A Fatal Slip (9 page)

“Maybe a hot bath?” Emma suggested.

“At the very least,” Mariel replied. She pushed open the front door, and Emma followed her inside. Mariel sat down on a bench in the foyer and began pulling off her boots. “Dr. Sampson told me I needed to take it easy.” She made a disgusted sound. “I’m not going to stop riding no matter what he says.”

She winced as she pulled off her right boot.

Emma wondered if riding was such a good thing if it had put her in such pain.

Mariel started to get up when she put a hand to her back and sank down onto the bench again. She groaned.

Emma looked at her in alarm. “Is there something you can take for the pain?”

Mariel shook her head. Her face was getting paler and paler until it was the color of putty. “I refuse to become hooked on those dreadful painkillers. I know what happens to people who take them. Just pick up the newspaper, and you’ll see all the stories. I told Dr. Sampson that I was having none of that.” She took a deep shuddering breath and struggled to her feet.

“I don’t want to end up like that talk show host . . . what was his name?” she threw over her shoulder as she made her way down the hall.

EMMA
stood in the foyer, undecided as to what to do or where to go, when Jackson came rushing in, sliding to a stop in front of her. He was wearing light-colored corduroy pants and a black turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up. Emma noticed he had a small tattoo on the underside of his wrist, but she wasn’t close enough to see what it was.

“Sorry. I do hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Not at all.”

Emma followed him back down the art-lined hall to the same office where he had interviewed her the day before. Liz was seated at the other partner’s desk, her blond head bent over a laptop.

She looked up when Emma walked in, and her broad, freckled face broke into a grin.

“The two of you obviously already know each other.” Jackson stood awkwardly, his hands dangling at his sides. Emma noticed how thin his wrists were. It gave him a very boyish appearance.

“Tom Roberts is here, too,” Jackson said. “He is . . . was . . . my father’s partner. He’s working in the library, but he does want to meet you. He should be along in a bit.”

Emma smiled encouragingly.

“Well.” He stood for a moment, hovering between one foot and the other as if uncertain what ought to happen next. “I suppose I will have to show you what needs to be done.”

“That would be helpful,” Emma said with only a trace of sarcasm. She felt a little sorry for Jackson—he appeared to be adrift. His father’s death had obviously had an unsettling effect on him.

“We have to create an inventory of all the works in my father’s collection. The IRS wants it, and our lawyers will need it to settle my father’s estate.” He ran a hand over his face. “Unfortunately, Father was allergic to computers and absolutely refused to have one in the office.” He gave a wry smile. “Our inventory, such as it is, is all handwritten.”

He reached over to the bookcase and pulled a book from a row of similar ones. It was an ancient notebook covered in worn and faded red fabric. The pages had gilt edges, and the spine was broken and crumbling. Jackson flipped it open randomly, and a musty smell rose from the paper. He showed Emma a page. Small but neat handwriting followed the blue lines carefully. Some of the entries were crossed out.

“Father wrote all his purchases down in these.” Jackson pointed to the half-dozen books behind him on the shelf. “Sometimes he remembered to cross out an entry when the work was sold and sometimes not. It’s a positively antiquated way of doing things—plus the books are falling apart.” He pointed to the broken binding. “There’s no way the IRS is going to accept this as an accurate inventory of what comprises my father’s estate. Unfortunately, it means more work for us, transferring all of this”—again he waved a hand toward the books—“onto a computer. We do have a customized database all set up, so it’s a matter of getting the information from the paintings and sculpture and entering it.” He looked down at his feet for a moment. “Always assuming the complete information is there. Father wasn’t a stickler for details. For him, the thrill was in the buying, selling and negotiating. He wasn’t concerned with keeping records. If you want to have a go at tracking down provenances or dates, please feel free, but don’t feel obligated. The biggest task is going to be getting everything entered properly into the database.” He scratched his leg idly. “I started entering some of the information myself—I bought the computer that’s set up in the library the day after my father died—but I only got through the works that are hanging in the house and some of my most recent purchases. That’s when I realized we were going to need help.”

Emma nodded. She wondered where the artwork was kept and how much of it there was.

“I’ll show you where the collection is housed,” Jackson said as if reading her thoughts.

Liz and Emma smiled at each other as Jackson led Emma out of the room.
Talk to you later
, Liz mouthed.

“We had a special room built—temperature-controlled, fireproof, perfectly secure.”

They went back out through the foyer and entered a back hallway that, unlike the other, was bare of any decoration. At the end of it was a gray metal door. Jackson punched some numbers into the keypad affixed to the front and pulled it open.

The room they entered was fairly large, windowless, and lined with shelves designed to hold paintings and others created for housing sculpture. There were also three metal cabinets, each with a half-dozen shallow drawers. Jackson walked over to one of the cabinets and patted the top.

“These are for unframed drawings, prints and the like.” He gestured toward the lock on the drawer handles. “You’ll be given a key, of course.”

A sturdy wooden table stood in the center of the room, and a comfortable-looking, padded desk chair was parked in front of it. On top of the table was a desktop computer.

“You’ll be doing most of your work in here,” Jackson said. “I hope it won’t be too uncomfortable. It seemed to make the most sense. No point in copying down all the information then having to go back to the office to enter it. Of course, if you need to look something up, we have a fairly complete library. Would you like to see it?”

Emma nodded and again followed Jackson down the back hallway. They crossed the foyer, where Molly was dusting, passed the door to the office and entered another door just beyond it.

The room was lined with book-stuffed shelves, and there was a ladder that attached to the top shelf and could be slid along a rail to where it was needed. A wooden desk, smaller than the ones in the office, was placed to one side. A desktop computer and large monitor sat on top. A tufted leather sofa was opposite. A man was seated on the couch, his short, stout legs stretched out in front of him, a pair of half glasses perched on his nose. He was reading
Art International
.

He looked up when Jackson and Emma entered.

“Emma, this is Tom Roberts. Tom, this is Emma. She’s going to be helping us out with the inventory.”

Roberts scrambled to his feet, pulling his pinstriped vest down to cover his rotund belly. His gray hair had receded to the middle of his head, and he did his best to hide the fact by plastering long strands across the top of his skull. One had gone awry and hung down alongside his right ear.

He shook Emma’s hand, holding it in his a moment longer than necessary. His was slightly damp. Emma had to restrain herself from wiping her palm along the leg of her slacks.

Tom put his thumb in the magazine he’d been reading to hold his place. “Have you seen Sabina?” he asked Jackson. He looked around as if she might be hiding somewhere in the library.

“I thought I saw her go out earlier. Perhaps she wanted a bit of air.” Jackson danced impatiently from one foot to the other.

“Here I am,” a voice from the door startled them all.

Emma swiveled around to face the beautiful woman she had seen at Hugh’s dinner dance—the one in the tangerine-colored dress who had stood out from the crowd. She looked no less exotic in an everyday pair of black pants and a sapphire blue silk blouse. Her dark hair flowed around her shoulders and her emerald eyes, dotted with specks of hazel, reminded Emma of a cat’s. She was clearly many years her husband’s junior.

She extended her hand to Emma, and, unlike her husband’s sweaty palm, hers was as cool as a sliver of ice. A large, square-cut diamond ring winked from her finger and was surrounded by bands of sapphires, more diamonds and rubies.

She had a lovely voice—deep and musical—with a slight accent Emma couldn’t place. Russian? German?

“Lovely to meet you,” Sabina said briskly. “Tom, I’m going now. I have a rehearsal this afternoon.” She turned to Emma with a smile. “I play the violin with the Nashville Symphony.”

Before Emma could reply, Sabina had exited the room, leaving behind nothing more than the scent of expensive face cream.

Tom smiled benignly at his departing spouse. “Sabina studied at the Nuremberg University of Music.”

“She’s German?” Emma asked. “I couldn’t quite place her accent.”

Tom shook his head. “Yes, her ancestors are from Berlin. They fled to London just before the war. They spent many years there, but when it was safe again, Sabina’s grandfather decided to return to Germany. Sabina was born and educated there.”

Jackson had begun to look impatient during this exchange, clearing his throat several times. Emma looked at him and smiled.

“Guess we’ll move on then,” he said scratching behind one ear. “I’ll show you how things are done.”

Emma spent the afternoon learning the computer database program and entering some sample information from the labels on the backs of the paintings—blue slips of paper with
hugh granger fine arts
written all in lowercase and with space to enter the title of the artwork, date of execution, measurements and a brief provenance.

As soon as Jackson felt Emma was comfortable with the process, he bolted from the room and rushed off to do something else. Emma worked diligently all afternoon—the job wasn’t complicated and would have been dreadfully dull had it not been for the opportunity to see so many beautiful works of art. There was a particularly charming Matisse drawing Emma would have loved to own, but she was quite certain it wasn’t in her price range. Her budget ran more toward framed posters than original artwork.

Emma was surprised when she looked at her watch and it was already a few minutes after five. She saved her work and powered off the computer. It felt good to stand up and stretch after sitting for so long. She was getting a cramp in her shoulder and her right foot had gone to sleep. She wondered if Liz was still working in the study or had already left to go home and get dinner for Matt and the kids.

As Emma turned out the lights and picked up her coat and purse, she realized she had become so engrossed in her task she had forgotten that her main purpose in being at the Grangers’ was to snoop. She chewed her lower lip. She wasn’t going to find out much of anything if she spent all her time alone in a windowless room. She would have to find excuses to poke around and talk to members of the family.

Emma let the door close behind her. According to Jackson, it would lock automatically, but just to be sure she checked the handle. It didn’t turn. Emma headed down the hall, through the lobby and down the front hallway. She peeked into the office and was pleased to see that Liz was still there.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Liz asked when she saw Emma in the doorway. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. She gestured toward her laptop. “I’m roughing out an idea for the web site. There’s so much inspiration to be had in all the amazing artwork around here. Jackson is definitely trying to take the business in a whole new direction now that his father is gone.”

Emma slipped into the seat opposite Liz’s desk. “Could that be a good motive for murder?”

Liz frowned. “I don’t know. Jackson seems genuinely distressed over his father’s death, but”—she shrugged—“that might be a good act, who knows? I do know it took some convincing to get his father to even agree to having a presence on the web.”

“Fortunately Aunt Arabella is more with it than some people half her age.”

Emma glanced toward the window. The sky was darkening and was splashed with streaks of purple and pink in much the manner of some of the contemporary paintings she had been cataloging. Movement and a flash of white caught her eye.

She got up from her chair and walked closer to the window.

“What is it?” Liz asked, pushing a hand through her hair, leaving her dark blond locks disheveled.

“I think someone is out there.” Emma peered out the window. “Probably just one of the staff . . .”

Liz jumped up and joined Emma, and they both looked out the window. A raised terrace extended out from the house and was surrounded by a low stone wall. Various pieces of outdoor furniture, shrouded in dark green canvas covers, were pushed to one side, and empty terra-cotta planters ringed the circular-patterned brickwork. A beech tree with spreading branches deepened the shadows on the right side.

Movement again caught Emma’s eye. “It’s only Mariel,” she said.

Mariel was standing in the shadows of the beech, just beyond the circle of light cast from the back windows. She was wearing the same dark barn jacket Emma had seen her in earlier and had a white scarf tied around her throat.

“Isn’t she cold?” Liz wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

There was more movement and what looked like one shadow separated and became two.

“Who is that?” Liz hissed, pointing.

“It’s a man,” Emma said.

“I can see that,” Liz grumped. “Do you know who it is?”

“No. But they must be very friendly. They were standing terribly close.”

“Lovers, do you think?”

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. Possibly. They obviously don’t want to be seen.”

“Well, well, well. Maybe everything wasn’t wine and roses between Hugh Granger and his wife after all.” Liz turned to Emma. “We may very well have another suspect on our hands.”