Bones of Contention

by Jeanne Matthews

  She opened the back door and he and Eduardo broke off in mid-sentence. Pretending she hadn’t noticed, she stepped outside. One of them had lit the citronella candles and placed the lantern on a wine crate with the bourbon. Eduardo stood at a distance, his back against a column. Lucien slouched in a chair nursing his bourbon.

  Dinah took a deep breath and planted herself in the chair next to Lucien. “Another eventful day, huh?”

  Lucien sighed. “I feel a third degree coming on and if it’s all the same with you, Torquemada, I’d rather wait for Newby to put me on the rack.”

  “We’re out of sorts,” said Eduardo. “De pis en pis.”

  “For chrissakes, Eddie, will you can the faggy French? We’re not in Paris.”

  “We would be if you’d listened to me,” said Eduardo.

  Dinah saw no gain in being tactful. “It might behoove you to talk to me before the inspector gets to you, Lucien. It’ll give you a chance to trump up a better bunch of lies. I’m sure he’ll have a number of questions about that bonanza of Pollocks and Hartleys and Homers you just inherited. They give you a jim-dandy motive for murdering Dr. Fisher.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Well, then, get your head out of the sand, big brother, and help me figure things out.”

  “You want a crisis, figure out who stole the Homers, why don’t you?”

  “Okay,” she said, dismayed that a couple of little pieces of pilfered art outranked a murder in his mind. “We can start there. Who first noticed the paintings missing?”

  “I did,” said Eduardo. “When I passed by the dining room around ten this evening, I saw they were gone. At first, I thought Cleon had taken them down. I asked him and he hit the roof.”

  Lucien was pessimistic. “They could’ve been lifted anytime during the day. By now they could’ve been bundled off to Katherine and sold to a private collector or a pawn broker or the Russian mob.”

  “Famous paintings aren’t that easy to sell,” said Dinah. “You know that. A buyer would want certificates of authenticity and a bill of sale. But even if they’re not found, Uncle Cleon must have insured them.”

  “Fuck the insurance. It doesn’t matter.”

  Dinah threw up her hands. “Okay, Lucien. I get it. You want the paintings for yourself and if they’re found, you can have the damn things. Just tell me what it is you’re hiding. Did you steal them from your dealer friend in New York? Is he the guy you beat up last month? What the hell is going on?”

  “Tell her,” said Eduardo.

  Lucien put his head in his hands.

  Eduardo came and put a hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “If you don’t tell her, I will.”

  Her fear magnified. “Lucien?”

  “They’re forgeries, Di.”

  “What?”

  “Your Homer watercolors are forgeries. Some of my best work.”

  “You? You forged them?” She felt as if she’d been blown off a cliff.

  “I copied them from the originals.”

  She stared at him in complete shock. This was a turn-up she couldn’t have imagined. The one person whose honesty and integrity she’d have staked her life on was a liar and a scammer, apparently from way back.

  He said, “They started out as a joke.”

  “A man walks into a gallery. Ha-ha.” What did he want from her, absolution?

  “Neesha walked into a gallery, the one belonging to my old art school friend, St. Jean. It was just after she and Cleon married and he’d given her a blank check to refurbish the farmhouse. She and her decorator were in New York trolling for antiques. They met St. Jean and me for lunch and I just happened to be showing the pieces to St. Jean. They weren’t for sale. They were like, exercises. Experiments. Neesha’s decorator saw them and went wild. They’d be the crowning touch for the new drawing room.”

  Dinah cut to the crux. “And you and St. Jean got dollar signs in your eyes. You strung them along and cashed in.”

  “Things got out of hand,” put in Eduardo, in a sort of proxy apology. “Lucien didn’t know how good an artist he was.”

  “How good a con artist, you mean.” She got up and stomped around the veranda. What offense against the gods had she committed to deserve so many pretenders and connivers in her life?

  “I was in my early twenties,” said Lucien. “Fresh out of school and experimenting with lots of styles and media. It wasn’t the crime of the century. Neesha and Dad are philistines. They didn’t know the difference.”

  “From the stink bombs he’s dropped into the conversation lately, I’d say Cleon knows the difference now. How’d he find out he’d been flimflammed?”

  “I don’t know. He never came right out and said that he knew until tonight when the things went missing.”

  “Did you tell Mom? Maybe she put him wise.”

  “I told her when Cleon first bought them, but she’d never blow the whistle on me.”

  “A tad lackadaisical of her, wouldn’t you say, sitting quietly by while her son fleeces his father out of millions?” Her tone was scathing, as she meant it to be.

  Lucien answered in kind. “You know something, kiddo, I’m tired of being your personal coloring book where you get to color me however you like, inside your lines. And for your information, Mom didn’t think what I did was much of a swindle. Those pictures are damn good. They wowed Neesha and, as far as I knew, they were going to stay in the family indefinitely.”

  “Maybe it was Mom’s indulging your big fat ego that led you to think you could outshine Winslow Homer in the first place.”

  “Just what is it you’re…?”

  Eduardo said, “I’ll be happy to referee this family spat later. Right now, we need to concentrate on finding the paintings.”

  “Fine.” Lucien finished his bourbon and picked up his crutches. “Neesha is the only other person who wants them. If what you told me about an amour with Wendell is true, then maybe he stole them for her. It was either Wendell or Neesha. I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe they’re in the trunk of Wendell’s car,” said Eduardo.

  Lucien pooh-poohed the idea. “Too risky. They’re probably in a locker at the Katherine Airport.”

  “With the key safe and warm in Neesha’s cleavage,” said Eduardo.

  “And she accused me of stealing them.” It wasn’t hard for Dinah to transfer some of her anger onto Neesha. But the woman had sounded so convincing. “What if it was Cleon who took them?”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Lucien.

  “I don’t know. To get your goat. To get Neesha’s goat. He certainly got mine.” She felt more galled by Cleon’s deception than by Lucien’s. Cleon had made her believe he was doing something special for her because he loved her when, in fact, he was just turning the screws on Lucien to make him fess up. “I was a sap to believe he was leaving me millions.”

  “I told you he’d use you,” said Lucien.

  “Oh, right. The way my high-minded, selfless big brother never would. You’ve had only my best interests at heart.”

  “Berate me all you want, Dinah. I deserve it. But if Neesha hangs those pictures in her gallery for the world to see or tries to sell them, I’ll be up the proverbial creek.”

  “Didn’t you paint some little tell or anachronism on them? Something to show they weren’t intended to pass for the originals?”

  “No. I matched the colors, even the watermarks in the paper. Everything’s exact.”

  A second wave of anger hit her. “Lucien, why don’t you just tell everybody they’re fakes and then nobody will want them?”

  Eduardo said, “Neesha would have him thrown in the Bastille, Dinah. It would ruin his reputation as an artist.”

  She pictured Lucien in an orange jumpsuit with shackles around his ankles. However much of a blister he’d been, whatever he’d done to get himself into this pickle, he was still her brother. Clan loyalty was in her genes.

  S
ergeant Norton opened the door. “Mr. Lucien Dobbs, Inspector Newby will speak with you now, sir.”

  Lucien pushed himself up on his crutches. “I’m on my way, Sergeant.”

  Norton held the door open and Lucien hobbled off to his interview.

  Eduardo said, “He feels really bad about letting you down, Dinah, but you put him on a pedestal he never wanted to be on.”

  “Well, he’s off it now.”

  “Be careful you don’t get a nosebleed standing on such high ground, cherie. You must’ve done things you’re not proud of.”

  “Yes, but my peccadillos aren’t likely to land me in the slammer.”

  “Touché.”

  “And why did I have to hear it from Jacko Newby that you’d served time for drug possession?”

  “I brought a teensy amount of mu over the border from Mexico a long time ago. Tout le monde does it. You know how Draconian the drug laws are. There was no reason to prostrate myself with regret.”

  She had a glimmer of intuition. “K.D. overheard you accuse Lucien of cheating, that you’d make him regret it with every fiber of his being. But it wasn’t about sex, was it?”

  “Sex? No, no, no. I meant that Cleon would make him regret cheating him.”

  “But if Lucien’s not two-timing you, what’s your problem with Mack?”

  “He’s trying to persuade Lucien to copy some Aboriginal art.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Eduardo said he needed coffee and went inside to brew a pot. Dinah stayed on the veranda watching the shark in the Southern Cross chase the stingray across the sky and thinking about the stolen paintings. They were small and unframed, but enlarged by the mats, they would be too big to hide in a sock drawer and too fragile to stick behind a piece of filthy furniture for the mice to nibble. Lucien’s idea that they’d been taken away from the lodge was probably right.

  A strong case could be made against Neesha, but Mack was shaping up as a promising culprit even if Lucien didn’t see it. A man who’d commercialize the spiritually inspired paintings of his people or collude with a foreigner to paint knock-offs might not be averse to a quick killing in Western art if the opportunity presented. And there was Seth. He wouldn’t turn up his nose at a chance to score a couple of valuable paintings, all proceeds to save the planet.

  She held her watch under the lantern. Jacko must think that the longer he kept everyone from sleep, the likelier it was that someone would crack. She got up and followed her nose to the coffee.

  The dining room door was closed as she passed by on her way to the kitchen. Wendell was sitting at the kitchen table, his laptop open in front of him and plugged into the land line. He was talking on his cell phone, which he held between his neck and his shoulder, and his voice sounded stressed.

  “Bud, it’s not going to work. I tell you the modem doesn’t…well, sure. Sure. Yes, I’ll try that.”

  Dinah poured herself a cup of coffee and, seeing that Wendell had a half-drunk cup next to the computer, poured him a warm-up. He mouthed a cursory thank-you and she sat down across from him and studied him over the rim of her cup. It was hard to believe that behind that bland exterior beat the heart of a lying back-door man. But a man who could lie so ignominiously about one thing could lie about another. She wondered if Neesha had slipped him the word that Dinah knew about their affair or if his little business emergency had delayed the inevitable. He seemed friendly enough, albeit very distracted and a shade haggard just now. With all the millions he’d inherited from Fisher, he wouldn’t be toiling away for the Bank of Brunswick much longer.

  “It’s the network connection, Bud. It keeps failing. Can’t this wait until…?”

  Sergeant Norton appeared in the door. “Mr. Dobbs, the inspector’s ready to see you now.”

  Wendell held up a finger, like be-with-you-in-one. “Right. Right. Because of the numbers. I understand. Look, Bud, I have another emergency here. I’ll try to send it again in a few minutes.”

  He turned off his phone, executed a few quick clicks on the computer and closed the lid. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Sergeant. It never rains but it pours, eh?” He gave Dinah an absent-minded nod and got up and followed Norton out of the room.

  Dinah slid the laptop around and opened it. Strange that he would turn it off when he meant to come back in a few minutes and try to re-send the whatsit with the numbers to Bud. Banking in Brunswick, Georgia, must be classified Top Secret. Or…or maybe he was afraid she would sneak a peek while he was out of the room and find a batch of salacious e-mails from Neesha, explaining her idea of love in non-Victorian language.

  If the computer contained e-mails between him and Neesha or anything not kosher in his dealings with Fisher, maybe she could ransom it for Lucien’s forgeries. If he had them. Even if Cleon knew about the affair, it would be embarrassing if Bud and the folks back in Brunswick found out what kind of hanky-panky old Wendell was up to. And compromising e-mails could be highly detrimental when it came time to divorce his wife.

  She wished she could be sure no one would walk in on her and she’d do a search, but it would be too time-consuming and risky. She definitely didn’t want to have to explain to Jacko why she was dipping into Wendell’s e-mails. Maybe she’d have a chance tomorrow.

  She looked at her watch. Shit, it was already tomorrow and had been for hours. She was tired to the bone. If she didn’t get a time-out soon, she’d start to gibber and Jacko still hadn’t called her in for her interview. She folded her arms and put her head on the table. Just as her eyes were closing, she saw the briefcase standing open under the table.

  She pulled it toward her and looked inside. The padded compartment where the laptop would be carried was empty. On the other side she finger-walked through a calendar, a copy of Forbes magazine, a plastic envelope with Wendell’s passport and a few American bills inside, and what appeared to be photocopies of documents detailing the various properties in Desmond Fisher’s estate. Loose in the bottom of the case were a couple of ballpoints and a little black doohickey, maybe two inches long. She took it out and examined it. Flash Voyager was printed in yellow on one side. It was a flash drive, a computer memory stick.

  There were people who recorded their entire lives on these little gadgets with the capacity to hold about a bezillion bytes of potential embarrassment. Had Wendell downloaded any embarrassing secrets?

  She rolled the little stick between her palms as if it she could absorb its secrets through osmosis. If she took it, she’d be guilty of theft and maybe blackmail. And if it contained information relating to Fisher’s murder, she’d be guilty of withholding evidence, subjecting herself to criminal prosecution. Subjecting herself to God only knew what retaliation from Wendell and Neesha.

  She slipped the Flash Voyager in her pocket. If Jacko found the paintings before he left, she’d put it back where she found it and no one would be the wiser. If not, she’d take it to town with her tomorrow, find a computer somewhere, and look for something damning. If there was nothing there, she might still be able to return it without anyone’s knowledge.

  You’ve sunk to blackmail, she thought sleepily. Neesha got one thing right. The D in my DNA could only stand for depravity.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Mack was in a state of high dudgeon. Wendell and Neesha had made pointed references to his interest in art and insinuated that he might have had something to do with the theft of the paintings. Mack denied this vociferously. But what really threw the fat in the fire was Eduardo’s contention that if anybody knew where to hide the paintings where they wouldn’t be found, it was Mack. Eduardo had tagged after the police exhorting them to look for loose floor boards, false walls, and secret panels. No hidey-holes were found, but Mack was incensed. As soon as Jacko and his men had left, which was just after sunup, Mack announced with icy indignation that he, too, was leaving and would not return until after the Dobbses had packed up and moved out.

  Dinah’s status as an American Abo
rigine seemed to have immunized her from the worst of his ire and, before anyone could object, she grabbed her things and cadged a lift into town with him. She intended to rent a car, check into a snug, spiderless, and spotlessly clean motel, and get a good night’s sleep. Maybe with distance, she could gain some perspective on all the craziness.

  “It always comes down to class,” Mack said as they drove away from the lodge. “When the nobs and the swells are looking for someone to blame, it’s either the butler or the black man.”

  “Completely unwarranted,” said Dinah, careful to stay on his good side. “Very insensitive.” She didn’t discount the possibility that Mack had filched the paintings. He had no compunction about counterfeiting art. Stealing was no great leap. But Jacko and his men had searched the lodge and all the cars from stem to stern and come up empty.

  “I’ve shown your family every courtesy, jumped through all their hoops, given Lucien a crash course in Aboriginal art, played nursemaid to Cleon and manservant to Wendell and Neesha and those cheeky children and this is the thanks I get.”

  “We’ve brought a lot of trouble on you, Mack. You don’t deserve it.”

  “And the police? I won’t say that Inspector Newby talked down to me exactly, but he flattered and blarneyed and led me on as if he were talking to a child. It was demeaning. Completely uncalled for.”

  “Completely.” His bleating about injustice was tiresome, but his leisurely pace made Dinah want to take a whip to him. He snailed along, swinging wide around the potholes as if the very soil beneath his tires were sacred. She picked dog hair off her slacks, polished her Wayfarers, and watched the trees grow another foot.

  “I’ve done the best I could to make everyone comfortable, catered to everyone’s wants and needs.”

  “You should demand more money. Hazard pay.”

  “And I kept your uncle’s illegal plans to myself.”

  “You didn’t tell Inspector Newby about Cleon’s suicide plan?”

  “That would make me liable under the new suicide law.”