Murder at the Falls

by Stefanie Matteson

  As in Spiegel’s painting, the inscription on Blake’s work read: “Shall mortal Man be more just than God? Shall a man be more Pure than his Maker?” The explanation said that the God of Justice who appears to Job is revealed by his cloven hoof to be Satan. “This is Blake’s most insistent doctrine,” said the text, “that the true God is not the God of Justice, but the God of Forgiveness.”

  Suddenly, Charlotte remembered that the God in Spiegel’s painting also had a cloven hoof, and she realized that his painting, like Blake’s, was filled with symbols, and that what those symbols were saying was that the false God of Justice had also appeared to him. Could it be that the false God had appeared to him at the entrance to that narrow alley? she wondered. That the justice he was repenting of was Randy’s murder?

  A chill ran down her spine. It would be just like Spiegel to put the clues to the solution of the murder in a series of paintings. That was what he had done in the Falls View series, wasn’t it? Maybe he was making his murder of Randy into an intellectual puzzle, just as he had his own death and resurrection. “A systematist,” he had called himself. A master of cool, dispassionate precision.

  “What is it?” Jack asked as he stood over her, looking at the book.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said.

  Jack returned to his seat, and ate another celery stick. “What are these tape recorders all over the house for?” he asked. There’s one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, and now I see one here.” He eyed the recorder on the end table, the one that Charlotte had previously shoved under the chair.

  Talk about death and resurrection, Charlotte thought. “Vivian put them out. They’re for my autobiography. I have a contract—not for the kiss and tell kind of autobiography,” she reassured him, but for one in which I share my thoughts about life, that kind of thing.”

  “I can’t see you doing a kiss and tell autobiography anyway,” he said, not without a hint of suspicion. “But if you did, I might have to take some action to prevent you.” He spoke jokingly, but she knew he was in earnest.

  “No need to worry,” she reassured him. “Vivian thinks that if she puts enough tape recorders around, I’ll be prompted to start talking into one.”

  “And have you?”

  “Not yet,” she said. Then she took a breath, and added: “I have the feeling that I can’t really start while I’m still in the middle of a chapter.” She gazed at him with her clear, gray eyes. “If you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.” He paused, and then continued: “Charlotte, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk with you about. I admit that I’ve been dilatory about bringing it up, but I think it’s time now.…”

  15

  In the end, Clyde had veered off into the Atlantic, catching only the tip of Long Island in its embrace. The storm had hit at about eight, bringing torrential rains, and winds that gusted at seventy-five miles an hour. By ten, the wind had moderated, and a pallid moon ventured forth, providing the backlighting for the dramatic black clouds that raced across the sky. As the storm lashed the city, Charlotte and Jack had discussed the details of their impending divorce over a pleasant dinner at a deserted French restaurant. He wanted to marry the widow of his businessman friend. “We make a good couple,” he had said, which only emphasized the fact that she and Jack had not. To her surprise, Charlotte wasn’t jealous or regretful, only relieved. Her reaction reminded her of what a doctor had once told her when she was trying to decide on two alternatives for treatment: surgery or drugs, both equally efficacious, and both with their attendant drawbacks. “Throw a coin,” he said. “Heads it’s surgery, tails it’s drugs. If it comes out heads, and your reaction is ‘Oh, shit,’ then you know you should have chosen drugs.” She had fully expected her reaction to Jack’s wanting a divorce to be “Oh, shit,” and now felt free as a bird knowing that she had made the right decision. Or rather, that Jack had made it for her.

  By morning, the only evidence that the storm had passed through was an occasional downed electric line, and the tree branches that littered the streets. It was still raining, not the heavy downpour of the day before, but a light drizzle that the weatherman predicted would cease by midday. After breakfast (unable to get a cab, Jack had wound up staying in Charlotte’s guest room), she and Jack headed uptown for the meeting with Agent Healey. After that, they would be going down to Soho to see Mary Catherine. Charlotte planned to sit in. She wanted to be there, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t. In fact, her presence enhanced Jack’s credibility as a buyer. Mary Catherine had no idea that Charlotte had been working with the police, only that she had been interested on behalf of a friend of Randy’s in his reaction to Verre’s painting.

  They arrived at the Koreman Gallery promptly at eleven. Much to his delight, Jack had been wired with a tiny microphone. His mission was to find out what Mary Catherine had to say about the provenance of the painting, as well as to induce her to produce the painting itself.

  After being greeted by the sullen receptionist, they were escorted back to Mary Catherine’s office, and offered some coffee. Then Mary Catherine appeared, wearing another hand-woven caftan and off-the-wall eyeglass frames, these of bright red to match the dress.

  “How very nice to see you again,” she said, extending her hand. Then she took a seat and asked innocently: “What can I do for you this morning?” as if her assistant hadn’t already spoken with Jack.

  “I’m looking for a Spiegel to add to my collection,” Jack replied. “I have several of his more recent works, but I’d like one or two from his earlier period to round out my collection.”

  “Before he started doing cityscapes, you mean?” she asked.

  “Yes. Something from the period when he was painting shiny surfaces—diners, airplanes, things like that. I’d like to get a sense in my collection of the artist’s development.”

  “I think I might have just the painting for you.” Turning, Mary Catherine signaled to a pale young man in an adjacent office. “Larry, can you bring out the Spiegel for Mr. Lundstrom, please?” she asked.

  The young man disappeared into a storeroom, and reappeared a moment later with a painting protected by bubble wrap. After unwrapping it, he set it on an easel in a corner.

  As Charlotte had anticipated, it was the same painting that Jason had copied and put up for sale at the Ivanhoe auction, and then bought back for twelve hundred dollars.

  “The title is ‘Hometown Diner,’ and the date is 1967,” said Mary Catherine. “The date and the initials are here.” She pointed to a reflection in the window. “As you know, the date and initials are concealed in all of Spiegel’s paintings.”

  Jack nodded. He went over to the painting, and appraised it with the cool eye of the prospective buyer who is reluctant to display too much enthusiasm for fear of being overcharged. It was a good piece of acting. “Can you tell me anything about its history?” he asked.

  “A little. It was purchased at a gallery auction in Paterson after Spiegel’s death by someone who was interested in diners. It had been in storage there for years. Neither the buyer nor the gallery knew it was an early Spiegel.”

  “Had it been forgotten?” asked Jack.

  “Apparently so, or overlooked. Anyway, the buyer brought it here to be appraised, and when he found out it was a Spiegel, he decided to sell. All he had wanted was a painting of a diner, which he could buy elsewhere for a lot less money.”

  It was a plausible story, Charlotte thought, one designed to make Jack think he was getting a deal.

  Jack turned the picture over, and studied the phony provenance taped to the back. “How much?” he asked.

  “Five hundred thousand,” said Mary Catherine.

  Half of which would go to Jason and Diana, Charlotte guessed. Enough for them to lead la vie en rose for at least a couple of years.

  “I’ll give you four fifty,” said Jack.

  “Firm,” was Mary Catherine’s reply. “You can’t buy a Spiegel anywhere for less than
seven fifty. This is a bargain.”

  Jack appeared to consider the offer, and then said: “I’d like to buy it.” Reaching into the breast pocket of his sports jacket, he removed his checkbook and placed it on Mary Catherine’s desk. “Will a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit be all right?”

  There was nothing like producing a checkbook to make a gallery owner’s eyes glitter. “That would be just fine,” she said.

  “I’d like a new frame,” he said. “Of my choice,” he added.

  You could depend on Jack to try to squeeze a little extra out of the deal, even when he knew it was just for show.

  “Of course,” said Mary Catherine, all smiles.

  As she spoke, the door of the gallery opened, and out of the corner of her eye Charlotte could see Voorhees and Healey talking with the receptionist. After Healey had flashed her badge, they marched toward the back, and appeared a few seconds later at the office door.

  “Good morning, Ms. Koreman,” the FBI agent said. “I’m Agent Carolyn Healey of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and this is Lieutenant Martin Voorhees of the Paterson police department. We’d like to talk with you for a minute.”

  Mary Catherine’s round face blanched. Then a red flush started creeping up her neck, turning her face a shade almost as vivid as that of her dress. For a moment, she just sat there, speechless.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we sit down,” said Agent Healey, taking a seat with Voorhees on the leather sofa against one wall.

  “Not at all,” said Mary Catherine in a tiny little voice.

  “I wonder if you’re aware of the fact that you’ve just sold Mr. Lundstrom a stolen painting,” said Agent Healey.

  As arranged, Charlotte and Jack met Voorhees and Healey a short time later at the Moondance Diner, where Charlotte had eaten on her earlier visit. Over “our best” coffee, delightfully seasoned with cinnamon, Healey told them what they had learned from Mary Catherine. All it had taken for her to spill the beans was the threat of a jail sentence. Not that there was much chance that she would actually go to jail. As Carolyn Healey explained, the Manhattan courts were so overwhelmed by rapists, muggers, armed robbers, and other denizens of the criminal underclass that the mere sight of an educated, well-dressed art thief was enough to make an entire courtroom breathe a collective sigh of relief. The result was that art thieves usually got off lightly, even when they were directly responsible for the theft, which wasn’t the case here. Healey went on to say with some disgust that the light sentences were one reason for the dramatic increase in art thefts, which now rivaled the drug trade as the number one moneymaker for the underworld.

  Mary Catherine had known the painting was stolen, but she hadn’t participated in the theft. She had, however, suggested the idea to Jason of putting his copy of the Spiegel painting in the auction, and then using the bill of sale as a provenance.

  Having turned state’s witness, Mary Catherine was now a participant in the sting. She was instructed to call Jason and Diana (she had said that they were both involved), and tell them that the painting had been sold.

  They would be arrested and charged with the theft when they came to the gallery to pick up their money.

  Though the question of who had stolen the painting had now been answered, there was still the question of who had murdered Randy. No matter what angle Charlotte looked at it from, she kept coming back to the aprons. “No ideas but in things,” Williams had written, and the things that this case revolved around were two long, white restaurant aprons. That night, she dreamed about them: white aprons hung on a clothesline, white aprons sailing through a cloud-studded blue sky, white aprons swirling on a dance floor. The figure in her mental picture of the scene was clear: a man hurriedly going through the kitchen cabinets in search of something with which to tie up the body. But the face was a featureless blur.

  The next morning, Vivian brought Charlotte her coffee and cinnamon toast in bed, along with the newspaper. The woman took care of her like an old-fashioned nanny: when she wasn’t bullying her, she was spoiling her rotten. As Charlotte drank her coffee and ate her toast, she read about the damage inflicted by Clyde: five million dollars’ worth of property damage in Montauk, and a record of twelve point nine inches of rain dumped on the metropolitan area over the course of twenty-four hours. Reading about the rainfall made her think of the Falls. Her walking-tour guidebook had said that they were most spectacular twenty-four to forty-eight hours after a storm. She had yet to see them in their glory: not only had the flow on her visits been less than usual because of the August drought, up to a quarter of that had been diverted to the hydrolectric plant. If the Falls were magnificent when the flow was reduced, what must they be like when it was heavy?

  There was nothing like coffee in bed with the newspaper to start the day off right, Charlotte thought as she finished. Setting the tray aside, she hopped out of bed and quickly dressed.

  Then she headed out to Paterson.

  At the Falls View, she took a seat in the usual booth and ordered the works: two eggs over easy, home fries, bacon, rye toast, orange juice, and coffee. Vivian’s coffee and cinnamon toast had been great, but they weren’t enough to hold her for the rest of the morning. Neither Patty nor her mother were there, and Charlotte missed them. To say nothing of John hunched over the grill, arms windmilling with his fancy grill work. Somehow the diner didn’t hum along at quite the same even pitch without the Andriopoulis family. Her breakfast arrived instantaneously, and it was delicious. Bacon cooked to the perfect degree of crispness; home fries made from real potatoes, and not too greasy; eggs with yolks that weren’t overdone or runny. Breakfast was such a simple meal, but so few restaurants got it right. As she ate, she planned her day. After breakfast, she would take a look at the Falls. Maybe take some pictures; she had brought her camera along. Then she would go over to Voorhees’ office, and see if he had anything new. Not that he would tell her if he did, she thought.

  No sooner had this thought occurred to her than she noticed Voorhees himself getting out of a car in the parking lot. He was wearing casual clothes—it must have been his day off—and he was accompanied by a pretty teenage girl: blond, with his own strong jaw.

  A few minutes later he entered, and, spotting Charlotte, came over to say hello. He introduced the girl as his daughter, Demetra: “Demi, for short.” The girl smiled sweetly, and shook Charlotte’s hand in a very adult manner.

  “I didn’t know you hung out here,” Charlotte said.

  “Everyone from Paterson eats here,” Voorhees said. “But not everyone from New York. What brings you here today?”

  “The Falls. I thought I’d see them in all their glory.”

  “They should be something,” he agreed.

  “Would you like to join me for breakfast?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” said Voorhees. He directed his daughter to the seat opposite Charlotte and then slid in next to her.

  For a few minutes, they chatted about a diving competition in Atlantic City, where Voorhees and his daughter were headed. But once their food arrived, Voorhees left his daughter to her pancakes and turned to business.

  “Armentrout has a ticket for Paris,” he said. “The FBI has been keeping an eye on the airports in case he tried to leave. He’s scheduled to take off tomorrow morning. He’s dropping by the Koreman to pick up his money first.”

  “What about Diana?” asked Charlotte.

  “She’s not going, I guess. He only bought one ticket, and the airlines don’t have any record of a reservation in her name. Maybe she’s going later. If she doesn’t show up with him, we’ll pick her up here later.”

  “But she told Tom and me that she was going. She’s closed the gallery.”

  Voorhees shrugged. “Maybe they had a falling out.”

  “Or maybe he’s double-crossing her. Any new leads on the murder?”

  “Only that the M.E. had identified the body that he thought was Spiegel’s: a wino who had been missing since early last spring.”<
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  “I have a new lead,” said a voice. It was Patty. She was serving the customers at the adjoining booth. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Just give me a minute here.”

  Voorhees nodded a greeting, and then returned to his eggs, clearly uncomfortable at the prospect of talking to John’s daughter.

  A minute later, Patty sat down next to Charlotte. “First I want to show you these,” she said, pulling some photographs out of her pocket. “They’re pictures of my father’s gravestone. They made it over at Ippolito’s.” She nodded at the monumental works across the street.

  The photos showed a gravestone of dark gray polished granite. Above the name John K. Andriopoulis and the dates was an engraving of the Falls View, complete with “Open 24 Hours,” and “Try Our Famous Hot Texas Wieners” written under the name.

  “John would have been very happy,” said Charlotte. She passed the photos to Voorhees, who gave them a cursory glance and then gave them back. “What’s your lead?” she asked as Patty pocketed the photos.

  Patty addressed Charlotte: “Remember when you stopped by on Tuesday? You asked me if Randy had ever inquired about the aprons?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time. There was someone else who inquired about the aprons: it was Jason Armentrout. He wanted to give some to Randy as a present. He thought Randy would like them because he was such a nut about diners.”

  “Patty, your order’s ready,” Carlos yelled from behind the counter.

  “I’m coming,” she shouted back.

  The blurry face in Charlotte’s mental picture now had features: a handsome, sharply angled face with vivid, deep set blue eyes, and graying hair pulled back into a ponytail.