Dusted (6 page)

“Do you mind if we speak to them?”

She smiled. “Of course not. They’re in the yellow house next door.”

“Mrs. Neilson, does anyone else have keys to your house, and the code to security?”

“A few people, but no one who would do something like this.”

Dick didn’t ask, so I did, “Could you make us a list?”

“Yes,” she said. “Would you both like some cookies? They’re fresh out of the oven.”

Which is exactly what Mrs. Santa Claus would say.

“So what do you think?” I asked Dick as we walked next door.

“Mrs. Neilson is genuinely bewildered by the forgery. And Mr. Neilson loves her.”

“Yes, I got the same impressions.”

I scanned the list of names of people who had keys to her house. Different security company. Different friends. The only name in common was Mac’Cleaners.

Boogers.

We knocked repeatedly on Mr. and Mrs. Delafoy’s door. Minutes later when the older woman finally opened it, I had to agree with Mrs. Neilson’s opinion. There was no way Mrs. Delafoy could have climbed a ladder and taken the picture down, then replaced it with the forgery and rehung it, even if Mrs. Neilson had been gone for a couple days.

I don’t think she could have managed it if Mrs. Neilson had been gone for a couple years.

Add to that, Mrs. Delafoy hadn’t seen anything unusual in the last few months. The Neilson’s friends had been in and out when they’d been on vacation, but she didn’t remember seeing anyone doing anything suspicious or unusual. She didn’t remember anyone carrying anything into the house.

“Well, that was a dead end,” I muttered as we left.

“Quincy, when you investigated who killed Mr. Banning, you didn’t find out immediately. You went down a lot of dead end alleys and collected a lot of information until everything fell in place. I think that’s how a real-life investigation has to work. There’s no such thing as bad information. You collected a bunch of random pieces that don’t seem to mean anything, until finally you put enough of them together and voila.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. When I was working on Mr. Banning’s murder, I realized that as a maid I earn my living organizing things, and as an amateur detective, I organized information until it made sense.”

“I think that’s why the white-board works so well for you. You keep adding to the information. Eventually you have enough to see the bigger picture.”

“Do you see a bigger picture?” I asked.

“I see questions. Why did someone steal the artwork?” Dick asked.

“Probably money? I mean, it seems to me most crimes are for the money, so it’s a safe bet.”

“Yes, that seems to be the motivation for most thefts. But then why go to the trouble of replacing it with forgeries?” he mused. “I can see ripping off the art, but replacing it? That adds a whole other degree of difficulty.”

There was only one answer I could think of. “They replaced the stolen art with forgeries so no one would notice it was gone. One victim bought the paintings merely because they went with her décor and as an investment. The other didn’t really know much about abstract art, if the rest of her collection is any indication.”

“So, whoever stole the artwork would have to know that about the victims.” Dick paused and asked, “How about the third victim?”

“I haven’t been able to connect with her yet,” I admitted.

“Then when you do, we’ll visit her and we’ll have a better idea of what the commonalities between the three crimes are.”

“I hope so, because right now, the only similarity I see is Mac’Cleaners.”

On Wednesday, I went into work for the morning, then I came home in order to meet Peri for lunch.

Tiny and I felt that one of us should be in the office during business hours, but most days nothing required both of us all day, so we frequently traded off the duty.

It was wonderful when the boys were younger. I was able to volunteer at school and chaperone field trips.

As they said in Mel Brook’s
History of the World
, ‘
It’s good to be the king.
’ Or queen as the case may be. Or I guess chief maid.

I got home five minutes before Peri was supposed to arrive.

I didn’t stress about cutting it close—Peri is always late.

Always.

And I’m not talking simply minutes late, I’m talking sometimes hours. Once she was a day late.

I am a punctual person by nature, so you’d think it would annoy me that she had never once showed up on time for anything. She was even late to her wedding to Jerome. But honestly, if you met Peri you’d realize it’s impossible to be annoyed with her. It would be like being annoyed with a puppy or kitten.

It would be like being annoyed when the sun was shining, or there was a rainbow over your house.

It would be like being annoyed when you had a gallon of ice cream and a box of wine in front of you.

Basically, it was impossible.

Peri was sweet and had a sunny disposition. I mean, she was so freakin’ happy about everything that I marveled at it. When I first met her, I thought it might be a façade. Later, I thought it might be medication. But over the last couple years I’ve learned that was just Peri. She is sunshine and glee personified.

So, while I waited, I checked in on the boys who had early dismissal—yet another good reason for coming home early. Seriously, I love my boys and think the three of them have very good, level heads on their respective shoulders especially for Hollywood kids. But that doesn’t mean I leave them unsupervised for long.

Marvel upon marvels they were both doing homework.

“We’ve got practice in a half hour,” Miles announced as I stood in his doorway. “The show starts on Friday. You didn’t forget, did you?”

“No,” I assured him. I wanted to walk over to him and ruffle his hair, but I knew the unkempt look he was currently sporting took him a long time to create, so I settled for patting his shoulder. “I won’t forget. Aunt Tiny, Sal, and Cal will be there, too.”

It was the first time I said Tiny’s fiancé’s name and my boyfriend’s name together. They rhymed, I realized. I decided not to combine them again in a single sentence if I could help it.

“Say goodbye before you leave,” I said.

“We will. I can’t wait till this is over,” he muttered more to himself than me as I let myself out of his room. I recognized the sentiment. My ex-husband was a producer and when he was in the thick of a project he frequently muttered the same thing. He’d tell me he was going to go into another line of work—maybe a dentist.

I have no idea why dentist, other than in Hollywood a good set of teeth was important. I knew that better than most. I was almost the ad woman for Dazzling Smile Toothpaste because of my good teeth. My smile wasn’t what sunk the campaign, the arsenic in the toothpaste was.

As I checked on my youngest, he just waved to me without really looking up. He was my comedian on any given day. But today was obviously not a given day. Despite his class clown status, Eli was a straight A student. Juggling his studies with the play was hard work and he took it seriously.

I went into Hunter’s room and reminisced about the days when I was everything to my three boys. Now, Hunter was away at college, and the other two boys would soon follow. I was just a blip in their life now, and I would be even less of a blip someday as they married and had kids of their own.

I suddenly felt old, but I didn’t have time to feel bad that my kids were growing up. I had a case to solve. I stared at my white-board and made notes.

Dick was right. There was a lot of information there. They were small pieces in the greater puzzle. I just needed to figure out how they all fit together. Pictures of the forged art. The map of the houses that had been stolen from. The clients’ names.

Theresa’s name in the center.

I sat down on Hunter’s bed and studied the board.

Different artists’ work had been stolen—although to me, all the forged paintings looked the same.

I looked at my attempt at copying Kirchoff’s painting.

Mine wouldn’t fool anyone, not even someone who bought their art because it complemented their décor. But with practice and slightly more talent than I apparently had, I could see how reproducing the stolen art was possible. More than that, it was plausible.

All the paintings in question had very few elements. A slash of color here. A dot of color there. Maybe a big blob.

Neither of the owners I’d talked to seemed particularly well versed in the intricacies of abstract art.

Other than Mac’Cleaners, I hadn’t found anyone who had access to both homes.

What about someone who knew people on both lists? Someone who could have taken spare keys?

But then how would they know about the art inside?

The doorbell rang.

“Boogers,” I muttered. It was becoming my current favorite fake swear word. I sometimes used
shut the front door
, too. But I found
boogers
more swearish.

I put aside my questions and went to let Peri in. She was bringing lunch from my friend Honey’s restaurant,
Psst
.

“I am so ready for some—” I started to say, but cut myself off as the theme from
Jaws
played in my head.

“Mom?”

I should apologize to the movie
Jaws
for comparing my mother to that huge shark that wanted to devour everything. My mother wasn’t a shark that wanted to eat everything in her path, but she was a woman with a forceful spirit who knew what she wanted and tended to get it.

What she’d always wanted was for me to conform to the family standards.

Alas, at least where I was concerned, her wants didn’t matter. I was the black sheep in the family. I was the one person that she’d never been able to mold to her will. It meant for an occasionally contentious relationship. Oh, we loved each other, but we didn’t normally understand each other.

“Quincy, I wouldn’t have thought to look for you here at home, but when I rang you at the office, Tiny said you took the afternoon off?”

There was censure in her voice. Mom was my height, five five-ish, and she had my fair Irish complexion. But her grey-streaked dark hair was always perfect. Mine was rarely even presentable. She’d had three children and still had a taut, toned figure. I was soft in the middle…and around the edges, too, if I were being honest. Somehow my mother seemed bigger than she was. As if when she entered a room or house, she took up all the space.

I was pretty sure I didn’t have that quality.

“Mom, what are you doing in LA?” My family was from Erie, Pennsylvania, a medium-sized city that sat on the shore of the Great Lake that shared its name. They could have had their pick of cities and hospitals, because well, with no false modesty I can say they’re brilliant. Really, if I needed surgery, I’d want my mom to do it.

But despite the fact they could have practiced anywhere, they stayed in Erie. They would tell you it was a practical matter. Erie was only two hours from Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. It was six hours or less to cities like Philadelphia, DC, or New York. There was an airport there and some wonderful hospitals.

The other members of my family would explain staying in Erie in those kind of practical terms. In reality, they loved the town. Despite the fact I’d moved to LA, so did I. I missed the lake, the bayfront and I really missed the peninsula, Presque Isle. No matter where I lived, Erie would always be home to me.

But my mom would never admit she stayed because of that kind of love. She didn’t talk in emotional terms.

So if I wanted surgery, I’d go to my mother but if I wanted someone to cuddle with, I’d go find the family dog.

Judith Quincy Mac was not a cuddly sort—not about her city or her daughter.

“That is a lovely, and oh-so welcoming greeting.
Mom, what are you doing in LA?
Not,
Mom, it’s so good to see you
. Or,
Mom, what a pleasant surprise
.” She sighed the sigh of the truly put-upon. “Are you going to invite me in, or shall I simply stand here on your porch all afternoon?”

“Of course. Come in,” I said, opening the door.

“And to answer your question, I’m here to see one of my grandson’s acting debut and the other’s directorial debut, of course.”

“Oh.”
Please, say you’re not staying here. Please, please, please…
I chanted it in my mind and crossed my fingers.

“Don’t look so worried. I’m not staying with you.”

I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief as I let out the breath I’d been holding, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I let it out slowly and as unsighingly as possible.

“Hunter’s gone so we have an extra bed if you’d like to,” I said with daughterly duty.

Say no
, I chanted in my head.
Say no. Say no. Say
—

“Why that would be lovely, Quincy. After we visit, I’ll go check out of the hotel.” My mom beamed at me.

“That sounds fine,” I said trying to resign myself to the idea of having my mother stay with me for a week. “Other than the play, do you have plans?”

“I plan to spend time with you, of course,” she said as if that were some forgone conclusion, though finding time for her kids had never been one of my mother’s driving forces. “And I’ve made arrangements to do some presentations at hospitals in the area. I’m doing a new study about.…”

Yes, I immediately zoned out. Whenever the family started talking medicine, I immediately made myself mentally invisible. Oh, I could glom onto bits of information. For instance, there was a certain family dinner right before I moved to LA where they all talked about colonoscopies and some new insights. I tried to block that conversation out. When you’re seventeen you don’t want to think about things like that.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to block that one out.

But as my mother rattled on about her presentation, I thought about the fact that of course, she’d found a way to combine business with family. My mother always put business first.

Now, I know I’m being unfair. Moments earlier I was hoping she’d refuse my offer and stay at her hotel. And now, I was resenting the fact she wasn’t planning to spend all her time with me.

As the daughter of a workaholic, perfectionist physician mother who never thought I’d managed to live up my potential and made no bones about telling me so, I was frequently conflicted about my relationship with her. Rather than let it stress me out, I tried to just accept my own complexities.

My relationship with my mother was what it was.

“Well, that’s good then,” I said when her explanation of her presentation ran its course.

“Your father will be here on Friday morning so he can go to opening night with us.”

“Then why don’t I give you my room and I’ll bunk in Hunter’s,” I offered. At least that would save me from having to move my white-board.

“I don’t want to put you out,” my mother said.

If she didn’t want to put me out, she’d be staying in a hotel.

Wow, I was really in a mood. I forced a smile and said, “It’s fine. I’ll put clean sheets on the bed while you go get your stuff at the hotel.”