Jane Cleland - Consigned to Death

“‘Her’?” Max asked. “Are you certain he said ‘her’?”

“Yes, absolutely. It sounds like he’s arrested someone, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Or, at least, that he’s got a suspect in custody,” Max agreed. “Who do you think it is?”

“I haven’t got a clue,” I said. “I was a hundred percent sure it was Barney.”

After a short pause, Max asked, “Didn’t Barney tell you that Andi had hired him?”

“Andi!” I exclaimed. “That’s right, he did tell me that. Wow! And Barney could have called Andi to tell her about the Matisse. But wait a second, Max. Even if he did so, and even if she decided to come steal it, there’s no way she could have gotten here that quickly.”

“What do you mean? It’s only a ten-minute drive from the Sheraton. Isn’t that where she and her mother are staying?”

“Mrs. Cabot told me she was going back to Chestnut Hill yesterday, and I assumed that Andi would go home to New York at the same time… but you’re right, it’s strictly an assumption on my part. Maybe Andi did stay longer, to work with Barney, or to start the lawsuit to try and break her grandfather’s will.”

“If it was Andi that Alverez caught in your warehouse, think about what that means. It implies that she stole the Renoir and that she killed her grandfather. Stealing the Renoir, maybe. But killing her grandfather? That stretches credibility!”

“Not if she was all drugged up.”

“True,” he acknowledged, sounding sad.

Responding to his tone, I said, “It’s so horrible to think about, isn’t it?”

“More than horrible. Unnecessary, too, since she’s due to inherit half of his estate.”

“But I wonder if she knew it at the time? She wasn’t close to her grandfather, that’s for sure,” I said.

“True. But still.”

“Yeah. She’s pretty volatile.”

“Maybe she’s mentally ill, you know, bipolar or split personality or something,” Max suggested.

I recalled her constant surliness, her occasional explosive temper, and the rapid mood swing I’d witnessed on Mr. Grant’s porch. One minute she’d been a shrew, the next, cajoling and plaintive.

“Maybe,” I acknowledged. A squirrel caught my eye as he dashed across the road and disappeared into the underbrush. I shrugged. “We have no way of knowing. You know what I mean… from everything you hear, drugs make some people act like they’re nuts whether they are or not.”

“I guess you’re right. And I guess it doesn’t matter, does it, whether she is actually mentally ill or not?”

“Not to us, maybe. But I bet Mrs. Cabot cares.”

I heard Max sigh. “Yeah.” After a pause, he asked, “Josie, does it make sense that Andi would sneak into your place and leave the Renoir? After killing her own grandfather to get it either because she’s insane or because she was high on drugs, wouldn’t she have kept it?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But if she’d learned about the Matisse and the Cezanne, and if she knew that I had been to the house the same morning and was considered to be a suspect, maybe she was willing to sacrifice the Renoir in an attempt to frame me. She’d still get millions from the other two paintings if she could get her hands on them, and if she did a good enough job with the setup, I’d be arrested and maybe even convicted, and she’d be completely off the hook.”

“Yeah,” he mused, “plus, once the investigation was over, and probate granted, the Cabots would get the painting back. It was a gambit… like in chess… you know?”

“Well, actually, no. I don’t know how to play chess.”

“A gambit,” Max explained, his voice animated, “is an opening move in which a player sacrifices a piece in order to secure a desirable position.”

“Wow. I see what you mean. You’re right. That’s exactly what she did. She sacrificed the Renoir-temporarily, at least-as a way of shifting suspicion onto me, which, to her, was a favorable position.” I looked out at the barren street, the leafless trees, and the empty, overgrown sidewalks. “Wait. Let’s not forget… ultimately, it didn’t work.”

“No, but she tried. As a strategy, I’ve heard worse.”

“Yeah.” I shivered again, chilled at the thought that a malevolent spirit strategized how to get me. I’d done nothing to deserve her antipathy, yet I was her chosen target. I felt tears begin to form, and my heart started to thump. I swallowed, trying to regain my composure. “Max,” I asked, as calmly as I could, “is it truly possible that someone would do something so… so… fiendish ?”

“Yes,” he answered softly. “Yes, I think it is.”

“Do you think that Mrs. Cabot knows what Andi did?” I asked, glad to shift the conversation to less personal ground.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know, Josie. Actually, we don’t know that Andi did anything. We’re just speculating.”

“I suppose so. Regardless, I’d like to tell Mrs. Cabot that I found the paintings, but I don’t want to burden her if she’s, you know, overwhelmed because of Andi.”

Max paused. “I was just thinking about whether it’s prudent to reveal that they’ve been found. Let me put in a call to Alverez and ask him. Then, once we have an okay, why don’t you get in touch with her and see how she sounds? Use your judgment. You can always just tell her the bare facts, and, if she’s not in any shape to talk to you, discuss the details later.”

“That makes sense.”

“Just remember, stick to the facts. Don’t hypothesize. And don’t editorialize.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes, I can do that.”

“Are you kidding?” Max said. “I saw you in action last night. You can do anything.”

I smiled, surprised and pleased at the compliment.

I pulled into my parking lot and saw that Griff was on duty, guarding I don’t know what. He told me that I could go in, no problem, and that he’d be leaving in a minute. “We’ll be coming by pretty often,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just to check.”

“Check on what?”

“A regular patrol, is all. You don’t need to worry.”

I got it. I wasn’t going to learn anything from him, even if he knew anything in the first place, which wasn’t by any means a given, so I thanked him, and went inside.

It was eerie. I walked through every area of the warehouse and couldn’t see a thing out of order, and yet, apparently, Alverez had caught a murderer within my walls only hours earlier. The cameras, microphones, and metal cabinet were gone. I felt unsettled. Ignoring the amorphous disquiet, I climbed the steps to my office, and began to work.

I drafted an e-mail to Gretchen explaining my idea for Prescott’s Instant Appraisals, and asked her to contact Keith, the graphic designer we used on an as-needed basis to create a themed campaign for the booth itself, newspaper ads, and flyers that we could tuck into bags when we packed up items. It had occurred to me that if Barney was more or less broke, he wasn’t much of a competitive threat, but I decided to proceed with the instant appraisal idea anyway. As a strategy to get a leg up on good inventory and build traffic, I didn’t see how it could be beat. Plus, it sounded like fun.

I stretched and glanced at the computer clock. It wasn’t even 7:30 yet. I wondered where Alverez was, and what he was doing. I stood up and paced, sat down, and then, a minute later, stood up and paced again, this time in a different direction.

I sat down, determined to focus on tasks at hand. I turned to the computer. I’d told Sasha that I’d take care of researching the leather trunk, and I hoped that doing so might stop me from wasting time and energy on other, pointless thoughts.