What Evil Lurks in Monet's Pond: A (11 page)

“Would you like to identify yourself or shall
I call the police?” I stood my ground.

“Geez, Maisie,” Bowie growled out of the side
of his mouth. “Is this really necessary?”

I made a big production of pulling out my
cell phone and punching 911. Just as I was about to hit send, she
capitulated.

“I am Anna Szabo,” she quickly told me. “I am
on the board of directors for the Tattinger Museum, and I am
interested in hiring your sister for a publicity campaign.”

I nodded curtly and stepped past her, not
inviting her into the castle. I wanted a chance to speak with Nora
first, to warn her. Besides, the arrogance of the woman already
stuck in my craw. “I’ll check and see if she’s available.”

“Why don’t you come in,” Bowie said behind
me, as if he was the host of the castle.

“Hold on, one minute,” I insisted, as Elmore
scooted past me. “It may not be convenient. Please wait here.”

“You’ll have to excuse my cousin,” I heard
Bowie tell her. “We’re all a little nervous since the dead body was
discovered up at the pond today.”

I found Nora in the upstairs hallway. She was
talking to Georgina and Aunt Clementine.

“Hey, Norrie. Can I see you a minute?”

“Sure.” I watched my sister come down the
grand staircase. This really would make a wonderful inn. I could
even imagine a bride stepping down into the grand hallway for a
picture-perfect wedding here.

“You have a visitor. Anna Szabo, on the board
of the Tattinger. She wants to hire you for a publicity thing.”

“Really? Why didn’t she call first?” Nora
seemed surprised that a potential client would just show up on her
doorstep, especially because she had spent so much time and money
on her business website.

“My point exactly. I’d advise you to proceed
with caution. A little birdie hinted to me today that the Tattinger
may be in some financial trouble. That’s just between us,
okay?”

“Sure,” she agreed. “Now I’m really
curious.”

“You and me both.”

I went and concealed myself in the library
before Nora let Anna Szabo into the castle. I’ve been gathering
information long enough to recognize someone who’s dodgy about the
truth, and all my senses were on heightened alert with the
Hungarian honey. Tucking myself into a dark corner, I hunched down
and waited for the show to begin. It wasn’t a long show.

“I am on the board of directors for the
Tattinger Museum, Ms. Johnson. I wanted to ask you if you are
interested in doing our summer program.”

“I will certainly consider it,” my sister
replied.

“Good. Then I will get back to you with the
details at a later date.”

“Oh?”

“That is all I came to say.”

“I see. Shall I see you out?” At that moment,
Nora’s house phone rang. She ignored it.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” the cunning visitor
told her. “I can see myself out.”

She did, in fact, walk herself out to the
hallway, while my naive sister answered that phone. I, on the other
hand, was available to show Ms. Szabo the door, and as I was about
to step into the hallway, just to make sure she was able to operate
the door knob without instructions, I caught her slipping something
into the vase on the hallway console table. As soon as the item was
concealed, she hurried to the door and left. The moment she was out
of sight, I took a look. A syringe. No wonder she wore gloves, I
thought to myself. What did this have to do with the dead man?

Chapter Twelve --

I went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of
baggies. Nora was in the process of arguing with someone, the
cordless receiver to her ear.

“And don’t call here again!” she growled.
Phone in hand, she pushed the ‘end’ button with emphasis.

“Who was that on the phone?”

“Some guy wanting to power wash my siding. Do
you believe that? It’s the middle of winter and the guy wants to
come and hose down the castle. Why do I bother to list our number
on the ‘Do Not Call’ registry if people just ignore the rules?”

“Why indeed,” I commiserated. “Got any
plastic bags? I’m working on a project.”

“Sure.” Nora opened a kitchen drawer and
pulled out a box. Quart-sized. Perfect.

“Any chance you have some string?” I asked
hopefully. She dug around in a different drawer and came up with a
ball.

“Here you go.”

“Scissors?” I grinned. She shot me a sisterly
look filled with good-natured disbelief and feigned impatience. She
reached into a utensil canister on the counter and pulled out
boning shears. I carefully took the pair she offered out of her
grasp. Pulling out about two feet of sturdy cotton chef’s twine, I
snipped off the piece. I put the scissors back.

“Want some crayons and a glue stick to go
with all that?”

“No, I’m good,” I laughed. I beat a hasty
retreat before she could ask me what I was working on.

I glanced around the massive hallway, to make
sure no one was on hand to observe my efforts. Slipping one bag on
my right hand, I reached in and retrieved the unexpected gift from
our Hungarian visitor. No need to obscure any potential
fingerprints, although I suspected the lady in the fox fur coat had
taken pains not to leave any. Carefully, mindful of the needle on
one end, I placed it in the second baggie, rolled it up, and made a
hasty retreat up to my bedroom. Why would Anna Szabo hide it here
unless she was hoping we would have an official visit from the
police? I was damned if I was going to let her get away with this.
I found my piece of string, tied it to the bundle, opened the
window and then the storm window. With great care, I secured the
string to the base of the shutter, tucking the bagged syringe out
of sight. Next time I saw Ross, I would give it to him. But in the
meantime, if the cops did a search, they weren’t going to find the
planted evidence inside the house.

About an hour later, I was doing some online
research into art thefts, trying to figure out a few things. I
understood the need to cut the paintings out of their frames. I
thought it was similar to the Gardner heist in 1990. By leaving
behind the narrow strips of canvas, it allowed the investigators to
confirm these were, in fact, the frames of the missing canvases. It
made it all seem so much more authentic. But what was missed back
then was something very telling. The paintings in question were all
suffering from damage due to the poor atmospheric conditions in the
museum. I heard from more than one source the stolen artwork had
been assessed by a professional framer, who determined that the
fabric was beginning to deteriorate. That meant that even if the
paint on the canvases was restored, there would still be issues
with the integrity of the material on the stretchers. In other
words, the thief wasn’t really doing all that much damage by
slicing and dicing the artwork. More reason to believe that theory
that the art heist was all about improving the museum. In this
Tattinger theft, it was a similarity. Was it a deliberate one?

I thought about Anna Szabo and I thought
about Ross. Obviously, the CIA felt it had a need to get involved
in this investigation. If I was, indeed, on the WikiLeaks list as a
CIA spy, it made sense to create a lot of public hoopla now, to get
me out of this mess. But it didn’t explain why Anna Szabo was so
interested in me. It’s not like I ever worked in Hungary. Even if
she was connected to an organized crime gang that siphoned off
profits from Internet businesses, that didn’t really form a
connection to me, did it?

And why come a-calling on my sister that way,
pretending she wanted to hire her for a publicity campaign? Unless
I was looking at this backwards.

What if Anna thought I was at the castle to
investigate her? What if her guilty conscience led her to believe
that I was spying on her at the museum? Maybe the museum had been
cover for some nefarious financial dealings all this time, and Anna
and her extended family had done a lot more than just loot the
Tattinger trust funds. But I still didn’t understand where that
artist came into the picture. And I didn’t even know his name. Why
did he have a phony business card on his person, with my name
misspelled, when he was killed? And what was he doing at the pond?
Was he supposed to meet me there? Did he think I contacted him?

Think, Maisie. Why would this guy have
something that looked like your business card on him when he was
murdered? Judging from the fact that Anna made such an effort to
conceal the syringe in Nora’s porcelain vase, I was pretty certain
he was deliberately killed. But why? What would have precipitated
this event?

I went over things in my own life, looking
for clues. A few months ago, I had given up my townhouse in
Virginia, at my handler’s request. The CIA wanted to relocate me to
the tri-state area, in anticipation of boosting my portfolio appeal
by getting me more gallery showings in New York. I put all my
belongings into a storage unit in Haddam, gave my tenant notice
that the townhouse was on the market, and arranged to stay with
Nora and Andrew when I returned from two months painting in
Germany. On that trip, I did a series on old streets in the
historic districts of several villages, staying at little hostels.
Then I moved on to the port cities, and spent three weeks painting
scenes of the docks. For that, I had a “borrowed” flat in a
building that was populated by many immigrants. Every day, I would
go off and work on my canvases. And when I came home, I would
observe the comings and goings of three men suspected of being
members of a new terror cell, the Golden Arm of Islam.

What had I done when I returned from that
trip? I stayed with my sister and brother-in-law once again. I was
ensconced in the tower room. Nora told me to just treat it as if it
were my home away from home, at least until I could find myself a
place near the city. She was lobbying to keep me around, suggesting
that I try Branford, Milford, or any of the towns along the
Connecticut shoreline that offered apartments and condos. I could
take the Acela train into the city. No need to drive. And that way,
I would be close enough when I was around to be able to pop around
for dinner.

Nora and I had actually started looking for a
place for me on my last trip back, two months ago. I had returned
from California that time, after following the coast down from wine
country to San Francisco. The CIA thought it would be beneficial if
I did a couple of larger canvases, because they wanted me to start
selling limited editions of my work. Budget cuts at Langley. If I
could raise the money to support myself, with a little help from my
friends, the money saved on my salary could pay for the other
necessities of intelligence operations. I had no problem with that.
As soon as I returned from California, the canvases were shipped to
the printer, who then turned them into prints in several sizes.
They were for sale at about thirty different print shops, and
according to the statistics I saw, the prints were a moderate
success in the marketplace. Marty would be a better judge of that
once he took a look at my numbers.

What if Anna Szabo thought I was here to
investigate her criminal activities? What would have convinced her
that was the case? I hadn’t gone to the Tattinger. On my visits to
Bothwell Castle, I had spent a lot of time going back and forth to
New York, trying to build relationships with people in the art
world. Elise Ulbricht had been helping me.

What if I wasn’t the only one in those
WikiLeaks to be exposed? Elise could have been a target, too. So,
maybe the dead man factored into this more than I thought. If only
Elise was able to recognize him. For that reason and that reason
alone, I downloaded the best of the five photos I took of the
deceased and attached the file to an email. He looked like he was
sleeping peacefully, except his bed was made of snow. In a brief
note to her, I detailed how I stumbled onto the body. I warned her
not to publish the photo, since it wasn’t really for public
consumption. Then I crafted a blog post about life’s twisted events
for this stunned artist. She could share it with her readers. I
made it all sound very mysterious, wondering if there was any
connection to the recent theft at the Tattinger Museum.

Twenty minutes later, as I was delving
through material on Hermione and the Count, I heard a little
ding!
and saw a reply from Elise.

Great blog entry. I’ve already posted it.
Interesting stuff about the museum theft. Did you know that Anna
Szabo just returned from Hungary? She’s a real character. The
museum has a big annual meeting coming up and Szabo is lobbying
hard to get Thomas Wittman off the board. Wittman is a
Post-Impressionist art collector. She also wants to get rid of
Clara Bowlens, the art historian who has protested many of the
changes Szabo made to the museum when she got herself elected as
head of the museum board. Bowlens wants to bring back the
scholarships and students.

As for the dead man, his face looked familiar
to me, so I checked back. About two years ago, I did an article on
Damien Fisher, a painter out on Long Island. Very contemporary
stuff. Nothing to write home about. But I interviewed him a couple
of times for the piece. It turns out he was born in Hungary. He
didn’t like that I found that out. Real name is Damek Fischer and
he has an arrest record long enough to choke a horse. The guy is a
fake. If he was hanging around the museum, it’s possible he was
there to do some forging. Maybe Anna needed to take out the weak
link with a little wet work.

Ah, code for an assassin. Is that how Damek
Fischer wound up dead? And with that phony business card in his
pocket? Was Anna doing a clean-up on Aisle 4, using her forger as
the red herring?

If the CIA was looking into the Szabo
criminal organization, there had to be a connection to something
big. Money-laundering. Internet crimes. It didn’t have to even be
intelligence-related, did it? What it had to do to get on the CIA’s
radar was pose some kind of threat to US interests.