Home again, the unrelenting rain feeding my feelings of remoteness, I cooked the chicken I’d prepared earlier, and ate one of my favorite meals in lonely isolation.
I reached the dealer, Ian Cummings, in London as Sasha and Fred sat down to watch the video, a copy of Mrs. Grant’s ledger in hand. When I had Cummings on the line, I introduced myself, referring to Shelly, and thanked him for taking the time to talk to me.
“Right,” he said. “So which Matisse are we talking about?”
“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. My seller is still on the fence about whether to let it go. Of course, if she decides to do so, I’ll call you first.”
“And you want price information?”
“Yes.” I detailed the range of prices I’d discovered, and explained that I was looking for guidance.
“Well, it’s a little tricky without knowing which painting, but let’s see. Is it an oil?”
“Yes.”
“On canvas?”
“Yes.”
“Quite. What subject matter?”
“A cityscape.”
“Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Size?”
I glanced at my notes. “It’s twenty-eight by twenty-one inches.”
“Provenance?”
“Various owners, all private, no one notable.”
“When was it last on the market?”
“I don’t know. Not for at least a generation.”
“Well, I can’t tell you anything for certain. But if I had to set a price right now, I’d probably aim to goose it just a little. I’d set a range of from one-point-three to one-point-six million pounds, and hope that I could persuade my seller to be satisfied with one-point-one million.”
I did a rough conversion. “In U.S. dollars, then, you’d expect it to go for around two million.”
“Yes, with any luck, more. As much as three million dollars.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”
Hanging up the phone, I sat for a moment, then put in a call to Alverez. I left a message on his voice mail.
I was about to head downstairs, ready to go over the protocol with Fred, when Sasha poked her head into my office and asked if they could come in.
“Sure. What’s up?” I asked.
“I wanted to show Fred the catalogues.”
I gestured to the wall of shelves. “Go to it.”
I listened as she explained how we organized them. “We have a lot of catalogues of local dealers. It makes sense, since we all tend to carry similar merchandise.”
“Can you rely on them?” Fred asked. A good question, I thought.
“Well, it depends,” Sasha answered. “Like anything else.”
As they started to leave, I asked if they were done with the video, and Sasha said, “Part of it. Fred wants to study it, so I thought I’d show him how we typically research things while we wait for you. Then he can take his time reviewing the tape.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m ready if you guys are.”
They moved chairs near my desk and I went through the steps I’d delineated as I took him through the binder. He nodded and scanned the pages.
“Is this one of the local dealers?” he asked, pointing to the Troudeaux title page.
“Yes,” I said.
“But we don’t think very highly of their research,” Sasha added, twirling her hair. “I mean we use them, but I’d want additional verification.”
“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “Martha Troudeaux does most of their research, and it’s often sketchy and sometimes just dead wrong.”
“Who’s this?” Fred asked, pointing to the editor’s name: M. Turner.
I was about to say that I didn’t know, when Sasha jumped in. “That’s Martha, too. Sometimes she uses her maiden name-Turner. I think it’s to make the company look larger, you know, not a mom-and-pop outfit with everybody in the firm sharing the same name.”
Staring at the page, my mouth fell open. In a flash of clarity, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Barney, whose wife, Martha, did most of his research. And who sometimes used her maiden name-Turner. I pictured him at the tag sale, deep in conversation with Paula. Paula Turner. I was willing to bet that Paula was Barney’s niece by marriage. That would explain the call that Wes had told me about, the one made from the Taffy Pull to Mr. Grant. No one in the family would think it was odd for Barney to stop by his wife’s family’s store and borrow the phone.
Roy, the picker, had said that Barney didn’t have the cash to buy the books. And a relatively small amount of cash it was. Less than a thousand dollars. Which must mean that Barney was broke. If Barney was broke, how could he afford the Renoir he’d intended to buy from Mr. Grant?
Maybe he hadn’t had any such intention. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted the Renoir for pride of ownership or even for the commission a sale would bring. The Renoir might have represented a second chance, a way of raising enough cash quickly to save his business, to protect all that he had built up.
I realized that Sasha and Fred were engaged in a lively discussion about verifying research, and I’d missed it all.
“I think we’re all set here,” I said. “Any questions?”
“No,” Fred said. “This is all very useful.”
“Great. Well, go and do.”
They left, still chatting. I’d never heard Sasha speak so much, or with so much enthusiasm. Maybe she’d met her match in Fred.
As their voices faded away, I thought of Mr. Grant, and sadness swept over me. In all of our interactions, he’d been jovial, gregarious, and kind. I’d liked him, and he’d liked me. An image of Barney came to mind. I could picture him towering over the older, weaker man.
I shivered, upset and dispirited. How could he have clone such a thing? I began to cry, and I didn’t try to stop myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks and as they fell, I concluded that I needed to speak to Alverez.
To think that Barney had killed Mr. Grant in order to steal the Renoir. I shook my head, astonished that I hadn’t realized it before, and sickened at the thought.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time Alverez called back, about an hour later, I’d remembered what Max had said about not volunteering information, and had thought better of telling him what I knew about Barney. Instead, I simply stuck with the original reason for my call and said that I was done with the research and had the pricing information he’d wanted.
“Can you meet in an hour?”
I glanced at the clock. It was only 9:30. “Sure,” I answered. “If Max can.”
“I’ll expect you here at ten-thirty then, unless I hear otherwise.”
“Okay,” I agreed, wondering whether I was imagining the urgency I perceived in his voice or whether, now that I had the information he needed, he was ready to act.
I reached Max at his office, and he told me that he could meet me at the police station at 10:30.
“Can we meet at ten-fifteen?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to you first.”
“Sure,” he said. “Our usual dune?” he asked in a joking tone of voice. “When we’re not in interrogation room two?”
I laughed. “Perfect.”
Passing through the office, I overheard Gretchen inviting someone on the phone who had, according to her, “an old set of flatware,” to stop by. An “an old set of flatware” could mean anything from two dozen fifteen-piece sterling silver place settings from Victorian England to a set of sixteen pieces of stainless steel from the ’70s.
Sasha and Fred were absorbed in a discussion about the use of a table’s height to validate its age. Sasha thought height was one of many factors that should be considered, but wasn’t a particularly reliable indicator.
“Not everyone in prior generations was short!” she argued.
“But all standard furniture was made as if they were,” Fred responded.
“So maybe the table was custom-made.”
“Well then, we would recognize that it was a custom piece, and consider whether the owner’s height was a factor.”