WE APPROACHED THE big door to the Grand Trunk Factory. The broken handle had yet to be replaced, and the door was still being propped open by the brick.
“You better be right about this, Virtue. I’m in enough trouble right now. Liebowitz thinks I’m pampering you. She’s not wrong, you know.”
I smiled at Lacroix. “You know I’m right.”
“I don’t know. It’s all pretty circumstantial.”
“Yeah, well. Still, I’ve always wanted to do this—put the whole accusing parlor scene together. It would have been nice to get the other artists in here.”
“But none of them did it.”
“Still,” I said. “It’s good to have an audience.”
“Get me an admission, and I bet even Liebowitz will thank you.”
“Is she coming?”
“No. Just in case you fuck it up. Her words.”
“She’s a wise woman.”
There was a class just finishing up in the main room. Lacroix motioned the uniformed officers upstairs, and he and I walked into the main room.
“Zack!” said Anna, sitting at the front desk. “What brings you by? Who’s your friend?”
“Anna, this is Lacroix.” I turned to Lacroix. “What’s your first name again?”
“William Lacroix, ma’am,” said Lacroix. “I’m with the Waterloo Regional Police. Can you call the rest of the staff up front?”
“Oh dear. Yes, I can.”
We waited for the people in the class to exit the building. A few of the stragglers entered the gift shop and started looking at knick-knacks, but I went in and stood uncomfortably close until each one left. After the last patron went through the door, Lacroix kicked the brick aside and let the door slam shut.
By this time, Bruce and Mariyam had come to the front. I could sense their nervousness and a hint of anger directed towards me, but I shrugged it off.
“Zack, what’s the meaning of all this?” asked Bruce. “We’ve got another class coming in shortly.”
“And I have a lot of work to do,” said Mariyam. “We’re all quite busy here.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” I said. “We’ll try to wrap this up as fast as we can.”
“What happened to you?” Mariyam asked. “You look like you got hit by a car!”
I looked down at my wrapped hand, still suspended in a sling. I bet my face was pretty messed up, too.
“You should see the other guy.”
“Did you kill someone else?” asked Bruce.
“Nah,” said Lacroix, “Virtue didn’t kill anyone. In fact, he saved a life.”
“Oh shucks,” I said. And to the group, I said, “We’re here because we have an update on the murder, and the plot to destroy the Grand Trunk Factory.”
“Destroy the gallery?” gasped Anna.
“Well, not destroy. Burn it down.”
“Burn it down?” gasped everyone except me and Lacroix.
“Yeah, well, possibly.” I sighed. “Bear with me. This is my first accusing parlor.”
“What?” asked Bruce.
“Let me start at the beginning,” I said. I looked over at Lacroix, who rolled his eyes at me. I took a deep breath, then paused and turned to Anna. “Anna, what happened to your hand?”
“Ooh, I cut it on that stupid door handle.”
“That’s too bad. Hey, you wouldn’t know where it is, would you?”
“No idea. It was on my desk.”
Bruce chimed in. “We’d very much like to find that handle, so we can repair the door.”
“Geez, Bruce,” I said, smiling. “It’s like you’re intentionally trying to sabotage this place. People can’t even open the door to get inside. Seems like it’s the first thing you’d fix.”
“Tell me about it,” said Mariyam, her arms crossed.
“Hey, we don’t have a lot of money right now,” said Bruce. “I called a guy to weld that handle back on the door, but we couldn’t find it.”
“I found it,” I said. “Someone hit me with it while I was down in the archives. I had to call the cops to let me out.”
“Oh, that was you who set the alarm off?”
“Yeah, well, I was unconscious for a while down there. Everything was locked by the time I woke up.”
“So, you found the door handle? Where is it?”
Lacroix withdrew a plastic wrapped handle. It was in an evidence bag. There was a little blood on it. Mine.
“And what were you doing down in the archives?”
“Talking to you, Bruce. You left me down there. At least for a little while.”
“You’re not saying I hit you with that door handle, are you?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying, Bruce. It could be the concussion talking. The reason I was down there was … well, let’s go back a couple of days earlier.
“I was helping everyone here get ready for the show when I got accosted by an angry art critic, who said I threatened him with a note. The note was signed with the letter ‘Z.’”
“Sure, like in Zack Virtue,” said Mariyam.
“Yes, but almost no one calls me Zack. Except for maybe you three.”
They all looked at each other.
“Doesn’t matter. I didn’t send him the note, and he realized this. During the show, he asked me for help and gave me a USB drive, which contained several Tom Thomson and Group of Seven images. The reason I was down in the archives is that I was looking for those paintings.” I pulled out the printed out list and unfolded it. I passed it to Bruce, who scanned it briefly, then passed it to Mariyam.
“Hey,” she said, pointing at one entry, “this one is the one we’re auctioning off.”
“Which is weird, eh? There’s one just like it at the Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound.”
Mariyam looked up at me. The color quickly drained from her face. “Oh, my God. That’s what he was talking about!”
“Who?”
“Andrew Neumann. He said there were some irregularities in the inventory. As curator of the show, he was supposed to be looking through the new submissions. But he kept going downstairs.”
“That’s right,” said Bruce. “I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. That’s why I was digging down there the other day. When you got …”
“Clubbed unconscious? Neumann’s list got me wondering. Wondering why someone would seek to discredit the gallery like that. Filling it with counterfeit artwork. Letting you sell it to unsuspecting buyers. Now, it’s possible that no one would notice the counterfeits. I mean, you’ve seen one Group of Seven, you’ve seen them all.”
“That’s not true,” said Mariyam.
“Of course not. But there are so many out there. And so many prints. And it’s hard to tell a Jackson from a Johnston. But once the gallery is discredited, it’s difficult to recover your reputation. And I think the city wanted to capitalize on that. Or at least, some folks in the city.”
“Sandburn!” hissed Bruce.
“Yup. But maybe it wasn’t moving fast enough for him. The subtle nature of counterfeit artwork could take years to uncover. But a murder …?”
“Wait,” said Mariyam. “Andrew Neumann was murdered in order to discredit the gallery?”
I shrugged. “The gallery’s suffered because of his death, yes?”
They all nodded.
“So, who would benefit from this? The city, of course. If the gallery went out of business, the city could lease out to a new renter. Maybe someone with a high-tech startup who needed additional space.”
“Hey, I don’t like where this is going,” said Mariyam.
“The downfall of the gallery would have been good for Virgil and maybe you, Mariyam. But only if the city sold you the building, which they hadn’t. At least not yet.”
“We’ve nothing to do with this,” she said adamantly.
“I’m almost certain of that,” I said. “There are other people who want the building too. And some of them just want the land.”
“Just want the land?”
“Say the gallery burned down, for example. The city would have no choice but to bulldoze the building. Then, it could redevelop the land. Maybe sell it to a large development group.”
“Seems pretty dodgy,” said Bruce. “Murdering someone, then burning down a building. Are you sure you thought this through?”
“Let’s put the murder aside for the moment. How about just burning down the gallery? Perhaps someone on the inside messes up the place a little? Maybe those mandated sprinkler updates get delayed. Maybe the entire basement gets full of garbage. Very flammable garbage. Maybe someone makes sure the insurance is the one thing in this whole place that’s actually up to date?”
“Hey, now I don’t like where this is going!” said Bruce.
“Don’t worry. You’re far too heavily invested in the gallery's success. The gallery may not have a lot of money, but nothing about that has changed in ten years. So, despite your wasteful and unorthodox methods, you wouldn’t actively try to sabotage the gallery. In fact, a couple of your ideas seem quite inspired. Personally, I think you’re on the right track. But try to keep on top of all the upkeep. You know, the city will pay for some of it.”
“So, who was trying to discredit the gallery? And who killed Andrew Neumann? Who tried to kill you?”
I looked at Bruce, then Anna, then at Mariyam. Lacroix made a get-on-with-it gesture, and just then, the two uniformed cops came downstairs. I raised my eyebrows at them, and one of them nodded back.
“It was Sandburn who wanted to discredit the gallery. The murder was the perfect thing. I don’t even know if he knew about the counterfeits, because he would have been all over that stuff. If he had caught wind of that, you’d have been closed the following day.
“See, on the one hand, the counterfeits would have been great for Sandburn and whoever wanted to put the gallery out of business. On the other hand, putting the gallery out of business might be a problem for whoever was making the fakes. Especially if they had nothing to do with Sandburn.”
I turned to Anna. “Isn’t that right, Anna?”
“What?” She jumped a little. “You’re saying I faked the paintings?”
“Yeah. Well, no. Adrian Gomez faked the paintings. You were just selling them on the side. Imagine the lucky investor who gets a tip that there’s an authentic Tom Thomson just sitting in the archives of the Grand Trunk Factory, and you dig it out and sell it to them on the side. How many have you sold?”
“I did nothing like that!” she yelped.
“See, I first wondered about it when you said Bruce was the resident expert in Group of Seven works. When I talked to him, he said they all looked the same.”
“I mean …” said Bruce, sheepishly.
“But Bruce worked in much bigger galleries. He’s an expert—” I looked over at him, “—of sorts. Certainly in the business of executive directoring. In identifying paintings, not so much.”
“Now it sounds like you’re picking on me,” said Bruce.
“But Mariyam is the one who put the Thomson into the auction. I bet she found it in the archives, and wondered why we had such a famous painter just sitting there, not in the vault.”
“I did! Anna kept saying it wasn’t worth anything. I guess she was right!”
“And to further confuse things, Anna told me that Bruce and Mariyam were fighting over something to do with Andrew Neumann. Maybe they were both in on whatever it was—maybe both were trying to get rid of him. But it was clear that these guys never talk about anything if they don’t have to.”
Mariyam and Bruce shared an uncomfortable look. “We need to work on our communication skills,” she agreed. Bruce nodded.
“And then that additional diversion of the threatening note. Seemed like the only person who wasn’t implicated in this was you.”
I walked over to Lacroix and punched him in the shoulder.
“What?” he said. “You’re done?”
“No,” I whispered. Bring your guy over.
I turned back to the group and continued. “Where were we? Oh yeah, the painting. Putting a fake Tom Thomson into an online auction is dangerous. Anyone could do a reverse image search and find out it’s in another gallery. I think that’s what happened to Neumann. He got angry at first. Then, with the threats, he got spooked. Maybe there was an earlier attempt on his life. Or maybe there was a desperate final confrontation. You could have tried to cut him in at the last minute. It’s weird to think about, but maybe, despite having little tact or actual artistic skill, he actually had some integrity. He said ‘No,’ and you killed him while everyone was downstairs, watching the show.”
Anna looked less helpless now. Still upset. Her jaw was fixed, and she crossed her arms.
“Gee, if only you had a witness, or some evidence.”
“I’m sure a forensic audit of your bank account will prove interesting.”
Her jaw suddenly became unfixed.
“But you’re probably not careless enough to just drop large amounts of money in there.”
“You don’t have anything.”
“Well, there’s that door handle.” Lacroix waved the bag. “With your fingerprints on it.”
“So? I touched that door handle lots of times.”
“And there’s also this bloody knife.” I gestured at the second evidence bag with a red-stained kitchen knife from upstairs. “Where did you find it, guys?”
The cop looked at Lacroix before answering me. “Under the kitchenette cupboard. Jammed in behind a drawer.”
“My fingerprints aren’t on that knife.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Surely, you’ve touched all the other silverware in that kitchenette?”
Anna said nothing, but stared daggers at me. They all looked like kitchen knives.
“I get that maybe you improvised with the door handle and forgot to wipe your prints off. I also get that maybe you wiped the knife before getting rid of it. But you didn’t get all the blood, it seems.”
“Obviously.”
“Is there any of your blood on it? That might be harder to explain.”
Anna unconsciously touched her bandaged hand. She gasped softly.
“And we can link you to Adrian Gomez, too. I noticed he had one of the gallery’s cards. With your number on the back. Your cell number.”
“Gomez,” said Bruce, trying to remember him. “Where was he? Why wasn’t he at the show? Was he in hiding?”
“He’s dead. Fell off a ladder. I found him today.”
“Oh my God,” said Mariyam.
“Yeah. And something just occurred to me. I’m wondering if he knew the paintings were being sold. Or did he just find out recently because of the auction? It’s possible that he had no knowledge of your activities and was completely unaware of what you were doing with them. Or maybe …” I looked at Anna, who was avoiding my gaze. “… He was involved, but was worried about getting caught.”
Anna turned away, covering her mouth with her hands.
I turned to Lacroix. “Better get forensics back out there. It may not have been an accident.”
“Oh, man,” said Lacroix. “More work for me. Thanks, Virtue!”
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders, wincing a little as I remembered that one of them wasn’t attached properly. “I just hope for your sake, Anna, that the police don’t find your fingerprints anywhere in his studio. Like, for example, on his ladder.”