Fatal Impressions (10 page)

Jonathan spent most of Friday morning talking to Hathaway lawyers. The lawyer who would be Dinah’s major defender was Sebastian Grant, known as the Cobra by everyone who’d come up against him and most people who worked for him. Grant, who’d met Dinah at their wedding, was properly horrified at anyone suspecting her of murder and leaped into the fray, making threatening calls to Hunt Austin Frederick and various lawyers attached to DDD&W, explaining exactly what would happen to them and their associates if Dinah were defamed. Backing up the Cobra were dozens of minions, all of whom required documents of one kind or another, including descriptions of what Rob was doing and information on everyone involved, all of which Jonathan supplied.

At last, satisfied that the Cobra and company had everything they required, Jonathan turned to his friend and classmate Greg Fry to discuss what Jonathan needed from the Fry Building security office: tapes, sign-in records, names of guards on duty at the critical hours. Anything else Greg thought would be helpful in establishing when Dinah had arrived at and departed from the Fry building during the critical period.

Rob sent an e-mail assigning background checks on Patti Sue Victor and Frances Victor Johnson to Pete, a computer whiz kid who worked for Rob’s agency more or less full-time, including weekends. Pete was a graduate student at City University of New York, who seemed able to handle both school and Rob’s assignments. He needed the money, but he also loved the work. He would enjoy researching the Victor sisters’ histories, their finances, everything he could find.

Rob had waited anxiously for Coleman’s reply to his invitation to dinner Saturday night. He was thrilled when she accepted. He agreed to her terms—she wouldn’t come otherwise. But deep down, he couldn’t believe she meant it. “Only friends.” He didn’t see how that was possible.

He worked on other clients’ problems until Coleman’s notes about Davidson’s obituary arrived. He studied the notes carefully and e-mailed everything to Ace, a friend of Pete’s who helped out occasionally, with a list of follow-up questions: Where are the daughters? Was there any obvious reason why they hadn’t been employed by DDD&W? What happened to their mother? Was she alive? He marked the material urgent, and returned to his other cases.

Dinah had been instructed by both Rob and Jonathan to stay at home, to ignore anyone who came to the door, and to let the answering machine pick up calls. She had agreed, but she didn’t like it. She prepared an egg white omelet and turkey bacon for Jonathan’s breakfast and nibbled a bran muffin while he ate. Worried and preoccupied, neither of them found much to say.

When Jonathan left for the office, she’d have liked to take Baker for a long walk, but the rain was beating down on the skylight. Walking in that downpour was impossible, even if she hadn’t promised to stay inside.

She spent the day on the telephone, calling dealers to acquire prints for DDD&W. Every half hour she called Ellie. Ellie’s office extension, which was also Patti Sue’s, rang and rang, but no one answered. Soon after noon, Patti Sue answered, and Dinah hung up without speaking; Patti Sue might recognize her voice.

Maybe Ellie was at home, traumatized by what she’d seen Thursday. Maybe she was avoiding the police. Dinah tried to track her down, but neither the Internet nor AT&T information turned up a listing for Ellie or Ellen or Eleanor McPhee in the five boroughs. She tried New Jersey and Connecticut, also without success. Of course, Ellie could be short for lots of names, not necessarily beginning with an
E
, but she telephoned all the McPhees she could locate, and no one had heard of an Ellie. Danielle? Isabel? Marcella? Much as she hated contact with the place, she’d have to try Ellie again Monday at DDD&W. Drat. She was anxious to tell Jonathan everything, but she didn’t feel she could expose Ellie before giving the girl one more chance to come forward. She wanted to tell Jonathan about Oscar Danbury, too, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the temper tantrum she was sure that story would provoke.

When Coleman’s e-mail on the will and the list of items from the museum arrived, Dinah sat down at her desk to compare the Americana collection listed in the will to the items sent to the museum. This was the kind of task she enjoyed, and for a while, she forgot her problems.

Almost immediately, she struck gold—or the absence of gold. Someone had stripped the DDD&W collection of its most valuable objects. The 414 works sent to the museum were junk: advertisements, faded and battered chromolithographs of kittens and ducklings, tattered woodcuts ripped from the pages of moldering books, incomprehensible cartoons by unknown artists from forgotten newspapers, and nearly worthless reproductions of Audubon and Currier & Ives prints issued by museums and other organizations. None of the items would sell for as much as $1,000; most would sell, if at all, for $100 or less. The total value of the works the Prince Charles Stuart Museum received was less than $25,000, maybe less than $10,000.

The DDD&W collection was nineteenth century and not Dinah’s area of expertise—the Greene Gallery specialized in American prints of the first half of the twentieth century—but she knew the missing objects included all the best works in the collection and that many of them were very valuable. Davidson had owned a complete set—all 435—of the first edition of Audubon’s
Birds of America
, printed by Robert Havell, Jr. A similar set had sold in New York recently for $7.9 million, and before that, in London for about $11.5 million. An individual print from a broken Havell set,
American Flamingo
, had sold for nearly $200,000 at Christie’s, while some of the other prints in the same set went for up to $150,000. She was confident that the Davidson works would sell for as much or more than they had in the past.

DDD&W had also owned both the original “Best 50” big and “Best 50” small Currier & Ives prints. Dinah didn’t know recent auction prices for most of those works, but she knew that
The American National Game of Baseball
had set a record at $76,000, and she knew that other Currier & Ives prints had sold for between $25,000 and $45,000. The museum had suffered a huge loss. The thief had chosen well.

She summarized her findings and faxed the report to Jonathan, Coleman, and Rob. What next? She looked up at the skylight. Rain was still pounding down, matching her mood. Not long ago she’d planned on spending this dreary Friday in California. No point in thinking about that. Back to the telephone to buy prints for a client she hated—a client who was accusing her of murder.

Debbi didn’t return Coleman’s call until after four Friday afternoon. She’d been in Philadelphia all day with a client. She was furious when she heard why Coleman was calling.

“Dinah? Murder? No way! Those people must be out of their effing skulls.”

“Exactly,” Coleman said. “I’m worried about the press. What do you think we should do?”

“The same as you think: preempt. Put our own spin on it. What have you got? Tell me all about it, and I’ll handle it,” Debbi said.

Coleman outlined everything she knew about DDD&W and the Cowardly Cowboy. Despite her fears about Dinah’s situation, when Debbi chuckled, Coleman joined in.

“What jerks! Got it. Start watching for our stuff. Read the tabloids every day, and keep me posted on developments,” Debbi said. “We’ll fix the bastards. They think they can slaughter that innocent little lamb? Little do they know the Dragon Lady is on Dinah’s team, and the war path.”

Coleman was still laughing when she hung up. When they’d first met, she’d nicknamed Debbi “the Dragon Lady” because her friend was always smoking and because she had such long red fingernails. But Debbi had recently quit smoking, and Coleman had begun to think of her as Smokey the Bear—Debbi was great at putting out fires and knew that the best way to stop a dangerous fire was to counter it with another one.

Soon after five Friday evening, Ted Douglas stopped by Hunt Frederick’s office. Hunt, who’d spent the day discussing Frances Johnson’s death with lawyers and DDD&W’s public relations firm, was signing the letters his assistant had typed. He wanted to get them in the mail right away and was far from thrilled at Ted’s interruption. He sighed but raised the topic he knew Ted wanted to talk about.

“What a mess this thing is. What are people saying?” Hunt asked.

“People in the office think Dinah Greene killed Frannie. Ms. Greene looks and acts like an angel, but so have other murderers,” Ted said.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry Ms. Johnson is dead, although I didn’t like her. But I’m even more concerned about the timing of her death—it couldn’t be worse. This is going to get us a lot of media attention before I have a chance to clean this place up. God knows what will come out.”

“Don’t you think we should release the story to the press? Let them know the killer is almost certainly an outsider?” Ted asked.

“No. I want to keep up the pretense that it was an accident as long as I can. If reporters start digging—well, you know what our situation is. Clients will lose confidence if they find out how bad things are. I’m taking some steps I hope will soothe both the staff and the clients.”

Ted raised his eyebrows in question but Hunt had no intention of explaining and prolonging the conversation. He wanted Ted to go away so he could return to his letters.

“Do you think Dinah did it?” Ted asked.

Hunt shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t know much about Ms. Greene. But I do know Frances Johnson wasn’t very smart and was available to anyone who’d have her. That fool of a woman even came on to me.”

Ted raised his eyebrows. “So you think it’s personal? Nothing to do with the business?” he asked.

“I think it’s personal, and the killer has to be somebody who works here—unless it’s Dinah Greene. I can’t see how anyone else could have access. I sincerely hope it
was
Ms. Greene—I hate to think one of
us
is a killer. On another topic, Teddy, is there anybody here we can put in charge of human resources? I’d like to hire a pro, but we can’t afford it,” Hunt said.

“How about Mark Leichter’s assistant, Naomi Skinner? Leichter thinks highly of her.”

Hunt sighed again. “I don’t have a better idea. Make it happen, would you? And see if you can find out what the police have on Greene, whether they’re anywhere near an arrest. I wish I’d never laid eyes on that young woman. Even if she isn’t a killer, something she did must have precipitated—provoked—the murder. The timing can’t be a coincidence: she arrives, and two days later someone dies.”

“I think so, too,” Ted said.

“What do you know about her cousin, Coleman? The magazine woman?” Hunt asked.

Ted looked amused. “She’s cute, isn’t she? She looks like a sweet, cuddly little thing—so tiny, blonde curls, dimples. But she’s not a bimbo. She owns an art magazine that’s the talk of the town, and she just bought another magazine. She’s sharp and tough. And don’t forget, she’s connected by marriage to Jonathan Hathaway.”

“Never mind all that. Will she write about DDD&W and this mess?” Hunt asked.

“I doubt it. She’s very protective of Dinah,” Ted said. “I’ll watch her.”

“Well, if she shows any sign of writing about us, it’s your job to stop her—however you can.”

By seven Friday evening, Coleman was so tired she could hardly move. She’d worked through most of the papers on her desk, although new articles, queries, and memos seemed to arrive every hour. She packed up the papers she hadn’t read, snapped Dolly’s leash in place, and plodded to East Fifty-Fourth Street through a freezing downpour. Her umbrella turned inside out in a gust of icy wind, and she tossed it in a trash can. She’d be happy to see March over and April arrive; she was ready for sunshine and forsythia and daffodils. She’d be happier still to see someone other than Dinah arrested for the murder of Frances Johnson.

She and Dolly were drenched and chilled by the time they reached home. In her snug apartment at last, she lifted Dolly out of her sodden pouch, toweled her dry, and fed her. She ran a hot tub and took a mug of Swiss Miss hot chocolate—only twenty-five sinless calories a serving—into the bathroom, along with a paperback copy of Stieg Larsson’s
The Girl Who Played with Fire
,
the second of the author’s trilogy; she’d loved the first book and looked forward to this one. After several tub refills of hot water, when the chocolate was long gone and the knots in her muscles had dissolved, she felt better but ravenous.

Dry and warm, wrapped in her favorite green cashmere robe, she put a Weight Watchers pizza in the microwave and phoned Dinah.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’m okay—just waiting for Jonathan to come home. I have a leg of lamb in the oven. I hope it doesn’t dry out. I think my husband spent most of the day tilting at windmills, so he had to stay late doing his real work,” Dinah said, sounding annoyed.

Coleman felt her shoulders tense. “He’s trying to help you, Dinah,” she said, forcing herself not to speak sharply. Dinah ought to be grateful for the help she was getting.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Dinah said.

“I hope you’re right. Have a nice dinner and sleep well,” Coleman said.

She hung up, carried her pizza on a tray into the sitting room, and turned on the DVD player to watch for maybe the twentieth time
Gaudy Night
from Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series. Both the video and the book it was drawn from were on her top ten list. Like Jane Austen novels and DVDs made from them, she turned to Lord Peter and Harriet Vane when she was worried or under stress. She fast-forwarded past the credits, looked at Dolly, half-asleep on the sofa beside her, and said, “I wish Dinah would get her head out of the clouds and understand that she’s in real trouble. I think it will take a bomb dropping on her doorstep to get her attention.”