Chapter 16
What was a masterpiece a hundred years ago is no longer so today.
—Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Swiss painter and sculptor
A faddish canvas might be hidden in a closet behind the galoshes. A sculpture, at best, might be moved to the garden and used to feed the wildlife.—Georges LeFleur
I remembered when twenty-five thousand dollars seemed like a fortune. True, it was a lot of money for a tiny piece of painted ivory, but it hardly seemed sufficient to justify kidnapping Mary and me and threatening us with bullets and rats. On the other hand, I had read that the average bank robbery nets only three thousand dollars, so perhaps it was all relative.
I dropped Sam at her Chinatown apartment, crossed the bridge into Oakland, and trudged up to my apartment, where I made a dinner of a pear and gorgonzola cheese. I ate in bed, wearing the oversized T-shirt that served as my night-gown, and was falling asleep when Evangeline and Mary called to report that Collectors’ Corner had offered nearly ten thousand dollars for the baseball cards.
The contents of the metal box now totaled thirty-five thousand dollars. Had I missed anything else of value? Perhaps the toy soldiers were worth something to a collector, or the letters and photos to a museum. It wasn’t a bad night’s work, but it wasn’t Blackbeard’s treasure chest.
The phone rang again and I jumped on it, hoping it was Grandfather. Instead, it was our old pal Donato Sandino, checking on my progress—or lack of progress, I thought to myself—with La Fornarina. The Italian reminded me of what was at stake: my grandfather’s freedom. I spent another restless night.
The next morning, in deference to a break in the rain and because I wasn’t planning on climbing scaffolding, I dressed in a flowered skirt, a bright blue tank top, and sandals. I would be catching up on paperwork and finishing the pirate drawings at the studio, so I should manage to remain presentable. I hoped the out-of-character attire would lift my mood. Cindy’s death still bothered me, I wondered about Donato Sandino’s plans for Grandfather, and I worried that Helena might have rolled up Raphael’s masterpiece like a cheap poster. I could almost hear the centuries-old varnish crackling.
Since I had a little extra time this morning, I decided to visit Mrs. Henderson and ask about Helena and about the legend of treasure in Louis Spencer’s crypt. The retirement community looked and smelled as it had the other day. When I approached the front desk, the same blue-haired receptionist was chatting on the phone. She looked up with a smile, but the smile shook when she recognized me. She hung up.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m here to see Mrs. Henderson.”
“Oh dear,” the woman said. “She’s gone.”
“Hairdresser’s again?”
“Oh, goodness, no,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “She’s . . .”
“What?” I urged, starting to worry.
“I’m so sorry, dear, she . . .”
A nurse who had been smoking outside walked up to the counter. “Are you family?”
“I’m her niece,” I lied.
“She was taken to Summit Medical Center in a diabetic coma.”
“A what? She was fine . . .”
“These things can come on quickly. She came back from an outing on Sunday—”
“Yes, I know. We went on a picnic.”
The woman’s lips formed a straight line of disapproval. “You should have watched what she ate. She loves sweets.”
“She seemed very careful, and when we got back she checked her blood sugar. The machine said everything was fine.”
“You must have read it wrong,” said the nurse. “I’m sorry.”
She hustled down the hallway, her ample hips chugging from one side to another.
“There, there, dear,” clucked the blue-haired woman. “Nurse Ratchett has a rather blunt way of putting things. She means well. It wasn’t your fault.”
An elderly woman with a strawberry-blond rinse accompanied by a stooped man with a hearing aid joined us. “What wasn’t whose fault?”
“Mrs. Henderson,” the receptionist replied in a loud voice.
“Shame,” the man croaked. “She was so happy about writing her autobiography, too.”
The two women nodded.
“Was someone helping her?” I asked.
“Pardon?” The man reached up and fiddled with his hearing aid.
“Was someone helping her?” the receptionist repeated loudly.
“Chinese girl. Pretty as a China doll.”
“She wasn’t Chinese, Ned. Not every Asian is Chinese, for heaven’s sakes,” said the strawberry blonde with a fond but exasperated smile.
“Korean, then,” Ned said.
“Did she have an accent?” I asked him.
“What’s that?”
“An accent,” I shouted. “Did she have one?”
“Nope. Mrs. Henderson was as all-American as apple pie.”
“No,” I said loudly, “the girl. The Asian girl.”
“Don’t suppose she did, come to think of it.”
“Could she have been Japanese-American?”
“A Japanese porcelain doll. I was stationed over there during Korea, you know.”
“We know, Ned, we know,” the receptionist said, winking at me. I was starting to like Blue Hair.
“Was her name Cindy?” I asked the group. “Was she a graduate student at Berkeley?”
“That sounds right,” the strawberry blonde said. “My grandson went to Cal.”
“Good school,” Ned said. “Go, Bears.”
“I graduated from Stanford,” the strawberry blonde said. “Go, Indians!”
“Bears!”
“Indians!”
“They’re called the Cardinals now,” Blue Hair interjected.
And I thought my crowd’s conversational style was linearly challenged.
“Come to think of it,” the receptionist added before the Cross-bay Big Game rivalry flared up anew, “she hasn’t been around in a few days. Not since Wednesday, at least. She used to come every other day.”
“What about Mrs. Henderson’s autobiography? Was there a manuscript?” I asked.
“Nope, she was a widow woman,” Ned replied.
“Ned, hush,” the strawberry blonde said. “No, dear, I don’t think they’d gotten that far. The girl used a tape recorder, tiniest little thing you’ve ever seen. Amazing what they can do with technology these days.”
“So how come they can’t fix this d-a-m-n hearing aid of mine?” Ned barked.
Blue Hair rolled her eyes.
I thanked the folks for their help and rushed out to my truck. At Summit Medical Center, I found Mrs. Henderson still unconscious, her sister and a handful of nieces and nephews surrounding her bedside. She was in serious condition, they reported, but the doctors were optimistic.
“I don’t understand it,” I said. “We checked her blood sugar the minute we returned from the picnic. The nurse even checked it. The machine said she was fine.”
“Did you notice anything odd about her behavior?” asked Mrs. Henderson’s nephew, Abe, a physician’s assistant.
“She seemed a little, well—inebriated. But I know for a fact that she wasn’t drinking.”
“That’s a common insulin reaction,” Abe said. “We see it in the ER all the time. It’s easy to confuse an insulin reaction with intoxication.”
“But the test strips were normal. The nurse said so.”
“It can come on suddenly,” Abe said, and his wife placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. I was glad to know that Mrs. Henderson had such a loving family. “Diabetes is unpredictable, and at her age it’s a delicate balance. You can’t blame yourself.”
I went out to my truck and sat for a long time, thinking. The “Japanese doll” was dead and the columbarium’s long-term secretary was in the hospital. Suicide and diabetic comas, my ass.
There was a killer on the loose.
I headed north, to UC Berkeley. This time there was no Pink Man to lead me to the Chemistry Department, but a clutch of anxious-looking students pointed me in the right direction. A bored-looking work-study student sent me to the TA office when I asked for Brianna Nguyen.
I wouldn’t have pegged this young woman as a graduate student, much less a chemist. She looked about twelve years old, and was dressed in tight jeans and a bright pink blouse. Her arms were covered with sheaths of material, but her shoulders were bare. Either the sleeves had been ripped off her blouse or something had chewed off the fingers of her gloves, I couldn’t decide which. She sat hunched over a large three-ring binder, two composition books, and a stack of loose papers, a Star Wars pencil bag jammed with fluorescent high-lighters beside her on the Formica-covered table.
Brianna did not seem surprised when I asked about Cindy, and reviewed a stack of cramped, neatly written lecture notes while she spoke.
“Omigod, I was so shocked. Omigod. I’m, like, so grossed out right now?”
Highlight in blue, highlight in green.
“Anyway, omigod,” she said. “I am, like, so glad I didn’t go to med school like my folks wanted? Sweartogod, I would’ve barfed every day. I nearly barfed when I saw Cindy. I had to, like, identify her? It was terrible. Omigod.”
She exchanged the green highlighter for a bright purple one.
“I saw Cindy a couple of nights before it happened,” I said. “She seemed fine then. Can you think of anything that was bothering her?”
She highlighted an entire paragraph in purple. “Maybe the painting deal. And some jerk-off was harassing her. Plus, she was seeing this guy? And he was, sort of like, married? But only sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Separated, I guess. Anyway, they seemed really happy.”
Her highlighter squeaked and my skin crawled.
“What was his name? You knew him?”
“Met him once. He was kind of old, but well preserved.” She giggled. “I mean, not crotchety or anything. White guy. Blond hair, pretty buff.”
“How old? Forties? Fifties?”
“Forties maybe. Dunno.”
“What about his name?”
She shook her head. “If I knew I woulda told the cops. They searched her room for clues to his identity, ya know, like on all those shows? Cindy and I used to watch CSI. The shows never say what a mess the forensic guys make, though. There’s, like, fingerprint powder everywhere. Cindy’d be pissed if she could see it.”
“I’ll bet. What did you mean by the ‘painting deal’?”
“She was doing a project with this old lady? And the old lady thought there was this total masterpiece at the cemetery place where Cindy was working. I guess she tried a coupla times to get experts to look at it, but they didn’t believe it was real. She was afraid someone would take it. I guess it’s worth a lot of money or whatever.”
“Did she take any notes? What about the tapes?”
“Tapes?”
“She was taping interviews.”
“Oh. That’s weird.” Highlight in pink.
“What’s weird?”
“There were some of those minicassettes in some cartons? And the tape was pulled out of the cartridges. Like she was despondent, least that’s what the police said. But it wasn’t like her. She was real neat and tidy.”
“Could I see her room?”
“Nothing to see,” Brianna said, highlighting in green. “Cindy’s family came by yesterday and went through everything. They didn’t want any of her, like, books or notes or anything. Just took it all to the Dumpster. It was pretty sad. I mean, my folks would rather I go to med school, but at least they’re interested in what I’m doing.” For the first time since I’d entered the room, Brianna stopped highlighting and met my eyes. “Why are you asking? Who are you again?”
“I met Cindy the other night, and she asked me about the painting, which made me wonder. You said someone was harassing her?”
“Yeah.” The chemist turned to her notebooks. “She didn’t say much, just not to tell anybody where she was. I was, like, whatever. I told the police but I couldn’t tell them anything, ya know, concrete.”
“Do you know if it was a man or a woman?”
She shrugged. “Mostly she was worried about the painting deal. She brought in some pieces for me to analyze. That’s not my specialty? But I, like, ran a couple of tests for her.”
My heart sped up. “Pieces of the painting?”
Brianna nodded.
“What did the tests show?”
“That it was pretty old. I found lead in the white paint, and it, like, breaks down with age? So I calibrated the breakdown. It was a few hundred years old.”
By itself, the test didn’t prove anything. A forger could fool the chemical dating process by mixing new pigments with scrapings from an old lead lantern. But it did rule out the more innocuous explanations. Crispin Engels wouldn’t have bothered with lead scrapings because he never claimed his copy was an original.
“There was something else. . . .” Brianna scratched her nose with her highlighter, leaving a fluorescent orange streak. “Something about the linen was off.”
“The linen fibers from the canvas?”
“Yeah. I think the linen dated like from the Renaissance.”
Crispin Engels also would not have used a Renaissance-era canvas. But Raphael—or an ambitious forger—would have.
“Brianna, could I get a copy of the report?”
“What report?”
“The report on the tests you ran.”
“There wasn’t, like, an official report. It was just a printout. I gave it to her professor.”
“Dr. Gossen?”
“Uh-huh. He said he’d give it to Cindy ’cause I was on my way out of town.”
“When was this?”
“Must’ve been last Tuesday. Wait—Wednesday. I guess.” I thanked her and left her to her frenzied highlighting. Dr. Gossen was not in his office and the administrative assistant had a few choice words for people who lied to hardworking secretaries. I decided not to ask her for Gossen’s home address.
Heading back to Oakland, I followed Martin Luther King Boulevard under the BART tracks, got caught at a red light, and noticed the sign for Lois’ Pie Shop. I liked the idea of a shop dedicated to pies even though I wasn’t much of a pie fan. I liked chocolate. Leave the fruit out of dessert, was my motto. It occurred to me that Billy Mudd’s office was nearby—I had been there once during the Save the Fox Theater campaign. I drove around until I spotted the small sign for Precision Builders. It was located down a long driveway, behind another single-story office structure, in a utilitarian cinder-block building.
White Chevy trucks sat in the driveway and men bustled back and forth loading lumber onto the truck racks. I nodded as I passed them and went through the metal doors into the shop, which was fragrant with the aroma of freshly milled wood. The shop was a single huge room jammed with wood-working equipment, stacks of lumber, and unfinished wood trim, cabinets, and furniture. Wood shavings littered the concrete floor, and in one corner a Latino man pushed two-by-fours through a table saw.
A place like this is Josh’s dream, I thought. Too bad Billy Mudd was such a pig. They might have been good friends.
A corner of the space had been sectioned off into an office, where I found Billy pacing like a caged lion and screaming into the phone. He rolled his eyes when I walked in but ignored me until he’d vented his rage at the unfortunate soul on the other end of the line and slammed down the phone. “What the hell do you want?”
“Good to see you, too, Billy. I have a few questions.”
“Why would I answer any of your questions?” The phone rang again and Billy snatched up the receiver. “What!”
While he bellowed at this new intrusion, I snooped. There were a handful of photos on his desk, which I assumed to be his ex-cheerleader wife and their two adorable towheaded children. The bookshelves held binders of building codes, relics of the historic buildings he had razed—a section of a carved wooden banister, a stone corbel from a fireplace— and numerous cardboard blueprints tubes. I recognized the fleur-de-lis insignia of Ethan Mayall’s architectural firm on one, and pulled it out.
“Put that down,” Billy said and snatched the cardboard tube from my grasp.
“I’m working with Ethan on a job in the City.”
“Bully for you,” he said, tossing the tube into a box on the floor. He returned to his desk and threw himself into his desk chair. Mudd’s eyes were rimmed in red, and he looked haggard beneath his tan.
“What are you working on with him?”
“None of your goddamned business.”
“Just wondering. Seems like a coincidence. By the way, I thought I saw you at Fisherman’s Wharf the other day. How do you know Professor Gossen?”
“Annie, you’re a pain in the butt. Always have been. Your mouth’s too goddamned big and your nose is just as long.”
What could I say? I didn’t like the man, but he was not altogether lacking in judgment.
“You came here to ask me about the architects I work with?”
“No. I came to ask if you were planning to build a development on cemetery land.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Wouldn’t you have to buy the land first?”
He stared at me, and his phone rang again.
“You’re a busy boy, Billy.”
“No shit, Sherlock. So you’ll understand when I tell you I don’t have time to chat. I’m not endangering any historical buildings, I’m just going about my business making a living. Maybe you should do the same and leave me alone.”
“Did you know Cindy Tanaka?”
“Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed, a sound more threatening than his bellow. He grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me toward the door. The Latino man stopped sawing, but made no move to intervene. “I’m a happily married man. Now stay out of my goddamned business.”
I blinked in the sunshine. “How ’bout you guys?” I called out to the workmen loading the truck. “Any of you like to contribute to a fund-raiser for women’s equality in the trades?”
No one spoke. I took that as a no.
Back on the road, I realized Billy had not denied knowing Cindy Tanaka, only that he had done anything wrong. Since Billy described himself as a “happily married man,” it seemed doubtful he was planning to dump Mrs. Mudd and the mini-Muddites to run off with a graduate student. Billy made my stomach heave but I imagined he seemed masculine and confident compared to the pasty academics Cindy spent most of her time with. Otherwise intelligent young women fell for married sleazoids every day. So perhaps the suicide scenario was plausible.
But suppose Cindy had mentioned to Billy her conversations with Mrs. Henderson and her suspicions about La Fornarina? It had been my experience that older men don’t pay much attention to what young women said, but what if he had put two and two together and realized that if the columbarium possessed a genuine masterpiece, they would be fully independent and have no need of possible real estate deals? Would he have been ruthless enough to kill Cindy in order to ensure her silence? Could he have tricked Mrs. Henderson into eating a Twinkie?
I found myself heading for Cindy’s apartment, wondering if the garbage had been picked up.
The building looked exactly as it had the other day. It was unsettling to think that the death of a young woman had so little effect on everything around her. I circled to the rear of the duplex. A large green Dumpster smelled like sour milk, rotting vegetables, and day-old Pampers.
Shawna pulled up on her bike just as I was standing on tiptoe, peering over the metal side into the abyss. Behind her was another girl, this one with white-blond hair astride a bright pink Barbie bike.
Every neighborhood should have such a ten-year-old squad on patrol.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” Shawna’s solemn eyes watched me. “This is my best friend, Hannah. Whatcha doin’?”
“I think something valuable might have been thrown away by accident.”
“You goin’ in there?” Hannah asked, a frown worrying her pale forehead.
Not if I could help it. “I’ll pay you a dollar to go in for me.”
“No way,” Hannah laughed.
Shawna looked disapproving. “You crazy, lady.”
“Five dollars?”
“Mama said not to take money from strangers,” Shawna said with the air of an outraged ethics professor. “Plus, it’s stinky in there.”
She was right. It ranked pretty high on the noxious fumes quotient.
Two teenage boys ambled over. They wore jeans that hung loose and low, and huge T-shirts that fell to their knees. Their hands were shoved deep in their pockets in what I could only assume was an effort to keep their pants from falling down around their ankles.
“ ’S’up?” They lifted their chins at Shawna and Hannah, who returned the greeting.
“What’s she gonna do, go in there?” the taller boy asked.
“This is Kareem and Anthony,” Shawna said, the neighborhood’s Welcome Wagon.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Annie.”
“’S’up?” they answered. “You gonna go in there?”
“How much money would it take to get you to go in there for me?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“More’n you got,” mumbled Kareem.
“Nuh-uh. These are new Nikes,” explained Anthony.
Since when had young people become so fastidious? When I was their age I would have happily gone into a Dumpster for cash. Then again, maybe that said more about me than about the youth of today.
“All right, fine. Great.” I marched back to my truck, uneartheda pair of latex gloves that I use for faux-finishing, and returned to the Dumpster. “Anybody know where I can get a ladder?”
My audience shook their heads, so I looked around and spied a crate by the back fence. I brought it over to the Dumpster and climbed on it, but still needed some serious athletic prowess to lift myself up and over.
What a day to wear a skirt.
Snapping on the gloves, I managed to hoist myself onto the side, but couldn’t get my rear end far enough onto the ledge. Moved by a spirit of gallantry—or fearing embarrassment if I fell backward with my skirt flying over my head— Anthony of the bright white Nikes stepped onto the crate, placed two broad hands on my waist, and lifted me onto the side as if I weighed no more than Shawna.
With a smile of thanks I swung my legs over the side, closed my eyes, and let go. One sandal-shod foot sank into something soggy, while the other plunged straight to the bottom of the Dumpster, burying my right leg up to my thigh. I forced my thoughts away from what I was standing in, and started searching.
The Dumpster must have served more than just Cindy’s duplex, because there was a whole lot of refuse in there, much of which was in flagrant defiance of Oakland’s green recycling program. I pushed aside moldy coffee grounds and blackening banana skins, mounds of potato peels, and an open container of gloppy yogurt. Numerous plastic bags had ominously squishy contents, and I could have sworn one was moving. A paper grocery bag contained used Kleenexes, about a mile of dental floss, and an old tube of toothpaste. I poked around a bit and finally unearthed a plastic garbage bag neatly sealed with a plastic twist-tie. That looked promising. Using the back of my wrist to push my hair out of my eyes, I managed to leave a smear of something I didn’t want to know about on my upper cheek.
Hearing muffled giggles, I glanced up to see Shawna and Hannah, no doubt held aloft by their teenage accomplices. But it would take more than the ridicule of little girls to daunt me. I’d grown up with an artistic soul in a small provincial Central Valley town; I had been inured to derision and mockery at a young age.
I gave them a bright smile as though to prove how much fun I was having. Hell, it worked for Tom Sawyer. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”
This sent them into peals of laughter.
I turned back to my search. Opening the garbage bag, I found several tiny cassettes, but the metallic tape had been torn out and creased, and I doubted they could be salvaged. A stack of notes beneath them seemed like a better bet. I started sorting through them, tossing aside seminar notes and discussions of research materials. At last I uncovered a composition book, which fell open to a page of notes on Rosicrucianism. A sketch of a cross with a flower in the center was titled MAY THE ROSES BLOOM UPON YOUR CROSS. Flipping through the book, I saw Louis Spencer’s name and a discussion of the pyramid structure of his crypt. Tucked between the pages was a receipt for a digital copy of La Fornarina, by Raphael.
Aha!
“Found something!” I sang out.
No response.
“Guys?” I called. “Hello?”
Nothing.
I had registered the clicking of Shawna’s bike a few minutes ago, but was so caught up in the discovery of Cindy’s notebook that I hadn’t paid attention. With a sinking feeling I realized I had no plan for getting out of this reeking hellhole. I reached up and latched on to the side of the Dumpster, searching for a foothold. I upended a plastic diaper bucket and stood on it so that I could peer over the side.
A car sat in the alley. A dark sedan. The kind detectives drove.
I dropped back down, muttering to myself about young hoodlums who didn’t have the courtesy to warn a person to cheese-it when the cops showed. What to do, what to do . . . In all of my years of training at Grandfather’s knee, not once had he offered a lesson on Dumpster diving.
On the plus side, my olfactory sense seemed to have given up the ghost, and the little delinquents were unlikely to tattle to the authorities. As long as I hunkered down in the trash, I would be safe. No way would anyone think to look in the—
“Fancy meeting you here,” Detective Hucles said as he squinted down at me.
“Detective.” I nodded, casual as one could be while standing thigh-deep in lumpy yogurt and soiled diapers. Hucles looked tired, his eyes red and lined, his tie loose at the collar.
“You look terrible,” I blurted out.
“This from the woman in a Dumpster. What’s that on your cheek?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“I don’t blame you. Ms. Kincaid—”
“Call me Annie,” I replied. No point in standing on ceremony.
“Annie. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing in there surrounded by garbage? And not just any garbage, but Cindy Tanaka’s garbage?”
I drew a complete and total blank.
“The Oakland PD doesn’t look fondly on citizens interfering in an ongoing investigation, Annie.”
“I thought you were convinced it was a suicide,” I said. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
I heard a police radio crackle. It sounded as if reinforcements had arrived. Hucles held my gaze a moment longer, but he had hard-to-read cop’s eyes. Was he about to ticket me? Arrest me? Burst out laughing?
“Find anything?” he asked.
“I think so. Cindy’s notes.”
“A suicide note?”
“No—research notes.”
He held out his hand, and I reluctantly surrendered the composition book. He flipped through it and handed it to someone I couldn’t see.
“What’s with the gloves?” he asked.
“Have you seen what’s in here?”
“I can only imagine. You always carry latex gloves with you?”
“Usually. I—” Wait a minute. Did the detective think I was trying to avoid leaving fingerprints? Try acting innocent for a change, I scolded myself. Especially since this time you are. “I’m a faux finisher. I use these gloves for work, and I was just trying to stay clean. This place is disgusting.”
“Which begs the question, what are you doing in the Dumpster?”
Something wet and slimy fell against my bare knee. I couldn’t bring myself to look.
“Um, Detective? Do you think we could have this discussion some place else?” At this point, being taken downtown to an interrogation room could only be an improvement.
Hucles disappeared from view, and two young officers popped up. What followed was not one of my better moments. The cops grabbed my arms and pulled, but between my lack of upper body strength and their lack of coordination, I wound up banging against the front wall of the Dumpster, twice, and falling on my butt in someone’s discarded pizza. By the time I was hauled unceremoniously over the side I was smeared and slimed and bruised in places I didn’t know could be bruised.
I collapsed on the crate, peeled off my gloves, and tossed them into the Dumpster.
Hucles was waiting, his arms crossed over his chest. “Better?”
I hesitated before answering. “Hard to say.”
“Where were you on the night of the twelfth?”
“I worked late at Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium, where I’m restoring some murals. My assistant was with me.”
“Name?”
I offered Mary’s name and phone number.
He flipped through his notebook. “A Ms. Sally Granger, administrative assistant in the anthropology department at UC Berkeley, told me you lied to her to get Cindy’s address.”
“Um . . . that’s true.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Gossen wouldn’t give it to me. And I was worried about her.”
“Why? You said you hardly knew the woman.”
I fessed up and told him about the masked grave robber stealing Louis’ box, and the possibility of a Raphael at the columbarium. “And on Sunday, a woman who was secretary at the columbarium for fifty-one years went into a suspicious diabetic coma.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police right away with this information?”
“At first I thought Cindy or the cemetery management would call. And then it just all seemed pretty far-fetched, especially the bit about the Raphael. In the end . . . I was just stupid, I guess.”
“Professor Gossen spoke about test results from a valuable painting. That’s the one you’re talking about?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Detective Hucles took a deep breath and flipped through his notebook. He wrote down Mrs. Henderson’s information, read some more, then fixed me with a steady gaze. “I’m choosing to believe your version of events, for now. If I have any reason to doubt you, we’re going to have problems. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded. “Crystal.”
“That’s it, then. You can go.”
“I . . . er . . . Cindy’s notebook? Could I take a look . . . ?”
“That’s the problem with these darned homicide investigations, Ms. Kincaid,” Hucles said with a shake of his head. “Everything’s potential evidence. Forensics is on their way, and they’ll have to try to figure out what might be significant and what might be the result of a faux finisher falling on her butt in the evidence.”
I deserved that. Hucles seemed okay for a cop. And he hadn’t arrested me, so he was a good egg in my book.
The detective accompanied me to my truck, where I reached in back of the seat and extracted Louis’ box.
“Oh, Kincaid,” he called as I started up the motor. “Don’t make any travel plans.”
Civilian detective or no, I thought as I climbed into my truck, trying to ignore the items drying on my skin, I still wanted to talk with Roy Cogswell. I was in desperate need of a shower, but I’d been meaning to talk to the columbarium director for days, and it was almost quitting time. I made a U-turn and headed north to the columbarium, pulled up to the curb, and started searching for a quarter for the parking meter. I was rifling through the door pockets— usually a mother lode of loose change—when a knock sounded on the passenger window.
It was Helena, in a neat cream pantsuit and a robin’s-egg-blue paisley scarf. I leaned across the bench seat and opened the door. She climbed into the passenger’s seat, folded her hands in her lap, and stared straight ahead. I thought I noticed her nostrils flaring, but she didn’t mention anything about my appearance or aroma.
“Helena? Something I can do for you?”
“Hands off my husband.”
“Dr. Dick?”
“His name’s Richard!”
“Fine, Richard. I’m not even remotely—”
“Don’t bother denying it. I saw how he reacted to you,” she said, pursing her lips. “I’ve had experience with this kind of thing.”
“You mean Aaron—”
“I have no intention of discussing my personal life with you, young lady.”
It had been my experience that people who suspect their spouses of cheating aren’t famous for their logic. “You started it,” I muttered.
“She’s a senile old bat, you know.”
“Who?”
“Henderson. She had a thing for my husband, too. Don’t think she didn’t.”
“Helena, I swear to you that I have no romantic interest in your Dick—your husband—whatever. And even if I did it wouldn’t do me any good. He’s nuts about you. We talked about you, mostly.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Yes, I do. It’s the truth.”
She looked at me, her hazel eyes limpid and yearning. Helena was a rhymes-with-witch-on-wheels, but some men loved the idea of rescuing an unhappy, demanding woman. It was a twisted version of the Prince Charming fantasy.
“Honest. He told me he’d live anywhere ‘as long as his lovely wife was at his side.’ ”
She looked as if she were choking back tears.
“You’re a lucky woman, Helena.”
“He’s such a dear man,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I said those things to you.”
“I’m just glad we got that straightened out.”
Now that we’d built a little sisterly camaraderie, I thought I’d take it out for a spin. “Why didn’t you want me to see the painting in the tube?”
“I’ve seen how you sneer at the Tim O’Neill in the office.” She sniffed and lifted her chin. “You are rude and sarcastic.”
“I’m sorry. You have every right to enjoy whatever art you please.”
“I wish the whole world were like an O’Neill painting,” she sighed.
I glanced out the windshield and saw Curly Top Russell walking up to an old beat-up Cadillac a few meters ahead of us.
Helena looked at her delicate platinum-and-ruby watch and frowned. “Is it time to leave already? Where does the time go?”
Russell climbed into the car, pulled the door closed, and started swinging his arms in the air, as if punching the roof.
“What’s he doing?” Helena asked. “Dancing? Boxing?”
“Maybe stretching?” What a geek Russell is, I thought. “You were saying about the O’Neill painting?”
“I wish I could follow one of his garden paths, enter a warmly lit cottage, and sit by the fire with a cup of tea. Do you remember the scene in Mary Poppins where the children and Bert the chimney sweep jump into a sidewalk chalk painting?”
I smiled. “It’s my favorite part.”
Russell was now bobbing back and forth, though not to any discernible beat.
“My son died, you know,” Helena whispered.
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
We sat in silence. The truck’s small cab started getting stuffy—and fragrant of eau de Dumpster—so I rolled down the window. I heard the muffled sound of someone crying for help. In the car up ahead, Russell’s movements had slowed.
Something was wrong.
I leapt out of the truck and ran over to the Cadillac. Russell’s body jerked and his face pressed up against the driver’s window.
His eyes were full of terror.