Artist's Proof (23 page)

Impatiently, “I did. I do.”

“Last time I saw you I said I thought Misha may have slept at the beach house the night before Cassie died. Do you remember my asking if you could guess who was with him? Because his bed was made and you agreed he'd never have made it himself?”

She took some time weighing how to answer this. Finally she said, “Are you trying to pin Cassie's death on Misha?”

“Would that worry you?”

“Plenty. Because whatever the bastard's assets, they do me no good if they go to a clutch of lawyers defending him on a murder charge.”

I said, “No, I don't think Misha did it. I'm just trying to sort out what was going on in the beach house around the time of the murder.” She didn't respond to that and I had to prompt. “As I remember, your first choice, and your brother's, for a sleeping companion for Misha, was Olivia Cooper.”

“I believe it was. So?”

“I spent a couple of hours with Cooper later that evening. And what troubles me is, she didn't seem anything like the bimbo you and Roy described.”

“I don't care what she
seemed.
I know what I know.”

“Which is?”

“What is this about, Mr. Shale?” She had pulled the chain on her flirty look. “I'll grant Olivia this much—she knows how to manipulate men. Don't tell me she's worked her magic on you.”

The best I could do was, “I'm puzzled, that's all.”

“Okay, you asked, so here's what I know.” She was simmering, and the story came pouring out. “Misha and I were at the house one weekend late last summer. We were having our usual marital ups and downs and this was during a rare up. On Sunday we were supposed to have lunch with a girlhood friend of mine who had taken a rental in Amagansett. At the last minute Misha complained that his arthritis was kicking up and the long drive would just about kill him. Since Midge was my friend, why didn't I go on alone? So I did.

“About fifteen minutes east I discovered I had left Midge's address at home, and I had to turn around and drive back. I went into the house, and down that goddam ramp. I headed for our bedroom, where I'd left the note with Midge's address and phone number. Still with me, Mr. Shale?”

“I may be ahead of you.”

“Passing the main guest room I heard sounds. The door was open a crack, and I pushed it wide. Misha and Cooper were locked so tight you couldn't tell where he ended and she began, except that I don't think the hand on her ass was her own. She couldn't have been there more than a few minutes. He must have called the instant I was out of the house, and she came running like a bitch in heat. They hadn't even heard my car. Maybe the heavy breathing drowned it out. Bimbo enough for you, Mr. Shale?”

She seemed to take pleasure in watching my face. The air of hospitality in the room had dissolved and there wasn't much more I was going to learn from Kitty. In point of fact, I had learned everything I came for. As soon as I could do it gracefully I thanked her for her time, asked to be remembered to her brother, and made my exit.

At the door I turned with a final thought. “If Misha was such a bastard—and I bet that wasn't the first time you caught him—how
did
you stick it out for thirteen years?”

“After I taught him he couldn't knock me around the way he had his Russian wives, he was very much the husband I wanted. I was used to having good things and he gave me good things. Many. And, oh yes.” She smiled sweetly. “When he put his mind to it, he was a hell of a lover.”

T
WENTY-ONE

“M
S. MORGENSTERN IS
engaged,” Jackie informed me triumphantly, and I felt a split second of alarm until I saw through the open office door that what she was engaged in was a hard sell to a brace of clients. Funny how I didn't want Lonnie for myself, but neither did I want her to want someone else badly enough to become engaged to him. I wasn't sure why; maybe it had to do with how much less time she would have left for selling my work.

Jackie suggested that since I had to wait, mightn't I profit from a serious look at the gallery's new show that opened this week? I had already taken a quick glance and I said, no thanks, but I might take a stroll up their alley for a serious look at the neighbors' garbage.

Jackie favored me with a venomous smile and, “As you wish, Officer Shale. To each his own.”

We were saved from a continuing duel of wits by the breakup of the meeting in the office. The client couple left, a bit dazed-looking, and Lonnie came to greet me wearing her victory smile: There had been a sale, probably after some heavy arm-twisting. Whether the sale was the reason or not, she was radiant—confident and startlingly attractive. She locked an arm in mine and pulled me back toward the office.

I said, “You're a great-looking woman, Lonnie, but you always have a special glow after sex or when you've made a good sale. Can I take a guess?”

I'm not sure my compliment, if that's what it was, registered. She closed the door and said, “I just sold two paintings. I wish one of them was yours.”

“So would that bursar in Vermont.” Every time she told me she had sold someone else's work I felt cuckolded. “Better luck next time,” I said gamely and moved on to business. “You said you had something to show me.”

“Yes, but you'd better call your son first. He phoned twice looking for you. He seemed anxious.”

“That sounds like a cancellation. Have I done something to turn him off?”

“Absolutely not. He adores you. Why do you think he paints? He can't wait for the end of school, so he can go out to the beach for as long as you'll have him. He'll clean brushes till the bristles fall out.”

I phoned, and my hunch was right. Alan was sorry, but he had this heavy math exam tomorrow and he hadn't nearly finished reviewing for it. I said, evenly, I thought he had stayed home from school today to do exactly that.

“Take it easy, Dad, I did. But then I got this call from the principal's office and I had to go in. Coming and going and everything killed a good two hours. And it was weird. I wanted to tell you about it.”

I was disappointed and a little pissed. “So tell me.”

“A guy from the Treasury Department had come in to school to see me.”

“The Treasury Department? To see you?” I spelled it out. “The United States Treasury Department?”

“He showed me ID. It looked good to me. And to the assistant principal, I guess, or he wouldn't have called me at home and scared the shit out of me. Oh, yeah, I had faked being home with a bad cold. So I had that to deal with too. Man.”

“Okay, what did this Treasury agent want?”

“He wanted you, Dad. But he said he couldn't find you. He said he had some questions he needed answered in a hurry and if I could help him he wouldn't need to track you down. I must have looked funny because he said not to worry, they weren't looking into your taxes—‘there's no IRS audit,' he said; they didn't do things that way.

“I said, so what was it about? He said it was a complicated interstate matter he couldn't explain because of, he said, ‘confidentiality rules,' but that you weren't in any kind of trouble. He gave me some bullshit I couldn't follow, and then he started asking questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like, did I know who my father sold paintings to, and I said I had no idea. And were my parents still legally married. That one I answered, because it's a public record, right? And then he wanted to know whether my father still received paychecks from the New York Police Department, and
that
sounded to me like a tax question and I told him I wasn't going to answer any more questions because I had to go study for an exam. I gave him your number at the beach and told him to talk to you. And I got out of there.”

“Good for you, Alan. You did fine.”

“What's it about, Dad? Should you be worried?”

“About the IRS? Forget it. I've never earned enough to cheat on my taxes. I think I know what this is about, and it's not important.”

What it was about, I had decided, was the impending action against me and the city that had blown up this morning with the claimant's death. Ray Drummit's lawyer must have set an investigator snooping to find out if I had assets worth pursuing, and he hadn't had time to call the man off. I told Alan I was sorry I wouldn't be seeing him tonight and I was looking forward to our spending at least some of the summer together.

“Me too, Dad. And I'm sorry to leave you stranded for dinner.” He took a beat. “Hey, why don't you ask Mom? I know she's not doing anything special.”

“Uh-huh. Thanks, I'll see.” The little matchmaker.

When I got off, Lonnie looked up from searching for a piece of paper on her desk. “Everything okay?” she said.

“Fine. He's just got too much work to go out.”

“That's a shame.” She held up a fax. “This is what I wanted you to see. You know how I hate to lose a client. When I blew the deal with the Turkintons on
Seated Girl
I wanted to find out if they might be serious collectors.”

“Translation: Do they have enough money to make them worth chasing?”

“Have it your way. I'm sure you're aware that Dallas is fertile soil for an art dealer. I've said it before: There's more oil on the walls than in the ground.
And paintings don't deplete.
” Her blue eyes were shining with the rightness of it.

She said, “I have this contact in the Dallas—Fort Worth area I occasionally ask to look into prospects for me.”

“Lonnie, a PI?”

She didn't like being confronted with the term. “I suppose that's what he is.”

I thought, You've come a long way, Baby, from apprentice sleepwear buyer. I said, “You put him on the Turkintons?”

“That's exactly what I did.” She handed me the fax:

Hi there, Leona,

Well, Honey, I'm afraid there's damn little I can give you on this one. Yes, there's an account under that name in the bank you gave me, and it'd cover the check you faxed. But I can't find a home address for a Ben Turkinton, and he doesn't vote here. I did find a business address for a Ben Turkinton. That turns out to be a Mexican restaurant downtown. Three partners, none named Ben Turkinton, none, for that matter, an Anglo. Try as I might, I couldn't find out where his mail gets forwarded—if he gets any. No trace of any Tess Turkinton. I don't have to tell you, this pair smells like last week's fish. Sorry, better luck next time.

Cal.

I said, “I hope you didn't pay a bundle for this information. Because I could have told you that those two were probably pulling a con.”

“Probably, but not definitely. What in the world are they after?”

“A few hundred thousand off Mikhael Sharanov for a restaurant that will never happen.”

“They didn't ring true, but they didn't seem
crooked.
”

“They may think they're not. They may think they're performing a public service by fleecing Sharanov.”

“Here's the only part that interests me, Sid. I believe in the end we're going to sell
Seated Girl
to the Turkintons.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“We know they set aside the money for it, and it's exactly what they need to firm up their swindle. When their deal ripens in a week or two, they'll be back to me.”

“Maybe, but the painting won't be here.”

“What do you mean?”

The idea hadn't formed till I voiced it. “I'm taking it off the market. For the time being at least. It's going into my ever-expanding personal collection.”

“Sid, don't be foolish. You need this sale.”

“Tell me. But I just decided I can't bring myself to exploit this dead girl. Or let the Turkintons do it. Specifically, the idea of her hanging on Sharanov's wall makes my flesh crawl. You'll sell someone else another one of my paintings.”

“Not tomorrow, I can promise you that much.”

“Sooner or later. I have faith. Right now here's what I'm going to do.” It was hurting but I had to say it before I changed my mind. “My pickup's in a garage not far from here. I'm going to ransom it and bring it around. Would you have
Seated Girl
wrapped for me?”

And then I said something else that came out before I had given it any conscious thought. “Before I take her home, how about you and I go out for a bite to eat? I mean, if you're free.”

Lonnie, who was almost never at a loss for words, took some time to find a few. “That sounds do-able. Let me see if Jackie will hold the fort. And then, I insist, dinner's on me. I can charge it to the business.”

She had almost spoiled it. I said, “No, this isn't business. I came out on top in a legal action today. I was going to celebrate with Alan but now you're the lucky winner.”

I was damned if I would let her floor me with her economic muscle. That had been a principal cause of our breakup the first time around.

I caught myself. What the hell did I mean by the first time around?

*   *   *

B
EFORE I KNEW
it we had slipped under the East River and were on our way to Brighton Beach. I don't know why, except that we weren't that far from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and I knew we wouldn't need a reservation at the Tundra on a weekday, especially at this early hour.

We didn't. When we arrived, fewer than two hundred diners were at work downing the Slavic noshes that sat on thousands of small plates. Gallons of vodka speeded their passage. There were still enough unoccupied tables in the hangar-size room to cause snow blindness—a problem, come to think of it, not that unusual on the tundra. I had figured Lonnie would be amused by the place, and she was. And incredulous.

“Does this go on every night?” she asked.