By the time Max joined me in the Rocky Point police station interrogation room, it was nearly eleven and I’d made a decision. I was going to try to find out for myself what was going on.
“No charges have been filed,” Max said by way of greeting as he pulled out a chair and sat.
“That’s good news,” I acknowledged.
“Alverez will be in soon. He’s going to ask you questions about the painting. Before he gets here, I need to know the truth. All the truth. Do you have any knowledge of how the painting got into your warehouse?”
“No.”
“Do you have any ideas about why someone would have placed it there?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen it before, anywhere?”
“No, never.”
“Okay, then.” He stopped, smiled, and reached across the table to pat my hand. “Josie, you’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out.”
What a nice guy, I thought. “Thanks, Max. I sure hope so.” I paused. “Do you remember how you said we should wait to hire a private detective?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Do you think it’s time yet?”
“No, not yet. If and when you’re charged with something-that would be the time to think about it. But we may not need to even then.”
“You’re talking about gathering evidence. I’m talking about figuring out what’s going on.”
“I understand your impatience, Josie. But it’s a bad idea. It implies that you’re worried.”
“So what? What bad outcomes could possibly result if people think I’m worried? Why wouldn’t my efforts create the perception that I’m serious about learning the truth?”
Max paused, thinking, I guessed, how best to express concerns that were, to him, self-evident. “You’ll signal fear, and once the world gets a whiff of it, you’re done for. You’ll look desperate.” He shook his head. “Let the experts do their work. The police are doing a thorough job.”
I sighed. “I don’t get it, Max. It’s as if we, and the police, are a step behind all the time.”
“I know it’s hard, Josie, but you need to trust in the system. Everything in its time.”
A gentle rat-a-tat-tat on the door was followed by part of Alverez’s face. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Max said, apparently confident that our conversation was over, that he had succeeded in bringing me around to his point of view.
He was wrong. Max might think we needed to stay passive until I was charged with something, but I didn’t. I was no longer willing to wait. And I didn’t understand why he was. His explanation seemed to me utterly lame. Bad strategy or not, I was going to act.
As Alverez got situated and hooked up his tape recorder, he asked, “You okay?”
I brushed hair out of my eyes. “Yeah.”
He nodded and started the recorder, gave the time and place, and read me my rights for the second time. While he recited the words, I looked at him. His face seemed composed of more angles than curves. His eyes were recessed under a forceful brow, his nose was straight, his cheekbones looked sculpted, and his chin was strong and determined looking. Only the pock-marks, scars from long-ago acne, perhaps, were rounded. They weren’t deep, and mostly, they were camouflaged by his five o’clock shadow. I bet he was the kind of guy who looked as if he always needed a shave.
When he finished stating the Miranda warning, he slid the written version across the table, and once again, I read it and signed my name, indicating that I understood my rights.
“So tell me what you know about the Renoir,” he said.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve never seen or heard of it?”
“Only what you know about.”
“Has anyone else talked to you about it?”
“No.”
“So all you know is what I told you?”
“Right. I have never touched it. Period.”
Alverez nodded. “Any ideas about how it got there?”
I shook my head. “No clue.”
“Change of subject,” Alverez said. “Have you had time to look through the warehouse and offices and see if anything is missing ?”
“No, I haven’t looked everywhere. I haven’t had time. I mean, I looked at the auction site, and I’m sure I, or Sasha, who supervised the setup, would have noticed if something was missing. But just looking around won’t necessarily help. A lot of my goods are small and grouped in lots.” I shook my head and gave a palms-up gesture, indicating that it was hopeless. “There’s just too much for me to notice it all right now.”
“How do you control inventory?”
“We use a bar-coding inventory-control system. I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow if any of the items scheduled to be part of the tag sale are missing.”
“Bar codes?” Alverez asked. “What are you, Wal-Mart?”
I shook my head a little, and smiled. “I wish. The software’s cheap nowadays, and easy to use.”
“You’ll let me know as soon as you verify your inventory. All right?”
“Sure.”
“And take stock of office equipment, computers, and so on.”
“All right.”
“Do you have a safe?”
“Yes.”
“Have you looked?”
“No, not yet.”
“What’s in it?”
“Some estate jewelry. I don’t sell fine jewelry to the public.”
“None?”
“Some costume pieces. That’s it.”
“How come?”
“It’s too hard to appraise and too easy to steal.”
“What do you do with the good stuff?”
“I wholesale it to a specialist in New York.”
“How does that work?”
“Aren’t you getting a little off on a tangent?” Max asked.
Alverez shrugged. “Until we know what’s going on, it’s hard to know what’s a tangent and what’s a clue.”
“True,” Max said, and waved a hand at me, gesturing that I could answer Alverez’s question.
“When I have something special, I call him, and he comes up. Sometimes he calls me and tells me he’s going to be in the area.”
“Then he stops by?”
“Right.”
“And?”
“And we go over the pieces and he pays me in cash. Which I declare as income on my tax return.”
“I’m sure you do,” Alverez said, smiling. “How do you know you can trust him?”
“I’ve known him for years and years. He’s reputable.” I shrugged. “Also, don’t forget that I know where the jewelry I’m selling came from, so I know which pieces are likely to prove valuable. Plus,” I added with a modest half smile, “while I’m not an expert, I know enough so it wouldn’t be all that easy to rook me.”
Alverez nodded. “When can you let me know if anything is missing from the safe?”
“Later today. When I get back there, I’ll look.”
“Another change of subject. What size shoes do you wear?”
“What?” I asked, unsure I’d heard correctly, as Max asked, “Why?”
Alverez paused, and Max added, “Come on. You know the drill. Connect it for us.”
Alverez nodded. “We might have some physical evidence. A partial on a footprint. I want to eliminate Josie as a suspect. So,” he said to me, “what size?”
“What size are the prints?” Max asked.
Alverez answered without hesitation. “Women’s nine narrow.”
I felt the weight of the world fall off my shoulders. Max leaned toward me and whispered, “What size do you wear?”
“Five,” I whispered back, smiling.
“This is good news,” he said, and patted my shoulder. “You can go ahead and answer.”
I sat up and looked at Alverez. “I wear size five. So I’m in the clear, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Alverez answered, quelling my hopes. “It’s unclear what we’re looking at.”
“What do you mean?” Max asked.
“We know these prints were left by a size-nine narrow shoe. We don’t know the size of the foot wearing that shoe.” He shrugged. “Maybe Josie put her size-five foot into a size-nine shoe.”
I shivered.
“How certain of the size are you?”
Alverez paused, considering, perhaps, how much to reveal. “We found two partial footprints on the far side of the crates and a lot of others that are just a mishmash and useless. The technicians tell me they extrapolated data to calculate the foot size.”
“Still,” Max insisted, “it looks like Josie didn’t leave those footprints.”
“Probably not, so yes, it looks as if she’s out of it, except that we don’t yet know what ‘it’ she’s maybe out of. And maybe she did leave those footprints. We don’t know yet.”
Max started to argue the point, but Alverez stopped him by raising a palm, and said, “Come on, Max, you know how it goes. As far as I know at this point, those prints could be six months old and unrelated to anything and Josie could still be deep in it.” Turning to me, he asked, “With further elimination in mind, do you know what size shoes your female employees wear?”
I thought for a moment. “No, I can’t say I do. But nine is a fairly large size, and neither Gretchen nor Sasha is tall.”
“According to the tech guys, that doesn’t necessarily correlate. Some big women have small feet and vice versa.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Do you have a theory as to how someone came to leave footprints?” Max asked.
“Everyone leaves footprints this time of year. It’s spring-mud.”
“And it was damp yesterday,” I said, remembering.
“Hard to tell how long they’ve been there.” Alverez shrugged.
“But you’re assuming that it’s related?” Max asked.
“We’re checking it out,” he answered. To me, he asked, “Who mops the floor?”
“A cleaning crew. I use an outside firm.”
“Which one?”
“Macon Cleaners.”
He made a note. “Do you know when they last mopped that section of the warehouse?”
“No, I don’t, actually.”
“I’ll check,” Alverez said.
“You said you only found partial prints. Are any of them good enough to use as evidence of anything besides shoe size?” Max asked.
“Maybe. We can trace the brand and model of the shoe from the markings and match it exactly through the tread patterns.”
“What kind of shoe is it?” I asked.
Alverez paused again before replying, “The specifics are pending. But I can tell you it’s a running shoe. Do either Gretchen or Sasha wear running shoes?”
“Not that I know of. Sasha wears sensible shoes, tie-ups or loafers, you know the kind. Gretchen wears heels. She’s a stylish dresser.”
“And you wear boots.”
“And I wear boots. Heels sometimes. But even when I wear heels, I’m not a stylish dresser.”
Alverez smiled, but didn’t speak.
“Any other questions for Josie?” Max asked after a moment.
He tapped his pencil on the notepad. “No,” he said. “That’s it.”
“Okay, then,” Max said, and pushed back his chair.
“Still no plans to leave town?” he asked me.
“No,” I answered, swallowing. “I’ll be around.”
Standing beside our cars, facing the blue-green ocean, Max surprised me by saying, “You need to be prepared for a search.”
“What?” I objected, offended.
“They found stolen goods-a Renoir-in your possession. They’ll want to find the sneakers that match the tread pattern on the footprints. Pro forma,” Max responded, his calm contrasting with my spurt of indignation.
Ignoring my protest, he asked, “Do you have anything illegal in your possession? Pornography? A gun? Cocaine? Anything?”
I stopped objecting, and focused. I thought of the gun in my bedside table. My father had taught me to shoot handguns when I was in my early teens, encouraging me to fear the people who misuse weapons, not the weapons themselves. He hadn’t been a collector, exactly, but he’d liked guns, and had respected the elegant simplicity of their design. When I was preparing to leave New York, I’d sold all but one of them, keeping only his favorite, a Browning 9-mm. I’d been meaning to get a permit for it since I’d moved, but I hadn’t gotten around to it.
“I have a gun. No permit,” I answered.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He pulled on his earlobe and turned back to the ocean. “They’ll be searching both your home and your business.”
“What should I do?” I asked.
“It’s a funny coincidence. Here you have a gun and I’m thinking about getting one. You know that the legislature is considering allowing people to carry concealed weapons? Well, they are. If they go ahead with it, I’m going to get one for Sally, my wife, to keep in her purse. As you know, I work long hours.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” I answered, impressed at his approach, wondering if I was supposed to play a more active role in this charade.
“So, what kind of gun do you have?” he asked.
“A Browning nine-millimeter.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes. Part of it is that it was my father’s. Sentimental attachment, if you will. But it fires straight, and it’s comfortable in my hand.”
“Any chance I could borrow it for a look-see?”
“You bet,” I said, not smiling, playing it straight.
“Would you get it now and bring it to my office?”
“Sure.”
I confirmed that I’d drop it off within an hour or so.
“When you report in after checking your safe, call the police station, not Alverez’s cell phone, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t ask for him. Just leave a message. All right?”
“Sure.”
“And if anything is missing,” Max said, “call me instead.”
I agreed, and thanked him for everything.
We got in our separate cars and Max waved that I should go first. I drove slowly along the coast. The sun was trying to come out from behind thick clouds, and the ocean glinted gold when it succeeded. Behind me, I saw Max signal and turn off toward the interstate, presumably to return to his office. I stayed on the back roads and got to my house just after one.
It was odd being home during work hours. The sun was brighter here, away from the coast. I ran up the narrow stairs, found the gun, and slipped it into a canvas tote bag. Half an hour later, I watched as Max put the Browning in an envelope, labeled and signed it, sealed it with heavy clear tape, and placed it in his safe.
It was a relief to get to back to work. Gretchen was in the office, her red hair glistening in the now-bright sun that slanted through the oversized window near her desk.
After greeting her, I asked, “Anything going on that I should know about?”
“Nope. Everything’s under control.”
“You are so good,” I said, meaning it.
“Thanks, but it’s not just me. It’s all of us. Any word about the Renoir?”
“Nothing definitive,” I answered. “I know this is a crazy question, but… what size shoes do you wear?”
“I wear an eight. Why?”
“It’s a long story. Another time, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, implying with her tone that she was willing to placate me.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Sasha’s at the preview. I just spoke to her and she said it’s slowed down some. Eric and the temps are almost done setting up the glassware. I think he said art prints would be next.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. I’m going to run up to my office for a sec, then I’ll be around and about. Have you eaten?”
“Yeah. Sasha and I traded off lunch breaks.”
“Order me a pizza, will you? I’m starved.”
“Anything else?”
“Not now. Thanks.”
Upstairs, I dialed the combination of my floor safe and saw that everything was intact. I sat at my desk for a moment to call in to Chief Alverez, as promised. I got Cathy, the big blonde, who noted my message without apparent interest. I could picture her writing on a pink While You Were Out pad.
I opened a bottle of water from the case I kept in my office and leaned back with my eyes closed, my determination to take charge allowing me to relax in spite of the ever-present fear.
“Oh, jeez,” I said, sitting up with a start, realizing that I could begin my independent research right away, “I never checked.”
As I turned toward my computer, Gretchen called to tell me that the pizza had arrived. Hunger overpowered curiosity, and I headed downstairs to eat.
Entering the front office, I was so intent on my own thoughts, I was only vaguely aware of Gretchen. It had just occurred to me that previously I’d searched an Interpol site to see if the Renoir had been listed on the official law enforcement site as stolen. But I’d never searched for information about the painting itself. I brought up a browser and entered the painting’s title and the artist’s name.
“Can I help you with anything?” Gretchen asked.
I considered telling her. Gretchen was plenty loyal, but she was young and social. She told me once, just after she started working for me, that she loved gossip. She laughed when she said it, as if it was a rather charming quality, girlie and cute.
She didn’t exaggerate. Gossip was more than a hobby. It was almost an obsession. She spent every lunch hour at her desk, nibbling on a salad, surfing celebrity gossip Web sites, except once a week, when the trashy tabloid newspapers hit the stores. On that day, she’d dash out to pick up copies and read them, too.
About a year after she started, she pointed to a photograph on the front page of one of the tabloids. A baby, apparently a movie star’s newborn, appeared to weigh almost twenty pounds.
“Isn’t that awful?” she asked.
I looked at the trick photo. It was awful.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “How do you think they did it?”
“Oh, you mean the photo? No, no. It’s real. The baby’s size is a deformity, a rare side effect of a medication his wife took while she was pregnant. Isn’t it horrible?”
I looked at her, gauging her level of credulity, and concluded that it was high. She thought the oversized baby was real. If I asked her why no other media mentioned the abnormality, probably she’d whisper that it was a conspiracy funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
I didn’t want to get roped in, so I smiled vaguely, and said, “You never know, do you? I’m off to the Finklesteins’. I should be back by two.” And I left before she could tell me anything else she’d discovered in the gossip columns.
I didn’t understand her enthusiasm at all, but knew enough not to judge. My mother had been a closet tabloid reader, lingering at grocery store checkout racks to sneak quick reads. It wasn’t something we discussed openly, but my father and I would often exchange knowing looks as we pretended to be occupied in another part of the store to give my mother time to finish a story.
Toward the end, when my mother became bedridden, my father bought a copy of every gossip newspaper, true-confession magazine, and scandal sheet he could get his hands on, and their pictures and stories helped ease my mother’s pain.
Still, Gretchen’s love of gossip didn’t inspire confidence that she knew the value of discretion, so I decided to keep my own counsel. If nothing else, she was young, and discretion generally wasn’t a virtue of youth.
“No, I’m fine,” I answered.
“Sure?”
“Thanks. I’m okay.”
“Then I’m going to go see if I can do anything for Eric, all right?”
“Good,” I answered absent-mindedly.
I clicked the Search Now button, and in seconds got eighty-nine hits, mostly art museums, poster shops, and reference sites, like encyclopedias and university art history departments. But one site was unique. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I clicked on a link to a site claiming to track art stolen by the Nazis before and during World War II.
While I read, I ate two pieces of pizza without tasting either one. According to the Switzerland-based organization whose Web site I was on, Three Girls and a Cat was one of seven paintings that had been stripped from the walls of the Brander family home in Salzburg in 1939 in return for a promise of exit visas for the family. According to the meticulously kept Nazi records recovered after the war, the paintings had been stored in a barn pending determination of their final destination. But mysteriously, only one daughter, Helga, then twenty-one, had been granted an exit visa. Apparently, neither the rest of her family, nor the seven paintings, had ever been seen again. Until now.
The phone rang, and I was so intent on what I was reading, I nearly missed the call. “Prescott’s,” I said, “May I help you?”
“You run tag sales, right?” a stranger asked, wanting driving directions.
Hanging up the phone, I read on. After the war, in 1957, Helga Brander Mason, married and living in London, had petitioned the Austrian government to locate and return the pillaged works. They’d promised to try, but whether they’d done anything more than register her request was anybody’s guess. Almost fifty years later, her son, Mortimer Mason, had picked up the search. He was listed as the contact for information regarding the seven missing paintings.
Reeling from my discovery, I stared into space, stunned and disbelieving.
“Things are looking great out there!” Gretchen said as she walked into the office. She looked at me and stopped, tilting her head. “Are you all right?”
“What?” I asked, distracted, having trouble switching my attention to her.
“Are you okay? You look, I don’t know, funny.”
“Yeah. I’m okay,” I answered. I bookmarked the URL and closed the browser. “How’s Eric doing?”
“Fine. He says he doesn’t need help.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“Any calls?” Gretchen asked.
“Just one. A woman wanting directions.”
Gretchen sat at her desk, and soon I heard tapping as she typed something. The phone rang and I heard her answer it.
It was inconceivable to me that Mr. Grant had owned a Renoir that had been stolen by the Nazis. Maybe, I thought, the purchase was innocent. Perhaps he hadn’t known the painting’s sordid history. I shook my head in disbelief. Mr. Grant was a sharp businessman, way too savvy to buy a multimillion-dollar painting without first verifying its authenticity. Since he hadn’t mentioned the painting when we’d talked about the sale, it was more likely, I thought, that he’d purchased it knowing full well that it was stolen. Or that he’d stolen it himself during or after the war.
I was beyond speechless. I was in shock.