China Trade (19 page)

“You know a lot of Irish maids?”

“Doesn’t everybody? What’s Mrs. Blair’s number?”

I gave it to him. He pushed back his chair and went to the pay phone.

“Okay,” he said, sitting down again. “I have a date with Rosie O’Malley at nine.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That she was beautiful as a summer’s evenin’, that her eyes were like the sparklin’ waters of home.”

“You didn’t.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d fall for that kind of stuff.”

“She didn’t. So I said I was a p.i., I’d like to ask her some questions, and I’d buy her a beer.”

“That worked better?”

“It usually does.”

He went back to his coffee. “Leaving her brother out of this,” he said between sips, “the guy Mrs. Blair doesn’t seem to be on such good terms with is Roger Caldwell.”

“You picked that up too?” I asked. “I wonder why.”

“And I wonder why, if it’s true, he was over at her place yesterday.”

“Maybe we should ask him.”

“Maybe we should.”

“But if they’re not on good terms,” I broke off a crumbly
piece of scone, “why did she try to consult him about the collection when Mr. Blair died?”

“Who says she did? Maybe that was just to throw us off.”

“Could be. You think she’s that sneaky?”

“I don’t know her. The only Chinese women I know well are you and your mother.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s your point?”

“I wouldn’t dare make one.”

He grinned. I dabbed crème fraîche on my pebble of scone. “What do you suppose it’s about, her and Dr. Caldwell?” I mused. “The pieces her husband beat him out for at auctions?”

“That sounds to me like a reason for Caldwell to carry a grudge, not Mrs. Blair.”

“Well, maybe it worked the other way too. Maybe he snarfed up some soup bowl Mr. Blair’s heart was set on.”

“For a woman not involved in the collection, it seems pretty heartless to dislike him over a soup bowl.”

“Not involved in the collection. But very involved with her husband. Suppose he’d wanted something very badly, and Dr. Caldwell had stolen it.”

“Literally?”

“Well, no. But used some seriously dishonorable means to get his hands on it. I’ll bet that would have upset her, if it upset him.”

“Possible. But you know, it didn’t sound to me as though
Mr
. Blair had a lot of trouble with Caldwell. She said they consulted sometimes.”

“True.” I finished my tea, noticing that I ached, wishing I didn’t, or, if I had to, that I could do it home in bed. “I don’t know, maybe she just doesn’t like his cologne. But I can’t get over the feeling that there’s something real there.”

“I think so, too,” Bill said. “I think there is. We just haven’t figured out what, yet.”

* * *

Our visit to the Morpheus Gallery was short, because Franco Ciardi’s little tidbit of information was short, though very interesting.

The gallery was a hushed, white-walled space on Madison, three square rooms at the top of a flight of carpeted stairs. The glow of the bare wood floor, the tranquil oil-painted landscapes, and the refined sounds of a string quartet gave you the sense that this was a warm, calm refuge from the scurrying and the chill outside.

Of course, all the paintings had price tags, and the string quartet was on CD, available at Tower for $14.95.

“Smith, my boy!” Ciardi, a sharp-nosed man in his fifties, beamed as we walked through his glossy door. “I would have closed, but I waited for you.”

He said this modestly, as though waiting for us was some impressively generous act he didn’t want any fuss made over.

“Uh-huh,” Bill said. “Franco, this is Lydia Chin.”

“Enchanted.” Ciardi turned the beam on me. It was like being caught in someone’s headlights; I wondered if he could turn it down. “Absolutely enchanted.”

I murmured something I hoped was enchanting. Ciardi squeezed my hand meaningfully, though I had no idea what it meant. Bill wandered into the room, stood in front of one of the landscapes. Ciardi looked his way.

“Oh, don’t waste your eyes, dear boy. Marvels of mediocrity, very popular with the matrons.” He winked at me. I had no idea what the wink meant, either. “Still, one must make a living.”

“In all sorts of ways,” Bill said, turning back to him. “You called me?”

“Certainly. I certainly did. About your porcelains. Come sit down.”

He showed us to the corner where his desk angled, to two highly finished wooden chairs with needlepoint seats. He perched himself against the graceful, curved-legged desk, folded his arms, beamed some more.

“So what’s the story, Franco?” Bill asked. “Someone try to sell some hot porcelain to a friend of a friend of yours?”

“No. No no no. Your pieces aren’t on the market, as far as I know. Not, of course, that I would have any real way of knowing that sort of thing. Only what I inadvertently hear, that’s all.”

“Of course that’s all,” Bill said in total agreement. “So why are we here?”

“Well,” Ciardi hugged himself a little closer, with the look of a man about to share a delicious piece of gossip, “the point, the point about your porcelains is, someone else is looking for them.”

Bill and I glanced at each other; then I said, “Who?”

“Ah,” Ciardi said. “Unfortunately, I don’t actually know.”

“If you don’t know who, how do you know he’s looking?” Bill asked.

“He was here,” Ciardi said triumphantly. “But he gave me a false name. Never con a con man, dear boy. I looked him up as soon as he left.”

“When was this? What was he like?” That was me.

“It was early this morning. Early in the art world, that is: before ten. He was, if I may say so, like the pair of you: He claimed to be a private investigator. That may be true. But he also claimed his name was Jim Johnson, which sounded phony enough to be true—sort of like ‘Bill Smith,’ dear boy—but it wasn’t.”

“You checked?” Bill asked.

“Thoroughly. Although he showed me a license that looked very like yours, no one bearing that name is licensed to ply your trade in this great state. Or the surrounding colonies.”

“What did he look like?”

“A very average gentleman. Brown hair, brown eyes, five foot nine or ten.”

“Did he wear a hat?” I broke in.

“A hat?” Ciardi seemed delighted at the randomness of the question. “He didn’t. No hat.”

“The guy following me,” I said to Bill. “It could be him.” To Ciardi I said, “What did he want?”

“He wanted porcelains. Chinese export porcelains, though,” turning his eyes to Bill, “I have even less faith that he had any idea what that meant than that you do, dear boy. But he described some pieces, rather vaguely. His descriptions were too similar to the photographs you showed me for coincidence.”

“He said they were stolen?”

“He did. From his client, who, he implied, would be willing to pay for their return.”

“How did he get to you?” Bill wanted to know.

“My dear Smith, do you think I’m your personal trade secret? One has a reputation, you know.”

“I’m sure one has. Did he leave you any way to get in touch with him?”

“No.” Ciardi gave himself a moment, to add to the drama. Then he said, “He told me, however, that he would be calling me.”

“Franco,” Bill said, “this is fascinating. Did you send him to the Kurtz also?”

“That,” Ciardi seemed affronted, “I would not have done.”

“Not for free, anyway,” Bill said.

“Most certainly not for free. You and I, after all, have a history. This is a gentleman I don’t know. However, as it happens, he’d already been there.”

“To the Kurtz?” I asked.

“He asked me about the Kurtz. Whether I’d heard of them acquiring porcelains lately. I had to say I hadn’t, and he said that’s what they had told him, too, but he’d wanted to make sure it was true. Unfortunately I couldn’t enlighten him further.” Ciardi beamed at us. “Have I been useful?”

“Franco, you’re invaluable,” Bill said. “Tell me one more thing. In your line of work, have you come across an importer named Lee Kuan Yue? Lee’s his last name.”

Ciardi rolled his eyes. “My dear boy, I’m well acquainted
with the Chinese custom of placing the family name first. A quite sensible way to proceed, actually.” He smiled and bowed to me. “No, I don’t believe I’ve heard the name.”

“You wouldn’t expect him to be interested in our stolen porcelains?”

“I have no reason to, no.”

“How about Hsing Chung Wah?” I asked.

“I’ve not heard of this gentleman, either. Is this case of yours turning out to be a far-flung international conspiracy? It’s beginning to sound quite fun.”

“Not fun, Franco,” said Bill, standing. “This sort of case is never fun.”

“My dear boy, I’m sorry to hear that,” Ciardi answered as I stood also. “One’s joy and one’s reputation are quite everything in life.”

T
W E N T Y - O N E

O
kay,” I said to Bill as we stood on the windy corner below the Morpheus Gallery. “I think it’s time to go to the Kurtz Museum and find out what’s going on around here.”

“Misguided optimism is one of your most adorable characteristics.”

“Get lost. But before you do, do you have any aspirin?”

“You have a headache?”

“I have an ache everyplace. Don’t sympathize,” I cut him off. “You’ll make me feel sorry for myself.”

“You have a right.”

“But I don’t want to. You don’t think Steve Bailey’s big news will make all this crystal clear?”

From his look I got the idea there was something he
wanted to say, but he didn’t say it. He shrugged. “So far everything we’ve learned today has just made it murkier. Here’s a drugstore; I’ll treat you to some aspirin.”

We bought aspirin and a seltzer to down them with. Bill looked at me critically while I drank.

“You do look beat,” he said. “Let’s take a cab to the museum.”

I was going to protest that it wasn’t that far, which it wasn’t; normally it would have been a nice brisk walk through the winter evening. Right now, though, the thought of slogging all the way to the Kurtz made me feel like a sled dog on the last day of the Iditarrod race.

“We’ll be early,” I said. “Do you care?”

“What’s a little bad manners compared to protecting the health of your partner, the vigor of your companion, the bloom in the cheeks of your—”

“Taxi!” I hollered, stepping into the street.

The cab dropped us a block down from the Kurtz; Bill and I think alike about that. Probably because I learned it from him.

As we approached the limestone building it seemed cozy and inviting, a soft light glowing from the third-floor window and another over the broad front door. Catching our breath in the wind charging out of the park, we climbed the stoop, and this time I rang the bell, seeing myself just for a moment as a daughter of New York’s glittering turn-of-the-century society paying a social call.

Then I saw something else.

The door was ajar.

“Bill?” From watching the street, Bill turned, looked where I was pointing, at the thin dark shadow line between door and frame. We exchanged glances.

“Ring it again,” he said. I rang the bell again. No one came.

“It’s not normal, is it?” I asked. “For a closed museum to be open?”

“No.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s not breaking and entering if the door is open. And it’s not trespassing if we were invited.”

“Sounds right to me.”

We could, of course, have called the police then. The museum is closed and the door is open, we’d have said; some thing’s wrong. But I was still hoping, then, to keep the police and this case apart.

And maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe Steve was just waiting upstairs, and the door hadn’t quite caught when he’d closed it, and he hadn’t heard the bell.

So we pushed the door open, silent on its heavy brass hinges, and we went in.

The downstairs lights were off, but enough light filtered in from the streetlights outside the high windows for us to see our way. I shut the door behind us, and I locked it.

“Wouldn’t you expect a museum to have an alarm system?” I whispered to Bill.

“I’m sure they do.”

“Wouldn’t you expect it to be on?”

“Not if there’s someone here and they haven’t actually closed up yet.”

We looked at each other. “There’s a light on upstairs,’ Bill said.

“What are you suggesting?”

He shrugged. So did I. We went upstairs.

The light we had seen from outside was in the third-floor windows of the director’s office. The dim outlines of glass cases shimmered in the pale glow from the streetlights. The pad of our footsteps on the marble stairs disappeared into the carpeted silence of the second floor.

The stairs from the second floor up were dark polished wood; they creaked under us. Beside me, Bill reached into his jacket, softly withdrew his gun. My hand was already on the .22 in my pocket.

On the third floor, light spilled onto the carpet from the
half-opened door of the director’s suite. Soundlessly, we moved toward it, took up positions on either side of the door.

Bill looked at me; I nodded.

He kicked the door wide. We both went in, crouching, guns up, each covering half the room and each other’s backs.

We didn’t need to.

The room was a disaster. Drawers were dumped, computers smashed, papers everywhere. Shards of a broken computer screen sparkled in the light of the lamp. And next to the lamp, as wrong and unmoving as everything else, lay Trish Atherton, lamplight glinting off her golden hair and off the blood, still fresh, that soaked her beautiful silk blouse.

My bones went cold.

Bill stood, looked at me. He nodded toward the door into Caldwell’s inner office. On autopilot, .22 ready, I stepped back to where I could see both that door and the hall one. Bill toed the inner door open, waited. He stepped inside, made a quick trip through the room and out again.

“No one here,” he said. He crouched by Trish, put two fingers to the side of her throat. The carotid artery, I thought uselessly, one eye on him, one on the hall doorway. That’s what’s in the throat. That’s what throbs, moves, pulses more than once a second, every second of your life. She’d need an ambulance. Call an ambulance, Lydia.