Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  Julia shrugged. “Maybe for the same reason that Underwood should be apologizing. They both knew Annabelle’s beloved brother was still alive, and they kept that knowledge from her. They allowed her to needlessly grieve.”

  She heaved herself up from the couch. “Look, we can argue about this until the cows come home, but our best bet would be to go see Underwood again. Let’s see what he has to say for himself once we confront him with the truth.”

  “And the finial?” Celine asked.

  “It’s going to be in a dryer full of clothes for now,” Julia said. “And I’ve put a decoy container in the wheelbarrow just in case your friends decide to return or Bob Massie unwittingly blabs to someone.”

  She stretched her back, wincing as she did so. “It’ll need to be returned to the Gardner. The sooner the better.” Her gaze returned to Celine. “Are you up for a trip to Boston?”

  “I guess.” Celine wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go. But there was little to keep her in Paso Robles. “The bar’s going to be closed for a while. And I suppose Andrea can manage the winery by himself.”

  Who knew, maybe the change in scene would be good for her after all. It had been years since she’d traveled anywhere.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The First Street Credit Union was at the corner of Longwood Avenue and Binney Street. A little over a half-mile northwest of the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum, Blake noted. And about a mile away from Boston University. Conveniently located for students—and anyone employed at the Gardner.

  Blake wasn’t surprised Simon Duarte and Earl Bramer had opted to bank here. Although the credit union had grown since the nineties—it boasted four branches now—its fees were still student-friendly, far lower than at the average bank.

  He parked his car on the narrow road—the bike lane was as wide as each of the two lanes running down the two-way street—and prayed he wouldn’t bump into the Museum’s Director, Penny Hoskins.

  It was the last thing he needed, he said to himself, eyeing traffic on both sides before jaywalking across.

  He pushed through the glass doors into a brightly lit, pleasant space. Comfortable couches upholstered in muted shades of carmine, thick rugs patterned in white, gray, and crimson, and wall art painted in cheerful reds and oranges gave the place an inviting air.

  A slim woman in a dove-gray business suit was at his side the moment he walked in.

  “Special Agent Blake Markham?”

  Blake nodded.

  “Mr. Kevorkian is waiting for you,” she informed him with a smile as she led him across the marble-tiled floor, through a door in the back, into a small office.

  A graying, middle-aged man rose from his chair and reached across to take Blake’s hand. “Special Agent Markham? Michael Kevorkian.”

  “Armenian?” Blake asked when the woman had left, and they’d settled down at the manager’s desk.

  Kevorkian smiled. “Yes! How did you guess?”

  “It’s the i-a-n,” Blake explained. “It’s a dead giveaway.” He’d grown up next to an Armenian family, and his buddy Arman had provided that particular clue to Armenian identity.

  “So it is,” Kevorkian agreed. “But I imagine that’s not what you’re here to discuss.” He pressed his palms together, interlacing his fingers. “What may I do for you, Special Agent?”

  When he’d requested an appointment, Blake had explained that he needed records for an old account. But he hadn’t mentioned any particulars. He did so now.

  “The holders of both accounts are dead, Special Agent, and the accounts have long been closed. May I ask what this is about?”

  It was a question Blake was prepared for. “Their names have come up in connection with a more recent case, and we’ve reason to believe that their deaths may not have been the accident we thought it was.”

  “Ah!” Kevorkian’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “In that case, I have some interesting information for you.” He pushed a slim manila folder across the desk to Blake. “A few days before the accounts were permanently closed, both young men came into the bank. They not only provided instructions on the disposal of the funds in their accounts in the event of their death—“

  “Bramer declared a beneficiary as well?” Blake interrupted. “Whom did he name?”

  “The same person as his friend Simon Duarte: Annabelle Curtis. Bramer apparently had no living relatives to leave his assets to.”

  “I see.” Blake nodded. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. You were saying . . .”

  Kevorkian leaned back in his leather chair. “They had a considerable amount of money in their accounts. They withdrew the bulk of it. Annabelle Curtis received a sizeable inheritance, but both men took out about eighty percent of what was in their accounts.”

  This was interesting. “How much was that?”

  “Between the two accounts, close to a million.”

  Blake whistled. “As much as that!”

  How had two presumably impoverished art students managed to get their hands on that much money? By selling the treasures stolen from the Gardner Museum?

  At the time of the theft, the stolen art had been valued at about two hundred million dollars. Then as now, the Vermeer alone would have accounted for half that amount. At black market rates, a savvy thief might have expected to net close to twenty million for his efforts. About half that for just the Vermeer.

  But for two young men such as Duarte and Bramer, a million dollars would have been a king’s ransom. Moreover, a rube in the art theft field would need to rely on a fence. And in that case, a million would be a fairly generous amount.

  “Special Agent Markham!” Michael Kevorkian’s voice penetrated his wandering mind. He looked up. “Could the money have been the cause of their death?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Blake replied. It had more likely furnished a means for their disappearance, but that was not a thought he could share with the bank manager.

  He leaned forward. “All that money, suddenly withdrawn, didn’t it strike you as being extremely odd? Suspicious even?”

  Kevorkian smiled. “I was just a humble clerk back then. Manning the counter out there.” He tipped his head outside the door at the four tellers attending to the credit union’s few customers.

  “Either the manager at the time saw no reason to ask any questions. Or, if he did, he was satisfied with the replies he received.”

  “I see,” Blake said. “Any chance, the manager’s still around.”

  Kevorkian’s expression became grave. “I’m afraid not. Rawlins died very shortly after. Murdered. It was an unfortunate affair. His house was broken into; the intruders killed him. A senseless crime.” He sighed.

  “Murdered?” This was getting even more interesting. “By whom?”

  “The case was never solved. There’d been a spate of bank robberies in the neighborhood. The police theorized that the killers may have wanted access to our vaults and that Jerry Rawlins refused to comply. Although whether they would’ve let Rawlins live after he’d provided the information is doubtful.”

  Blake agreed, although he didn’t think Rawlins’ killers were after bank codes or vaults. They were most likely enforcers for an enraged mob that had just discovered it had been swindled by a couple of rookie criminals.

  Rawlins likely had no information about the whereabouts of Simon Duarte and Earl Bramer. But even if he had—and been willing to share it—he would have been no less dead.

  The crime scene tape and the police cars around Simon Underwood’s residence were visible as soon as Celine turned onto South Street.

  The sight was jarring to her. Gripping the steering wheel hard, she eased her foot off the pedal. She turned to Julia.

  “What do you think is going on there?”

  “This must be Blake’s doing.” Julia leaned forward and peered through the windshield. “He probably uncovered some information that ties Underwood to the stolen art. I’d love to know what, though.”

  “I thought the sta
tute of limitations had run out on the theft.” The Pilot lurched forward as Celine pushed the gas pedal down.

  “It has,” Julia replied, her eyes still on the scene up ahead. “But you could still be charged for possession of stolen property. And if I’m not mistaken that’s exactly what’s happening here. Cruise forward, will you, so we can find out what’s going on.”

  They’d barely approached the corner of South Street and Morro Avenue when a Morro Bay police offer stepped forward with his badge held out.

  “I’ll have to ask you to turn around, ma’am,” he said when Celine rolled down her window. He jerked his thumb back at Simon’s house. “Crime scene.”

  Julia leaned across. “I’m retired FBI, Officer.” She showed him her badge. “May I ask what happened here?”

  The officer hesitated, looked over his shoulder, then turned back around. “I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am. But if you’ll wait here a minute, I can ask Detective Mailand if he’ll talk with you.”

  “Just as I suspected,” Julia said when the officer had left them. “This is connected with what happened at the Delft. And the Gardner.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.” Celine’s eyes were riveted on the house. Simon was nowhere to be seen. He’s dead. The thought flashed across her mind. Her fingers, wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, felt cold and clammy.

  It seemed like an eternity before Detective Mailand walked out to them. The craggy lines on his face had deepened, settling into a forbidding, dour expression that intensified the moment he saw Julia.

  He bent down and peered in through the open window. “What brings you here, Ms. Hood?”

  “We were here to see Simon Underwood,” Celine replied for her. “We had some questions for him.”

  “Some things that, upon reflection, don’t add up,” Julia added. “May we have a moment with him?”

  “I wish I could say, yes.” Mailand’s gaze drifted toward Celine. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Ms. Skye.”

  Celine had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling, but her voice quavered nonetheless when she asked: “How did you know? How did you know to come here?”

  Mailand’s eyes were on Julia when he replied. “Your colleague at the FBI asked us to check up on him. He feared Underwood might be in danger.” He paused. “Unfortunately, he was right.”

  “Same perps?” Julia asked.

  “Looks like it.” Mailand stood up. “Same MO.”

  Back in his car, Blake wondered why no one had questioned the timing of the deposits into and out of Duarte’s and Bramer’s accounts. They had occurred so shortly after the Gardner Museum heist, it was hard to believe no one at First Street Credit Union had thought to report the transactions.

  He leafed through the file Kervokian had given him. The money had been deposited in four separate checks—two going into Duarte’s account and two into Bramer’s. Even so, the deposits were larger than any the two had made in their entire history with First Street Credit Union.

  Either an overworked teller had slipped up, failing to report the amounts to Jerry Rawlins, the manager, or someone in the credit union—a teller or Rawlins himself—had been bribed to keep the amount under their hats.

  Certainly, there’d been no additional scrutiny other than an automatic three-day hold on each check. A hundred dollars of the amount had been made immediately available, five thousand after the first business day, with the rest being made available by the third day.

  The checks had clearly passed scrutiny, although nothing in the file told Blake who had signed them.

  He set the file down on the passenger seat, started the car, flicked on his left turn indicator, and waited. A steady stream of cars drove past.

  The deposits were suspicious. Clearly, Duarte and Bramer had been involved in something illegal. But the withdrawals were even more telling.

  They were the clearest indication so far that Duarte and Bramer had intended to go on the run.

  Why? Because they were genuinely in fear for their lives? Or because they’d double-crossed the mob? Blake didn’t know.

  He peered into his side-view mirror, waiting for traffic to sufficiently clear to let him merge in. The steady tick-tick of his indicator accompanied his thoughts.

  No one had told poor Annabelle Curtis about the large withdrawals her brother and his friend had made shortly before their “accident.”

  “She never asked,” Michael Kevorkian had told Blake. “I still remember her coming into the credit union to close the accounts. She was so distraught. All she wanted to do was get on with the business at hand. She barely paid attention to the information we did give her.”

  The withdrawals and everything Blake had learned thus far provided the first faint glimmer of corroboration for the cockamamie tale Grayson Pike had brought to the FBI years ago.

  Duarte and Bramer had made off with the Gardner Art. And Blake was beginning to suspect they’d staged the car crash and faked their deaths. What better way to escape the mob than to die before they could dispose of you?

  A lagging car afforded Blake the opportunity he needed. He was about to take it when his phone rang. He glanced at it.

  Penny Hoskins.

  He could swear the woman had a sixth sense for his whereabouts—and for the exact wrong time to call.

  Sorry, Penny, you’re going to have to deal with voicemail for now.

  He pushed the gas pedal down and steered smoothly into the gap in traffic.

  He’d call her just as soon as he possibly could.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Simon Underwood had been garroted with a thin wire and left for dead some time during the previous evening. Mailand had been able to ascertain that Underwood had received and responded to a phone call around about 6 p.m. Someone—his killer, or killers in all likelihood—had knocked on the door shortly after.

  “There were no signs of a break-in, so he must have let his killers in.”

  How the Sheriff’s detective had ascertained these details or even why Blake Markham had suspected Simon Underwood might be in danger, Celine didn’t know. She sat with Julia in Mailand’s makeshift office at the Paso Robles Police Station, her mind grappling with the news.

  It felt oddly surreal to be here again. To be dealing with murder for a second time.

  But at least Mailand wasn’t treating them like suspects this time. If anything, he was being surprisingly forthcoming.

  “Was anything found in Underwood’s residence?” Julia’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Any paintings not by him?”

  Mailand shook his head. “The place was in disarray. Whoever killed him had searched the place pretty thoroughly. The paintings that were there were pretty roughed up. There’s nothing missing from what we can tell.

  “And nothing that doesn’t belong to Underwood either—other than a few fingerprints that matched the crime scene at the Delft and the break-in at your cottage, Ms. Skye.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been Greg—Grayson, whatever his name is.”

  It was the one thought that stood out clearly in Celine’s mind. She’d initially thought he’d had something to do with these events, but her cottage had been broken into and Simon killed after the man had already left Paso Robles.

  “Unless, of course, he drove down from San Luis Obispo,” she added.

  “His fingerprints weren’t a match for the ones we found. It wasn’t him,” Mailand said. “Although we still think he’s a person of interest in that he might know or have seen something that could help explain who’s behind this.”

  “Any luck finding Grayson?” Julia asked.

  Mailand shook his head. “I’m afraid he led us on a wild goose chase. He conned a cashier at Costco into giving him a Costco Membership card without verifying his identification. He used that to fly into Boston. The prepaid credit card we were tracking down . . . he gave that to an elderly lady. It was a deliberate strategy to get us off the scent.”

  “Sounds suspici
ous,” Julia remarked.

  “No, he was probably just afraid,” Celine said. She didn’t know how she knew that. The thought had just popped into her head.

  It was followed by another. “He’s probably hiding in a church somewhere.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mailand looked puzzled.

  “She means,” Julia said with a hard glare at Celine, “that churches often provide sanctuary to people—even those running from the law or the federal government. We were talking just the other day about illegal immigrants who take refuge within Catholic churches.”

  Mailand shrugged. “I guess that’s as good a possibility as any. Of course, the other important bit of business is to find Simon Duarte. It seems he may have known both Dirck Thins and Simon Underwood. Now both men are dead. Can’t be a coincidence, if you ask me.”

  “Anything useful on Dirck’s cell phone?” Julia wanted to know. They’d stopped by his cottage before setting off for Morro Bay. But Dirck’s phone bill had only shown phone calls to and from an unknown number. Simon Duarte’s number, they’d both thought.

  “And I was so sure Dirck was the one who’d called in that tip to the FBI.” Celine had let the bill slip from her fingers, disappointed. Could she really have been so wrong about her employer?

  The number had a Paso Robles area code, but the phone company, when Julia had called, had been unable to provide any information on it.

  Mailand nodded when Julia shared that snippet with him. “Must have been the burner number Thins was using to call the feds,” he said. “There was a burner app on his phone.” He turned to Celine. “Any idea why he may have wanted to conceal his identity?”

  Celine shook her head. Dirck hadn’t told her he was calling the FBI. He hadn’t told her how or why he’d come into possession of the Gardner’s bronze finial. But at least he’d been attempting to return it. That was something.

  “He must have thought he was in danger.” What had Simon Underwood said—something about the FBI being in bed with the Boston mob? Could that have been the reason for Dirck’s caution?