“Quince, you’re not going to talk your way out of this. You’re investigating the forgeries,” he said with a Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery sort of ahaed-ness to his voice.
“How dare you accuse me in that tone,” I said, going for indignant outrage. “I am not a child who needs scolded. I’ll have you know that I was putting together the information strictly to get everything clear in my mind so that I can talk to your detective friend and give him the most helpful information that I can.” Then I added, “The board helps me think. I discovered that while I was working on Mr. Banning’s murder.”
“Quincy.” The way he said my name had it sounding more like an expletive.
“Cal,” I said, trying to mimic his tone.
“You make me crazy,” he muttered.
He’d said as much to me in the past. Sometimes when he said it, it had nothing to do with my playing amateur detective.
Sometimes he said it in that husky, sexy voice of his and it made me melt a little.
That was the mood I wanted to foster right now.
“It was nice of you to bring pizza for the boys. But you know they won’t be home for a few hours.”
I stepped into his arms and nuzzled his neck, which was as high as I could nuzzle unless he bent down. “I mean, we could go back and eat more pizza or we could find something else to do to kill the time until they come back. Two very long hours.”
“That’s funny. I don’t have to be back to work on my case until after my dinner break. That means I have time to kill if you can think of something other than pizza to do.”
“I can come up with something to do,” I said, trying to distract him. I looked down. “Or obviously you’ve already come up with something.”
My distraction worked just fine.
A couple hours later we were eating cold pizza when the boys came home.
“Hi, Cal,” they said as if finding a man eating cold pizza in the kitchen with their mother was nothing out of the ordinary. The fact of the matter was, it wasn’t. At least not for the last few weeks. Now, before they’d gone on vacation with their father it would have been, but since I met Cal, we’d spent a lot of time together. Which was amazing given we both had careers and I had two boys left at home, one son in college, a script I was writing, and now a mystery to solve.
Miles and Eli talked about the play practice, then somewhere around the boys’ third slice of pizza, they started talking football with Cal.
That’s when I zoned out.
I may have three boys and the fact that I may have watched more than my fair share of sporting events makes me a good mom, not a sports fan.
So instead of talking about downs and kicks and trades and other bally stuff, I started to think about the forgeries.
I needed to talk to the clients who’d had their art replaced with forgeries.
As an owner of the cleaning service that was under suspicion, I wasn’t sure they’d want to talk to me. I didn’t imagine they’d want a free day’s cleaning services, which had been a ploy that had worked well when I was investigating Mr. Banning’s murder.
I could talk to my insurance agent and see what she’d found out.
Wait.
I bet the clients had all spoken to insurance agents.
Our business’s agent as well as their own.
What if there was an insurance investigator who came to question them?
They’d recognize me and Tiny, so we couldn’t pretend to be one.
I needed a real private investigator. A gumshoe. A private eye. A flatfoot. A private dick.
Better yet, a Dick. After years of writing mystery scripts and teaching about how to write a detective, maybe it was time for Dick Macy to experience investigating first hand.
Thoughts of private dicks, gumshoes, and paintings kept me occupied while the sports talk went on and finally died down.
I enjoyed having Cal over, but I was anxious for him to get back to his murder investigation so that I could get back to my forgery investigation.
“Quincy, what were you thinking about when the boys and I were talking about football?” he asked as I walked him to the door.
“Shoes.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. I was thinking about gumshoes. A particular gumshoe insurance investigator who I planned to invent.
I suddenly wondered why private investigators were called gumshoes. I’d have to look it up.
But that’s not what I said to Cal. I said, “I was thinking about the new pair of shoes I want for our next date.”
“Are we going to have a date soon?” he asked.
“As soon as you solve a murder. We’ll go out and paint the town.” Hopefully we’d be celebrating my solving the mystery of the forged paintings, too.
“Sounds good,” he said.
And then he kissed me.
“That was a chaste one,” he assured after he’d kissed my socks off. The first time he’d given me a chaste kiss, I’d doubted its chasteness, but having experienced Cal’s passionate kisses I no longer doubted that this one was chaste.
“It was,” I whispered back. “Call me later.”
“I will.”
As soon as he’d backed out the drive, I made a call. “Hey, Dick. It’s me, Quincy. I have an idea and a favor to ask you.…”
I looked up the term gumshoe the next morning. The theory was, it came from the fact detectives wore shoes with gum soles in order to creep around stealthily.
I met my own personal gumshoe mentor, Dick, at his house the next afternoon and outlined my plan.
“I’ve got the perfect disguise,” he said excitedly.
So excitedly that I didn’t have the heart to point out he didn’t need a disguise because no one knew who he was.
He came out with glasses on and wearing a pair of black slacks, a white, short-sleeved shirt, a tie, and the pièce de résistance… “A pocket protector,” he said excitedly. “Seriously, if I were an insurance man, this is what I’d wear.”
I wanted to tell him that my personal insurance agent was a very attractive, well-dressed woman, but he looked so pleased I didn’t have the heart.
“You know how to play this?” I asked, not commenting on the outfit, which I thought was very kind of me.
“Oh, yes. Let’s go.”
Half an hour later, we were in Hollywood Hills and I knocked on the door.
Dick was way too excited.
“Calm down,” I whispered. “You investigate insurance claims every day. It’s old hat for you, remember?”
He took a deep breath as the door opened.
“Hi, Mrs. Gifford. I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Quincy Mac from Mac’Cleaners. This is Mr. Macy. He’s an investigator from our insurance company.”
“Ma’am,” Dick said with an odd accent. “I do appreciate you taking time to let me see the crime scene.”
“I just want this all taken care of,” Mrs. Gifford said. “It’s been a nightmare. A true nightmare. I thought having my Bird on the Ledge torn was awful, then to find that not only is it a forgery, but three of our other paintings were as well…” She let the sentence trail off there, as if she couldn’t think of words to describe how upset she was.
“Do you have pictures of the artwork in question?” Dick asked.
I wanted to kick him. I already had pictures, and I knew that the police did, as well as the insurance agencies.
Mrs. Gifford didn’t seem to think his question was odd. “Yes. I’ll go up to the office and get them for you. You can see for yourself where the artwork hung. The police took the forgeries as evidence.”
We stood in a very stylish living room and stared at an empty wall. Three mounting brackets were all that remained.
“They all hung low enough that they could be removed without a ladder or any other equipment, though you would have had to do it carefully because the bottom of all the frames would have been about six feet up,” Dick mused.
“They were low enough to get to, but not so low you were
up close and personal with them. It would have made them harder to really look at them and notice the differences.”
Mrs. Gifford came back, printed papers in her hand. “They’re the photos we took for insurance purposes. The frames in the pictures are the same frames the forgeries were in. That means whoever removed the originals knew enough about framing to put the others in their place so well I didn’t notice.”
“When do you think they had time to do that?”
“Well, if it was Theresa, she was here once a week, supposedly for a few hours, but she could have stayed longer. She knew our schedules.”
“And if it wasn’t?” I asked. “Have you traveled or been gone for any length of time?”
“We were skiing for a week in January, and then went to the Bahamas for another week in March.”
“Who all had keys for when you were gone?”
“My next door neighbor, Mac’Cleaners, the pool service, my cousin, a couple friends, my husband’s brother.…”
“That’s a lot of keys,” Dick said. He gave me an elaborate wink that I took to mean he thought his comment sounded very insurancey.
“Yes, it was a lot. We’ve changed the locks since then and we won’t be using your service any longer,” she said looking at me.
Kind of like wearing a condom after you’re pregnant, I wanted to say, but I resisted. I also didn’t mention that firing Mac’Cleaners before she knew who did it seemed unfair.
“Could we have a list of the people’s names?” I asked politely instead.
She nodded.
“I don’t know much about art, but I have to think taking the picture out of the frame and switching out the new one would take time.”
Mrs. Gifford gave us the rest of the information and saw us to the door.
“Ma’am, can I ask you something that’s not related to the theft?”
She gave me a regal nod and said, “You may.”
“Why do you like Kirchoff’s work? They look like someone dropped a paintbrush to me.”
“I could try to play off that I’m an art expert, but I’m not. I could tell you what the woman who sold it to me said about the meaning of it, but to be honest, I went to the gallery looking for something that would complement the colors in the room. My husband wanted something that would be a good investment. Kirchoff was new, but hot and the price of his art was climbing, so it worked for my husband. And he used a lot of red…which worked for my living room.”
I had to confess, I admired Mrs. Gifford’s honesty. And her explanation made sense how her art could be replaced without her knowing it.
She added, “Give me a landscape any day. That I can understand on some sort of emotional and artistic level. Kirchoff was a decorating, investment choice.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Gifford. I’m so sorry about what happened, but I hope, when the police find out who really stole the paintings, you come to think of Theresa’s accident as a lucky happenstance. We’d love to have your business back when they find the real thief.”
She didn’t say anything as she showed us out. But I was glad I said it. Business rule number one, never burn a professional bridge.
“Wow,” Dick said as we walked to the car. “That was honest.”
“Yes, it was.” She was honest about not knowing much about art. The paintings had been investment and decorating choices.
If she didn’t know much about art, it would have been easier to fool her with forgeries.
“Are we going to the other homes?” Dick asked.
“I couldn’t reach anyone at either of the other homes, so I left my information. Can I call you when they get back to me?”
“Definitely. That was fun.” He rubbed his hands together with the sort of excitement my boys used to show when I said ice cream.
“Do you need me for anything else?” There was hope in his voice.
I shook my head. “I want to stop at an art supply store, if you have time on our way back. I have an experiment I want to conduct.”
“Sure, I have time,” he assured me. “I’m working on a new script and can’t decide how to stash the body’s dismembered parts.”
“You could get in trouble talking like that in public,” I teased.
“Or on a date. Specifically the blind-date I went on last weekend.” He then shared with me what had to have been the worst date in history. “Turns out not everyone’s as entertained by homicide investigations as you are. You are a unique woman, Quincy Mac.”
I laughed, but knew he was right.
I came from a family of doctors. I was a maid.
I came to Hollywood to find fame and fortune on the big screen…or even on the little screen. I’d had three sons before I was twenty-three.
Yeah, I was definitely unique.
Two days, five brushes, five pieces of paper, and one canvas later, I had a Kirchoff-esque painting.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was close. Close enough that I thought it might fool a layman.
I took it to the office and called Tiny in.
“You found it,” she exclaimed as she spotted it in the office.
“No, I made it,” I said.
She walked up closer to the painting and said, “Now that I’m closer I can see…” She shook her head. “Who am I kidding? I don’t get his art, so I’d never notice the difference between yours and the painting in the picture.”
“I think I missed my calling,” I told Tiny. “I should have been an artist. Even if they sold for half what Kirchoff’s went for, if I could make one a week, something designed to compliment various decors, I’d be rich.”
“But I wouldn’t want any other business partner,” she said. “I’m so lucky I’ve found you and Sal. My two soulmates.”
Speaking of soulmates made me think of Dick and his bad blind date. “Hey, do we know anyone we could fix up with Dick?”
“What about Theresa? If we could get her married off, then maybe she’d quit.”
“And we wouldn’t have to fire her. You’re brilliant,” I told Tiny.
Mrs. Neilson finally got back to me and had no problem with the insurance investigator visiting with me. Dick and I went to see her the next day.
She’d only had one painting that was forged.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the forger had been prepared to steal more paintings and Theresa’s accident had derailed their plans.
If so, they were probably angry.
And angry people made mistakes.
The woman who opened the door looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, if Mrs. Santa Claus wore power suits, pearls, and hair coiffed in a chic bob.
“Mrs. Neilson, I’m Quincy Mac and this is Mr. Macy, who’s investigating the crime.”
“Ma’am,” Dick said, with no trace of the weird accent today.
“Please, come in.”
Martha Washington would have felt at home in Mrs. Santa Claus’s living room. There were hardwood floors, area rugs, and antiques.
I didn’t know any more about antiques than I knew about art, but I was a maid, I cleaned houses for a living, and this house screamed be-careful-because-everything-in-me-is-old-breakable-and-costs-a-fortune. Being able to recognize antiques was important in my line of work.
“I made a copy of the picture of the painting.” She handed me the paper. “Debra Gleeson’s Kissing Under the Apple Tree.”
It wasn’t Kirchoff, but it could have been.
In addition to furniture that all wore a patina of age, Mrs. Neilson’s living room walls were covered with art. The artwork in the living room probably had some fancy title, but I’d call it Americana. There were pastoral scenes and village scenes. And in all of it, I could tell what was a cow and what was a horse.
I liked it.
But I didn’t see any empty spots where the forgery had been. “Did it hang in here?”
Mrs. Neilson laughed. “Goodness, no. Come with me.” She took us upstairs to the master bedroom suite and again, it was full of art and had that same Ameri
cana feel to it while the room had that same Martha Washington antique look. All dark woods and old stuff. There was an empty space where the painting used to be. I thought the empty space looked better than the abstract would have looked with all the portraits and landscapes. The empty space was directly across from the bed.
“Ma’am, the forged painting—”
“Kissing Under the Apple Tree,” she said.
I searched for some diplomatic way to say she didn’t seem like an abstract art fan. “Yes. Kissing Under the Apple Tree. It seems a little different than the other pieces you have in here.”
“It was. My husband knew I loved art, and he bought it for me. He said he knew I had other paintings with apple trees.” She pointed to a large farm scene which indeed had a section filled with an apple orchard. “He tried so hard to find something that would please me. And while it wasn’t my style, every time I looked at it I remembered that he loved me.”
In this case it was definitely the thought that counted to Mrs. Neilson. “That’s why it hung across from the bed?”
She nodded. “I liked having it be the first thing I saw every morning.”
And here, it wasn’t the first thing any guests saw. She didn’t love the artwork, but she loved her husband and what the painting represented. “I’m so sorry that you lost it.”
Dick nodded. “Me, too.” I elbowed him and he remembered. “But none of your other paintings are forgeries?”
“No. It was very odd. The thief just took that one.”
“Maybe they simply hadn’t gotten around to them yet?” Dick said.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Have you traveled lately?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just a couple days in San Francisco. But the house was fine. We had neighbor’s feeding the cat and bringing in the mail. But Mr. and Mrs. Delafoy are in their seventies. I can’t imagine even together they’d be able to climb a ladder and take the painting off of the wall, then replace it with the forgery and put it back.”
“Do you mind if we speak to them?”
She smiled. “Of course not. They’re in the yellow house next door.”
“Mrs. Neilson, does anyone else have keys to your house, and the code to security?”
Dusted (A Maid in LA Mystery) Page 4