Consigned to Death (16 page)

“What about fingerprints?” I asked.

“Apparently yours were everywhere. Barney’s were around, too, but not as many as yours.”

I smiled. “I’m more thorough.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I’m ready to sell my family’s treasures.”

“Does your family have treasures?” I asked.

“Hell, no. I was joking.”

“Too bad. I would have made you a good deal.”

Wes shook his head, grinning a little. “There were other prints, too. Miscellaneous and explainable. Grant’s wife, for instance, obviously from before she died, a house cleaner who came in periodically, and a delivery boy from a grocery store in town. There was one set of prints in the living room that is still unidentified.”

“Can they tell anything about who left them?”

“No, not to quote them on. They’re adult prints, but smallish, so based on the size, they may be from a woman.” He shrugged. “But there are small men, too. And large men with small hands.”

“Doesn’t it seem incredible that no other prints were found? I mean, what about his daughter and granddaughter? Or other delivery people? Or friends?”

“I guess he lived a pretty quiet life.”

I shook my head, wondering what prints they’d find in my house if they looked. I wasn’t a bad housekeeper, but I wasn’t a nut about it either. It made me wonder whether maybe one of my dad’s prints was still somewhere, maybe on the side of a dining room chair, a remnant from one of the scores of times when he’d sat, idly tapping a beat, waiting for me to serve the meal.

“Anything else scheduled for that morning?” I asked, focusing on Wes, chasing away the memory. “Besides me?”

“Just Barney Troudeaux’s nine o’clock appointment.”

“I thought he changed it when he called the night before.”

“That’s what he says, but it was still in the diary.”

“Maybe Mr. Grant hadn’t gotten around to changing it before he died,” I said, saddened at the thought.

I recalled the day that I’d made a mistake in my schedule, realizing it only after I’d left the Grant house. I hurried back and knocked on the door. When he answered, I apologized for my error, he assured me it wasn’t a problem, and escorted me back to the kitchen. I could picture him sitting at his kitchen table, erasing the mistaken entry, turning pages to find the correct date, his callused index finger running down the center of the page until he located the time slot he wanted. He smiled then, and using a freshly sharpened pencil, he wrote my name.

“We’ll never know, I guess,” Wes said.

“Yeah. And probably, it doesn’t matter. Because Barney was at the board meeting, right?”

“Right.”

Bright sunshine unexpectedly illuminated the beach from a sudden break in the clouds. I heard the dog bark, and squinted into the sun in time to see him run a circle around his owner as they made their way up the dunes. I took another bite of doughnut. My coffee had cooled enough so it was comfortable to sip.

“How about Mr. Grant’s background? Were you able to learn anything about him or his family?”

Wes nodded. “Yeah. Quite a story, actually. He was born in Kansas, the only son of successful ranchers. He came east to go to prep school, and never lived in the Midwest again.”

“Was he in the war?”

“Yeah. He joined the army in 1942, and for a lot of the time, he was stationed in France. That’s when he met his wife. According to all reports she was a piece of work. A tough old bird with a temper. She was maybe French, maybe Belgian, maybe who knows what.”

“What do you mean, ‘who knows what’?”

He shook his head, and gestured that he had no idea. “I know that her name was Yvette. Or at least that’s what she called herself. I couldn’t even find a record of her maiden name.”

“How can that be? What does that mean?”

“Probably nothing. Maybe she was a Jew on the run. Maybe she was a Nazi sympathizer. Who knows? Back then, there were lots of good reasons to change your name and reinvent yourself.”

I thought about that for a long minute, watching as shards of sunlight dappled the sand and water. Gretchen had wanted to reinvent herself, a fresh start, she’d called it. I wondered if Gretchen was her real name, or if, like Yvette, she too had changed it. No matter. She was Gretchen to me, and I felt grateful that her desire for a fresh start had led her to my door.

After a sip of coffee, I asked, “What did Mr. Grant do after the war?”

“He settled in Rocky Point and started a painting contracting business.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And he made a fortune. Everyone I checked with said he was a ruthless SOB, but likable. The kind of guy who could sell tulips to a Dutchman.” He shrugged. “Apparently he was a good talker and a terrific negotiator. But you’d better be careful every step of the way because if there was anything he could exploit, he would.”

“Why? What does that mean?”

“You know ... it means that he was a smooth operator, a guy who knew the angles and never missed an opportunity to make a profit. He built his business by winning federal contracts until it became the biggest company of its kind in New England, then sold out to a national firm. That was about fifteen years ago.”

That sounded like both the Mr. Grant I’d met and the one I’d gotten to know after his death: charming and shrewd. “How big a fortune are we talking about?” I asked.

Wes glanced at the folded square of paper. “Somewhere around thirty million dollars, depending on who you ask.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wow it is.”

I remembered that Max had planned to ask Epps who would inherit Mr. Grant’s estate, and wondered if he had done so. From my conversation with Mrs. Cabot yesterday, I assumed she inherited everything. It occurred to me that Wes might know.

“Does his daughter inherit everything?” I asked.

“Nope. Fifty-fifty split with the granddaughter. Nothing to anyone else.”

“No siblings, uncles, cousins? No other family?”

“No. Mr. Grant had a sister who died in her teens back in Kansas. Mrs. Grant—who knows what family she might have had. According to my source, no one else has surfaced yet.”

I nodded. That would account for Andi’s impatience. Fifteen million dollars would buy a lot of independence. I wondered whether she cared that she had such a small family. As the only children of only children, apparently Andi and I shared a common legacy—small families that grow smaller with each generation.

“Anything else of note?” I asked.

“Something about the daughter’s leaving after high school. Mrs. Cabot. She left to get married in ... let me see here ... 1964. It seems she and her father had an argument sometime during the summer after her high school graduation that was heard for miles around.”

“What about?” I asked.

“No one remembers. But they sure remember the shouting. The fight started on the beach, and continued through the village. Dana marched into the house, packed two bags, and, with her mother pulling at her and begging her to stay, left.”

I stared at Wes. Was it possible that a forty-year-old argument had anything to do with Mr. Grant’s death? It was hard to believe that a long-ago altercation could be relevant today. Turning my attention to the sea, I looked at the whitecaps shimmering in the now-bright sun. I remembered Max asking Alverez why he was interrogating me about the jewelry in my safe. Alverez had said that until he knew what was going on, it was impossible to know what was a tangent and what was a clue. Dana’s departure had been so remarkable, it was etched in the community’s memory even after forty years. An event that memorable might, in fact, have repercussions that rippled through the generations.

“That kind of breach between parents and a child, it’s sad, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Wes answered with a shrug, seeming not to care much one way or the other. “I guess. But I bet that her half of thirty million dollars will help heal a lot of wounds.”

“Don’t be cynical,” I said. “It’s sad, and that’s that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I gotta tell you, Wes, that my head is spinning a little from all this information. But I’m not sure whether any of it is relevant.”

“Me either. I just provide the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

“Good point.”

“Plus which, there’s more.”

“What?”

The sun was warming the air, and Wes paused to unbutton his jacket. I followed suit. He offered me some more coffee, and I accepted a little. He poured himself a full mug. “Stardust” resonated through the speakers.

“Want another doughnut?” he asked.

“No, thanks.” Three-quarters of my first one rested on a nearby napkin. “So, what else?”

“Seems Mrs. Grant ran a tight ship. One of the things she did was keep a detailed record of purchases.”

“What kind of purchases?”

“Everything. Appliances, antiques, dry cleaning. Even milk, bread, and gasoline. Everything.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, a little anal, wouldn’t you say?”

“She probably grew up poor. You know what I mean ... like how for some people who survived the Depression, watching pennies was a way of life.”

“Yeah, whatever. The point is, she listed everything in big ledgers. By category, in chronological order by date of acquisition.”

“So?”

“So the police experts have accounted for everything on the ledger except two things.”

“What?”

“Two paintings—one by Cezanne and one by Matisse.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed.

“Nope.”

“What paintings?”

Consulting his notes, he said, “
Apples in a Blue Bowl with Grapes
. That’s the Cezanne. The Matisse is called
Note-dame in the Morning
.”

I shook my head. “Think about it ... a Renoir, a Cezanne, and a Matisse.”

“Good taste, huh?”

“When were they purchased?”

“September of 1945.”

“Where?”

Wes shook his head. “Only initials. Apparently Mrs. Grant used a kind of shorthand. I guess since she knew where they bought things, she didn’t bother spelling everything out.” He shrugged. “According to my source, the paintings were purchased from an ‘A.Z.’ ”

I nodded. “Sounds like a private party. You know, some person’s initials. Were all three paintings bought at the same time?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s hard to picture, isn’t it? At the end of the war, with everything going on, can you imagine buying art?”

“Who knows the circumstances? Things were completely chaotic over there. Maybe the Grants were helping a friend by taking the paintings off his hands when he needed hard cash, not art.”

I nodded, letting Wes think he was making a valid point. I was willing to bet that the Cezanne and the Matisse would be on the Swiss Web site’s listing of pillaged art, alongside the Renoir, and flirted with the idea of telling him about it. I decided to stay quiet. My knowledge of the Renoir’s provenance was the only leverage I retained. Once revealed, its usefulness was gone. At some point, I might need to parlay what I knew for something, so it made no sense to offer it for free. Right now I had nothing to gain and, potentially, everything to lose.

“Maybe,” I answered finally. “How much did they pay?”

“Ten thousand each. In U.S. dollars. Cash.”

“Wow. They paid in cash?”

“Right. I bet most transactions in Europe at the end of the war were in cash.”

“That makes sense. But would they be in U.S. dollars?”

“I guess the U.S. dollar was primo even back then.”

“Interesting,” I mused. “But only ten thousand dollars? Even for sixty years ago that sounds like a bargain. I wonder how much that would be in today’s dollars?”

“I looked it up,” Wes said, unfolding his paper to check the figure. “Close to a hundred grand. Each.”

“That’s unbelievable.”

“Cheap, huh?”

“Just a little,” I responded, opening my eyes wide and shaking my head, astonished.

“How much are they worth today?”

I shrugged. “I’d need to do research to be sure. There are lots of variables. But in 1999, a Cezanne sold at auction for more than sixty million.”

Wes stared, disbelieving. “You’re kidding.”

“No. So if you bought a Cezanne for a hundred thousand dollars today, it would be fair to say that you got, ahem, a good buy.”

“But we don’t know the going price for a Cezanne back then.”

“No,” I acknowledged. “If I remember right, though, in the mid-1940s, a master would have sold for something like a few hundred thousand dollars.”

“In other words, it’s safe to assume that ten thousand dollars was low.”

“Probably, but not necessarily. Sometimes art appreciates exponentially, sometimes prices stay flat, and sometimes, prices even decline. It’s pure capitalism. Art sells for what a buyer will pay, and no more.” I shrugged. “The bottom line is that there’s no way to tell without extensive research what Cezannes sold for back then.”

“If it’s that complicated, how do you set prices?”

“Recency is a big factor. I can do a good job of accurately predicting today’s values by looking at sales of similar items over the recent past—unless something has occurred to impact value—up or down. For instance, if a great artist’s studio burns to the ground along with half of his works, whatever still exists is likely to shoot up in value. On the other hand, if an artist painted in a certain genre or style that falls out of favor, who knows why, the marketability of the paintings might plummet. That said, if all things are equal, the fact that a Cezanne sold for sixty million dollars in the last few years tells me that a similar piece is likely to go for many millions now—even if sixty million dollars is an aberration. But there are so many other factors to consider—provenance, historical value, condition, and so on.” I flipped a hand. “The point is that not knowing what Cezannes typically sold for during the war, I have no way of knowing whether the Grants got a bargain or not.”