The corridor to the elevators was long. I wondered why Atlanta hotels kept their public spaces so cold.
The Saab still smelled faintly of her perfume and the after-club effluvia of smoke and beer, and I told myself I was a fool. I drove back to Lake Claire very fast, with all the windows open, and found when I returned that the clocks were blinking 88:88—there had been a power hit in the middle of the night. The thunderstorm, no doubt.
I gave the homeless man in front of the Marquis Tower Two a dollar bill that was nearly whipped away in a gust of warm April wind, and went into the lobby which was all black marble and chrome. A very good, hidden sound system played Satie. The piano notes glided around the hard walls and polished floor, warming and humanizing the space, but not enough.
Thirty-four floors up, I headed towards the Lyon Art suite, expecting more sleek surfaces, with perhaps some uncomfortable furniture and elegant but indifferent staff. Instead the door swung open to laughter, bright colours and the earthy, welcoming scent of French roast. The woman who was laughing—comfortably plump, about sixty—turned at my entrance, scooted her chair under the beautiful pine reception desk, and smiled. “Good morning. How can we help you?”
The four or five people in the cubicles to the left were on the phone or tapping away at their keyboards. I smiled back. “Aud Torvingen. I have an appointment to see Julia Lyons-Bennet.”
She frowned. “Oh. She said…Didn’t she call you? I distinctly remember her telling me she was going to call you last night.” She swung her chair around again and called to a man who was munching a cinnamon bun by his computer. “Ricky, tell me I’m not losing my mind. Yesterday afternoon, when Julia got that message from InterCom, she said she was going to call Ms. Torvingen?”
“Sure did.”
She turned back to face me. “Well, somebody got their wires crossed. Julia’s not here. She had to go to Boston yesterday. She said she would call you and let you know last night.”
I remembered the storm battering the hotel window.
“I apologize on her behalf. I hope you haven’t been too inconvenienced. I know she particularly wanted to talk to you.”
Her look of genuine distress made me want to reassure her. “I think I know what happened. She probably left a message but I had a power hit last night. I bet the machine reset itself, and when I got in, there was no blinking light so I thought there was no message. No one’s fault.”
“I get so tired of the power company, don’t you? Every time there’s a storm, phht, the power goes. Still, at this time of year it’s not so bad. But when it goes in August, I just go crazy without my air-conditioning. The heat!”
“I know what you mean. When is she expected back from Boston?”
She looked surprised. “This morning. Didn’t I say? No, I don’t suppose I did.”
“Well, perhaps you could ask her to call me.” I reached for one of my not-very-informative cards.
“Oh, heavens, keep that. She’s got your number. Besides, there’s no need for you to rush off. Her plane lands in”—quick glance at her watch—“less than an hour and I’ll page her to make sure she’ll come straight here. Do you take sugar? In your coffee,” she added kindly.
“No. Thank you.”
She started bustling about. “How about cream? Yes? I wish I could get Julia to take some cream. Nothing but skin and bone. I tell her she could do with some padding, no one dates skinny girls, but she just gives me that look.” She handed me the coffee, directed a piercing look at my ringless left hand, and nodded to herself. “Dating can be hard for career women.”
I thought about Mindy, probably already smiling efficiently at her prospective employer.
She gave me a sly smile. “Well, come along, let’s go see if we can find that file she wanted you to see.”
I followed her past Ricky, who flashed me a sympathetic look, behind the cubicles and past a large room full of strange crates and bags of foam peanuts, into what I took to be Julia’s office. “Here we go.” She held out a maroon folder. I hadn’t seen where she had taken it from. “Well, don’t just stand there like a lamppost. Sit, sit.” I allowed myself to be chivvied into a comfortable chair. “You read that and drink your coffee and I’m sure it won’t feel like a minute before Julia gets here.”
I felt like a seven-year-old being comforted by a friend’s mother, but managed to regain my poise enough to smile and say, “I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
She gave me a roguish twinkle, said “Mrs. Miclasz, but you should call me Annie,” and closed the door behind her.
I sipped the coffee. It was delicious, perfectly prepared, as I imagine anything prepared by Annie Miclasz would be. One of those formidable women who felt they had to hide their efficiency behind a soft, caring front; who hid for so long that the front became real; one of the women who kept the world turning; one of the women it paid to never, ever cross.
The office was large, and obviously made for use rather than show. Two large drafting tables, one with sheets clipped down; a computer; four filing cabinets; three different Rolodexes; rough iron statuary in the corner near a huge picture window; two lush green plants that I couldn’t identify; and lamps everywhere, mostly unlit. I had expected art on the walls, but they were covered with graphs and charts. No doubt the view of the city at night would be more than fair compensation.
I opened the folder. Fastened to one side were scrupulous records of billable hours (I lifted an eyebrow at her rates); phone calls; packing materials; special transport; estimated costs of airport tax; a list of security measures to be engaged to and from Atlanta and Orly—all subcontracted; a muddy Polaroid of a strangely angular picture of what looked like a ship crushed between ice floes, with Caspar David Friedrich, 39 x 51, oil pencilled on the bottom….
I mused on the relative value of things. The homeless man outside begging for dimes. Thousands of dollars to ship a single piece of canvas that was not even big enough to shelter a person from the wind and rain.
I looked at the photograph again. The pencilled writing was angular, too; that of a Lyons-Bennet more than a Miclasz, I decided. The items attached to the other side of the folder were more interesting: partly typed, partly handwritten memos detailing phone calls between Lyons-Bennet and the banker, one Michael Honeycutt; between Lyons-Bennet and James D. Lusk, Ph.D., ASA, ISA; between Lyons-Bennet and Paulette Ciccione, who turned out to be the insurance adjuster.
I took notebook and pencil from my jacket pocket and made notes as I read. Phone memo: on April tenth, David Honeycutt asked Lyon Art to ship the Friedrich to Mantes-la-Jolie (a careful annotation in Julia’s hand read: twenty-five miles from Paris), to provide insurance and security, and to have the painting in France before the end of the month. Receipts indicating that Honeycutt handed the painting over to Lyon Art on the twelfth. I jotted, Who brought? What transportation? Directly hand to hand? and went back to the notes.
Perhaps half an hour later the door opened and Annie came in. “I’ve paged her. She should be here soon.” She picked up my empty coffee cup, nodded with approval. “More?”
My forehead felt tight from lack of sleep and too much beer. Not something caffeine could fix. “No, thank you.”
Julia’s later notes were all handwritten. The prospect of the painting being a fake, of her having made a mistake, had understandably led to a desire for privacy. Handwritten notes were much more secure than any computer hard drive. I was willing to bet, though, that Annie Miclasz already knew everything in this folder.
When I had read everything I went to the window and stared out. Peachtree Street was, architecturally speaking, a virtual John Portman fiefdom. Typical of his New Atlanta, One Peachtree Center rose diagonally across from the window: arrogant, too big, erected without any consideration for neighbours; its open metalwork spire glinting wasteful and golden in the late morning sun. To the left was another of his monstrous towers with its buff-coloured stone and mean, prisonlike windows, linked—by those silly gl
ass sky bridges that Dornan, a friend of mine, refers to as gerbil tubes—to the Mariott Marquis and the Gaslight Tower. People scurried back and forth looking nervous; below, the streets seethed with traffic even though it was not remotely near any kind of rush hour or even lunchtime. I wondered idly what kind of damage a couple of antipersonnel mines would do to those tubes and the street below.
Atlanta was a big city getting bigger every day: three million people living, breathing, working, cutting down trees and spewing out waste. This week there was one less than there had been: Jim Lusk, Ph.D., ASA, ISA. Where did he fit in the story of the fake painting, the very suspicious cocaine, and the banker? The police were no longer looking; they were only too happy to believe the soured drug deal story, but drug dealers would not leave several hundred thousand dollars worth of product lying around for the police to pick up.
Murders are committed for a variety of reasons but, given the supposed worth of the painting, and the cocaine, I would bet on money, power, or a warning—or a combination of all three. The question was, whose money, whose power, and who was being warned, and about what?
Ask any airline attendant and they will tell you that the worst passengers are always from first class: corporate CEOs who defecate on aisle trolleys and wipe themselves down with linen napkins when their third bottle of wine isn’t brought fast enough; the seventeen-year-old daughters of Arab sheiks who pinch and slap attendants who can’t provide Belgian chocolates. They have money and power and are used to the world conforming to their every whim. Lusk’s murder, like every other, came down to the same thing: someone out there believed that the rules everyone else obeyed did not apply to them.
The door opened behind me. Julia. No coat, hair in a French braid so tidy that either the wind had stopped or she had taken the time to replait it after arriving. She was sipping from a large coffee mug: probably already briefed by Mrs. Miclasz.
“I’m so sorry you have had to wait.”
I nodded over the file still on the chair. “It’s been fruitful.”
“I imagine you have questions.”
“I do. But let’s discuss them over lunch. I didn’t have time for breakfast.”
“Certainly, but there is one formality we should attend to first. The fee.” Here on her own turf she looked different: more whole and competent; denser somehow.
I had no idea what private investigators charged. “One twenty-five an hour, plus expenses, with a three-thousand-dollar advance.”
“The advance is fine, but I can’t pay more than eighty an hour, and the only expenses I’ll allow are travel.”
“One hundred, travel and food.” I smiled and added, “I’ll buy lunch.” I didn’t need the money but, judging by the rates she charged for her own services, she could afford it.
She gave in gracefully enough and asked Mrs. Miclasz to draw up a contract. It appeared in suspiciously short order. “Do you hire investigators often?” She shrugged, which I interpreted as no. I read it carefully—it seemed straightforward enough—and we both signed. Mrs. Miclasz then cut a cheque, one of those oversized corporate things that I had to fold twice to get in my pocket.
The old Murphy’s Restaurant had reminded me of the lower decks of a nineteenth century sailing ship: hot and airless, with cramped alcoves and no headroom. Five years ago, they had moved to specially built quarters just across the street, and Julia and I took a table by one of the many long, open windows where the spring air—softened, now that we were out of the canyon streets of downtown, to a gentle breeze—wafted pink and white dogwood blossom over the flagged floor, and where sunlight made me want to blink and stretch like a cat.
I ordered mixed greens with oregano garlic dressing, followed by lemon chicken and wild rice. “And please bring some bread meanwhile.” Julia pondered the menu, her blue eyes the colour of faded ink in the strong sunlight. I sipped idly at my water, felt a sudden flush of desire as a bare-midriffed waitress eased by and reminded me of Mindy’s pliant body under my hands.
Never mix business with pleasure. I thought deliberately about the fire, what it would have done to a human being. “Somebody out there killed Lusk for a reason. Do you have any ideas?”
“No. But the whole drug idea is ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
“You agree?”
“The cocaine was a plant. Did Lusk have any enemies—or any friends, lovers, ex-spouses who might want him dead?”
“No. Or at least not to my knowledge.”
“How good a friend was he?”
“Good.” A pause. She made a visible effort to let down her barriers. “Getting better. We met ten years ago, at Northwestern. He was one of my teachers. We kept in touch. When I moved to Atlanta six years ago, we had lunch. We had lunch regularly. Sometimes we had supper at his house when he had a rare painting or sculpture for me to look at. It doesn’t sound like much, but for him it was. He was a kind, gentle man. Shy. I think it took him all those years to realize I didn’t want anything from him except friendship, to share his knowledge and love of art. But he was beginning to unbend. We’d been talking about maybe going to Memphis together this summer to see that Moderns exhibition. He doesn’t like to travel, but he was so excited….” She looked fixedly out of the window.
I didn’t want her to cry before I’d had something to eat. “Were you romantically involved?”
“No.” It came out clipped and glacial. I could imagine the half-formed tears freezing across her cornea.
“What do ISA and ASA stand for?”
“The International Society of Appraisers and the American Society of Appraisers.”
“That’s how he earned his money?”
“Yes. As I said, he didn’t like to travel very much, he hated to fly, so he told me he made his travel rates quite ridiculous, but every now and again there would be a particularly difficult identification problem somewhere like New York or Vancouver and a client would be willing to pay his huge fees plus the expense of travelling by train, first class.”
“When you say ‘ridiculous,’ just how much?”
“I don’t know, but probably something like four thousand dollars a day.”
A day. “So he wasn’t under any financial pressure.”
“Not that I know of. But he was a very private person.”
I pulled out my notebook, made a note to check out Lusk and to ask a few questions about the recovered cocaine. The salad came. I paid attention to the food for a few minutes, then flipped back a couple of pages for the notes I had made reading Julia’s file.
“Tell me about the transfer of the painting from the banker to your premises. One of your staff picked it up from an address in Marietta—was that Honeycutt’s home or an office?”
“His home. He works downtown, at Massut Vere.”
“Was the painting received from his hand, or from one of his representatives?”
“Ricky and Maya—that is, Ricard Plessis and Maya Hall—who have both worked for me for a long time, took one of our trucks to Honeycutt’s house at ten in the morning and took delivery of the painting from his housekeeper. It was already crated. They gave her a receipt.” Fast, clear, detailed: she had obviously been through all this herself before talking to me.
“Did they unwrap it to check what it was before giving the receipt?”
“No.”
“Did the fact that it was all crated and covered up not make Ricky or Maya suspicious?”
“No. It’s usual to protect such valuable objets.”
“Yet you uncrated it to check.”
“No. That is, yes, I uncrated it, but that’s usual, too. If I’m to be held responsible for the safe transportation of a painting, I like to pack it properly from scratch in-house. Owners sometimes have very odd ideas about wrapping pictures. I’ve heard horror stories of Old Masters wrapped in newspapers and arriving with ghostly copies of the funnies imprinted on a stately old forehead.”
“Do you think the clients know you will unpack their caref
ul work?”
She considered that. “I don’t know. Those that ask are told we carry our own packing materials to protect the work during the transfer from client to Lyon Art, but not many do ask, so I suppose they assume we’ll just crate up around their packing.”
“How well was the Friedrich—or the fake Friedrich—packed?”
“Very well. Clean linen wrappings. Properly measured wooden frame crate with the correct filling. Actually, it came wrapped in the same packing I used when I first brokered it to the original owner, Charlie Sweeting, two years ago.”
I made a note to ask for Sweeting’s address. “Tell me about the painting.”
Apparently Caspar David Friedrich was arguably the most important German Romantic. His technique was impersonal and meticulous. The picture was painted in 1824, insured for three million dollars. “It would probably fetch a little less than that at auction, of course. Two years ago, when I first brokered it to Sweeting, it sold for one and a quarter.”
“And you were quite persuaded of its genuineness two years ago?”
“I was.” Her pupils were tight and small.
I said easily, “I don’t know as much about art as I need to for this, so if I ask questions that seem to question your expertise or, even worse, your integrity, chalk it up to my ignorance, but please answer them. I need the information.” She nodded infinitesimally. “What made you so sure, then, that it was genuine, and equally sure now that it was not?”
“There is a certain quality in Friedrich’s work, a haunting, prismatic loneliness.” She didn’t sound the least self-conscious. “It doesn’t editorialise. It doesn’t try to manipulate the emotions the same way, say, Turner did with his tinted steam.”
“Tinted steam?”
“Something that Constable said about Turner. Anyway, when I first saw Crushed Hope it seemed to me that this clarity was present. When I saw it again, ten days ago, it was not.”
Interesting, the way her speech got more formal as she discussed art. “So, if pushed, would you say you might have been mistaken two years ago, or that there were two different paintings?”
The Blue Place Page 5