Dearly Departed (22 page)

CHAPTER 38

“M
om?” Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Fanny and Barbara were sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling, looking like old friends. “Are you okay?”

“Your partner calls you Mom?”

“We're very informal,” Fanny explained.

The room was dim from the fading light. Amy's hair was up under a gray wool newsboy cap, and it took Barbara a second to recognize her. “Amy? I didn't know your mother was a cop.”

“I never said I was,” Fanny protested. “She made an assumption that I neglected to correct. Is that a crime?”

“You never said you were a cop?”

Amy sighed again. “Barbara, I'm so sorry. Mom likes to stick her nose into things. I asked her to meet me here, but obviously, she took it upon herself . . .” As she rambled on, doing her best to explain, she couldn't help noticing the furtive glances going back and forth between Barbara and her mother. Noticing them—and trying to ignore them. “I hope she wasn't too much of a bother.”

“No. We were just . . .” Barbara pointed to the open safe in the middle of the parquet floor. “Finishing up the inventory.”

Amy looked down into the shallow steel square. “Who would imagine a floor safe in a penthouse apartment? That's wild.”

“The rug was off-kilter,” said Barbara. “When I went to straighten it, I happened to notice the edge of the trapdoor. The safe itself was unlocked.”

“Anything important?”

“Nothing,” said Fanny with some conviction. “Just a bunch of papers.”

“Must be important papers.” She glanced inside. From the second she'd seen the well-hidden safe, Amy had hoped that it might hold the document she'd been puzzling over ever since Peter Borg hit a wrong note all those weeks ago. But she hadn't expected it to be so easy. She'd almost looked right past it. “Oh, my . . .”

“Oh, your what?” asked Fanny.

“You didn't see this?” Amy asked, pointing.

“No. We were preoccupied.” Fanny finally looked. “Oh, my . . .”

There it was, right on top, three handwritten pages from a yellow legal pad, stapled together. Fanny bent over for a closer look. The writing was clear and precise, on paper wrinkled only slightly by the years and humidity.
If you are reading this ...

“Mom?” said Amy, leaving the rest of her statement to be relayed telepathically.

“Barbara was just leaving,” said Fanny, straightening up and standing up.

“Leaving?” Barbara shook her head, feeling emboldened. “I'm not leaving. I'm the executor. I have every right to be here, while, unless I'm mistaken, neither of you do.”

“Well, if you have a right to be here, then you won't mind coming back later.” Fanny smiled.

“Why should I? And why are you even here in the first place?”

“Because . . .” Amy was hoping an answer, any answer, would just come out, but none did. “Because . . .”

“We're here because we want to snoop around MacGregor's apartment,” said Fanny. “And you're leaving because you found the music box you were looking for and you have no reason to stick around. Am I right? Enjoy your day, dear.”

Amy was used to her mother's logic. Usually, it left you with your mouth hanging open and no good response. But this argument had been a little weak and disjointed even for Fanny.

“Yes, the music box,” said Barbara. It was lying, lid shut, on the bed between them. “That's a good point. I should go.” And she took the music box, placing it under her arm like a purse, and headed out of the bedroom. “Just close the door behind you,” she added meekly. “Take your time.”

“You're welcome,” said Fanny and watched her go.

Any waited until she heard the front door close. “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” said Fanny. “Oh, she found the music box.”

“I saw that. What was in it?”

“Nothing. Sentimental value. Look, dear heart, are you going to read the damn note or not?” Fanny switched on the nearest bedside lamp, three clicks to high, while her daughter pulled the pages out of the floor safe and started reading aloud.

“If you are reading this, then I am dead, and there are certain things the police need to know.”

“An intriguing way to begin,” said Fanny. “Keep reading.”

“My name is Maurice David Steinberg. For over a decade, I owned the Steinberg Gallery in New York City, and I knowingly sold art forgeries to the public. I make this confession at this time in the hope of rectifying some of the wrong I have done and of establishing once and for all the facts that many of my victimized collectors may have suspected throughout the years.

“First, let me say that no one else at the Steinberg Gallery knew of the forgeries or had any reason to question their authenticity. What I did, I did on my own, with the sole collusion of Professor William Strohman of Columbia University, who created the forged artworks and provided me with them.

“I became acquainted with Bill Strohman during a New School course he taught in the summer of 2000 on the subject of art authentication. During our conversations after class, he more than once brought up the subject of forgery and how the art world unknowingly colludes to make this crime easier than it should be.

“Our first effort to prove his point began as an experiment. One afternoon he drew a small Salvador Dali sketch, ink on paper, like a hundred others of that period. Without consulting Strohman, I framed the piece and put it on display in my gallery. I told myself at the time that I had no intention of selling it and just wanted to gauge the reaction, but of course that was a lie.

“The next day a surrealist expert and collector saw the Dali sketch and demanded that I sell it to her. I should have had the ethical strength to tell her the truth, but I didn't. It sold for eight thousand dollars.

“From that moment on, Strohman and I became partners in defrauding the New York art world. Not to use this as a defense or an excuse, but it was surprisingly easy. Through his wife at the time, Strohman had access to old canvases and paints, while I personally forged the provenance documents.”

Below this last sentence came a list naming every forged work of art: its title, size, attributed artist, and buyer, and the price paid. Nearly two dozen pieces in all, taking up a full page and a half. In the final paragraph of the note, Maury apologized to his wife, to Colleen Strohman, and to the collectors they'd cheated over the years.

“So this is the ‘if I die' note,” said Fanny after her daughter had finished reading every word. The moment wasn't quite as fulfilling as she had expected. “Not written by a victim.”

“Written by a bad guy.”

“Why the hell would he put that down in words?” asked Fanny, shaking her head. “In his own handwriting?”

“Paisley MacGregor,” said Amy, without hesitation. “She was a very maternal, moralistic woman. No one could talk him into going to jail. But she must have convinced him to try to set the record straight after his death. As luck would have it, she died first.”

“So what does this mean?” asked Fanny. She had taken the pages and was rereading the first. “Maury flew to Istanbul to kill his old partner?”

“I think their meeting in Istanbul was accidental,” said Amy as she started to piece it together. “Strohman's forgery career was at an end, thanks to his tremors. He'd been reduced to hanging around the high-end hotels, renting himself out as a guide. That's where he saw Maury, looking prosperous and happy. Well, as happy as Maury was capable of looking.”

“And he followed Maury to India,” said Fanny, continuing the train of thought. “To blackmail him. Maury was rich and respectable. The last thing Maury needed was a call being placed to the Manhattan bunco squad, outlining his role in all this.”

“Bunco squad?” Amy asked. “I don't think anybody's had a bunco squad since the nineteen forties.”

“You know what I mean,” said Fanny.

“I think Dick Tracy had a bunco squad.”

“Art forgery squad. Don't get snooty, girl of mine. If it wasn't for me, you never would have found this.”

Amy focused on the three yellow sheets. “And if we weren't dealing with a cold-blooded killer, I might even thank you.”

“A two-time killer,” Fanny reminded her. “He must have killed Joy Archer while trying to get this back.”

“Right.” Their mood turned more serious than ever. “This not only connects him to the forgeries,” said Amy. “It connects him to Bill Strohman. We need to get this to the police.”

“It's not going to prove murder.”

Amy thought it over. “Not exactly,” she had to admit. “The death in India's been ruled a mugging. And the one here was an accident.”

“So, what good would it do, handing this over to the police?” Fanny's tone was rhetorical, as if her question were some incomplete thought.

Amy's eyes flew open. “Oh, no, no, no. You're not going there.”

“Going where?” No one could feign innocence better than Fanny.

“We are not keeping that.” Amy leaned away from her mother and the toxic three pages. “Two people have died for this secret.”

“And their killer's getting away with it.”

“He's not getting away.” Even as Amy said the words, she realized the truth. “Okay, he's getting away with murder. But once we give this to the bunco squad, his life will be ruined.”

“What do you think he'll get? A few years? Plus, the embarrassment, of course. I believe it could be quite embarrassing. Poor man.”

“Mother!”

“Don't ‘mother' me.”

“It's punishment enough, from his point of view. It drove him to murder.”

“Lucky for us. That's the only advantage we have.”

“Advantage?” Amy didn't like the sound of this. “What do you mean?”

“The fact that he's been willing to kill for three pieces of paper.” Fanny flattened them smoothly on the bed. “That's how we're going to catch him.”

“We? Oh, no. There's no ‘we.' In fact, there's no ‘you' or ‘me' or anyone.”

“It won't be that hard.”

“Won't be hard? What are you saying? Are you saying you have a plan?”

“No. But between you, me, and Marcus, I'm sure we'll come up with one.”

CHAPTER 39

F
or the past few days, Maury had been living in a kind of nightmarish limbo.

His plan, concocted on his flight in from Maui, had been simple: to take back the Sutton Place penthouse. There was still a month left on Paisley MacGregor's lease. Until then the place would be managed by the executor, Corns and Associates, who would see to the sale and disposal of all the late maid's tacky white furniture and lifetime possessions. There was no stipulation for the late maid's maid to continue squatting, no legal right, even by the lax New York City housing code. His plan had been to nicely but firmly evict Joy Archer and give her some cash for her cooperation, maybe five thousand dollars. He and Laila had agreed on that part.

Somewhere along the way, Maury figured, he would have the time, the keys, and the excuse of being the landlord to enter and search for that damned letter. Why, oh why, had he written it in the first place?

It had all been Paisley's fault. She must have eavesdropped on one of his conversations with Strohman; or jimmied open the locked file cabinet in his home office; or pieced together tidbits from the scare, when an appraiser labeled the little haystack Pissarro a forgery and the buyer demanded his money back. Knowing Paisley, it had probably been all three.

The scare had been enough to make him quit. He had always been squeamish about the forgeries, criminally and morally. And now he was married to Laila—generous, clueless Laila—so money was not an issue. He could give up his business and devote himself to meddling in hers. But he had continued to feel guilty about defrauding his customers, many of whom had been good, longtime friends.

Paisley MacGregor had observed his loss of appetite, irritability, and erratic sleep and took him aside one evening, right before cocktail hour, his most vulnerable moment of the day. She seemed to know everything. “Would it make you feel better to confess, Maury, dear, like the Roman Catholics do? They say it's good for the soul.”

“And ruin my marriage and go to jail? Not in my lifetime!”

Not in my lifetime.
A choice, unfortunate turn of phrase. “Well, what about after?” Paisley had asked in her soulful, maternal way.

That was how the idea had come about, three handwritten pages meant to help cleanse his soul. Paisley had agreed to protect his secrets, the way she always had. In the unlikely event that she died first—she was younger, after all, and had an air of invincibility about her—she would leave the pages in a safe place. But she'd never told him where the safe place was, and the next time he'd heard, she was already dead. “Too soon, too soon,” he'd muttered, tears in his eyes, at more than one of the worldwide wakes. And he'd meant it.

As for the murders, they were just flukes, little more than accidents, moments when he'd been backed into a corner and had to protect his interests.

He hadn't recognized Billy Strohman at first, just another English-speaking guide hanging out in front of the luxury hotels. When Billy came up to him, Maury was startled by the palsy and the tattered suit. He felt sorry for his old partner—until the subject of money reared its ugly head. The man was greedy and desperate and, worst of all, persistent, showing up not once, but twice, in different cities. What else could Maury do?

Joy Archer reacted in much the same way. Maury had knocked on the penthouse door, fully prepared to charm his way back into an apartment that was rightfully his. But he could tell from the second she greeted him with that superior, canary-eating grin that she'd found it. She practically admitted that it was there in the apartment with her. Again, wrong place, wrong time. He was just unlucky, he told himself.

After the police removed the crime-scene tape, he'd taken his time searching the place from top to bottom, between the pages of every book, behind every painting and photo. Two long, frustrating afternoons with no results. Wherever the maid's maid had slipped it, it remained hidden. Perhaps, if he was lucky for once, it would stay hidden forever.

Maury stood in the elevator of the Ritz-Carlton, on his way to the nineteenth floor, checking his phone app for possible flights back to Maui. When the doors dinged his arrival, he barely looked up.

“Sorry, sir,” someone mumbled.

The doors had opened, and he was facing a sleek, youngish man in a black hotel uniform. The man lowered his head and stepped aside to let Maury off before getting on himself and pressing a button. The man with the sharp nose and wavy black hair didn't look up as the doors closed, but he seemed familiar. Of course he looked familiar, Maury chided himself. A hotel worker in the hotel where he was staying. Why wouldn't he look familiar?

Maury was still checking flights—a once-a-day nonstop from Newark to Maui on United, which would be nice—when he used his other hand to swipe his key card and open the door to his junior suite. He switched on the lights, distracted, still waiting to see if there might be another, even more convenient nonstop, perhaps out of LaGuardia.

He paid no attention to the object that had been slipped under his door, walking straight over it. Probably some hotel promotion or an accounting of his purchases from the minibar last night, when he hadn't felt like going down to the Auden Bistro & Bar for his pre-bedtime drink and had made do with a mini-bottle of pinot grigio and a bag of cashews.

He was considering another purchase from the minibar right now, perhaps a bag of peanut M&M'S as an antidote to that too-healthy vegan salad he'd had for lunch. Laila would never let him eat M&M'S at home. And then the object caught his eye again, a manila envelope, blank and thin, definitely not anything official from the Ritz. He bent down to pick it up.

At first he didn't recognize the contents. The three stapled pages were photostats, black on white, not the black on legal-pad yellow that he recalled writing all those years ago. Even his own handwriting seemed unfamiliar. And then came the icy chill.
How in the world? Again?
Why was everyone trying to blackmail him? You'd think after two murders they would start to get the idea.

On the last page of the copy was a green Post-it note with a phone number, ten digits written in bold. Nothing more needed to be said.

His first thoughts went to Barbara Corns. She was the only other person with access to the penthouse. But it didn't feel like Barbara. Evan Corns, yes, but not meek and mild Barbara. Not without her husband to goad her on.

But if not Barbara, who? Maury sat down on the bed and stared at the pages between his hands. Could this new blackmailer be someone from the tour? Someone who had seen him and Billy together in Istanbul or maybe in India? That seemed far-fetched. It was a long way from connecting Billy and Maury to finding an old letter outlining their past life together. And yet . . .

And yet Amy Abel had a track record with this sort of thing, didn't she? Just last year she'd been responsible for the arrest of someone on one of her tours. Maury didn't recall the details, but like almost everyone, he knew how to get the answers to most of life's questions. He opened the laptop on his hotel desk and typed in three words:
Amy Abel crime
. That should do it. Within .34 seconds, the Google results came up, including “Images for Amy Abel.” Of the seven thumbnail images, two were from newspaper articles, one showing Amy arm in arm with a sharp-featured, good-looking man about her own age, with black, wavy hair and a dangerous smile. Maury double clicked on the image, and it expanded.

Maury couldn't be sure, but this looked like the man he'd seen getting into the elevator, the same man in the same uniform—he remembered now—he'd seen with Amy on the edge of Central Park a few days ago, when the Ritz doorman was hailing him a taxi. That was why he'd looked so familiar.

For his last confrontation with a blackmailer, Maury had left his Walther P22 in his hotel room, in his luggage, undisturbed since he'd packed it in Maui, just in case. He would not be making that mistake again.

 

Fanny studied her hand, then glanced at the six cards turned up in the dummy hand, then at the seven turned-down cards, then at the cell phone in the middle of the small round table, then back at her hand. “Two clubs,” she announced to Marcus and her daughter, the two other players at the table.

“You don't mean that,” sighed Amy.

“I think I know what I mean, dear. I've been playing bridge since before you were born—while you were being born, if I'm not mistaken. It was a long, very annoying labor.”

“Then you must know that two clubs is an artificial bid. It means you're looking for a response from your partner. But you don't have a partner in three-handed bridge, which is what we're playing. Our partner's the dummy.”

Fanny was unfazed. “Well, maybe I'm psychic and I'm asking the cards to tell me what they are.”

“You're not psychic.”

“Maybe it's not artificial. I happen to have a lot of clubs.”

“You don't have a lot of clubs,” said Amy, checking her own hand. “Not unless they doubled the number in a deck.”

Fanny released a theatrical groan and threw down her hand. “This is ridiculous.”

Amy had to agree. “Maury may not call today. He may not call at all.”

“If he calls, it'll be soon,” said Marcus. “This isn't the kind of thing you put off.”

They had bought the prepaid, disposable phone with cash at the Duane Reade on Seventh Avenue, and according to their plan, Fanny would be the one to pick it up when it rang. Amy certainly couldn't answer it. And Maury Steinberg had heard Marcus's voice, just a few words as they'd passed in the elevator. They'd decided to err on the side of caution. So it would be Fanny.

“About the call . . .” Fanny picked up her cards again and pretended to study them. “I still think fifty thousand is too low.”

“Mom.” They'd been over this again and again. “Fifty thousand is probably the most he can get out of his bank on short notice.”

“But he's not going to go to his bank, dear. He's going to try to kill us—Marcus and you, to be precise. I was voted out. God forbid I should be around for the fun part.”

“The fact that you refer to a murder attempt as fun is the reason you were voted out,” said Amy.

Fanny waved away her concern. “Yes, murder isn't fun. Got it. But the police will be there, so it's not like he's going to get a clear shot. Who knows if he even has a gun?”

“He's done pretty well without a gun,” Marcus pointed out.

“No gun? Then why can't I come along?”

“Let's all assume he has a gun,” Amy said, not wanting to lose any of her hard-won concessions. “And fifty thousand is the right number. Any more and he'll want to delay the payoff.”

“Why would he delay, since he's not going to the bank in the first place?”

“Fanny, dear.” Marcus leaned across the table and stared into her eyes. “If we ask for half a million and tell him the payoff is tomorrow, he'll smell a rat. He'll know that we know that no normal person can get that much cash in a day. He'll know that we know that he's going to double-cross us. And he'll know that we must be laying a trap for him. Fifty thousand is reasonable.”

Fanny shrugged. “I think we can get more.”

“Get more what? He's not bringing money.” Amy used the same tone of voice she would use on a dense and stubborn two-year-old. “He's bringing a gun.”

“I know he's not bringing money,” said Fanny. “But it still feels like we're selling ourselves cheap. Especially since he killed two people.”

“Yes, but he doesn't know that we know that he killed two people,” Amy said in the same tone. “As far as he knows, it's just art forgery.”

“Well, maybe we should let him know that we know about the murders. We can get him up to half a million, easy.”

“Why do you care about the money he's not bringing?”

“It's not the money, dear. It's the principle. He should have to pay, even if it's just symbolic.”

They could go on like this for hours, Amy knew. And, honestly, there were worse ways to while away a late afternoon. But then the phone in the middle of the table rang shrilly, like a cheap, cheery alarm clock, bringing them back to the moment.

Amy reached over to an old oak sideboard, retrieved a digital micro-recorder, and placed it next to the cell phone. A second later Fanny slid open the phone and pressed the speaker button.

“Hello, Mr. Steinberg.” She tuned her voice half an octave lower, even though he'd never heard her voice before.

“Who is this?” Maury Steinberg's words filled the small wood-paneled dining room.

“That's not important,” said Fanny in her best baritone, “which isn't to say I'm not important personally. I have a lot of friends who think very highly of me. But my identity isn't important right now, for the purpose of this conversation. That's what I meant to say. What
is
important is that I have something you want.”

“I know that. How did you get it?”

“Again, not important. But it will cost you one hundred—” Amy had been trying to kick her mother under the table for the past ten seconds. Finally she connected. “Ow! Okay, fifty. Fifty thousand. You have to admit that's a bargain, considering what's in your little note. Normally, I would demand a hundred thousand, you understand. Even that's a bargain.... Ow!”

“You sent me a copy. How do I know it's the only one?”

“I don't want this getting out any more than you do, dear. That would defeat the whole purpose of blackmail. You'll get the handwritten original. No copies. I want this to happen quickly.”