False Impressions (20 page)

And the question that had arisen when she first came into the store.
Could Corinne be the thief or the forger?

I decided to drop Corinne for a moment and rewind all I’d been learning. I’d been assuming that the art was stolen during the move from one gallery to the other at any time. There were just so many danger points, so many ways the heists could have gone down. As a second thought, I’d been considering someone who had access to either of the galleries. Madeline had confirmed that Syd was the only one who had had keys to both. At the old gallery, some construction people might have had keys, or some artists working on installations, but Madeline was pretty sure those keys had been returned. No matter what Madeline thought, Syd was still high atop my list.

Jeremy was also on that list. I’d been doing research on the black market for art, and it was clear that identities were protected and the money was huge. Jeremy had mentioned money a number of times—money Corinne was insisting he give her. Having the paintings forged, and allowing the forgeries to be discovered, would allow him to pay Corinne less and sell the pieces on the black market.

But what if it was Corinne? What if she’d had those paintings forged before Jeremy took them in for appraisal? What if she’d been planning to get divorced and had arranged for the paintings to be taken from the house, faked and replaced? Or what if she realized that money was going to be an issue in their divorce and had them copied after they began splitting up? Madeline had said that Corinne initiated the divorce. What if she’d planned the timing to allow her to forge the art?

She would have needed assistance, though, if she wasn’t an artist herself. Which brought me back to Syd. And then someone else’s name appeared—Margie Scott. The art moving specialist.

I found her name on the internet and called. I figured I’d leave a message and try to meet with her next week to see what I could find out. I was surprised when the phone was answered quickly.

“Margie Scott,” a low, serene voice said.

“Oh, hello. This is…” I hadn’t even planned out a fake name yet. “Isabel Hollings.” That would have been my name now if I’d married Sam. I’d tried it on so often, that even though we were no longer together, it rolled off the tongue.

I told Margie that I was moving, from a Gold Coast apartment to an Uptown home, and needed assistance moving my art.

“Of course,” she said. She described the process she went through to assist in moving art from one residence to another. “We’ll even install for you in your new home,” she said. “Now, how many pieces are we talking about?”

Shazzer.
I should have thought about this before I jumped into it. If I gave too high a number she might wonder why she hadn’t met such a collector. If I gave too low a number she might tell me she didn’t do that size job.

“About twenty,” I said, taking a stab.

She murmured, “Okay, okay.” Then, “What type of art or artists?”

Shazzer again.
I dredged up a few artists I knew from Madeline’s gallery. “I received your name from Madeline Saga actually.” I threw that in for good measure.

“Oh, Madeline,” she said in a happy-sounding voice. “She’s wonderful. Such a pro.”

I decided to throw out another name. “I believe Corinne Breslin also mentioned you.”

“Hmm. I don’t recall her. But we’ve done so many jobs.”

“Of course.” I asked if we could meet the next week, and within minutes, I had an appointment for Tuesday morning.

I got off the phone, my mind returning to Corinne. Margie Scott didn’t know her, but Jeremy had said that Corinne knew the art world well, and that was clear from my dealings with her that day. If she was responsible for the forgeries, she could have had her ear to the ground. And she said she was dear friends with Syd, who now knew my real identity.

Could Corinne Breslin have heard about me being a part-time private investigator? Was that why she came into the gallery today, using my date with her husband as a ruse?

The thought didn’t sit well.

And I didn’t sleep well that night.

When I got up the next morning, before I headed to Axel Tredstone’s studio, I knew who to call for help. “Mags,” I said when she answered. “I’m coming over.”

* * *

“Come in, come in,” Maggie said, opening the door to her high-rise apartment. From down the hallway, I heard a full, soulful sound. I cocked my head that way. “Is that Bernard practicing?”

She nodded. Bernard played the French horn for the Chicago Symphony.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, well.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “It’s not that beautiful when you have to hear it all the time. We’ll soundproof the room eventually, but in the meantime, sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”

A haunting yet lovely note snuck down the hallway, then grew louder.

We went into her kitchen. “You’re still not drinking coffee?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Actually, I’m dabbling,” I said.

“Good.” She poured me a cup, then put sugar and milk in front of me. “It’s decaf.”

“Pregnancy thing?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, leaning against the counter. “And you cannot believe all the physical stuff that happens when you’re doing this.” She pointed at her belly. “I’m a human science experience. I can’t believe women have been doing this forever. It’s freaky!”

Maggie’s face was growing animated, and it made me laugh.

“Seriously, Iz,” she said.
“Seriously.”

She held up her hands. She looked like a stand-up comedian about to tell the best part of the bit. “I woke up the other night, middle of the night, and I forgot I was pregnant, you know? I was half asleep, and I thought I was the old Maggie. And then I heard this snore, and I looked around and my first thought was,
Holy shit, there’s a huge Asian guy in my bed.
But you know, that happens all the time, that’s not necessarily pregnancy related. My brain still doesn’t always realize right away Bernard is here.”

I leaned back on Maggie’s counter, ready for the rest of the story. I
loved
Maggie’s stories. It was like actually being in her life. The way she told them made you feel you were down the hallway, in the middle of last night, waking up to your new boyfriend, a big Filipino French horn player who’d gotten you pregnant quite quickly.

Ten minutes later, she ended with, “Only then did I remember I was pregnant. I had completely forgotten while I was sleeping!”

I was laughing again, imagining tiny Mags, naked in her bathroom, shocked at her swollen belly.

“Aside from that, how do you feel being pregnant, about to be a mom?”

We both fell silent at that.

“A
mom,
” I repeated.

“I know. Can you believe it?”

“I’ve always said you’d be a good mom.”

“And I’ve always thought that. But now, it’s just speeding toward me, and I don’t know anymore. I’m realizing I really don’t know anything!” She got up and poured herself another coffee. When she sat down again, she gave me a look I didn’t see too often. One that said,
I’m nervous. Help.

“Mags,” I said. “You’ve helped your sisters raise their kids. You’ve been there for all of it, from the birth to the near teenagers.”

“Yeah, but except for those first few weeks, I always got to go home to my bed. Ultimately, I wasn’t responsible.”

More silence.

“That is intense,” I admitted. Maggie wouldn’t accept clichéd platitudes from me.

“Right?” She nodded. “And my sisters have gone through it so long ago that they’re all, ‘Don’t worry about it! No big deal!’ But it is a big deal.”

“You’ll knock it out of the park.”

“I’d settle for a single.”

“Not a problem.”

She looked at me plaintively. “You’re sure?”

“Positive. And hey, you’ve got a friend who is both an associate
and
a babysitter.”

“Thanks, Iz.”

“So I’ve got a question for you. How’s your bullshit detector?” I asked Maggie. “Is it off because the pregnancy?”

“No. It’s better than ever,” she said.

In their business as criminal defense lawyers, Maggie Bristol and her grandfather, Martin, had intensely investigated and ruthlessly cross-examined many detectives and prosecutors. They’d accused them (in addition to many other sins) of judging people based on hunches.

The truth was, Maggie believed in her own hunches just as much.

I told Maggie, as vaguely as I could, about Madeline’s situation. I told her that an unnamed gallery might have unintentionally sold forged artwork, and the gallery owner had been followed. I told her some of the players, rounding around to the Fex. The title came in handy, since I wasn’t using real names.

“So it’s likely our client has had her work space invaded and the paintings stolen, then forged,” I said.

“Or it happened somewhere in the moving process,” Maggie said.

“Right. Or there could be something else going on altogether. For example, our client just told me she occasionally keeps artwork in her house if it hasn’t sold yet but she believes that somewhere down the line it will. The internet comments and emails she’s gotten might be from the thief or maybe not.” I told her then about the difference in opinion as to whether the author of those comments and emails was female. Vaughn was sure it was. Mayburn, who knew more about the case as a whole, wasn’t so certain.

Maggie blinked. I waited for some brilliant shot of insight. “Did you say Vaughn?” she asked. “As in Detective Damon Vaughn?”

“Yeah.”

She shook her head, like, No. No. I can’t believe that. Maggie knew my whole history with Vaughn.

I took a deep breath. “Yeah. And you won’t believe what I have to tell you about him.”

“Oh, I think I will. Nothing that asshole does would surprise me.”

“He arrested me Friday night.”

That one stopped even Maggie Bristol in her tracks.

50

W
hen I got to Axel Tredstone’s studio, I was distracted. I was still mulling over Maggie’s pronouncement that I should watch out for the Fex, although Maggie didn’t think Corinne had anything to do with the forgeries.

“Your basis for the opinion that the Fex isn’t the thief?” I’d asked her, getting into witness examination mode.

“My gut. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

More than anything, once she got over her shock, Maggie wanted to talk about Vaughn. She wanted to rail about Vaughn, and how awful he was, “like most cops.” “They just decide what justice should look like,” she said. “And then they put it into play. They’re the judge
and
the jury.”

I pointed out to her that she had essentially done the same thing by declaring the Fex someone to watch out for, but not someone who necessarily had committed the crime.

“Yeah!” she’d said. “That’s a gut instinct. You’re right! But I’m not about to go out and arrest someone over it.”

“Technically, I did break the law by not paying the cover.”

“That’s not something you arrest someone over. Certainly not a member of the Illinois bar.”

“His buddy owns the club.”

“Why are you sticking up for him?”

“I have no idea.”

Maggie waved her tiny arms in the air. “And then he gets you stuck in a blizzard!”

I had left the apartment a few minutes later, laughing, after Maggie had declared Vaughn an “immense and gaping asshole.”

So when I arrived at Axel Tredstone’s studio, I was in a good mood. It was large, with old hardwood floors, brick walls and black-painted ductwork overhead.

The first person I met was his assistant, a small guy dressed in skinny jeans and a studded leather belt who scurried around putting up lights and big shaded things on sticks, barely paying attention to me except to point me to another guy, the makeup artist.

“Hi, honey,” the second guy said. He grabbed me and hugged me like we’d been friends for twenty years and he hadn’t seen me in ten. “Sit here.” He directed me to a high chair in front of a big mirror surrounded by lights. Next to that station was “the stand up area,” as the makeup artist described it, where I could be painted while I stood.

“Okay,” he said. “Now I’m going to base you.”

“You’re going to what?”

“I’m going to the lay down the base coat of paint.” He raised a finger, then ran it through the air, pointing up and down the front of my body. “All at the direction of Axel, of course. And then he does the details, the creating.”

“Okay,” I said. It sounded reasonable enough.

He directed me to a modest, all-white bathroom, where I undressed. I felt…fine. A plain, white cotton robe hung there, and I put it on. I was surprised (and a little impressed) by my nonchalance.

But then Axel Tredstone arrived at the studio.

At first, the experience wasn’t as strange as I’d anticipated. After working with Forester Pickett, my former client, and a lot of his compatriots, I found I communicated well with men in their fifties and sixties.

But Axel Tredstone was a rock-star/artist guy in his fifties. He had been graced with a lot of blondish-brown hair that crested back from his forehead and hung right below his ears. He grazed it with the fingers of one hand and tossed it to one side, a trait that was not without its charm.

He was lean. He dressed casually in jeans and an untucked shirt, with a jacket over that and a great crimson scarf, both of which he tossed over a chair as soon as he saw the makeup artist beginning to set up the base paints.

“Stop,” he said to the makeup guy. “I need her.”

Need.
I rather liked the sound of that.

He was German, but he sported (if this were possible) a British-y/Chicago accent—lovely, at least to my ears. The photo assistant and makeup artist scattered, and Axel and I sat on two stools in a middle of an open studio, nothing else around, just me in a robe, no big deal.

Strangely, that’s how it felt—casual. Normal.

“Tell me about you,” he said. “Where were you born?”

And we were off. I talked and talked, and Axel listened. He was an inviting listener. Every reaction to my sentiments seemed not just authentic but thrilled. He actually appeared rejuvenated by my words, fascinated by me. And I wasn’t even giving him the whole story. I left out my last name and the fact that I was an attorney. And that I was a part-time private investigator. I did mention—without facts or names—that my fiancé had taken off a few months before our wedding, that we’d patched things up but never gotten married and that I’d been in a relationship since then but that was over, as well.