by Hy Conrad
“We’ll talk later. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“You can change your name instead.”
“I wish I could.” He actually seemed sincere. “But I’ve got a lot of equity in the Peter Borg brand. It’s a known commodity.”
“Whereas Amy’s Travel is known only for killing off customers. I wonder if merging with me is such a good idea. You should reconsider. I’m like an albatross.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. No one was murdered on this trip.”
“Peter, we found a body.”
“He had nothing to do with our tour.”
“We were just at a memorial.”
“That one was an accident.”
Amy shook her head, either in annoyance or admiration; she couldn’t quite decide. “I wish I could accept all of this as easily as you. I’d probably be much happier and healthier.”
“Hey.” Peter shook his head back at her. “Don’t make me out as some heartless jerk. I feel bad. I feel bad about that guy dying at the Taj Mahal. I feel bad about Evan falling into the volcano. I feel bad about Paisley’s maid. What’s her name? Archer? I feel bad for Maury and Laila Steinberg trying to sell that place after such a terrible accident or suicide or whatever.”
“Maury and Laila?”
“The resale value. I mean, even if they try to rent it again instead of selling . . . people at the high end of the market don’t like messes. If I were them, I’d take out the fireplaces. Rip them out, so there’s no question. No reminder, you know?”
They’d stopped at the corner of Hudson, in the light of a streetlamp. Amy was confused. “Are you saying the Steinbergs own the MacGregor penthouse?”
“Yeah. Laila mentioned it on the trip. They bought it at the bottom of the market as an investment property. They never lived there. But they figured they’d rent it out to MacGregor until prices turned around. Laila was worried they’d have some trouble getting MacGregor’s maid out of there. But that’s not a problem now.”
“You never mentioned they owned the apartment.”
Peter considered this. “The subject never came up.”
“For eleven days we did little else but talk about Paisley MacGregor, and the subject of her apartment never came up?”
“I don’t think it did. Why are you suddenly interested in who owns her apartment?”
“Because that’s where Archer died.”
“Yes . . .” He drew the word out. “And what does Archer’s death have to do with Maury and Laila?”
“Because the Steinbergs would know the building. They would have access.”
“Access to what? To the apartment?” Peter cocked his head. He inhaled and exhaled forcefully through his nose. Not a good sign. “I hope you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
“Her death wasn’t an accident or a suicide. Joy Archer was murdered. My theory? Someone was trying to get back MacGregor’s ‘if I die’ letter.”
“The ‘if I die’ letter? I thought we settled that weeks ago.” Peter groaned, and his hands flew up to hold in place his exploding head. “Amy, you cannot keep doing this.”
“I’m not doing anything. The guy who came with me to Evan’s service—he’s a homicide detective. He’s investigating.”
“You brought a homicide detective to a memorial? Why? To spy on our clients? You are out of control.”
“Well, the police agree. And the fact that the Steinbergs actually own that apartment . . .”
“Are you saying Maury and Laila killed Archer? That’s ridiculous. For one thing, they’re in Hawaii. I talked to Maury the other day.”
“His landline or his cell?”
“I don’t know.”
“The police eliminated the Steinbergs because they weren’t around. But, of course, we don’t know that. Let me borrow your phone.”
“No.” Peter laid a protective hand on his jacket pocket. “Amy, this is not your business, and it’s not mine. If we’re going to be partners, you have to promise. No more involvement in murder.”
“But we’re already involved.”
“No we’re not. Damn you. Clients come to us to forget their problems, not to get dragged into police stations.”
“Fine.” Amy turned on her heel and headed back up Barrow Street, stewing every step of the way.
“Amy!” he shouted, but she didn’t stop.
Was this really the man she wanted to be in business with? she wondered. Even if it meant saving the business?
Meanwhile, there was a cheesecake in her garbage can and another man out there, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to get dragged into a police station for her. Any day of the week.
CHAPTER 35
The painting hung above eye level, but she could still make out the masterful details—thick layers of short, self-assured brushstrokes, each stroke a slightly different shade. A multitude of browns shifted gently into greens here or grays there, given form mainly by the angle of the strokes and by the eye’s distance from the canvas.
Samime thought back to their early days in Istanbul. Bill would spend every morning in the studio on the top floor, working on some project or other, happy in his self-imposed isolation. Once a week or so, an art dealer friend would drop by. They would all have tea in the sun-dappled courtyard, under the lemon tree, before the men retired up to the studio to talk. Afterward, he would take her out to her favorite restaurant, the one with the French wines and the endless view of the Bosphorus.
And then slowly that changed. The friend stopped by less and less. Bill became more and more withdrawn, angrier, and more sullen. And finally, one winter day she came home from the meat market to find her husband at the living room hearth, burning a canvas in the fire, cracking pieces of the frame and tossing them on top of the pungent, acidic flames.
“Bill painted this, didn’t he?”
Samime had never been this assertive. But today was different. She had planned it perfectly: arriving after the light had faded, so Colleen wouldn’t have an excuse to say no; finding a way to sneak through the building’s outer door, so Colleen couldn’t turn her away on the street; charming her way into the apartment on the pretext of needing to talk about Bill, which wasn’t really a pretext.
“A friend painted it,” Colleen said, walking back into the living room with two small glasses of red wine.
“It is very much Bill’s style.”
“It’s Pissarro’s style.” Colleen approached and handed over a glass. “I suppose if Bill imitated Pissarro, it would be his style, too.”
Samime had known she would say this. “It’s not just his brushwork. It’s the frame. I remember Bill bringing a lot of old molding pieces on the plane with us to Turkey. We brought them as carry-ons, and he was very careful. He made me keep them under my seat the whole way.”
“A lot of old moldings are similar. Even then they were mass-produced.”
“You must have a lot of them lying around here. Old frames. Old canvases. Authentic pigments and brushes.”
Colleen began to look a little wary. “Yes. That’s my job.”
“Of course. People want them reframed, so you keep the old frames. You re-stretch a big painting, and there’s a nice piece of nineteenth-century canvas left over. Can I keep this?” Samime put down her glass then lifted the small painting off the wall. She heard Colleen’s thin gasp behind her. “As a memento from Bill?”
“I told you. He didn’t paint it.”
“It’s good enough to be real,” Samime said, examining it from just a few inches away. “It’s even signed Pissarro, which a normal copier wouldn’t do.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
Samime wrapped her arms around the painting and clutched it to the front of her coat. “As soon as I saw this, I knew. Suddenly it made sense—why Bill’s money dried up, why he became so depressed over a few shakes of the hand.” She turned it around and ran her fingers over a sticker from a gallery on the back. “Bill used to visit this gallery.”
“Go ahead. Take it.” Colleen downed her wine in two quick gulps. “I don’t know why I kept it in the first place.”
The Turkish woman didn’t thank her but just nodded. “Is that what ruined your marriage? Some fight about what he was doing?”
“I never knew.” Colleen reconsidered her reply, then reached over to Samime’s untouched glass. Two more gulps and she was feeling better. “Not at first. But I had a pigment, a rare Naples yellow. It’s toxic and not used anymore, except for restorations. One day I noticed about a third of my jar was missing.”
“You weren’t helping him do it?”
“Heavens no.” Colleen’s anger seemed genuine. “When I found out how he was using me . . . not just my supplies, but my expertise . . . There’s always inside information floating around—which paintings are in private hands, which have been lost over the decades. You need that to help establish the provenance of any good fake. Where has it supposedly been all these years?”
“But you didn’t call the police.”
“No.” Was that a note of regret in her voice? “Reputation is a delicate thing. The work I do is based on judgment—how much to strip away, how much to paint over. A bad restoration can cut the value of a piece in half, so my clients have to trust me. The idea of an art conservator being involved in any way with a forger, even innocently . . . When you told me about his tremors, I felt both happy and sad.” Colleen allowed herself a tiny smile. “I cared for Bill, yes. But there was a certain justice to it. God’s way of putting an end to the travesty.”
“Meanwhile, he stayed in business. Millions of dollars’ worth of his fakes are now in galleries and private collections. If they knew the truth . . .”
“I don’t think anyone wants that kind of scandal,” said Colleen.
Samime didn’t answer her.
“Don’t be so high and mighty, Mrs. Strohman.”
“Me? I never suspected.”
Colleen’s laugh was both wounded and cruel. “Want to know an interesting fact? Istanbul is a world center of art fraud. It’s always been hard to trace forgeries through that corner of the world. When I heard that Bill was moving there, it made perfect sense. Things start getting hot in New York, and you marry a starry-eyed Turkish girl. Move your operations offshore.”
“That’s not true.”
“What part isn’t true, dear? That he suddenly married you? That he wound up with dual citizenship? Or that he continued in Istanbul with a dealer who was even more unscrupulous than his man in New York?”
Samime exhaled, as if the wind had just been punched out of her. “You’re a bitter, lonely woman. Good-bye.”
“Are you going to sell it? I mean, as a Pissarro?”
“Maybe I will,” Samime said, without bothering to look back. “Why not? Bill would want me to be provided for.”
“One word of caution.” Colleen kept her distance. “What I said about things getting hot, that’s true. One of Bill’s paintings was declared a fake. The buyer, some broker or hedge-fund manager, was trying to get insurance. He happened to find a very smart and diligent appraiser. The gallery owner managed to smooth things over. He bought the piece back, a small, lovely oil with a haystack and some cows.”
Samime pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders. “Why do you tell me this?”
“Because that piece”—Colleen pointed—“is on record as a forgery. The Interpol art division has a photo on file.”
“You forget I live in Istanbul, the forgery capital,” said Samime as she opened the door and walked out.
CHAPTER 36
Marcus had invited Amy to lunch, and she’d accepted. This was their standard way of apologizing. If one of them wasn’t ready to make up, that person would be too busy. If the rift was only one person’s fault, it would become a dinner date, with the offender paying the tab. But this was scheduled as a lunch—Dutch treat—and they met on the corner out in front of the Ritz-Carlton.
Since the day was nice and the lilies were in bloom—and no one had bothered to make a reservation—lunch was purchased from the gourmet food trucks that had recently emerged from their winter hibernation. Amy went with a coriander-braised duck burger from Le Camion, parked by the fire hydrant on Fifty-Eighth Street, while Marcus chose a lobster and orange salad from See Food, near the crosswalk on Sixth Avenue. They found an empty bench overlooking the Central Park Pond and talked as if nothing had happened.
This was the best part of a relationship, Amy thought. Well, maybe the second-best part. To have someone you could talk to about anything, to not have to struggle to make conversation or be on your best behavior.
The one sore subject in their repertoire came up only afterward, when Amy was walking Marcus back to the Ritz. “So you knew about our finances.” She tried to keep the accusing tone out of her voice. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“Fanny made me promise.”
“Since when do you keep promises?”
“Now you’re blaming me for keeping a promise?” He had to smile. “There’s no winning.”
“Okay, you’re right. It’s Mom’s fault, not yours.”
“As long as we’re on the subject . . .” His voice turned serious. “I think you should be wary of Peter Borg. Personal feelings aside.”
“He should be wary of Mom and me. Have you seen our bank account?”
“That’s my point. Why would Peter want to merge and assume your debts? It’s not like you have a great business model or the only available storefront in Lower Manhattan.” He tilted his head in her direction. “I’m just being honest.”
“You know what he wants,” Amy said, giving her butt a sexy little shake.
“I do,” Marcus admitted. “I also think Peter’s smarter than he lets on. He wants you to think it’s personal, that he’s giving himself a bad deal just for you. But the guy’s a pro. There’s got to be a reason.”
“You don’t think I’m reason enough?”
“Seriously, Amy.” He put on his serious face. “You’re sexy and smart and worth everything. But that’s not how Peter thinks. There’s something we’re not seeing. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a warning.”
Could Marcus be right? Amy thought about it as they began to jaywalk gingerly across Central Park South. When Marcus looked over a few seconds later, she was gone. He found her back on the curb, standing behind a parked bus.
“Amy, I’m sorry. But I can smell a con job. . . .”
“It’s Maury,” she whispered and nodded toward the other side of the bus.
Marcus glanced across the six lanes of traffic. Sure enough, Maury Steinberg was on the sidewalk in front of the Ritz-Carlton, waiting as the doorman hailed him a taxi.
“If we can see him, he can see us,” Amy said and pulled him back behind the bus.
“So? You knew Maury was staying at the Ritz.”
That was true. After Amy had found out about the Steinbergs owning the penthouse, she had called Lieutenant Rawlings, who had in turn called Maury’s cell phone. After some hemming and hawing, Maury had admitted to being in New York for a few days.
“I was hoping to slip in and out,” he’d told the detective. “As much as I liked Evan, I didn’t want to have to spend an afternoon at another memorial service. You understand.”
The lieutenant did. He asked Maury where he was staying and how long he would be in town, but somehow neglected to ask where he’d been at the time of Joy Archer’s death.
“I don’t want him to see me,” Amy said, still on the other side of the bus. “He’ll think I’m following him, which will be awkward if I ever do intend to follow him and he catches me.”
“He’s your suspect? Maury?”
“Only because he knows the building and probably has keys to everything.”
“Do you want to search his room? I can get us into any room in the Ritz-Carlton.”
“You would do that for me?” It was so much nicer having someone like Marcus on her side. “I’m not sure what we’d be looking f
or. But thanks.”
He seemed disappointed. “Well, think about it.”
They were still behind the bus when Amy’s phone rang. “Amy?” It was Fanny, and she wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. “Samime’s leaving. I came home and found a note. What did you say to the woman?”
“Nothing. What did you say to her?”
“Nothing. The note says, ‘Thank you for all your help and friendship. I’m forever indebted.’ Blah, blah . . . ‘No more we can do. Have to go home.’”
“Really? It says, ‘Blah, blah . . . ’?”
“Amy, don’t be a jerk. Something’s wrong.”
In the taxi on the way to JFK, Amy checked her phone. There was a nonstop Turkish Airlines flight leaving in about two hours. She told her cabbie to take her to Terminal One, then sat back, buckled up, and wondered what could have happened. She tried Samime’s cell phone every few minutes but saw that it was going directly to voice mail.
There wasn’t much hope of catching her, Amy knew, but she didn’t have a choice. If Samime left, there would be no contacting her again, short of Amy making her own trip to Istanbul. It was early afternoon on a Wednesday. Grand Central Parkway was clear, and the airport nearly empty.
Once inside the terminal, she followed the overhead signs, half running toward the security gate. She was hoping to see the usual rats’ maze, with hundreds of fliers snaking their way through the endless nylon ropes. Instead, there was only one chaotic family and a few silent couples and business travelers.
At the front was a modestly dressed woman in a brown head scarf, just placing her shoes on the belt. There was no way to get to her, Amy saw, not without going through the ID and ticket control. She considered shouting out Samime’s name but didn’t want to risk having her disappear completely.
Amy scanned the edges of the hall, looking for another way to get to the woman. And that was when she saw the other modestly dressed woman in a head scarf. This one was seated in a nearby row of plastic chairs, rearranging the contents of a plastic shopping bag.
“Why are you leaving?”