Fatal Impressions
Page 26
“I don’t know, Dolly. So much has happened. I feel as if I’ve been on a roller coaster. I think we’re back on the ground again, but it’s a lot higher than when we started. Do you think we can learn to like the fifty-fifth floor?”
About the Author
Reba White Williams worked for more than thirty years in business and finance—in research at McKinsey & Co., as a securities analyst on Wall Street, and as a senior executive at an investment management firm.
Williams graduated from Duke with a BA in English, earned an MBA at Harvard, a PhD in Art History at CUNY, and an MA in Writing at Antioch. She has written numerous articles for art and financial journals. She is a past president of the New York City Art Commission and served on the New York State Council for the Arts.
She and her husband built what was thought to be the largest private collection of fine art prints by American artists. They created seventeen exhibitions from their collection that circulated to more than one hundred museums worldwide, Williams writing most of the exhibition catalogues. She has been a member of the print committees of several leading museums.
Williams grew up in North Carolina and lives in New York, Connecticut, and Southern California with her husband and Maltese, Muffin. She is the author of two novels featuring Coleman and Dinah Greene, Restrike and Fatal Impressions, along with the story of Coleman and Dinah when they were children, Angels. She is currently working on her third Coleman and Dinah mystery.
Also by Reba White Williams
We hope you enjoyed getting to know Coleman and Dinah Greene in Fatal Impressions. Coleman and Dinah first appeared in the novel Restrike.
One of Coleman’s writers is discovered selling story ideas to a competitor and The Greene Gallery is in the red because sales are down. When billionaire Heyward Bain arrives with a glamorous assistant, announcing plans to fund a fine print museum, Coleman is intrigued and plans to get to know Bain and publish an article about him. Dinah hopes to sell him enough prints to save her gallery. At the same time, swindlers, attracted by Bain’s lavish spending, invade the print world to grab some of his money.
When a print dealer dies in peculiar circumstances, Coleman is suspicious, but she can’t persuade the NYPD crime investigator of a connection between the dealer’s death and Bain’s buying spree. After one of Coleman’s editors is killed and Coleman is attacked, the police must acknowledge the connection, and Coleman becomes even more determined to discover the truth about Bain. Coleman must risk her life to expose the last deception threatening her, her friends, and the formerly tranquil print world.
New York Times bestselling author Julia Spencer-Fleming called Restrike, “An ambitious, fascinating and textured puzzler, rife with suspects and red herrings. A polished gem of a read.”
Here’s an excerpt:
Coleman Greene paused just inside the entrance to Killington’s auction room to look at a group nearby. The central figure, a dark-haired fortyish man, was only a few inches over five feet tall—about Coleman’s height in the three-inch heels she always wore—but like Napoleon, he exuded power. This had to be Heyward Bain, the man she wanted to meet. He was flanked by an enormous hulk—probably a bodyguard—and a voluptuous redhead in a pink Chanel suit, dripping gold chains.
Coleman stared at him as long as she felt she decently could, memorizing his tanned face. She was close enough to see that his eyes were a light gray, and his black eyelashes were so long they looked false. She’d have liked to speak to him, but there wasn’t time. The auction was about to begin.
She was looking around for an empty seat when her cousin Dinah touched her arm. “I saved you a seat down front—all that was left when I got here,” Dinah said.
“Before we sit down, check out the trio to my left,” Coleman said in a low voice.
Dinah’s blue eyes widened. “Who are they? I’ve never seen them before. I’d remember.”
Coleman nodded. “Anyone would—they’re definitely distinctive. They’re new in town. Debbi Diamondstein called me late last night to tell me that Heyward Bain has come to New York to open a print museum; she said he’d be here and I should introduce myself. She’s handling his press, and she wants me to interview him for ArtSmart. That’s Bain.”
Dinah was still staring. “A print museum!”
It figured that Dinah, newly married and a print dealer, would be more interested in Bain’s plans for a museum than his looks or his fortune. Coleman, on the other hand, was thrilled to see a handsome new bachelor in town.
“Is he here to buy? Or is he just sightseeing?” Dinah asked.
Coleman shrugged. She was scanning the room for celebrities to mention in her article, but Bain was still on her mind. “Who knows? If he buys, I’m sure he’ll have someone bid for him like all the other big-deal collectors.”
Dinah was still staring at Bain and his entourage. “Who’s the redheaded woman?”
“It must be his assistant,” Coleman said. “Debbi told me her name—Ellen Carswell. She’s expensively dressed—that outfit costs thousands, and her jewelry looks real. I wonder if she’s more than an assistant? I’d hate to learn that Bain was already spoken for.”
At ten o’clock Killington’s top auctioneer, a tall brunette in a trim black pantsuit, stepped into place at the podium. She’d move the auction along rapidly, with one lot sold every forty seconds. A lot might include only one print, or several. If all went well, two hundred lots of about three hundred prints would have been sold shortly after noon. Coleman planned to stay till the end of the auction, or until she saw Bain leaving. She could get the auction details from Dinah. Bain was the news.
She craned her neck for another look around. The room was packed with dealers, collectors, artists, art press, and an unusual number of spectators—who, unlike those who planned to bid, didn’t have paddles—and it buzzed. The crowd looked expensive—designer clothes, coiffed hair, even furs, unnecessary on this beautiful October morning. The room even smelled rich: perfume, a hint of tobacco, and the odor of new leather.
Killington’s, the largest and grandest of the auction houses that had opened in the years since the price-fixing scandal at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, was holding its first auction of the season. After more than a month of pre-opening festivities—benefits for the New York Public Library, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Central Park Conservancy—Killington’s was launching its autumn season with a print auction.
A surprising choice. Prints weren’t as glamorous as many other art objects. Nevertheless, Killington’s had rounded up some outstanding works and attracted a stellar crowd.
But if not for Heyward Bain, Coleman wouldn’t have covered the auction; she’d have sent one of the writers. Since she’d bought ArtSmart three years ago, she wrote only a monthly column and a few important articles a year. Bain was her kind of story.
Still, since she was there, she would pay attention to the auction. Of the many interesting and unusual works on sale, the biggest draw was a rare print by Winslow Homer, Skating Girl, from about 1890. Homer had used the image several times—a long-skirted girl on ice skates holding a muff and smiling flirtatiously at the viewer—but no one had ever seen this print. The ice in the print glistened in sunlight, an effect achieved with flecks of white ink or paint—added, according to the experts, by Homer himself, greatly increasing the print’s value.
The crowd held its breath as the bidding soared swiftly past the high estimate of $150,000. Skating Girl sold for an astonishing $500,000. Coleman strained with everyone else to spot the person with the winning bid, paddle number 132.
“Who’s he? I don’t seem to know a soul today,” Dinah said, watching the tall, slightly stooped man in a modish English-cut suit stroll toward the back of the room.
“Simon Fanshawe-Davies. He’s an Old Master paintings dealer, works for the Ransome Gallery in London. Look, he’s talking to Heyward Bain—he must have been bidding for him. Why else would an Old Master dealer buy an American print?”
“I agree, he’d have been the logical choice. Maybe Bain and Fanshawe-Davies are friends. I’ll find out. I’m going to interview them both. I’ll call you later.”
But by the time Coleman forced her way through the crowd to the back of the room, Bain and his companions had disappeared. She wandered around looking for Bold Face names, but a number of bidders and most of the sightseers had left after the Homer sale. She couldn’t spot a single celebrity.
Maybe she could find a Killington’s source who would tell her something about Skating Girl’s provenance. The auction catalog contained almost nothing about the print’s history, not even the identity of the seller, usually a matter of public record when the object was rare and expensive.
Coleman glimpsed the lanky figure of an old friend, Zeke Tolmach, across the room and waved. She’d have enjoyed a chat with Zeke, but she’d spotted a bespectacled junior assistant in Killington’s public relations department. He’d been known to spill secrets when he’d worked at Brown’s Auction House in Dallas. Maybe he’d be as indiscreet today.
Nearly two hours later, Coleman abandoned the exhausted young man in the Third Avenue luncheonette where she’d plied him with coffee and doughnuts. After a lot of coaxing and some not-so-gentle bullying, he’d revealed the name and telephone number of the seller of Skating Girl—Jimmy La Grange, a small-time dealer she’d never heard of. Odd. Anyone with the money to acquire art that valuable should be in her Rolodex.
Back in her office she tried the number, but La Grange’s answering machine picked up. She left a message, but she’d also try again later. Persistence might be required to get this guy to talk. How had an unknown dealer acquired such a valuable print? La Grange had some explaining to do.
Meanwhile, she needed to interview Simon Fanshawe-Davies and Bain. Coleman decided to ask Debbi to set up meetings with both of them. Debbi would do all she could; she was ArtSmart’s press agent as well as Bain’s. She was also one of Coleman’s best friends.
Fifteen minutes later, she had a dinner date Wednesday evening with Bain, and breakfast with Simon Wednesday morning before the Grendle’s auction. She entered the appointments in her diary and turned to her messages. Nothing important except that her friend Clancy from the New York Times wanted her to call him. Urgent.
“Clancy? What’s up?”
“A suspicious death early this morning of a guy connected to the art world. Jimmy La Grange. Do you know him?”
“What? I can’t believe it. I’ve never met him, but I’ve been trying to reach him. A print he owned sold at Killington’s this morning for half a million dollars.”
“You have to be kidding. The police say he’s a part-time art dealer, part-time model, part-time actor, maybe a small-time hooker. They sure don’t think he had any money—he lived in a run-down tenement in the West Village. They think his death was a sex-gone-bad crime—he wanted it rough, and it got too rough,” Clancy said.
Coleman was taking notes. “Tell me everything you know, then I’ll fill you in on the auction and the print.”
“Okay, but can you get me background on this guy? It might not be a story for the Times, but if it is, I’ve gotta be prepared.”
“I’ll find out what I can. Dinah probably knows him. Now, tell.”
“The police say he picked up a couple of biker types and took ’em to his apartment. A neighbor on the way home after a late night out saw two gorillas leaving La Grange’s building about one this morning. The police think La Grange was probably dead or dying by then. They’ll know more after the autopsy, but they already know he was battered to death. Did you know he was into rough stuff?”
Coleman grimaced. “Yuck. No, I never even heard of him till today. I don’t know anything about him but what I’ve told you. Who discovered the body?”
“An old lady who lived across the hall noticed his door was open, and went in to see if he was all right. She’d heard a lot of noise the night before, but didn’t see anyone. But the one witness they have is sure he’d recognize the men he saw.”
“Too bad about La Grange. Young, on the verge of getting all this money, and dying in such a terrible way,” Coleman said.
“Yeah, he got a bad deal. Of course, if it was an accident, a consensual sex death, it’s nothing to do with the Times. But if there’s an art angle, I have to look into it. What do you think?”
“There’s a big art angle. Have you heard the Heyward Bain story?” She reported what she knew about Bain, the purchase of Skating Girl, and Jimmy La Grange.
“I’d heard about Bain and the museum, but I had no idea of a connection with La Grange. I’ll talk to my police sources, see what they know. Call me if you learn anything from Dinah.”
Coleman fetched a cup of coffee from the conference room, sat back down at her desk, and pondered Jimmy La Grange’s death. The poor guy finally gets a big financial break, and is immediately killed. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But neither could it have been somebody trying to steal the money he got for Skating Girl: Killington’s wouldn’t send out the check for weeks. But what was the link between the print and Jimmy La Grange’s death, if not money?
She telephoned Dinah, but Dinah knew almost nothing about La Grange. She’d met him a few times when he’d visited the gallery, offering prints for sale, but that was the extent of their acquaintance.
“He sold prints he picked up at garage sales, places like that. He was a runner—didn’t have a gallery—carried everything he had for sale in a portfolio. I liked him. He was shy, sweet, quiet. I bet Skating Girl was supposed to be his big break,” Dinah said.
“Yes, but it may have turned out to be a curse. His selling that print for so much money almost certainly caused his death.”
“Do you know anything about his personal life?” Coleman asked.
“No, I didn’t know him that well, and I never heard any gossip about him. But I don’t think that looking-to-be-beat-up story makes sense. He told me he made more money modeling than selling prints. His face was his fortune—he was gorgeous,” Dinah said.
“Maybe he wasn’t seeking sex—maybe it was a gay bashing,” Coleman said.
“It’s awful no matter how it happened. Let’s don’t talk about it anymore. Are you going to Grendle’s auction tomorrow? They have a lot of junk, a few nice things, and one fabulous print—a rare Toulouse-Lautrec. It has to be on Bain’s list,” Dinah said.
“I’m going in the hope Bain’ll turn up. But before the auction, I’m meeting Simon Fanshawe-Davies. I wish I knew more about him. Do you know a Renaissance art expert who could fill me in on Simon’s background, and his relationship with the Ransome Gallery? I don’t know if he’s a partner, or what he does there.”
“Several of my graduate school classmates specialized in the Renaissance, but they mostly work in Europe. I’ll see who I can find. Do you want to have lunch after the auction?”
“Sure, what about the Red Dragon? I’ll make a reservation.”
“Okay, see you at Grendle’s.”
You’ll also get the opportunity to see Coleman and Dinah in an entirely different light when you get a glimpse into their childhoods in Angels, coming from The Story Plant on July 15, 2014.
Set in small-town North Carolina, it tells of orphaned cousins who discover each other and believe that angels are watching them and guiding them through their most important moments. Seven-year-old Dinah has been blessed with a loving grandmother and great aunt. Five-year-old Coleman has not been so lucky. But now that the two have been united, the wonders of the world begin to reveal themselves.
Touching, thoughtful,
and rewarding, Angels is a treasure.
Here is an excerpt:
I knew in the back of my mind I had a cousin Coleman, but I just put the knowin’ away like you do when something doesn’t seem real, or is like a storybook, kind of half-real. So I was ’mazed when Miss Ida told me Coleman was comin’ to live with us. Seems like all the folks around here have big families but us. “Us” is just my granny—I call her Miss Ida ’cause that’s what everybody else calls her—and my great-aunt Polly. I love Miss Ida and Aunt Polly to death, but I’d have liked having a mama and daddy and a brother, and ’specially a sister. I had prayed for a sister, and I was about to get me one. My heart near ’bout jumped out of my chest, I was that excited.
Miss Ida said Coleman could stay in my room with me, and we should get it ready, so we all went upstairs to look at it. It’s a big room with a fireplace, and at the back of the house, so you can see the Good Hope River from the windows. But there’s not much furniture: a big ol’ white-painted bed, saggy in the middle; a beat-up wooden chair by a table where I do homework; a chest of drawers; and a wardrobe for hanging clothes (our house is so old it doesn’t have closets). Thin white curtains, yellow from being old; a white crocheted spread, made and mended by Aunt Polly; a bare wood floor and blue walls, faded by time and the sun. In winter, the room smells like wood smoke, but now I can have the windows open and let the breeze and the sunshine in, and I can smell the pine trees, and the lavender we put in the linen closet with the sheets. “We can both sleep in that big bed,” I said, thinking how we’d talk late at night.