Dead Man's Mistress

by David Housewright

  I said, “No, kidding,” as if I was impressed and I might have been, too, if I had known who the hell Eastman Johnson was. At the same time, I nearly asked if she sold because of the quality of her work or because she was That Wykoff Woman, yet managed to catch the question between my teeth before it slipped off my tongue.

  “How much would your paintings be worth?” I asked.

  “Between five and ten thousand dollars.”

  “Each?”

  “For the three.”

  “That gives it felony weight, anyway.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “According to the law, the difference between a felony and an infraction or a misdemeanor is the value of what is stolen. If your paintings were worth only five hundred dollars…”

  “I’ve sold my work for as little as that and was happy to get it.”

  “Still, it would be hard to believe that you would contact a private investigator, even an unlicensed one like me, to help recover them. A theft crime, though, where the value is over a grand—that’s a different story. It means as much as twenty-four months in prison for a first-time offender. It gives us leverage. I might even be able to get some help from the local cops…”

  “No police.”

  “Off the books, of course.”

  “The police would do that? Help even if I didn’t register a complaint?”

  “Sometimes, if it’s not too much work.”

  “Yes, but—you would lie to the police?”

  “It’s okay. They’re used to it.”

  Louise stared into her mug as if instead of coffee it contained tea leaves that might reveal something momentous. She spoke softly, “I need to get those paintings back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “I need you to make a list of everyone who’s been in this house in the past year. Family, friends, students, plumbers, electricians, Girl Scouts selling cookies if they got past the front door. Everyone.”

  “All right.”

  “Tell me, who owns the white van parked outside?”

  “My neighbor across the street.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Her.”

  “Her. Does she know who you are?”

  “Of course. She works part-time in a gallery downtown that sells some of my work.”

  “Has she been in your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re friends then?”

  “Acquaintances.”

  “Put her on the list.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “She owns an unmarked white van.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You have to start somewhere.”

  TWO

  I told Louise that I needed to drive home, but that I would pack a bag and return the next day and we’d go over her list. She said okay. While heading back down I-35 between Duluth and Hinckley, I looked for a plaque or a sign that would indicate where Randolph McInnis had died. Of course, there wasn’t one.

  My Mustang had all the latest electronics so it was a simple matter to use the onboard communications system to make a hands-free phone call.

  “Bonalay and Associates, attorneys at law,” a woman said.

  “Hi, Caroline. It’s McKenzie.”

  “Well, hello. We haven’t heard from you since—when was the last time you were arrested?”

  “You’re killing me, Caroline.” By the way she laughed apparently she thought that was funny—her killing me. “Is the boss in?”

  “She is. Just a moment, please.”

  A couple of moments later another woman said, “G. K. Bonalay,” which is the way my lawyer always answered her phone.

  “Hey, Gen.”

  “McKenzie, it’s good to hear from you. Are you in trouble?”

  “Why do you always assume that?”

  “Given the nature of our relationship…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I have a hypothetical question for you.”

  “You are in trouble.”

  “I’m not, Genevieve, c’mon. I’m asking for a friend.”

  “You realize, of course, that you’re protected by attorney-client privilege, right? Instead of hypotheticals, tell me exactly what you need to know and why.”

  I did.

  “Wow,” G. K. said. “Louise Wykoff. That is so cool.”

  “You think so?”

  “Has there ever been an art class taught in Minnesota that didn’t include Randolph McInnis and That Wykoff Woman? I have the book, McKenzie, the whopping big coffee table book that includes all the paintings and pictures. Tell me—does she still look like she did in the paintings?”

  “Pretty much. Her hair is the same color; her eyes are just as riveting. From what I could see she hasn’t gained an ounce of weight. ’Course, she was wearing clothes so…”

  “Very, very cool.”

  “So much for legal detachment.”

  “To answer your question, no. Wykoff won’t be arrested for theft. Not a chance. She wouldn’t have been arrested back when McInnis died, either. From what you’ve told me, there’s no physical evidence that proves McInnis gave Wykoff the paintings, that they were a gift. Yet, by the same token, there’s nothing to prove that he didn’t do exactly what she claimed, give them to her. Considering the circumstances and the length of their relationship it would be very easy to rule that Wykoff was telling the truth and very difficult to rule that she was lying. No cop would arrest her. No judge would allow it to stand.”

  “So, she gets to keep the paintings?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’d think that after all this time she would know her position.”

  “Not necessarily. Most people are pretty dumb when it comes to the law, aren’t they? They only know what they see on TV and that’s almost always wrong. On the other hand…”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is where the lawsuit comes in.”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “I’ve seen it many, many times. ‘I get to keep the china because Aunt Sue promised it to me.’ ‘That’s a lie. She promised it to me.’ ‘I get to keep the lake home because I’m the eldest.’ ‘There’s nothing in the will that says that.’ And so on and so forth. The higher the value of the object in question, the more contentious these things get.”

  “Who is most likely to win if Mary Ann McInnis sued?” I asked.

  “Whichever party has the most money to invest in the case.”

  “That would probably be Mary Ann.”

  “She could beat Wykoff into submission, wear her out, bankrupt her. Beyond that, though—you’ve heard the expression ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’?”

  “Sure.”

  “It doesn’t have any real standing in court; it doesn’t carry legal weight. However, it is generally held that it is much easier to hang on to something than it is to take it away. An obvious example—the car you’re driving is assumed to be yours unless someone can prove by a preponderance of evidence that it’s not. Also, most of these kinds of cases are about the money, probably ninety-nine percent I’d say. The fact that Wykoff hadn’t attempted to sell the paintings in all these years suggests that they hold greater value for her than just the monetary. That would also give her an edge with a judge.”

  “Good for her, then.”

  “Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “It works both ways. The person who now has possession of the paintings could say he bought them at a garage sale, discovered them in an attic, found them resting against a Dumpster along the side of the road. That they rightfully belong to him. My point is Wykoff would have to prove—in court, mind you—that the paintings actually belong to her, that whoever has them now broke into her house and stole them. Can she do that?”

  I gave it a long hard think before replying although the answer was obvious the moment G. K. asked the question.

 
“No,” I said. “She claimed no one knew she had the paintings and there was no sign of forced entry when she was robbed. She doesn’t even know when she was robbed.”

  “Which means if you do find the paintings and took steps to—shall we say, recover them? You could be the one charged with felony theft. We’re speaking hypothetically, though. Right? You would never knowingly break the law, would you, McKenzie?”

  I glanced down at my speedometer. I was currently doing eighty-three on a seventy-miles-per-hour stretch of freeway.

  “Never,” I said.

  * * *

  I once told Perrin Stewart that she was a babe. She laughed at me and said I was just being polite. I meant it, though. She was one of those curvy women who weighed about eighty pounds more than what the body mass index labeled “ideal.” Yet she carried herself so lightly and dressed so stylishly and spoke so smartly that meeting her convinced me that I had missed out by only dating women whose dress sizes (and sometimes IQs) were in single digits.

  We were walking the corridors of the City of Lakes Art Museum. The museum had been closed for nearly an hour and the only sound we heard was the clicking of Perrin’s heels on the marble floor. There was something magical about it. Not the clicking, the privacy.

  “This is my favorite time to be here,” Perrin said. “When I’m alone.” She reached out and brushed my hand yet did not take it. “Or with a good friend. It’s as if all this great art belongs to me, myself, and I.”

  “Since you’re the executive director of the joint, technically it does, doesn’t it? Belong to you and the trustees?”

  “Ha.”

  “Where does all this stuff come from, anyway?”

  “Some of it is on loan from collectors who want the work to be seen and not just gather dust in their basements. Some is the result of gifts or bequests from private collectors who are seeking financial and tax benefits. The rest we purchase outright, about half I’d say. Why? Do you want to make a contribution to our acquisition fund?”

  “I like to think of myself as a patron of the arts.”

  “Donate a half million dollars or more and I’ll make you a trustee.”

  “What do I get for fifty bucks?”

  “I’ll send you a CLAM button and a copy of our newsletter.”

  We took the stairs to the third floor. You’d think Perrin would have preferred the elevator, yet she didn’t. When we reached the top step I was the one who was out of breath, not her. We walked some more. I told her that I thought it might be too quiet.

  “Most people find it unnerving,” I said. “It’s like when you’re in the woods and the birds are singing and crickets are chirping and then they stop. It means there’s danger lurking somewhere. When it’s too quiet your mind begins to wonder if something’s going to happen. That’s why if you go to a grocery store, go to Cub Foods—they pipe in music. Something to think about.”

  Perrin stopped and gave me a hard look.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she asked.

  “Of course I am.”

  You are? my inner voice asked.

  We continued walking.

  “Although,” I said. “A little Duke Ellington, some Wynton Marsalis…”

  “You’re a philistine, McKenzie. Besides, music would drown out the voices.”

  “You hear voices?”

  “I do, especially when it’s quiet like this. Sometimes it’s like the paintings are speaking to me. Or perhaps the artist. I don’t know which.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually, I don’t hear voices so much as sound effects. I’ll stop in front of the Delacroix and I’ll hear the clatter of the crowd in the bazaar or I’ll stare at the Monet and the noise of the stormy sea crashing against the rocks becomes so real. We have a Rousseau—Autumn at St. Jean de Paris, Forest of Fontainebleau. Sometimes I can hear the birds singing in the trees. You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “I would never say that. Eccentric, maybe.”

  “That’s so much better.”

  “Some people say that I’m eccentric.”

  “No, they say you’re crazy.”

  We reached a section of the museum that was designated Contemporary American. There we found a room dedicated solely to the works of Randolph McInnis. It contained some of his earlier paintings, the postcards Louise Wykoff had called them, although a critic quoted on the placard claimed they were icons of American art. One in particular—Olson’s Barn—was hailed for its bleak realism “so distinct from the abstraction and avant-gardism of the time.”

  “He had a very frugal, bare-bones style,” Perrin said. “Muted colors. Precise brushstrokes.”

  There were two paintings that were part of the Scenes from the Inland Sea series that did not feature Louise, both donated to the museum by Mary Ann McInnis according to another placard. I asked about them.

  “We were all shocked when she made the donation after our second year,” Perrin said. “Mary Ann said it was essential that a Minnesota art museum feature Minnesota’s greatest artist. Who were we to argue? Since then our curatorial staff has had only one standing directive—all the McInnis you can lay your hands on. Now we have nine including”—she gestured at the two paintings on the far wall, both of them featuring That Wykoff Woman.

  “I was told that Mary Ann sold the entire collection in the 1980s,” I said.

  “Most of the collection, yes, including all of the drawings and paintings of Louise. She kept some pieces for herself, though, and gave a few away to family and friends. These…” She gestured at the Wykoffs again. “These we acquired from various collectors over the years. The man Mary Ann had originally sold the collection to—what was his name? A big-time real estate investor. They say he suffered some financial setbacks a short time after he bought the suite because of Black Monday in October of 1987. Stock markets all around the world collapsed. The Dow Jones lost something like twenty-five percent of its value overnight. Apparently—why can’t I remember his name? Apparently, he began selling off the paintings a few at a time after that. Who knows? Maybe he had intended to do it all along. Buy low and sell high, isn’t that what they say? I need to look him up when I get back to the office.”

  I examined all four walls of the exhibit space and couldn’t find it so I asked, “Don’t you also have a painting by Louise Wykoff?”

  Perrin crooked a finger and led me out of the exhibit. She pointed at a canvas of brightly dressed Native American women on the wall next to the entrance with the title, Daughters of the Ojibwa.

  “Not in the same room?” I said.

  “Mary Ann McInnis wouldn’t care for it and there’s no way I’m going to piss her off.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Tell me, Perrin, did Louise tell you what she wants from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d love to get my hands on those paintings and put them on exhibit. Three missing McInnis canvases recovered after thirty-five years, my God that would be huge. The attention this museum would get. Locally. Nationally. Internationally. The boost in fund-raising. It would be wonderful.”

  “Except Louise wants to keep them all to herself. She doesn’t want the world to know that the paintings even exist.”

  “I’m sure word would leak out somehow and when it does having Louise donate them to City of Lakes or even just loaning them to us might dissuade Mary Ann from suing her ass off.”

  “You have it all figured out then.”

  “No. Well, I didn’t at first. At first—Louise called yesterday. She was very upset. We had met at a gallery in Duluth a few years ago and kept in touch. I like her very much. I like that she never tried to capitalize on her relationship with Randolph McInnis. She told me what had happened and I immediately thought of you, my knight in shining armor. Afterward, I thought—McKenzie, those paintings need to be seen. If not here then somewhere else. I don’t know what Louise was thinking keeping them hidden all these years. This is some of the greatest
art ever produced by an American. It doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to—okay, okay. You don’t need to hear my fund-raising speech.”

  “Still…”

  “Yeah.”

  We drifted back into the exhibit hall, surrounding ourselves with the work of Randolph McInnis.

  “You wouldn’t be the one to leak that news, would you?” I asked. “Drop a dime to Mary Ann McInnis?”

  “Drop a dime?”

  “Make a call.”

  “I won’t lie, McKenzie. I’d be awfully tempted, especially if it meant I would get the paintings. I mean the museum. You know what I mean.”

  “You still owe me a favor,” I said. “From before.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Promise you won’t say a word to anyone about the paintings without talking to me first.”

  Perrin didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at me while she wrestled with my request. It was because she hesitated so long that I believed her when she said, “I promise.”

  “It’s all moot, anyway,” I said. “I haven’t found the paintings. I don’t even know where to start looking for them.”

  “I have a great deal of faith in you. After what you did last time…”

  “I nearly got killed last time, remember?”

  Perrin’s eyes clouded over for as moment and she nodded. I gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  If I remember correctly, she was more concerned about the Jade Lily than your health and well-being, my inner voice said. ’Course, at the time, she thought you might be the one trying to steal it.

  “All’s well that ends well,” I said.

  “I have bourbon in my office.”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you, sweetie.”

  “Sweetie you call me and we haven’t even started drinking yet.”

  “Tell me something. Just out of curiosity—do you hear anything when you look at Scenes from an Inland Sea?”

  “Not when it’s the Wykoff woman, no. I do when I study the other paintings, the ones featuring the Apostle Islands and the lighthouse.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “Wind. A low, mournful wind. I never met the man, of course, but if you study his work like I have, you have to conclude that despite his fame and fortune, Randolph McInnis was a dark and moody fellow, prone to melancholy.”