Dusted (5 page)

“Oh, yes. Let’s go.”

Half an hour later, we were in Hollywood Hills and I knocked on the door.

Dick was way too excited.

“Calm down,” I whispered. “You investigate insurance claims every day. It’s old hat for you, remember?”

He took a deep breath as the door opened.

“Hi, Mrs. Gifford. I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Quincy Mac from Mac’Cleaners. This is Mr. Macy. He’s an investigator from our insurance company.”

“Ma’am,” Dick said with an odd accent. “I do appreciate you taking time to let me see the crime scene.”

“I just want this all taken care of,” Mrs. Gifford said. “It’s been a nightmare. A true nightmare. I thought having my
Bird on the Ledge
torn was awful, then to find that not only is it a forgery, but three of our other paintings were as well…” She let the sentence trail off there, as if she couldn’t think of words to describe how upset she was.

“Do you have pictures of the artwork in question?” Dick asked.

I wanted to kick him. I already had pictures, and I knew that the police did, as well as the insurance agencies.

Mrs. Gifford didn’t seem to think his question was odd. “Yes. I’ll go up to the office and get them for you. You can see for yourself where the artwork hung. The police took the forgeries as evidence.”

We stood in a very stylish living room and stared at an empty wall. Three mounting brackets were all that remained.

“They all hung low enough that they could be removed without a ladder or any other equipment, though you would have had to do it carefully because the bottom of all the frames would have been about six feet up,” Dick mused.

“They were low enough to get to, but not so low you were up close and personal with them. It would have made them harder to really look at them and notice the differences.”

Mrs. Gifford came back, printed papers in her hand. “They’re the photos we took for insurance purposes. The frames in the pictures are the same frames the forgeries were in. That means whoever removed the originals knew enough about framing to put the others in their place so well I didn’t notice.”

“When do you think they had time to do that?”

“Well, if it was Theresa, she was here once a week, supposedly for a few hours, but she could have stayed longer. She knew our schedules.”

“And if it wasn’t?” I asked. “Have you traveled or been gone for any length of time?”

“We were skiing for a week in January, and then went to the Bahamas for another week in March.”

“Who all had keys for when you were gone?”

“My next door neighbor, Mac’Cleaners, the pool service, my cousin, a couple friends, my husband’s brother.…”

“That’s a lot of keys,” Dick said. He gave me an elaborate wink that I took to mean he thought his comment sounded very insurancey.

“Yes, it was a lot. We’ve changed the locks since then and we won’t be using your service any longer,” she said looking at me.

Kind of like wearing a condom after you’re pregnant,
I wanted to say, but I resisted. I also didn’t mention that firing Mac’Cleaners before she knew who did it seemed unfair.

“Could we have a list of the people’s names?” I asked politely instead.

She nodded.

“I don’t know much about art, but I have to think taking the picture out of the frame and switching out the new one would take time.”

Mrs. Gifford gave us the rest of the information and saw us to the door.

“Ma’am, can I ask you something that’s not related to the theft?”

She gave me a regal nod and said, “You may.”

“Why do you like Kirchoff’s work? They look like someone dropped a paintbrush to me.”

“I could try to play off that I’m an art expert, but I’m not. I could tell you what the woman who sold it to me said about the meaning of it, but to be honest, I went to the gallery looking for something that would complement the colors in the room. My husband wanted something that would be a good investment. Kirchoff was new, but hot and the price of his art was climbing, so it worked for my husband. And he used a lot of red…which worked for my living room.”

I had to confess, I admired Mrs. Gifford’s honesty. And her explanation made sense how her art could be replaced without her knowing it.

She added, “Give me a landscape any day. That I can understand on some sort of emotional and artistic level. Kirchoff was a decorating, investment choice.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gifford. I’m so sorry about what happened, but I hope, when the police find out who really stole the paintings, you come to think of Theresa’s accident as a lucky happenstance. We’d love to have your business back when they find the real thief.”

She didn’t say anything as she showed us out. But I was glad I said it. Business rule number one,
never burn a professional bridge
.

“Wow,” Dick said as we walked to the car. “That was honest.”

“Yes, it was.” She was honest about not knowing much about art. The paintings had been investment and decorating choices.

If she didn’t know much about art, it would have been easier to fool her with forgeries.

“Are we going to the other homes?” Dick asked.

“I couldn’t reach anyone at either of the other homes, so I left my information. Can I call you when they get back to me?”

“Definitely. That was fun.” He rubbed his hands together with the sort of excitement my boys used to show when I said
ice cream.

“Do you need me for anything else?” There was hope in his voice.

I shook my head. “I want to stop at an art supply store, if you have time on our way back. I have an experiment I want to conduct.”

“Sure, I have time,” he assured me. “I’m working on a new script and can’t decide how to stash the body’s dismembered parts.”

“You could get in trouble talking like that in public,” I teased.

“Or on a date. Specifically the blind-date I went on last weekend.” He then shared with me what had to have been the worst date in history. “Turns out not everyone’s as entertained by homicide investigations as you are. You are a unique woman, Quincy Mac.”

I laughed, but knew he was right.

I came from a family of doctors. I was a maid.

I came to Hollywood to find fame and fortune on the big screen…or even on the little screen. I’d had three sons before I was twenty-three.

Yeah, I was definitely unique.

Two days, five brushes, five pieces of paper, and one canvas later, I had a Kirchoff-esque painting.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was close. Close enough that I thought it might fool a layman.

I took it to the office and called Tiny in.

“You found it,” she exclaimed as she spotted it in the office.

“No, I made it,” I said.

She walked up closer to the painting and said, “Now that I’m closer I can see…” She shook her head. “Who am I kidding? I don’t get his art, so I’d never notice the difference between yours and the painting in the picture.”

“I think I missed my calling,” I told Tiny. “I should have been an artist. Even if they sold for half what Kirchoff’s went for, if I could make one a week, something designed to compliment various decors, I’d be rich.”

“But I wouldn’t want any other business partner,” she said. “I’m so lucky I’ve found you and Sal. My two soulmates.”

Speaking of soulmates made me think of Dick and his bad blind date. “Hey, do we know anyone we could fix up with Dick?”

“What about Theresa? If we could get her married off, then maybe she’d quit.”

“And we wouldn’t have to fire her. You’re brilliant,” I told Tiny.

Mrs. Neilson finally got back to me and had no problem with the
insurance investigator
visiting with me. Dick and I went to see her the next day.

She’d only had one painting that was forged.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the forger had been prepared to steal more paintings and Theresa’s accident had derailed their plans.

If so, they were probably angry.

And angry people made mistakes.

The woman who opened the door looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, if Mrs. Santa Claus wore power suits, pearls, and hair coiffed in a chic bob.

“Mrs. Neilson, I’m Quincy Mac and this is Mr. Macy, who’s investigating the crime.”

“Ma’am,” Dick said, with no trace of the weird accent today.

“Please, come in.”

Martha Washington would have felt at home in Mrs. Santa Claus’s living room. There were hardwood floors, area rugs, and antiques.

I didn’t know any more about antiques than I knew about art, but I was a maid, I cleaned houses for a living, and this house screamed be-careful-because-everything-in-me-is-old-breakable-and-costs-a-fortune. Being able to recognize antiques was important in my line of work.

“I made a copy of the picture of the painting.” She handed me the paper. “Debra Gleeson’s
Kissing Under the Apple Tree
.”

It wasn’t Kirchoff, but it could have been.

In addition to furniture that all wore a patina of age, Mrs. Neilson’s living room walls were covered with art. The artwork in the living room probably had some fancy title, but I’d call it Americana. There were pastoral scenes and village scenes. And in all of it, I could tell what was a cow and what was a horse.

I liked it.

But I didn’t see any empty spots where the forgery had been. “Did it hang in here?”

Mrs. Neilson laughed. “Goodness, no. Come with me.” She took us upstairs to the master bedroom suite and again, it was full of art and had that same Americana feel to it while the room had that same Martha Washington antique look. All dark woods and old stuff. There was an empty space where the painting used to be. I thought the empty space looked better than the abstract would have looked with all the portraits and landscapes. The empty space was directly across from the bed.

“Ma’am, the forged painting—”

“
Kissing Under the Apple Tree
,” she said.

I searched for some diplomatic way to say she didn’t seem like an abstract art fan. “Yes.
Kissing Under the Apple Tree
. It seems a little different than the other pieces you have in here.”

“It was. My husband knew I loved art, and he bought it for me. He said he knew I had other paintings with apple trees.” She pointed to a large farm scene which indeed had a section filled with an apple orchard. “He tried so hard to find something that would please me. And while it wasn’t my style, every time I looked at it I remembered that he loved me.”

In this case it was definitely the thought that counted to Mrs. Neilson. “That’s why it hung across from the bed?”

She nodded. “I liked having it be the first thing I saw every morning.”

And here, it wasn’t the first thing any guests saw. She didn’t love the artwork, but she loved her husband and what the painting represented. “I’m so sorry that you lost it.”

Dick nodded. “Me, too.” I elbowed him and he remembered. “But none of your other paintings are forgeries?”

“No. It was very odd. The thief just took that one.”

“Maybe they simply hadn’t gotten around to them yet?” Dick said.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Have you traveled lately?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Just a couple days in San Francisco. But the house was fine. We had neighbor’s feeding the cat and bringing in the mail. But Mr. and Mrs. Delafoy are in their seventies. I can’t imagine even together they’d be able to climb a ladder and take the painting off of the wall, then replace it with the forgery and put it back.”