“Yes, Miss Herzog,” Carella said. “I learned this morning from your former husband’s attorney that he left his entire estate to a man named Louis Kern. Something in excess of two million dollars.”
“Well, I am not surprised,” Jessica said. “His father’s paintings, you know, were worth quite a bit of money.”
“Miss Herzog, the law firm that made the will for Mr. Newman is a firm named Weber, Herzog, and Llewellyn.”
“Yes?”
“Your brother works for that firm.”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Newman changed his will on the eighteenth of July, three weeks before he was found dead in the apartment on Silvermine Oval.”
“But what has this to do with me or my brother?”
“Did you know Mr. Newman had changed his will?”
“No, of course not.”
“Your brother never mentioned it to you?”
“Certainly not. In any event, what would that have to do with me? Am I inheriting something?”
“Not that I know of. Are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you know Louis Kern?”
“No. Who is he?”
“He owns the Kern Gallery here in Isola.”
“I do not know him.”
“But you were familiar with the art world...”
“Yes?”
“...when you were still married to Jerry?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Didn’t you know that your father-in-law exhibited his paintings at the Kern Gallery?”
“I may have known it.”
“Yes or no?”
“Why do I have to answer these questions?” Jessica asked. “Is this Nazi Germany?”
“No, ma’am, it isn’t,” Carella said. “But what’s so difficult about answering a simple question about an art gallery?”
“You are saying that I knew about Jerry’s will. You are saying the will may have had something to do with his death.”
“I’m simply asking whether you knew your father-in-law exhibited his paintings at the Kern Gallery.”
“No, you are asking whether my brother told me anything about Jerry’s will. And I have already told you no. Why then do you persist in...?”
“Miss Herzog,” Carella said slowly, “this isn’t Agatha Christie.”
“What?” she said.
“I’m a civil-service employee with a job to do. I don’t like schlepping all over the city in this heat, I don’t like checking out a brother-sister relationship that may or may not have led to a breach of confidentiality, I really don’t. I would much prefer sitting here on a nice terrace, sipping iced tea, and getting myself a suntan. But your former husband ended up dead three weeks after he changed his will. If anyone had prior knowledge of that will—”
“I had no prior knowledge of it.”
“I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with—”
“I certainly did not.”
“But if you did know of the will, and if you mentioned it to anyone who might have benefited from the terms of the—”
“I do not know this Louis Kern. I had no knowledge of the will. Are you forgetting that I am the one who suggested to you that Jeremiah could not have voluntarily taken those pills?”
“No, Miss Herzog, I haven’t forgotten.”
“But now you suspect that I, or my brother, may have had something to do with his death. Because of his will. When it was I who came to you in the first place, Detective Carella, to tell you he could not possibly have committed suicide by—”
“Yes, Miss Herzog, I know that.”
“I do not have to answer your questions.”
“Miss Herzog—”
“This is not Nazi Germany,” she said, and suddenly she was weeping.
The tears startled them both.
“I should not have come to you in the first place,” she said. “I thought I would be doing my duty as a citizen, but instead—” She groped blindly for the crumpled tissue in the shirred tube top, dabbed at her eyes with it. “Now there will be trouble for all of us. I should have stayed away from you entirely, I should have minded my own business.”
“All of us?” Carella said.
“Yes, yes,” she said, weeping, drying her eyes “Me, Louis, all of us.”
The detectives looked at each other.
“Louis Kern, do you mean?”
“Yes, Louis,” she said. “Oh God, I should not have come to see you. Now there will be only trouble.”
“What kind of trouble, Miss Herzog?”
“He is married, he has two children.”
They waited.
“We have been lovers,” she said.
Still, they waited.
“For many years now. And when my brother told me he was to inherit such a large sum of money, I naturally... we are lovers. I told him.”
“Then you did know about the will.”
“Yes.”
“When did your brother give you this information?”
“Only last week.”
“And you told Mr. Kern?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last Thursday. When I was with him last Thursday.”
Carella nodded.
“Now there will be trouble,” Jessica said. “I know it.”
The Kern Gallery was on the wide cross street running arrow straight between the Majesta Bridge on the south shore of Isola, and the docks lining the River Harb on the north. The two street-floor windows of the gallery were crowded with French impressionist paintings, and a printed placard informed any passersby that the current show had started on August sixth and would continue through the end of the month. Carella and Kling stopped at the desk just inside the entrance door, and asked a blonde receptionist where they might find Mr. Kern. She directed them to an office on the second floor of the gallery.
They took the elevator up, and found themselves in an open room the size of Guadalcanal and littered with what appeared to be the wreckage of half a dozen World War II bombers. A poster on the wall, featuring a photograph of one of the crashed B-29s, informed them that this was the work of a sculptor named Manfred Wills. They walked past what looked like a smashed rear turret with a gnarled machine gun poking out of its plastic bubble, and followed a discreet sign lettered offices, a small arrow under the word directing them to turn left through an arched doorway. At the end of the corridor, Carella showed his shield to a young brunette sitting at a desk there.
“We’d like to see Mr. Kern, please,” he said.
“Who shall I say is here, sir?”
“Detectives Carella and Kling, 87th Squad.”
The girl rose from behind the desk. She was taller than she’d appeared sitting, and she was wearing tight-fitting tailored slacks that emphasized the long, slender look of her. She was gone only a moment. When she came back, she told Carella that Mr. Kern was on the phone and would be with them shortly.
“Could I see that again?” she asked. “Your badge?”
Carella showed her his shield and the Lucite-encased I.D. card.
“Gee,” she said, “that’s the first time I ever saw one of those. It actually says ‘Detective,’ on the badge, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Gee,” the girl said. The phone on her desk buzzed. She lifted the receiver, listened, and then said, “You can go in now.”
Louis Kern was sitting behind a white modern desk. The walls of his office were covered with abstract paintings, a riot of primary colors that overwhelmed the singularly drab man himself. He was wearing a dark gray flannel suit — with the heat outside standing at ninety-nine degrees — and a white button-down shirt with a black wool knit tie. He had graying tufts of hair over each ear, but he was bald otherwise, and his pale, almost ghostly face indicated that he was not an avid beachgoer. Carella guessed his age at seventy or thereabouts.