The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) (13 page)

“I’m not so sure, Chris. From a financial perspective I suppose so, but is high attendance a worthwhile goal in itself? Can you really have a meaningful engagement with a work of art when you’re standing in a gallery filled with garrulous people elbowing their way in front of you to get a better look—a thirty-second look—at whatever it is that you’re trying to
see
?”

“Well, then what about this? You know, to a lot of people an art museum is a mysterious, off-putting place they have no interest in going to. Don’t popular works bring them in and help demystify the experience?”

“You’ve just succinctly expressed the prevalent point of view in today’s museum world, Chris, and as a result of it we have sorry efforts like a Punk Music and Contemporary Art exhibition at the Met—the Met!—and ladies’ underwear at the Paris Decorative Arts Museum, and . . .” He sighed his disgust. “These things are designed to entice
whom
, exactly? No, I see it very differently. I don’t want the art museum demystified. Our ‘product,’ if you choose to call it that, as Clark indeed does,
is
the mystery, the wonder of art. That is what the art museum, and the art museum alone, has to offer, our singular distinction. Alix, would you agree with that?”

“Prentice,” Margery said firmly, “are you planning to stop badgering these poor young women long enough to let them have something to eat?” She turned to them. “He thinks he’s still at the lectern, you see. It’s all very sad. Now, just you try these potato croquettes and see if you can tell me what they’re stuffed with.”

“That was really nice,” Chris said as they drove back uptown, “but I’m ready for some plain,
un
fancy, solid American food for dinner.”

“Me too. How about a pizza?”

“Perfect, can’t get any more American than that.”

“I know a good place, and on the way we can drive right through the intersection I was talking about before. In fact, we’re about to now.”

“The epicenter, the heart of the heart of downtown?”

“The very place.”

“Is that it up ahead, where those tour busses are lined up along the curb?”

“That’s it.”

A few seconds later Chris burst out laughing. “The
heart
of Palm Springs?” Chris shouted with more laughter. “I would say they’re a little off in their anatomy.”

Alix laughed along with her. They were on Tahquitz, approaching Palm Canyon and coming up behind an enormous, billowing skirt that revealed a curvy, four-foot-wide, panties-clad rear end. This was Palm Springs’s number-one tourist draw of the moment, the brilliantly colored “Forever Marilyn” statue, nearly thirty feet tall, in her most iconic pose, from
The Seven Year Itch
, where she stands caught in the updraft from a New York City subway grate, futilely trying (but not very hard) to hold down her ballooning skirt.

“It’s only on loan to Palm Springs,” Alix told her. “They’re trying to buy it, though. I heard they offered one point two million, and they’re waiting to hear.”

“It’s beautiful, in a strange way,” Chris said, looking up at Marilyn’s laughing face as they passed. “She looks so happy. Makes you smile, doesn’t it? Look at all those people, they’re all smiling.” She twisted to look back as they passed it and crossed Palm Canyon. “So it’s for sale,” she said thoughtfully as she straightened. “One point two million, was that what you said?”

Alix fixed her with a stern glance. “No, you can
not
have it. As your trusted and respected counselor and guide, I forbid it. I’m letting you get away with the portrait miniatures, but there’s such a thing as going too far.”

“Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea, and I intend to talk you into it.”

Alix responded with a phrase she’d learned from the many times she’d heard Tiny mutter it: “
Quando voleranno gli asini.”
When donkeys fly.

T
wo miles north and west of Giuseppe’s Pizza and Pasta, where Chris and Alix were starting on their final slices of linguica and mushroom pizza, Mickey Buckner was sitting behind the wheel of his snazzy new Mazda MX-5 Miata, relieved to be only a block from home. He shouldn’t have been driving at all and he knew it, not after consuming the better part of two sixty-ounce pitchers of beer at the Village Pub. He already had one DUI conviction on his record, and that had been a miserable enough experience. God knew what would happen if he got a second, and he had no interest in finding out. But he hadn’t liked inconveniencing one of his less intemperate friends for a lift, or having to come back and retrieve his car in the morning (and where would he leave it, anyway?), and it all seemed like too much to deal with. So here he was.

He was being extremely careful, and not only because of that DUI, but because the shiny red automobile was only a few weeks old, and he had every intention of keeping it dingless for years to come. And so the route he’d chosen was mostly along quiet streets. He drove slowly and cautiously, coming to a complete, standing stop at every intersection that had a stop sign, and a rolling stop at the ones that didn’t (first prudently checking behind him).

Which was why he was now paused at this particular intersection, the signless junction of Santa Rosa Drive and South Patencio Road, peering up and down Patencio to make sure it was safe to cross this last barrier between him and home, only a block away. To his right, nothing to be concerned about. About thirty feet up Patencio, a man that he had seen crossing Santa Rosa as he drove up to the corner was continuing his unhurried stroll northward, away from him, head down and hands in his pockets. As most people did in these quiet old residential neighborhoods, he was walking in the roadway itself; the sidewalks, where they existed at all, were too troublesome to bother with, being broken up every few yards by lawns and walls.

The other way, to Mickey’s left, fifty feet or so down Patencio, a green compact was very slowly approaching—a 2012 Ford Focus. (Mickey owned a garage. He knew cars.) It was well into twilight, but the Ford didn’t have its lights on, which made Mickey realize that he didn’t either.

He reached to turn them on, but before his hand got there, he was startled by the sudden gunning of the Ford’s engine. At the same time its brights flicked on and a second later it came screaming across the intersection five feet in front of his hood. The walking man only had time to begin to turn around before the car plowed into him with an appalling
whunk!
and mowed him down. Or rather, mowed him
up
. He went flying straight up in the air—ten feet, it seemed to a stunned Mickey—with his arms windmilling, came down on the Ford’s windshield and roof, bounced over the passenger side, and apparently got hooked on something so that he was dragged down the roadway for ten or fifteen yards, arms, legs—and head—flopping. The Ford, still at high speed, jigged sharply left, then right, to throw him free, and he was flung off to slam into the white-painted stone wall that fronted a house at the next corner. There his limp body collapsed forward into a flattened human heap like nothing Mickey had ever seen before.

The man was bent completely double, as if he’d been trying to touch his toes and had overdone it. His fingers extended well beyond his toes and his face rested against the ground between his knees. Nobody but a contortionist could take a position like that, and Mickey didn’t think he was a contortionist. For a normal person’s body to pancake that way, his back had to be broken, his spine snapped, muscles and ligaments severed. And his head, his head was all . . .

Mickey barely got his own head out the window before half a gallon of beer came pouring out of him, mixed with what was left of a large order of fish and chips. Then he just sat there, shaking. He had just been witness, probably the only witness, to an assassination; what else could it be? The speeding Ford had never slowed (other than to shake loose its victim), let alone stopped, but had roared off, to swing right at the following corner with tires squealing, and rear end fishtailing.

But what was he supposed to do? Call 9-1-1, right? He knew in his heart that was the right thing, and he was a good citizen, he really was, but in his current condition he’d be crazy to talk to anyone who could and would report it to the police. Call anonymously and hang up before any questions could be asked? But could they trace the cell phone to him? He didn’t know. A public telephone was out of the question because who knew where they were anymore? Maybe call in the morning? But then they’d want to know why he’d waited. Surely, it was his duty to call them. He could identify the make and even the year of the car. Most important, he could tell them that it had been no accident, no unfortunate split second of driver inattention. Still . . .

While he dithered, two men came running toward the broken body from around the far corner. He knew them, not by name but by sight, and he sprang into action before they had a chance to see him there. He put the car into reverse and barreled rapidly and expertly backward—he’d had plenty of experience at it at work—turned right at the next corner, and headed back to downtown. He needed to do some quiet thinking, to figure out what he should do. And he needed a drink, just a short one to calm himself down. He headed toward a quiet, dark bar he knew just off South Indian Canyon Drive, where the bartender left you alone unless you wanted to be talked to. He parked on the street and walked in, surprised to find himself more unsteady on his feet than he’d been at the wheel. The only people at the counter were a gay couple at one end, and they were too engaged with each other to notice him. All the same he chose the stool at the other end of the bar.

“Give me a Coors Light, Charley,” he said. “No, wait, make that a Scotch on the rocks, double.” Why not? The beer had all come up, hadn’t it? The alcohol had been flushed out of his system. He needed to settle down, to get things straight in his head. A Scotch, slowly sipped, would help him with that. Still, moderation was required. “On second thought, put in a splash of water, Charley.”

Half an hour later he’d decided what to do, and it hadn’t been all that hard, not once he’d relaxed a little and taken the time to think things through. Really, there wasn’t even anything to argue about with himself. What was there for him to go to the police about? He’d seen enough TV shows to know they’d figure out what had happened from the tire tracks, and the position of the body and other forensic stuff: the fact that the Ford had jumped into high speed from a standing start, had hit the poor bastard mostly from behind, had jigged left and right to shake him loose, and then sped on. And they’d know which way it had headed from more tire marks at the corner of Baristo.

He’d be able to tell them that it was a green 2012 Ford Focus, of course, which was important, only
was
it a green 2012 Ford Focus? Was he ready to swear to that? It had been dusk and he’d glimpsed it for no more than three or four confused seconds. Mightn’t it have been something similar, a Fiesta, or a Chevy Cruze, or even a Toyota FT-CH? Could he even say with certainty that it was green and not blue or black? What if he gave them information that turned out to be wrong and some innocent person was arrested?

He couldn’t give them the license plate number, not a single digit or letter of it, and he had no idea of what the driver looked like, or whether it was a man or woman—it could have been a chimpanzee for all he knew—or how many people were in the car. He’d just plain never noticed. It had been too sudden, too fast, too dark. So, all things considered, what could he tell them that would actually be helpful? Not a damn thing. So what was the point of going to them at all? There wasn’t any.

Jesus Christ, what a load off his back.

“Charley,” he said, “I’ll go ahead and have that Coors Light now, I think. So tell me, whaddaya think, are the Chargers gonna do any better next year or not?”

B
y the time Alix got back to the Villa Louisa it was dark. The evening’s outdoor movies were getting under way on the back lawn. With a dozen other like-minded people, she got a cup of decaf coffee from the nearby urn that had been set up, settled into one of the lounge chairs, and watched a loopy old Marx Brothers short, followed by an equally dopey 1930s Barbara Stanwyck seaboard comedy, and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. At the close, when a clerk came out to shut the projector down, he was nice enough to ask if she’d be more comfortable if he went with her when she opened the door to her bungalow.

Although she hadn’t been thinking about it until he brought it up, she took him up on the offer, and then, as an afterthought, asked him to change the code on her lock and make another new key card for her.

He approved. “Better safe then sorry.”

With those words in mind, she double-checked the windows and doors to make sure they were locked, and pulled the blinds. Once into her pajamas, she browsed in a rickety old bookcase along the wall, found a dog-eared Agatha Christie that looked as if it might have been left by Miss Crawford herself, and took it to bed with her, hoping it would ease her into sleep. It did; when she surfaced in the middle of a pleasant dream some nine hours later, awakened by her own laughter, the book still lay open on her chest, turned to page two. Feeling rested and relaxed, she tried to remember what the dream had been about. It had involved Prentice Vandervere and Harpo Marx. They had been going through some kind of lunatic routine with Harpo booping away on his horn to distract Prentice, who was trying to deliver a learned lecture from—

A sudden recollection sat her up, blinking. Not of anything from the dream, but of something Prentice had mentioned over cocktails the previous evening. It had been while they were talking about the Pollock. Alix had observed how much Mrs. B must have wanted the Pollock to have given up nine prize paintings from her father’s personal collection to pay for it. Prentice’s biting reply had been along the lines of: “Well, you know Clark. He can be very persuasive when he wants to be.”

At the time it hadn’t registered. Only now did she realize what it meant. When she and Clark had been discussing the Pollock the other morning, Clark had led her into thinking the painting was a favorite of Mrs. B’s.
Her pride and joy
, he’d called it, which, according to what Prentice had said, had to be an outright lie. More than that, Clark had mentioned nothing about his own part in bringing it to the Brethwaite, nothing to suggest that the picture was in reality a recent acquisition (which it must have been, since Clark had been there barely four months). Without ever saying so explicitly, he’d managed to leave her with the impression that the Pollock had been in the museum’s possession a long time.

Her mind was racing now. A lot of things had suddenly clicked into place. Or if that was overstating it, then at least she now had some plausible explanations for last night’s attack and for Clark’s behavior. Or if even that was overstating it, then at least she had some possible rationales for them. What if the painting
was
a forgery? What would happen to his job and his reputation if that were to come out, considering the assets the museum had given up to acquire it? Couldn’t that be why he asked Alix to postpone telling Mrs. B about her suspicions?

Well, yes, but would he really try to kill her over it? It was hard to believe, but suppose she took the speculations a little further: What if he
knew
it was a forgery and had known it all along? What if he’d somehow engineered the sale to the Brethwaite, knowing it? Why would he have done that if it didn’t benefit him in some way? It would hardly be something new in the art market: A person who orchestrates a sale and for his efforts is paid a “finder’s fee,” or a “referral fee” (or in plainer language, a kickback). If the sale is important, as the Pollock sale was, such a fee can run into six figures; excellent news for Clark.

Except, of course, that having any knowing part in selling a forgery was as illegal as hell, and if it were to come out that it
was
a fake, he would be facing criminal trial, civil suits, and serious jail time. Now
there,
she thought with a long exhalation—she’d been holding her breath without knowing it—was the rationale for murder that she’d been looking for, and a plausible one at that.

Plausible enough to call Detective Cruz? Maybe not. Did she really believe it herself? She wasn’t even sure about that. The only solid, physical fact that she could produce to Cruz or to herself was Clark’s puffy, red nose, and she knew Chris was right about that. As evidence went, it was ludicrous. It could just as easily mean he was Santa Claus. Still, she owed it to herself to go to the detective with it. For all she knew, Clark would come after her again. After all, from his point of view, nothing had changed. If there was a reason to go after her the other night, it was still there. And if what she was hypothesizing was right, he had to do it soon, before the time they had set for Alix to go to Mrs. B if she still had doubts about the painting. And that would be Tuesday, three days from now.

Yes, call Cruz. Definitely.

She found the card he’d left with her, dialed his number, got his voice mail, and left a message saying she had some ideas about who it was that might have attacked her. She wasn’t any more specific than that because somehow she felt sillier and more paranoid naming Clark over the telephone than she would in talking to Cruz face-to-face. She would be at the museum most of the day if he wanted to talk to her there, she said, or she’d be happy to come to the police station if he preferred that.

The detective’s car pulled into the Brethwaite’s parking lot an hour later, just as Alix was getting out of hers. “Okay if we talk outside?” she said. “More private.”

“On a day like this? What could be better? Lead on.” He seemed to be in the same mellow mood he’d been in the other night, but he looked a lot fresher, with a crisp, blue-checked sport shirt, a newly shaven jaw, and the breezy smell of aftershave still clinging to him.

She took him around to the north terrace, the one that looked out over the wind turbines and the desert, and asked if he’d like some coffee. When he said yes, she went inside to get it from the break room, and on the way back she stopped at the workroom, where the paintings were being prepared for transfer to the auction house. Alfie Wellington and Drew Temple were at one long table, assembling the backs of two of the braced, made-to-measure crates. Each segment had numbers and letters on it to show which piece attached to which, and where. Jerry was at a smaller trestle table next to them, where he had one of the paintings lying face up and was applying a protective “X” of masking tape to the glass pane that fronted it. This was the first step in the final packing process. After that it would be wrapped in newsprint. Then would come bubble wrap, and then the insertion into the partly assembled crate, probably with a few handfuls of foam peanuts thrown in to fill up any empty spaces. Finally, the front of the crate would be screwed on by hand, through the screw holes that had been drilled in advance.

“When do they ship?” she asked Jerry.

“Some today, the rest Monday. That is, if these two clowns can get their act together and manage to do more than one crate an hour.”

“If you’re unhappy with our work,” Drew said, “just say so. It was my impression we were doing you a favor.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Jerry sang.

“What Jerry fails to allow for,” Alfie said to Alix, “is that we’re mere volunteers, untrained in the subtleties of this intricate task.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, “you have to know not only the whole alphabet, but the numbers too, all the way up to twelve.”

Alix saw now that the object he was working on wasn’t a painting, but the panel with the twelve miniatures. She leaned over to look at it more closely, then tipped it toward her to eliminate the glare on the glass crystals. She found elements in the portraits she hadn’t seen before; not just the wonderfully executed details—the silky, elegantly knotted white cravat on the boy, the little girl’s upswept, extravagant head of curls—but the overall texture, the surface quality of the paintings. They shone with a golden glow, almost as if they were backlit.

“Jerry,” she said pensively, “these two Dunkerleys—how sure are you they’re really—”

“Stop!” Jerry cried. “Alix, please, for God’s sake, have mercy; don’t tell me, not at this point, that these are fake
Dunkerleys
!”

Alix laughed. “No, but you know, I wouldn’t mind getting a magnifying glass from my workroom—”

“Absolutely not!” he cried theatrically, snatching up the panel and clasping it to his breast. “Won’t someone here
please
control this woman?”

“Seriously,” Alix said, “my friend will probably take your advice and bid on it at the auction, and I’m helping her, so I’m doing some research. You said the other day there was a pretty solid provenance on these two. It’d be helpful to have a look at that. Any problem with that?”

“Nope. They’ve already been sent to Endicott, but I’ll be there next week, and I’ll e-mail you copies. Remind me if you don’t hear from me by, oh, say, a week from Monday.”

“Will do. Thanks, Jerry.”

“Or you can stop by San Francisco if you want to see the originals.” He held the panel up not far from his face. “I’ll tell you, I like these things a lot myself—all of them, not just the Dunkerleys—just beautiful. I wouldn’t mind placing a bid on this thing myself.”

“What? What?” Alfie called, looking up from his screwdriver. “Set the valuation of an object and then bid on it yourself? I believe that’s frowned upon in the business. Although now that I think about it, I must say—”

“Moot point,” said Jerry, “since I couldn’t afford it anyway.”

“Well, that’s your own fault, dummy. You’re the valuator, aren’t you? You should have set the value at something you
could
afford.”

“Damn, why didn’t I think of that? I wonder if it’s too late to reset it to something I could manage.”

“I doubt if twelve ninety-five is quite what Clark has in mind,” Drew said, straight-faced.

“Enough screwing around, gentlemen,” Alfie said after another slug from his trusty mug. “Drew, you and I better get on with the job. Putting crates together might turn out to be a useful skill for a couple of ex-curators.”

“We are not amused,” said Drew, his nose longer than ever.

Detective Cruz accepted his coffee with thanks, and they both sat on one of the benches, this one with a cheery little bronze plaque on it that said, “In loving memory of our dear husband and father, Max L. Borowski. We shall miss you greatly.”

“Don’t you love these little signs?” Cruz said. “Sure lighten the mood.” He took a mug from her and held it in both hands, elbows on his knees. “So. What do you have to tell me?”

She told him, not leaving out even the most tenuous elements of her reasoning. It was made more awkward than it might have been because he was utterly silent, as he’d been the other night when Officer Campbell was interviewing her, so she was doing lots of explicating and rationalizing. Throughout, his fleshy face wore an intent expression that she couldn’t place. Skepticism, she would have expected, but this was something else. Wariness? Outright disbelief?