Brilliant (11 page)

T  W  E  N  T  Y  -  O  N  E

Fifteen minutes later, Owen strode in and took charge. I could tell by the color in his face and the spring in his step that he’d exercised in spite of the rain. He ran seven miles through Hyde Park every morning, looping around the Serpentine and back.

Did I mention I’ve been trying to go walking on a more regular basis? Nothing to write home about, but as soon as Benjamin died, I decided to live a healthier lifestyle. Besides, I love to walk, especially in France. I made the decision to become a
robuste
walker, to walk five miles every day, rain or shine. To make it a habit. I want to develop the habit of fitness. I was already up to a mile or two every two or three days, or so. I call that progress. A good base.

“You found her, Kick?” Owen said to me, his face expressionless.

I nodded. “About seven-thirty.”

“Through here, Mr. Brace,” the commander said, directing Owen into his office. “If you could make an official identification.” They were back out seconds later. Owen’s color had turned about as waxen and whey-faced as Tina’s.

“Is there somewhere private I can ask you a few questions?” Commander Curtis asked him. “Just routine.”

Owen looked at me. He seemed disoriented.

“The boardroom, sir,” I suggested.

“Right.” He was looking worse by the second. “Come with me, Kick.”

“You might prefer that we talk in private,” the inspector said. Owen shook his head. “I don’t have any secrets from Miss Keswick.”

No, I thought. Only about 680 million red ones. And that’s going by Friday’s tally.

Into the boardroom we went. I turned on the lights, and Alcott brought coffee, tea, and warm sticky walnut muffins. Owen had left the portrait of the founding father, the original, bewigged, dew-lapped and whiskey-nosed Sir Ballantine, hanging at the end of the board table above his chair. Before long, I imagined Owen would be claiming him as his own ancestor.

“When was the last time you saw your wife, Mr. Brace?”

“Last Friday morning when she came to the office. She’d just been served with her divorce papers.”

“I see. Was she upset?”

“Very. We had a little scrap.”

The commander waited.

“A little scrape, in fact.” Owen grinned and indicated the four elongated, fading welts on his cheek. “She gave me these. Then she went on TV Friday afternoon and claimed I’d given her a black eye, which I categorically deny.”

“A black eye?”

Owen nodded. “You didn’t happen to notice if she actually had one, did you?”

“I didn’t notice, but I’ll make a point of checking.”

“Let me save you the trouble: She didn’t. It was makeup.”

“Did she often use drugs?”

Owen nodded. “Yes, unfortunately. Often.”

“Do you know how she got them?”

“No. But I can tell you she didn’t get them from me. That business is loaded with groupies and hangers-on, all of whom are more than willing to provide whatever the star wants. It’s pathetic.”

Oh, please, Owen, I wanted to say. Get over yourself. It’s not as though you don’t have groupies and hangers-on of your own, willing to provide whatever you want. Okay, so maybe it’s not drugs, but sex on demand? Give me a break.

“We don’t suspect any foul play, Mr. Brace. This appears to be a straightforward overdose situation—but just so there are no surprises, since she was found in what can be termed ‘irregular circumstances,’ we are required by law to perform an autopsy. I also need to ask you, sir, where you were this weekend.”

“I understand,” Owen said. “I spent all day Saturday and Sunday out in Henley, at the plant.”

“The plant?”

“The Panther plant. I own it.”

“Panther Automobiles?”

Owen nodded.

The inspector was impressed. “Super,” he said, making a note. “And did you spend the night in Henley?”

“No, I came back to the city Saturday, but I didn’t go out.”

“And Friday?”

“I had a dinner engagement Friday evening with Céline—we were at Mark’s.”

“Céline?”

“She’s a model.”

“Oh, yes. Céline. I know who you mean. Super-looking girl. Long blond hair. Big eyes.”

Owen nodded. “Big . . .”

“Excuse me,” I said.

Owen closed his mouth and Commander Curtis bit his lip to keep from smiling. He was obviously enjoying this case, and really, who could blame him, living the grisly life he did. “And Mark is?”

“Mark’s. It’s a club.”

“Ah,” the inspector nodded sagely, and took a large bite of his roll, leaving bits of brown sugar at the corners of his mouth that he blotted properly with his napkin instead of licking them off with his tongue, as Owen would have done. “Of course. Mark’s. And after dinner?”

“And then I had a late meeting with Miss Keswick at her flat.” Owen smiled over at me.

I almost laughed out loud at the expression on the detective’s face. Whether or not he’d found me attractive before, now I think he might have been somewhat intrigued. I gave him a very small grin which, if I were younger, I’d say had a little of the coquette in it, but as it was, was simply bright-eyed, guileless, blank, and un-forthcoming.

Owen continued, “Tina had held a press conference Friday afternoon. I’d missed it, and I went to Miss Keswick’s to watch it on the eleven o’clock news.”

“And how late were you there, sir?” Owen looked at me.

“Until about two,” I said, feeling like a naughty teenager. I felt my cheeks color.

“My driver took me back to the hotel, and I went to bed.”

“Your regular driver?”

“Yes. Michael. He’s out front. At least he’s supposed to be out front.”

“And then you left for Henley first thing in the morning?”

“Yes, about nine.”

“Do you know why Miss Romero would have been in your office?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You didn’t arrange to meet her here?”

“No.”

“Did she have a key to your private office?”

“Not to my knowledge. I don’t have any idea why she was here or how she got in.”

“Who has keys to your office?”

“I do. Kick does. The security department, of course. As far as I know, that’s it.” Owen looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.

“That should do it, sir.” Commander Curtis closed his notebook. “Thank you for your time. And please accept my condolences.”

“Can I ask you a question, Inspector?” Owen said. “How long are you going to leave her in there?”

“It should only be another hour or so.”

“You can’t move her out quicker than that? I’ve got a lot to do.”

Curtis appeared startled by Owen’s reaction. “We’re moving as quickly as we can, sir. Even after we’re done, you’ll want to give it a little time for the air to clear.”

No kidding. The place smelled worse than the pedestrian underpass from Kensington to Green Park, which is occupied by homeless bums who use no facilities but their pants.

I was so nervous he was going to ask me where I’d been over the weekend, I realized I hadn’t actually breathed during the entire session, and once he left the room, I gasped for air.

“Are you all right?” Owen said. “You’re white as a sheet.”

“Fine. It’s just sort of a shock.”

He shook his head with disgust. “She was a complete loser. What in the hell was she doing in here over the weekend? And how in the hell did she get into my office?”

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t let her in.”

What I didn’t mention, and I don’t know why, was that there is a private staircase to Owen’s office—it leads straight up from what looks to be a welded steel panel in the alley, behind the Dumpsters. It was so old and unused, I wasn’t even sure if Owen himself knew about it—I’d never mentioned it or shown it to him. The last person to use it, to my knowledge, had been Sir Cramner, years ago, trying to dodge his wife and her mother. Poor Sir Benjamin never used it— he’d had no one to hide from but himself.

T  W  E  N  T  Y  -  T  W  O

“I didn’t know Tina used drugs,” I said to Owen, who’d set up shop in the boardroom while the police wrapped up their work in his office, tucking Tina’s moldering corpse into a large black plastic bag and wheeling her onto the rear service elevator and out the back door. “I thought she was such a fitness nut.”

“There’s a lot you didn’t know about Tina. Drugs were just the tip of the iceberg.”

I wanted to say, Like what? But Owen didn’t volunteer.

“Look, Kick,” he continued. “About Friday night. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you with my half-assed pass. I won’t blame it on the champagne, I meant what I said, but I do apologize.” He handed me a section of the morning paper, folded to the daily gossip column. A paragraph was circled in red. “Get me invited to that.” His finger jabbed the item. “And get Gil on the phone . . . Please.”

The item was about a party to celebrate Mr. Ishmael Winthrop’s ninetieth birthday, to be held at his home in Mayfair. This is a side of the auction business that is somewhat unsavory: seeking out and befriending the old and infirm. Correction: The old, rich, and infirm. Beneath the industry’s veneer of class, and prestige, and privilege, churns a maelstrom of shameless ambulance chasing. It’s preferable to get to the prospects and their families before the dearly beloved is departed; therefore, auction house executives and experts spend an inordinate amount of time and money using their connections and wiles to get themselves invited to galas, parties, luncheons, dinners, house parties, and all manner of receptions: weddings, christenings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and funerals, where they will come into direct contact with their targets. Interestingly, this is not as difficult as it sounds. Most auction house experts, associates, and junior associates are from privileged backgrounds, which only makes sense. They are the people who’ve grown up around the collections and understand and appreciate their history and value. Furthermore, by hiring the scions, the auction house hopes that when their parents or grandparents die, those collections will come to their firm to be sold.

I put in a call to our eighteenth-century British maritime paintings expert, Philadelphia Singer, an attractive woman of about forty who was a grandniece of Mr. Winthrop, and made the request.

“Is it true?” Philadelphia said. “That Miss Romero is dead in Mr. Brace’s office?”

“Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately, it is.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“They were separated.”

It did sound pretty heartless, but heartless was in these days at Ballantine & Company. In fact, we were beyond heartless. Here in the second-floor executive suite, we were fast approaching take-no-prisoners. Cash was king.

She called back ten minutes later saying how much Mr. Winthrop’s family—his two daughters, Sheiglah Fullerton and Beverley Hughes, now both widowed—looked forward to including Mr. Brace and his companion at the soirée, two weeks from Friday.

Sheiglah Fullerton. The name rang a bell, and then I remembered. There had been a magazine piece about her: Her sport of choice was big-game hunting. She paid quadruple the going rate for regular safaris, because she went on ones where she could actually shoot the animals. She had all their heads and hides in a trophy room at her house.

“Miss Keswick.” Bertram emerged from his office. He’d missed just about the whole show. “What are all these people doing here?”

“I told you, Tina died.”

“You mean
here
?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good heavens. This is the kind of publicity we do not need.” He shook his head. “Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.”

Commander Curtis stepped forward and introduced himself. “I’d like a couple of minutes of your time, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means, Commander,” Bertram said with uncharacteristic warmth. “Come in. I see you’re wearing Magdalene colors.”

He closed the door behind them. Oxford. Old school ties.

Twenty minutes later, I took Curtis down and introduced him to our chief of security who, with his command post team of four, occupied a room behind the main staircase. Banks of screens monitored every entrance, exit, elevator, saleroom, exhibition room, and storeroom. Even restroom doors had cameras on them.

“This is impressive,” the commander observed.

“Tighter security than the Bank of England,” the chief boasted. “We can afford to keep our quaint public look because of our advanced security systems. Ms. Keswick makes sure we upgrade them every six months.”

They played through the tapes of the whole weekend, starting with five o’clock Friday. Our David-Niven-look-alike customer, who I suspected was the Samaritan Burglar, breezed through the metal detector chatting familiarly the whole time with a well-dressed couple. I could tell by their expressions they were trying to figure out where they knew him from.

“There’s Miss Romero,” the security chief said. “We had an old masters drawings auction Friday night, including a couple of Fra Bartolommeo studies. Bigger crowd than usual.”

“Which one is she?” Curtis studied the flow of blurs that filled the screen.

“You mean you can’t tell?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, she might as well have been from Mars she stood out so clearly from our regular customers.

The chief stopped the tape and tapped his finger on the monitor. “There, in the white mink coat and dark glasses coming through the metal detector.” He switched to another view of the foyer. “There she is going up the stairs, which wasn’t unusual. She usually went up to see Mr. Brace, but of course, he was gone by then. Don’t know why we didn’t catch this.”

The rest of the tapes of the weekend showed just what the guard had said: lots of experts and associates, eager and anxious to get started on the paperwork for the Carstairs estate. But no one, except Bertram, took the stairs to the second floor, and he must have gone up and down ten times on Friday night and Saturday. The rest of the staff used the elevators to the third floor, where their offices and workrooms were located.

Tina never came back down.

Commander Curtis and I told each other good-bye at the front door. He paused, and I knew he was trying to get up the nerve to invite me out. “Miss Keswick,” he said. “May I call you?”

“Call me?”

“Yes. Would you be interested in having a cup of coffee, or a drink, or a concert, with me sometime? Some off-duty time?”

“I think that would be lovely.”

His face lifted, and I could see the possibilities. A deep kindness resonated in his war-torn eyes. “Good. I’ll be in touch.”

I hadn’t ever been invited out by a police officer, much less a commander, and now probably wasn’t the time to start. But, on the other hand, there was something so genuine and fine about this man, if he really did call, I wasn’t sure if I’d say no.

“Don’t forget you have lunch with Gil,” I told Owen later in the morning after the place had cleared out. I’d opened the windows in his office and called a company that specialized in cleanup and fumigating after “unnatural” incidents. I can’t imagine making my living in such a business. I shudder to think of the things they must see. “You’re meeting him at Mark’s.”

“Right.”

“And Owen, there’re lots of media people around, so try to look a little somber. If you go out there looking all happy, it’ll be bad for business.”

“Right. Maybe I should stay put. Have Gil come here.”

“Can if you want to, but people would like a little peek at the grieving widower, especially by our brass sign at the gate.”

He looked at me, his mentor, and guide. “Right,” he said. I could tell he thought we truly were birds of a feather. But he didn’t have a nest egg worth the powder to blow it to hell, and I was getting ready to fly the coop.

Owen left, passing through a flood of flash and television lights, his raincoat draped around his shoulders, no dark glasses. Once he was safely away, I went into his office, locking the door behind me, and over to the secret door that led to the private staircase. If you were searching for it, you could find it. It was simply a section of the paneled wall on an invisible spring catch. A series of prints hung on the panel, and a chair and side table were arranged in front of it. As far as I could tell, the furniture hadn’t been moved, the dents in the carpet were where they should be under the chair and table legs. I lifted them aside. The door opened easily, and I clicked on the light switch at the top of the miniscule landing. We all see what we’re looking for, but I wasn’t sure what that was. As far as I could tell, the door hadn’t been opened in years. Or maybe it had been used over the weekend. I had no idea. I closed it up, put the furniture back where it went, and went about my lunch-hour business.

Outdoors, the air was crisp and invigorating, just what I needed to clear my head, and after a brisk, ten-minute, zigzag march, I arrived at Forty-six South Carriage Square, a quiet spot whose grand old mansions front on Park Lane near Stanhope Gate. Number Forty-six happened to be the residence of Sheiglah Winthrop Fullerton, sixty-six-year-old daughter of Ishmael Winthrop. Sheiglah would be out for sure on Friday night two weeks hence, celebrating her father’s ninetieth.

I brought along the crossword from the morning paper, a small Thermos of coffee, and a sandwich of Camembert and Delia Smith’s fresh date and apple chutney—which is a no-brainer to make and has just enough cayenne bite to keep it interesting—all pressed tightly together on my homemade nut bread. This really is a most delicious combination, very healthful and filling unless you’re watching your carbohydrates, and then all you would want to eat would be the Camembert. I chose a bench in Hyde Park across the street with a good view of the house and started to get to know it a little bit.