I had to think for a moment. “Dad’s wake?”
“Yes, twice in nearly two years,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand that I’ve hung on to that big old house because I have hung on to that image, that fantasy. But the family I have left, you and Casey and Max, are all down here. So why, I ask myself, am I still up there in that great mausoleum of a house?”
“What about your friends? Gracie and the Jakobsens?”
“I’m thinking I might move into a two-bedroom apartment and they can come and visit.”
“It’s a bold step, Mom. I’m proud of you.”
“Oh, but cleaning out the house.” Her shoulders sagged with the weight of the thought. “Dear God. It makes me tired just to think about.”
“You decide what you want to keep, and we’ll leave the rest to the boys.” The boys were Lyle, my former housemate in San Francisco, and his partner, Roy. They were both, as Gracie Nussbaum said, mensches and yentas. We could trust them to always know the right and the efficient way to tackle a problem like Mom’s move.
“Have you talked about it with Gracie?” I asked.
“Yes. And that’s why she’s coming down. She wants to make sure I’m not in the clutches of some sort of cult.”
“You know that by the end of her stay Ricardo and Linda will have her moved down, too.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
I told her I would put some of the wine and pâté that Jean-Paul had brought into the trunk of the car for her and Gracie to take with them. She thought that was a fine idea.
“Hostess gifts,” she said. “And treats for the guests.”
I got home, at last, to find three dejected-looking horses. There was a canvas canopy over the high side of their enclosure and their stalls were covered, so they could get out of the rain if they wanted to. But I found them standing in the open, apparently oblivious to the drizzle. Early had cleaned their stalls that morning, bless him. I checked their water and gave them fresh alfalfa and a few treats, and told them good night.
Showered, dressed in sweats and warm socks, I took a cup of tea into my workroom and booted the computer to see what Jack had sent me about Hiram Chin.
Chin had an impressive record of accomplishments; he had no need to pad his résumé, though I knew that people did it all the time. Born in Washington, D.C., son of a Taiwanese diplomat. Good degrees in art history, finished with a Ph.D., with honors. Multilinguaclass="underline" English, Mandarin, French, Italian, Spanish. Long list of publications and awards. Full professor at a California university and then Dean of the School of Humanities until he suddenly retired. I read through the mass, and found a few nuggets to focus on.
Karen Holloway had mentioned that Chin and her husband had worked together on a committee at the Smithsonian in Washington. From Jack in network research I learned that the committee was an acquisitions advisory panel for the National Gallery, parsing proposed museum purchases and gifts to the collection. That little nugget made me think again about Clarice Snow.
There were newspaper articles and some clips from news broadcasts about the questions raised over Chin’s academic résumé when he applied for elevation to provost. The name of the deposed dictator whose collection he claimed to have helped assemble came up and Chin was criticized for having a relationship with the man-in exile at the time of Chin’s application, in disgrace, facing international charges of brutality-even though the dictator was an ally of the U.S. and a legitimate head of state when that relationship took place. Was campus squeamishness over that relationship the real reason Chin’s résumé had been challenged? How heated had that criticism by his colleagues been? That information might be hard to find out: As Detective Thornbury was learning, a college campus can be a closed society.
I went online to see what I could find about the collection that Chin helped assemble. There was a cached webpage of the dictator and his extravagantly dressed and bejeweled wife “at home” in their presidential palace. The walls were indeed lined with paintings in heavy gilt frames. Priceless masterworks? Not my area of expertise.
When I searched for an inventory of the dictator’s collection, all I found was an abstract of a court case that was filed the same month that Hiram Chin resigned from the university. I called Uncle Max.
“A group of creditors filed a claim against the assets of the dictator when he was in exile after he was deposed,” I told him. “His art collection was listed among the assets the creditors were going after. The court found in favor of the claimants and awarded them the collection and some bank accounts to satisfy the judgment.”
“Lucky them,” Max said. “Was it a valuable collection?”
“That’s the interesting part, Max. The claimants had it appraised and then they went back to court seeking an amended judgment. Hiram Chin was called as a witness. I’ve only found this abstract so far, so I don’t know any more of the details. Can you search the case for me?”
I gave him the case number and the court, and he said he would put a clerk on it.
Next I emailed Jack and Fergie and asked them to see if they could find a catalogue of the collection from the Middle Eastern museum that Chin claimed to have advised. When that régime collapsed, the museum was looted. Who did the looting, I wanted to know. And did any of the art works show up later?
Fergie emailed right back and told me she would do her best.
Jean-Paul’s little off-key bell rang for me. His friend who lived on Broad Beach, Mme Olivier, had several very striking works of art in her mansion. The house down the beach from Hiram Chin’s. I called Jean-Paul.
“Certainly,” he said, after I told him what was on my mind. “I will have a little conversation with Madame Olivier-Lisette-about her association with your Mr. Chin. How do you say it? It’s in my job description to look after the interests of my countrymen who are in this district.”
We talked for a while about what I had discovered.
“A couple of the men I met at Madame Olivier’s reception Saturday said they knew Park Holloway,” I told him. “They were on some sort of trade junket together in China. Holloway helped one of them buy an antique jade brooch as a gift for his wife.”
“Do you suspect it was a fake?”
“No, actually, I don’t. But Holloway passed himself off as a bit of an art expert. I would love to know if he was at all involved with Chin in putting together collections for some nefarious people. Maybe I should say nefarious collections.”
“Perhaps,” Jean-Paul said, “as a member of Congress he was able to pull a few strings for his friend. It is interesting, Maggie, this quagmire you have ventured into. Very interesting, indeed.”
After saying good night to him, I felt all warm and mushy inside. A lovely warm and mushy.
The house phone rang, another “private caller,” the third that day. I didn’t answer, waited to see if there would be a message, but as usual there wasn’t. Prank caller? A phisher? Annoying, whatever they were.
As I was turning out lights downstairs and checking doors and windows, preparing to go to bed early, the motion-sensitive lights in the front yard snapped on. Duke set up a fuss, as he does when the lights come on, running around his enclosure, making a general fuss. I went to the front window expecting to see the usual pack of trashcan-scavenging coyotes skulking up the drive. Or maybe a possum family.
A large dark car pulled up close to the garage and snapped off its lights. I tried to remember if Mike’s Beretta was still in his desk drawer, loaded. I was just heading off to check when I saw Roger and Ricardo, his father, get out of the car.
“Whose car is that?” I asked as they climbed the front steps.
“The department’s,” Roger said, handing me his raincoat as he came inside. “I rarely drive it, but mine is in the shop.”