Follow That Blonde

by Joan Smith

  “We might as well,” Nancy said. “This is as good a place to wait for Nick as any."

  We ordered spumoni. It seemed we were always sitting around like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, waiting and talking while the excitement occurred elsewhere. Bert was a little nervous; he kept looking over his shoulder and out into the street. Since Nick wasn't here, it was a good chance for Nancy to quiz him. He went for the spumoni, and I said, “Why don't you ask Bert why he's dressed in that ridiculous disguise? You haven't forgotten our suspicion? He might be hanging around here, waiting for a word with Boisvert."

  She gave me a dirty look. When he came back, she said, “You didn't tell us why you're wearing that wig, Bert."

  “Why do you think? My rear end's up for grabs if Conan spots me. He might have heard I saw Maria at Lingini's last night.” He didn't turn red.

  Nancy was satisfied with this half explanation. I wasn't, but I'm not much good at direct confrontation. I had to steel myself to ask, and when I did, it came out more harshly than I had intended. “Were you selling Nick's old Paris paintings behind his back, Bert? Do you know Boisvert?"

  “What?” He was genuinely confused. He was even too confused to be angry yet. It was Nancy that went for my throat, and she was the one who put the idea in my head in the first place.

  “Nick trusts Bert implicitly. I don't see that it's your place to question him.” She fluffed her blonde locks over her shoulder and glared.

  “Those two expressionist paintings disappeared. Bert had them,” I reminded her.

  “I didn't have them,” Bert said. “Nick thinks I had them. Last time I saw them, they were in his studio. The guy that spiked our booze must have got them. Why else did he want us out of commission?"

  He still wasn't red. I grudgingly admitted Bert was innocent. It finally dawned on him that his honor had been impugned. He put one hand on his hip, gave me a disparaging look and said, “Pshaw,” or something like that. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lana. With friends like you, a guy doesn't need enemies."

  “Just checking. I'm sorry, Bert."

  “Aaah,” he batted my hand forgivingly. “I know what my reputation is in Troy. It's the old Treasurer of the Student Council thing that's bugging you, right?"

  I felt humbled at his forgiving so quickly, and easily. “Well..."

  “It ain't easy being one of the gang when you don't have an allowance. I delivered papers, did errands—for your Dad's drug store, among others. Did you ever hear of me rifling the till? No. My old man always had his hand out for any dough I made. He drank, you know. So I shaved two cents from the Student Council fund to take a girl to the Christmas Prom. Big deal. The money was for the students, right? Well, I was a student."

  “You don't have to explain, Bert,” I said, feeling like one and a half cents. I thought of that sign in his kitchen, “The hardest thing about becoming a millionaire is thinking you can do it.” Poverty and ambition are a hard mix. “I'm sorry."

  “Why do you think I was so anxious to get out of Troy? My name's mud there. As soon as my mom died, I split. I only stayed for her sake."

  “Don't be silly. Everybody's forgotten about that,” I assured him.

  “Except you,” he said. My value plunged to one cent. “My nose is clean here. Don't crap on my parade by telling Nick, okay?” I nodded. “Now eat your ice cream before it melts.” He left.

  Nancy glared at me as if I were a child murderer, and I felt a bit like one. “You're the one that suggested it!” I growled.

  “You really hurt his feelings, Lana."

  “I know, and I feel awful. I didn't know his dad drank.” Not that this excused him entirely, but it was certainly an extenuating circumstance that bore consideration.

  “You never really knew Bert,” she said stiffly. “I knew his dad was a drinker. He gave the family an awful time, but Bert never complained. Not once. I wonder who it was Bert wanted to take out when he took the money from the Student Council. I bet it was Mary Livingstone."

  “I don't know. Were you really engaged to him?"

  “Oh Lana, he was so miserable when his mother was dying. Mom and I used to go over to help them out a bit. He cried, Lana, like a little boy. My heart just went out to him. He's sensitive, beneath that tough shell. He really loved his mother. His father was so mean—the drink, of course. Bert said he couldn't live with his dad, and when he asked me to go away with him—it was partly pity, but he really is a nice guy."

  I felt worse than a child molester. My childhood had been so idyllic, I never even thought of such things as abused kids. Poor Bert. And I had never been nice to him. I was a smug, self-satisfied jerk. We finished our spumoni in silence. I left a huge tip, because I felt so guilty. Nancy took up some of the bills and handed them back. “Don't add insult to injury,” she said.

  I accepted the money humbly, feeling like an ugly American, trying to buy goodwill with cash. “What should we do now?"

  “Bert's keeping an eye on things here. Let's get a taxi and take our luggage back to Nick's."

  That's what we did. I checked the Frageau. The Gauloises had gone out, but the painting had lost its sheen of newness. Nancy phoned Ron in Salerno and left a vague message that we'd join them later, before they left Italy. We went out on the terrace to wait.

  “Our tour colleagues will think we're shacked up with some men here in Rome,” she said.

  “We'll feel stupid when we join them. Imagine the smirks and comments."

  “And the jealousy.” She laughed.

  We discussed putting on our bathing suits as the terrace was quite private. Before we got around to it, the Alfa-Romeo came streaking into the driveway and Nick got out. Nancy gave me another of her coy looks and said, “I'll leave you two alone a minute.” I ran into the house.

  “Did you find Boisvert?” I asked, scouring him for signs of lacerations or contusions. He was all in one undamaged piece, but he'd lost his hat.

  “No, but I caught Claude and Réné. They're French cops. They're chasing Boisvert, too."

  “Did you tell them he's at the Risorgimento?"

  “They had already followed him there. They think he spotted them and slipped out the back way. That's why we couldn't find him. They're staying at the Santa Vittoria. That's where I caught up with them. I'm supposed to phone them if I find Boisvert."

  “Why are they after him?"

  We sat on the sofa and Nick told me their conversation. “It has to do with Frageau. It is a made-up name, but there's a corpse of one Edouard Fargé in Paris who comes into the story as well. He drowned a year after I came to Italy. Boisvert claimed the body, identified it as Paul Frageau, and paid for the burial. The way we figure it, Boisvert got to examining the paintings I had left behind with him and decided that with a romantic story to get people interested, he might turn a few thousand francs on them. He figured enough time had passed that anyone who knew me had forgotten the kind of painting I did. So he cut off my signature, added Frageau's and held a posthumous exhibition for the drowned artist. His death was called suicide, due to public apathy regarding the young man's art. If you play it right, that old chestnut still brings in a few guilt-ridden collectors."

  “Bert was right about that."

  “More or less. One of them—Pierre Duplessis—liked my stuff and bought a painting. He showed it to his friends, including Georges St. Felix, and before too long, Boisvert had a hit on his hands. The price shot up. Unfortunately, it involved some publicity as well—just articles in local publications in Paris first—that was safe enough since I was in Italy. Then eventually the article appeared in Art World. Boisvert knew I'd see it. He must have been worried sick. But that wasn't the greatest of his worries. He had Edouard Fargé's father to worry about as well."

  “That's the young man who drowned?"

  “Exactly. After Edouard had been missing for a few weeks, his father became worried. Edouard was a no-good layabout, as far as I can make out. A spoiled rich kid who spurned his bourgeois fa
mily, but lived off them. His father gave him an allowance that let him set up a studio, but he spent most of his time and money doing various illegal chemicals. The father went looking at the house where Edouard lived, and was told his son had disappeared. Just walked out one day and never came back. So he began checking police records, morgues, etc., and decided that the body claimed by Boisvert as Frageau was actually his son."

  “The body wouldn't still be in the morgue, though."

  “Oh no, he had the body exhumed and identified Edouard by dental records and things. He went to Boisvert; Boisvert denied it, of course. There were lengthy legal discussions—France is riddled with red tape. Fargé was trying to get Boisvert indicted, if not for murder, at least for complicity in something illegal. Fargé thinks—or he's pretending he thinks—his son actually did my paintings, and is threatening to sue Boisvert for the money. It amounts to a quite a bit by now. Boisvert confessed the whole thing to Fargé —sort of. Except that he didn't identify Frageau as Niccolò Hansen. He just said Frageau had disappeared, but was still alive. He said he's looking for Frageau to give him the money. You can laugh at that one. He knows exactly where I am. He's just trying to keep Fargé's hands off the dough."

  “Did he give Fargé any excuse for letting on you were dead, and claiming Edouard's body as yours?"

  “Oh sure, the old dead artist stunt, as Bert calls it. He explained to Fargé that a dead artist's work is worth more, and since no one had claimed Edouard's body, he decided to pretend it was mine—Frageau's that is."

  “So why did the police run when I announced I was Frageau? Wouldn't it have been more natural for them to question me?"

  Nick riffled his fingers through his hair, thinking. “They knew Frageau was supposed to be a man."

  “That should have made them all the more curious."

  “I was so busy following their story that I didn't have much time to think.” I gave him a withering stare. “They kept interrupting each other, too, and asking me questions. I was a little confused."

  “So I gather."

  “They did ask who you really are."

  “This is a crock, Nick. According to that story, Boisvert should be trying to find you, and keep you alive, shouldn't he, to corroborate that the paintings don't belong to Fargé? Why is he having someone shoot at you?"

  “But if he ‘finds’ me, he'll have to pay up. If Boisvert did manage to steal the two abstract paintings from my studio ... He could keep the money himself, I suppose.” He scratched his cheek doubtfully. “You're right. It's a crock. I'm no good at analysis. My talent is for creating things, not figuring them out."

  “Boisvert couldn't keep the money if Fargé has anything to say about it. He needs you to prove you painted them. And what about the Contessa? Did you ask them about her being there?"

  “They don't know Rosa at all.” I gave another of my withering looks.

  After a little more head rubbing, Nick said, “Maybe I'd better call Claude and check up on a few points.” I went with him into the studio.

  The conversation was in Italian, but I got the gist of it even before Nick hung up and said sheepishly, “They're not registered at the Santa Vittoria. Never were. They're con men."

  “Weren't you in their room?"

  “No, we talked in the bar. They were very generous with the vino, too. They conned me. Dammit! I should have smelled a rat. They're not policemen.” He looked at me warily, waiting for a tirade.

  “You should have been a rat, like them."

  “I thought you thought I was."

  Nancy appeared at the door. “Time's up,” she called. “Am I interrupting anything?"

  Nick was just starting to repeat his story when the motorcycle pulled into the driveway. He waited till Bert came in, so he'd only have to tell it once more.

  Bert was smiling from ear to ear. He pulled bills out of his pockets and tossed them up over his head. “I'm rich!” he said. “Boy, this waitering is the racket. I'm going to try for one of the decent hotels. So what's shaking on the home front?"

  “Pull up a chair,” Nick said. “This'll take awhile."

  “In that case I'll grab a beer and take off my shoes. My feet are killing me."

  We all got a beer and went to the terrace. Nick told the story again.

  “The sum and total of it is, you dropped the ball, Nick,” Bert said. “We'll all have to put on our dunce caps and see if we can figure this out."

  “That's thinking caps, Bert,” Nancy pointed out.

  “Whatever."

  CHAPTER 12

  “If those two guys aren't from the French Sureté, who are they?” Bert asked. “That, to quote the Bard, is the question."

  “Boisvert's pals are the answer,” Nancy said. “And they wouldn't be just ordinary cops. They'd be Interpol, wouldn't they?"

  Nick looked interested. “They mentioned the Art and Fraud Squad. That's Interpol. So maybe Interpol's investigating Boisvert, if Fargé is kicking up a dust in Paris. They might be doing a quick scan of other countries, trying to find Frageau. But if Claude and Réné are Interpol, they'd want me to work with them. They wouldn't have any reason to lie to me and give me the wrong address. It might explain where their story came from though, if they've found out Interpol is in Rome. They had to say something to appease me, and claimed to be agents."

  “And you believed it,” Bert said, with a disparaging wag of his head. “How'd you like to buy the Colosseum, Nick? I can get if for you wholesale. You shouldn't be allowed to leave home alone."

  Nick looked at me. “There, be saved you the bother of saying it."

  “On the doubtful theory that there's an Interpol agent or agents in Rome, who do you figure it could be?” I asked. “We can eliminate Boisvert and his crooked-nose friend who broke in here and later shot at us. Réné and Claude aren't legit."

  “I think we can assume anybody who keeps trying to avoid us, or taking potshots, is not Interpol,” he said.

  “That's sure not their MO,” Bert told us.

  “What would their MO be, Bert?” Nancy asked.

  “Hey, I'm just a layman. Why ask me?"

  I said, “Who else is left?"

  “There's Conan and Maria,” Nancy said doubtfully. “They certainly aren't trying to avoid Bert. But French agents wouldn't be Italian."

  “Their hobby wouldn't be breaking men's bones,” Bert added. “That's my purely personal problem. It has nothing to do with Nick. Cherchez la femme—or should I say signora? All we have left is the Contessa. No, dammit, she's Italian, too."

  “Interpol's international,” I reminded them. “Maybe she's working with the French."

  “With those fingernails?” Nancy asked.

  It sounds irrelevant, but as a symbol of the lady and her lifestyle, it didn't sound as stupid as it should have. Bert had mentioned she was the social lioness of Rome. I couldn't see her involved in police work, in her elegant shifts and snakeskin sandals. A beautiful young lady, married to an aging nobleman wasn't likely to risk her body working for the police.

  “There isn't anyone else,” Bert said, “not on our list of dramatis personae. And if Interpol's here, why didn't they contact Nick? What we have here, folks, is neither fish, fowl, nor good red meat. It's a red herring. Speaking of which, is anybody hungry? Lunch was a non-event."

  “Let's eat in so we don't have to tackle the traffic,” Nick said. “Lana, would you mind giving me a hand?"

  The terrace was so beautiful I left it reluctantly. “What did you have in mind?” I asked, as we went to the kitchen. “For dinner, I mean,” I added hastily. His black eyes were casting a sultry gaze on me, and his lazy smile suggested delightful non-cooking activities.

  “Spaghetti, but not with meat balls. We'll make it alla carbonara. The only meat I have left is bacon."

  “We're eating you out of house and home!"

  “And jeering me out of my self-respect. I feel like such a dope, being outsmarted by those two fakers."

  “It was the
wine,” I said forgivingly.

  “Now you're thinking I'm a wino!"

  “You're too upset to cook. Let me take you and Bert out to dinner tonight, Nick."

  “We'll see. For now, you can earn your keep. Be my sous chef and toss a salad while the master cooks."

  “Yes, master."

  It was fun watching Nick cook. He certainly knew his way around a kitchen. And what a kitchen it was. Enough to make you want to buy an apron. The pots all gleamed. Funny little cooking tools hung on a pegboard, some of them I'd never seen before. He opened a bottle of red wine and we drank as we worked. He put on a huge copper pot of water to boil for the pasta, fried bacon and sautéed garlic and pimentos while I prepared the salad.

  “The peppers are my own addition,” he explained. “I put them in for eye appeal."

  “That'd be the artist coming out in you."

  He cocked his head and examined the pan. “Don't the red and green look pretty?"

  “Like Christmas in July.” I grated the pecorino cheese.

  “I like pecorino romano best,” he explained. It was a hard cheese, the color of straw with a black rind that I thought should be removed. “Leave it on. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the dish."

  “I think I prefer to know what I'm eating. Black specks in my food put me off."

  He shrugged. “As long as they don't have wings."

  The aromas floating around the small room set my stomach grumbling in appreciation. Nick beat the eggs till they were silky, then he tasted the pasta and put a string in my mouth, gazing at me as we chewed. “What do you think?” I felt like the woman in Tom Jones, eating chicken while passion simmered.

  “I'd say it needs two more minutes. It's still hard in the middle."

  “Americans over-cook pasta. It shouldn't be mushy. I'll give it one minute."

  I escaped and set the table. Nick was an inventive cook. On various trips to the kitchen I saw him regarding the earthenware crock of black olives, marinating in olive oil. He popped one into his mouth, then picked up a handful and tossed them in with the spaghetti before he added the eggs, so I added a few to my salad. He picked a piece of fresh oregano from a pot growing on his windowsill, stripped the leaves in one smooth motion, put one in his mouth and sprinkled the rest on top of my salad. On another trip he was removing a long, thin loaf of bread from the oven, where he had put it to warm. He even heated the plates—did it all so gracefully and easily, with none of the reeling pandemonium that occurred when I was in a kitchen alone.