The Hanging Page 11

  She offered her hand to me. “Clarice Snow.”

  I took her cool fingers and said, “Margot Duchamps,” which was my pre-TV legal name. “And this is Jean-Paul Bernard.”

  He took her hand and gave her a little French bow.

  “We are fortunate to have these,” she said, turning our attention back to the paintings. “They are estate pieces from the private holdings of a prominent California family. The owners were very knowledgeable collectors who frequently recognized young talent. They purchased these from the painter when he was still quite unknown outside of a small circle of local plein air painters.”

  She turned to us with a demure smile. “It is always exciting to be able to add previously unexhibited works to the artist’s known catalogue.”

  Jean-Paul asked, “No one knew these paintings existed, then?”

  “They were known, yes,” she said. “But only by description and anecdote. Other than the owner’s family and guests to their home, including the artist himself, no one has seen them for over seventy-five years.”

  “They are beautiful,” I said.

  A very well-dressed couple entered the gallery. Clarice Snow nodded to them, and said to us, “I’ll leave you to look around. If you have questions, do ask.”

  Jean-Paul whispered in my ear, “Shall we take all three, dear?”

  I had to look at him, find the twinkle in his eye to be sure he was kidding—he was. I hadn’t the slightest idea how much money he had. Or didn’t have.

  He tipped his head toward the right and whispered, “The bronze bowling pin you told me about. It is there.”

  I turned and saw it, exhibited on a low dado in a far back corner, with no spotlight to show off its contours or call attention to its presence.

  The piece was big, maybe six feet tall, bottom-heavy, with a dull, rough, unfinished-looking surface. I wondered what it weighed.

  We walked closer, made a circuit around it, found no charm. It seemed to absorb all the light around it, a black hole of a piece. I agreed with Bobbie Cusato and Lew Kaufman that it would not have been an asset to the bright and airy lobby of the college administration building, and would look better spouting water in someone’s garden.

  The price card on the wall behind it had a little red sticker over the numbers; it was sold.

  On a pedestal under the price card there was a stack of postcards with photographs of other examples of the artist’s work on one side and contact information for Franz von Wilde, the artist, on the reverse. I picked one up.

  Standing beside me with his back against the wall in front of the price card, Jean-Paul made a show of studying the sculpture with some interest. After a moment he stepped up close beside me and canted his head toward mine.

  “Do you know how price is fixed on an artwork?”

  “How?”

  “By how much a buyer will pay for it.” He opened his jacket and slipped the price card, which he had taken from the wall, into an inside pocket. “We shall see, then, shall we, how valuable someone thought this heap was?”

  “I might simply have asked Clarice Snow what the price was,” I said.

  “And she would have told you it was sold and tried to interest you in something else, so you would never know.”

  I took his arm. “Remind me to be careful around you.”

  We looked at the rest of the gallery’s holdings. There were some nice prints offered at reasonable prices, some new works by up-and-coming artists, and works by more established artists like Millard Sheets. A photo album open on a bookstand showed a large selection of pieces that were not on display but could be seen by appointment. Among them were a spindly sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, a small Monet painting, and several paintings from Picasso’s Blue Period. The prices, like lobster in good restaurants, were not listed; market value was inferred.

  Jean-Paul and Miss Snow exchanged cards as we said our good-byes. When she saw his title she looked at him with new interest.

  “I noticed you glancing through our exclusive catalogue,” she said. “Anytime you would like a private showing, please call and I will make arrangements.”

  As soon as we were in the car, Jean-Paul took the stolen price card out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  I carefully peeled off the sticker, gasped, and showed him the numbers on the card. He whistled at the six figures written after the dollar sign.

  “I would think that its greatest value would be the bronze it was cast from,” he said. “But then, beauty is in the eye of the beholder—that is what you say, yes? And maybe your Mr. Holloway found something beautiful in the piece that escapes me.”

  I did my best to imitate one of his little shrugs, hoping he read, The world is full of mysteries.

  He asked, “Could he have paid that much money for it?”

  “I don’t know, but I know who to ask.”

  “Maggie, that card you picked up.”

  “Von Wilde’s postcard?”

  “It has the address of his studio, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s drive over and see what’s there.”

  He punched the address I read to him off the postcard into the car’s GPS. We headed toward the ocean, west of the freeway, following the instructions given by the GPS.

  “You’re becoming quite the spy,” I said. “Shall I call you Tintin?”

  “I prefer Bond, James Bond.” He’d make a decent Bond.

  “Mr. Bond, James Bond,” I said. “This isn’t about Park Holloway and the bronze bowling pin for you, is it?”

  “No.” He took my hand and set it on his knee.

  “Something about that gallery, though.”

  “Yes, probably nothing to it, but, you know, I hear a little bell going off in my head and it rings just a bit off-key for me. It may be nothing, but I think, why not go see if we can find a bell maker?”

  “Can you explain that?”

  “You know that as consul, other than keeping my countrymen out of trouble when they come here to visit, my primary mission is promoting French trade and culture to America.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That and throwing great parties.”

  He laughed softly. “Yes, and that. I’m afraid I feel the way your mother does about good pâté de foie gras, and I need to behave better. Look what’s happening.”

  He took my hand from his knee and patted his side with it. There was the tiniest hint of extra flesh over his belt.

  “What do you call this?” he asked.

  “Love handles,” I said.

  “Love handles?” He thought that over for a moment and then smiled. “Oh well then, that’s all right. Maybe I’ll keep them.”

  “Don’t change anything on my account,” I said. “So, about promoting French trade and the ringing of your little bell?”

  “Promoting French trade also means protecting French products.” He turned onto Quinientos Street. “Every day, I work with U.S. Customs and Interpol to block trafficking in counterfeits. Who would pay four hundred dollars for an Hèrmes scarf if—using the argot of a Customs investigator I worked with—you can buy an African or Mexican or Chinese knockoff for ten bucks at the swap meet?”

  The neighborhood outside the car became increasingly industrial: small factories, storage yards, car repair shops. We passed a homeless encampment that had sprung up on a vacant lot.

  “So, in the gallery, you heard the off-key ringing of a counterfeit what?” I asked. “Clarice Snow’s Dior belt or her paintings?”

  “Maybe I should go back and take a closer look at the belt.” He cocked his head and offered me a wry smile before continuing.

  “But do it on your own time, sir.”

  “No, I am more interested in the art she has in her exclusive catalogue, as she called it. Did you notice the sculpture attributed to Giacometti?”

  I admitted that I had.

  “Not so long ago a Giacometti sold at auction,” he said. “Can you guess the price?”

  “Millions?”


  “One hundred and four million,” he said, satisfied when I exhaled a low whistle; who has that kind of money?

  “The piece that sold was over four feet tall, and the one in Miss Snow’s album is under one foot,” he said. “But we are comparing big apple to small apple, not apple to orange. Her piece is museum quality. One would expect it to be offered through a major auction house and not a little gallery, not even if the gallery, like Miss Snow’s, is in a very wealthy community.”

  “You said ‘attributed’ to Giacometti. Are you thinking forgery?”

  He toggled his head: maybe yes, maybe no.

  “Perhaps she is a fence for an international gang of art thieves,” he said, using the James Bond accent. “Interpol regularly sends me a list of stolen treasures.”

  “And maybe the sculpture belongs to her,” I said, making it up as I went. “Given to her by the wealthy Mr. Weidermeyer or some sheik who wooed her. But now she needs cash so she’s selling it. If she sells it herself she won’t have to pay a commission to an auction house.”

  “And the Monet and the early Picassos?” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Works of that caliber have known provenance. A few minutes on the Internet and we may find exactly where they should be and who owns them.”

  “Or,” I offered, “the catalogue is bait-and-switch, and she doesn’t have access to those listings at all. If you ask to see something, she can say that it is unavailable, then she’ll try to interest you in something else, as you suggested earlier.”

  “Interesting possibility,” he said.

  The GPS voice told him to turn right at the next intersection.

  “Quarantina Street doesn’t sound very promising,” Jean-Paul said as we drove through a canyon of abandoned warehouses. If there were a contagious disease on the street, it was obsolescence and a longstanding bad economy for whatever commercial endeavors that neighborhood had once undertaken.

  Von Wilde’s studio was in a large warehouse midway down a block slated for redevelopment. It was Sunday; there was no one on the street except us. As we got out of the car, a freight train passed on the far side of the studio, rattling the iron-barred windows set high up on the walls. The only other break in the building’s bunker-like façade was a steel roll-up door large enough to drive a truck through.

  No one answered the bell next to the door so we walked down the driveway along the side, following the sound of metal clashing against metal. Further along, flashes of silver-blue light shot out from an open doorway. A welding torch, maybe.

  A young man wearing a welder’s face shield and leather apron came out of the side door. He flipped up the shield and challenged us. “What do you want?”

  “Is this the studio of Franz von Wilde?” I called as we walked toward him.

  “Who?” Then the light dawned and he said, a bit incredulously, “You mean Frankie?”

  “Is he here?” I asked.

  Scowling in apparent puzzlement, he asked, “Why?” in a way that seemed to question why anyone would want to see Frankie rather than asking what our business was.

  I pulled out the postcard from the gallery. “We saw his sculpture at the Snow Gallery.”

  He smiled broadly at that. “Did you like it?”

  “Is Mr. von Wilde here?” Jean-Paul asked again.

  “Yeah, sure.” He beckoned for us to follow him inside as he shouted, “Frankie. Visitors.”

  The door we passed through was similar to the big delivery door on the front of the building. It opened into a long, narrow work room, a space partitioned from the large warehouse. At the far end there were several metal sculptures that could have been cousins of the bronze bowling pin—big, oddly twisted, and dark.

  The welder took off his shield and set it on a workbench next to what looked like a large iron gate.

  Jean-Paul asked, “What are you working on?”

  “The driveway gate,” he said, running his hand over a welded seam. He seemed affable enough, mid-twenties, I guessed, more biker than Bohemian. “Some asshole rammed it the other night. Probably drunk.”

  He punctuated his statement by yelling for Frankie again.

  “Otherwise, you couldn’t have walked down this way,” he said. “We always keep the gate closed. That’s why I was surprised to see you; no one ever comes down here.”

  “I would think people who visit the gallery might come by to see the studio from time to time,” I said.

  He grinned. “Never happened before.”

  A door at the back opened and a face under a mop of uncombed black hair peered in. The welder heard the door and turned toward it.

  “Didn’t you hear me, Frankie? I said, you have visitors.”

  A young man about the same age as the welder, twenty-something, sidled in and shut the door behind him. He looked like he might have just rolled out of bed, barefoot, rumpled jeans and holey T-shirt, eyes puffy and unfocused. He switched those sleepy eyes back and forth between Jean-Paul and me a couple of times as if deciding whether he would stay or not.

  “They were at your mom’s gallery,” the welder said. “They saw the sculpture and wanted to see what else you got.”

  Frankie aimed his dark eyes at me. “What do you want?”

  “I just told you,” the welder said as if speaking to a slow child. “They saw the sculpture—”

  Frankie snapped, “I heard you, Eric. Now shut up.”

  “Jeez, just trying to tell you something. You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  Frankie ventured a few more feet into the studio. He kept his eyes focused on me.

  “I know who you are,” he said, sounding angry. “What do you want?”

  Jean-Paul slid his hand under my elbow and pressed close beside me protectively.

  “We’d like to speak with you,” I said.

  “Is it about Dr. Holloway?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Hey, look.” He came all the way into the room but stopped some distance from us. “I know it was you found him, I saw it on the news. And I’ve seen your shows, I know what kind of stuff you do. I also know that you’re some kind of friend to that kid, Sly.”

  “Do you know Sly?”

  He shook his head. “I know who he is. People are saying he threatened Dr. Holloway, and maybe he killed him.”

  Reflexively, I put my free hand over Jean-Paul’s where it rested on my arm, something solid to hold onto.

  “What people?”

  “The usual assholes.”

  “You used to attend Anacapa College,” I said.

  “That was my mom’s idea. I wanted to go to NYU.”

  “Hah!” Eric, the welder, interjected. “Like you could get in.”

  “I told you to shut up, Eric.”

  “Asshole,” Eric muttered. He put his face shield back on the top of his head and picked up his welding torch. “You want to take your powwow somewhere else so I can get this finished? If we don’t get the gate back up by tonight there will be hell to pay. Hell to pay.”

  “Who’s stopping you?” Frankie said. To me, he said, “I got nothing to say to you.”

  Then he turned and went out the way he came in.

  Chapter 12

  Roger rolled my inky fingertips, one at a time, onto a fingerprint card. The Sheriff’s Scientific Services technicians had dusted the administration building for prints and wanted sets of exemplars from everyone ever known to have been in the building.

  “Detective Thornbury was going to have you go down to the Sheriff’s Malibu station to give a set of your prints,” Roger said. “But when I offered to get them when you came over tonight for dinner, he went along. He’s figured out that his life will be easier during the investigation if he drops the hardboiled-cop shtick and plays nice with the locals.”

  “Locals meaning you and your department?”

  “Yep.” He handed me an alcohol wipe to clean my fingers with.

  “How pleasant for you,” I said with a definite lack of sinceri
ty. “Having them underfoot.”

  “It works out for him,” Roger said. “The closest Sheriff’s substation to Anacapa is down the freeway in Lost Hills. Didn’t take Thornbury long to figure out how much time he was going to spend stuck in freeway traffic if he had to go back and forth. So I told him that if he could mind his manners and take turns washing and refilling the coffeepot like the rest of us, he and Weber could have a desk in our station. He accepted.”

  “And does it work out for you?”

  He nodded. “The Sheriffs took over the investigation. But it’s still my community.”

  “Watch your back, Roger,” I said, putting the used wipe in the hand he held out for it. “I don’t trust the guy. From what I’ve seen of him, I just don’t think he’s as smart as he needs to be to get this case right.”

  “Maggie?” From the paternal tone in his voice, I knew something pithy was coming so I looked up into his face and waited. He put a hand on my shoulder, leaned his forehead against mine, looked into my eyes, and said, “They can’t all be Mike.”

  I tapped his cheek. “Good thing. Can you imagine life if they were?”

  “That would be scary.” He laughed as he straightened up, wadded the used wipe into a ball and flicked it into a trashcan. “But what fun, huh?”

  While he put away his fingerprint kit and slipped my exemplars into a protective envelope, he asked, “That kid, Frank Wiedermeyer, actually told you people are saying that Sly killed Holloway?”

  “Might have killed Holloway,” I said. “And he’s no kid; my guess is he’s somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.”

  “The angry young artist?”

  “Artist? I’m not so sure. He’s not scuffed up enough. His friend Eric’s hands were black and calloused, what you’d expect for a metal worker. You can’t wash that black off with a little soap and water,” I said. “But Frank? From what I saw, his hands were clean and smooth.”

  “What did that mean to you?”

  “Either he quit working with metal a long time ago, or Eric is the sculptor and Frank is his front. Eric seemed very pleased when I told him we were there because we had seen that thing everyone is calling the bronze bowling pin. But Frank didn’t seem to care.”