Murder at the Falls

by Stefanie Matteson

  “Height and weight?”

  “Five foot ten, a hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

  Average, she thought. “Any distinguishing features?”

  He shook his head.

  In other words, thought Charlotte as she headed back to her car, the bashed-up, badly decomposed body that the rescue squad had pulled out of the river was the body of a Caucasian male of about Spiegel’s age and height. It might have been any one of the winos or crackheads who made their home in the vacant mills of the historic district. A glimmer of a hypothesis was beginning to form at the back of her brain: that Spiegel had faked his own suicide and then taken on the identity of Ed Verre. Which then led to the question of why he had done so, if indeed he had. First on her agenda was proving that he had. Toward that end, she got back into her car, and headed back to the Montclair Art Museum. (What was it that she had said to herself about driving cross-country and back again?) As a prominent New Jersey artist, Spiegel must have exhibited there at one time or another. Maybe the museum even had some of his paintings in its collection.

  “Oh, yes,” said the librarian in response to Charlotte’s request for information. “We have a lot on him.” Getting up from her desk, she disappeared among the stacks.

  Though the librarian had been surprised to see Charlotte back so soon, she had asked no questions about why she wanted the information, made no demand for credentials, required no payment. Her only aim was to provide smiling, efficient, speedy service. Charlotte had always ranked librarians up there with diner waitresses and attentive nurses among the unsung saints, and the museum’s excellent librarian only served to confirm her already high opinion. She returned a few minutes later with a thick file folder, two books—one on photorealists and one on Spiegel, and half-a-dozen catalogs from Spiegel’s various shows. “If you need anything else, just let me know,” she said.

  Charlotte found what she was looking for right away: Donald Edgar Spiegel, born in South Bend in 1938, educated at Indiana University. Same year as Verre, neighboring state. She also took note of the fact that Edgar, the shortened form of which was Ed, was Spiegel’s middle name. From there, the curriculum vitae went on with page after page of listings: exhibitions, awards, articles, and so on. But no photo.

  Going over to the librarian’s desk, Charlotte asked if they had one.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she replied. “We don’t keep photo files. But there might be one in one of the books or articles about him.”

  But there wasn’t, in either the books or the catalogs. After asking the librarian to make copies of a couple of the pages of biographical information, Charlotte thanked her and left. Then she got back into her car and headed back into the city.

  Before she confronted Verre, there was someone else she wanted to see.

  Morris and Evelyn Finder lived in a rent-controlled, one-bedroom apartment in the Village, which was crammed to the rafters with the fruits of a lifetime of art collecting. All the available wall space had long ago been taken up by paintings, and there were now paintings under the bed, behind the doors, and on top of the kitchen cupboards. The living space, modest to begin with, was now reduced to a place for the bed, a narrow path to the bathroom, and a small area in the kitchen with a tiny table and two chairs. All the living was done at this table, where the Finders entertained, read, watched TV, and ate, though Morris had once told Charlotte that they rarely ate at home anymore because there was no room to cook. “Not that I ever liked to cook in the first place,” Evelyn had added.

  “I know what you mean,” Charlotte had replied. She was not much of a cook herself, and tended to eat most of her meals out as well.

  But despite its modesty, the atmosphere of the apartment was rich with the sense of the Finders’ devotion to art, far richer in this regard than, say, the Lumkins’ luxurious uptown penthouse. After visiting the Finders—as she often had when she was still living with Jack—Charlotte always felt as if she had come away from the mountain retreat of a Confucian scholar or the cell of a medieval monk. One never felt confined there, because the apartment’s ambiance was that of a great institution—the Institution of Art. Nor did the conversation ever degenerate into the mundane: garbage removal, neighborhood restaurants, or the real estate market. One had the feeling of being in the storeroom of a great museum, and indeed, the Finders had been courted by the directors of museums around the country, who had visions of their institutions becoming the ultimate repositories of the Finders’ collection.

  It was to the tiny kitchen table that Morris and Evelyn now escorted her. They had just returned from their regular Saturday morning gallery rounds.

  “Would you like some tea?” asked Evelyn. She was a petite woman with short gray hair and oval, black-framed eyeglasses. She was stylishly dressed in a black cotton-knit suit accented by a colorful scarf.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Charlotte, taking a seat at the table, which was piled high with catalogs. She could use a cup of tea; by now, it was nearly two, and her energies were flagging.

  “What painting is it that you wanted to see?” asked Morris as Evelyn assembled the tea things. He wore a plaid jacket, tan chinos, and white running shoes—not stylish, but ideal for pounding the city’s sidewalks.

  “The one by Ed Verre that was in the show at the Koreman Gallery,” she replied. “It’s called ‘Falls View Diner on a Rainy Spring Night.’”

  “Where’s that one, Evie?” asked Morris.

  “In the rack next to the hall closet.”

  As Morris went to fetch the painting, Evelyn carried the tea tray to the table. The tea was served in glasses, Russian-style. “Go ahead,” she urged, passing Charlotte her glass. “Drink it before it cools off.”

  Charlotte took a sip of the brew. It was an herb tea of some kind, but with a delicious fruit flavor, not weedy-tasting as many herb blends were. “It’s delicious,” she said. “What’s that floating around in it?”

  “Cherry preserves,” Evelyn replied, joining her at the table. “To sweeten it. That’s how they serve it in the old country. Or so Morris says. I wouldn’t know. The closest I ever got to the old country was the Russian Tea Room.”

  Morris had returned with the painting, which he propped up against the refrigerator. “There we are,” he said. “‘Falls View Diner on a Rainy Spring Night.’” He stood to one side, his arms folded over his chest.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said. “Actually, there’s another painting that I’d like to see too. Would you mind?”

  “Not at all,” he said agreeably. “Which one?”

  “Anything recent by Donald Spiegel.”

  Morris’ gray eyes widened in surprise, and Evelyn set down her glass of tea and stared across the table at Charlotte.

  Once Morris had regained his composure, he said: “We don’t have anything recent by Don Spiegel. He priced us out of the market a long time ago. But we do have a painting of his that might interest you.”

  Evelyn looked up at him. “‘Herald Square’?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “It’s in the bathroom,” she said.

  Morris’ reappeared a moment later with the Spiegel, which he leaned up against the refrigerator next to the Verre.

  It was a view of Herald Square, looking east, with Macy’s in the foreground and the Empire State Building in the background. As in the Verre painting, it was a rainy night scene, and the lights of the city were reflected in Macy’s wet plate-glass windows.

  “Is this the kind of painting you were looking for?” asked Morris, fixing her with a questioning gaze that told her he also suspected, or possibly even knew for sure, that Spiegel and Verre were one and the same.

  “Yes,” she said. She looked at the painting again, and then back up at Morris. “So you suspected it too,” she said.

  “I suspected the moment I saw it.” He nodded at the painting of the Falls View. “A painter of that calibre comes along once in a lifetime. Besides that, the coincidence was too great to ignore.”
>
  Evelyn chimed in: “Don Spiegel commited suicide in April; Ed Verre appeared out of nowhere the following January.”

  “When I got the Verre home, and could compare, I was certain,” Morris continued. “Spiegel’s brushwork is distinctive—it’s very sure. He never blends colors, never goes over anything. That’s his genius, the sureness and quickness of his brushwork.”

  Charlotte remembered that Diana Nelson had also talked about Spiegel’s distinctive brushwork.

  “Evelyn, where’s the magnifying glass?” asked Morris.

  “In the basket,” she said. She got up and handed it to him.

  Holding the magnifying glass up to the canvas, Morris gestured for Charlotte to come over. “See,” he said, “there’s no attempt to clean up the stroke. He leaves it ragged and coarse, which makes the effects he achieves all the more remarkable.”

  He was right, she thought as she compared Spiegel’s brush stroke to Verre’s. The brushwork was exactly the same: sharp and bold, but with coarse, jagged edges that let you know it was the hand of the painter and not an airbrush that had applied the paint to the canvas.

  “It’s Spiegel’s brushwork that gives his work its confidence and lack of pretense. Now I’ll show you a painting by another photorealist. A lot of them use an airbrush, of course, but among those who use a bristle brush, this artist is probably the most comparable to Spiegel.”

  “The question is, do you know where the painting is?” teased Charlotte.

  “No,” Morris replied, with a lopsided grin. “But Evie does. I’d be lost without her.” He looked down at his wife. “‘Jim’s Super Service?’” he asked.

  “Under the dining table,” she replied.

  After pulling the painting out from under the table, Morris returned with it to the kitchen and set it down next to the Spiegel. It was a painting of a pickup truck parked in front of a convenience store. “Jim’s Super Service” was painted on the door.

  “This is by a West Coast photorealist,” he said. He handed Charlotte the magnifying glass: “As you can see, the artist tries to obliterate the brush marks; everything is smooth. I think the worked-over feeling gives it a tediousness that Spiegel manages to avoid.”

  After taking a look, Charlotte handed the glass back. “It looks as if you’ve lived up to your name again, Morris,” she said. “By finding Don Spiegel, or should I say, re-finding him.”

  “I couldn’t find anything without Evie,” he joked.

  “Have you told anyone?” she asked.

  Morris shook his gnomish head. “Why should we? We’ve been buying Spiegels for ten thousand dollars. Some day it’s bound to come out that Verre and Spiegel are the same person, and then our Verre/Spiegels will be worth ten times that. Not that the value matters to us.”

  “We enjoy them no matter how much they’re worth,” said Evelyn.

  Morris gazed down at Charlotte. He was leaning against the counter, his arms folded across his chest. “How did you figure it out?”

  That was a good question. The answer had to do with Leapin’ Sam Patch and ducklings and a quiet pool of yellow-brown water. But rather than go into all that, she fudged it by saying that she had noticed the similarities in the paintings in the museum show.

  “Very perspicacious of you, my dear Charlotte. To me, the similarities weren’t readily apparent. It was studying the brush-work that convinced me. The brushwork, and a couple of other things.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “First the name, which is something a shiksa like you”—his gray eyes twinkled—“would never have caught on to. Spiegel means glass in Yiddish, or, for that matter, in standard German; and Verre means glass in French.”

  Of course! thought Charlotte. She was far from fluent in either German or French, but she had developed a passing acquaintance with both of those languages during the years she’d spent at a posh Connecticut finishing school.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But I did catch on to the use of his middle name. He also moved his home state. Spiegel was born in South Bend in 1938 and studied at Indiana University, and Verre was born in Peoria in 1938 and studied at the University of Illinois.”

  “I guess people who change their identities figure it’s best to stay as close to the truth as possible,” Morris commented. He turned back to the paintings. “Then there’s the matter of the initials. Spiegel always signed his paintings with his initials, which were hidden somewhere in the painting.”

  “Like Alfred Hitchock in his movies,” said Evelyn.

  “Here they are, here,” Morris said, pointing to the backward reflection of the letters DS. Then he turned to the Verre, which bore the prominent “Verre” signature in the lower right corner. “I wasn’t sure about the initials in this painting. There is a DS here”—he pointed to the license plate of the truck—“but it could be just a coincidence. Excuse me,” he said. “I just have to get another painting.”

  “Also under the dining table,” said Evelyn.

  He returned a moment later with “Falls View Diner with Banana Cream Pie,” which he set down in front of the other Verre.

  “I didn’t realize that you owned this one too,” Charlotte said.

  “We’ve bought all of them, including the one that’s now in the Paterson Museum show. In this painting, the truck is gone,” he said. “But the initials are still there. This time they’re on this sign.” He pointed to the initials at the bottom of a sign advertising a $2.99 breakfast special that hung on the inside of the window, just above the booth where Meeker was sitting. “Again, the initials are in reverse.”

  “Were Spiegel’s initials in the painting in the Paterson Museum show?”

  “Yes. That’s why we went to the opening. To see if we could find them. It took us longer than we thought. They’re on a candy bar in the display case under the counter. If you go back to the museum, you should take a look. Among all the usual candies—Milky Ways, M & M’s, Mounds Bars, Lifesavers—is something called a DS Crunch.”

  “A DS Crunch,” Charlotte repeated, leaning back in her chair, and taking a sip of her tea. “Have you ever met Verre?” she inquired.

  Evelyn replied: “We’ve tried to set up a meeting, but we haven’t had any success. His phone’s unlisted, and he doesn’t answer our letters. We hear he’s a recluse, but we think it’s more than that. We think he’s avoiding us because he knows we’re on to him. Why else would we have snapped up his every painting as if it were a diamond in the rough?”

  Morris straightened up suddenly. “I just remembered one other painting that I want to show you. Where’s the self-portrait?” he asked.

  “Behind the couch in the living room,” Evelyn replied.

  He returned a moment later with yet another canvas, which he propped up in front of “Herald Square.” “This one’s called ‘Self-Portrait with Two Reflections.’ It’s the only self-portrait Spiegel ever did.”

  The painting was a close-up of the smoked plate-glass window of a city tailor shop, showing the reflection of a man standing on the sidewalk across the street. He was reflected twice: once in the plate glass itself, and once in a mirror that hung above the counter inside the shop: a shadowy figure with dark hair, wearing jeans and a white shirt.

  The painting reminded Charlotte of the chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors of the palace at Versailles: reflection after reflection, stretching off into infinity. But in this case, the viewer was unable to see the original, and even the reflections were a reproduction of the real thing. It struck her that Verre was also a reflection, and how elusive that reflection was.

  “If you were to ask me,” Morris continued, “I would tell you that this is the self-portrait of a man who craves anonymity. Yet it is also the self-portrait of an artist who led the most public of lives. Evie and I have been to Don’s studio at the Gryphon Mill many times. There were always people around; he was never alone. That kind of life can be death to an artist’s creativity.”

  Charlotte nodded, beginning t
o sense what he was getting at.

  “Plus there was the fact that he was locked into his style. How is an artist to break away from a style that has become an artistic dead end for him when the paintings that he produces in that style sell for a million dollars before he’s even set brush to canvas?”

  “Tell her your theory, dear,” Evelyn prompted.

  “I think he faked his suicide in order to start over artistically, just as an author takes on a pseudonym. He often told us that he was happiest before he became a big success, when he still had the latitude to experiment.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Charlotte commented, “and I would agree if what he’s done as Ed Verre represented a new direction. But as far as I can see, he’s just gone back to his earlier subject matter—diners—and is painting them in the same way as his cityscapes.”

  “Yes,” Morris said. He raised a knuckle to his chin and gazed out the window, which overlooked an air shaft. “That puzzles me too. If shedding the trappings of success was the reason for the new identity, I don’t understand why he hasn’t taken off in a new direction.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t gotten around to it yet,” Evelyn offered. “Maybe he’s going over the old ground one last time. After all, he’s only been Ed Verre for what … nine months?”

  “Maybe,” Morris agreed. Then he looked at Charlotte. “I suppose we’ll be competing with Jack Lundstrom now for the works of Ed Verre. Not that we mind,” he added, looking at Evelyn for confirmation. “We were lucky to have the field to ourselves as long as we did.”

  Of course, Charlotte thought. As far as the Finders were concerned, she would have had a reason for her visit, and her being Jack’s representative would make the most sense to them. She saw no reason for telling them otherwise.

  “Not necessarily,” she said.

  She arrived home at about four, and went right to her library. She wanted to sit down and have a nice little think, to say nothing of a nice little drink. After fixing herself a Manhattan, she flopped down on the oversized sofa, and put her feet up. Vivian’s tape recorder was still sitting there, but it had lost its threatening aura. She now had more important things to think about than her memories of the past. Specifically, what had happened on the night of Randy’s murder. She now had two new important pieces of information. The first was that Arthur Lumkin had returned to the diner after making his call to Australia, which meant that he could have tied Randy up and thrown him in the river. He had been to the diner at least once before when Randy had found him hiding in his car. And if he and Xantha had sometimes dropped in at the mill, as Diana said they had, he had probably been to the diner more than once. The diner was the hangout for Paterson’s art community, and although it was hardly the kind of restaurant usually frequented by someone like Lumkin—Lutèce would be more his style—there was nowhere else in the neighborhood to get a cup of coffee unless you wanted to try a Spanish cantina. He might already have known that the soiled aprons were kept in the enclosure out back, or he might have seen John putting them out when he drove around. In any case, his presence at the diner later that night qualified him for a slot at the top of the list of suspects.