Pursued by Shadows

by Medora Sale

  “Someone called the night before, that’s why, telling him he was supposed to fly out the next morning to pick up a consignment. And that meant making a lot of arrangements. He had this friend with a four-seater plane that he used to charter when they had pickups in awkward locations. Anyway, I drove him to the airport at five in the morning. And he got on that plane. I saw him. And I saw it take off.”

  “In whose car?”

  “His. We had driven up to the lake in his car, and after I got him on the plane I took it over to the Smithsons’ and just left it in their driveway and walked over to the bus. No one saw me as far as I know—it was pretty early in the morning.”

  “Do you know where was he going?”

  She shrugged. “Somewhere in upstate New York, I think.”

  “Do you know who called him?”

  “I assumed it was his mother—but I don’t know. He never said.”

  She was slowing down. “Did his mother have your phone number at the cottage?” he prompted.

  “She didn’t need it. He had one of those phones he could have his calls forwarded on, you know. So you just dialed his number and you got him wherever he was.”

  “When did she—or whoever it was—call?”

  Susan Pappas frowned. “I was outside, looking after the grill, and Dean had gone in to get us drinks when the phone rang. So I guess that would have been around nine or so. We had dinner late.”

  “Miss Pappas,” he said, casting about for a way of phrasing the question so that it didn’t amount to an accusation that she was lying, “when we questioned your fiancé, he said he spent the evening alone at home. Why, when he had a perfectly good alibi, didn’t he use it?”

  Her entire face contracted. “It was his mother. She hated me. I’m not rich enough, or beautiful enough, or important enough for one of her sons.” She spat the words out. “We decided that as long as he wasn’t in real trouble we’d just pretend he hadn’t been with me. He wasn’t ready to break with her until he had his money.”

  “Why come forward now, then?” he asked quietly.

  “No one accused him of killing anybody until now. Otherwise I would have come forward.” She looked up at him, tears muddying her makeup. “Someone killed that painter, and his mother is going around blaming it on Dean. His mother. Dean wasn’t perfect. He had a temper but he wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t have murdered anyone. Not deliberately.”

  His new witness’s flow of information seemed about to bog down in acrimony and Sanders adopted a brisker, businesslike tone. “Can you prove that you and Dean were up at Lake Simcoe that particular night?”

  “Sure.” She opened up her large bag, and began to haul slips of paper out of a catch-all compartment. “I brought everything with me in case you wanted to see it. Here’s the receipt for the video rental,” she said, dropping a slip on the table, “with the date on it—see, May 26—and the kid might remember us too, and Lew at the grocery store will remember we were in. There’s the grocery receipt. And we bought gas up there. I charged it on my card.” Two more slips fluttered down on top of the first. “And some of the neighbours might have seen us. There were a few people up there. I’ve written down their names and addresses. And you can check with Al—he’s the pilot. His name and address are on the sheet as well.” She placed a sheet of notepaper on top of the receipts and looked straight at him. “We were there. You might not want to believe me, but we were. And that means that someone is sitting back and laughing while you guys dump all the shit on Dean.”

  “May I take these?” asked Sanders.

  “That’s why I brought them,” said the efficient Miss Pappas. “And I have photocopies of them in here, too. I’d like you to sign the back of the photocopy saying you got all three receipts.”

  He took out his pen, checked the receipts against the sheet, and signed. “Thank you,” he said, not at all sure that he meant it.

  “The thing is, my dear, that it is absolutely worthless to you,” said Nina. In twenty-four hours she had changed from chalk-white to delicately shell-pink of cheek and was back at the gallery, apparently unmoved by the fact that she had seen her eldest son cremated the day before. “Without provenance and authentication you won’t be able to sell it at a flea market for more than five bucks. Framed. Whereas I have someone to authenticate it. He’ll provide all the documentation necessary for a major sale.”

  “Did Guy forge it?”

  “My God, what a question to ask. Really, Jane. Are you suggesting that I would—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. But as documents go it’s pretty dubious no matter how you look at it. Either it’s real, and stolen, or it’s fake, and you’re trying to pass it off.”

  Nina picked up a water biscuit from the plate on her desk, broke it into quarters, and nibbled on one. She put it down, half-eaten, broke a corner off a square of cheese, and began to nibble on that. Then she looked up again, with a smile partially hidden by her golden hair, and took a deep breath. “Jane, dear, there are other reasons for secrecy. As you should know. The map was owned by a prominent Spanish family; I have no idea how they got it—it could well have been stolen, but after a few hundred years, who cares? They needed cash, and they didn’t want anyone to know they were selling off national treasures. They got in touch with a gallery in London, who mentioned it to Guy who mentioned it to me and I paid them an honest thirty thousand pounds for the map.”

  “That’s damned cheap, even for you, Nina,” said Jane steadily.

  “Not really,” she said confidently. “They couldn’t sell on the open market. I had to promise them secrecy, so that ran me into more problems. It meant hiring an expert to authenticate it and he expects a hefty fee. I gave Guy and the gallery a commission in advance of the sale.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a very complicated deal. Too complicated to explain. Jane, my dear, I am out a lot of cash so far, and I want to make it clear that I own that map. I don’t particularly want to go to the police, but I will if I have to.” Nina favoured her with a shark-like smile.

  Irritably, Jane stood up and began wandering around the office. Nina’s honey-sweet lies grated on her nerves. “What was Dean up to?” She turned her back to avoid the frown of puzzled candor she knew her question would elicit and began to study a wall covered with framed photographs of Nina posed with her better known artists. There, in the upper right-hand quadrant of the collection, Guy’s boyish grin flashed out at her from an unfamiliar setting. He was standing on the pavement in front of a large window, one arm around Nina and the other around Christopher. Just behind Guy’s right ear, a man with a smile that haunted her nightmares was resting his left hand possessively on Guy’s shoulder. Her gut twisted in fear and a light sweat broke out on her forehead. Suddenly she realized that Nina had been speaking, and was waiting for her response. “Sorry, Nina. You were saying?”

  “I said Dean was trying to get the map back. For me. Then he must have figured he could make a pretty packet on it for himself and his bedraggled little girlfriend. Have you met her?”

  Jane shook her head. “Where was this picture taken?” she asked and shivered. She pitched her voice low, to disguise its trembling. “The one with you, Guy, and Christopher standing in front of some store. It looks sort of like—”

  Nina left her desk and stood directly behind Jane. “It’s a gallery in London,” said Nina, sounding surprised. “DeVilliers and Hardy.” She paused. “I owned a part-interest in it at one time. Didn’t Guy ever take you there?” Without a pause, she answered her own question. “Silly—I don’t suppose he would, would he? We had no connection with the place by the time you were in London. That picture is impossibly ancient.”

  “And who’s that person clutching Guy like he’s afraid he’ll run away?” she went on, with an awful attempt at an amused laugh.

  “Edward? He ran the place,” said Nina, placing her o
wn hand lightly on Jane’s shoulder. “And may run it still, for all I know. Slightly rough around the edges but knows his stuff. It used to be one of those family firms drowning in its own disorganization and stupidity, and Edward turned it into a gold mine. Unfortunately he doesn’t give it the kind of image I like to be connected with. Have you met him?” she asked suddenly.

  Once again, the disinfectant smell of the cheerless coffee bar assailed Jane’s nostrils. The face across the table, with its razor, its mocking laughter, its callous indifference to death flashed back into her head and she jumped like a startled pony.

  Nina moved closer. “My dear,” she said, taking her by the hand, “you are positively shaking from stress and exhaustion. I can feel it. There’s only so much the human frame can take at once, you know. Sit down and I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “I can’t find her,” said Amos. His voice was calm, but his fingernails drummed against the telephone receiver in agitation. “She was supposed to meet me outside Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street. Then we were going for lunch. I waited for a few minutes and then called the place where she was supposed to be. I was going to walk over and meet her. She wasn’t there. She didn’t go to any of the places where she said she’d be.”

  “Where was that?” asked Harriet.

  “She was going to the gallery to talk to Nina and then to the lawyer. Both close by. I called both of them. Neither one saw her. She has simply disappeared. Nina suggested”—his face drained of colour, except for a few freckles that stood out on his forehead, and his hair burned against the pallor—“Nina suggested that Jane has a long history of simply walking out on people—men, her parents, you.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Harriet firmly. “She’s left without warning once in her life. And that was because Guy wasn’t the sort of person you could have a reasonable argument with. Tell him you wanted to leave, and his response was to break your nose. Jane doesn’t sneak out on people. She leaves in the blaze of combat.” She frowned. “Why don’t you come over here? I’ll call John and see what he thinks. And one more thing. Never believe anything that Nina Smithson tells you unless there are two independent witnesses backing her up. And even then be cautious.”

  Jane stared down at her empty coffee cup. It began to slide sideways, closing itself, turning into two insubstantial coffee cups. Nina was saying something to her, something ridiculous about Guy and money, and she suddenly realized that she needed Amos to hold on to her, or she was going to slide and split and divide into two Janes and then turn fuzzy and insubstantial too. She tried to explain this to Nina, but her mouth was frozen and unable to shape letters; her tongue was thick and woolly and immobile, like a child in a snowsuit.

  And from far away, she heard a voice that billowed and sank like the sea. “Hurry up. Wrap this around her and slide her into the back of the station wagon. If anyone sees you they’ll think she’s a piece of sculpture, for God’s sake. Stop worrying. And get that goddamn picture off the wall—you stupid, incompetent little bastard—before someone else comes in and sees it.”

  Two sets of stamping feet at the front door of Harriet’s apartment announced John’s arrival, that and the smell of pizza and warm cardboard drifting up the stairs. “I brought Ed and lunch,” he said, dropping the box in the middle of the table. “Since otherwise we weren’t going to get any.”

  “Did she make definite appointments with the gallery and the lawyer?” asked Dubinsky, as soon as everyone was supplied with plates and food. “Or was she just chancing it?”

  “No—she called,” said Amos. “She was to be at the gallery at ten-fifteen; the lawyer at eleven. They’re only a block away from each other. Then we were going to meet at eleven-forty-five for a very early lunch and to decide what to do. Whether to stay here, or go home, or go and get Agnes. We didn’t know if she was going to have to stick around to look after things. Or even if there were things to look after.”

  “What about the map?” asked Ed Dubinsky. “Doesn’t she still have it?”

  “Sort of,” said Amos. “It’s in my safe-deposit box, but she can have it any time she wants. It was one of the things she was going to ask the lawyer about. I mean, if it’s real, and if Beaumont came by it legally—and frankly, I can’t see it, but Jane says it’s just barely possible—we ought to sell it to a museum or something. She was going to get his opinion on what she should do.”

  “Maybe she asked Nina about it,” offered Harriet. “I mean about whether it was real or not. And how to sell it.”

  “But Nina said she hadn’t even been there—”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. No matter who called the gallery, asking for Jane, Nina would assume that there was something tricky in the question and say no. She lies out of habit, you know. Truth is always her absolute last resort.”

  “Isn’t Nina likely to be mixed up in the whole scam?” asked Ed. “Not the best person to go to with innocent questions about how to get rid of the map.”

  “We only assumed it was Nina’s money behind the map because we didn’t know that Guy was rolling in the stuff,” said Harriet. “Jane always thought that Guy was the one who found it, you know. And she was there. She could be right.”

  “So what in hell was Dean Smithson playing at?” said Dubinsky. “Why tell Miss Sinclair he killed Beaumont? Or are we just dealing with another nut?”

  “I don’t think he was a head case,” said Harriet. “Wouldn’t you have a file on him if he was one of those crazies who confesses to every murder in the city? I think he was just trying to scare Jane. Even though the poor guy looked mean as hell, he wasn’t very good at dealing with people. But that doesn’t matter right now, does it?” said Harriet, who was watching Amos Cavanaugh’s white face and clenched hands. “What matters is finding Jane. Do you think Nina might have sent her to talk to her expert?”

  “What expert?” asked Sanders.

  Harriet smiled guiltily. “Remember the morning I went over to Nina’s? Did I remember to tell you that there was some professor hanging about in the hall, waiting to see her? It occurred to me last night that he might be the map expert. He looked very distinguished and professorial. And that would explain why he was at Nina’s at that particular time. After all, how many different kinds of professors does she need in a month?”

  “What did he look like?” asked Dubinsky. “Besides like a professor.”

  Harriet closed her eyes to dredge up a picture. “Fairly tall,” she said, after a few moments, “dark hair originally, gray at the temples and graying elsewhere. Thin, elegantly dressed in a dark suit, carrying an expensive-looking raincoat over his arm, black umbrella, uh, dark eyes, I think, and pale face, clean-shaven—no—one of those tiny mustaches. There. Not bad, eh? He looks like everybody’s idea of the picky expert. The kind who goes ‘Tut, tut, Inspector, you didn’t notice that fragment of llama hair on the bottom of the end table? Careless.’”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Ed. “Did you get his name?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be important. Of course, he could have been there about the drains—except that I’m sure the housekeeper called him the professor.”

  “Why are you looking so significant?” asked Sanders.

  “Because he sounds to me like the expert at the U of T. The one I interviewed about the map. I think we might drop in on him, don’t you? You stay here,” he said, turning to Amos, “in case she calls and says that she’s been out shopping for shoes all morning.”

  The telephone rang in the momentary silence that followed Ed Dubinsky’s pronouncement. Sanders reached his long arm over to the desk and picked up the receiver.

  “That was McNeill,” he said, after he finished making the last note on the conversation. “We sent him over to the gallery as soon as you called. At noon, Mrs. Smithson was sticking to her guns about maps and about Miss Sinclair. She knows nothing about the map except what we’ve told her,
and she hasn’t seen poor Miss Sinclair since London. He thought she sounded rather irritable. The lawyer hasn’t seen her either. Or heard from her. Nor has his secretary, his receptionist, etc. So maybe we ought to try the professor—”

  “Martin, his name is,” said Ed. “Richard Martin.”

  “—even though it’s a slim chance. Let’s get moving,” he added, reaching out his hand to Harriet.

  “What do you need me for?” she asked, looking over at the lonely form of Amos Cavanaugh.

  “My perceptive darling, if you are right about that, then you are the only person who can connect the expert with Nina Smithson.”

  They stepped out of the elevator into the long, dreary concrete hall that led to Professor Martin’s office. The university had already dropped into its half-somnolence of the summer. There wasn’t another human being in sight; for a moment, there was absolute and chilling silence, and then the rumble of distant traffic resumed its place in the background. “It’s at the far end,” Dubinsky said. “Of course.” And strode rapidly and impatiently ahead of them.

  Martin’s door was not quite closed when he reached it. Without pausing, Ed knocked once irritably on the frame, pushing open the door at the same time. He halted in mid-stride, braking his forward momentum with a reverse thrust of his enormous shoulders. “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly, and spread his arms out to the side, barring the way.

  The office had lost its air of neat academic clutter. There were sheets of paper lying everywhere, on the desk, on the turned-over plants, on the tipped chairs, and on the person lying on the rug in front of them. Except that the papers scattered over him were crumpled and decorated with huge, scarlet stains. His hands were clutching spasmodically and catching at sheets from his manuscript. Ed Dubinsky stepped over him and grabbed the telephone from the desk; its cord dangled; the jack hung on by one frail filament. He swore. “Do what you can for him,” he snapped and vanished.

  “What’s going on?” said Harriet, elbowing her way past Sanders. She stepped on a piece of paper, stopped and looked down. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, and sank to her knees beside Martin.