Cold Hit (35 page)

Preston Mattox crossed his arms and leaned against the sill. Something he thought of brought a smile to his face. “I almost gave up on Deni before I got started. For a while it wasn’t Lowell’s shadow that got in the way, it was Wrenley’s. Everywhere we went, he’d been there with Deni first. Just your mention of Marco Varelli reminded me how unreasonable I’d been about it. I’d been introduced to the man any number of times, but that last afternoon we were up in his studio, Deni and I walked in with a bottle of wine and some
biscotti
and he embraced me in a bear hug, calling me ‘Franco.’ Instead of correcting
him
, I took it out on Deni as soon as we left, asking her what the hell she’d been doing there with Frank.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“I’m not sure she ever gave me an answer, Mr. Chapman. As with most of our arguments, she got me over them by taking me home to make love. I knew she and Wrenley had been doing the auction scene together, so it made sense that they had taken some work to Varelli to be cleaned up or restored. I just didn’t like following in his footsteps wherever we went. But I didn’t answer the question you asked, did I, Miss Cooper?

“Yes,” he went on, “I was confident that I’d be spending the rest of my life with Deni. I can’t tell you how extraordinarily happy that made me.”

“Why had you gone to see Varelli that day?”

“Because Deni asked me to. Simple as that. He’d been mad at her about something, she wouldn’t tell me what. So she wanted to take him a gift for his wife, smoke the peace pipe together — that sort of thing. I suppose I was an intermediary. She knew he liked to talk to me about my work — and that I could hold my own, whether it was about the architectural principles of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Jefferson or about drawings and art.”

Chapman didn’t care about the dome on the Rotunda. “What was the gift that Deni took for Mrs. Varelli?”

Again Mattox hesitated before lifting his head to meet Chapman’s stare. “It was a necklace, Detective. An amber necklace. But I suppose you knew that already. I imagine you found the small figurine that Deni left behind, and that Mrs. Varelli told you the story.”

Neither of us responded to his statement.

“I take it the peace offering didn’t go very well, did it?”

“Varelli was furious.” Mattox seemed to be open with us, having convinced himself that Varelli had told the story of the encounter to his wife. I guessed that he did not even recall that the soft-spoken young apprentice, Don Cannon, had been in the room when the beads were presented. “He assumed that the amber was part of Lowell’s secret cache of looted Nazi riches. The old guy didn’t even want to hold the necklace in his hands.”

“Isn’t that the truth, though? Isn’t that the source of the amber?”

“Hardly, Mr. Chapman. All of us who’ve been looking for the Amber Room have combed the Baltic coast for years. In Lowell’s case, for half a century, if you can imagine that. We’ve each come back with bits and pieces — the area is rich with amber. There are places along the coast where you can pick up chunks of it right on the beach. But no one really knows whether the great room was destroyed in some wartime bombing or is buried in one of the quarries that treasure seekers are constantly drilling.”

“How about the rumors that Lowell Caxton has smuggled half the remains out of Europe and re-created the palace room in some hideaway in the Pennsylvania countryside?”

“And that’s why I had latched on to Mrs. Caxton, Mr. Chapman? I’ve heard that one, too. If you could have seen Deni throw back her head and roar at those stories — and the nonsense that she and Lowell had used this mini Amber Room for their trysts — well, then you would have seen the woman I adored. She liked to fuel those absurd tales when she heard they were circulating. The more bold and bizarre, the more it pleased her. She loved outrage, Detective, and if she was at the center of it she loved it even more.”

“Were those the only jewels from Lowell that Deni wanted to give away?” I asked, referring to the amber beads.

“Lowell?” Mattox said with some surprise. “I don’t think she was parting with anything
he
gave her. His gifts to her were pretty substantial.”

“Then why the amber?”

“Those pieces weren’t from Lowell.”

I was sure Don Cannon had repeated that as part of Deni’s explanation when she tried to hand Varelli the necklace.

Mattox thought for a moment. “You know, you’re right, though. She told Marco they had been given to her by Lowell.” Now he looked up at me. “But you see, that was part of the game she liked to play. By implication she’d let people assume they were part of Lowell’s collection. Knowing Deni, she thought it would titillate old Marco to think there really was an Amber Room and that she and Lowell had cavorted in it. She and Varelli may have talked about it on other occasions — I simply don’t know that.”

“But she wouldn’t take anything fake to give Varelli,” I said. “I realize that his specialty was paint and artworks, but he had such a great eye. People tell us he had a unique sense of touch, and could identify the age of artworks so precisely. She wouldn’t pass off something to him as an antique or a valuable if she was trying to appease him, would she?”

“The necklace and figurine were genuine, Miss Cooper. Very old and very fine amber. The Baltic region is full of great pieces. It’s just that these things had absolutely nothing to do with the mysterious Russian palace and its amber. Deni may have tried to create that impression, but she knew damn well where the pieces came from.”

“And what was that?” Chapman asked.

“The necklace had been commissioned by King Wilhelm of Prussia for his queen. And the figurine as well. Sold at auction in Geneva several years ago. Can’t remember the price they brought, but it was quite high.”

“And Lowell bought them for Deni?”

“No, no.” Mattox seemed bothered that we hadn’t followed his point. “Deni only
said
she had gotten them from Lowell. Actually, they were a gift to her from a friend.”

“You know who he was?” “

She
, Detective. From a woman called Marina Sette.”

“Pretty nice stocking stuffer,” Mike said.

It seemed even more curious that Deni would relinquish something that her closest friend had given to her. I still had every note card and silly souvenir that Nina or Joan had ever sent me, not to mention the more serious gifts. “But why would she get rid of something so precious, from someone she liked so much?”

Preston Mattox looked at me with a curious glance. “Liked so much? They hadn’t talked to each other in a long time.”

Chapman spoke before I did. “I thought they were best pals.”

“I don’t know what gave you that idea. They used to be quite close, but they had a terrible falling-out this spring. I don’t think Deni had returned Marina’s calls in months.”

“What was that about, do you know?”

“The only person who thought she had a greater entitlement to Lowell Caxton’s fortune than Denise did was Marina Sette. Deni came to believe that the primary reason Marina had befriended her in the first place was to work herself back into the inheritance — the fortune that would have been Marina’s had her mother not abandoned her when she married Lowell. There was nothing logical about Marina’s position. I doubt she has a leg to stand on in a court of law. But I think it was more of an emotional attempt to regain some connection to the mother she never knew, by claiming that she had a right to some of the masterpieces acquired during the period her mother was married to Lowell Caxton.”

“Seems to me there was more than enough money to go around,” Chapman murmured.

“But they’d never argued about that before?” I asked.

“It never was an issue with Deni before this spring. But then, once she suspected that Marina Sette had been sleeping with Frank Wrenley, it became more than an issue. It was the end of the friendship. The worm turned.”

Mercer Wallace lifted his head off the pile of pillows as we entered the room and gave us a weak but warm greeting. The nurse who helped feed him his dinner — still a liquid diet — was moving the tray off the bedside table as we settled in around the patient.

Chapman grabbed the television remote control panel dangling from a cord on Mercer’s bed railing and pointed it at the small set that was hanging from a support in the corner.

“Too early,” Mercer said, laughing. It was only six thirty-five, and he thought that Mike was looking for the
Jeopardy
! channel. “Let me hear what’s going on.”

Mike kept clicking until the screen was set on NBC and the national news report. “Don’t you want to see Cooper’s guy? Has he got a live shoot tonight, kid? Whoops, looks like Brian Williams has the anchor spot.” He muted the sound and asked Mercer how he felt.

“I don’t remember much about yesterday. Pain’s under control, and they even had me out of bed for an hour this afternoon. One lap around the hallway.”

“There he is!” Mike said, rising from his armchair and walking to stand directly under the television set. “Gimme volume, Mercer.”

Jake was standing on First Avenue, in front of the United Nations building, and he was midsentence when I heard his voice: “… after the secretary of state and the delegate from…”

Mike’s pen was in his right hand, held up against the screen and tapping at Jake’s chest. “Here’s the thing, Mercer. The reason you and I will never get to first base with Ms. Cooper is that we don’t have these ties that all her beaux wear, know what I mean? Every one of ’em has these itsy-bitsy, teenyweeny little friggin’ animals all over ’em. Grown men, and they got little squirrels runnin’ around with nuts in their cheeks, sheep jumping over fences, monkeys swingin’ on vines, giraffes standing on tippy-toe. I would be mortified to be here on national television, talkin’ about sending troops to the Middle East, decked out in some French necktie — what do you call them, Coop? Hermies or Hermans or Ermies — something like that. Anyway, the thing is, Mercer, that it
works
. ’Cause whatever it is about those ties, every one of the goofballs who shows up wearing one of ’em gets laid.

“Am I right, blondie? Ever do a simple guy with a striped tie? I doubt it. I’m telling you, if Alex Trebek walked in with one of these on, she’d go down on him like a pelican, wouldn’t you, kid? You wanna predict who Cooper’s gonna get up close and personal with, you check out the tie. That, my good friend, is my Dick Tracy crimestopper clue of the day.”

Mercer was holding his hand over his chest. “Don’t make me laugh, Mike. Somebody want to tell me what’s going on with the case?”

“First of all, forget that you ever saw Alex tonight. Pat McKinney’s riding her pretty hard. Doesn’t want her to visit with you, so you don’t talk about the facts of the case together.”

Mercer looked across at me to see if Mike was still kidding. “It’s true. He’s afraid we’re going to conspire and rearrange the events if we talk to each other. I spent three hours last night giving my statement. I’m sure they got one from you today, as soon as you opened your eyes. I don’t know what he’s so worried about.”

“They were here. Two guys from Major Case, first thing this morning. They said they’re taking you back over to the scene later in the week.”

“Yes,” I said, hoping that my involuntary shudder at the thought of revisiting the gallery hadn’t been visible to Mike or Mercer.

“That is one spooky exhibit,” Mike said. “I stopped there this morning on my way to the hospital the first time. Kind of reminds me of that great Orson Welles scene in
Lady From Shanghai
— the shoot-out in the fun house? Only thing missing was the mirrors. Listen to this.”

Mike pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pants pocket. “They’re already moving a new show into Caxton Due. Somebody probably needed all that friggin’ yarn to make a sweater. I’m reading right from the description Bryan Daughtry wrote. It’s in
New York
magazine . ‘The artist affixes hardened blobs of paint and scraps of paper, hair, and other scavenged materials to her monochromatic canvases.’ I’m looking forward to wrapping this case up so I can go back to working something real, like a pickpocket detail.”

Mercer winced as he tried to push himself up in bed. I moved to his side to adjust the pillows behind his back and beneath his head. I grabbed one of his enormous arms and pulled on it as gently as I could, but was unable to move him. Mike got on the other side, and together we raised Mercer so that his head rested in a more comfortable position.

“Watch out for the tubes,” I said to Mike, lifting the IV drip from where it was caught under a roll of bedsheet.

“Else you’ll get
strangulated
on all those concoctions, Mr. Wallace. That’s a word for the
S
section of my dictionary. I got to jot that one down. ‘Fixiated’ — that goes with the
F
’s, not the
A
’s — and ‘strangulated’ are two very popular causes of death among perps.”

“Have mercy, will you please, Mr. Chapman? I’m supposed to be lying here very still. Don’t make me get up and have to hurt you.”

We spent the next half hour telling Mercer what we had learned from Don Cannon and Preston Mattox. “Who do you like in all this?” he asked.

Mike shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing and nobody is like what you’d think they’d be. Me, I always thought the international art world was for the elegant and elite. Classy, calm, sedate, cultured. I’m tellin’ you, there are more lowlifes in
this
business than all the Hannibal Lecter wanna-bes in the world.”

“Between the fakes and the frauds, and centuries of thefts and misrepresentations, I can’t imagine now how anyone sets a value that can be trusted on any painting,” I added. It was odd that for so many of the people we had encountered, their passions had become obsessions, and their lives as illusory as their art.

Mike reached for the clicker and raised the volume again. “Okay, the Final Jeopardy topic is Sports. Way to go. I’m in for fifty dollars. Partners, Mercer?” Mike gave him a thumbs-up and got a wink in response. “Get your money up, Coop.”