As expected, I spent a restless night.
I slept some, I guessed, but the hours I stayed in bed were filled with upsetting and confusing dreams, and I awoke jittery and tense. Lying there, tired but unable to sleep, I thought about Alverez and wondered if his plan had worked, and if so, whether he was still questioning his suspect or whether he’d called it a night. I could picture him sitting in interrogation room two, struggling to stay awake, but I could also imagine that he was home, asleep, and it got me wondering what his home was like. Was it a rental, like mine? Was it furnished with heavy, masculine pieces, like an Adirondack lodge?
One thought led to another and at about 4:30 in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep, and went downstairs. Wrapped in my soft pink robe, I made coffee, and with a cup in hand, I curled up in the window seat in my kitchen and looked out over the meadow. I saw nothing. Thick clouds completely obscured the sky, and the darkness seemed absolute.
Determined to shift my focus from thinking to doing, I scrambled eggs, had a second cup of coffee, and just before 6:00, decided to go to work. Wearing black jeans and a cherry red sweater, I stepped outside in the dim light of another cloudy spring morning, took a deep breath of wintry-cold dawn air, and started the car. I shivered, chilled, as I used the small plastic scraper to rid the windshield and side windows of hoarfrost.
Three miles down the road I glanced at my cell phone and realized that I’d missed a call. Punching buttons, I saw that it had come from Alverez while I was in the shower. “Damn,” I said aloud.
I pulled over to the side of the road and listened to the cryptic message. “Josie,” Alverez said, sounding energized, “I’m sorry to call so early, but I’m going back into the interrogation room after grabbing a little sleep, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to talk next. I just wanted to thank you again, and to let you know that the plan worked. We got her.”
I dialed back, but got his voice mail. “Damn,” I said again. I didn’t want to leave a message. I wanted to talk to him.
I called the station house. Whoever answered the phone said that Alverez wasn’t available and couldn’t venture a guess as to when he might be able to call me back. I hung up and tapped the steering wheel, frustrated and impatient for news. Impulsively, I called Max, and, after apologizing for disturbing him so early, I recapped Alverez’s message and my failure to reach him.
“‘Her’?” Max asked. “Are you certain he said ‘her’?”
“Yes, absolutely. It sounds like he’s arrested someone, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“Or, at least, that he’s got a suspect in custody,” Max agreed. “Who do you think it is?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” I said. “I was a hundred percent sure it was Barney.”
After a short pause, Max asked, “Didn’t Barney tell you that Andi had hired him?”
“Andi!” I exclaimed. “That’s right, he did tell me that. Wow! And Barney could have called Andi to tell her about the Matisse. But wait a second, Max. Even if he did so, and even if she decided to come steal it, there’s no way she could have gotten here that quickly.”
“What do you mean? It’s only a ten-minute drive from the Sheraton. Isn’t that where she and her mother are staying?”
“Mrs. Cabot told me she was going back to Chestnut Hill yesterday, and I assumed that Andi would go home to New York at the same time… but you’re right, it’s strictly an assumption on my part. Maybe Andi did stay longer, to work with Barney, or to start the lawsuit to try and break her grandfather’s will.”
“If it was Andi that Alverez caught in your warehouse, think about what that means. It implies that she stole the Renoir and that she killed her grandfather. Stealing the Renoir, maybe. But killing her grandfather? That stretches credibility!”
“Not if she was all drugged up.”
“True,” he acknowledged, sounding sad.
Responding to his tone, I said, “It’s so horrible to think about, isn’t it?”
“More than horrible. Unnecessary, too, since she’s due to inherit half of his estate.”
“But I wonder if she knew it at the time? She wasn’t close to her grandfather, that’s for sure,” I said.
“True. But still.”
“Yeah. She’s pretty volatile.”
“Maybe she’s mentally ill, you know, bipolar or split personality or something,” Max suggested.
I recalled her constant surliness, her occasional explosive temper, and the rapid mood swing I’d witnessed on Mr. Grant’s porch. One minute she’d been a shrew, the next, cajoling and plaintive.
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. A squirrel caught my eye as he dashed across the road and disappeared into the underbrush. I shrugged. “We have no way of knowing. You know what I mean… from everything you hear, drugs make some people act like they’re nuts whether they are or not.”
“I guess you’re right. And I guess it doesn’t matter, does it, whether she is actually mentally ill or not?”
“Not to us, maybe. But I bet Mrs. Cabot cares.”
I heard Max sigh. “Yeah.” After a pause, he asked, “Josie, does it make sense that Andi would sneak into your place and leave the Renoir? After killing her own grandfather to get it either because she’s insane or because she was high on drugs, wouldn’t she have kept it?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But if she’d learned about the Matisse and the Cezanne, and if she knew that I had been to the house the same morning and was considered to be a suspect, maybe she was willing to sacrifice the Renoir in an attempt to frame me. She’d still get millions from the other two paintings if she could get her hands on them, and if she did a good enough job with the setup, I’d be arrested and maybe even convicted, and she’d be completely off the hook.”
“Yeah,” he mused, “plus, once the investigation was over, and probate granted, the Cabots would get the painting back. It was a gambit… like in chess… you know?”
“Well, actually, no. I don’t know how to play chess.”
“A gambit,” Max explained, his voice animated, “is an opening move in which a player sacrifices a piece in order to secure a desirable position.”
“Wow. I see what you mean. You’re right. That’s exactly what she did. She sacrificed the Renoir-temporarily, at least-as a way of shifting suspicion onto me, which, to her, was a favorable position.” I looked out at the barren street, the leafless trees, and the empty, overgrown sidewalks. “Wait. Let’s not forget… ultimately, it didn’t work.”
“No, but she tried. As a strategy, I’ve heard worse.”
“Yeah.” I shivered again, chilled at the thought that a malevolent spirit strategized how to get me. I’d done nothing to deserve her antipathy, yet I was her chosen target. I felt tears begin to form, and my heart started to thump. I swallowed, trying to regain my composure. “Max,” I asked, as calmly as I could, “is it truly possible that someone would do something so… so… fiendish?”
“Yes,” he answered softly. “Yes, I think it is.”
“Do you think that Mrs. Cabot knows what Andi did?” I asked, glad to shift the conversation to less personal ground.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know, Josie. Actually, we don’t know that Andi did anything. We’re just speculating.”
“I suppose so. Regardless, I’d like to tell Mrs. Cabot that I found the paintings, but I don’t want to burden her if she’s, you know, overwhelmed because of Andi.”
Max paused. “I was just thinking about whether it’s prudent to reveal that they’ve been found. Let me put in a call to Alverez and ask him. Then, once we have an okay, why don’t you get in touch with her and see how she sounds? Use your judgment. You can always just tell her the bare facts, and, if she’s not in any shape to talk to you, discuss the details later.”
“That makes sense.”
“Just remember, stick to the facts. Don’t hypothesize. And don’t editorialize.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes, I can do that.”
“Are you kidding?” Max said. “I saw you in action last night. You can do anything.”
I smiled, surprised and pleased at the compliment.
I pulled into my parking lot and saw that Griff was on duty, guarding I don’t know what. He told me that I could go in, no problem, and that he’d be leaving in a minute. “We’ll be coming by pretty often,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just to check.”
“Check on what?”
“A regular patrol, is all. You don’t need to worry.”
I got it. I wasn’t going to learn anything from him, even if he knew anything in the first place, which wasn’t by any means a given, so I thanked him, and went inside.
It was eerie. I walked through every area of the warehouse and couldn’t see a thing out of order, and yet, apparently, Alverez had caught a murderer within my walls only hours earlier. The cameras, microphones, and metal cabinet were gone. I felt unsettled. Ignoring the amorphous disquiet, I climbed the steps to my office, and began to work.
I drafted an e-mail to Gretchen explaining my idea for Prescott’s Instant Appraisals, and asked her to contact Keith, the graphic designer we used on an as-needed basis to create a themed campaign for the booth itself, newspaper ads, and flyers that we could tuck into bags when we packed up items. It had occurred to me that if Barney was more or less broke, he wasn’t much of a competitive threat, but I decided to proceed with the instant appraisal idea anyway. As a strategy to get a leg up on good inventory and build traffic, I didn’t see how it could be beat. Plus, it sounded like fun.
I stretched and glanced at the computer clock. It wasn’t even 7:30 yet. I wondered where Alverez was, and what he was doing. I stood up and paced, sat down, and then, a minute later, stood up and paced again, this time in a different direction.
I sat down, determined to focus on tasks at hand. I turned to the computer. I’d told Sasha that I’d take care of researching the leather trunk, and I hoped that doing so might stop me from wasting time and energy on other, pointless thoughts.
It didn’t take long to find the information I needed. There were loads of comps. The trunk’s silky-soft leather was a sign of the quality of its construction, and its unusually large size and remarkable condition set it apart from similar pieces. I estimated that it would sell for between $1,750 and $2,000.
Eric arrived just as I was finishing writing it up. He called out a general hello, and I shouted back that I’d be right down.
“Hey, Eric,” I said as I hurried down the steps, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.”
“Yeah, if we stay this busy you’re going to have to schedule staff meetings so we see each other.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears!” I said, laughing. “Are you ready?”
“Yup. I just got to pick up the money and the paperwork.”
“I’ll get you the money. Just give me a minute.”
I went to the safe and counted out a dozen hundred-dollar bills. We’d need to replenish our cash reserves soon. Returning to the office, I handed the money to him. He was swift to insert the bills in the envelope containing the inventory and a receipt that Gretchen had prepared, but I stopped him.
“Count it, Eric.”
“Ah, Josie, I know you’re not going to screw me over.”
“Right. But everybody makes mistakes. Even me.”
“Nah. Don’t believe it.”
“I’m flattered, but indulge me. Always count money, Eric. And always read papers before you sign them. I shouldn’t have to tell you this over and over again. When you accept money, you’re responsible. Take it seriously.”
“I do,” he said, almost, but not quite, whining.
“I know you do, theoretically. But I’m focused on practicality. Remember the old saying, ‘Trust, but verify’? Well, do that every time. Always… even with me, Eric. Trust, but verify.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, not quite casting his eyes heavenward, but acting as if he wanted to. He counted the bills, grinned, and said, “See, I knew it would be right.”
“This time.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
“Go,” I told him, shaking my head and smiling, “I’ll see you later. And don’t forget to count the damn ducks!”
Since all I wanted to do was talk to Alverez, everything I did felt like busywork. I wanted an update. I wanted to know the details about what was happening. Instead, I was in limbo, waiting and wondering. Curiosity and anxiety consumed me, and, as a result, I had trouble focusing.
Fred arrived as I was considering my options. Wearing a gray sweater vest and black jeans, he looked ready for whatever came his way, office work or rolling on the floor examining the bottoms of furniture.
“Is Sasha here?” he asked.
“Not yet. I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.”
He got settled at the spare desk, and I decided to go to the Grant house and do some appraisal work. Sasha would, I was certain, arrive soon to cover the office, and if not, well, we had voice mail. I told Fred not to worry about the phone, gave him my cell phone number, just in case, and asked him which room I should work on at the Grant house.
He consulted his notes, thought about it, and finally suggested that I start on a small room on the top floor that had been used, apparently, as a sewing room. I grabbed a notebook and my purse, and left.
Max called as I drove. “When I called before, I left a message for Alverez,” he explained, “asking whether it was all right for you to tell Mrs. Cabot that the paintings had been found. I just got a call back with his answer-yes. That’s it. No other information or news.”
“Thanks, Max,” I said. We ended the call by agreeing that our curiosity about what Alverez was doing-and with whom-was white hot and growing.
When I arrived at the Grant house, I saw that O’Hara, the police officer who’d kept an infuriated Andi at bay while Alverez entered the house with me, was sitting on the porch steps smoking a cigarette. He stood as I approached and we exchanged greetings.
Ten minutes after I entered the sewing room, while rummaging through loose photos stuffed in the bottom drawer of a tallboy, I found a picture labeled on the back, “Us and Arnie Zeck, Paris, 1945.” Mrs. Grant’s ledger had stated that the Renoir, the Cezanne, and the Matisse had all been purchased from someone or something called A.Z. It wasn’t much of a stretch to conclude that I was looking at the man who’d sold the Grants paintings that had been stolen from Jewish families.
I sat back on my heels and studied it. The grainy black-and-white image showed three people, two men and a woman, sitting at a table near a grass tennis court, drinks in hand, laughing. All three appeared healthy, happy, and carefree. Neither of the men looked familiar, and I wondered whether one of them was Mr. Grant, and if so, which one.
I sorted through the rest of the photographs. They were a jumble, and I doubted that they had any market value. I put them aside to send to Mrs. Cabot.
I turned my attention to the Chippendale-style walnut tallboy. It was beautifully built. Lying on my side to better examine the lower portion of the piece in detail, I noted restoration to the ogee feet. I’d already noticed that several spots along the fluted, canted corners were slightly nicked. Still, it was a bold and desirable piece, dating from the 1770s, and I expected that it would sell for more than $3,000. If it hadn’t been restored, it might have been worth twice that.
I finished jotting down the imperfections and thought about calling Mrs. Cabot. According to my cell phone, it was 9:30, a reasonable time to call. I stood up, stretched, and walked across the room to stand at the window and look out at an unobstructed view of the ocean.
I found her number where I’d written it in my calendar, and thought about what I wanted to say. After a moment of indecision, I realized I was in deep avoidance mode. I didn’t want to make the call. I didn’t want to deliver more pain to that nice, stoic woman. When I’d faced the fact that my father was dead, I’d been in shock, ragged with emotion, unable to focus on anything except my incalculable loss. If she was like me, she wouldn’t even register that the paintings had been located, and if she did, she wouldn’t care.
I wondered if she knew about Andi. With her father just dead, murdered, she was, no doubt, overwhelmed with grief. How could she bear knowing that her daughter was the killer? I shook my head, weighed down at the thought of the anguish she must be enduring.
Still, she had to be told that I’d found the paintings. The stolen art had to be returned. Do it, I told myself. Talk to her, and, as Max suggested, follow her lead. If she didn’t want to know the details, I wouldn’t force them on her.
I dialed, and after six rings, I got an answering machine. I made a fist and soft-punched the window frame. Having girded myself to speak to her, it was a real disappointment to get a machine. I closed my eyes again, and focused on the message.
“Mrs. Cabot,” I told the machine, “this is Josie Prescott. I found both the Cezanne and the Matisse, and I have important news about them. I look forward to filling you in. You can reach me on my cell phone anytime.” And I gave my number.
I felt satisfied with my message, and it was only when I noticed that my hands were trembling that I realized how hard that call had been to make. I hated disappointing people that I cared about. And, it seemed, I’d come to care about Mrs. Cabot.
I turned my attention to a small sampler hanging on the back wall, but before I reached it, Mrs. Cabot called me back.
“I’m sorry I missed your call,” she said. “I stepped outside for a moment.” She sounded the same as always, polite and pleasant.
“No problem. Thanks for calling back so quickly.”
“Chief Alverez called as well, but he wasn’t available when I tried to reach him back. By any chance… do you know if he has news?” she asked.
My throat constricted and my heart began to race. I swallowed twice, panicked, uncertain what to say. Max’s standing instructions came to me. Tell the truth and give short answers. And the truth was that I didn’t know anything. Speculation wasn’t fact.
“No, I don’t know anything.” I gripped the phone, hoping she wouldn’t ask additional questions. Poor Mrs. Cabot.
“He’s very good about staying in touch,” she remarked. “I’ll try him again when we’re done talking.”
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
There was a long pause. “All right. This is a difficult time.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted her to know how much I’d liked her father, and that he’d been laughing and seeming to enjoy life in the days before his death. I determined to write her a note. The sympathy cards people had sent me had provided great comfort, more so than spoken words. When they’d talked to me, I’d had to respond, to hold up my end of the conversation, and during those first weeks, that had proven impossible. Reading meaningful recollections, though, had consoled me.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cabot,” I said, finally.
After a pause, she said, “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “Yes, well… you said in your message that you found the two paintings?” she asked.
“Yes. They were hidden here in the house, quite cleverly.”
“Where are they now?”
I swallowed. “The police have them.”
“For safekeeping?”
“Well, not exactly,” I said, hating that I had to be the one to tell her.
“What do you mean?”
“It seems that there’s no clear proof of ownership, I’m afraid. In fact, I have to tell you that I have reason to believe they’re stolen.”
“I see,” she said in a tone so low I could barely hear her. She cleared her throat and I could picture her troubled eyes. “I thought as much.”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“No, no, don’t be. I’ve been troubled by the thought for more than forty years. Certainty is always better than speculation. From whom were they stolen?”
I wondered if her suspicions about the paintings had led to the argument with her parents forty years ago, but I didn’t want to ask. Instead of trying to find out what might have happened when she was a girl, I answered her question directly. “My research suggests that they were taken from three different Jewish families before or during World War Two. Probably by the Nazis.”
I heard her inhale. “How awful.”
“Yes. They were all sold, apparently, by a man named Arnie Zeck.”
“Arnie Zeck. He was a friend of my parents. They knew him in Europe. I’ve seen photos.”
“Yes, there’s one mixed in with a bunch of others in a drawer of the tallboy in the sewing room.”
“I never knew…” she started, her voice trailing off.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I should have investigated those paintings’ histories myself. Instead I kept quiet. More shame on me. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, ‘The cruelest lies are often told in silence.’ I’ve kept many secrets in my life out of misplaced loyalty.” She laughed derisively.
I didn’t know what to say. Mrs. Cabot continued speaking before I had to decide how to respond. “No more,” she said. “I decided not to enable my daughter in her drug abuse either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I arranged an intervention last night.” Her voice cracked with emotion, but I also heard pride of accomplishment. It was a long moment before she continued. “I convinced Andi to drive down with me yesterday. When we got home, I surprised her with the intervention.”
My mouth fell open. I was astonished. More than astonished, I was shocked.
I’d persuaded myself that Andi was guilty of murder-of killing her own grandfather. To learn otherwise was staggering, and I had trouble focusing on the conversation with Mrs. Cabot. Alverez’s message was clear-he’d referred to the suspect as “her.” If it wasn’t Andi he had in custody, who was it? I was speechless, yet I needed to react. What had Mrs. Cabot said? An intervention? She’d arranged an intervention? I shut my eyes, leaned against the window frame, and forced myself to concentrate. With my mind still reeling, I asked, “What was it like?”
“It was extremely emotional. The professionals from the rehabilitation facility coordinated everything. We invited several of her friends from New York, and we all told her the truth.”
“What was her reaction?” I asked, unable to imagine anything less than a calamitous explosion.
“She was upset,” Mrs. Cabot said, in what I assumed was yet another example of understatement.
“What happened?”
“She decided to try and get over her addiction.” Her voice cracked again. “You know, perhaps, that the goal of an intervention is that the addict immediately admits herself to the program. Thank God, she agreed.” I could sense the fear behind her words, and my heart went out to her.
“You must be so relieved,” I said.
“I am.” She stopped, her wrenching emotion palpable. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again, it was in the calm, pleasant voice I’d come to expect. “It’s only the first step, of course, in what will be, no doubt, a very difficult process. But at least it’s a step in the right direction.”
I shook my head. Having seen Andi in action, I was a non-believer, yet I needed to say something positive. I gazed out the window toward the ocean. Under the cement-colored sky, the ocean looked bleak, seaweed dark, a green deeper than bottle green, and endless.
Nothing positive came to mind. I wondered whether Andi had any sense of the anguish her actions caused others. Finally, I said, “It must have been very hard for you.”
She paused. “Yes, well, I suppose so. But I am confident that I won’t be in this position again. If nothing else, my recent liberation from the conspiracy of silence precludes it.”
We agreed to talk in a day or two about the appraisal.
Hanging up the phone, I stayed at the window for a long moment, watching the forbidding-looking ocean, trying to make sense of what I’d learned.
Since last evening, Andi was in rehab somewhere in the Boston area. I shook my head. If she was in a secure location, who then, did Alverez have in custody? I felt the icy chill of uncertainty wash over me again.