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  Arsenic and Old Paint

  AN ART LOVER’S MYSTERY

  Hailey Lind

  2010 · Palo Alto/McKinleyville

  Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Company

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

  The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

  Copyright © 2010 by Julie Goodson-Lawes and Carolyn Lawes

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  A Perseverance Press Book

  Published by John Daniel & Company

  A division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

  Post Office Box 2790

  McKinleyville, California 95519

  www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance

  Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

  Cover image: Julie Goodson-Lawes

  ISBN 9781564747402

  Library Of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  Lind, Hailey.

  Arsenic and old paint : the art lover’s mystery series / by Hailey Lind.

  p. cm.

  ISBN (first printed edition) 978-1-56474-490-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1 Art thefts--Fiction. 2. Art forgers--Fiction. 3. Women detectives--Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.I5326A89 2010

  813’.6--dc22

  2010006980

  To Susan Jane Lawes,

  whose imagination and love of beauty

  are second to none.

  Can’t wait to read your book!

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Shellee Leong and the good people of San Francisco’s Cameron House, and to the spirit of Donaldina Cameron and all the denizens of Chinatown, past and present, from sixth-generation natives to the newly arrived. And to Jon Hee for his stories of tunnels and neighborhood history over dim sum.

  From Julie: Thanks to the usual cast of wonderful characters who allow me to call them friend: Jace Johnson, Shay Demetrius, Suzanne Chan, Bee Enos, Pamela Groves, Jan Strout, Anna Cabrera, Mary Grae, Susan Baker, Chris Logan, Brian Casey, Kendall Moalem, and the entire Mira Vista Social Club. To all those incredibly supportive, talented writers who have taught me and laughed with me, especially my on-the-road roomie extraordinaire, Sophie Littlefield, and all the Pensfatales; the tavern gang (you know who you are—we miss you, Cornelia); and all my Sisters in Crime.

  From Carolyn: Thank you to Janine Latus, Sandra Pryor, and Chris Casnelli for your unflagging friendship and support when it was needed most. To Scott Casper, Anita Fellman, Heather Jersild, Steve Lofgren, Buffy Masten, and Karin Wulf, who always see the joy in life. Thank you all for allowing me to be a part of your lives.

  Finally, thanks from both of us to our wonderful, eternally supportive parents, Bob and Jane Lawes, for giving us the kind of childhood every soul should be lucky enough to experience. And lastly and most especially to Sergio Klor de Alva, the newest music sensation to emerge from Oaktown!

  Author’s Note

  Theories abound as to whether there are tunnels under Chinatown. As in this book, it appears that there were sewer pipes and coal chutes that may have been used from time to time, but nothing like the system of tunnels found in other locales such as Portland, Oregon. Any tunnels under Nob Hill are pure conjecture for the sake of fiction. The Fleming-Union and the College Club were entirely fabricated by the author.

  1

  To all my fans: It is I, the great international art forger, Georges LeFleur. To all those who believe a man who exalts the beauty of the Renaissance cannot become part of the twenty-first century, I say, “Bah.” I may be a Luddite when it comes to egg yolk tempera, pure linseed oil, and crushed-earth pigments, but here I am, with my new blog, surfing these modern internets and sharing my knowledge, free for the asking.

  —Georges LeFleur’s blog, “Craquelure”

  (A web of fine lines indicating age, that results in greater beauty)

  “What was that?”

  “A ghost?” Samantha teased me.

  “Naw, that ain’t no ghost,” my temporary assistant, Evangeline, said with surprising conviction, her stage whisper reverberating down the wood-paneled hall. “Sounded like a lady to me.”

  We picked up our pace down the stairs. Although the day outside was bright and cheerful, as befit San Francisco in the early fall, inside the Fleming Mansion it was dim and gloomy. Sunshine struggled to find its way past the floor-length, hunter green velvet curtains to cast a pattern of shadowy prison bars on the intricate Turkish wool runner. A bone-deep mustiness permeated the portrait-laden walls: the smell of old money.

  I longed to tear down the curtains and fling open the leaded windows, allowing the sun and fresh bay breezes to air out the place, but we were already sort of trespassing. Two rules had been made crystal clear to me when I signed the contract for this job: what happened in the club stayed in the club, and double-X chromosomes who wandered beyond the service areas would be summarily fired. According to my birth certificate, that meant me.

  Another sound split the tomblike silence.

  A woman’s scream.

  The three of us gaped at each other for an instant before charging down the rest of the stairs to the second-floor landing, across the hallway, through an open bedroom door, and into an old-fashioned en suite bathroom.

  Samantha, in the lead, stopped short. I bumped into her, and Evangeline—nearly six feet tall and built like an Olympic shot-putter—plowed into me, throwing me off-balance and causing me to clutch at Sam, who stumbled forward. Our Keystone Kops routine came to a halt as we took in the scene.

  The man in the bathtub looked ill. The sword protruding from his bony white chest didn’t help.

  A curvy blonde with a cheap dye job knelt by the side of the claw-footed tub and sniffled, her blood-curdling screams having subsided to high-pitched whimpers. She wore a black-and-white French maid’s outfit, complete with a stiff lace apron and cap, and her name, Destiny, was stitched in gold thread on her right shoulder.

  Not so long ago I would have been screaming and whimpering right alongside her, but now I just felt woozy. In the past year and a half I had tripped over a few dead bodies. Apparently a person could get used to anything.

  Chalk one up for personal growth.

  What bothered me most at the moment was the way the sword’s hilt swayed in the air...to and fro...to and fro...as if keeping time to a soundless beat. The movement started when the maid let go as we piled in. Which implied that she had been wielding the sword. Which, in turn, suggested that Destiny-the-maid had just stabbed Richie-the-rich man to death in his bathtub.

  I heard Samantha repeating, “Oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord” in her Jamaican sing-song lilt as she hurried from the bathroom to the bedroom and snatched up the receiver of the old-fashioned black desk phone. Evangeline followed her, dropping with a whoosh onto a soft leather armchair next to the huge stone fireplace.

  The flames from a gas jet hidden behind a fake log cast an incongruously cheerful glow across the dark bedroom. More heavy velvet curtains covered the arched floor-to-ceiling windows and shielded the ornate Victorian wallpaper and Oriental rugs from the sun’s rays. Above the fireplace mantel, in lieu of the cheesy oil painting of an American Revolutionary naval battle so beloved of men’s social clubs, was an empty set of brackets suitable for hanging a musket.

&nb
sp; Or a sword.

  I heard Samantha giving the 911 operator the street address, though it was probably not necessary. The Fleming Mansion is well known in the city. The forbidding historic brownstone holds pride of place at the summit of chic Nob Hill, and is home to the Fleming-Union, one of the most exclusive men’s clubs in the country. The membership list is a closely guarded secret but is said to include past and present U.S. presidents, and the board regularly turns away mere corporate moguls, especially those who had committed the unpardonable sin of being born female. By and large, San Franciscans aren’t big on gender or class deference; most of us refer to the Fleming-Union as the “F-U.”

  We four women were sorely out of place in such a masculine domain. I doubted the place had witnessed this much concentrated estrogen since the strippers from the last bachelor party decamped.

  “Destiny, come away from there,” I said gently, beckoning to the maid from my position in the bathroom doorway. Personal growth or not, I was not entering the Marbled Chamber of Horrors.

  “What... What happened?” The maid seemed rooted in place, her gaze fixed on the corpse. “Who coulda done such a thing?”

  I refrained from stating the obvious: she coulda. The flickering light from the ancient wall sconces gave an amber tint to Destiny’s features, smoothing the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and making her appear younger than the forty-something she probably was. I scarcely knew her, but seldom loath to leap to conclusions, assumed any maid who plunged a sword into her wealthy employer’s chest probably had an excellent reason.

  I passed my flashlight beam over the scene. Even taking into account the fact that he was dead, the deceased looked unwell, more like an inmate at a tuberculosis sanitarium than an imminent threat. He appeared to be middle-aged, his blank dark eyes sunken into his skull and underlined by half circles. His body was frail, the ribs outlined beneath pale, almost translucent skin. A white towel was draped around the crown of his head, and a handful of dark hairs speckled his scrawny chest. He was unshaven, with tufts of black hair poking out from beneath the folds of the towel. One arm hung over the side of the tub nearly grazing the floor, the fingernails broken and discolored. The other floated in the water as if playing with the blank letter-sized piece of paper that drifted about on the surface.

  A single drop of blood oozed from the chest wound and slowly made its way down his ribs. Shouldn’t there be more blood, I wondered, enough to tint the water? My stomach lurched.

  “The police are on their way,” Samantha called out, still holding the phone to her ear, and I heard the faint wail of a siren.

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” the maid mumbled. She tore her eyes away from the body and looked around, as though surprised to find herself in the room. “None of us are supposed to be here!” She bolted for the door.

  “Destiny, stop!” I shouted.

  Evangeline, more comfortable with action than with words, grabbed the maid around the waist and lifted her clear off the floor. Destiny let out a string of vile curses and dug her French-tipped nails into Evangeline’s forearm. Kicking and screaming, the maid reached back and tried to grab Evangeline’s hair, but my assistant’s signature buzz-cut was too short and spiky to grip.

  “Need a hand here, Annie,” Evangeline grunted.

  I started toward them, but Destiny’s flailing legs kept me at bay, so I picked up the wooden desk chair and approached the twosome like a lion tamer.

  “Calm down, Destiny, it’s okay,” I soothed, though it was doubtful she heard me above her vitriolic shrieking. “Take a deep breath....”

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and a frightened-looking security guard stumbled into the bedroom and stopped short, mouth agape. I recognized him as the boyish blond who sat at the club’s back door signing the staff in and out and guiding limited-edition Bentleys and DeLoreans into the club’s coveted parking spots. He was clearly out of his comfort zone.

  Close on his heels were two San Francisco police officers.

  The cops pulled their guns and assumed the shooting stance. “Put her down!” one cop yelled at Evangeline. “Put her down now. Don’t move! Nobody move!”

  Nobody moved except Destiny, who added spitting to her repertoire of wailing and kicking.

  “You!” One cop focused on Evangeline. “Let her go. Now!”

  Evangeline promptly released Destiny, who fell to the floor on her butt before bounding to her feet and bolting for the door. Unsure who the evil-doers were, one cop kept his eye and gun on the rest of us while the other launched himself after Destiny, tackling her in the doorway.

  More uniformed police thundered up the stairs and poured into the room, eyes wary, radios crackling. The tension eased when they spied the first responders, and then the interminable discussing and speculating began.

  All talk halted when a woman materialized at the top of the stairs. The cops fell back, making way as if she were Moses and they the Red Sea.

  Tall, more striking than pretty, she wore a dark gray tailored suit and royal blue silk blouse, and projected an imperious air. The type of woman who never had to ask twice.

  Inspector Annette Crawford.

  Of all the cops in all the towns...

  “Are you the only homicide detective in San Francisco?” I asked as she approached.

  “Are you the only artist and faux finisher who sniffs out murder scenes? Oh, that’s right, you are,” the inspector replied, her sherry-colored eyes giving me the once-over. “I happened to be on duty. Besides, whoever called 911 asked for me by name.”

  “That would be me,” Samantha said, holding up her hand. “I thought it might reduce the need for lengthy explanations. Hello, Inspector.”

  Inspector Crawford and I had met last year, when a museum custodian had been murdered to hide the knowledge of a stolen, and forged, Caravaggio masterpiece. Since then, our paths had crossed at crime scenes more often than either of us would have liked. I admired the intelligent, acerbic inspector, and had once entertained the notion that we might become friends, but circumstances had made friendship difficult. Especially the part where I kept ending up on the wrong side of the law.

  On the other hand, I no longer hyperventilated in the presence of what my felonious grandfather, the internationally acclaimed art forger Georges LeFleur, called “the constabulary.”

  Score two for personal growth.

  After scoping out the scene and issuing orders, Annette led the way down the cop-clogged hallway to a small sitting room, whose flocked burgundy wallpaper and gold-leaf trim gave it the appearance of a down-at-heels bordello. Plopping onto a tufted velvet settee that looked more comfortable than it turned out to be, I watched Annette settle gracefully into a blue brocade armchair, her notepad and pen at the ready. What would it be like, I wondered, to be able to literally poke at a corpse one minute and then appear ready to sit down to tea with the queen, the next?

  “I hear I missed a good time,” the inspector said. “The men said something about breaking up a catfight?”

  “That makes it sound like we were mud-wrestling.”

  “So what did happen?”

  “We were trying to keep Destiny from leaving. She wasn’t cooperating.”

  “Okay, we’ll come back to that. Let’s take it from the top, shall we?” The inspector’s eyes shifted to an ornate hunting scene in oils hanging on the wall behind me. “Please tell me there isn’t a forged painting here somewhere.”

  “Not that I know of. I’m working, actually. Upstairs, with Sam and Evangeline.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Stripping wallpaper in one of the attic rooms, where—”

  “You’re in the wallpaper business now?”

  “Not normally. The club wanted to convert the attic rooms into overflow guest chambers, but there was a roof leak, which damaged the wall coverings. See? The water came all the way down into this room, as well.” I gestured to the corner where ugly rust and black stains marred the old yellow-and-brown wallpap
er, which was pulling away from the wall in some places. “The contractor who repaired the roof is a history buff, and recognized the wallpaper as an original William Morris print dating from the nineteenth century, when the Fleming Mansion was built.”

  The contractor, Norm Berger, was an incongruous mixture of good ol’ boy and amateur local historian. We’d worked on a few jobs together, and had become semi- sort-of friends. Or at least as good a friend as I could be with a man whose favorite T-shirt bore the slogan WILL FART FOR FOOD.

  “The board chairman, Geoffrey McAdams, hired me to re-create the look of the ruined Victorian wallpaper, using paint. Milk paints are preferable to wallpaper because they allow the walls to ‘breathe’ so that the plaster doesn’t develop mold, which means—”

  “That’s fine,” she said, waving off my treatise on plaster and paint. I adore talking about restoration and the artistic process; wind me up and it can be hard to shut me down. Annette knew me well.

  “Where’s your assistant, Mary Grae? Upstairs?”

  “Thailand.”

  Annette raised one eyebrow.

  “She has a friend who opened a bar in Bangkok, and...it’s a really long story involving a punk rock band, a beer bottle collection, and a gangrenous thumb. You sure you want to hear it?”

  “Never mind. Mary’s out of town, got it. Sam’s your new assistant?”

  “Evangeline Simpson’s giving me a hand until Mary returns. Sam’s here today because of the wallpaper.” I lifted a purple-patterned paper curl caught in the bib of my scruffy overalls: Exhibit A. “Sam and her husband renovated three Victorians, so she knows a lot about removing old wallpaper.”

  “Given the club’s reputation, I’m surprised they allow women to work here in any capacity other than housekeeping.”

  “Most of the women do have to wear those French maid outfits,” I conceded. As far as I was concerned, that sort of thing belonged behind closed doors, between consenting adults. “I prefer my overalls.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Such as how you got this gig.”

  “The contractor gave them my name, and Frank DeBenton, who installed the security system, vouched for me.”