The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “Oho!” she cried, just as Ted finished his call. She bent to snatch what looked like a three- or four-inch length of narrow green hose or tubing from the ground a few feet from the edge of the road.

  “Jake’s on his way,” Ted said. “Oho, what? What is that thing?”

  “Come, I’ll show you.” She tightened her fist around it. “I knew it!”

  He had to trot to keep up with her as she ran excitedly back to the car, and when they reached it, its hood still propped up, she held up the flexible green tubing like a magician showing off a trick, said “Watch this!” and fitted it onto one of the cut ends of the nearer brake line, then bent the tubing into a U-shape and fit its free end onto the other segment of the brake line, thereby closing up the gap.

  “I think I’m sort of seeing where you’re going with this . . .” Ted said, “but I’m still a little . . .”

  “Well, I couldn’t figure out why there was a gap in the lines. That takes two cuts instead of one, and one cut would have done the job. And then it occurred to me . . .”

  The hydraulic fluid in the lines is put under tremendous pressure when the brake pedal is depressed, she explained. A stainless steel brake line can take that pressure without bursting—or swelling, which would also lower the pressure in the line. Rubber tubing can take some pressure too, but only up to a point. Whoever did this was counting on the rubber segments standing up to relatively soft stops, but bursting or popping loose at the first really hard stop—when the car was moving fast and had to stop quickly; when it was a matter of life and death, in other words. And that was exactly what happened.

  “So,” Ted said, “he was just hoping you’d eventually run into a serious situation, a critical situation, when you really needed the brakes . . . and they wouldn’t be there. The fact that it happened now, right here, was just coincidence?”

  “Unless you think that guy that ran us off the road was in on it, yes, but I can’t imagine that.”

  More waves and we’re-okay-thanks smiles to a couple of drivers.

  “Ted, this thing is all very clever, but it’s not exactly a surefire way to get rid of someone, you know. After all, we’re still here.”

  “Yeah, thanks to some fancy driving on your part. But what you said about its being pretty iffy is true. I’m assuming this was a kind of first try. If it didn’t work, or didn’t happen at all, he’d try something a little more certain. Which means he couldn’t be in that much of a hurry to . . . to deal with you; that he’s got time enough to make another try.”

  “To kill me, you mean—we may as well say it, don’t you think? It would also mean that I can expect another try at it. That should make the next few days even more exciting.”

  Ted let out a pent-up breath. “Whew. This is all really hard to believe.”

  “What? That someone’s trying to kill me? If you ask me, it’s getting to be pretty old hat. Seems to happen just about every other day.”

  “No, not that someone’s trying to kill you—that two people have been trying to kill you.”

  “Two people? How do you figure—” She slapped her forehead. “Oh, my God, I must still be in shock or something. Of course it’s two people. If Clark was the first one—”

  “He was the first one,” Ted reminded her.

  “But he sure can’t be number two, can he?”

  “Not very likely, I’d say. Hi there, we’re fine, thanks for checking. So then, who? Do you have any idea at all?”

  “No, there isn’t anybody. Clark was the only one with a stake in the Pollock.”

  “Then maybe it’s not about the Pollock, maybe it was never about the Pollock, maybe it’s about something else.”

  “Ted, honestly, there isn’t anything else. I’ve just been doing my work, keeping to myself. I mean, maybe I’ve ticked off somebody without meaning to—”

  “Naw,” Ted said. “You? Surely you jest.”

  Alix gave him a sour smile. “—but there certainly hasn’t been anything to get myself killed over.”

  “Alix, maybe it’s got nothing to do with the museum at all. Maybe . . .” Ted was looking down the road over her shoulder at a dark blue, unmarked sedan approaching from the city. “Here comes the man you need to be talking to about this, and there’s the tow truck right behind him.”

  A moment later, Jake Cruz pulled over, stopped beside the road, and stared at their car.

  “Jesus H. Christ, did you get hit by a train? I never knew there was a crossing here.”

  “It felt like we got hit by a train, Jake,” Ted said, “but, believe me, it could have been a lot worse. Thank God it was Alix behind the wheel and not me.”

  Alix shrugged it off, but in fact she was pleased.

  The tow truck pulled up then, a big flatbed tow, and Jake had to move his car back to make room.

  The overalled, booted driver climbed down and stood there, gnawing on an unlit cigar and sizing up his job.

  “It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” Ted said, being friendly.

  “Seen worse,” was the nonchalant reply. “You folks going to need a ride back?”

  “No,” said Jake, coming up. “I’ll take them.” And then to the driver. “H’lo, Ed.”

  “Well, hi there, detective. We sure meet in some lovely places.”

  “Yeah. Just good luck, I guess. Give us a minute with the car, will you, before you take it.”

  “My pleasure,” Ed said, climbing back up to his seat and taking out a cigarette lighter. “I’m on hourly for this one.”

  Jake did most of his own car maintenance, so it took just a few minutes for Alix to explain her deductions about the brake line tampering.

  “Well, that’s a new one,” was his only response.

  After that, they went over the same ground that Ted and Alix had covered—who would want to kill her/why would anyone want to kill her/what did it have to do with Clark/what did it have to do with the Pollock? But other than concluding that the bad guy was very likely the same one who’d killed Clark—there was such a thing as too many coincidences, after all, and in a town that typically saw three or four murders a year, this was one too many—they made no progress. As to what the connection was between the two, and whether they were related to Clark’s attempt on Alix, they couldn’t come up even with a hypothesis.

  Jake used a tissue to pull off the green tubing and looked into one end. “Some kind of oil in there, so you’re probably right. Kind of sorry you handled it, though. Maybe we can still get some latents off it.”

  “According to what Alix said, there must be a second one lying around, though,” Ted said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have a couple of guys out. But this is obviously a pretty slick character. Be surprised if he left any prints.” He called to the driver. “All yours, Ed. This is a police case now. You know the drill.”

  Ed waved his cigar in acknowledgement. “I’ll take care of it, chief.”

  On the way back to Palm Springs, Ted sat in front with Jake, Alix in the back, and after a few more unproductive surmises about what had happened, Ted changed the subject. Slightly.

  “How’re you coming on Calder’s murder, Jake?”

  “Ah, well, there I can report some progress—thanks to your telling us about what he was planning to do that night.”

  Alix, watching the barren, brown desert glide by, didn’t see the flick of his head that indicated he was talking to her, and only realized it from the silence that followed.

  “My telling you?” she asked. “What did I tell you?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Jake asked, clearly enjoying himself. “You told us you heard him on the phone, arranging a meeting at Melvyn’s Lounge. You even told us when: six o’clock. You don’t remember?”

  “No, I didn’t. I never said that. I said . . .” Her eyes opened wide. “You
mean ‘Melvyn’s’ is the name of a place? That’s what he meant?” She replayed his words in her mind. “Well, sure, that could be, I guess, but how in the world did you come up with it?”

  “Just the usual superior police work. We’re detectives, we detect. But the thing is, my partner went over there, to Melvyn’s, and showed Calder’s picture to the waitress, and she remembered him—she wondered if he was a movie star. She also remembered that he was there with another guy, a guy in a baseball cap, and they were getting pretty annoyed with each other over something. Couldn’t really give us anything like a helpful description of the other guy, but she thought she could probably ID him if she saw him again.”

  “Which is good,” Ted said. “All you need to do is come up with the other guy.”

  “On whom we are closing in with implacable rapidity. My partner in excellence tracked down somebody who actually witnessed the hit-and-run, but took off at the time. The guy’s an auto mechanic, and he was able to tell us a lot, including the make, model, and year of the car. And color. A 2012 Ford Focus. Green.”

  “That sounds like real progress, Jake,” Alix said. “Congratulations.”

  “Well, it is progress, but do you have any idea how many 2012 Ford Focuses are registered in San Berdoo County alone? And if you throw in L.A. and Orange right next door, sheesh. But we’re working at it. Ah, civilization.”

  They had reached the end of Tramway Road—the end of the desert—and Jake turned them south onto North Palm Canyon. They traveled only a few blocks before turning onto East Vista Chino, which took them away from downtown. “Where are we going?” Alix asked.

  “We need to stop off at the police department, get a statement. We’ll need a few words from you too, Ted. Shouldn’t take long, given that the scene of the crime wasn’t really a scene of a crime—for all we know, the guy who did it was a hundred miles away—so there’s not much to get from you. Which brings me to my next point: Wherever he is, he’s still loose, and that means Alix is going to need some protection. We’re a little tight on personnel, but I know Lieutenant Mitchell would okay—”

  “How about holding off on that, at least while I’m here, Jake,” Ted said. “I’ll be happy to stick close to her.”

  “That okay with you, Alix?” Jake asked.

  Okay for Ted to stick close to her? Was he kidding? “Sure, I guess so,” she said offhandedly.

  Ted turned in his seat. “I’ve already booked the bungalow next to yours at Villa Louisa, Alix.”

  “You—?”

  “I called while you were hunting for that tube. So I’ll be right next door if you need me, even in the middle of the night.”

  Jake’s head cocked just perceptibly at that, and Alix felt the blood rise to her cheeks. A double entendre? From Ted? No, impossible, the guy was too straitlaced for double entendres. For Alix, who was thought by some to be a tad straitlaced herself, it was a considerable part of his manly charm.

  “Listen, Jake,” Ted said as they turned into the parking lot at police headquarters, “I had a thought. About that Ford?”

  “Shoot.” Jake pulled the key from the ignition and turned toward him. “I can definitely use a thought.”

  “Well, Ford Focuses are the most popular rental cars in the country. So before you go checking on every single one in the United States, why don’t you call around to the local rental outfits and see if maybe someone brought back a green 2012 in the last couple of days with damage on it? From what I saw in those photos of Calder’s injuries, there’s no way the car got away without injuries of its own.”

  “Now that is a hell of a thought,” Jake said, and then slowly nodded. “You feebs. Never mind what they say, you really are pretty smart guys.”

  Their interviews with Jake and his partner took longer than expected—until almost seven o’clock—and when they were done, Jake drove them to the museum parking lot, where Ted still had his car. This was at Ted’s request. “No point in your getting another rental,” he volunteered, when Alix had implied that that was her intention. “Wherever you’re going, I’m driving you, like it or not.”

  Jake nodded his approval.

  “I guess I can live with it,” she said, borrowing one of Ted’s own rather ambiguous phrases, “if I have to.” Had she meant it to be taken as grudging acquiescence? A meaningless throwaway line? An ironic joke? She didn’t know herself. Well, let him wonder too. It was, after all, his laconic, unrevealing response at that cursed luncheon at the National Gallery, when she turned down his offer to continue working with him. I can live with that.

  Ted in a nutshell.

  This time he didn’t respond at all, so she was in the dark as to his reaction, assuming he’d had any.

  “I need food,” Ted declared when they’d gotten out of Jake’s car. “I’ve been listening to my stomach rumble for the last half hour. Any suggestions as to where to go?”

  “Well—”

  “Not up on the mountain, if you don’t mind. Maybe some other time.”

  “No, I most certainly wasn’t thinking that,” she said, laughing, “but . . . well, one of the curators—Prentice Vandervere, an old professor of mine and one of the most respected—”

  “I know who Prentice Vandervere is. We’ve gone to him a few times with questions. I have a lot of respect for him. Be an honor to meet him.”

  “Oh, good. Prentice is the new senior curator at the museum and Lillian’s putting on a reception for him at Le Vallauris—”

  “A reception? Kind of gauche, wouldn’t you say, what with her previous senior curator’s body barely cold.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it is, but she’s not the most sentimental person in the world, you know. I think she’s come to regret ever having had anything to do with Clark, and she’s anxious to put everything about him behind her. Anyway, Le Vallauris is supposed to be the best restaurant in the city. Reception started at seven, a few minutes ago. I’m invited, and I’m welcome to bring someone if I like, so I was thinking—”

  “Don’t bother thinking, you don’t have any choice. You’re bringing me. Where you go, I go. That’s the deal.”

  “Oh, darn,” she said, and smiled at him. And he smiled back.

  On the brief drive to the restaurant, something occurred to her. “Ted, I just had a thought. What if whoever cut those lines didn’t do it just on the off chance that I might have to stomp on the brakes in some highly unlikely life-and-death situation while I was tooling around Palm Springs? What if he knew I’d be driving on that straight, flat, clear, uncrowded road today? He’d know nobody drives under fifty miles an hour on that thing. Wouldn’t that improve his odds of my having to put that kind of pressure on the brakes?”

  “Sure, but how could anybody know? We didn’t decide on it ourselves till just before we left.”

  “Not exactly. I’d wanted to take the tram this afternoon anyway, even before I knew you’d be here. I told you that, remember?”

  “No, I don’t, but why does that matter?”

  “Because I also told the people at the museum. Yesterday, when we were taking a break in the atrium. All the curators except Prentice, and then Jerry too.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? We were just chatting. I didn’t think I was risking my life. The restaurant parking lot is there.”

  He was nodding as he drove into it. “You raise a good point, Alix. That’s worth thinking about. And are you sure those are the only people you told?”

  “Absolutely. My God, do you think it’s one of them?”

  “Maybe so.” He was nodding. “Maybe so.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We go in there and get something to eat. And maybe you point out those people so I can have a look at them. But first, eat.”

  If Le Vallauris wasn’t the classiest restaurant in the city, it was sure putting on
a good imitation, complete with an elegant host who glided from group to group inquiring in a charming French accent as to how things were, and waiters in black tie—not college-age kids, but smooth, efficient older men; professionals.

  The Brethwaite reception was on the back patio of the old Spanish Revival house that held the main dining rooms, and very like a garden in Old Spain it was, with rose-pink flagstones underfoot, a dense green canopy of fig leaves overhead, and a luscious floral perfume in the air, at least some of which was from the vases of fresh flowers on the tables. The far corner of this pleasant place was cordoned off for the museum people, with a buffet table, a private bar, and a few small cocktail tables. Most of the attendees were standing in little groups within easy range of the buffet, employing the standard two-fisted cocktail party stance: wine or highball glass in one hand, and a canapé or two in the other.

  The curators were all there, of course (with the surprising exception of Prentice), along with Jerry, Lillian, and Richard, and one or two others that Alix had seen around, but the rest were unfamiliar—spouses, or friends, or employees she hadn’t run into. The men were almost all in sport coats, the women in dresses. Alix, still wearing the cords and hiking shoes she’d put on for the mountains, was distinctly underdressed and she hesitated at the entrance. Ted, seeing her reaction, pulled off his tie (his jacket and the sweaters he’d worn for the tram were back in the car), rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, and opened his shirt collar a few buttons to put her more at ease.

  What the hell, Alix thought, and walked in with him.

  Even Lillian had dressed up for the occasion. Apparently recovered from her downhearted humor of the morning, she was again erect and regal in a lacy, jacketed, knee-length cocktail dress—very sweet and feminine, but there was also a vintage tiara glittering in her hair, in case anyone had any doubts about who was queen of the hive.

  When she saw them, she waved them in and went on with what she was saying.

  “—have noticed that our guest of honor isn’t here. That’s because he’s been in San Francisco on business, you see, and his plane is just arriving about now. He should be here shortly. When he does arrive, he will have quite an announcement to make. Oh, and the auction catalogues have arrived, so everyone is welcome pick up a copy. They’re over there on that table.” She pointed to her left. “In the meantime, please continue to enjoy yourselves. The smoked salmon is quite marvelous.”