Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  Julia had pooh-poohed the idea so strenuously when Simon suggested it that Celine hesitated to broach it again now.

  She glanced at her companion. Why was Julia really here, she wondered. Two men had been killed since her arrival in town. And last night, Celine had conked out—so deeply unconscious, Julia could’ve come and gone, and she’d not have a clue.

  Now Julia had the finial. Was she going to mention it to Mailand?

  Ella looked up from her computer, her round glasses gleaming, the moment Blake opened the door to the outer office. He felt a guilty start as their eyes collided. Why his personal assistant had that effect on him he had no idea. But she did.

  She’d been waiting for him; he could tell from the way she leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.

  “There you are,” she said in the mildly disapproving tone of an elementary-school principal chastising a tardy first-grader.

  She pushed her chair back and came around to him, a folder in her hands. “I’ve been fielding calls for you all morning.”

  Calls, Blake thought. There’d been more than one? He opened the door to his office and gestured Ella in.

  “Penny Hoskins?” he asked as she strode past him. He didn’t see who else it could be.

  Mailand had already called in from the Sheriff’s Office in San Luis Obispo County to report Underwood’s murder.

  “First Street Credit Union,” Ella replied. “I thought that’s where you went.”

  “I did. That’s where I’m coming from. Traffic was—” He stopped himself. She was his assistant, goddammit, not his boss. She didn’t need an explanation.

  “Well, the manager called. More than once.”

  “What about?” He pulled a chair out for her and then went around behind his desk to his own comfortable black leather swivel chair.

  “About the accounts you were interested in.” She opened the folder and passed a paper across the table to him. “Simon Duarte and Earl Bramer each received a check for two hundred and fifty grand on March 11 and then a second check for the same amount on March 18, 1990.”

  Blake glanced at the paper. The checks had been from a Boston-based art dealership, Lawrence & Young. The first deposited a week before the Gardner Heist, and the second on the day of. It may not have looked suspicious then. But it sure as hell did now.

  “First Street,” Ella continued, “conducted the usual safeguards, checking with Lawrence & Young’s bank to make sure the dealer’s account had sufficient funds for the checks to clear, but it was just a formality.”

  Lawrence & Young had banked with Citizens Bank, Blake noted. It was a fairly prominent financial institution in the New England region. Respectable, well regarded, with never a sniff of anything remotely shady.

  He looked up. “Go on.”

  “As a noted art dealership, Lawrence & Young habitually dealt with large amounts of money—cash and check. On a few occasions, they had made sizeable payments—although nothing to the tune of what Duarte and Bramer received—to clients of First Street, many of whom were up-and-coming art students at Boston University.”

  In other words, there’d been nothing untoward about the transactions.

  Blake nodded to indicate he was following her. The additional transactions on the document Ella had handed him showed Duarte and Bramer receiving five hundred dollars each from Lawrence & Young just six months prior to the amounts they’d received in March 1990.

  “So, when Duarte and Bramer showed up with these checks, First Street simply assumed their clients had struck gold?”

  “That’s right,” Ella said. “Naturally, they saw no need to file a criminal referral form.”

  Because Lawrence & Young had been seemingly above suspicion, Blake realized. A known commodity. At least within the banking community. If only they’d heeded Ronald Reagan’s advice to “trust, but verify.”

  “And when the teller casually asked the two men about their sudden fortune, they said their work was finally getting the interest it deserved. A couple of art collectors from Ohio thought they were destined to be the next big thing in the art world.”

  “A couple of art collectors?” Somehow Blake didn’t buy that story. Art collectors, no matter how naïve, simply do not drop a quarter of a million dollars on works by unknown artists.

  “It sounded fishy to me, too,” Ella said, noting his skepticism with something akin to approval.

  “You looked into it?”

  “And missed my lunch doing so.”

  Ah! That’s why she’d been so grumpy. Ordinarily, Blake would have been the one making phone calls.

  “I haven’t eaten either,” he confessed. “Want me to have something brought in”—he pulled the phone toward himself, his fingers ready to lift the receiver—“and we can continue this conversation over lunch?”

  Ella regarded him, head tilted, lips pursed, then smiled. “Okay. But make sure it’s from Floramo’s.”

  Floramo’s—about a two-minute walk from the FBI office—ordinarily didn’t offer takeout. But an exception was usually made for the clientele at 201 Maple Street.

  Blake placed an order for the veal cutlet sub, extra mushrooms for himself, and the chicken cutlet sub with extra cheese for Ella along with an order of fries and onion rings.

  When it came, he allowed Ella to tuck in before pursuing details of her investigation.

  He bit into an onion ring, chewed, and swallowed. “So you called Lawrence & Young, I assume,” he began.

  She shook her head, mouth full. “I tried to,” she said after she’d swallowed. “But they went out of business five years ago when Lawrence passed away. Young had already died some years back. After Lawrence passed on, there was no one—except Lawrence’s son who wasn’t interested—to carry on the business. The son just liquidated the dealership’s assets.”

  “So you called Citizens Bank,” Blake ventured a guess.

  “Who wouldn’t tell me anything. They point-blank refused to send over any records pertaining to Lawrence & Young.”

  “Not surprising, all things considered,” Blake remarked. He couldn’t believe Ella had even gone that route. They had no probable cause for demanding the art dealership’s financial statements.

  “That they couldn’t get a hold of you to confirm my requests didn’t help either,” Ella informed him.

  Yet another reason for her initial irate greeting, Blake realized. “So what did you do?”

  “I told them we were looking into a potential money laundering case that went all the way back to the nineties, and that Lawrence & Young may have been unwittingly involved. I mentioned the two checks issued in March 1990. Had they, I asked, looked into the individual who had paid Lawrence & Young just before they issued those checks?”

  She took the last bite of her sub, washing it down with a quick gulp of Sprite.

  “That got their attention. The manager still wasn’t willing to reveal very much, but he did look into Lawrence & Young’s deposits for that month. Turns out the dealer received four checks—signed by four different individuals—but all drawn upon an account owned by a company called Gold Star, Inc.”

  “A shell company,” Blake guessed.

  “Yup. It took me some digging to find out, of course. Care to take a guess who the director of the board of said shell was?”

  Blake frowned. The name of the company had sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “One William Longfellow Worth,” Ella said.

  W.L. Worth? Blake straightened up in his chair. W.L. Worth was the shady fence who—according to Grayson—had indicated that Duarte and Bramer had made off with all the Gardner Art.

  When questioned, Worth had denied making that statement. But now here was a connection between Worth and the museum’s two assistant gardeners. That was surely not a coincidence.

  “Well done, Ella!” Blake said. He meant it.

  “There’s more.”

  He waited expectantly.

  “Shortl
y after the FBI brought W.L. Worth in for questioning, Gold Star was dissolved. Its assets went into a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

  “So something shady was going on—whether Lawrence & Young was aware of it or not?”

  “Absolutely,” Ella replied. “Citizens Bank suspected nothing. They went so far as to mention that Gold Star had made prior large payments to Lawrence & Young.”

  “All shady, I’m guessing.” Blake scratched his chin. “If only we could get a look at those transactions.”

  But the connection to the Gardner Museum heist was too tenuous to convince a judge to give them the go-ahead.

  Ella dabbed at her mouth with a paper napkin.

  “Well, if my plan works out, we just might.”

  He gaped at her, visibly startled.

  She pushed back her chair, amused by the expression on his face.

  “Don’t worry, Blake, it’s all on the up-and-up.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “You didn’t tell Detective Mailand about the finial,” Celine remarked as she put the gear into reverse and backed out of their parking spot. The Pilot made a smooth, wide arc onto the street.

  “Why not?” Celine depressed the brake pedal, her hand on the gear, ready to move it into drive. She turned to face Julia.

  You can trust her, Celine, Sister Mary Catherine had softly murmured into her ear. Based on that, Celine had decided against mentioning the finial to the Sheriff’s detective. But now she wanted to know Julia’s reasons.

  If they were going to work together, they would have to trust each other. And for that, Celine needed more than her guardian angel’s voice.

  “There’s a car behind us,” Julia said, tipping her chin at the rearview mirror. “We’d better get moving.”

  Celine shifted the gear and took her foot off the brake, letting the Pilot roll forward. Her gaze slid to the right and then shifted back to the road. Julia looked as though she was collecting her thoughts, so Celine waited.

  Julia sighed. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” she said eventually. “Not something you really think about. But”—she expelled another breath—“there were several fairly good reasons behind that decision. First, on the surface of it, the finial has nothing to do with either murder. We’re assuming it does.”

  “We are?” Celine asked.

  “Think about it. If you were on its trail, would you rip a painting out of its frame to find it?”

  “I guess not,” Celine agreed. It was the reason she hadn’t initially considered it worth mentioning that Dirck had given her a container to hide hours before his murder.

  “Second, if Grayson came to Paso Robles, drawn by the photo of the finial you inadvertently advertised on Facebook, then his presence in town coincides with one murder and has been followed by a second. Best that we keep our discovery on a need-to-know basis.”

  Celine stole another look at Julia. “I thought you said that my ad might have attracted the mob’s attention.”

  Julia seemed to hesitate a fraction of a second. “I’m not so sure anymore. Given your targeting criteria, I think it’s more likely that Grayson saw the ad. He’s a lush—always has been. More into beer than wine, but you said you targeted anyone partial to alcohol. And he is heavily into art, I’ll give him that.”

  “Then how did the mob come to know? Their enforcers obviously followed him here.”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Julia replied quietly. “If Grayson thought he’d discovered the whereabouts of the Gardner loot, he’d go straight to the FBI. It seems like he did just that. They bit, so there was no need to blab to the mob.”

  She paused, then said: “On the other hand, maybe he did blab. Perhaps it slipped out of him while he was drunk. But somehow I don’t think that’s what happened. He was after the reward money; why would he jeopardize his chances of getting his hands on it? No most likely Grayson kept this little tidbit to himself.”

  “And they found out . . . how?”

  “I wish I knew. That he took off his tracker is telling.”

  “You think the FBI . . .?”

  “I don’t know.” Julia cut Celine off. “What I’m more interested in is why Dirck offered up the Vermeer when he called in his tip to the FBI, but not the finial. Was he unaware of what it was?”

  Celine thought back to the last time she’d seen her employer alive. Dirck had emphasized the value of the object he was giving her. It needed to be kept in a safe place, he’d said. Away from prying eyes.

  “Dirck said he’d been keeping it for someone he and John cared for very deeply. He didn’t think he could keep it any longer. It needed to be returned.”

  “You think he was referring to Simon Duarte? Or Earl Bramer?”

  “He was talking about a woman. I can’t help but think it was Annabelle Curtis.”

  “Duarte’s sister.” A playful gust from Niblick Road whipped Julia’s ponytail to the front. She rolled up her window. “I wonder if that bronze eagle was stolen for her. It’s not particularly valuable. Never has been. Its appeal is more historic than aesthetic.

  “We ought to pay her a visit when we get to Boston,” Julia said.

  “And I’m going to have to tell her Simon Underwood is dead, after all.”

  It was clear to Blake that Simon Duarte and Earl Bramer had been involved in an underhanded scheme to sell some—or all—of the stolen Gardner art to disreputable collectors.

  A premeditated scheme, given the dates on the checks. Duarte and Bramer must have approached William Worth and Gold Star well before the heist with a fairly clear idea of the works they’d dispose of.

  And a fairly good idea that they’d soon be on the run.

  Funneling the art through Lawrence & Young, a seemingly legitimate art dealer, would have been Worth’s idea. Had Worth arranged for false papers and new identification for the two as well?

  Blake rubbed his chin as he pondered the various threads of the case.

  If Worth had helped Duarte and Bramer acquire false ID, it would make sense for him to surmise that the stolen art had been destroyed along with the two men—burnt to ashes in the fatal car crash that had supposedly taken their lives.

  “And if I were Worth—and the FBI brought me in for questioning,” Blake said to himself, “I’d deny making that surmise, too.” To admit it would have forced Worth to confess to having knowingly dealt with some of the stolen Gardner art.

  But for Worth to have drawn that conclusion, the checks issued to Duarte and Bramer could certainly not have been for the entire body of stolen art.

  No. Blake shook his head. Definitely not.

  Besides, if Dirck Thins’ tip was to be believed, the Vermeer, at any event, had ended up in Paso Robles.

  Had the four separate checks, then, been payment for four separate works of art? Or just the one?

  Blake pressed his fingers into his temple. His cogitations were making his head hurt.

  He opened his drawer, about to reach for his bottle of Tylenol, when his phone rang.

  Penny Hoskins, according to the caller ID.

  Jesus Christ! The woman was relentless.

  “You’re a hard man to get a hold of, Special Agent Markham.” Penny Hoskins’ breathy, high-pitched tones made Blake’s ears tingle.

  He put a fraction of an inch between his head and the earpiece on the receiver. “I was out in the field,” he said.

  “Indeed.” The rising tone of Penny’s voice as she uttered the word made it clear she was expecting a report.

  Blake wasn’t about to give it to her. But he did owe her an account of his visit to Annabelle Curtis the other evening.

  “Was Simon Duarte attached to his sister?” he asked.

  “Very much so,” Penny replied. “She was like a mother to him. I take it you’ve discovered he’s in touch with her. I told you—”

  “Actually, Penny, what I’ve discovered is that Annabelle Curtis mourns her brother today as much as she did when she first learned he and
Bramer had been killed.”

  “She could’ve been . . . you know . . .” Penny hesitated.

  “Lying?” Blake voiced her unspoken thought. “If you’ve met her, you’ll know she isn’t capable of dissimulation. Annabelle isn’t just grieving for her brother. She’s furious that what should have been investigated as a murder was allowed to go down as an unfortunate accident.”

  “Murder?” Penny sounded incredulous. “I just don’t believe that, Blake.”

  “They were in fear for their lives,” he told her. “They’d unwittingly agreed to be part of a heist that was meant to get the museum to be more proactive about security. When they realized that wasn’t the case, they wanted out. But they knew too much.”

  Blake had bought that theory when Annabelle had first broached it. But after his recent investigation into Duarte’s financial affairs, he’d begun to have his doubts. Had Duarte fed his unsuspecting sister a bunch of bull?

  He wasn’t ready to admit his suspicions to Penny Hoskins, however. Not just yet. And he certainly wasn’t ready to admit to her his strong suspicion that Duarte might still be alive.

  He thought he’d made a powerful case to the contrary. And there was one fact that made it even more compelling.

  “You can’t really believe that Duarte would have allowed his sister to believe he was dead all these years.” That cinched it—or so he thought.

  He wasn’t prepared for her reaction.

  “I think the evidence suggests that he might just have,” she replied quietly.

  What evidence? Blake wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  “The finial has turned up. In Paso Robles—exactly where your tipster hinted the Vermeer was.”

  “And you know about this—?” Blake let the question dangle.

  “From your retired colleague, Julia Hood. She’s flying it here. There’s no question it’s the real thing.”

  He heard a rush of air as Penny exhaled.

  “Special Agent Markham”—they were back to last names, he noted, and this time she wasn’t being playful—“The FBI has consistently given us the runaround. For three decades, we’ve had to press for the few updates we’ve been given.