by Betsy Draine
“I’ll check him out. How well do you know this Keogh?”
“We’ve met over the years, but we’ve never done business together. I don’t know him well at all.”
“When was the last time you saw Charlie alive?”
“He was fine Friday at the shop.”
“What time was that?”
“About five, when I was getting ready to leave. Charlie was going to watch the shop over the weekend.”
Dan jotted down the information. That meant that Charlie was killed sometime after closing Friday and this morning, which was Sunday.
“So when you saw him Friday, did he seem nervous, worried about anything?”
“No, just the opposite. He was in an upbeat mood, seemed excited about some stuff he’d bought at auction the week before. I remember he bragged about some movie memorabilia that he picked up for a song. Not ‘bragged.’ You know what I mean. He was happy about what he’d bought.”
“Did he say anything about plans for the evening? Say, meeting anyone, or going out somewhere?”
“He did mention something about a customer.”
“Was he expecting to meet someone after you left?”
“That wasn’t clear. Maybe. Or maybe he meant Saturday.”
“Did he say anything else about this customer?”
“No, I didn’t ask. It was more like a possibility that somebody might be by, not a definite appointment.”
Dan drummed his fingers on the coffee table. “Tell me, how well off was Charlie? Did he carry much cash?”
“Hardly. He was just scraping by. That’s why I offered to share space with him.” Toby explained the terms of his business agreement with Charlie. Dan continued to take notes.
“What kinds of things did he bring into the gallery? Was there anything really valuable?”
“Nothing worth big money as far as I know,” said Toby.
“All the same, if you haven’t been up there since Friday, you better check to see if anything’s been taken.”
“Are you saying robbery was the motive?” Judging from Toby’s expression, that thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“At this point, we can’t rule it out. Charlie’s wallet is missing, but that could be a smokescreen. I’m not even sure he was killed on the boat. The medical examiner says he was stabbed through the heart, but if so, there should have been more blood than there was at the scene. That means he might have been killed somewhere else and his body dumped on the boat. We’ll see what forensics tells us. Meanwhile, better make sure nothing’s missing from your gallery.”
“I will,” said Toby. “But if Charlie wasn’t killed on the boat, why would anyone go to the trouble of hauling his body out there?”
“Good question,” replied Dan. “I can think of a couple of possibilities.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, to send a message, the point being to make sure the body was discovered. Everybody knows the kids go out there at night. Do you suppose Charlie had any connections to the mob?”
“I can’t imagine that,” said Toby, incredulous.
“We’ll look into it. Okay, two, as a plant, to incriminate a third party, namely the owner of the boat. But we’ve already tracked the guy down, and he has a tight alibi. He’s been in the hospital the past three days. And he’s in enough trouble for abandoning the boat.”
“That’s two,” said Toby. “What’s your third possibility?”
“Three, and this one I don’t like at all, our killer is deranged and the location has a twisted personal meaning for him. But frankly, none of those explanations gets us very far. And if it turns out that your partner was killed on the boat, that raises a different set of questions, starting with, why was Charlie out there in the first place?”
“I haven’t the faintest,” said Toby, shaking his head.
“Me neither,” said Dan, checking his watch. “I’ve got a report to file. What you can do for me is to get up to Duncans Mills and let me know if anything looks suspicious in the gallery. Tell me if anything’s out of kilter or if you can think of anything else I should know about Charlie. In fact, give me a call when you get there. If you don’t reach me, contact the sergeant in Investigations. You’ve got my card. It has my number, and if I don’t answer, it’ll ring through to Reception. Carol will route you to the sergeant.”
“All right,” said Toby, standing and shaking hands with Dan. “And you’ll keep us posted if you learn anything?”
“You can count on it. This must be hard for you. I’m sorry.” Dan put his hand on Toby’s upper arm and gave him a manly pat.
“Thanks.” Toby gave Dan a grateful look and then led him out. I cleared the mugs from our California Mission coffee table. Toby sank back down on the sofa. I gave him a little breathing space as I puttered around the living room. It was a few minutes after three. Toby switched on the radio to catch the local news. He wanted to see if they had picked up the story. Through the static, it was clear that they had.
“A body was discovered this afternoon in an abandoned boat in Bodega Harbor. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s office is treating the boat as a crime scene. No further information is available at this time, pending the notification of next of kin.”
Toby clicked off the radio. He wore a pained expression and was nodding his head back and forth, as if denial could restore his equanimity.
“Are you okay?”
“If I said yes, I’d be lying. Charlie was a quiet guy. He didn’t say much, but I liked being with him, after all the time I’ve spent working alone. I’ll miss hanging out with him. I’ll miss the easy way he had with people who came into the shop. And I’m angry. I’m angry something terrible like this happened to him.”
“You have a right to be.”
“Maybe this is stupid, but you know what I’ve been thinking of? That line from The Maltese Falcon, when Bogart says, ‘When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.’ That’s how I feel about Charlie. It keeps running through my head.”
I sat next to him and took his hand. “It isn’t stupid. You love that movie, and you used to do a pretty good Bogart imitation.” In fact, we both like watching the classic movies channel, and Toby has a small repertoire of famous actor imitations. He does a few of the most obvious ones: Bela Lugosi, Groucho Marx, Bogie. “Go on,” I coaxed him, because I thought it might help.
He curled his lip and tried a nasal whistle, then slumped down. “Not now. I can’t. But that line keeps running through my head. Remember when his partner gets shot at the beginning of the movie?”
“Sure I do. The woman, what’s her name, did it.”
“And by the end Bogie is in love with her, but he turns her in because he’s got this code that says when a man’s partner is killed, he’s got to do something about it. It doesn’t matter what he thought of him, or whether the guy was good or bad, he’s supposed to do something.” There was no hint left now of the imitation. Toby looked determined. “And damn it, I’m going to try.”
2
HIGHWAY 1 FROM BODEGA BAY to Jenner is a dazzling stretch of road. The two-lane tarmac spools up and down low, close-cropped hills and winds around treacherous horseshoe bends, while the ocean crashes against the bluffs and throws spume high into the air. At night the drive is dangerous, especially if the fog rolls in, but on a sunny afternoon it’s breathtaking. You may pass a cow or two nibbling by a fence or, overlooking the sea, a row of tiny cottages, hardly more than shacks, really. They can’t be enlarged, and they’re on land that can’t be developed thanks to strict state laws designed to preserve the coast. Without those laws, this slice of northern California would look like southern Florida, with high-rise condos and neon signs crowding the shoreline, but along Highway 1 there’s nothing to spoil the views. I usually don’t talk much in the car so Toby can concentrate on his driving and I can watch the ocean, which I never tire of. We were headed toward the shop, per Dan’s instruction.
Just before Jenner, Highway 1 is joined on the right by Highwa
y 116, which follows the Russian River on its way to the sea. After the turn, the drive hugs the river for about four miles until you reach the little town of Duncans Mills. That’s right, without an apostrophe. The hamlet was founded in the 1870s by two brothers named Duncan who built a lumber mill there, so by rights it should be Duncan’s Mill, or maybe Duncans’ Mill, not that it matters. The town was leveled by the great earthquake of 1906, but it came back in the early years of the last century as a tourist destination. It was close to the river and the redwoods and was served by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, so folks from San Francisco came up on vacation. The railroad and the mill are gone now, but there’s a restored depot and an old passenger car on a defunct stretch of track, as well as a cluster of galleries, a craft shop, and a couple of cafés. The wooden buildings are a little ramshackle, and there’s even a boardwalk between the shops that gives the place the air of an old cowboy town. The road splits the town in half, with shops and restaurants on either side.
Toby’s store, on the left side as you enter from the west, isn’t visible from the road. It sits behind the boardwalk stores with an entrance at the rear. It’s large enough for a good display of furniture: oak table sets, desks and bookcases, carved bed frames, gilt mirrors, lamps and curios, with a selection of nineteenth-century paintings of modest worth, as well as a wall of framed prints. We drove around to the back and parked in front of the shop entrance. The door was fastened by an old brass lock, but when Toby introduced the key, it wouldn’t turn. On closer inspection, the wood around the jamb was loose, and the door stood slightly askew on its bottom hinge.
“It’s been jimmied,” Toby said with irritation. “Dan was right. We’ve had a break-in.” He pushed open the door.
At first glance, everything seemed orderly. But to Toby’s eye there were signs of disarray. “Things have been moved around. Someone’s been through this place.”
I looked again and saw that here and there a chair had been swiveled away from a table, some drawers had been left open, a back cushion of a Victorian sofa was turned down, and a rocker was sitting in the middle of an aisle. Someone had done a search. “Is anything missing?” I asked, looking around the large open showroom.
“I can’t tell right off the bat.” Toby began a systematic tour of the room. His face was taut with concentration as he roamed the floor taking a mental inventory of his stock. After completing a full circle, he came back to where I was standing and said with a puzzled expression, “Nothing of mine that I can tell.”
“What about Charlie’s things?”
“Ditto. Nothing obvious. The big pieces are all there. But I’ll look again.” He did a second tour more slowly than the first, this time pausing at the wall of prints, then shaking his head. “Wait a minute.” He went over to a large oak desk that Charlie used for keeping his records and stared for a moment at an empty picture hook hanging on the wall above it. “That’s what I thought,” he said, pointing to the empty space. “There was a Russian icon that he picked up for us at auction last week along with some other stuff. It was hanging above his desk. Now it’s gone.”
“Was it valuable?” I asked, remembering Dan’s question.
“I doubt it. Charlie wanted to do some research before putting it up for sale. To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay much attention. It looked kind of dark, needed a cleaning. You know, religious icons aren’t my thing.”
Or mine. Even though I’m an art historian, icons are out of my bailiwick. My work is on nineteenth-century painting, especially Impressionism and related movements, with an emphasis on women artists. “Can you describe it? What was the subject?”
“An angel with wings. Gold paint in the background. The frame had an odd shape, looked old. That’s all I can say about it. Hold on.” Toby was rummaging through a pile of printed matter on the desk. “Here’s the auction catalog. That should tell us something.”
He pulled a glossy catalog out of the stack and opened it to a page that had been marked by a Post-it. The catalog was from Morgan’s, a low-end auction house in San Francisco that specializes in catch-all sales under the rubric of “Discovery Days.” Morgan’s takes consignments that are generally beneath the notice of the high-toned auction houses, and their lots usually sell in the lower price ranges. For that reason the firm is frequented by dealers on the lookout for cheap finds. The lots are mainly furniture and oriental rugs, though now and then an interesting painting or print comes up for sale. Plenty of antique dealers in the Bay Area keep track of Morgan’s auctions, but serious art collectors hunt elsewhere for more precious prey. This had been a typical two-day sale for Morgan’s, covering a mix of objects ranging from art to carpets, posters, pottery, and what-have-you.
It came as no surprise to me that the icon Charlie had marked for bidding, listed as lot 87 on day 2, had a presale estimate of $1,000 to $1,500. In the heady world of art auctions, that’s small potatoes. Next to a color photo of the icon, someone (Charlie presumably) had written “$800,” which was either what he planned to be his highest bid or what he paid for it. The brief catalog description read: “A Russian icon on a wooden panel, eighteenth or nineteenth century, showing the Archangel Michael. Originally part of a triptych.” Underneath the photo were the work’s dimensions: 8" × 4.8". It was small, about the size of a Kindle. It took no great expertise to determine that the painting once belonged to a triptych—a work in three parts in which two side panels, when closed, cover a central panel, and in which all three panels, when open, face the viewer. The panel was shaped like a little door, curved on top, with straight sides. Two grooves on the left side of the little door marked where it once had been attached to a central panel, probably larger in size, so that the two side doors could fold into it. Plainly, this was the right wing of a triptych. Missing were its complements.
A religious icon of uncertain age wouldn’t be hugely valuable, I guessed. Nor was the image that impressive. Unless the photo was indistinct, the surface of the painting was clouded with grime. I was looking at a frontal view of a slender, winged figure in armor bearing a raised sword in his right hand and holding an empty scabbard in his left. Billowing around him was a cloak in a dull red color. The iconography was correct. Here was a typical pose of the warrior archangel Michael. Yet as a work of art meant to inspire devotion, the image seemed rather dull. The face was flat and without expression, with large eyes peering blankly at the viewer. The drawing was minimally competent, with hardly any modeling; the paint seemed indifferently applied, the colors sallow. The edges of the panel were indented, and there were no background features other than the chipped gilt sky. As I said, I’m no expert on icons, but this one struck me as mediocre. Who would want to steal it, I wondered, let alone kill somebody for it?
Toby had been leafing through some hanging files in a deep drawer on the right side of the desk. He fished out a manila folder. “Here’s Charlie’s file on the purchase. Maybe it’ll tell us something.” He emptied its contents on the desktop. There was a bill of sale from Morgan’s marked “paid” in the amount of $960, which confirmed a winning bid of $800 plus a 20 percent buyer’s fee. As a dealer, Charlie wouldn’t have paid sales tax, because he’d bought the work for resale. There was also an envelope containing a few color prints of photos that Charlie had taken to document his acquisition. One was of the back of the panel, which might prove useful in revealing details about the painting. The others were photos of the front, including several close-ups of various parts of the icon. Charlie’s photos reinforced my impression from the catalog that the image was coated with grime and that its underlying colors had lost whatever richness they might once have had.
I shared my thoughts with Toby, and we both shook our heads at the possibility that this unprepossessing work might have been the motive for a brutal crime. On the other hand, how likely was it that the break-in at the gallery was unconnected to the murder? As a coincidence, that strained credulity. “Better call Dan,” I said.
Toby went to his desk, in
the opposite corner from Charlie’s. While Toby spoke with Dan, I studied the photos again but gained no additional information. The men spoke for a few minutes. Then Toby said, “He wants to talk to you.” He passed me the phone.
“Hi, Dan.”
“Hi, Nora. Based on what Toby’s been telling me, this icon that’s missing wasn’t worth that much, and you don’t think it’s an important work of art. That right?”
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. Russian icons are way out of my area. But Toby told you what Charlie paid for it, and frankly, judging from the photographs, I wasn’t surprised by the price. It doesn’t strike me as a masterpiece. Of course, we probably should get an expert opinion.”
“That’s more your department than mine. How would you feel about helping me out on this one? What I need to know is whether the theft and the murder are connected. You’ve worked with us before. Are you interested? Same terms as usual?”
What Dan meant was that I’d recently worked as a freelance consultant to his department on two cases, one involving art theft and another involving art fraud, helping to clear up questions of value, authenticity, and provenance. The pay wasn’t much, but the work was intriguing, a nice real-world break from my usual scholarship.
“Sure. What would you like me to do?”
“Start by talking to the auction house. See what more you can find out about the sale, who set the estimate, whether it was reasonable, who else might have been bidding, who the seller was, that sort of thing. And then see if you can locate someone who’ll help us with the value. Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye. You could save me a lot of time running down that angle.”
“I’ll get started right away.”
“Thanks. Do you still have some of my business cards?”
“At home I do, yes.” They would be my credentials for my link to the sheriff’s office.
“Great. Let me know as soon as you come up with anything. I’ll be in touch.”