The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) (14 page)

The more she talked, the more inscrutable his look got. Was he trying his best not to
laugh
? “Look,” she said with some frustration, “I know as well as you do that this all sounds crazy, and I wouldn’t be coming to you with it if I wasn’t concerned that he might try it again. Or try something else. I would have thought it was your job—”

“Whoa, hold your horses. Let me set your mind at ease on that point. I can tell you with complete assurance that Mr. Calder will
not
be coming after you again.”

“I don’t understand. Have you arrested him?”

“Alix, he’s dead.”

“
What
?
” The news was so out of the blue that this came out more squawk than speech. “
Clark?
He’s
dead?
But I was talking to him just yesterday afternoon . . . I know,” she said in response to the detective’s wisp of a smile, “that’s what everybody says. It’s just—”

“Just that someone who’s going to die any time soon ought to have the decency to look it, and in most kinds of death they do. But not this kind.”

She caught her lower lip on her teeth and expelled a breath, stalling for time to collect herself. “How did he die?” she asked in a whisper.

“Hit by a car a few blocks from where he lived.”

“An accident?” But something about Cruz’s manner told her otherwise.

“Hit-and-run,” he said. He paused, as if considering whether or not to say more, then went ahead. “And not an accident.”

“Are you telling me he was murdered?”

“That’s what the forensics point to. Of course, there’s still an autopsy to be done, and lab work, but I can’t see how they’re going to change that.”

“My God.”

“Listen, Alix—what you were telling me about the Pollock . . . is it possible that that could have something to do with this?”

“With someone murdering
him
? No, I don’t see any connection there. Most of what I told you wasn’t much more than wild surmise anyway, so no . . . but . . .”

His eyebrows went up. “But?”

“Well,” she said, “he wasn’t very much liked, at least not around here. You probably know that already.”

“We know practically nothing about him, we’ve just started. What can you tell me? Why wasn’t he liked?”

“Well, basically, he’s pretty new here and he’s really been shaking up the organization. For one thing, his new plan is going to mean that some of the curators’ jobs are going to be cut. And some of them are even—”

She hesitated, chewing her lip, and the experienced Cruz adroitly read her mind. “I know. You don’t like the idea of being an informer, you don’t want to get anyone in trouble, you’re not accusing anyone, and so on. I’d feel the same way. But think of it like this: Anything you can tell us, we’re going to find out anyway, but the quicker we learn it, the sooner we can start excluding people as suspects, and the better our chances of quickly narrowing in on whoever did do it.”

More lip chewing. “Look, detective—”

“Call me Jake, will you? It’s only fair; I’ve been calling you Alix.”

“Thank you. But look, I haven’t even been here a week. I barely know these people’s names. I’ve hardly brushed the surface. How about this: You talk to the people directly involved, the curatorial staff—well, and Mrs. Brethwaite, the director—and then if you still have questions that you think I can help with, I’ll do my best.”

She didn’t expect him to accept that, but he did. “All right,” he said comfortably. He reminded her of a big cat now, lapping up his coffee and clearly luxuriating in the combination of sun and crisp morning air.

“Oh, let me ask you one other question now,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him. “Where would you have been last night at six thirty, seven?”

Alix had once been addicted to
Law and Order
, and she remembered wondering how it felt to be asked that question:
Where were you last night?
Now she knew. Not good.

“I would have been having dinner with my friend. Chris LeMay. At Giuseppe’s Pizza and Pasta, on East Palm Canyon.”

“Would anybody be able to verify that? Other than her?”

“Well, I’m not . . . oh, that’s right, Chris was kidding around with the guy behind the counter. I know he’d remember
her
.”

“That’s good. You understand, I had to ask that question. Well . . . other than that, is there anything else you can think of that might lead somewhere?”

She began to shake her head. “No . . . Oh, wait a minute, maybe I do have something. Chris and I went to see him yesterday morning—she wanted to buy some drawings before they went to auction—and we overheard him on the phone having an argument with someone. He was getting pretty upset.”

He lifted a hand. “You know, I think it might be better if we talked down at the station at this point. You amenable to that?”

“Sure. When?”

“No time like the present.”

“Let’s go. I’ll follow you.”

Instead, Cruz offered to drive her to police headquarters and then back to the museum, and she accepted. For the first few minutes of the drive they were both quiet, cogitating and reflecting, and then Alix said, more to break the silence than anything else: “How many detectives does the department have?”

“Four, why?”

“Well, I was starting to think maybe you were the only one. You’re the only one I’ve seen.”

“No, there are four of us, and we all have plenty to do. I’ve been the lead on the Phantom Burglar for months, which is why I showed up at your bungalow the other night, and as for Clark, the All-Knowing Skull, applying a subtle and complex algorithm, selected me for this one too. I’m partnering with a guy named Pat Malloy, but he’s out in the field this morning, so it’ll just be me today.”

She was frowning. “The all-knowing—?”

“We’re here,” he said before she could finish.

They parked at a curb lined with departmental black-and-whites—three patrol cars and three motorcycles (and two Segways)—and to get to the long, low headquarters building they had to cross a small plaza that was centered by a bronze memorial statue. Beside a semi-abstract open car door, two life-sized, realistically sculpted officers were on the ground: one, obviously grievously wounded, on his back, the other kneeling at his side, tending him, with his cell phone to his face. “Help is on the way” read the identifying plaque, and Alix thought it was stirring and particularly well done.

“That’s beautiful,” she said, stopping in front of it. “It’s extremely moving.”

She caught a narrow, darting look from Cruz, which didn’t surprise her. Almost every layperson seemed to assume that any
real
art expert would ex post facto look down her nose at sentimental, old-fashioned representational art. But when he saw that she meant it, he thawed. “It is, isn’t it? Gets me every time I walk by it.”

“Is it based on a real incident?”

“No, it’s a memorial to two of our officers killed in the line of duty at different times. But trust me, there have been plenty of real incidents just like this.”

“I don’t doubt it. Anyway, it’s beautiful.”

“Certainly is.” If she hadn’t been certain that Cruz liked her before, she was now.

Once through the entrance lobby, he led her into a corridor lined with office cubicles, each of which held a compact, cluttered desk, a couple of rolling chairs, a corkboard bulletin board with the usual jumble of memos, photos, cartoons, and paper scraps pinned to it, and a metal filing cabinet, all in a space that was no more than eight by eight. She hoped—but doubted—that Cruz had something larger in which to work because he would have had a hard time squeezing himself into one of these.

“You were about to ask about that skull thing before? That’s him right there, the All-Knowing Skull.”

He was pointing at a plastic Halloween fright skull, the kind that has eyeballs dangling out of their sockets on springs. Someone had mounted a pair of nerdy, Clark Kent-ish spectacles on this one, which sat atop one of the partitions separating the cubicles, its popped and bouncy eyeballs looking down into one of them. “The way it works is this. It’s moved once a week to face a different cubicle. And when a new case comes up, whoever’s cubicle it’s looking into at the time, he’s the assigned—the lead investigator. It happened to be gazing into mine when the first Phantom burglary occurred, and into mine again when Calder got himself killed.”

Alix looked sideways at him. “I know you’re kidding.”

“I am not kidding. What’s more, I think it’s a great system. It’s fair, it’s impartial, and it’s understandable.”

She shook her head, laughing. “I suppose so, but I have to say, you people certainly have your own way of doing things.”

“I prefer to think of us as trendsetters. Come on, I want to hear more about this argument you heard.” He took her to an interview room, as utilitarian a space as could be imagined: a small plastic-topped table, three chairs, and a wastepaper basket. The matte white walls were blank except for a rectangle about the size of a light switch plate mounted at eye level on one of them. In its center was what appeared to be a lens.

“A camera?” Alix asked. “Are we video-recording this?”

Cruz nodded. “Any objection?”

“None, record away.”

Cruz tested the recording system, then stated the date, time, place, and participants. “Okay, Alix, suppose you just tell us what you started to tell me at the museum.”

Alix took a moment to order her thoughts. “Yesterday morning my friend Chris LeMay and I went to see Clark about Chris buying one of the auction items before it actually went to auction, and as we got there we overheard him having what sounded like an argument with someone on the phone.”

“About . . . ?” Cruz asked.

“Well, we really weren’t listening that hard. It’s just that there’s no door on his office. But we heard enough to know it was something about an arrangement of some kind that the other person wanted to change. ‘A deal is a deal,’ I remember Clark saying. And he wasn’t happy about it. But the person on the other end must have been pushing him, because Clark, um, let’s see . . .” After a second it came to her. “Oh, that’s right. The other guy—well, I don’t know if it was a guy or not—the other person asked for seven at first and Clark said that was out of the question, and then after listening for another minute he said all right, six was possible, and that seemed to settle it. He didn’t like it, though.”

“Six what? Hundred dollars, thousand dollars,
million
dollars?”

She shrugged. “Six dollars, for all I know. Or six paintings, or six tickets to a baseball game. I have no idea. You understand, we weren’t really listening, we were just . . . overhearing.” She thought for another few seconds. “And that’s about it. Oh, no, wait a minute. He called him by name! It was . . . it was . . .” She grimaced, raking her mind. “. . . Seymour . . . Milton . . . something like that, something old-fashioned . . . Stanley . . . Morton . . . no,
Melvin
, that was it!” she cried triumphantly.

“Melvin,” Cruz echoed. “Mean anything to you?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, but is there anything else you remember? Even if it doesn’t seem like anything?”

“Yes, I think—”

“Hold it,” Jake said, reaching into a shirt pocket for his cell phone, which must have been on
vibrate, because Alix had heard nothing. “Yeah, Spike, sure,” he said into it. “No kidding, is that right? Damn . . . Look, I kind of have my hands full right now. Could you maybe give this to Booker? He’s familiar with it all. Okay, thanks.”

When he closed the phone there was a wry little smile on his face. “Guess what. Another burglary, just a few minutes ago. With the Phantom’s M.O. plastered all over it.”

“Ah.” Alix’s wry smile matched his. “So would I be correct in thinking that Clark is now off the hook as far as being the Phantom Burglar goes?”

“I’d have to say you’re right about that. And that it makes what you were saying before a lot more probable.”

So she wasn’t paranoid after all. That raised her spirits. “Does that mean you think he did come after me because I said the Pollock—”

Jake lifted his hand. “Let’s not get back into that right now, Alix. I need to think about it some more. For the moment, let’s stay with his murder. You were about to tell me about something else you remember.”

“That’s right. The person he was talking to on the phone—just before he hung up, Clark said, ‘All right, Melvin, see you there.’ As if they were going to get together, or at least be in the same place at the same time. I don’t think he said when, so I guess he could have been talking about some meeting or conference a year from now.”

“Or last night.”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “And really, I think that’s everything.”

“Thank you, Alix,” Cruz said, but he looked disappointed, as if he’d been hoping there’d be more meat in what she had to say. “If you remember any more at all, even a couple of words, you’ll call me?”

“I will. And I’ll talk to my friend Chris and see if she remembers anything I forgot.”

“Thanks for coming in, then,” he said rising. “Let’s get you back to the museum. I have to get over there myself. Want to talk to the staff.”