Dead Man's Mistress

by David Housewright

  “You were lucky,” I told my reflection.

  My reflection didn’t argue with me.

  I double-checked the locks on the doors, closed the blinds, turned off the lights, and lay down on the bed without removing my clothes. I pressed an ice pack against my face, but not against my stomach. It was about that time of night when I should be calling Nina. I decided against it, though.

  I’ll make up some story in the morning, I told myself.

  I closed my eyes. Sleep began pulling at me almost immediately.

  My cell phone rang.

  My eyes popped open.

  “All right, Nina, all right.” I reached for the cell and swiped right. “This is McKenzie.”

  “McKenzie, we need to talk.”

  It was a woman’s voice but not Nina’s.

  “Who’s calling, please?” I asked.

  “I’d like to see you as soon as possible.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Oh. That’s right. We’ve never been introduced. I’m Mary Ann McInnis.”

  TWELVE

  Kenwood was originally developed when millionaires still believed it was acceptable to erect their mansions next door to each other instead of several football fields apart. The neighborhood was more or less nestled between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles and designed, according to the Minneapolis government website, for “discriminating residents,” which meant that there was no poverty whatsoever within its borders unless you considered a six-figure income living on the edge.

  The mansion I wanted was more than a hundred years old and had a nice view of the Cedar Lake East Beach. I parked on the street, climbed the concrete steps to a portico, and knocked on the door. The door was pulled open by a woman all of five feet tall with long gray hair worn in a ponytail and wearing a sweatshirt that swore her allegiance to the Minnesota Lynx women’s basketball team.

  “You can’t use the doorbell?” she said. “You need to knock? Here.”

  She stepped onto the porch and pressed the button on the door frame. Inside I heard four bells chime the melody known as the Westminster Quarters. It was the same tune you hear in London when the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster where Big Ben hangs marks the hour. The music was so deep and sonorous that you might have thought it was the real thing.

  “That is so cool,” I said.

  “Go ’head. You know you want to.”

  I pressed the button and listened to the chimes again.

  “I never get tired of that,” she said. “Are you McKenzie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am. Ma’am is an archaic term coined by men to disparage older women.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Neither did I until my granddaughter explained it to me. Personally I think she’s full of hooey. The word doesn’t seem to bother the Queen of England, does it?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I’m Mary Ann McInnis. Shake my hand.”

  I did.

  “Are we going to be friends, McKenzie?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Then you can call me M. A. M-A, not to be confused with ‘Ma.’ Are you a drinking man, McKenzie?”

  “Yes, M. A.”

  “Thank God. Come inside.”

  I did. Directly in front of me was a grand staircase reminiscent of the one Clark Gable carried Vivien Leigh up in Gone with the Wind. At the top of the stairs was a photograph of the actor Nastassja Kinski during her sex-symbol days. She was very young and very nude and wrapped in a boa constrictor.

  Okay, not in Kansas anymore, my inner voice said.

  To my right there was a lot of furniture plus a grand piano strategically arranged around a fireplace large enough to roast a side of beef. To my left was another sitting area, only this time the furniture was arranged around a bar. I had never seen an actual bar inside a house before except in the movies. The Philadelphia Story came to mind.

  Mary Ann went to the bar. I followed her. Along the way I discovered a dining room with a table large enough to seat twenty and another room that I wanted to call a library because it was filled with books even though the books were in stacks scattered around chairs and tables and not arranged on shelves.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Noon.”

  “Beer or wine?”

  “Beer.”

  I was delighted when she pulled two Summit EPAs out of a refrigerator behind the bar. She popped the caps off the bottles with an opener that had a handle designed to resemble a baseball bat and gave me one.

  “My philosophy, you can drink anything you want in the morning as long as you mix it with tomato or orange juice,” Mary Ann said. “Noon until four it’s beer or wine. After four it’s every man for himself.”

  “Rules to live by.”

  “Cheers.”

  We clinked bottles and drank.

  “So, McKenzie,” Mary Ann said. “What happened to your face? Run into a door?”

  I fingered a line of purple and blue along my jaw that looked like a goth cosmetologist had painted it there. It was my stomach that ached though. A palm full of Advil and black coffee early that morning had alleviated some of the pain, but not by much. The beer worked better.

  “More like the door ran into me,” I said.

  “But you should see the other guy, am I right?”

  “I’m sure his hands are very sore.”

  “You’re not going to defend your honor or at least your ego? You’re not going to tell me that you didn’t see him coming?”

  “I didn’t see him coming. I should have, though.”

  “Perrin Stewart likes you very much. She says you’re the least pretentious man she knows.”

  “The way things have been going lately, I wish she liked me less.”

  “I called her yesterday after I saw the report about Randolph’s paintings on the news. I asked her what she knew about it. She told me everything.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “You don’t fault her for that?”

  “It doesn’t make much sense to keep Louise Wykoff’s secrets if Louise isn’t going to keep them.”

  “I want those paintings.”

  “I figured that, too.”

  “They don’t belong to the Wykoff woman. They belonged to my husband, which means they now belong to me.”

  “You certainly have a valid claim.”

  “Only you refuse to accept it?”

  “Let’s just say I appreciate Louise’s point of view as well.”

  “What you appreciate is that Louise is sexy as hell. Don’t worry. I don’t hold that against you. It’s what men do.”

  “You misjudge me.”

  “I doubt it. You know, McKenzie, I was pretty once.”

  “I believe you.”

  “No, you don’t. Come with me.”

  Mary Ann led me into the library that really wasn’t a library. It was another sitting room with a wall of windows facing south. It looked as if Mary Ann had once read a book there, set it down, read a second book, and when she was finished set it on top of the first book, and then repeated the process about six hundred times. We negotiated the stacks until we came to a wall filled with family photographs and a single portrait. The portrait was of Mary Ann. It had been painted by Randolph McInnis and it gave off the same vibe as the paintings he had done of That Wykoff Woman.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “This was painted in 1959 after I started sleeping with Randolph. I discovered later that it was not uncommon for him to paint portraits of the women he slept with, although it was uncommon for him to marry them. Louise wasn’t the first by any means and if Randolph hadn’t frozen to death in that damn ditch, she wouldn’t have been the last. She was the prettiest, though.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  “Ha. Aren’t you the charmer? But I know where I rated in Randolph’s hierarchy. This was done twenty years before Louise Wykoff was even born. I was ch
erry when I first did it with Randolph and drunk, a coed—they called us coeds back then—studying business administration even though I doubted I’d be permitted to be anything more than a secretary. Such were the times I grew up in. Randolph eventually put me in charge of the empire, mostly because he had so many disagreements with the man he had hired before me. I was always grateful for that. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning and I thought it would protect my place in the hierarchy. That and our son. Silly girl. I was forty-five by the time my sixty-five-year-old husband got around to twenty-five-year-old Louise and in his eyes, I was fading fast. Old age is tough, especially on women. Even on women with all the money in the world. Louise, though—she just keeps rolling along, doesn’t she? Age doesn’t seem to bother her at all. If Randolph had lived, who knows? She might’ve been the one drinking beer with you.”

  Mary Ann took a long pull from the bottle and I liked that she had done nothing to hide the years; that she hadn’t resorted to tucks and lifts and injections and hair dyes. When she smiled, her entire face smiled. When she frowned, you could see every line, crease, and crevice that she had earned over eighty years. I liked that she had greeted me in a sweatshirt. I liked that she drank beer from the bottle. I liked that she spoke of her life without sentimentality.

  “I like you.” I didn’t mean to actually speak the words. They just kind of slipped out.

  “McKenzie,” Mary Ann said. “Oh my.”

  She took my arm and we retreated back to the bar.

  “You like me, huh?” Mary Ann said. “So what’s it going to take to get you on my side in this thing?”

  “Does there need to be sides?”

  “Have you any idea what those paintings are worth—the missing Scenes from an Inland Sea? My granddaughter says we’re trending. I’m not entirely sure what that means. It sounds profitable, though. Plus I keep getting calls from CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Associated Press, Time—they all want to do stories; they all want quotes, mostly I think, because they’re so damn tired of covering those nitwits in Washington. This must be a nice change of pace for them. I might not be up on social media, McKenzie, but the mainstream media, publicity, that I understand very well.” Mary Ann lifted a fist straight into the air and pulled it down quickly. “Cha-ching. So, McKenzie. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Do you know where those damn paintings are? Can you get them? Will you get them for me?”

  “No. Possibly.” I held my hand flat and gave it a waggle. “Meh.”

  “What the hell does ‘meh’ mean?”

  “May I tell you a story, M. A.?”

  “Should I drink another beer while you tell me this story?”

  “I would.”

  She opened two more bottles and slid one over to me. I drained my first Summit ale and took a sip of the second.

  “Once upon a time,” I said, “a three-hundred-year-old Stradivarius violin valued at more than five million bucks was stolen from the concertmaster for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The FBI’s Art Crime Team was brought into the case almost immediately because it thought that the Strad would be transported across state lines. Only it wasn’t. The crime was all about the reward money—$100,000. Instead of trying to move it on the black market, the thieves attempted to trade it back to the insurance company that covered it. They were caught, the violin was recovered, the thieves were sentenced to seven years in prison for receiving stolen property, and the concertmaster got his Stradivarius back.”

  “And the moral to this story is…?”

  “Always, always, always follow the money.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There are only a handful of people in the entire world who could sell the Scenes from an Inland Sea on the black market and I guarantee none of them live in Grand Marais. In my opinion, the thieves didn’t have a plan when they snatched the paintings and probably still don’t. We should provide them with one.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “You should offer a reward for information leading to the safe return of the Scenes from an Inland Sea. We’ll use the word ‘information’ because it allows you to argue that you’re not negotiating with criminals, which of course you are.”

  “I know all that, McKenzie. This isn’t my first rodeo. But why me?”

  “The paintings weren’t insured. There’s no insurance company involved.”

  “Why? Me?”

  “Louise doesn’t have the money.”

  “Too bad for her. Wait. You don’t actually expect me to pay these thieves for my own property, do you? Then turn around and give it to That Wykoff Woman? Hell no.”

  “First, I’m hoping we can avoid actually paying the ransom, but if it comes to that—yes. Pay them. As for the rest, I’m hoping you and Louise can reach an understanding.”

  “Why? I don’t need her, McKenzie. Come to think of it, I don’t need you, either. I can take your plan to the FBI, see what they have to say. Or I could hire private investigators or mercs or whoever it is you hire for this sort of thing.”

  “Except…”

  “Except, what?”

  “I’ve made enough of a nuisance of myself in Grand Marais that the thieves probably already know me. Anyone else, they’ll automatically think is a cop. Granted, that might not matter. What does matter—there’s only one person in the world who knows what the paintings actually look like, who can identify them as being the real deal.”

  I ignored my inner voice when it said, You can authenticate the paintings. Louise already described them to you, plus you know their exact dimensions.

  “You’re saying we need to be sure, before money changes hands, that we’re not buying forgeries,” Mary Ann said.

  “We need to do it at a glance, too. Once things start popping, it’s doubtful we’ll have much time.”

  “Shit.” Mary Ann took another pull of her beer and slammed the bottle down so hard on the bar that I had to marvel at the tensile strength of the glass. “I’d tell you, McKenzie, that I don’t want that woman in my life, but the sad truth is she’s been a part of my life for thirty-five years. Shit.” Mary Ann began shredding the label on the beer bottle as if she hated it. “I’ve only spoken to Louise once since the Scenes from an Inland Sea was introduced and that was last week. Bruce Flonta decided—do you know Flonta?”

  “We haven’t met, but I know of him.”

  “Flonta wanted to film a documentary about the series and he asked me to participate. Apparently, he also asked Louise because she had the audacity to contact me through Perrin Stewart and ask if it was all right if she told the truth. Like she even knows what the fucking truth is. When Randolph went up to Duluth he was on vacation for God’s sake. People don’t act the same while on vacation as they do at home. It’s all fun and games when you’re on vacation.”

  When she finished tearing the beer label, Mary Ann glared at me.

  “Goddammit, McKenzie,” she said. “What kind of arrangement are you suggesting?”

  “That’s entirely up to you two.”

  “Let me guess. I’m supposed to go all the way up to Grand Marais and negotiate with the bitch.”

  “Actually, she’s here.”

  “In Minneapolis?”

  “She’s staying with Perrin Stewart.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since about ten this morning.”

  “You brought her down, didn’t you? Aren’t you a clever boy?”

  “I don’t know how else to get the paintings back.”

  “I’m not even sure I want the goddamn things back, now.”

  “Oh, M. A., of course you do.”

  I turned from the bar toward the staircase. A young man skipped down the steps with the swagger of youth, college age, perhaps grad school. Like Mary Ann, he was dressed casually in a sweatshirt with a CalArts logo and faded jeans as if he wanted you to think he was a struggling student. His shoes gave him away, though, black Yeezy Boost from Adidas with SPLY-350 stitched in red upside
down on the outside. When I was his age I once bought a car that cost less than his shoes.

  “I thought you left,” Mary Ann said.

  “I came back.”

  “McKenzie, this is my grandson Mitchell.” I thought she rolled her eyes when she spoke his name, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Mitchell crossed the room and we shook hands. His hair was full of product and his facial hair looked as if it had been trimmed by Japanese gardeners, yet I didn’t hold that against him.

  “You must recover the missing Scenes from an Inland Sea, you simply must,” he said.

  “Why must we?” Mary Ann asked.

  “To guarantee a comfortable retirement for your progeny.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “M. A., your language.”

  “I’m eighty years old and rich. I can talk any goddamn way I want. McKenzie, my son Mark wanted nothing to do with the family business. He became a financial analyst and moved to New York. Good for him. This young man, however, fancies himself a great artist like his grandfather.”

  I gestured at Mitchell’s hoodie.

  “CalArts?” I asked.

  “I attended the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, California. It’s one of the best art schools in the country.”

  “It’s also on the other side of the continent from his parents,” Mary Ann said.

  “That, too,” Mitchell said.

  “Unfortunately, Mitchell is a better illustrator than he is an artist.”

  “You mean like Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, Richard Corben, Frank Miller, Jack Kirby, Edmund Dulac, and Maurice Sendak?” Mitchell asked.

  “Jack Kirby, the comic book guy?” I asked.

  “Don’t you start.”

  “Okay, college boy,” Mary Ann said. “What do you think those missing paintings are worth.”

  “I don’t know, but not too long ago Sotheby’s sold a Nicolas Lancret at auction for two-point-two million bucks.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” I admitted.

  “Neither does anyone else.”

  “All right, McKenzie,” Mary Ann said. “Call the bitch.”