The Polka Dot Nude (20 page)

I didn’t want to turn on my flashlight, but I had to find a weapon, something to hit the intruder over the head with, when I crawled up behind him. At least he was alone; it was two against one. I edged to the work table and felt around in the dark till my fingers closed over cold metal. A hammer—good enough. I’d have to tap gently or I’d kill him. All was silent in the next room. Jerome must have heard the man and turned off his flashlight. With luck, the man might pass straight through to the front gallery.

I crept quietly to the door and listened. Not a sound. You’d have sworn the room was unoccupied, till the intruder turned on a flashlight. I knew it was the intruder and not Jerome, because he was only two feet inside the door. In the light’s beam, I saw Jerome’s bifocals twinkle. I expect I imagined the look of terror in the eyes behind the glasses, but it would have been there all the same. I raised the hammer and struck, firmly but not fatally hard, at where the intruder’s head should have been. He was taller than I thought. I just grazed his ear and the side of his head. It should have been enough to knock him out, but certainly not kill him. I was glad, as long as he was knocked out.

“Come on,” I called to Jerome.

“What about him?” Jerome asked.

“Never mind him. I didn’t kill him.”

“I wonder who he is,” Jerome said, and played his light on the fallen hulk.

For an instant, I had the strange impression the man had disappeared. There didn’t seem to be anything on the floor where he had fallen. I turned my light to him, too, and discovered a black lump, totally, absolutely jet black from head to toe. He wore a black ski mask, a long-sleeved black jersey, black gloves, black trousers, and black sneakers. A special color-coordinated outfit for breaking and entering. My curiosity was piqued, and when Jerome leaned over to lift the mask, I didn’t stop him, which proved to be a mistake.

The black lump came to life. Jerome was suddenly pulled to the floor and flung aside. The lump leapt out and pounced on me. Being only human, I opened my mouth and howled in mortal tenor. A black leather glove clamped over my mouth, and I was restrained against a concrete chest. I hoped Drew had an alarm, and that police cars would soon arrive, sirens wailing.

The lump swore off a string of curses, ending in the word “Audrey?” in a questioning tone.

I might have known who would get himself rigged out in a matching outfit to go breaking and entering. “Brad, is that you?”

He let go. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? Jerome, are you all right?” I turned my light on him.

Jerome picked himself up from the floor, adjusting his glasses and rubbing his left arm. “I think so. And Audrey, we really should be getting out of here. The police might come any minute.”

“Jerome thinks there might be an alarm,” I explained.

“Did you find it?” Brad asked.

I knew he meant the picture, not the alarm. “No.”

“Is this it?” Jerome inquired politely, and went to a corner to hold up my polka dot nude, still in her gilt frame, and still as lovely as ever.

“You found it!” I squealed, and ran to make sure it was my picture. The only difference was that the name
Rosalie
had been changed to
Pissarro.

“Good, let’s blow,” Brad suggested, and we left.

“What about the lock?” Jerome asked.

“Drew’s going to know she’d had company when this is gone. There’s no point trying to hide we were here,” I pointed out. As about nine and a half minutes had elapsed since we went in, Jerome didn’t argue.

“Did you drive here?” Jerome asked Brad.

“No, I took a cab, and stopped a block away.”

“Can I give you a lift?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Brad squeezed himself into the backseat of the Volkswagen Beetle and we left. There was no sign of police cruisers, no sound of sirens. I don’t think Drew had any alarm at all, but we didn’t stay around to find out if the police came later.

“Where to?” Jerome asked.

“My place is the closest,” I said. “How’s your head, Brad?”

“Speak up. I can’t hear you very well. My left ear’s bleeding.”

We all went to my apartment. Jerome made coffee while I bandaged Brad’s ear. It wasn’t really his ear that was bleeding. The skin was gouged above the ear, and a little trickle of blood oozed down—nothing desperate, though he tried to make me feel guilty.

‘I can’t put a Band-Aid on this unless you let me shave a bit of your hair off,” I explained.

“Shave my hair? You’re crazy! Elaine would have a fit.”

“A lady friend?”

"My hairdresser. No Band-Aid. Use a bandage.”

“You just want to look like van Gogh. I’ll put some antiseptic on it.”

I got the peroxide bottle and daubed some on with a cotton swab. A patch of white foam bubbled up above his ear, while howls of painful protest bellowed from his mouth.

“You’re torturing me to death!”

“It’s only peroxide.”

“Peroxide? Oh my God, I’ll have blond streaks in my hair.”

“A fate worse than poverty. Elaine can touch it up for you. Here, wipe off that foam. You look like a mad dog.” It had slid down and was gathering on his chin.

“You’re a cruel woman, Audrey. No feminine compassion. You haven’t even said you’re sorry for hitting me with a hammer.”

“I’m sorry. And you haven’t told me why you were there.”

“We were both there for the same reason.”

“You didn’t say you were going.”

“Neither did you.”

“I was trying to save you fifty-five thousand bucks.”

“All we’ve done is tip her off,” he lamented. “Not that she can do much about it, except report the picture as stolen.”

“Which she won’t, since she stole it from me in the first place. What do you think we should do now? I mean are you still going to her gallery tomorrow morning?”

“Oh yes, I’m still going to buy the Matisse. The difference is, I won’t have to pay for it.”

“Coffee’s ready,” Jerome called, and brought the pot into the living room. “Well, this was quite a night.” He smiled happily. “We haven’t done anything like this for a long time, Aud.”

Brad cast a curious look from Jerome to me. One could wish Jerome had been six inches taller, and a little less emaciated, since the look suggested Brad took him for a boyfriend. A T-shirt that didn’t have Kermit the Frog’s picture on it would have helped, too. Actually the only other criminal activity Jerome and I ever undertook together was painting the math teacher’s windows one Halloween.

“Remember the night we painted old Johnson’s windows?” Jerome smiled.

Jerome did a lot of smiling the next half hour, as he regaled Brad with long and boring stories of our youthful exploits in drama clubs and minor student revolts. It brought home graphically how extremely tedious my life had been. By eleven-thirty neither of them gave any indication they had a home to go to.

“Well, it’s getting late,” I said, and stretched my arms sleepily.

“Yeah; hey, did Aud ever tell you about the time we fell out of the canoe?” Jerome asked Brad.

“Yeah, she told me that one,” Brad lied, and laughed in spurious memory. “Right in the water.”

“With all her clothes on,” Jerome added.

I yawned ostentatiously. “I don’t know about you guys, but I have to get up early in the morning.”

“You can get up whenever you want to. You writers—boy, you really have it made,” Jerome said, and reached for the coffeepot. Fortunately, it was empty.

“You still have to be in the store at nine, Jerome,” I reminded him. “I don’t want to keep you too late. Thanks a lot for helping me.”

“Anytime. Can I give you a lift, Brad?”

Brad looked a question at me. “It’ll save calling a cab,” I told him. His black eyes skewered me.

They finally left. I bolted the door and sat smiling at my painting. I’d gotten it back, which was my major concern, but I knew Brad planned to go on and solve the whole mystery. Since it involved Rosalie and my book, it concerned me too—actually more so than Brad. I began to wonder why he was still following it up at all. We’d only come here to recover my painting, and we’d done that, but the predatory gleam in his eye told me he had no notion of letting up.

CHAPTER 16

How we were going to proceed in the morning was unclear, now that I had my polka dot nude. Why, for instance, had Brad said he was still going to buy the Matisse? Did he expect me to meet him at the gallery, polka dot nude in hand, or were we to hide from Drew that I had it? When I figured Brad had had time to get home, I called him. There was no answer. That was at midnight. He still wasn’t home at twelve-thirty, or at one. By one-thirty, I wouldn’t have spoken to him if he came dashing up to my door on a white charger.

I spent the wakeful hours between one and three A.M. deciding how I could remove from my life this toothache named Brad O’Malley, who was certainly out with Rosalie Wildewood, giving her new ideas for her famous love scenes. Having come to New York in his car, I would either have to bus it back to the cottage, or hire a car and drive myself. That would be the first little hint that I didn’t care for his company. I doubted that he planned to remain on at Simcoe’s cottage now that he wasn’t writing his Rosalie book, but if it transpired that he planned to remain, I would leave. I would not go on having my life turned upside down by him. Meanwhile, in the morning I would dress and behave like a civilized human being. I would be witty and charming, yet devastatingly disinterested. I would smile, I would say “I hope you slept well,” with no emphasis whatsoever on the word “slept.”

My apartment was a humid ninety degrees when I woke up. My blue tailored dress with crisp white trim had lost its crispness. My hair had lost everything except its straightness. But I refused to be depressed. I did my best with the hair, put on the dress, and added ivory jewelry in recognition that it was summer in the city.

By nine I was ready—a mere hour too early. That happens when you get out of bed at seven. I called Brad again, expecting either no answer, or a woman’s voice. “Brad, it’s me,” I announced brightly. “I hope I didn’t get you out of bed.”

He sounded heavy with sleep. “No,” he said. “I meant to call you.”

“I was just wondering if you want me to bring along my painting this morning.”

“No! Don’t tip her off. We’ll leave it in the car.”

“But I’m taking a taxi.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

My dress became a little crisper at this news. “All right. Did you get the certified check?”

“I’m picking it up on the way to your place.”

“Why are you doing this, Brad?”

“To lull Drew’s suspicions. I don’t want her to do anything rash before we get your picture to an expert. Let’s get there a little early, before she has time to discover her back door’s open.”

When Brad called for me, he wore dark glasses. “The top o’ the morning to you, Mr. O’Casey.” I smiled. “I bet they don’t wear sunglasses in Ireland, Timothy me lad. You’ll be giving yourself away.”

“You’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning,” he said.

“I’m a terrible traveler. Being cooped up in a car all day made me surly yesterday. Sorry I inflicted it on you.”

“I’m used to the rough side of your tongue by now,” he said, and pulled off the sunglasses. His eyes were noticeably bloodshot.

“Better put them back on,” I suggested. To my credit, I made none of the obvious suggestions as to how he’d acquired those inflamed eyes.

“Let’s go. I’d like to catch Drew on her way into the gallery.”

My painting was wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. We put it on the backseat and were waiting at Drew’s door when she got there. She had the Matisse with her, already wrapped for its transoceanic voyage. Brad held it while she unlocked the door. “I can ship this to you in Ireland, and save your carrying it,” she suggested once more.

“I’ll take it along with me, but it was grand of you to wrap it up so well,” he said.

“I wouldn’t undo it till I got it home, if I were you. Just for safekeeping,” she advised.

We went in and Brad drew the certified check out of his wallet. I peered at it over Drew’s shoulder, smiling at the
Timothy O’Casey
written in Brad’s big scrawl, all perforated and stamped and certified, and looking as official as a passport. Amazing what money could do.

There was an exchange of congratulations and thanks, a reminder of dinner that evening, and we were off, Brad carrying the wrapped painting.

“The first thing we have to do is unwrap it and make sure she hasn’t pulled a switch,” I said urgently. “She was very insistent that you not unwrap it.”

“That’s not what she’s up to. She just doesn’t want anybody who might know something about art getting too close a look at it. We’ll soon know. I’ve arranged for Art Whitdale at the Met to examine it.”

We drove to Fifth Avenue, where Mr. Whitdale was waiting in his office. He was a tall, thin, elegant man with sandy hair and tinted glasses. When the Matisse was unwrapped, it was indeed the one that had hung in Drew’s apartment the night before. We placed it beside my polka dot nude and Whitdale examined them both.

“Nice job. The colors are good,” he said, nodding and removing his glasses to clarify the colors. He turned his attention to my nude. “The pointillism isn’t as meticulous as Pissarro’s would be. Still, it’s a good forgery. Who did it?” He suggested a few names, none of them familiar to me.

“Rosalie Hart,” Brad said.

Whitdale laughed. “No, seriously, where did you find these paintings?”

“At the Drew Taylor gallery.”

“Did she have forged papers to go with them?” Whitdale asked. His nose was wiggling at the scent of a good scandal.

“No, she sold them ‘as is."

“Really Brad, I thought you knew better!” Whitdale howled. “You’ll have trouble nailing her down, if she didn’t guarantee them for originals. She only has to say she mistook them for originals, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Caveat emptor
and all that. What did you pay?”

“The Matisse was fifty-five thousand. What kind of a reputation does the gallery have in art circles?” Brad asked.