Linda Fairstein - Cold Hit

“This might work even better. There’s a rear door on Twenty-third Street, through the warehouse of the gallery. We saw the sign for it, like a service entrance, the first day we came here. Maybe Daughtry’ll let me in that way. As Chapman said then, Daughtry might even prefer we use it.” Again, I checked the time. “Chapman should be calling soon. C’mon, let’s go around the corner.”

We drove up to Twenty-third and Lazarro signaled left, then made a U-turn to pull up to the curb in front of the spot I pointed out as the garage entrance to Deni’s gallery. Brigid got out of the car when I did and walked with me over to the rusty-colored door frame, which had an intercom system with two buzzers next to a small enamel plate. One was marked caxton due-service, and the other said caxton due- gallery.

I pressed the second bell and waited a couple of minutes.

“Any idea how long we’ll be here?” Brigid asked.

“With some luck, if he lets me poke around the warehouse, I might be an hour or more. If Chapman turns up anything important, be ready to fly out of here with me, okay?”

The gray haze seemed to be lifting, as the forecasters had promised, and the sun was beginning to filter through. I was hot and looked forward to being received in the cool of the airconditioned art display space.

We both heard the sound of the intercom click.

“Yes?” Judging from the crackling quality of its sound, the system was as old as the building.

“Alexandra Cooper. From the District Attorney’s Office,” I identified myself to Daughtry.

“I’ll buzz you in. Come on up-is not-but I’ll-top-”

The entrance led directly up an old iron staircase, which bypassed the storage area to lead into the gallery itself. Before the door swung shut behind us, I heard Lazarro calling Brigid’s name.

“Sergeant Danz wants to talk to you. Needs an idea of how long we’re going be tied up here. Wanna take it?”

Brigid looked at me. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I do the same thing when my boss calls.”

“Can you wait down here a few minutes while I report in? The sergeant’s gonna have to get permission for us to work over the end of the shift at three thirty.”

I pointed up. “You know right where I am. I’ll be out as soon as Chapman calls.”

As I climbed the steps, I could see scores of paintings arrayed in bins beneath, most of them covered in bubble wrap or kraft paper, and all labeled by the artist’s name and some kind of numerical code. They varied in size from tiny objects, not larger than four by six inches, to giant canvases that were best suited for museum walls.

I rang at the door at the top of the stairs and the buzzer sounded to unlock the way into the small lift, which descended to this ground floor area to take me up to the top of the atrium, where Daughtry awaited my arrival. When the door slid back, I was again overwhelmed by the beauty of the open atrium space. Emerging from the elevator on the north side of the building, I was facing the glass wall of the southern exposure and its great view of the city sky.

As I stepped off into the room, I felt the relief of the cold surge of air that I had anticipated. It contrasted with the unexpected brightness of the afternoon sun at the end of a gloomy day, which lit up the gallery space and beamed down on the tracks of the deserted Hi-Line Railroad.

I took my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket for the first time that day.

“Over here,” called a voice that was familiar to me, but it was not Daughtry’s.

I looked around and saw Frank Wrenley sitting on one of the couches in the exhibition area one flight below me.

“Welcome, Ms. Cooper. I’m baby-sitting the art for Bryan. He should be back anytime now. May I offer you a cold drink?”

I remembered that this morning, in my office, Wrenley had told us that Daughtry was going to allow him to look through Denise’s belongings to see whether any of his property was included there. He was holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and a tall glass in the other.

“Shall I come down?”

“Please.”

I followed the catwalk around the bend until I arrived at the metal staircase that led to the level below. I walked down, shook Wrenley’s hand, and accepted his offer to sit on the couch. I could see the documents he had laid out on the glasstopped table between us. He had a red pen and appeared to be going through lists that he was checking against his own.

“Will you join me in a Bloody Mary?”

“No thanks.”

“Ah, the constable doesn’t drink on duty, does she?”

“I’m so exhausted, Mr. Wrenley, that I’d probably curl up and take a nap if I so much as smelled a whiff of the vodka. Your inventory?”

“Bryan’s off trying to solve the mystery of Lowell Caxton’s hasty retreat. He’s been good enough to let me attempt to reconcile some of my records with Deni’s things before I return to Palm Beach.” He waved his receipts in my direction as though to convince me that he had proof of title for anything he needed. “Where’s your sidekick? I was beginning to think you and Detective Chapman were joined at the hip.”

“He’ll be along soon. We were-I was hoping to get Mr. Daughtry’s permission to look around a bit at some of Denise’s things.”

“I thought that first day I met you here you’d gone all through this place with warrants and everything short of commando troops. Bryan was sure he was going back to prison.”

I smiled at his exaggerated description. “That’s one of the problems when you do a search before you know just what it is you’re looking for.”

“But now you do know?”

Not really. But I saw no reason to tell that to Wrenley. We’d try again with some of the information we had picked up after Varelli’s murder and during our conversation with Don Cannon. “Do you have any idea when Mr. Daughtry is due to return?” I didn’t know whether to try to wait it out or get down to my office and face the music with McKinney.

“Pretty soon, I should think. He’s got to lock the place up for the night.”

It was now going on three hours since Mike had left the city. I reached in my bag to get the cell phone to try to beep him. When I turned it on, the failure of the three green icons to light up reminded me that the battery must have run down. I kept the charger set up on my desk at home and plugged the phone into it every evening as a matter of habit, but since I had spent the last two nights at Jake’s apartment, I had neglected to recharge it.

“Would you mind if I use the telephone for a moment?”

Wrenley pointed to the portable unit on the table next to his papers. “Help yourself.”

I picked it up and dialed Chapman’s beeper, punching in the number of the gallery as I read it off the plate on the receiver. Then I set it back down, knowing he would return the call to the unfamiliar number only when he was ready to take a break.

“I can’t give you access to the storage area, but I don’t imagine Bryan would mind if you look through the gallery and the office while you’re waiting. After all, you’ve done that once already, haven’t you?”

I was feeling even more foolish as I stood up and glanced around. There was nothing in the midst of this thoroughly modern exhibit that I could connect by my wildest stretch to the art treasures that I associated with Deni Caxton’s troubles. I started to work my way about the place, reading the descriptions and trying to make sense of the works.

Within several minutes the phone rang and I hurried back to the area where Wrenley was sitting. He had answered it by saying, “Galleria Caxton Due,” and passed it off to me when I approached the table.

Instinctively, I turned my back to him and started to walk a few steps off. I was aware that it was rude, but I also wanted whatever privacy might be necessary. “No, that was Wrenley. Frank Wrenley,” I said, responding to Mike’s question about whether the man who had spoken was Bryan Daughtry.