“You never say no to a cup of coffee,” Maggie said, dryly. “And I do want to hear why you had breakfast with Burtis.”
“Half an hour?”
“Yes. Ray should be here by then.”
“You’re at River Arts?” The cats were still staring at me.
“I’m here.”
“I’ll see you soon,” I said and hung up.
The cats crossed the room and sat in front of me. “I’m not making you two any snacks,” I said.
They exchanged glances and resumed staring at me. I got up and went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. Owen and Hercules were right on my heels.
“I’m serious,” I said, looking down at them. “Both of you eat way too much peanut butter. Roma said I should just be feeding you cat food and the occasional sardine.”
Owen’s face twisted into a cranky pout. Despite his gift of Fred the Funky Chicken parts, Roma was still not his favorite person.
I bent down to pet him. He sniffed my hand, reared back in a kind of kitty double take and then sniffed me again. Hercules watched, puzzled. Owen looked at me, golden eyes narrowed.
There was no way he could smell sausage on my fingers. I’d washed my hands at least twice since I came back from Fern’s, and brushed my teeth. Clearly, he’d been eavesdropping while I talked to Maggie.
He gave a snippy meow. Hercules leaned in for a sniff and his gaze narrowed as well.
I pulled back my hand. “Stop sniffing me,” I said.
They couldn’t fold their paws across their chests, but everything else about their body language said pissed-off cat. I could feel their eyes on me as I moved around the kitchen. I knew who was going to win this one.
I got a can of sardines from the cupboard and put half of one in each of their dishes. “I’m admitting nothing,” I said.
They exchanged quick glances—and started eating. I went upstairs to wash my hands. Again.
In the bedroom I put the lid back on the box of Rebecca’s mother’s things and set it up on the dresser just in case Hercules decided he wanted to “read” the journals again. The pen cap that he’d found was on the table and I picked it up, turning it over in my fingers once again. Did it mean anything, I wondered? It was old and as far as I could tell it was the cap from a fountain pen. It looked as though it belonged to the pen that had been in Jaeger’s puzzle box. I stared at it and ideas began to link together in my head.
It had to have something to do with Ray. He collected and sold vintage ink bottles. I’d seen them in his studio. Maybe he had some old pens, too. Maybe the cap—and the pen that had been in the puzzle box—belonged to Ray.
I was certain he’d lied about being at the Summerhill auction with Jaeger, but the pen didn’t prove anything.
Or did it?
What had Maggie said to Marcus about Jaeger? He knew how to forge all the provenance. Jaeger knew how to forge documents, like a letter from a respected and dead artist.
I looked around for the piece of paper Owen had found. All that was on it was the same signature written over and over, five times on the small scrap. The handwriting was tight but shaky, like someone very old had written it. It was part of whatever Jaeger Merrill had been up to. I just wasn’t sure how it fit. I slipped the bit of paper in my pocket for now. It was time to meet Maggie and get some answers.
I made sure the litter box was clean and the cats had water. “I’ll see you later,” I told them and headed out.
Maggie was sitting on the front steps of the arts center in the sunshine. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she said, holding out her hands and looking skyward.
“How are things at the store?” I asked, walking across the sidewalk to her.
“Dry,” she said with a grin. “I might—might—be able to do a makeup tai chi class tomorrow.”
“It doesn’t seem right to be doing cloud hands when the sun’s out,” I said.
“Nice try,” she said, getting to her feet. “I expect you to be there. I know you haven’t been practicing the whole form, but you have been working on your cloud hands, haven’t you? And snake creeps down?”
“Sort of,” I said, following her inside.
“Sort of yes, or sort of no?” she asked as we started up to Ray’s studio.
“Define ‘working on.’”
“Okay, so no,” she said.
“Let’s change the subject,” I said. “I think I’ve figured out what Jaeger was doing.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
She stopped and leaned against the railing. “Since we’re on our way to Ray’s studio he must be involved in some way.”
“He is,” I said. “I think.”
“Tell me,” Maggie said.
So I did.
“You don’t think that Ray could have…pushed Jaeger down the stairs, do you?” she asked after I’d finished explaining.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”
“Okay,” she said. “What do we do?”
I started up the steps again. “Go talk to Ray and find out for sure.”
The door to his studio at the end of the hall was open. Ray, in jeans and a denim shirt, was studying several large drawings he’d leaned against the wall. Maggie knocked on the door frame. “Hi,” she said. “I heard about the interview. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” He smiled and walked over to us.
I pulled the pen cap out of my pocket and held it out. “Does this belong to you?” I asked.
“It does,” he said. “Thank you. I thought I’d lost it at the store.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “The rest of the pen is in a box that was Jaeger’s. The police have it.”
Ray frowned, not missing a beat. “I don’t know what you mean. Why would Jaeger have one of my pens?” He was doing a better job of lying this time. He remembered to meet my gaze and he didn’t twitch or fidget.
I handed him the cap. “You loaned it to him, along with some ink. Did you get the paper he needed at the estate sale?”
“Paper? For what?” He crossed his arms over his body and continued to look me directly in the eye.
“For the letter that Jaeger forged for you. The one that Galen Lee is supposed to have written in which he said he liked your work.”
He swallowed and looked away.
“Ray, what were you thinking?” Maggie asked.
His head swung around. “I was thinking that I’m sick of working my ass off just to see some kid, whose idea of art is spray painting squiggles on the side of buildings, become the new darling of the art world, while artists—real artists—continue to be ignored.”
“So what?” she retorted. “You fake a letter from a dead artist to get noticed?”
“My work will stand on its own merits. All I’m doing is getting someone to pay attention for a minute,” he snapped.
“By lying,” I said.
He looked at me then. “It’s one letter and Galen Lee is dead. Who’s it going to hurt?”
“All of us,” Maggie said. Her face was flushed with color and one arm was up over her head, almost as if she was trying to hold herself back. “You’ve damaged the reputation of this center, and the co-op and all the artists who work here. You said your work will stand on its own merits. You should have let it do that.”
Ray’s mouth moved but no sound came out. His face was flushed as well.
“You figured out who Jaeger was,” I said.
He cleared his throat and made an effort to focus on me again. “Purely by accident. I was in Chicago. One of the local stations did a piece on the forgeries. It was the anniversary of the arrests. I recognized him. I have a good eye for details.”
“And he offered you a trade, your silence for a letter that could make your career.”
Ray nodded.
I glanced at Maggie standing stiffly beside me. “You had the pens and the ink. You went to the estate sale to find the right paper. Galen Lee was a bit of a tightwad. He never threw anything out. He wouldn’t write a letter on new paper.”
“No,” Ray said, shaking his head. “I mean yes, you’re right about Galen Lee, but Jaeger already had the paper for the letter he wrote for me. He was looking for paper for something else.”