According to Clark, there had been a forensic analysis in which the painting’s authenticity had been firmly established, but she’d never seen it for herself, so she didn’t know how trustworthy it was. It was past time, she thought, to bring this all to Mrs. B’s attention—not something she looked forward to—but first, she wanted to look at the painting for herself one more time. She printed the article to take with her and circled around to the next level (to get from anywhere to anywhere in the Brethwaite, you had no choice but to travel in a circular arc), where the picture was displayed, wondering for the hundredth time what it was that she had seen in it that had made her suspicious in the first place. Or had her connoisseur’s eye now evolved to the point where she could intuit falsity in a signature? No, impossible. The propensity for a talent might be innate, but to amount to anything it needed to be honed by experience and training, and when it came to signatures she had none of either. She barely registered them. Until she’d seen the photos Geoff sent, she’d had no idea what Pollock’s signature looked like. If you had asked her yesterday whether Untitled 1952 was unsigned as well as untitled (or was Untitled a title, technically?), she couldn’t have said—
She stopped so abruptly she came close to toppling over her own feet. In front of the painting, a man stood quietly with his back to her. Tall, erect, square-shouldered, unmistakably handsome even when seen from behind.
Ted.
If anything, a year without sight or sound of him had intensified the effect he had on her, and coming on him so suddenly, so unexpectedly, had almost knocked her legs from under her. The feelings that now roiled in her head were muddled and contradictory. She was thrilled to see him, yes. But she was humiliated too, and angry—did he think she was some fluttery, fainting Victorian heroine who needed a big, brave hero to come and rescue her from danger? Damn him.
She was annoyed with Jamie too, for telling him about what had been happening. Why didn’t anyone pay attention to what she asked of them—especially what she asked them not to do? First her father and the Pollock (she thought unreasonably), and now Jamie. Anger notwithstanding, she yearned to run to Ted, felt physically pulled toward him, and yet she knew that, had he not already seen her, she would have turned and run the other way. She wanted him there and she wanted him not there.
“Ted—what are you doing here?” It wasn’t something she consciously decided to say. It just popped out, so charged with anger, surprise, excitement, and God knew what else that he jumped, then spun to face her.
“Alix! I was just . . . I’m here about this picture . . . to talk to Ms. Brethwaite . . . it’s a case I’m working on . . . it’s got nothing to do with you . . . well, except tangentially, of course . . .”
She couldn’t believe it; the cool-as-a-cucumber Ted Ellesworth, Mr. Unflappable, was flustered—every bit as much as she was. But why should he be flustered? Was it that he was simply embarrassed to see her face-to-face after so baldly going out of his way to avoid her all this time? Had he hoped to get in and out of Palm Springs without running into her?
In any case, he recovered his wits before she did. “I think I’d better start one more time,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Hello, Alix, it’s nice to see you again. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Ted. It’s nice to see you too.”
Did he feel as stupid as she did? They sounded like a couple of characters in a dusty old novel of manners. Now what?
They had moved closer while speaking and now stood looking awkwardly at one another. Alix was afraid that he was going to offer to shake hands, but he did better than that, although not that much better. He placed one hand on each shoulder and gave her an almost-hug; bodies almost touching, cheeks almost touching, but nothing really touching, the kind of hug two reserved and proper friends might share on unexpectedly running into each other. But, oh, my, it felt wonderful. For an instant her cheek brushed the rough fabric of his tweedy sport coat, and she smelled newly mown hay. And there was just a hint of the cedary aftershave she had forgotten all about but now remembered with a bittersweet pang.
“Alix,” he said, releasing her (after a moment longer than necessary, or was that wishful thinking?), “I’m due for an appointment with Mrs. Brethwaite right now, but I hope we can get together and catch up later on.”
I hope so too! “I should have some free time this afternoon,” she said offhandedly. “Perhaps—no, wait, you’re going to talk to her about this painting? The Pollock?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“You think it’s a fake?”
“I think it might be.”
“I think it is. And I was just on my way to talk to her about it myself.”
“Really?” He turned to study the painting again. “What makes you think so?”
“Admittedly, only a gut feeling to start with—”
“Never mind ‘only.’ I know about your gut feelings.”
“—but then just this morning my fa—that is, I found this study of Pollock’s signature—” She thought it best not to insert Geoff into the conversation. Ted still had a few reservations about him. (Understandable, she thought; she had a few herself.) “—that compares his—”
“Wait, hold it, why don’t you come with me? This fits exactly into what I need to talk to her about.”
“Good idea. She’s not going to like hearing this. I could use some protection. She can be a pretty scary old lady.”
He leaned close, tapped his jacket, and whispered confidentially, “No fear. I’m packing.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Ellesworth, she’ll be delayed a bit, perhaps another fifteen minutes,” said Mrs. B’s secretary, Richard. “She asked me to apologize on her behalf. If you’d care to have a seat—”
“Why don’t we wait in my office instead?” Alix suggested to Ted. “You can give us a call when she’s ready, Richard.”
Richard looked dubiously at her. “I’m sorry, Ms. London. The director was quite clear. Her appointment is with Agent Ellesworth. If you would like to schedule—”
“Alix will be attending too,” Ted said. “At my request.”
The corners of Richard’s mouth turned very slightly down. “Of course. As you wish. However, Ms. London, your ‘office,’ as you refer to it, will be in use. The security staff will be conferencing there. It is the conference room, you know.”
“Do you know, I believe you may have mentioned that before, but thank you for reminding me. We’ll be out in the central courtyard, then.”
“Let me explain what I’m doing here,” Ted said as they sat down opposite each other at one of the picnic tables. “You’re familiar with Lord & Keen?”
“I know who they are, of course. Major New York dealer. They specialize in American Modern, if I’m not mistaken. I think I read they’re in some kind of trouble, didn’t I?”
“They are, indeed. Several suits have been filed against them, and unless I’m wildly wrong they’re going to be in a lot more trouble before very long. They will be if I have anything to do with it.”
The prominent ninety-year-old dealership had been the subject of an investigation for several months, he explained. Evidence was mounting that they had knowingly passed off as many as two dozen forgeries of works by artists like Rothko, O’Keeffe, DeKooning—
“And Pollock,” Alix said.
“And Pollock. This particular one, in fact, was bought from them.”
“And so you’re here to check it out, see if it’s the real thing or not?”
“Alix, if what I wanted was an opinion on a painting’s authenticity, there’s somebody else I’d be far more likely to rely on, especially considering that she happened to be right here in the vicinity.”
“Thank you, I’m flattered, but why exactly are you here then? Not that I’m not happy to see you, because I am. Or was that a double negative?”
Something about his
attitude or his bearing had cheered her up and loosened her tongue. He was . . . friendly, maybe more than friendly. Was it possible that things between them could still be repaired? Had he perhaps forgotten about her performance at that wretched lunch or at least come around to putting it into perspective, seeing it as a sort of temporary, post-traumatic reaction to her nearly getting killed in Albania? That was certainly how she’d come to look at the way she’d behaved, and the way she planned to put it to him if/when the time was ever ripe. She realized she was suddenly feeling absurdly happy.
“I’m glad to see you too, believe me,” Ted said, “but if you want to know why I’m here, maybe you should stop asking questions and just listen and let me talk for a couple of minutes?”
She propped her chin on her clasped fingers, elbows on the wooden table. “Talk away. I’m all ears.”
Apparently, all of the fakes had been done by one man: a twenty-nine-year-old Taiwanese immigrant, believe it or not, who had been here illegally for four years, lived in a no-deposit, $75-a-week boarding-house (who knew such things still existed?) near the Newark docks, and spoke little English. This frightened man had cooperated when first interviewed, but all he could tell them was that he’d been paid a thousand dollars cash plus expenses for each painting, by a person whose name he didn’t know. He claimed he had no idea where the paintings went and Ted had believed him. He had disappeared after the first interview, and there had never been a second. Unfortunately, a full list of his fakes hadn’t yet been compiled.
“You don’t think he was—?” Alix said.
“Killed? Yeah, maybe he was killed or hidden away, or there could have been some kind of accident. But remember, he was an illegal, he was scared, and when the FBI started showing some interest, he disappeared. Not exactly unusual.”
Lord & Keen themselves had at first declared that all the paintings in question had received their usual thorough review before being offered for sale; they had been submitted to recognized authorities who had confirmed they were what they were purported to be. Then later, when two of the paintings—a Whistler and an O’Keeffe—had subsequently been determined to be fakes, the dealership had claimed to be as aggrieved as the buyers and had immediately taken the pictures back and made full reimbursements. They had also removed the “authorities” they’d used from their list of consultants.
Ted didn’t buy any of it, and more recently, as the net around them tightened, Lord & Keen had been refusing to speak with the FBI at all and they had hired a top-notch criminal law firm to keep it that way. Ted and his team, undeterred, were now looking into things from the other end of the chain, slowly going through the list of institutions and individuals that had bought major works from them in the last several years, and contacting them one by one to get whatever information they could about their purchases. The Brethwaite, having bought the Pollock from them, was on the list, but Ted hadn’t expected to get to Palm Springs for several more weeks.
“And yet here you are,” Alix said.
“Sure, because of what happened with Clark Calder.”
“So Jamie told you, after all,” she said tightly. “I assume she also told you he attacked me a couple of nights ago.”
“She did.” Ted eyed her. “And this annoys you.”
“Yes, after I explicitly asked her not to!”
“And what exactly is so annoying about her telling me that somebody attacked you?”
“What’s so annoying about it! It’s just that I expected . . . that I thought . . . that I didn’t want you to think you had to . . . well, that I . . . Rats,” she finished, scrambling for words and trying to remember just why she’d been so adamant about keeping him out of her life. She certainly wasn’t sorry to have him here beside her now.
“I see. Well, that certainly clears things up,” he said, looking her steadily in the eye. She fought to keep her own gaze level. “But I’m a little annoyed myself, Alix. In the first place, I would have thought that if somebody tried to kill you, you might have let me know, don’t you think? Regardless of what you happen to think of me personally—”
What I think of you personally. So the things she’d said at that lunch were still on his mind. Well, what else could she realistically expect?
“—I do have some pretty good resources at my command.”
“But it had nothing to do with what I think of you personally,” she blurted, screwing up her courage. Here was her opening, a chance to explain, to apologize, to get a start on making things right. “In fact, if I’m going to be honest, my feelings toward you—”
He wasn’t even listening. “And second, I didn’t know anything about what was going on down here until yesterday. Jamie didn’t tell me until after we heard about him getting killed.”
This struck her as dishonest. “Oh, really? You knew about that? You follow the local news from Palm Springs, do you?”
“No, we don’t,” he said coolly, “but we’ve been following the news about Clark Calder ever since we connected him to the purchase of a major Lord & Keen painting back when he was with a museum in Austin.”
“Oh,” she said lamely. When would she learn that trying to be snide never worked for her? She always wound up with her foot in her mouth.
“In fact, it was the fake Whistler I was talking about a minute ago.”
She thought about that. “So . . . assuming this one is a fake too, it’s the second time he’s been at least circumstantially involved with Lord & Keen in a forgery?”
“A lot more than circumstantially. He was the senior curator on the Whistler as well, and the one who was primarily responsible for arranging the sale.”
“I believe that was the case here too,” Alix said.
“It was the case. I talked to Mrs. Brethwaite on the phone last night and she confirmed it.”
“Wow.”
“And now he’s been killed.”
She nodded.
“And a few nights ago he tried to kill you. Aside from any concern I might have for you—and whether you believe it or not, I do have considerable concern—it was obvious that something was going on with the guy and it was time for me to check it out.”
Believe it or not, I do have considerable concern? That got Alix’s mind reversing direction and taking off in a dozen new ones, but now wasn’t the time to pursue them. “Well, it certainly looks to me as if he was the one who broke in, but I don’t have any evidence. And the police don’t agree with me.”
“Oh, it was him, all right, and the police do agree. Before I came here I spent half an hour with the detective working on it—”
“Jake Cruz.”
“Right, good guy. They came up with some prints on the plastic shoe cover your man left behind, and they matched the ones on an old employment record of Calder’s. The blood on the inside of the mask is undergoing DNA testing too, but with the fingerprints, it’s a foregone conclusion.”
“So I was right,” she mused. “Ted, I still don’t understand how you got here so fast. Clark was killed the night before last. You just heard about it yesterday. Yet here you are, you’ve already talked to Jake Cruz—”
“Red-eye from Dulles. Flew all night, got here at the break of dawn. My eyeballs don’t always look like this, you know.”
Your eyeballs are beautiful, she thought inanely, barely suppressing an idiotic little grin.
They turned at the sound of one of the glass double doors that opened into the courtyard.
“Mrs. B will see you now,” said Richard, doing his usual Jeeves impersonation.
And that’s about where we stand on things, Lillian,” Ted said, having gone over what he’d just been telling Alix. Astonishingly, Mrs. B had asked him to call her Lillian inside of two minutes, a privilege that no one else at the museum had been accorded. Not even Clark. Not even (as far as Alix knew) Prentice.
They were in the director
’s office, Mrs. B looking tiny behind her big oak desk, but no less raptorlike; a sort of mini-bird-of-prey. She was wearing another mannish outfit: a black, buttoned-up Nehru jacket over a stark white shirt with a band collar. It made her look like a priest—but not the mellow Bing Crosby kind. More along the lines, say, of Torquemada.
Alix and Ted were across the entire breadth of the room from her, primly seated at opposite ends of a heavily brocaded Second Empire sofa that could have held four.
“And you think our Pollock is one of these forgeries,” Mrs. B said without expression.
“At this point I’m not sure what I think about that. I believe Alix has some new information for us, but let’s save it for a minute.” They were so far from each other that they were practically shouting.
“Bringing us more good news, no doubt, eh, Miss London? I can hardly wait.” Mrs. B had swung her head to focus those sharp, hooded eyes on Alix.
Alix felt like a butterfly pinned to a specimen chart and resented it. “I’m simply doing what any honest—” she began hotly, but Ted interceded.
“How did you meet Clark Calder, Lillian?”
“It was at a conference of private museum directors a few months ago. Clark had just resigned from the Austin Museum of American Art, and he was full of exciting new concepts that I thought could help us get out of the financial bind we’d gotten ourselves into. And bring us into the twenty-first century at the same time. We’re rather a fusty old bunch here, you see, and set in our ways. And I include myself in that. Clark . . .” She shook her head, thinking back. “Clark seemed like a much-needed breath of fresh air at the time.”
“Did you check with the Austin museum about his tenure there?”
The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) Page 19