17
I stumbled out the front of Truman Capone’s apartment building, desperate for air. The sight of the photograph of Granddad’s painting had hit me like a physical blow to the gut. That and the realization someone hired Capone to copy it.
Nate caught me by the arm as my foot missed a step.
“Nate? How—? What are you doing here?”
“Your mother called him and told him about my ankle,” Aunt Martha said.
Except my mind was still on the photograph. What it could mean. If the copy was made before the burglary that ended in Granddad’s murder, who supplied the photo? Their housekeeper? Is that what Petra Horvak had meant when she’d taunted me about knowing who killed Granddad?
“So he had Randy drive him here, so he could drive my car home for me,” Aunt Martha rambled on. “Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, nice.” I stared at him in a bit of a daze, not sure what to think of his sudden helpfulness after he’d made himself so scarce all weekend. And finding that photo sure didn’t make me want to take anything at face value.
“We spotted your aunt’s car on the other street, where your mom said the phone had been,” Nate explained. “When there was no sign of either of you there, we figured we’d find you with the police cruisers and ambulance. What’s going on?”
“Truman Capone is gone.” I bit my lip hard to stave off a rush of hot tears. Because so was my chance to ask Capone what he knew about Granddad’s murder.
The name didn’t seem to mean anything to Nate, but Randy lost a bit of color and took a step back. “What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean dead.” At his flinch, my gaze narrowed. “You know him?”
“Sure. He’s been around forever,” Randy said quickly. “He’s done portraits at the state fair since I was a kid. Probably since our folks were kids. How’d he die? His heart finally give out?”
“Won’t know until after the autopsy. The coroner’s due any minute.”
Randy backed up three more steps. “Well, I guess I’ll get out of everyone’s hair.”
“Thanks for the lift,” Nate said.
“Wait!” I ordered as Randy turned to leave.
He turned back, his expression guarded. “Yeah?”
“From what I saw in there, Capone was a master at copying others’ work.”
Aunt Martha gasped. “Do you think he painted the Dali?” Aunt Martha pressed a hand to her chest and shook her head. “Now I feel terrible for suspecting Tyrone.”
Not wanting to make her feel worse, I opted to skip explaining Capone was the guy she’d seen leaving Tyrone’s yesterday. Instead I said to Randy, “You ever hear rumors of Capone doing work for organized crime?” and then slanted Nate a glare that said, Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been holding out on me.
Randy laughed. “No way. The guy painted portraits of little kids. Everywhere he went, people lined up to have him draw them.”
“People also hired him to paint copies of priceless paintings,” I pointed out. Why else would he have folders full of photographs of them?
“There’s nothing illegal about that.”
“Was Capone the artist you’d planned to introduce me to when I was posing as Sara?”
Randy’s eyes darted back and forth as he clearly debated the safest answer. “Yeah,” he said softly. “He was the first guy I’d thought of.”
“You didn’t think he’d have a problem with how Sara”—I punctuated the name with air quotes—“intended to use the finished product, then?”
“Who’s Sara?” Aunt Martha blurted.
I sucked in a breath and counted to three. “I was,” I said on the exhale. “I was undercover.”
“Ooh, I wish I could’ve seen that.”
“Answer Serena’s question,” Nate said to his brother with uncharacteristic impatience.
Randy shrugged. “I hadn’t planned on telling Capone.” Randy was attempting to play it cool, but he couldn’t mask the sweat beading his upper lip.
I couldn’t imagine a connection between the assault outside his apartment and his plan to introduce us to Capone, but I had a niggling sense it was all connected somehow. “Around twelve forty-five on Friday afternoon, you were in a coffee shop a block down from the Missouri Athletic Club.”
“Could be. I drink a lot of coffee.”
“I was mugged a few minutes later, and you’d spoken with the mugger minutes before he targeted me.”
“What?” Aunt Martha squawked, grabbing my hand. “You never told us you were mugged!”
I patted her arm and disentangled myself from her grasp. “I wasn’t hurt.”
Nate’s hands curled into fists as he glared at his brother.
Randy balked. Looked genuinely horrified, in fact. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t even know who you were before Martha introduced us at the MAC.”
Or just didn’t know I was a friend of your brother’s? “Do you remember the guy you talked to in the coffee shop?”
“I talk to lots of people.”
“It’s true,” Aunt Martha vouched. “He seems to strike up a conversation with everyone he meets.”
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my old messages to find the picture Matt sent me. I turned it toward Randy. “This guy.”
Randy frowned, shook his head. “I don’t know him.”
The coroner arrived, and we moved out of the way of the building’s front door.
“Can I go now?” Randy asked.
I looked to Nate, silently asking if he believed his brother. Nate had this uncanny sixth sense that seemed to tell him what I was thinking, but unfortunately he wasn’t nearly as readable. Even with all my FBI training.
“We know where he lives if you have more questions for him,” Nate said.
A police officer burst out the front door of the apartment building, and Randy skedaddled without waiting for further consent.
“You Jones?” the officer asked.
“That’s right.”
He motioned me inside. “They want you upstairs.”
“I’ll drive your aunt home,” Nate said, offering Aunt Martha a hand.
“Hold on.” The officer stepped toward them. “You the lady from the dumpster?”
Nate’s eyebrows shot up. “You were in a dumpster?”
Aunt Martha giggled. “Long story.”
“Well, I need you to tell me the whole thing,” the officer said, letting the door slam shut behind me.
“Lord, please help her to stick to the facts,” I murmured as I hurried up to Capone’s apartment. Aunt Martha enjoyed spinning yarns far too much, possibly too much for her own good.
“Over here.” Officer Prescott waved me over to an apartment across the hall from Capone’s. “This is Miss Bradley.”
The spectacled, blue-haired lady squinted up at me. “No, she was the one who came later. Made a racket with her pounding.”
“We met earlier,” I said to Prescott. “I thought it was my aunt she’d seen, but my aunt says she never made it upstairs.”
“Miss Bradley saw someone enter Capone’s apartment shortly after three.”
“I know the time,” the elderly woman said, “because my soap opera had just finished, and I went downstairs to collect my mail.” She poked the officer’s arm. “Tell her about the hood.”
Prescott smiled at my widened eyes. “She said he or she wore a black, hooded sweatshirt.”
“You couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman?” I asked Miss Bradley. I thought she’d said a woman earlier, but maybe I’d assumed because I’d been so anxious to find my aunt.
“I only glimpsed the person from behind as I came up the stairs.”
“Did you happen to see two men retrieving paintings from Capone’s apartment some time after that?”
“You mean the boys he hired to set up his booth at the exhibition center?”
“I’m not sure. They were loading the paintings into a white panel van.”
“That’s them. Truman always uses the same guys. Um . . .” She looked at the ceiling as if it would help her tap into some buried memory. She snapped her fingers. “Oh, their names will come to me. Anyway, the flea market people let Truman keep his booth set up in a corner of their main building, so he only has to bring new supplies each weekend, but for the special events, he always hires those boys to set up for him.”
Okay, so maybe we’d made a wrong assumption about the guys in the van. But they’d been in the apartment after the person in the hoodie.
Officer Prescott handed her a business card. “Give me a call if you think of their names.” After Miss Bradley disappeared back into her apartment, Prescott turned to me. “Looks like we need to track down Capone’s delivery boys.”
“Yeah, the door to Capone’s studio was closed when I went into the apartment, so it’s conceivable the things they had to pick up were waiting for them by the door, and they didn’t expect to see Capone.”
“Conceivable, but unlikely.”
“Hmm.”
“Why was your aunt outside Capone’s building?”
“Whoa, you can’t think she killed him!”
“I can’t dismiss her simply because she’s your relation.”
“Okay, yes, she came here to see Capone, but she never made it into the building.” I explained Aunt Martha’s interest in helping Tyrone make a go of his art. Was this why Prescott had summoned me up here? So her sidekick could grill Aunt Martha without me there to defend her? Thank goodness Nate had shown up.
Detective Richards strode out of Capone’s apartment. “Jones, Prescott said you found evidence pertinent to the Keane theft?”
“Yes, I’ll—”
A pair of EMTs guided a gurney holding a body bag out Capone’s door. We waited as it passed, then I motioned Richards into the apartment and showed him the photograph of the Margaret Keane painting.
“Good catch,” he said. “Irwin has located a ledger that might prove helpful in matching jobs to clients if we can figure out the guy’s coding system.”
“Irwin?” I asked.
A well-dressed Tom Selleck–type—tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair, and dark, bushy mustache—strode into the room with a leather-bound ledger under his arm. “You must be the agent who found the body.”
“Yes, Serena Jones.” I extended my hand.
“This is Detective Irwin. The homicide detective on the case,” Richards said by way of introduction. “I’ve already filled him in on your interest in Capone.”
“If it’s all right with you,” I said, matching his viselike grip, “I’d like to follow up on all the photographs of paintings. I think we may find other collectors have been unwitting victims and haven’t realized it yet. One of them may be able to give us a lead on who was buying the forgeries from Capone and pulling the switches.”
“I’m only interested in the people who had motive, means, and opportunity to kill him.”
I dropped his hand. I’d hoped he’d be more enthusiastic about my investigation. “May I?” I asked, pointing to the ledger.
He handed it over. The pages dated back more than thirty years and were yellowed with age. I thumbed through the most recent entries and found four in the weeks leading up to the Dali theft. The jobs had numbers I suspected would match those scratched on the back of each photograph. But without a numbered photograph of the Dali, there was no way of knowing if it was among the jobs listed. The customers were identified by an alphanumeric code. Several were repeat customers.
I thumbed back eighteen years to the weeks before my grandfather’s murder. At the sight of a familiar number, I gasped.
“What is it?” Irwin asked.
“I have strong reason to believe that at least one of his customers murdered someone.” I turned to the officer packing up the photos for processing back at the station. “May I?”
He looked to Detective Irwin, who nodded, then handed me the stack.
I found the photo of my grandfather’s painting. The numbers matched the ledger entry. I moved the photograph to the top of the stack, my heart twisting at the memories that came flooding back. “See this?” I pointed to the matching entry in Capone’s ledger. “The owner of this painting was murdered by the man who stole it.”
“Here in St. Louis?”
“Yes, eighteen years ago.”
He scrutinized me as if I didn’t look old enough to know the city’s ancient crime history. “How come you know so much about this painting? Is it famous? I don’t recognize it.”
I squared my chin. “The painting’s owner was my grandfather.”
“Oh, I see,” Detective Irwin said, frowning. “Um, sorry for your loss.”
Right, that was an afterthought if I ever heard one. What did he think? That a personal connection to the investigation would taint my perspective?
Irwin booted me off his crime scene with a “we’ll keep you in the loop; thanks for calling,” so I decided against telling him I’d snapped pics of the art photographs. I stepped out of the building and smiled at the evidence team loading boxes of them into the police van. What Irwin didn’t know wouldn’t get his nose out of joint.
I walked to the corner of the street where I’d parked my car and had the neck-prickling sensation I was being watched. I glanced over my shoulder. Detective Richards was heading toward me, but when our gazes met, he waved and turned toward a car at the curb.
I waited a moment to see if he actually climbed in it. He did.
I scanned my car inside and out before getting in, but the churning in my stomach didn’t abate. Of course, it was more likely nerves over the thought of telling Nana about the photo I’d found than the idea of someone following me. I might as well get it over with since Nate took care of driving Aunt Martha home.
Two streets later, a black Lexus that had cruised up behind me after I left Capone’s was still on my tail. Then again, with everyone heading home for supper, traffic was tight. He could just be going the same direction. I pulled into the visitors’ lot of Nana’s condo just off King’s Highway Boulevard, and the Lexus didn’t even slow. Good, glad I didn’t waste time doing any evasive maneuvers.
Nana lived in a full-security condo, so no one would be sneaking in after me anyway. “I’m here to visit Stella Jones. I’m her granddaughter,” I said to the doorman. A doting granddaughter wouldn’t have to tell him. I would come so often he’d recognize me on sight. I shoved aside the thought. Nothing would make me happier than to feel as if Nana would welcome my visits, but I suspected she ranked them up there with a house call from the dentist.
“You can go on up, Miss.” The doorman tapped the elevator button for me.
“I prefer the stairs,” I said with a practiced smile. Nana lived on the tenth floor and enjoyed a spectacular view of Forest Park. But the place felt more like a showplace than a home.
Nana opened the door the instant I knocked. “Serena, what a nice surprise. Have you brought news of the investigation?”
“Of a sort.”
“That sounds cryptic. Come in. Would you like a spot of tea?”
“No thank you.” I’d actually have liked nothing better, but getting through what I had to say would be hard enough without trying to balance a cup of tea while perched on Nana’s pristine white sofa.
“Then come sit.” Nana motioned me to her sitting room. It smelled like Chanel No. 5 and furniture polish—without a hint of the rich leather-and-sandalwood fragrance I fondly remembered from their home in Granddad’s time. Or the deep, mellow tones of Frank Sinatra crooning in the background.
Nana wore a fashionable plum pantsuit with a floral blouse. She sat in the Queen Anne chair, her back ramrod straight, her legs crossed at the ankle.
I attempted to do the same, although the sofa’s soft cushion made the posture thing a challenge. “I may have identified the person who painted the copy of Gladys’s Dali.”
“May have? You don’t know?”
“Not definitively.”
“I see. And do you think he made the switch?”
“No, I believe someone provided him with a photograph of the Dali and hired him to paint the copy, then made the switch himself at a later date.”
“Someone who?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“It sounds like you’re doing a lot of supposition with nothing helpful to show for it. Can’t you coerce this artist into giving you the name?”
“No, he’s dead.”
Nana’s eyes narrowed. “Dead? So he’ll be no help at all to us, then?”
I bristled at her utter lack of compassion. “We did find evidence he painted copies of at least two other stolen paintings. Evidence that may help us track down the thief.”
“That’s good, then.”
I took a deep breath. I’d hedged long enough. “Have you heard of Truman Capone?”
“No, should I have?”
She’d answered quickly. Too quickly? No, if she recognized the name, something in her body language would’ve betrayed it. A twitch. A lip curl. Something.
“Capone had a file folder full of photographs of paintings we believe he copied. One of those photographs was of the Blacklock landscape stolen from your home the night Granddad was murdered.”
Nana stiffened. “I see.”
“According to his ledger, someone hired him to paint a copy.”
Nana clasped the fine gold chain at her neck, trailing her fingers along it until they reached the lantern-shaped locket at her throat. She rubbed her thumb along the etching, her gaze drifting to the window.
“The ledger entry was dated a month before the robbery,” I added softly.
She nodded, her gaze still fixed on something beyond the window.
I’d expected surprise. Anger even. I swallowed hard. I wouldn’t blame her for being angry. If I hadn’t begged to stay overnight so Granddad and I could finish my painting, he would’ve been out with Nana at their Bible study like they were every Wednesday.
“I trust this will not cause the police to reopen the investigation.” Nana’s features remained as hard as granite.
I blinked. “Excuse me? Don’t you want Granddad’s killer brought to justice?”
“Will the photograph of Gladys’s Dali you found in this man’s file help you locate the person who hired him?”
I reeled at her deliberate avoidance of my question. I’d been stupid to ask it. Why would she dignify it with an answer? “We didn’t find a photograph of the Dali,” I said.
“Then why are you involved? Surely this man’s murder isn’t an FBI matter. You should be working on Gladys’s case.”
I fought the urge to shrink back at her caustic tone. “I don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy.” For the past eighteen years, I’d spent half my waking hours dreaming of the day I’d bring Granddad’s murderer to justice, for that reason. “I’m sure this will convince investigators to reopen Granddad’s case.”
Nana crossed her arms, not defiantly but as if to contain something building up inside her chest. “Then I hope you will ensure they don’t.”
“Why?” Was the prospect of an investigation so intolerable? I’d been ten at the time of the original investigation, so I didn’t remember much about it. Her British stiff upper lip had remained firmly intact throughout, as I recalled.
Then again, in a murder investigation, the spouse is often the prime suspect until he or she alibis out. Maybe Nana’s Bible study had finished too early to provide her with an ironclad alibi.
Nana shook her head. “Because picking at old scars only makes them worse.” She stood, signaling the conversation was over. “Leave it alone.”