Stained Glass (20 page)

Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Stained Glass

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Susan felt that she was running a boardinghouse. First Amy Gorman, and now Madeline Schutz, who had shown up on her doorstep saying she was in danger of losing her life. The dramatic phrase lost its force because of the silly smile Madeline wore as she said it. “I quote my rescuer.”

Susan looked beyond Madeline, where a car was pulling away from the curb. “Anyone I know?”

“He's a reporter. The one who did the piece on me. Tetzel?”

“He says you're in danger?”

“It's quite an exciting story.”

It was mistaking Bobby's body for Madeline's that had brought
first Amy and then Susan and Madeline together. So Susan took her inside, relieving her of the duffle bag as they went.

“Be careful. My computer is in there. I hope you can lend me a nightie. I left in a hurry.”

Susan had to agree that it was an exciting story. Halfway through it occurred to her that it was some stunt the reporter was pulling so he could make another story of it. It seemed pretty far-fetched that a crime committed in Kenosha, Wisconsin, could involve Madeline, even if the crime had been committed at the house that published her books.

“Argyle House itself is a crime.” Susan had heard the saga of Madeline's witless agreement. Only an aspiring artist could understand her vulnerability when the chance for publication was dangled in front of her. Susan knew all kinds of artists who would sell their souls in order to get into a gallery. Well, their bodies, anywayâand galleries that were probably less impressive than Argyle House. “Maybe this will get you out of your contract.”

“I never thought of that!” Almost immediately second thoughts came. Get out of her slave contract with Argyle House and have to find another publisher?

Susan got Madeline settled with her computer in a far corner of her studio, turned the portrait of Fulvio to the wall, and tried to get back in the mood. No easy task. How could she drive from her mind all the hullabaloo about the Devere Foundation? First her father called all in a snit because Grandma Jane had made use of her discretionary powers as director and given away some money. That's what the money was for. It wasn't theirs anymore; they had to give it away. The only decision was the choice of beneficiaries. It wasn't the money but the recipient that made Susan sympathize with her father.

“Carl Borloff!”

“I know what you think of him.”

“Isn't backing his stupid magazine enough?”

“You're not impressed by
Sacred Art
?”

Why go on about it? Art critics are like sportswriters, nerds who couldn't play a game to save their lives pontificating about those who can. Susan doubted that Carl Borloff could draw a straight line, not that there was much of a market for straight lines nowadays, so what qualified him to rank artists and works of art? She wondered if Angelo Menotti's reputation could survive Borloff's enthusiasm.

Her father explained that there wasn't much they could do about the money already given to Borloff, but they could certainly veto the long-term agreement that his mother and Amos Cadbury had drawn up. Amos Cadbury! Susan thought of her doomed effort to get the family lawyer to let her give away her money. So why was she complaining about Grandma giving money to Carl Borloff? Because he was a fake? Where would her own money go if she could get rid of it?

“Susan, this is one board meeting you must attend. Hugh has agreed to be there.”

“Hugh? I don't believe it.”

“I wish the two of you had a more robust sense of family.”

“Dad, it's not the family, it's the money.”

“Do you think it's tainted?”

“Of course not.” It suddenly occurred to Susan that her father worked very hard and that his success had not made him remote from Hugh and herself. What a petulant spoiled brat she must sound like to him. She promised her father that she would attend the board meeting of the Devere Foundation.

“Thursday at three. At home.”

“Right.”

Home. The Devere Home. Grandma on the upper floor and her son in one wing and her daughter in the other. Hugh had kept
his room there, but Susan had her house in Barrington. With two guests.

Amy Gorman listened while Susan explained that Madeline would be staying in the house for a while.

“Where will you put her?”

“I'll sleep on a cot in my studio. She can have my room.”

“Susan, she can take my room. It's time I went home.”

“Nuts. You can't go home until they lock up whoever put the body in your garage. Madeline's on the run, too. Maybe from the same man.”

“I am not on the run.”

“You know what I mean.”

“The thought of my house gives me the creeps. I really think I must sell.”

“That better wait until the body in the garage is cleared up and forgotten.”

They went into the studio, where Madeline looked up from her computer. Susan mentioned what she was working on.

“The Empyrean Chronicles!” Amy exclaimed.

“You read them?” Madeline asked, coming alive.

“My son does. He's in Iraq. Paul.” Amy seemed to be surveying Madeline for eligibility as a daughter-in-law.

What a matchmaker she was. She insisted that Susan and Fulvio were destined for each other. “Think of it. Your aunt meets him on a cruise where he is impersonating a sailor. He turns out to be the grandson of Angelo Menotti, the great discovery of the Deveres. Anyone in the room could see the sparks fly when you two first met,” she had said.

“Amy, go make yourself a drink. Lots of ice. After that, a cold shower.” Susan was glad that she had turned her portrait in progress of Fulvio to the wall.

Amy made herself a drink, and Susan popped a bottle of white wine. Madeline didn't want wine. “I still have to write a page or two in order to complete my daily stint.”

“How many pages do you do a day?” Amy asked.

“As many as possible. I have three more volumes to go.” She flourished an object that was attached to a cord she wore like a necklace. “My USB storage device. Everything I've ever written is on this little baby.”

“What if you lost it?”

“What if a meteor four times the size of Earth slammed into Chicago?”

Susan got Madeline settled in her room and then sat down with Amy, who had made herself a second drink.

“Hard day at the office,” Susan commented.

“Who's she running from?”

“A man who was a pal of Bobby Newman. Maybe the pal who killed her and hung her in your garage.”

Fulvio came before they had even begun to think of dinner. With a drink and a half in her, Amy was in a beaming mood, so Susan kept her distance from Fulvio lest Amy beam them up the aisle.

“I have another houseguest, Fulvio. Someone I think you'll like.”

Amy made a face. She had other plans for Madeline.

Fulvio perked up when Susan told him of the man Madeline was hiding from. A man who had been sketched by a woman who knew Bobby Newman. “As soon as Madeline recognized the man in the sketch she was packed off to me. I should let her tell her own story, though.”

Susan went down the hall and called, “Madeline!” She followed
her voice up the stairs. Maybe, exhausted from her daily stint, Madeline was taking a nap.

Indeed, that was what she was doing. Susan didn't have the heart to wake her. She would have to meet Fulvio some other time.

Traditionally, Amos Cadbury's role at meetings of the Devere Foundation board had been as mediator, as voice of reason when disagreements became too sharp, as both involved and an impartial spectator. On this occasion, he arrived at the Devere house with the criticisms of James heavy on his heart. It was not often that his legal work was called into question, and indeed not even James had suggested that there was anything unusual, legally, in the agreement that Amos had drawn up at Jane's request. He had drawn up an agreement in order to shield Jane's decision from the charge that it was arbitrary, even whimsical. Extending the agreement into an indefinite future had been couched in provisos that neither Jane nor Borloff seemed to notice. Those carefully inserted restraints were to ensure, among other things, that the whole board must go along with Jane, with the proviso that even her discretionary grant could be voided by the board.

Who can be his own advocate effectively? Amos had not defended his work in any detail when confronted with James's displeasure. “Your quarrel is with your mother, James. Not with me.”

“You aided and abetted her.”

“That is not an apt description of legal help.”

“Would she have gone ahead without you?”

“James, she already had. She had written a letter to Borloff. The agreement was to supersede that letter and tighten matters up.”

It was not any reluctance to explain what help he had been to Jane on the Borloff matter that weighed on Amos now. The real cloud over the board meeting was the apparent disappearance of Carl Borloff.

Jane said, “I asked him to come today and stand by for any questions you might wish to put to him.”

“Did he answer?”

“He did not.”

Susan chirped, “Shouldn't that be sufficient to forfeit the grant?”

“What do you mean, he disappeared?” Hugh asked. Before Jane had called them to order, by tapping on the tabletop with her pen, Hugh had expressed the hope that this wouldn't take long. “He could be on a trip. He could be taking a little vacation. He could be paying another visit to Angelo Menotti.”

“Has he been there?” Jane asked.

“Getting a warm reception, in several senses of the term. Menotti thinks he can stop Borloff's project.”

“I know. That isn't so.” Jane seemed saddened by the realization. “He has moral rights, I suppose, but no legal ones. Amos?”

“An artifact is the property of the purchaser.”

Susan professed to be shocked by this.

Margaret tut-tutted. “Photographing a window is scarcely to do violence to it.”

The table at which they sat was not quite ovoid; its curved sides were joined at their ends by straight edges. Amos sat at one of these, Jane at the other, and facing one another across the middle were James and his sister-in-law, Margaret. Susan sat next to her father, Hugh next to his aunt.

“Who is Carl Borloff anyway?” James demanded.

Amos intervened. “I take it that your question is the beginning of our discussion of the arrangement entered into by the foundation and Carl Borloff.”

Jane nodded. “So ordered.” She had once glanced through
Robert's Rules of Order
and from time to time employed a phrase from it.

Susan provided a very negative account of Carl Borloff, her language judged tendentious by Amos.

Jane slapped a hand on the table. “This foundation has been supporting the work of Carl Borloff for some years. We provide an annual subvention to keep his journal
Sacred Art
afloat.”

“It would sink without it, Grandma.”

“That may or may not be true. My point is that it is ridiculous to refer to Carl Borloff as someone hitherto unheard of around this table.”

“We're not discussing the subvention to his magazine,” James said.

“We are, however, referring to an individual to whose magazine we have given a subvention at least three times. He is not a stranger.”

“He couldn't be any stranger.”

“Now, Susan.”

In the manner of such meetings, the discussion was a scarcely coherent flow of remarks, short speeches, crisp reactions, interventions by Jane, inquiries put to Amos, with repetitions frequent. Susan was sketching on a pad. Hugh looked frequently at his watch. James had all the ardor of someone fighting what he himself considered a lost battle. Margaret, seated very erect in her chair, might have been an observer. She might have been gathering herself to speak, and finally she did.

“The underlying problem is this family's long attachment to the
work of Angelo Menotti. I do not question, of course, the soundness of that attachment, but perhaps it makes us vulnerable to such proposals as that before us. Is there any pressing need of or demand for a collection of photographs of Menotti's windows?”

“Margaret, all you have to do is look at them.”

“In church. Where they have their native habitat. Those churches are all accessible. Anyone with the least bit of interest could easily visit them all in a matter of days.”

“Are you against reproductions of great works of art?”

“In this case, the artist apparently is. You say he has no legal right, Mother, but you added that he has a moral right to say what is done with his work. You say Borloff visited Menotti. Did he receive permission to proceed?”

“Menotti told him he would sue him if he did,” Hugh said, smiling. “He is quite a character.”

“Then you've made the pilgrimage, too?”

“I have.”

“Hugh,” Jane cried. “You must tell me about it. Not now, of course.”

Margaret said, “I have told some of you that I met a grandson of Menotti's on a freighter.”

“A grandson!”

“Yes, Jane. Susan has met him since.”

“You have!”

“Would you like to meet him, Grandma? I'll bring him here.”

It was Amos who tapped the table with his pen. “I fear we are wandering rather far afield. Let me propose that the board confirm the discretionary grant made by our chairman, after which I will draw attention to features of the agreement with Borloff that will remove any suspicion you may have that this is carte blanche.”

“He has probably made off with the money already given him.”

Amos brought his long fingers down across his mouth and stroked his chin. “I am afraid he has squandered a good portion of it already, James. At the time we discussed his project, he had made no arrangements with a publisher, and he had yet to interview possible photographers. The discretionary grant was meant to cover any number of start-up costs. It seems that Borloff made arrangements with a publisher whose president was recently found murdered in her office.”

“You mean Argyle House,” Susan said.

“I do. It seems to be a very unusual publishing house.”

“Tell it to Madeline Schutz.”

“What do you mean?”

“They're robbing her blind. Her books sell like crazy, but her royalties only start after the first zillion copies, and she's committed to writing ten novels.”

“Good Lord,” Margaret murmured. “Argyle House? I never heard of it.”

“It's been in the news.”

“I wonder if Borloff turned over any money to them?”

At that moment Mrs. O'Grady came to the doorway and beckoned Margaret, mouthing, “Phone.”

Margaret rose. “I'm sorry, but I have been expecting this call. I thought we would be done by now.”

Margaret's question was answered after she left the room.

“A check for one hundred thousand dollars signed by Borloff has already been cashed,” Amos said. “I am a joint holder of the account, another precaution of the agreement, James.”

“A check made out to Argyle House?”

“To Charles Ruskin.”

“Who is Charles Ruskin?”

Susan said, “No doubt an accomplice.”

“It sounds more like an alias, Susan. Ruskin?”

After it was over, James suggested to Amos that they should hire an investigator to locate Borloff.

“I shall aid and abet you,” Amos said.

James laid a hand on the lawyer's arm. “Uncle Amos, I think you're as suspicious of that fellow as I am.”

Uncle Amos. How long had it been since James had called him that? It warmed his heart.