“I see where we’re headed now,” said Healey.
“Then you’ve got better vision than I do,” said Voorhees.
“I refer you to the ninth painting on the list of missing paintings: ‘Diner. Oil. Twenty-four by thirty-six.’” Then she continued: “Jason makes a copy of this painting, and places it in the Ivanhoe auction. At the auction, he buys his own painting back for twelve hundred dollars. Now he has a bill of sale for a photorealist oil painting of a diner, twenty-four by thirty-six.”
“I see now,” said Voorhees, nodding.
“Then Jason disposes of his own painting and takes the Spiegel to a gallery along with the bill of sale. Ordinarily a gallery might have had a problem with an unsigned painting. But Spiegel never signed his paintings: his initials were always hidden in the painting, and they’re often hard to find even for people who know they’re there.”
“Very clever,” said Healey.
“More clever than I would have expected of Armentrout,” she said.
“What do you mean?” the FBI agent asked.
“He didn’t strike me as particularly bright. I think someone put him up to this. Maybe his girlfriend, Diana Nelson. But I suspect a bigger fish. I think what he or Diana did is put some feelers out in the art community as to who might be interested in buying a Spiegel with no provenance, the result being that someone came back with this suggestion for manufacturing one.”
“Do you know what his motive is?” the agent asked.
“I can guess. He’s a Francophile: drinks Pernod, Smokes Gauloises, likes to think of himself as a latter-day Toulouse-Lautrec. He doesn’t wear a black beret, but he might as well. Diana told me that she’s moving to Paris, and I assume that he is too. I think he just wants to live the good life in Gay Paree, and he certainly can’t afford to on what he makes from his painting.”
“We can get a financial statement on him,” said Voorhees. “See just how badly he needs the money.”
“The same goes for Diana,” Charlotte pointed out. “No more limping along with a marginally profitable art gallery. With what they made from the sale of one Spiegel, they could live comfortably for a couple of years. Meanwhile, they could stick the other paintings in a vault and scout around Europe for a fence. When they ran out of money, they could simply sell another painting.”
“It’s easy to move art around,” said Healey. “If you want to cross a border with several million dollars worth of drugs or diamonds, you’re going to run into problems, but not with paintings. I’ve seen paintings change hands half a dozen times and go halfway around the world in a week.” She addressed Charlotte: “Do you think he or Diana or both might have killed Goslau?”
“The thought has occurred to me. Especially now that we know the body was thrown directly into the raceway. The Ivanhoe is situated on the raceway, upstream from where the body was found. In fact, Diana told us that she once found Randy passed out in her doorway. Jason and Randy were supposedly friends, but people have been known to kill their friends in the name of money.”
Charlotte paused while the FBI agent took notes.
“I guess that’s it,” she said once Healey had caught up.
Voorhees looked up at the clock, which read five of eleven. “I think it’s time for a coffee break.” He looked over at Martinez, who rose and went into an adjoining room.
After Martinez had left, Carolyn Healey turned to Charlotte. “Miss Graham, you said that your husband”—she consulted her notes—“Jack Lundstrom, I believe is his name, is a collector of contemporary art.”
Charlotte nodded.
“Is he the level of collector who would buy a painting by an artist such as Donald Spiegel, a painting that would cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more?”
“Yes. In fact he has several Spiegels in his collection,” she replied, wondering what Jack had to do with the price of bread.
Martinez returned carrying a tray laden with a coffeepot, sugar and cream, and matching cups and saucers. Voorhees had him well trained. He poured the coffee, and passed the cups around.
Healey sat quietly drinking her coffee for a moment. Then she set down her cup and said, “I agree with you that this scheme smacks of someone more sophisticated. A bigger fish, as you put it. I’d like to snag the bigger fish, and I’d like to use your husband as bait. Do you think he’d agree?”
Charlotte sat back. This was one development she hadn’t expected.
The FBI agent continued. “If he did agree, he’d let it be known among the galleries he deals with regularly that he’s in the market for a Spiegel painting of a diner. Then sit back and see who came forward.”
“In other words, a sting,” said Voorhees.
“Yes,” said Healey.
“He was very angry about the stolen Lipschitz,” Charlotte replied. “I think he would agree, yes. He would look on it as a worthy cause, as doing his part to see that art thieves are brought to justice.” If he did agree, she thought with some apprehension, it would mean that she would have to see him and that they would have to come to some decision on the divorce issue.
But she was also tired of putting it off: it was time the issue was resolved. “I’ll give him a call,” she said.
13
After leaving Voorhees’ office, Charlotte headed back to the historic district. Before she went home to call Jack, she wanted to ask Spiegel about the missing paintings. If Jack agreed to go along with the plan, he’d need as much information as possible. Spiegel had known Randy better than anyone other than Patty. He should be able to tell her if her theory that Randy had given the paintings to Jason for safekeeping made sense. He might even be able to tell her where Jason had stored them. She also wanted to sound him out about Jason, whom he must have known pretty well. Was Jason capable of thinking up the scheme of which she suspected him, or was the idea more likely to have originated with someone else?
“Aha,” Spiegel said as he answered the door. “Miss Charlotte Graham, the exposer of my real identity.” He opened the door wide. “Won’t you come in?” She had interrupted him at his work. He was wearing his painting clothes and holding a paintbrush between his teeth.
“I see that you’re working,” she said, after explaining that she had been drafted by Voorhees, because of her connection with Jack, to help track down the missing paintings. “Perhaps I should come back another time.”
“No,” he said. “We can talk while I work. I’m just putting the finishing touches on a painting. Follow me,” he directed, rolling his wheelchair into the large, light-filled studio. After pulling over a chair for Charlotte, he transferred himself with the aid of crutches into a seat in front of an easel, which was mounted on an apparatus that was electronically controlled to move the seat up and down and from side to side.
“That’s quite a rig,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Fully automated. I may have little control over my body, but at least I can control my immediate surroundings. Everything in here is specially designed for the handicapped. Some of the features were already here; some I’ve added myself.”
“I noticed,” said Charlotte. “The door lever, the counters at wheelchair-height, the recessed space under the counters.”
“The bathroom, too. That’s the most important. I can roll my wheelchair right into the shower. The bathroom, and the Amigo.”
“The Amigo?”
“That’s the brand name. The technical name is a battery-powered three-wheeled platform mobility aid.” He nodded at the motorized wheelchair that was parked in a corner, with another set of crutches tucked into a carrier on the back. “I can go anywhere with it: grass, sidewalks, carpeting—you name it. Four and half miles per hour, sixteen miles on a charge.”
Charlotte stared at the Amigo. With it, she realized, Spiegel could have made it up to the diner for the aprons in much less time than she had figured, which did away with his alibi. Operating a motorized vehicle was a lot easier than rolling a manual wheelchair uphill. M
oreover, he could have used the Amigo to drag the body from wherever he found it to the raceway.
“It’s the world’s greatest invention for the handicapped,” Spiegel continued. “I use a wheelchair at home, but I use the Amigo everywhere else. The operating mechanism is a simple lever on the handlebars: you press one side for forward, and the other side for reverse. It’s a lot simpler than this thing,” he said, referring to his motorized easel.
In fact, Charlotte thought, the Amigo could explain the aprons. It would be easier to drag a body that was wrapped up than one that wasn’t. As she mentally returned Spiegel to the top of her “A” list, she wondered: if the Amigo had been the instrument of Randy’s death, why would Spiegel be telling her about it, and then decided that it might just be the arrogance of the murderer.
Spiegel pressed a button, and his chair moved up so that he could reach the top of the painting, which was a large oil depicting a man inside a cave, hunched over in torment. Written across the top in Gothic lettering were the words: “Let the day perish wherein I was born.” “This is my current work-in-progress,” he said, as she sat down in the chair he had dragged over for her. “What do you think?”
Charlotte returned her attention to the painting. It was a realist painting, but not a photorealist painting, unless you could snap a shutter at the soul. In her opinion, the banality of the photorealists’ subject matter was the weakness of the style. She understood the technical challenge of painting shiny surfaces, but the style lacked emotional appeal and importance.
“Well?” Spiegel prompted.
In this painting, Spiegel was applying photorealist techniques to important subject matter—not diners and storefronts, but personal myth and inspiration. In doing so, he was taking the style to new frontiers. “I think it’s a masterpiece,” she said finally. “The application of photorealist techniques to an inner reality.”
“Exactly,” he said, pleased that she understood. “It’s a new direction for me. My new identity has also given me the chance to break new ground artistically. New York is filled with artists who repeat themselves ad infinitum. I didn’t want to be one of them, but I couldn’t break away. To have a waiting list for your paintings puts a damper on the need to take risks.”
Morris Finder had been right. Spiegel had undergone an artistic rebirth, but it wasn’t with the diner paintings; it was with these meticulous representations of the inner man.
Spiegel continued: “When I started out, all I cared about was sunshine and shadows. But as time went on, I found myself getting into reflections: what was bouncing off the glass. First from far away, then from up close. As I moved closer in, the surfaces kept bouncing me back out when what I really wanted to do was go through the glass, to see what was behind the glittering surface.”
“To make your paintings subjective instead of objective.”
He nodded. “William Blake said it best: ‘As poetry admits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand or a blade of grass insignificant—much less an insignificant blur or mark.’”
“What’s it called?” she asked.
“This one is ‘Job’s Wrath,’ after Blake. Being in that tunnel was my crisis of the soul. Like Job, I was angry at first at my fate, but then I came to realize that I had been denying what was most important to me—my art, my family, my soul.” To her surprise, tears sprang to his eyes. “I had a spiritual disease, the cure for which was the renunciation of my former life.”
“That’s what the new identity was all about,” she said.
He nodded. “I came to welcome even the paralysis. My inability to move my legs became a metaphor for my suffering: the outward and visible sign, so to speak.” He nodded again at the painting. “This is the third in a series.”
“You like doing things in series, don’t you?” she said, thinking of the series of the Falls View.
“I guess I’m a systematist. Would you like to see the others?”
“Very much.”
“The series is called the ‘Path of Experience,’ after Blake’s Job,” he said as he shifted himself back into the wheelchair. Then he rolled it over to a storage rack.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“It’s not necessary, thanks. I’ve gotten quite good at this.”
One by one, he slid three canvases out of their racks, and set them across his lap. Then he rolled himself over to another easel. “The only trouble is that I can’t lift really large canvases,” he said as he hoisted the first painting onto the easel. “But that’s okay; I look on it as just another limitation that I have to work within.”
“What’s the ‘Path of Experience’?” she asked.
“The five states established by Divine mercy to help the fallen man find his way to the true God. This painting represents the first state: Innocence. The title is ‘The House of the Gryphon.’”
The painting showed the same man. This time he was sitting at a bountiful table, surrounded by his adoring family and friends. The setting was clearly the dining room at the mill. Written across the top were the words from the Bible: “When the Almighty was yet with me, When my children were about me.”
Spiegel pointed to the gryphon—half eagle, half lion—that hovered above the assemblage: “The gryphon is an emblem of valor and magnanimity,” he explained. Then he removed the painting from the easel, and put up the next one. “This painting represents the state of Experience. The title is ‘The Palace of Delights.’”
The setting was the same room, but now it was the scene of an orgiastic party, with the same figure at the center. The Biblical quotation was: “Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house.” The gryphon had disappeared, and now a cloven-hoofed Satan loomed over the gathering.
“The third painting you’ve seen, representing the state of Revolution, when Job rebels against his woes, and now I’ll show you the fourth. He lifted another painting onto the easel. “This is the Dark Night. The title is ‘The Forest of the Night,’ which is a metaphor for the false theories that block the path to enlightenment.”
The painting showed a man cowering in a dark forest. Overhead loomed a beneficent angel of light. The quotation was: “Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?”
“I haven’t done the final state,” he said as returned the painting to the rack. “I’ve managed to penetrate the surface of the glass, you see. But I have yet to come out on the other side.” He rolled his wheelchair back over to the automated easel. “Now,” he said, transferring himself back into the chair, “What can I do for you?”
“Do you know Jason Armentrout?” she asked. “I assumed, since he was a friend of Randy’s, that you would know him as well.”
“You assumed correctly. What do you want to know about him?”
Charlotte described the scheme that she suspected Jason of engineeering, and then said, “What I want your opinion on is this: Is Jason clever enough to have come up with this scheme on his own, or was he put up to it by someone a lot cleverer?”
“The latter,” he said definitively. “Jason is a rich kid whose funds have dried up, and who can’t make a living from painting: a poseur. He’s too flaky to think up such a scheme himself. Maybe Diana”—he paused, and then shook his head—“but I don’t think it was her either.”
“That was the feeling I had too,” she said. “But I’m glad to hear you confirm it. Which also means that you don’t think Jason could have murdered Randy for the paintings.”
“Not necessarily. You have to be clever to carry out a scheme of the kind you describe, but you don’t have to be clever to throw somebody in a river, especially if he’s already unconscious.”
Charlotte noticed that he said river and not raceway, which could mean either that he was innocent or that he’d read the newspapers. Thinking over what he had said, she decided that he was right, which didn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to deflect suspicion from him
self.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I guess I’d have to agree,” she said. “By the way,” she added. “Do you care about the paintings? I’m just curious.”
“Not a whit. They’re ancient history to me now.”
“Randy has left them to Patty Andriopoulis of the Falls View Andriopoulises. She’s the heir to his estate. That is, if Bernice doesn’t press you to get them back for her.”
“They should go to Patty, if she’s his heir,” he said. “If they turn up, that is. Though I may have wanted to rescind it, I did sign an agreement saying that I gave the paintings to Randy.”
“Bernice isn’t going to be happy about that.”
“Bernice isn’t going to be happy, period. I’m going to have to call her today, before she hears about my resurrection through the grapevine. I have the feeling that she’ll prefer me dead to alive. That way the real person doesn’t get in the way of the reputation.”
“One final question,” said Charlotte.
Spiegel nodded.
“Do you have any idea where Jason might have stored them?”
Spiegel thought for a moment and then said, “As a matter of fact, I do. His studio is downtown in the former Columbia Bank building next to City Hall. Nine Colt Street.”
Charlotte nodded. “I visited him there.”
“Then you know the setup. Across the hall there’s a utility room where he stores his canvases. It’s filled with racks like those.” He nodded at the storage racks against the wall. “I’ll bet they’re in there.”
Charlotte smiled. “Thank you very much!” she said.
Back at home, Charlotte fixed herself another drink, and took a seat in her living room. She loved her little townhouse in Turtle Bay, with its mementoes of her fifty years on the screen. As her eyes swept the room, they alighted on a tape recorder that had appeared on an end table. This was getting ridiculous, she thought. She would have to have a talk with Vivian. The first one had appeared two weeks ago on her bed stand; the second one had appeared three days later on the kitchen counter; a third had appeared on a table in the library; and now, here was a fourth. They were multiplying like the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. For a moment, she considered a policy of appeasement. If she spoke into one of them for a few moments—there must be some innocuous memories that she’d be willing to share with this sinister creature—would its shiny black plastic lose its threatening quality? Would it cease to reproduce at such a frightening rate? Would its commander in chief halt its relentless drang nach Osten? But ultimately she decided on a more hostile tactic. Getting up, she grasped it by its handle and then vigorously shoved it under the biggest armchair in the room. Then she resumed her seat, eyeing its resting place suspiciously. She had no doubt that it would reappear, if not here, then someplace else. Or worse, spawn dozens of tiny black plastic offspring among the dust bunnies in the womblike darkness underneath the armchair.
Murder at the Falls Page 21