The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “I’ll drink to that,” a red-faced Alfie said happily, lifting his glass.

  “What wouldn’t he drink to?” Drew Temple muttered as he came up to Ted, looking as usual both depressed and sullen—and spoiling for a fight. “I hear you’re with the FBI, is that right?”

  “Is that a question or an accusation?” Ted said, but he said it pleasantly.

  “I have a question I want to ask you,” Drew said, not so pleasantly. “What I want to know is why the federal government thinks it’s perfectly all right—”

  Ted’s cell phone bipped. He held up one hand to stop Drew while he extracted it with the other. “Yes, Jamie, hello,” he said, and then, to Drew: “You’ll have to excuse me. I have to take this.” And then again, into the phone: “It’s a little noisy here, let me find someplace quieter.” He shrugged another apology to Drew and threw a funny, saved-by-the-bell look toward Alix as he moved off with the phone to his ear.

  Alix went in the direction that Lillian had pointed to find a catalogue, first stopping at the bar to get a glass of white wine. The catalogues, a dozen or so of them, were in a cardboard carton on a small table provided for people to set down their used glasses and plates. The catalogue covers looked nice: glossy, understated, and attractively done.

  Endicott Fine Art Auction Galleries, Ltd.

  San Francisco

  presents

  Treasures of the L. Morgan Brethwaite Museum

  7 P.M., March 14, 2014

  But it was the carton itself, a US Postal Service mailing carton with an Endicott Galleries return address, that caught her eye. The postmark strip in the upper right corner showed that it had been mailed from San Francisco on February 8, Saturday, the day before yesterday. Saturday? But that would mean . . .

  It would mean that she and Chris had been lied to by Clark when Chris had said she was interested in buying the panel of miniatures before they went to auction. He’d told her that it was impossible because the catalogues had already been mailed. That had been on Friday, but now Alix knew that in reality they hadn’t gone out until the following day. That supposedly disappointing “conversation” he’d had on the phone with the printer—the whole thing had been a sham. There’d been nobody on the other end. He just didn’t want to sell it.

  He’d jumped at Chris’s offer on the Marsden Hartleys just a few hours before, yet when it came to selling the miniatures, he’d concocted an excuse for why it couldn’t be done. Why would he do that? Clearly, he’d seen some kind of profit for himself in not selling them—at least at that point. Selling them later, then? Getting possession of them at the auction, then reselling them later for a lot more? But why would they have earned a lot more later?

  Her mind was churning away. Those two portraits that Chris had liked so much—the little boy and the little girl in the bottom row—wasn’t it possible that they weren’t painted by the obscure Joseph Dunkerley, but by the illustrious John Singleton Copley, as Alix had initially sensed? (But had never followed up on, damn it.) If Clark had somehow known that, he would certainly have known that two matched Copleys would bring millions, not the thousands of dollars a pair of Dunkerleys would command, and would certainly have wanted them for himself . . . at Dunkerley prices.

  But where did that lead? He knew he couldn’t get away with bidding on a lot from his own museum, which meant he would need to have somebody do it for him: a proxy. So there had to be a second person involved. The person he’d been arguing with on the phone, perhaps? The person who’d met him at Melvyn’s? The person who’d run him down just a few minutes later?

  She paged through the top copy of the catalogues, searching for . . . well, she wasn’t really sure of what she was searching for. The Marsden Hartleys that Chris had bought were not in it; that was as expected. The panel of miniatures was in it. That was also as expected. She looked hard at its photograph, but the resolution wasn’t nearly good enough to—

  “Oho, I see your attention has been caught by the miniatures.”

  Prentice, tall, elegant, kindly, smiling, stood beside her, having apparently come in without being noticed.

  “Yes, they’re beautiful.”

  “I’ve just come back from Endicott,” he said. “I wanted to see all the pieces for myself, and I’m very glad I did.” Unusually for Prentice, his suit coat was rumpled, probably from wearing it on the plane. Prentice Vandervere would probably be the last man in America who still flew in coat and tie. He was definitely elated about something tonight. “Alix, you’re not particularly well acquainted with the field of miniatures, if I recall correctly.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, look at these two on the bottom right, the boy and girl.”

  “The Dunkerleys.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that.”

  Alix felt a little flutter in her chest. If Prentice was about to tell her that he had identified them as Copleys, that would settle it. “You’re not?” She was surprised to find herself short of breath.

  “You can’t tell from the photograph here, but you’ve looked at the actual panel, haven’t you? Do you remember how luminous these two were, glowing almost as if they were lit from behind?”

  “I do, yes.” Her excitement continued to grow.

  “That’s because they were painted, not on ivory as was almost every other miniature of the time,” Prentice told her, “but on a ground of gold leaf laid on copper. It was a technique unique to one particular American artist, a very fine artist, and the fact that he used it was completely unknown to his contemporaries, and not even suspected until just a few years ago.” He paused to heighten the suspense. “I wonder if you have any idea who that artist was.”

  She knew, all right, but she wasn’t about to spoil his pleasure in the moment. “No, I don’t. Who?”

  “Copley! The great John Singleton Copley! I knew it the moment I looked at them!”

  Alix was glad she hadn’t blurted the name. She suspected it had been a long time since he’d been this happy. “Copley!” she said. “That’s wonderful! But I thought there was a solid provenance that established them as Dunkerleys.”

  “Provenance? No, no such thing, not at any rate as you and I understand the term. I’ve been through the records. An aide to Mr. Brethwaite bought them for him in 1971—at a country auction in New Hampshire. That’s the extent of their provenance as Dunkerleys. They’ve been moldering away in the basement of the house ever since, never considered important enough to come up into the light, which was why I’d never seen them before, although I castigate myself now for never seriously exploring our storage areas. Isn’t that something? Copley!”

  “Yes, wonderful.” Her mind was doing more than churning now. Barely remembered events and half-formed ideas were beginning to sharpen and rearrange themselves, to line up and connect. The killing of Clark, the rigging of her car’s brake system—they had nothing to do with the Pollock. That was over and done. It was the Copleys that were at their root. It all added up.

  And what it added up to was Jerry Swanson.

  Consider: It was Jerry who had lied to her about the existence of a credible provenance on the miniatures, much as Clark had earlier lied about the existence of forensic testing on the Pollock. And just as Clark had thought it necessary to rid himself of her before she found out otherwise, so had Jerry when it came to the Copleys. And when she’d tried to take a closer look at them while they were being packed, he’d practically torn them out of her hands, making a joke out of it.

  But it was no joke. Clearly, Jerry knew, just as Clark had, that they were Copleys. The two of them were in it together—a swindle, a scam to get ownership of them for a fraction of their worth by bidding for them at the auction, and then later selling them for millions after “discovering” that (gasp!) they were actually Copleys. But neither of them would be allowed to bid at the auction, so there had to be yet a third
person involved, a proxy who would buy the lot for them without revealing their names.

  That was a lot of convoluted thinking, but it had only consumed a few seconds, and Prentice, normally so suave and contained, was continuing to prattle away.

  “I’ve managed to establish that they’re 1759 portraits of two of the children of Andrew Oliver, a lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and they haven’t been seen since 1811, when they were auctioned by his heirs at Christie’s London to an unnamed buyer. And now, here they turn up in our basement! Imagine—a lost Copley—two lost Copleys—after two hundred years. Lillian has already requested their removal from this particular auction of course, but I entertain no illusions about them remaining at the Brethwaite for long. For one thing, they’re too small to monetize very many eyeballs, heh-heh, but more importantly, this really isn’t the place for them. I anticipate enormous interest from museums that already have significant miniature collections—Boston, New York, New Haven—and I have no doubt that the price they bring would more than resolve the financial predicament that has so worried Lillian. But the big thing, the wonderful thing, is two beautiful little Copleys that had been lost to the world for . . .”

  Click, click, click, pieces were popping up and dropping into place faster than she could keep up with them: how Jerry had once mentioned that he did his own car maintenance and thus had to have a pretty good knowledge of engines and brake systems; how he had been present yesterday when she announced that she’d be driving the desert road to the tram; how—

  “I’m sorry, Prentice,” she said abruptly. “I have to—excuse me.” She ran to find Ted, leaving Prentice with his forehead puckered in surprise.

  “Alix?”

  Ted was standing at the far end of the patio near the iron-grill fence, just slipping his cell phone into a pocket. He looked as if he was thinking hard.

  “Ted! I know who it is! Who killed Clark, who meddled with the brakes on our car! I don’t have it altogether clear yet in my mind, but it was . . . it has to be—”

  He mumbled something—a question. Alix thought she’d misheard. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you were talking about the valuator from Endicott, Jerry Swanson.”

  “Yes! How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing, trying to put the pieces together based on what I heard from Jamie just now. I’m still trying.”

  They were whispering, working hard to keep from stealing peeks at Jerry, who was fifteen or twenty feet from them, engaged in a spirited conversation with Madge. Still, he seemed to somehow sense their interest, because he gave Madge a couple of quick nods and began to sidle away.

  Ted took a step toward him. “Mr. Swanson? Sir? Could you hold on a minute, please? I’d—”

  Jerry froze for a split second, then broke and ran for the open gateway that led from the patio out into the parking lot and the street. Three steps was all he managed before colliding with an elderly, frail-looking waiter balancing a loaded tray on one shoulder. Down went the waiter with a desolate gasp, down came the tray with a din of clanging cutlery and shattering china, and down went Jerry, sprawling forward to his hands and knees. He was up quickly, again bolting for the gate.

  There he flew straight into yet another obstacle, but this time the person on the other end was neither slight nor elderly. Detective Jake Cruz seemed to fill the entire gateway and proved, at least as far as Jerry was concerned, to be an Immovable Object, against which the pudgy Jerry was no Irresistible Force. Jerry bounced off his chest like a beach ball coming off a stone wall, and landed on the seat of his pants.

  “Why, hello there, Mr. Swanson,” Jake said, looking down at him. “How nice. We were just looking for you.”

  Jerry just sat there with his mouth open, looking balefully up at Jake. He had lost his black-plastic-rimmed glasses, and now his face looked all doughy and featureless. It looked as if it wouldn’t take very much to make him cry. Jake stepped out of the gateway and from behind him came a uniformed officer and a man in a polo shirt and slacks; Jake’s partner, Alix assumed.

  “Stay where you are, please, don’t move,” the partner said sharply while the officer came around Jerry. Kneeling behind him, reaching to his utility belt with one hand for his handcuffs, he quickly interlocked his other arm with Jerry’s and pressed on Jerry’s shoulder, at which Jerry, forced forward, grimaced—“Hey! Ow!”—but a moment later the pressure was released and he was hauled to his feet, his hands now cuffed behind him. Nobody’s head had ever hung lower.

  A pat down produced no weapons (Alix would have been surprised if any had turned up; a killer Jerry might be, but not the kind who would do it face-to-face with a knife or a gun), and he was hustled off. Every head on the patio swiveled to follow them. Some people were appalled, but most looked thrilled, already working on the way they would be telling the story tomorrow. Alix heard more than one whispered, appreciative “wow” floating in the air around her.

  Soon enough the soft “wows” began to morph into increasingly excited buzzing, at which point Alix and Ted ducked out through the gate.

  “Where are we going?” Alix asked as they walked toward Ted’s car. “Somewhere to eat, I hope?” Neither of them had had anything since breakfast.

  “You bet your life, somewhere to eat. We sure haven’t had any success at it so far today, have we? Any suggestions?”

  “Well, we just walked out of the best restaurant in town. We could see if there’s a table in one of the dining rooms, away from the others.”

  With a nod of concurrence, he took her elbow and steered her away from the cars and around the building to the front entrance. There they were told by the hostess that they were in luck. A private event had been canceled, and several tables had been made available. One was still left. Would they like it?

  “Would we like it!” Ted said with a grin.

  A few minutes later they were seated beneath a lovely old Flemish tapestry, a forest scene turned a romantic, faded russet with age. An operatic aria played softly over the speaker system. Bellini, Alix thought. Norma. “Casta Diva.” She even thought she recognized Callas. How lovely. Could she really have been watching the arrest of a murderer five minutes ago—someone who’d actually tried to kill her? Hard to believe that that wild scene—like something out of an opera buffa, what with people running into each other and falling down all over the place—had barely finished taking place no more than twenty yards from this beautiful, quiet corner.

  A bottle of Oregon Chardonnay had been set into an ice bucket on the thick linen tablecloth, had received Ted’s approval, and was now being poured for the two of them. Smiling, they clinked glasses, took their first sips, murmured their appreciative mmms, set the glasses down, and sat back looking at each other.

  “Ted,” Alix said, “you want to tell me what that was all about back there?”

  “Obviously, Jake concluded that Jerry was his man and acted accordingly.”

  “Yes, obviously, but did you know it was going to happen? Did you have anything to do with it?”

  “No, nothing. I was as surprised as you were.”

  “But . . . do you mean to say all of us—you, me, Jake—came to the same conclusion at the same time? That seems a little—”

  “Yes, it does, but apparently that’s exactly what happened. Jake must have some pretty good evidence against Swanson, but he sure hasn’t let me in on it. Neither have you, for that matter. How did you come up with Jerry?”

  They paused while the gray-haired waiter put down their first course, a salad of roasted, cubed beets and chopped pistachios that had been formed into a neat cylinder, topped with feta cheese, and stacked on a base of thinly sliced apple rings arranged into a circle.

  “Beautiful,” Alix said.

  “Thank you, madame, I hope you enjoy it.” Another French accent. He didn’t actually back away from the table, but so
mehow gave the impression of doing it.

  The explanation of her reasoning took them through the salad course.

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Ted said, pouring them more wine. “You’ll want to tell Jake all about it too.”

  “I will. Your turn now. How did you narrow it down to Jerry?”

  “I didn’t narrow it down to his being the guy who killed Clark and damn near did us in too, if that’s what you mean. That only popped into my mind when you came running up. I was coming at it from another angle entirely. I was focusing on the auction.”

  Among the things he had done, he told her, was to get a list of registered bidders from Endicott. On that list he had spotted a familiar name: Ferenc Herczog, a mysterious Hungarian or Bulgarian or Romanian or Slovakian emigré who appeared to make his living acting as a proxy at art auctions around the world for buyers who chose to remain anonymous. Nothing illegal about that, but some of Mr. Herczog’s clients had not been among the most elite ranks of art collectors. Some had been downright shady. In the past, Herczog had been helpful to the FBI, sometimes through inducement, more often through—let’s not say bullying or harassment, but rather through the patient explanation of the possible consequences attendant upon cooperation or the lack thereof.

  In this case, it took only twenty minutes of such patient explanation by Joe “Lurch” Mazurski, Ted’s scariest agent, to get the name of the secretive buyer Herczog was representing. And that name—

  “—was Jerry Swanson,” Alix said. “The valuator buying the object on which he himself had set the value.”

  “Right. A definite no-no. Jamie had just told me that when you came up, at which point the connection to what’s been going on around here more or less made itself.”