False colors (16 page)

I would feel better when Pop checked out Miss Vernon and Mr. Meadows. "I understand," I said. "You have to be careful."

"Yeh," he said in his toneless voice. "We don't take no chances."

I went inside and started looking for Nancy. The first floor of the house had half a dozen big rooms. Four of them were

being used for the exhibit, and were crowded with people chattering and lifting drinks and occasionally looking at the paintings on exhibit. Right away I bumped into Sheldon Thorp. He had been looking at a Renoir as though it were a stain on a restaurant napkin, and when I came along he let me be the stain.

"Hello, Sheldon," I said. "Where's Nancy?"

"Why should I tell you?" he said. "Does Gimbel's tell Macy's?" Then he grinned and added, "That's not bad, is it, Pete?"

"You've collected everything else," I said, "so now you're going to collect old jokes, hull? You brought her, didn't you?"

"I brought her but I can't keep track of her. She's fluttering around somewhere."

Sure. Fluttering around like a clay pigeon at a trap shoot. "I'll see you," I said.

"Stick around and let's sneer at Lassiter's exhibit. I find it very disappointing. It's been thrown together like a rummage sale at a church. What do you think, is Lassiter slipping?"

"Not in some ways," I muttered, and walked off.

After hunting through the exhibit rooms for a few minutes I saw a glint of bright hair flickering through the crowd. I hurried after it. The glint whisked around a corner and vanished. When I turned the corner I saw the doorway of a small dark room. The door was partly open, and enough light reflected in to show the outlines of office furniture. There seemed to be another light, too—a moth-sized glow winging over a desk. I poked my head in and there was Nancy. She was using a small pocket flashlight, happy as a kid fighting matches to look in a gas tank.

I glanced around quickly. Nobody was in sight. "Psst!" I said. "Come out of there!"

At least she had enough sense to jump. "Oh, it's Pete!" She gasped. "You startled me."

"If it had only been a silk scarf tightening on your neck, it probably wouldn't have bothered you a bit. Come out here!"

"There are some papers here I want to look at and—"

"Don't get excited about them. They're nothing but invitations to your funeral. I'll drag you out in a moment."

She switched off the flashlight and came out of the room. "You don't understand what I'm doing," she said.

"Certainly I do. You think Lassiter is the guy who hired Nick to forge that painting. So you're looking for evidence."

"But Pete, I know he's the man! I spent all day at the Parkway Museum, and I finally found a guard who remembered Nick copying a Van Gogh there, and Mr. Lassiter striking up an acquaintance with him. Aren't you proud of me?"

I took her arm and guided her back to one of the exhibit rooms. "You're wonderful," I said. "Compared to you, a bloodhound would look like a lost puppy. But you could have saved trouble by sitting home and figuring out why Lassiter invited you here tonight."

"I don't know what you mean."

"The guy's guilty and he's worried about us. He wants to know if we suspect him. So he asks us here to see if we'll sneak into his office and flash a light over his papers. I bet you wouldn't find anything worse than a bill for groceries."

"Oh, Pete! How can you figure that out from a plain little invitation?"

"Because there isn't any other reason for it. You're not an art collector, and I'm a dealer who can't do him any good."

She smiled up at me and waved her lashes like oriental fans. "I think you're sweet," she murmured. "I'll bet you just came here tonight to rescue me."

"Don't take it personally. The thing is, it upsets me to have the cops grill me about a murder."

"Sometimes I don't understand you a bit. Whenever I set the stage for romance, you talk about cops."

I stared at her. The elfin face with its halo of hair looked very sweet and solemn. I took a moment to analyze my feelings. There was a churning in my stomach and a champagne lightness in my head. Some guys might think those were signs of romance. I called them signs of fright and tiredness. That was the only sensible way to look at it. This was no ordinary girl,

giving me the wide-eyed treatment. This was the Van Rensselaer Vernon kid. She had half a dozen guys on the string, dangling like charms on a teen-ager's bracelet. All of them were better looking and had more dough than I did. Right now she was merely keeping her hand in, like a golfer putting on the living room rug.

"You'd better unset that stage," I said. "I don't like walkon parts."

"Has anybody asked you to walk off yet?"

"No. But the hero will be along pretty soon, and that will be my cue to exit smiling. If it's Sheldon I will exit scowling."

"You're the most maddening creature I ever met," she said angrily. "If you ever get murdered, there will certainly be a lot of suspects."

"I'm glad we're back on the sensible subject of murder. You shrugged off my previous remark. If I may repeat, it upsets me to have the cops grill me about a murder."

"Oh, piffle. Who's going to be murdered?"

I arranged a yawn. "I don't know who's going to be next," I said. "I'm talking about the last one."

That got home to her. She grabbed my arm, trembling. "You can't mean Nick's been killed!"

"It wasn't anybody you ever heard of. A guy named Mason Dawes, about two years ago." I told her about McCann's visit, that morning, and how I dug out the story on Mason Dawes.

"Why, it's fantastic!" she said. "A young artist just like Nick, and the same girl involved in both cases, and another length of blue-green silk. Everything ties up!"

"Yeah. McCann saw it too. He must have done the investigation on the Dawes case, or at least heard the details of it. That's why he turned so much heat on me last night, after Kay was almost killed with one of those hunks of silk."

"It opens up all kinds of things for us to explore."

"Correction. For the cops to explore."

"But Pete, did you happen to think that Nick might have been out of jail two years ago?"

"Was he?"

"He's been on parole several months longer than two years. And he was going to art school when that other man was killed. Isn't it likely that the police might try to connect him with that case?"

"They'd be foolish if they didn't try. And it wouldn't be healthy for Nick, if they can prove he knew Dawes and that Nick might be the guy who attacked Kay. Nick's an ex-convict. He's hotheaded. They could build up quite a case."

"That's why we have to go on working. Nick's in worse trouble than ever. And the police won't help him."

"I kind of like the guy," I said, "but I like you better. You're not going to take any more chances."

"We could at least talk to Kay Raymond."

"She cleared out this morning. I tried to see her. That leaves nobody for us to see but the cops. Now let's get out of here and—"

She set her soft chin until it looked as if you could use it to drive nails. "I'll leave when I'm ready," she said.

"I don't want you to give me any trouble."

"I won't," she said. "Trouble worries you too much. So I'll just go off about my own affairs."

"Now wait, Nancy—"

"I don't like waiting," she said, and turned and marched away.

I could have wrung her neck, except that the general idea was to keep people from doing just that.

14.

For a couple of minutes I tried to keep an eye on her but it didn't work. She went through the crowd like a bumblebee on a jag, pausing here to drop a gay word to somebody, darting

off, hovering, zipping away. You trailed her for a while and began to think there were four Nancys, and then all of a sudden there were none.

If I couldn't keep an eye on her, at least I could watch the guys who might cause her trouble. I checked the front entrance. The white-haired old man was still at his table, and near him die tame gorilla was on guard. If I hadn't had something better to do I might have coaxed him to talk, just to see if I could place where I had heard his voice before. He might be the guy who had beaten me up that time in Nick's studio. Lassiter might have been the man who directed things. But all that could wait.

I wandered through the crowd and finally saw Lassiter headed my way. His big square face broke into a smile that looked like a crack in cement. "Hello, Mr. Meadows," he said. "Glad you managed to come."

"It's a nice show you're putting on," I said. "Thanks for the invitation."

"Sorry to hear you had a little trouble getting in."

"Your guard was only doing his job."

"That's Joe Molo. He's been with me for years. Used to be a wrestler. With a lot of valuable paintings around, I need someone like him. As a matter of fact he has a heart of gold. He looks tough, but actually he's very gentle. Fond of kids and all that."

"Sure," I said. "On his day off he goes to the playground and gives kids rides up and down on his biceps." Probably I shouldn't have said that, but there was no use acting too stupid. That would make Lassiter nearly as suspicious as if I tried to sneak a set of his fingerprints.

Lassiter chuckled. It sounded like a truck backfiring. "All right," he said. "I won't overdo it. I wanted to see you before, but you were deep in talk with Miss Vernon. Have you taken a look around the exhibits?"

That looked like a good chance to tie him up for a while. "Only a sketchy look. How about you showing me around?"

"Delighted. I believe I told you some of these are a new shipment from abroad? Here is perhaps the prize of the lot. A rather nice Corot, yes?"

It was a landscape in the classic style, with a good play of light and nice harmony in the colors. I said it was very nice, and we moved on. During the next fifteen minutes he gave me a quick but thorough tour of the collection. We wound up finally in front of the painting which he had described over the phone as possibly a real Caravaggio.

"Now tell me frankly," he said, "what you think of the show."

I took a moment to sort out my thoughts. In a way I felt highly honored by his exhibit, because it had been put together for my benefit. It contained half a dozen hunks of art that raised questions in my mind. Lassiter knew I had at least a little reputation as an art detective. So it was logical to think he had deliberately put those tricky items in the show to see how I would react. He wanted to find out whether I was honest or a crook, and whether I was on his trail or not.

There were four different answers I could give him. I was honest but not on his trail. I was honest and trying to pin a crime on him. I was a crook but didn't know he was. I was a crook and I was trying to get something on him, but like all crooks I could be bought off. The second answer was suicidal. I didn't think I could get away with the first. The perfect answer was the third, but I wasn't sure of making that one stick either. Probably the safest answer was the fourth: I was a crook and had picked up his trail but I could be bought off.

I gave him a wise smile and said, "This is just between us dealers, isn't it?"

"Naturally."

"About that Corot you showed me first. As you say, maybe it's the prize of the exhibit. I wouldn't want to suggest it might be a Trouillebert."

"Trouillebert?" he said vaguely.

"You remember him. He and Corot were alive at the same time, and there's quite a resemblance in their work. Dealers were passing off Trouillebert landscapes as Corots even when the guys were alive."

"And you think that is a Trouillebert?"

"I said I wouldn't want to suggest it. What the hell, they've

both been dead a long time. It doesn't make any difference to them. And a collector will be happier with a Corot than a Trouillebert."

"A very mature way of looking at things," Lassiter said. "If there is any blame, perhaps it should rest on the original dealers?"

That was a booby-trapped question. "Why blame them?" I said. "It was probably hard to sell the guy's stuff under his own name, and so they put a tag on it that sold. You know collectors. All they want are big names. Dead, if possible. Even Michelangelo couldn't sell his stuff at one time."

"Wasn't he caught once, trying to pass off one of his statues as an antique?"

"Sure. A statue of a sleeping Cupid. He had a friend give it an aging treatment and bury it in a field, so it could be sold as a find from ancient Rome."

"Ah yes. I remember now. While we are talking about Italian art," he said, gesturing at the painting in front of us, "do you think I'm too hopeful that this is a real Caravaggio?"

It was a still-life, and even under the thick brown gallery tone you could see the striking contrasts of light and shadow. "Why kid around?" I said. "You know what you've got here. Of course it's a Caravaggio."

He chuckled. "How can you be so sure? X-ray eyes?"

"Just plain eyes. It isn't one of his well known paintings, but I happened to see it when I was in Italy."

"Your knowledge of art is very thorough."

Tve been around. How did you get it out? The Italian government still has that ban on the export of masterpieces, doesn't it?"

"I have an export permit. And it identifies this painting both by title and by Caravaggio's name."

That sounded like quite a trick, but I knew how it was done. You get a relatively unknown masterpiece and do a reverse job of restoration on it. You paint over the fine parts of the picture with the right kind of glue, and then after the glue hardens you repaint the picture with tempera. And your repaint job is

pretty bad. So the Italian customs examiner sees a very poor Caravaggio, and decides that Italy won't lose anything if the painting is exported. Later you wash off the tempera and glue and have your masterpiece again, with a nice legal clearance. As I studied the painting I saw exactly how it could have been changed from a fine still-life into a poor one.

"Any trouble getting off the glue and tempera?" I asked.

He let out a laugh that sounded like barrels rolling downstairs. Then he looked at me almost fondly, and said, "I think we can do business. Let's go in my office."