Dearly Departed (20 page)

CHAPTER 34

A
my opened up the shop after the service and worked the rest of the day alone. It was a decent afternoon, with two walk-in inquiries and a deposit from Lou Halpern, the co-owner of a nearby diner who had won a few million in the New York Lottery and was using some of the proceeds to take his extended family on a cruise.

On arriving back at the brownstone, she was surprised to find the door to Fanny's apartment closed. This was rare. Even when her mother was out, she almost always left it wide open, trusting in the exterior lock and the safeness of the neighborhood. It was her way of telling her daughter, “My door's always open.” Except today it was closed.

Maybe it's reverse psychology
, Amy thought.
Pretending to keep me out so I'll want to come in. Then bam! An hour spent discussing Uncle Sol's upcoming divorce. Well, it's working.
“Mom?” She knocked softly, then turned the knob.

“Amy, darling. How was work?”

She found her mother at the small kitchen table, hurriedly stuffing papers back into a file folder. Across from her sat Peter Borg, who was even worse at covering up his embarrassment. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Peter replied. “Well, not nothing, obviously.”

“Come and sit down,” Fanny said and patted the top of the third chair. Her expression was serious.

The truth came out quickly enough. Peter was there to discuss a merger. “It'll be great for all of us,” he explained with his nervous, ingratiating grin. “I need to open an office downtown, near all the SoHo and Tribeca lofts. Your place could use my connections. And face it, the two of us work well together.”

“You do,” said Fanny, her grin equally as nervous.

Amy said as little as possible, trying to wrap her mind around it. It wasn't the idea that she found so shocking. It was the implication.

The inescapable fact was that Fanny hated Peter. And Peter was scared of Fanny. There was no way Peter would have proposed this merger on his own. That meant that it had to be Fanny's idea, even if Peter somehow thought it was his. And that meant that Amy's Travel was dead broke. There was no other possibility.

As Peter continued his sales pitch, Amy threw her mother a slightly raised eyebrow. She responded with an apologetic nod, confirming her daughter's deduction. Not the nicest way to learn bad news, but that was Fanny.

And then, as if the moment wasn't awkward enough, they heard the front door open. Marcus's voice boomed down the hallway. “How are my girls? Anyone in the mood for cheesecake?”

 

Half an hour later Amy was walking Peter along Barrow Street, looking for a cab. He had been planning to take them out for a celebratory dinner. He'd even made a reservation at One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Amy's favorite restaurant, just down on Barrow. But the scene with Marcus had put an end to that notion.

As soon as Marcus was informed of the news, he'd flown into a rage. “So this is how you solve your problems?” he'd shouted at Fanny. “Selling your daughter to get out of debt?” Amy had never seen him this angry.

Fanny had shouted back. How dare he? This was none of his business. And it was business, not personal. No one was selling anyone. Peter and Amy had had the good sense to fade back into the living room. The argument had ended with the cheesecake being thrown into the garbage and Marcus storming out.

“He shouldn't be jealous,” Peter said as they strolled past the polished, upscale restaurant, where tonight there would be one empty table for three. “It's business. It makes sense.”

“I don't know what makes sense,” Amy said.

“We won't do it if you don't want to.”

Amy knew in her heart that this was probably the best solution, the only solution, to a problem she hadn't even known existed until this evening. “No. It makes sense,” she said. “I'm just a little overwhelmed.”

“I'll bet.” A cab flew by. Neither had reached out to flag it.

Amy and Fanny would discuss it later, of course. But Fanny, despite her flaky view on life, was smart about things. If she had to make a pact with Peter in order to save the company, then there was probably no other option.

“Let me think about it, Peter.”

“My lawyer will draft a document. We can fold Amy's Travel into my corporation. And you don't have to change the name right away.”

“I have to change the name?” She tried not to gasp. “No.”

It seemed like such a betrayal of her dreams. A betrayal of Eddie. The founding of her company had been a tribute to her adventurous fiancé, who had never lived to see it. Now it would just be the downtown office of Peter Borg Travel.
Our finances must really be desperate
, she thought.

“Not at first,” Peter said. “But at some point . . . I mean, that's the whole idea, to make a cohesive product. We'll merge our business plans and our Web sites. Fanny can keep writing TrippyGirl. I wouldn't take that away from her.”

“I don't know if I can change the name.”

“We'll talk later. I shouldn't have brought it up.”

“You can change your name instead.”

“I wish I could.” He actually seemed sincere. “But I've got a lot of equity in the Peter Borg brand. It's a known commodity.”

“Whereas Amy's Travel is known only for killing off customers. I wonder if merging with me is such a good idea. You should reconsider. I'm like an albatross.”

“Don't be hard on yourself. No one was murdered on this trip.”

“Peter, we found a body.”

“He had nothing to do with our tour.”

“We were just at a memorial.”

“That one was an accident.”

Amy shook her head, either in annoyance or admiration; she couldn't quite decide. “I wish I could accept all of this as easily as you. I'd probably be much happier and healthier.”

“Hey.” Peter shook his head back at her. “Don't make me out as some heartless jerk. I feel bad. I feel bad about that guy dying at the Taj Mahal. I feel bad about Evan falling into the volcano. I feel bad about Paisley's maid. What's her name? Archer? I feel bad for Maury and Laila Steinberg trying to sell that place after such a terrible accident or suicide or whatever.”

“Maury and Laila?”

“The resale value. I mean, even if they try to rent it again instead of selling . . . people at the high end of the market don't like messes. If I were them, I'd take out the fireplaces. Rip them out, so there's no question. No reminder, you know?”

They'd stopped at the corner of Hudson, in the light of a streetlamp. Amy was confused. “Are you saying the Steinbergs own the MacGregor penthouse?”

“Yeah. Laila mentioned it on the trip. They bought it at the bottom of the market as an investment property. They never lived there. But they figured they'd rent it out to MacGregor until prices turned around. Laila was worried they'd have some trouble getting MacGregor's maid out of there. But that's not a problem now.”

“You never mentioned they owned the apartment.”

Peter considered this. “The subject never came up.”

“For eleven days we did little else but talk about Paisley MacGregor, and the subject of her apartment never came up?”

“I don't think it did. Why are you suddenly interested in who owns her apartment?”

“Because that's where Archer died.”

“Yes . . .” He drew the word out. “And what does Archer's death have to do with Maury and Laila?”

“Because the Steinbergs would know the building. They would have access.”

“Access to what? To the apartment?” Peter cocked his head. He inhaled and exhaled forcefully through his nose. Not a good sign. “I hope you're not saying what I think you're saying.”

“Her death wasn't an accident or a suicide. Joy Archer was murdered. My theory? Someone was trying to get back MacGregor's ‘if I die' letter.”

“The ‘if I die' letter? I thought we settled that weeks ago.” Peter groaned, and his hands flew up to hold in place his exploding head. “Amy, you cannot keep doing this.”

“I'm not doing anything. The guy who came with me to Evan's service—he's a homicide detective. He's investigating.”

“You brought a homicide detective to a memorial? Why? To spy on our clients? You are out of control.”

“Well, the police agree. And the fact that the Steinbergs actually own that apartment . . .”

“Are you saying Maury and Laila killed Archer? That's ridiculous. For one thing, they're in Hawaii. I talked to Maury the other day.”

“His landline or his cell?”

“I don't know.”

“The police eliminated the Steinbergs because they weren't around. But, of course, we don't know that. Let me borrow your phone.”

“No.” Peter laid a protective hand on his jacket pocket. “Amy, this is not your business, and it's not mine. If we're going to be partners, you have to promise. No more involvement in murder.”

“But we're already involved.”

“No we're not. Damn you. Clients come to us to forget their problems, not to get dragged into police stations.”

“Fine.” Amy turned on her heel and headed back up Barrow Street, stewing every step of the way.

“Amy!” he shouted, but she didn't stop.

Was this really the man she wanted to be in business with? she wondered. Even if it meant saving the business?

Meanwhile, there was a cheesecake in her garbage can and another man out there, a man who wouldn't hesitate to get dragged into a police station for her. Any day of the week.

CHAPTER 35

T
he painting hung above eye level, but she could still make out the masterful details—thick layers of short, self-assured brushstrokes, each stroke a slightly different shade. A multitude of browns shifted gently into greens here or grays there, given form mainly by the angle of the strokes and by the eye's distance from the canvas.

Samime thought back to their early days in Istanbul. Bill would spend every morning in the studio on the top floor, working on some project or other, happy in his self-imposed isolation. Once a week or so, an art dealer friend would drop by. They would all have tea in the sun-dappled courtyard, under the lemon tree, before the men retired up to the studio to talk. Afterward, he would take her out to her favorite restaurant, the one with the French wines and the endless view of the Bosphorus.

And then slowly that changed. The friend stopped by less and less. Bill became more and more withdrawn, angrier, and more sullen. And finally, one winter day she came home from the meat market to find her husband at the living room hearth, burning a canvas in the fire, cracking pieces of the frame and tossing them on top of the pungent, acidic flames.

“Bill painted this, didn't he?”

Samime had never been this assertive. But today was different. She had planned it perfectly: arriving after the light had faded, so Colleen wouldn't have an excuse to say no; finding a way to sneak through the building's outer door, so Colleen couldn't turn her away on the street; charming her way into the apartment on the pretext of needing to talk about Bill, which wasn't really a pretext.

“A friend painted it,” Colleen said, walking back into the living room with two small glasses of red wine.

“It is very much Bill's style.”

“It's Pissarro's style.” Colleen approached and handed over a glass. “I suppose if Bill imitated Pissarro, it would be his style, too.”

Samime had known she would say this. “It's not just his brushwork. It's the frame. I remember Bill bringing a lot of old molding pieces on the plane with us to Turkey. We brought them as carry-ons, and he was very careful. He made me keep them under my seat the whole way.”

“A lot of old moldings are similar. Even then they were mass-produced.”

“You must have a lot of them lying around here. Old frames. Old canvases. Authentic pigments and brushes.”

Colleen began to look a little wary. “Yes. That's my job.”

“Of course. People want them reframed, so you keep the old frames. You re-stretch a big painting, and there's a nice piece of nineteenth-century canvas left over. Can I keep this?” Samime put down her glass then lifted the small painting off the wall. She heard Colleen's thin gasp behind her. “As a memento from Bill?”

“I told you. He didn't paint it.”

“It's good enough to be real,” Samime said, examining it from just a few inches away. “It's even signed Pissarro, which a normal copier wouldn't do.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

Samime wrapped her arms around the painting and clutched it to the front of her coat. “As soon as I saw this, I knew. Suddenly it made sense—why Bill's money dried up, why he became so depressed over a few shakes of the hand.” She turned it around and ran her fingers over a sticker from a gallery on the back. “Bill used to visit this gallery.”

“Go ahead. Take it.” Colleen downed her wine in two quick gulps. “I don't know why I kept it in the first place.”

The Turkish woman didn't thank her but just nodded. “Is that what ruined your marriage? Some fight about what he was doing?”

“I never knew.” Colleen reconsidered her reply, then reached over to Samime's untouched glass. Two more gulps and she was feeling better. “Not at first. But I had a pigment, a rare Naples yellow. It's toxic and not used anymore, except for restorations. One day I noticed about a third of my jar was missing.”

“You weren't helping him do it?”

“Heavens no.” Colleen's anger seemed genuine. “When I found out how he was using me . . . not just my supplies, but my expertise . . . There's always inside information floating around—which paintings are in private hands, which have been lost over the decades. You need that to help establish the provenance of any good fake. Where has it supposedly been all these years?”

“But you didn't call the police.”

“No.” Was that a note of regret in her voice? “Reputation is a delicate thing. The work I do is based on judgment—how much to strip away, how much to paint over. A bad restoration can cut the value of a piece in half, so my clients have to trust me. The idea of an art conservator being involved in any way with a forger, even innocently . . . When you told me about his tremors, I felt both happy and sad.” Colleen allowed herself a tiny smile. “I cared for Bill, yes. But there was a certain justice to it. God's way of putting an end to the travesty.”

“Meanwhile, he stayed in business. Millions of dollars' worth of his fakes are now in galleries and private collections. If they knew the truth . . .”

“I don't think anyone wants that kind of scandal,” said Colleen.

Samime didn't answer her.

“Don't be so high and mighty, Mrs. Strohman.”

“Me? I never suspected.”

Colleen's laugh was both wounded and cruel. “Want to know an interesting fact? Istanbul is a world center of art fraud. It's always been hard to trace forgeries through that corner of the world. When I heard that Bill was moving there, it made perfect sense. Things start getting hot in New York, and you marry a starry-eyed Turkish girl. Move your operations offshore.”

“That's not true.”

“What part isn't true, dear? That he suddenly married you? That he wound up with dual citizenship? Or that he continued in Istanbul with a dealer who was even more unscrupulous than his man in New York?”

Samime exhaled, as if the wind had just been punched out of her. “You're a bitter, lonely woman. Good-bye.”

“Are you going to sell it? I mean, as a Pissarro?”

“Maybe I will,” Samime said, without bothering to look back. “Why not? Bill would want me to be provided for.”

“One word of caution.” Colleen kept her distance. “What I said about things getting hot, that's true. One of Bill's paintings was declared a fake. The buyer, some broker or hedge-fund manager, was trying to get insurance. He happened to find a very smart and diligent appraiser. The gallery owner managed to smooth things over. He bought the piece back, a small, lovely oil with a haystack and some cows.”

Samime pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders. “Why do you tell me this?”

“Because that piece”—Colleen pointed—“is on record as a forgery. The Interpol art division has a photo on file.”

“You forget I live in Istanbul, the forgery capital,” said Samime as she opened the door and walked out.