Another Day, Another Dali

by Sandra Orchard

  “Wasn’t the housekeeper implicated in that Westmoreland theft you investigated a few months back?” Nana asked conversationally.

  Gladys gasped. “You can’t be suggesting my Ruby would . . .” Her voice cut out as if she couldn’t even bear to put it into words. “She’s been with me for twenty years.”

  Nana, who had no illusions of the loyalty of the help, turned my way, her eyes widening ever so slightly as if to say, I wouldn’t cross her off the suspect list.

  I walked to the fireplace to scrutinize the Salvador Dali water-paint-on-paper forgery that hung above it. “This is very good.” The jerkiness of the signature gave it away, but why would Gladys scrutinize the signature of something that had hung on her wall for years? “I’m not surprised you didn’t notice the switch.”

  “Who knows how much longer it would have hung there undetected if I hadn’t brought in that appraiser?”

  “Why did you bring him in?”

  “Oh, uh,” Gladys spluttered, her gaze bouncing from Nana to the painting and back to me. “Uh, with Dali’s work becoming more valuable these days, I thought it might be worth listing it on the insurance policy.”

  “It isn’t already listed on your policy?” The disbelief in Nana’s voice practically made the teacups rattle. “Dali’s work is selling at auction for over a hundred million.”

  Gladys blanched, apparently just coming to terms with the magnitude of her loss. “It was only a few hundred dollars when we first bought it.”

  “Do you still have the sales record?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She handed me a file folder. “But the insurance company limits payment to a maximum of five hundred dollars for art that hasn’t been specifically appraised and listed. And that’s my deductible.”

  I reviewed the invoice. Her husband had bought the piece from a respectable dealer forty years ago, making the likelihood that it was a fake from the start slim. “Do you have any idea when the switch could have happened?”

  “Oh yes, it couldn’t have been more than a month ago.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because my painting had a mar in the corner. I’d been explaining as much to the appraiser when I realized this one didn’t have it. You see, Peter took a Magic Marker to it as a child. But we caught him before he made more than a small mark, and we managed to shift the painting in the frame so no one would see it. But when I shifted it to show the appraiser . . . the mark wasn’t there.”

  “But you’d seen the mark a month ago?”

  “That’s right. Squirrels got into the chimney. My son tried to smoke them out, but only succeeded in smoking us out, so he called a pest control service.”

  My mind flashed to the man outside my office at the drop-in center last night, and I glanced at Nana. “Who knew you were coming to see me last night?”

  “Don’t interrupt Gladys when she’s speaking,” Nana scolded.

  I bristled. “The man you tripped over at the drop-in center last night said he was from pest control.”

  Nana’s eyes widened. “Oh.” Her gaze shifted to Gladys. “I was here when I called you at work, and when you said you couldn’t come, I decided to meet you at the center.”

  “So Gladys knew. Anyone else?”

  “The exterminator didn’t do it,” Gladys piped up. “I was explaining how I knew it was still here when he left. You see, the painting went askew from all the young man’s banging. I remember needing to shift it in the frame after he left to hide the mark again.”

  “I’m surprised someone went to all the trouble of painting a forgery,” Nana chimed in, “when they could’ve simply replaced it with a print.”

  “No prints were ever made of this piece. My husband was picky that way. He didn’t want something a thousand other people might one day have a poster of, hanging on their walls.”

  “And it never left the premises?”

  “No.”

  “Then the thief must’ve taken a picture to give the forger and then returned a second time to make the switch, unless . . . Have you been on an extended vacation in the past month?”

  “No, I’m never out of the house more than a few hours. I usually go to my sister’s in early September, but my arthritis has been acting up too much. I haven’t been away at all.”

  “Did your pest control service make a second call?”

  “No, he cleaned out the squirrel’s hoard of nuts, put some kind of guard on the top of the chimney, and I haven’t had any more problems.”

  So if he photographed the painting, he would’ve needed an accomplice to make the switch. “Who else has been in this room in the last four weeks?”

  “Well, your grandmother. The appraiser. My housekeeper. My daughter, Tasha, and her husband, Lucas. And of course, my Peter.”

  Ruby brought in a plate of cookies, which prompted Gladys to pour the tea.

  “Ruby,” Gladys called after the departing woman, “do you remember if anyone else has been over since the squirrel incident?”

  Something in the flick of Ruby’s gaze suggested she’d thought of someone. “No, ma’am. Not other than your children.”

  “Do you recall the exterminator’s name?” I asked Gladys.

  “You’d have to ask Pete. No, wait.” Gladys plopped down the teapot. “You can’t ask him, because then he’ll wonder why you’re asking. Oh dear, maybe we should just forget about this.”

  “Gladys,” my grandmother said in her listen-to-reason voice, “my granddaughter is not going to forget about this. You’ve had a very valuable painting stolen.”

  Gladys stirred her tea a tad too vigorously. “It probably wasn’t valuable. Not with that Magic-Marker mark on it. The appraiser said that could reduce the value significantly.”

  Nana’s snort came out as a refined, ladylike tsk. “He said that because insurance companies don’t want to pay you more than they have to, but who knows how high it could’ve gone at auction?”

  Gladys twisted her wedding band. “I wish Frank were still alive. He’d know what to do.”

  Nana patted her hand. “You’re doing the right thing now. Serena will find your painting.”

  My heart should’ve soared at Nana’s surprising confidence, but all I could think about was how disappointed she’d be if I failed. As it was, I had to do some pretty fancy talking just to convince her to let me take the forgery into evidence in the hopes of finding a clue as to the forger. And so I could compare it to the forgeries we’d recovered from the drug bust, but I didn’t tell her that part.

  Her housekeeper returned to collect the tea tray as Nana and I rose to leave. “I remembered there was another gentleman who visited,” she said to Gladys. “The one you hoped might buy Pete’s property, remember?”

  Gladys spluttered again, her face going red this time. “No, no, he came before the exterminator. Remember? Mr. Fuhrman was the one who heard the squirrel in the chimney.”

  Fuhrman? “The real estate mogul?” I jotted down the name, the whole scenario sounding even more suspicious, given the men’s connection.

  “He’s an old family friend,” Gladys said quickly—too quickly.

  Had Pete asked her for the plug? Or had it been her idea?

  An uneasy feeling settled in my gut. If Pete’s side business wasn’t doing as well as Gladys seemed to want me to believe, her fears of being pushed from her home could stem from something even scarier—a fear that her son was her thief.

  7

  Back at headquarters, I sent out an email alert about Gladys’s missing Dali to my art-crime contact list—basically anyone the thief might try to sell the work to—art galleries, dealers, auction houses, law enforcement contacts, and even criminals.

  Next, I ran cursory background checks on Gladys’s children and housekeeper. The housekeeper’s credit history was spotty, but she didn’t have any liens against her. She’d been at the same address for the past twenty years—the same length of time she’d been with Gladys. She’d also had a couple of side job
s through the years. Never married and had a lead foot if her speeding tickets were any indication.

  Gladys’s daughter, Tasha, didn’t have any red marks against her. She’d gone to the top private schools, joined a sorority in her college years, married as soon as she graduated at twenty-two. Taught piano lessons from her home. Her husband, Lucas, was a different story. He’d had a DUI at nineteen and spent a weekend in jail. He’d gone through more than twenty employers by the time he graduated with a masters in business, and another three before he landed in the CFO job at his current bank. He was questioned in connection with a possession charge during a raid at a local bar, but it didn’t look as if anything came of it. Six years ago, a woman had filed a paternity suit against him. I did a deeper search but couldn’t find any information on the outcome.

  Could mean someone paid her off. Or that it was still unresolved. If Lucas was getting himself into trouble sowing his wild oats, it could be motivation to secretly sell one of mother-in-law-dearest’s expensive paintings.

  Gladys’s son, Pete, had a clean criminal record and a good credit history. So whatever real estate albatross Randy had been referring to earlier hadn’t affected his daily transactions. At least not yet. Pete hadn’t missed a single payment on his mortgage, utilities, or credit card.

  Stretching out the kinks in my neck, I decided to wait on pumping Pete for the name of the exterminator he’d hired to catch Gladys’s squirrel. Despite Ted’s appearance at the drop-in center, it seemed like a stretch to suppose he knew why Nana wanted to see me and had followed her. Besides, he couldn’t have switched the paintings without an accomplice. An accomplice that I had a bad feeling had to be someone Gladys trusted too much.

  My cell phone rang, and a fuzzy image of my mugger appeared on the screen.

  “This your guy?” Matt Speers, my friend on the St. Louis PD, asked.

  “Yes, where’d you get the pic?”

  “Pulled the image off the security footage of the coffee shop across the street from your art expert. According to the time stamp, he was already in the shop before you went into the building across the road.”

  “So he wasn’t following me. That’s good. Saves me worrying about one more thing.”

  “Yeah, figured you’d be happy about that. We didn’t manage to ID him. The barista said he wasn’t a regular, but that it’s not the first time someone’s been mugged coming out of the artist’s place.”

  “No? Did you look up the report on the other mugging?”

  “No report was filed. According to the clerk, the victim said the joke was on his mugger, because he’d just found out the painting was a forgery.”

  “Really? Sounds a little too coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”

  “How well do you know that expert you were visiting? You think she could be pulling a scam? Telling people their genuine paintings are fakes, then alerting a mugger to take them off their hands.”

  I shook my head, not that Matt could see me. I didn’t want to believe it. Zoe, my good friend, not to mention the head of security at Forest Park Art Museum, had highly recommended Nicki. “I watched the readout for the paint elements come up on the screen. My painting was definitely a forgery.”

  “You sure she didn’t scan it over a nearby palette on the sly when your attention was diverted?”

  “Wow, you’re devious. I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve seen it all.”

  “Okay, I think I’ll get a second opinion to be on the safe side.” Zoe was in the middle of planning her wedding, and as her maid of honor—somewhat delinquent though I was—I could vouch for how distracted she’d been lately. And I certainly hadn’t been watching for any sleight of hand on Nicki’s part. I tidied my desk and then snatched up my bag so I could go down to evidence to retrieve the Degas one more time.

  Tanner rounded the corner of my cubicle as I turned from my desk and caught me before I ran into him. “Whoa, you get a lead already?”

  “Lead?”

  “You know . . . another day, another Dali.” He turned his cell phone screen my way. “Got your email alert.”

  “Cute. No lead. I was heading out to get a second opinion on the Degas. My friend with the St. Louis PD thinks the expert I took it to might’ve lied about its authenticity.”

  Tanner’s cheek muscle twitched, a sure sign he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  “What? You know something I should?”

  “Nah, I hoped to pull you in on a surveillance run. But if you need—”

  “It’s fine. This can wait until Monday. How can I help?”

  “How’s a sunset cruise sound to you?”

  “Ooh, sounds like my kind of surveillance.”

  “Perfect. I figured having a ‘date’ to photograph would give me a good excuse to get my targets on film without raising suspicions.”

  I glanced down at my standard FBI-wear—charcoal-gray slacks and blazer, white blouse. “I guess I should get changed.”

  “Good plan. If I pick you up at your apartment in an hour, that give you enough time?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  He backed away, hands raised in surrender. “Hey, what do I know? I thought sometimes women want to do their nails or—”

  “Is something wrong with my nails?” I needled, studying my splayed fingers. Okay, they could use a little TLC. Nail polish wasn’t really my thing.

  Tanner shook his head. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  Back at my apartment, I slid into a classic black cocktail dress, sheer pantyhose, and black pumps—because if Tanner was noticing fingernails, I sure didn’t want him seeing my toes. I added a swipe of gloss to my lips and a touch of glittery shadow to my eyelids and glanced at the digital clock next to my bed. Still had fifteen minutes to figure out what to do with my hair. I undid my ponytail and experimented with a couple of updos, trying to decide which Tanner would prefer.

  I dropped my hair like a hot potato. What was I doing? It wasn’t as if this was a real date. I snatched up my favorite hair product, spritzed it on, and scrunched my long, blond waves into the kind of rumpled disarray men seemed to find appealing, if magazine ads were anything to go by.

  My thoughts drifted to the one and only river cruise I’d ever been on. I’d been sixteen, the boy seventeen, and it had all seemed so astronomically romantic—the music, the gentle sway of the boat, the breathtaking colors splashing across the water and sky as the sun slipped below the horizon.

  Laughter filtered through my apartment wall. Laughter that sounded a lot like Aunt Martha’s. I glanced out my back window and spotted her powder-blue car in the parking lot. How had I missed it? Sometimes I wondered why she begged me to take over her apartment lease. She seemed to spend more time here than at my parents’. Chances were she was visiting friends other than me, but just in case, I grabbed my wrap, stuffed my Glock and wallet into a nicer purse, and snuck out my kitchen door that opened onto a metal staircase on the side of the building.

  Tanner pulled up just as I reached the bottom stair. His appreciative whistle filled the air.

  I rolled my eyes.

  He shifted into park and reached for his door handle, but I waved him off and let myself in the passenger side. No point risking hanging around a second longer than necessary. Aunt Martha wasn’t like Mom, trying to marry me off to every guy who asked me out. But who knew what she might say to Mom if she saw me like this?

  “Uh . . .”

  Wow, rendering Tanner speechless was a first. Because I looked so hot and he wasn’t used to seeing me this way? I hid a smile. Wait . . . what was with the funny expression?

  I twisted to check the sides and back of my dress. “Did I forget to take the price tag off? What?”

  “Um”—Tanner glanced at his watch, and a look of pain flickered over his face—“nothing. Really.” He rammed his truck into reverse and squealed out of the driveway. “You look amazing.”

  Ri-i-i-ght. That was totally convincing.

&nbs
p; “We’ve got to get on the boat before six in case my target’s contact doesn’t stick around for dinner.”

  I laughed. “What’s he going to do to get away? Jump overboard?”

  Tanner’s hand jerked the stick shift, grinding the gears. I’d never seen him so flustered over a stakeout. He was practically squirming in his seat.

  At the next intersection, he suddenly turned into Forest Park. “Why are you going this way? We’ll miss the boat for sure.”

  As if he’d simultaneously turned a corner in settling whatever had him so antsy, he stopped squirming and that familiar bantering gleam returned to his eye. “I’m pretty sure they’ll hold our boat until we arrive.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  He pulled up alongside the Boathouse restaurant in the middle of Forest Park.

  “Why are you stopping here?” The Boathouse offered casual indoor and patio dining overlooking Post-Dispatch Lake, as well as . . . paddleboat rentals. “No way. I’m not dressed for this. You said you were taking me on a sunset cruise!”

  “It is.” He pointed to a sign advertising sunset cruises, complete with a deluxe picnic supper and rental of a two-person paddleboat to chug around the rivers in Forest Park. An instant later he materialized outside my truck door in his cream-colored chinos and navy blue windbreaker, a DSLR camera slung over his shoulder.

  “You’re serious?” I said as he opened my door.

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

  “Fun? Look at me. I can’t go in a paddleboat like this.”

  Grinning wickedly, he looked his fill. “I’m sorry. Back at headquarters, when you asked about changing, I assumed you meant into something more casual. Then it was too late to do anything about it. But trust me, it’ll be fine.” He caught my hand and helped me out. “I’ll be the envy of every guy in the place.”

  I grabbed my wrap from the seat. “Fine, but I’m not paddling.”

  Laughter rumbled through his chest. “Wouldn’t dream of making you.” Tanner led me through the gate and gave his name to the man in charge of the boats. The outside patio was packed with dinner patrons.