ELEVEN

 

“Is that who I think it is?” asked Zack, staring at the image inside the locket, a tiny etching of what appeared to be a portrait of a young Rembrandt van Rijn.

“It’s definitely Rembrandt,” I said. Having majored in art in college and taken four years of art history classes, I absolutely, positively, without a shadow of doubt knew Rembrandt when I saw him—whether portrayed in his youth or as an older man. “Meet Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Rembrandt Aux Trois Moustaches as the etching is often dubbed.”

Zack squinted at the etching. “Three mustaches?”

“Weird, huh? For some reason the sobriquet is a reference not only to the hair on his lip but also the hair on his chin and the fact that his cap appears to sport a mustache.”

“In which course did you learn that nugget of trivia?”

“None. I found a copy of the original hand-written bill of sale when the etching was purchased for Isabella Stewart Gardner.” I shrugged. “Maybe the art dealer had a strange sense of humor.”

“Whether one mustache or three, it’s got to be a copy, right?”

Rather than agree, I said, “I’m not so sure. We need to measure it.”

Zack strode across the room and pulled a small ruler from his desk drawer, handing it to me when he returned to the sofa. I gently opened the hinged glass that held the etching inside the locket and measured, taking care not to touch the actual artwork. “Exactly one and three-quarters inches by one and fifteen-sixteenths inches.”

I replaced the glass and locked eyes with Zack. “Exactly the size of the miniature etching stolen from the Gardner Museum during the burglary in 1990.”

Zack let loose a low whistle. “Do you suppose this is what Murphy wanted from Johnnie Doyle?”

“This and probably some of the other pieces.” I filled him in on what I’d read.

“After Murphy’s release from Leavenworth, he was suspected of burglarizing a jewelry store in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. His partner-in-crime was named Garrett Quinn, one of the men the FBI suspected of pulling off the Gardner heist.”

“Were they arrested?”

“They were brought in for questioning but never charged due to a lack of evidence.”

“And I’m sure neither talked.”

“Of course not. But get this: Garrett Quinn’s wife is Colleen Doyle Quinn. She’s Johnnie Doyle and Shauna Doyle Gallagher’s sister.”

“Interesting coincidence.”

I offered him a catbird smile. “Oh, but it gets better. At one point the FBI executed a search of the Quinn’s farm in New Hampshire in conjunction with a drug investigation. They came up empty in their search for drugs but found a cache of weapons. At that point, Colleen Doyle Quinn, who was recently widowed, volunteered that her husband Garrett had been in possession of two of the stolen paintings from the Gardner Museum. When the Feds asked her where the paintings were, she claimed that prior to his death, Garrett had turned them over to another mob associate, Lochlin Fitzgerald.”

“She was probably worried she’d be charged for illegal possession of the weapons,” said Zack. “She dangled information about the Gardner paintings as a carrot in case she needed to cut a deal.”

“If so, she wasn’t very smart.”

Zack agreed. “She should have called her lawyer before offering up any knowledge of the paintings.”

“Anyway, when the Feds picked up Lochlin Fitzgerald for questioning, he told them he never saw any paintings, that Colleen had lied. The Feds didn’t believe him until he dropped a bombshell—Colleen wore the miniature Rembrandt etching in a locket around her neck. He claimed she showed it to him.”

“Whoa!”

I held up a finger. “I told you it gets better. The Feds got a second search warrant, but my guess is that Colleen had freaked out after their first visit and mailed her jewelry, or at least whatever she knew was stolen property, to her sister Shauna Doyle Gallagher for safekeeping.

“When the Feds showed up at the farm the second time, they failed to find the locket. Colleen wasn’t wearing it, and it was nowhere on the property. When questioned, she said she’d never owned any locket and never met Lochlin Fitzgerald.”

“Then how did Colleen know her husband gave Fitzgerald the paintings?”

“She said he told her.”

“Which may or may not be what happened to the paintings—if Quinn ever had any of them in the first place. Or the Rembrandt etching.”

“True, but Lochlin Fitzgerald stuck to his story about the Rembrandt in the locket. He claimed Colleen Quinn was crazy and had been for years. Said it was common knowledge and the Feds could ask around. Remarkably, cocky mobster that he was, he offered to take a polygraph.”

“Did he pass?” asked Zack.

“That’s yet another strange chapter in this story. He failed. Miserably.”

“He probably thought by offering, the Feds would believe his version of the story and wouldn’t go ahead with the test.”

“But they called his bluff. When presented with the results, Fitzgerald admitted he’d made up the entire story.”

Zack studied the locket. “Or not. Maybe he got cold feet and decided he shouldn’t have told the Feds anything in the first place.”

“You think he backpedaled and said he lied?”

“Makes sense. How else would the locket wind up here?”

“What do we do now?”

Zack pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Ledbetter.”

FBI Special Agent Aloysius Ledbetter was the cousin of Zack’s ex-wife Patricia. I’d previously met him under less than pleasant circumstances, but he’d immediately earned my respect.

When Ledbetter answered, Zack explained the situation. He then listened for a few seconds before saying, “See you soon,” and ended the call.

“Sounds like he was interested,” I said.

“Extremely. By the way, do you know there’s a ten-million-dollar reward for information leading to the return of the Gardner artworks?”

“That did come up in my online research.” I sighed dreamily. “Imagine being able to pay off Karl’s debts by finding one of the stolen pieces of art. With plenty leftover.”

“If the etching is the original.”

I shrugged. “That’s a question for the experts. Eight semesters of art history didn’t provide me with anywhere near the expertise I’d need to determine an original from a forgery. That’s an entirely different field.” At best, I might be able to determine if the etching was a modern-day print of the original, but I knew better than to remove the piece from the locket to examine it closer.

“This etching isn’t signed,” I said. “I don’t know if the one stolen from the Gardner Museum was signed and numbered or not, but I suspect it wasn’t.”

“Why is that?”

“None of the images I found on the Internet showed a signature, date, or print number. What are the chances the museum would frame an original Rembrandt in such a way as to hide those details?”

“None. But we both know not all artworks are signed.”

“True, especially preliminary sketches and etching proofs. Rembrandt may have seen this self-portrait as no more than an exercise.”

“Or something that didn’t rise to the high standards he set for himself,” added Zack. “Could have been the mustache on the cap. Maybe Rembrandt himself named the piece.”

“I suppose it depends on whether he had a sense of humor. If this was a work-in-progress, he may never have gotten back to it for any number of reasons. Given the tiny size, he may have lost or misplaced the etching plate. Nothing I came across in my reading offered any additional details about the work.”

~*~

Agent Ledbetter arrived an hour later with a second agent, a woman of about fifty with light brown hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun at the nape of her neck. He introduced her as Special Agent Lournetta Smanski. “Agent Smanski is a member of our Art Crime Team,” he said. “She deals with fakes and forgeries.”

“Would you also be able to determine if the jewelry was stolen?” I asked.

Agent Smanski shook her head. “Normally, no. That would be our Jewelry and Gem Theft division. However, when Agent Ledbetter told me what you had found, I talked to one of their agents. A spate of robberies occurred at jewelry stores in and around Boston shortly after Murphy’s release from prison back in the early two-thousands. Not all were solved.” She opened an attaché case and removed an iPad and a piece of heavy white felt as she continued to speak. “I have photos of the pieces that are still missing.”

She unrolled the felt onto the coffee table. Ledbetter pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and began to assemble the jewelry on the felt. I glanced at Zack. Neither of us had thought to wear gloves when we handled the pieces.

“If you’re going to dust those for prints,” he said, “you’ll find both mine and Anastasia’s on them.”

Ledbetter frowned. “Thought you both knew better.”

“At the time,” said Zack, “we didn’t suspect we’d discovered stolen property, especially since half the pieces appear to be costume jewelry. They have no markings.”

“What about the locket?” asked Agent Smanski.

“We never opened it until today when I read about Colleen Quinn.”

Zack and I began to explain the events of the last week and what I’d discovered about the Rembrandt. When we’d finished, Agent Ledbetter said, “I don’t know why I was called in, Mrs. Pollack. The way you solved my last case, you’ll probably have this wrapped up on your own by the end of the week.” He winked and added, “My offer still stands. You’d be a huge asset to the agency.”

“Thanks,” I said, knowing his offer wasn’t serious, “but murder and mayhem have given me too many gray hairs lately.”

Agent Smanski paused from examining the locket and cast a questioning eye toward Ledbetter.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” he said.

Zack slipped an arm around my waist. “And I’m turning gray from worrying about her, Ledbetter. So stop asking.”

Ledbetter shrugged. “I tried.”

Agent Smanski closed the locket. “I won’t remove the etching here. I need to look at this back at the lab to run some tests.”

“I expected as much,” I said.

She snapped a photo of the locket, both opened and closed. Then she set about photographing the other pieces of jewelry. “I’m uploading them to the database,” she said. “We should know if we have any hits shortly.”

Within seconds, her iPad chimed. The three of us hovered around her as she tapped her screen. When she had finished, she looked up at me. “Congratulations, Mrs. Pollack. You’ve uncovered a treasure trove of stolen jewelry.”

“All of it?” I asked.

“Only the pieces that are stamped.” She nodded toward Zack. “The remainder, as you and Mr. Barnes suspected, are costume jewelry, gold-plated and paste. They have no value.”

I wondered if there was a reward offered for the jewelry but contained myself. Asking seemed tacky. I’m sure I’d learn soon enough. Instead, I asked, “Were they all from the same burglary?”

“Since that’s not my division,” Agent Smanski said, “I don’t have that information. It makes sense, though. If not from the same burglary, then most likely the same thief.”

Ledbetter began placing the stolen jewelry in evidence bags. He also bagged the non-valuable pieces. “Why are you taking those?” I asked.

“We’ll dust them for prints as well. You never know what forensics will reveal.”

“And DNA?” I asked.

Agent Smanski raised an eyebrow. “What exactly do you do for a living, Mrs. Pollack, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m the crafts editor at a women’s magazine.”

“But in her spare time, she catches killers,” added Ledbetter.

Agent Smanski eyed me for a long moment, then turned to Agent Ledbetter. “Sounds like I’m going to hear quite an intriguing story on the way back to headquarters.”

“You have no idea,” he said, shooting me another wink as he and Agent Smanski prepared to leave.

“Now what?” asked Zack after the two FBI agents had departed.

My stomach answered with a loud rumble. “Lunchtime?”

Zack opened the refrigerator and began pulling out an assortment of meats and cheeses and two apples. I grabbed a box of crackers from one of the cabinets and started a fresh pot of coffee. As we set about fixing two plates of food, I said, “I think I’ll visit Rosalie this afternoon.”

“Any special reason?”

“Just being neighborly.”

“Or perhaps you want to ask her what she knows about the Gallaghers?”

No fooling that man. I offered him a self-incriminating grin. “That, too.”

~*~

Rosalie Schneider had lived in the Cape Cod behind our rancher most of her adult life. A row of azalea bushes, rather than a fence, separated our yards. The back walls of our garages stood a mere three feet apart.

She and her husband had purchased the home shortly after their marriage, but not long afterwards, he’d run off with her sister. Rosalie had remained in the house by herself ever since.

We’d bonded years ago over a shared love of crafts after I saw her award-winning quilts hanging on her clothesline one day and introduced myself. Now in her mid-eighties, she still had the eyesight and nimble fingers of a quilter half her age.

I knew Rosalie didn’t get along with the neighbors on either side of her. One had a dog that barked incessantly. The other came and went at all hours of the night on a Hog you could hear half a mile away. I wondered what she’d have to say about the previous owners of my home.

Not having any homemade baked goods to bring with me, I raided my craft stash in the basement and found several yards of cotton print fabric samples sent to me by one of the magazine’s advertisers. Knowing Rosalie, she’d drool over the fabric the way I’d drool over freshly baked brownies or cookies.

She greeted me at the back door. “Anastasia! What a pleasant surprise.”

I handed her the fabric. “I thought you’d like these.”

She cradled the pieces in one arm, her other hand caressing the sample cuts as if she held a newborn kitten. “What gorgeous patterns and colors. How thoughtful of you. Come in, dear. I was just about to have a cup of tea and a slice of lemon poppyseed cake. You’ll join me, won’t you? I’ve got a loaf fresh from the oven.”

“Rosalie, I’d never pass up freshly baked anything from you.” Rosalie’s talents in the kitchen were second only to her talent with a needle and thread, her baking prowess running neck-and-neck with Cloris.

As we sipped our tea and feasted on the lemon poppyseed cake, I asked her about the Gallagher family.

She glanced up, as if she could pluck some memories from the ceiling. “Haven’t thought about Shauna and Kellen Gallagher in years,” she said. “They pretty much kept to themselves, but when the weather was nice and the windows open, I often heard Shauna and Kellen fighting like cats and dogs.”

“Any idea over what?”

Rosalie nodded. “Shauna once confided in me. I saw her out in the backyard one day. She looked like she was crying. I walked over and asked if she was okay. At first, she seemed embarrassed, said she was fine, but then it all came tumbling out in a flood of words.”

Rosalie paused to take a sip of her tea. “Her brother Johnnie used to stay with them for extended periods of time. He was a troublemaker, but Shauna made excuses for him.”

“What sort of excuses?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “The usual. ‘You can’t blame him. He had a rough childhood.’ Yada, yada, yada. Shauna didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the sense drugs were involved and perhaps some run-ins with the law. Kellen thought the brother was a bad influence on their son. What was his name?” she muttered to herself. Pausing, she stared off into the distance for a moment, then said, “Aiden? Yes, I’m sure his name was Aiden. Anyway, that’s what they fought about mostly. That and money, of course.”

“Was her husband often out of work?”

“Not that I’m aware. It was the money she gave her brother and what she spent on the kid. That boy was spoiled rotten. I think Kellen worried he’d turn out like Johnnie.”

“Did he?”

Rosalie shrugged. “I have no idea. One day they were gone. Then you moved in.”

She rose to steep a second pot of tea. “Why the sudden interest in the Gallaghers?”

“Our contractor found something in the attic that we’re assuming belonged to them.”

“The jewelry?”

I nearly choked on a mouthful of cake. “You know about that?”

Rosalie returned to the table with the teapot. “After she unburdened herself that day, Shauna and I occasionally got together for tea or coffee. I don’t think she had any close friends. I felt sorry for her.”

She cut two more slices of cake for us. “One day Shauna told me she’d received a box of jewelry from her sister Claire.” Rosalie paused, pursed her lips, and shook her head. “No, that’s not right. Some other common Irish name.” She thought for another few seconds, then smacked her hand on the table and said, “Colleen. Colleen Quinn. And Colleen’s husband was Garrett Quinn.”

Rosalie smiled at me as she tapped her temple with an index finger. “The old girl’s still got it, Anastasia.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second, Rosalie.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “Shauna said Colleen asked her to keep the jewelry for her, but Shauna suspected the pieces were from a burglary.”

“Why would she think that?”

“Shauna said Garrett had a record and was in and out of prison over the years.”

“If Shauna suspected the jewelry was stolen, why didn’t she notify the police?”

“I urged her to do so, but she was afraid her sister would be charged.” Rosalie sneered. “For some people, dear, no matter what a relative does to you, blood is thicker than water.”

I wondered if that was a reference to Rosalie’s own past. “What did she do?”

“The box was only half-full. She filled the remainder of the box with costume jewelry that had belonged to her mother.”

That explained why the box contained both valuable and worthless pieces of jewelry. “And hid the box under the eaves in the attic?”

Rosalie finished her tea, then said, “To my knowledge, she never told anyone but me, not even her husband. I suspect she deliberately left the box in the attic when they moved. Or maybe she forgot it was there.”

She refilled our cups with the freshly steeped tea. “Out of curiosity, I’d love to see that jewelry,” she said. “Shauna was too spooked to show any of it to me.”

“I’m afraid I no longer have the pieces,” I said.

Rosalie’s eyebrows arched. “Oh? What did you do with them?”

I decided to keep my explanation as vague and simple as possible. “We suspected one of the items was connected to a high-profile burglary from 1990. Zack called someone he knows in the FBI. We turned everything over to him.”

Her brow creased. “1990? Unlikely, dear.”

“How so?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on the dates, but I’m sure Shauna didn’t receive the jewelry from her sister until at least ten years later, maybe a few years before you and Karl moved into the house.”

I didn’t see the point of explaining all that I’d learned from my hours of research earlier that morning. Instead, I said, “I’m sure the FBI will sort it all out.”

“No doubt. You will let me know what happens, won’t you?” She clasped her hands together. “I do love a good mystery. I’ve read every Agatha Christie book multiple times.”

I thanked Rosalie for her hospitality and rose to leave. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”