Mr. Gottlieb had endured the loss of his home, his family, and incarceration in a prison camp, only to come to America and find death on a cold wintry night on a frozen river in Minnesota.

  Days later, I would apologize to Aaron Gottlieb that I was unable to identify and bring to justice the murderers of his great uncle but that I was sure they had been appropriately dealt with. When I placed in his hands the ledger that Manfred had brought to Minnesota, the ledger that documented the theft of the Neumann painting and so much more thievery, and had led to the deaths of five people, he seemed mildly nonplussed. He thanked me for my services and went out of my office to go back to his family and his safe life in Chicago.

  I put on my coat, shut off the lights and went home through snowy streets to my love.

 

 

 
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