A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) Read online

“You know,” Ted said, “I’d love to look at it again, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure.” Mendoza raised his voice. “So Jock? Where is it now? We have it, don’t we?”

  “Of course we do, what do you think?” said the aggrieved Jock. “It’s in the evidence room. We’ve got one of the two women coming in to verify it’s the one they saw the guy running away with.”

  “Which one?” Ted asked Mendoza. “LeMay or London?” He was aware that he was treading on Mendoza’s turf, but it was starting to look as if it was going to have to be shared turf after all. Still, he felt constrained to politely say to Mendoza’s back: “I mean, if you don’t mind telling me.”

  Mendoza shrugged and forwarded the question to Jock. “It’s the good-looking one, London,” the detective called. “Should be here any minute. Hooper’s taking her in.”

  “Good. Oh, and tell Hooper she asked for an easel. Tell him to get the one out of the conference room.”

  “Will do.”

  “And tell him to let me know how it goes.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, thanks, Eduardo,” Ted said as Mendoza was closing the door. When the lieutenant had returned to his desk, he said with some urgency, “You know, I had a feeling she’d be in this up to her ears. Look, would it be all right with you if I just happen to show up in the viewing room when she’s there?”

  Mendoza hesitated. “Uh, no offense, Ted, but I’d just as soon handle this on my own. You know—”

  “Of course!” Ted said. “I have no intention of getting involved in the homicide part of it, believe me. It’s strictly the fraud case that I’m interested in.”

  “Well—”

  “I just want to see what she has to say about the painting, that’s all. It would help a lot. I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, okay, I can see that,” Mendoza said. “Okay, let’s head you over there. We can say we wanted you to identify it as the picture that was in Liz’s office when you were there in the afternoon. Which is true, come to think of it.”

  “Great, thanks a million. Don’t forget, though, she thinks I’m Roland de Beau—”

  The telephone on Mendoza’s desk buzzed, and the lieutenant picked it up. “Yeah? Yeah? No kidding, is that a fact? Okay, tell her thanks for the heads-up.”

  He put the phone down and looked with sudden seriousness at Ted. “That was one of my guys. London just asked him to call me. She says I need to know about this fishy character that she’s pretty sure is right in the middle of this whole mess. She just saw him right here in the station.”

  Ted was puzzled. “Who?”

  The laughter that Mendoza could no longer control came out in a snort. “You.”

  The first thing that had surprised Alix when she entered the detectives’ bullpen area was the sight of Roland de Beauvais. Lieutenant Mendoza was standing in the open doorway of his office talking to one of the detectives, and seated at the lieutenant’s desk, where she’d sat last night, was de Beauvais, in shirtsleeves, looking very much at home. The second, which happened as Mendoza was closing the door, was hearing de Beauvais say to him, “Okay, thanks, Eduardo.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. Eduardo? What was this slippery Boston art dealer or broker or whatever he was supposed to be, doing on such chummy terms with the chief of Santa Fe’s homicide unit? But what really threw her for a loop was the way he’d said it. Not that archaic, drawled Brahmin-speak—“Ohkai, thahnks, Eduahhhdow,” but the plain, straightforward, standard American version: “Okay, thanks, Eduardo.”

  What kind of double-dealing was this guy up to? What was with the phony Boston accent he’d been using? Or maybe this was the phony accent, although that seemed a lot less likely. Either way, he was going around pretending to be something he wasn’t.

  An overweight, tired-looking man in a rumpled white shirt, loosened tie, and open collar rose from one of the desks. “Hey there, Miss London, thanks for coming in. I’m Detective Hooper. I’ll take you to the property room.”

  “Thank you, Detective. Um…the man in there with the lieutenant? Would you happen to know who he is?”

  “No ma’am, didn’t see him.” He scratched at his five-o’clock-shadowed jaw and waited patiently. She wondered if he’d been up all night.

  She hesitated, then went ahead. “Well, I do, and I think there’s something the lieutenant needs to know. Could you call him—”

  “You mean right now, this minute?”

  “I think you’d better, yes. Would you tell him that the man he’s talking to isn’t quite what he seems?” She lowered her voice a notch. “In fact…”

  Once the detective had somewhat reluctantly relayed her message, Alix was happy to forget about Roland de Beauvais. The ball was in Mendoza’s court, and he could do with it what he wanted. She’d done her civic duty, and now she looked forward to her time with the O’Keeffe. She’d had barely a glance at it the afternoon before, and she’d been itching ever since for a closer look. She certainly hadn’t anticipated doing it in a police station, but that was as good a place as any for doing her job.

  Hooper signed in with the property clerk and used a wall-mounted keypad to open the door to the property viewing room. On one of the two tables in it was a portable easel with the painting resting on it.

  “There ya go,” Hooper said with a weary wave of his hand. “Put these on first.”

  She took a pair of plastic throwaway gloves from the box he was holding out to her and, heart thumping, took her first good look at what she had come to New Mexico to see.

  It was a medium-sized landscape of an ethereally pale cliff face split by deep vertical canyons, in a stark, bright setting of sand and sky. In the dimly lit bottom of one of the clefts, barely noticeable, just a few sure strokes of the brush, was the small, shadowed figure of a man—well, perhaps a woman—in profile, facing to the right. Around the picture was a simple, unadorned steel frame—the perfect framing for it, she thought. The metal frame had turned out to be useful too; she doubted that the picture would have so nicely survived its flight into the bristly miniature pines without it.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.

  Hooper shrugged and unsuccessfully tried to stifle a yawn. “I guess so. Not really my kind of thing. So, is it the one you got out of the bush?”

  “Yes, no question.”

  “Okay, great. You’re good to go, Miss London.” He started to take the painting off the easel. “We appreciate the help.”

  “No, wait,” Alix said quickly. “I’d like to take some more time to look it over. Would that be all right?”

  He paused, his hands on the frame. “What for?”

  “One of the things that Christine LeMay hired me to do is to evaluate its authenticity. It’s her painting, after all, unless she decides not to take it. Anyway, I’d think the police would be interested in that side of it too.”

  “Didn’t know there was a question.” Another covered yawn. “’Scuse me.”

  “There’s always a question,” she said. “Especially when it comes to something as expensive as this.”

  “So how expensive is it?” he asked without much interest.

  “Almost three million dollars.”

  “You’re shitting me!” he blurted, then apologized again, almost before the words were out of his mouth. Well, at least she’d finally gotten a rise out of him.

  He moved back from the painting and offered it with a gesture for her inspection. “Go ahead, look away.” Then, under his breath she heard him muttering: “Three million bucks. Unbelievable.”

  She had barely started when a telephone on the other table buzzed. Hooper went to it and picked it up. “Sure, yeah, Lieutenant, I’ll let him in.”

  To her amazement, it was Roland de Beauvais who was waiting on the other side of the door. Even before he uttered a word, she could see that he was back in character—not only the gorgeous cashmere sport coat that he had slipped on, but the condescending, aristocratic lift of the eye
brows, the incipient, self-confident smirk that made you want to smack him in the face, even the languid, irritating grace of his posture—the man was a consummate actor, she had to give him that much.

  No, wait, she thought, not as consummate as all that. He spoke like a Brahmin, he acted like a Brahmin, but he most definitely didn’t dress like a Brahmin. Real Brahmins—the Whipple-Pruitts, for example—might have million-dollar paintings on the walls of their living rooms, and half-million-dollar Louis XVI furniture sets in their dining rooms, but that was at home, where there was no one to see them but their own kind. They most assuredly did not saunter around with thousand-dollar cashmere coats on their backs. Inconspicuous consumption was their hallmark. They wore holey sweaters and beat-up deck shoes, not designer jackets and Gucci loafers.

  A fake through and through is what he was.

  “Why, Ms. London, what a nice surprise to find you here,” he said. And yes, that grating nasal drawl was back too.

  She managed to work up something like a smile. “And what brings you here?” she asked. Damn, she had wanted some time alone with the painting. With this preening slimeball hanging around she wasn’t going to get anything done.

  “Oh, they’ve asked me in to see if I can verify that the painting is the one that was in poor Ms. Coane’s office yesterday. Awful about what happened.” He glanced at the picture. “Yes, that’s it, all right, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, I would.” Excellent. And now, if you would kindly turn around and leave—

  But the mental message she was sending wasn’t received. He continued to look at the painting, showing no inclination to go. “From late in her Ghost Ranch period, obviously,” he said.

  Alix was surprised. Unsavory he might be, but he knew his stuff.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “1961, 1962—maybe as late as 1963. Somewhere in there.”

  “Well, no,” he said with a patronizing smile, “I think perhaps just the least little bit later.” He studied it a moment longer. “I’d say…1964. Yes, 1964, probably the early part of the year, though. So you weren’t very far off.”

  And I’d say you’re full of it, she thought. Nobody’s got that good an eye.

  “Do you recognize the setting?” he asked.

  “Not for sure, no, but I’m thinking it’s one of her renditions of the Ghost Ranch area itself. What do you think?”

  “Oh, it’s Ghost Ranch, all right. Quite obviously. What I meant was, specifically.”

  Why, he’s turned this into a contest, she realized. Everything he’s said has been to one-up me and prove he’s smarter than I am. Creep. He reminded her more of the unlamented Paynton Whipple-Pruitt every minute.

  “Not really, no,” she said, grinding her teeth.

  “Tell me, Ms. London, what’s your opinion of the painting as a painting?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, do you think it’s a good one? Are you going to advise your friend to buy it? How would you rate this within the O’Keeffe oeuvre?” He waited, smiling, for her answer.

  In the first place, Alix hadn’t yet had a chance to study it enough to come to a conclusion. In the second place, she wasn’t about to offer a tentative opinion, only to have him put her down again. “I haven’t decided. Tell me, how would you rate it?”

  A small shadow—of concern? doubt?—passed over his face, the first honest emotion she’d seen on it. She’d surprised him, caught him unprepared. Maybe he really wasn’t the expert she’d taken him for. This was starting to be enjoyable after all.

  He studied the picture, his chin cradled in his right hand, his right elbow cradled in his left hand. He cleared his throat. “I think it’s quite marvelous. As always, I find myself simply stunned, don’t you know, by her treatment of whiteness as a representation of rationality and order, and by how she emphasizes not only its symbolic implications but its formal-structural aspects as well.” He finished by clearing his throat again.

  What a total load of baloney, Alix thought, smiling at him. Was that really the best he could do? He knew it too, and he knew she knew it as well. She could tell that from the hint of embarrassment, or maybe even humor (was it possible that he was laughing at himself?) that was visible in his returning smile. To her surprise, she had a sudden glimpse of him in a different light. Drop the overwrought speech mannerisms and the too-too blasé demeanor, show a little in the way of honest feelings, and he could actually be a fairly attractive man. Those clear, piercing blue eyes, the square-cut jaw, the—

  Whoa, she thought, that’s enough of that. This was not a road she was dumb enough to let herself start down. She had always been good at focusing her concentration, and now she made use of that ability to turn it away from de Beauvais and direct it to the picture. Time to start doing what Chris was paying her to do. First question: was it the real thing or was it a fake?

  To many people, even people within the art world, the idea of anyone’s having a “connoisseur’s eye” was laughable; a carnival act, pure hokum—at best, self-deception. The way one evaluated a painting’s authenticity, so the conventional wisdom went, was to scrupulously apply the tools of science and meticulous scholarship, not to put one’s credence in some gauzy, impossible-to-pin-down first impression.

  Alix knew differently. Sure, she went with her first impressions, her gut reactions, and yes, they were hard to pin down, but she knew that they were solidly based on scholarship, experience, and training—plus that rare, all-important, inborn faculty that condensed it all into a single, overarching, seemingly instinctive judgment. It didn’t work with all artists—she could look at a Duccio or a Cimabue from now till Christmas and nothing would emerge. It didn’t mean she didn’t like or appreciate them, it simply meant she didn’t “connect.” But with Georgia O’Keeffe she did, and now, having gazed at the painting for a minute or so, she closed her eyes and let her impressions coalesce on their own. The colors were right…the subject matter was certainly right…the treatment in general looked right…there wasn’t any signature, but even that was right; O’Keeffe didn’t sign her works, except once in a while on the back (and even then it was more likely than not to be only her scrawled initials, “OK”); she felt that her style was signature enough.

  Apparently, de Beauvais was also considering the subject of authenticity. “At any rate, I’d say it’s certainly genuine,” he said, almost reluctantly. “There really isn’t any doubt there either.”

  “And I’d say it’s a fake,” Alix declared, surprising herself. The words had popped out before she’d even realized she’d reached a conclusion.

  The Boston dealer swiveled around and stared at her, seemingly astonished, or possibly offended. “On what grounds?” he demanded.

  Well, that was the nub of the matter, all right. The flashing intuition of real, fake, good, bad always came before the understanding of what was behind it. “I’m not sure exactly, yet. Maybe it’s that it’s too beautiful, too pretty. There’s a kind of indefinable edge that you expect from O’Keeffe, and this doesn’t have it. And there’s something else that’s bothering me, something missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it…it’s hard to say…”

  Pretty lame, she thought, but it was the best she could do right now. She expected a sneer from de Beauvais, but he kept a straight face. “I see,” he said archly. “How interesting.”

  Creep, she thought again. Well, it would come to her eventually, she knew that. She took a metric tape measure from her purse and quickly measured the canvas in two deft movements: width, ninety-one centimeters, height, seventy-six centimeters—thirty by thirty-six inches, probably a little larger, depending on whether some of it was hidden by the frame.

  “Why bother to measure it?” De Beauvais wanted to know. “If you’re so certain it’s inauthentic.”

  “It’s what we do,” she snapped, jumping at the chance to put the supercilious snot in his place. I’m a professional, she was telling him. You’re out of your depth here, mister. “And I
didn’t say I was certain. It’s an opinion…an educated opinion,” she added pointedly.

  “No offense, Ms. London, and I’m sure your opinion is invaluable—” he was being equally disagreeable, “—but if the police ask my opinion I will suggest they not depend upon opinions at all, but rather submit the picture to a forensic laboratory for examination. With the aid of chemical and spectrographic pigment analysis, for example—”

  God, the man was windy too, along with his many other faults. “If this was supposed to be an eighteenth-century painting,” she said crisply, “scientific analysis would be helpful. The pigments in use three hundred years ago were quite different from the ones available today, as were the canvases, which would have been handwoven at that time—”

  “Yes, I’m aware of all that, but—”

  “There would be craquelure to be analyzed for authenticity, as well as dust and grime. But in this case, the painting is supposedly only forty-some years old. The pigments in use then were the same ones available today. The same is true for brushes, canvases, stretchers, and the rest. There is no craquelure to be analyzed, no grime to be aged. Moreover, unless the person who painted this is completely incompetent, which he obviously is not, he will have used the very same materials and techniques that O’Keeffe would have used. He would have—”

  Hey, you can be pretty windy yourself, she thought, and stopped. In any case, de Beauvais looked very satisfactorily snowed.

  “Okay if I turn it around?” she asked Hooper, who was seated off to the side, silently observing. “Sure. Just don’t drop it. Three million bucks. Whew.”

  She turned it with care and set it back on the easel, making sure that it was the frame and not the canvas that came in contact with the support. The backing, like the backings of most paintings that have been around for a while and have changed hands, had a few stuck-on labels, yellowed and curling, and various indecipherable stamps and scrawls. One of the ink scrawls was the anticipated “signature,” a simple OK in a loose, five-pointed star. That proved nothing one way or the other. In fact, the lack of a signature would have been a better indication of authenticity. Not only were O’Keeffe’s initials the easiest thing in the world to fake, but whereas a good many famous artists didn’t sign all their work, no forger of famous artists would think of leaving one of his fakes unsigned.