Feint of Art: Read online

  I glared at him over my jacket collar.

  “Just ask,” he urged.

  What the hell. “Georges, what do you know about Harlan Coombs?”

  “Quoi? Annie, I cannot hear you. It must be a solar flare.”

  Solar flare my ass. Grandfather didn’t want to answer the question.

  “Harlan Coombs,” I shouted. Johnson winced.

  “Bernard Sahagun?”

  “No, Grandfather, Harlan Coombs.”

  “Sahagun? Never heard of him, darling.”

  I tried to make sense of that, even though I suspected my dear old grandpapa was fibbing again. “Is Bernard Sahagun a friend of Coombs? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Ah, my darling girl, I must go now. Je t’aime, bye-bye!” Grandfather disconnected.

  “Who the hell is Bernard Sahagun?” I muttered, tucking my phone into my jacket pocket.

  “Sixteenth-century Spanish priest. Converted the Aztecs to Catholicism,” Johnson said.

  Now I was really confused. What did Aztecs and Spanish priests have to do with a Polish art forger? “Was he an artist?” I asked, hoping for clarity.

  “No.”

  “Was he an art dealer?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “So what does he have to do with Harlan Coombs?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why should I care?”

  “I didn’t say you should. Your grandfather did.”

  “No he didn’t. He misunderstood what I was saying.”

  “Why is this my fault?”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault. How do you know about Bernard Sahagun, anyway?”

  “The Jesuits. They teach stuff like that.”

  “Oh.”

  We had yet another staring contest. True to form, I blinked first. “Well, listen, Michael Xerxes Johnson, or whatever your name really is.” I glared at him. He smirked at me. “It’s been a whole heck of a lot of fun, but I have got to go.”

  Literally. My bladder was infamously small. Plus, my knees had just announced that if I didn’t stop squatting immediately they would not be held responsible for the consequences.

  Johnson rose gracefully and sauntered toward the door. I rose stiffly and lurched across the room, trying to work the kinks out. I hadn’t been called Kinky Kincaid in college because of the hair alone. Then I remembered the note the mystery woman had left. Johnson intercepted my gaze and beat me to it.

  “Hmmm,” he said portentously.

  “What? What’s it say?”

  “Oh, not much.” He folded the note and nonchalantly slipped it into his pocket.

  “Hold on there, Mr. Private Eye,” I ordered. “You have no right to that note. Hand it over.”

  “Oh, I think not,” he replied.

  “Oh, I think so,” I mimicked nastily. “Because if you don’t, I’m calling the cops.”

  He snorted.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  He snorted again.

  “Okay, how about this?” I said. “You show me the note and then I’ll tell you something about Coombs.”

  “You tell me something about Coombs, then I’ll show you the note.”

  “We’ll do an exchange on the count of three, okay?” He nodded. “Okay. One, two, three . . .”

  I held out my hand for the note. “Coombs has a hide-out in Chinatown, where some scary people are waiting for him,” I said as Johnson gave me the piece of paper.

  “We need to talk,” it said. “I’m at Q’s. Important!!! Joanne.”

  We spoke at the same time.

  “Who is Joanne?” I asked him.

  “What scary people?” he wanted to know.

  We shrugged in unison. I was beginning to feel as if I were back in middle school.

  “You go first,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know,” he grumbled. “Harlan’s operated out of that Chinatown place for years. And ‘scary people’ is pretty broad.”

  “Yeah, well, ‘I’m at Q’s’ is pretty broad, too, so I’d say we’re even. Who’s Joanne?”

  Johnson shrugged again. Frustrated, I dropped the note on the desk and headed for the door. “Don’t you want the drawings?” he called after me.

  Apparently my hiding place left something to be desired. Pulling the drawings out from beneath the rags, he placed them on the worktable and studied them. He looked up and held my gaze. “They’re fake, aren’t they?”

  I had the distinct impression that he was reading me, not the drawings.

  “Maybe.”

  “Here.” He handed them to me.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “You don’t have much of a poker face, honey.”

  “Don’t call me honey.”

  He smiled and escorted me to the door.

  “How do I get in touch with you?” he asked smoothly.

  “Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

  I waved his business card over my shoulder as I descended the outside staircase, slammed the redwood gate behind me, stashed the fake drawings behind the driver’s seat of my truck, and took off.

  I drove back to the studio, mulling over what had just transpired. I was no closer to finding Anton than I had been this morning, and now I suspected he had decamped. Judging from the stack of fake drawings stashed behind my seat, there were probably a number of disgruntled art dealers and clients looking for Anton, which would have driven him underground even if he had not been worried about the Caravaggio affair. And who was Joanne? She had zeroed in on the portfolio quickly enough, though she hadn’t bothered to check if the drawings were actually inside. Had she commissioned the forged sketches? Was she working with Harlan Coombs? Who was the “Q” she referred to in her note? Most important: where were the original—and extremely valuable—sketches?

  Michael X. Johnson was a new puzzle. The name sounded phony—Xerxes fell out of favor shortly after the Persian Wars in the fifth century B.C.—and I did not buy his PI routine for a second. As for the business card, it proved nothing. Once, for a sociology class assignment, I had gone to a crafts fair and handed out cards proclaiming me to be a licensed acupuncturist in order to see how many people were prepared to let me stick them with needles on the basis of nothing more substantial than a business card. The number was frighteningly large.

  It was apparent that Johnson was also after the drawings, but why? Had one of Coombs’ victims hired him to find them, or was he somehow connected to the forgery of The Magi? Johnson had suggested a link between Ernst Pettigrew and Harlan Coombs, though to be fair I had to remember that for years Coombs was a legitimate art dealer. He and Ernst would likely have met through the Brock’s Acquisitions department.

  But first things first. My bladder was informing me that I had five minutes tops before I disgraced myself and ruined my truck’s already sad upholstery. Four minutes later I zipped into my building’s parking lot and thundered up the stairs. I got as far as the first landing when a door downstairs banged open and somebody called my name.

  Rats. It was my new landlord.

  “Yes, Mr. DeBenton?” After yesterday’s fiasco I thought it behooved me to be polite, but he had better make it quick or we would both regret it.

  “May I have a word with you?”

  “No problem, but I’m in a bit of a hurry at the moment,” I said, emphasizing my haste by moving up another step. “Can I call you?”

  “I wish you would. I’ve left several messages already this morning on your office phone. I don’t expect a lot from my artist tenants. But I do expect common courtesy.”

  That stopped me. “I haven’t been in my office yet this morning. And what have you got against artists?” I inquired, my nose so far out of joint I could smell my shampoo.

  “Let me see.” He shrugged. “Artists are unpredictable. They don’t pay their rent regularly. They make huge messes and don’t clean them up. They make noise at odd hours. They are dramatic and they cause sc
enes.”

  “I’m afraid I must disagree,” I replied, trying to be civil. “First off, I’m very predictable.” This was not strictly true. “Second off, I always pay my rent, and I pay it on time.” Kind of. So far, anyway. “Third, I always clean up after myself.” This was not even remotely true. “I don’t make much noise at any time, I am not dramatic, and I do not cause scenes.”

  Fender Bender was watching me with what appeared to be a ghost of a smile. I imagined he was trying to decide whether to call 911 to have me arrested or his lawyer to have me evicted.

  “Now, if you will excuse me, I have some pressing business to attend to.” I pivoted and charged up the stairs, sprinted down the hallway, and darted into the women’s room.

  Back in the studio I found Mary and her good friend Sherri sitting on the red velvet couch talking to three leather-clad young men sporting a variety of piercings and multicolored hair, who lay draped over cushions on the floor. Since I wasn’t able to pay Mary enough for her to rent a decent apartment in San Francisco—heck, I couldn’t afford a decent place in the City—I let her use the studio as a de facto living room, and it was not unusual for unnaturally pale musicians to clutter up the place. I nodded at them and went to the desk to check for messages.

  “What’s up, toots? Something wrong?” Mary asked, joining me at the desk.

  “I don’t think Fender Bender likes me,” I said, deflated.

  “Yeah, I met him today. He stopped me when I passed his office and asked what my business was here. Sexy, though,” Mary declared. “Too bad he’s gay.”

  “Gay?” I was surprised. “Are you sure? My gaydar didn’t go off.” True, there had been no wedding ring. In these parts, that was rare for a good-looking straight man with two nickels to rub together.

  “With those spiffy suits and that slicked-back hair? Totally gay,” Sherri declared from the sitting area. Sherri and Mary were from the same small town in Indiana. After devoting their adolescence to scoring illegal cigarettes and dyeing their hair with Kool-Aid powder, the two had hitchhiked to San Francisco. Here they found hordes of young people who shared their passion for smoking, black clothes, and Goofy Grape-colored hair. Despite her diminutive stature and baby-doll voice, Sherri worked alongside her leather-clad husband, Tom, as a process server.

  The young men sprawled at Sherri’s feet nodded in agreement.

  “You’ve all met the man who owns the building?” I asked. No wonder Fender Bender was annoyed. Five sets of heavy motorcycle boots trodding the old wooden floorboards outside his office must have sounded like a contingent of Nazi storm troopers. I had to smile.

  “I don’t know,” I continued, unconvinced. “He’s too stuffy to be gay.”

  “C’mon, Annie. Have you ever seen a straight man in the City who dressed that well?” Mary insisted.

  “True enough,” I conceded. “But remember, he’s not from here. There are men in other parts of the world who dress like gay men do here. The French, for instance. Stand in a room full of Frenchmen and you’d swear they were all gay, but they’re just stylish.”

  “Huh. Maybe so,” Mary said thoughtfully. “Guess we’ll have to check it out.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” I said, suddenly wary.

  Mary and Sherri smiled. “Don’t worry—we’ll come up with something.”

  “Hey, do not, I repeat, do not get me in any more hot water with the landlord, okay? I’m serious, guys.” I was going for severe, but feared I’d hit only plaintive. The phone rang, and I answered it while shooting stern looks at my assistant. “True/Faux Studios.”

  “Ms. Kincaid.”

  Speak of the devil.

  “Mr. DeBenton!” I cooed. “How nice to hear from you. And so soon!”

  “Indeed. I thought I should inform you that two inspectors from the San Francisco Police Department are on their way up to see you,” he said.

  Two SFPD inspectors were here? To see me? I considered slipping out the back door but decided against it, seeing as there was no back door. And I figured that vaulting out the window and climbing down the fire escape might give the cops the wrong impression. It then occurred to me that this was the second time today I had considered escaping through a second-story window and I hadn’t even had lunch yet.

  “So,” DeBenton continued, “would this be the part about not causing trouble?”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Anxiety had jammed my brain’s circuitry. “Anyway, I don’t see how this is pertinent to . . . Oh, Lord, they’re here.” I slammed down the phone. My youthful interactions with the authorities had been unsettling, to say the least, and I harbored a sneaking suspicion that, as my grandfather always insisted, larceny ran in my blood. For whatever reason, I always assumed I was guilty until proven innocent. And in this case I was guilty, at least of not approaching the police earlier to tell them about the events at the Brock.

  “May I help you, Inspectors?” I asked, using my best Citizen of the Year voice and trying not to hyperventilate. Filling the doorway were one pale, skinny, white man who reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane and one solidly built African Princess. Both flashed badges. Neither smiled.

  “Anna Kincaid? We’d like to ask you some questions, please,” the Princess said in a deep, authoritative voice.

  None of Mary’s friends had budged. I tried to imagine the scene through the inspectors’ eyes and saw instead tomorrow’s headline in the Chronicle: MUSEUM MURDER SUSPECT RUNS DRUGGIE DEN FOR YOUNG MUSICIANS.

  “Guys, why don’t you all run over to the park or something? Get some fresh air and sunshine?” I said to Mary’s crowd, as if they were eight years old.

  “We might need to speak with them,” Ichabod intervened. “Do you know how to get in touch with all of them?”

  “Certainly,” I lied.

  The group got languidly to their feet and clomped out, avoiding the official eyes. Grandfather’s voice whispered, unbidden, in my ear: “It is important, my darling, when entertaining members of the constabulary, to act like a lady. It will mislead them.”

  Accordingly, I gestured to the now vacant sofa. “May I get you anything?”

  “No, thank you. I am Inspector Crawford,” the Princess said, her voice terse, “and this is Inspector Wilson.” Ichabod nodded and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “We have reason to believe you met with Ernst Pettigrew two nights ago.”

  “Oh?” I tried to project interest without commitment.

  “We found your name in his diary,” Inspector Crawford continued, eyeing me.

  “His diary?” I protested. “I hardly knew the man!”

  I kept a diary when I was eleven. I found it last year, when my mother sent me an old box marked ANNIE’S STUFF—STAY OUT! The diary would have been hilarious if it were not so pathetic, since it was mainly a catalogue of how “barfy” I thought some of my schoolmates were. I didn’t think grown men kept diaries. What had Ernst written about me? Was I barfy?

  “It wasn’t that kind of diary, Ms. Kincaid,” Inspector Crawford said, her mouth twitching in an unwilling smile. Ichabod remained stone-faced. “It was his desk calendar. It indicated he had an appointment with you yesterday.”

  “Oh.”

  “And did he?”

  A woman of few words, the inspector. What to say, what to say? Although I had fully intended to approach the police voluntarily, my reflex was to lie, and I had to remind myself that I had nothing to do with Ernst’s disappearance or Dupont’s murder.

  “Yes, he did,” I said, deciding that, notwithstanding my grandfather’s example, sometimes honesty really was the best policy.

  The inspectors scribbled something in their notebooks. To me, it didn’t look like “Witness said yes.” To me, it looked like “Suspect admitted meeting missing curator. This will crack the case! She’ll rue the day she tried to fool SFPD’s finest! Bwahahahaha!”

  “—was that?” Inspector Crawford was asking.

  “Pardon?”

  “What. Time. Was. That,” she repeate
d slowly.

  Note to self: maybe if I acted really dim-witted, it would allay their suspicions.

  “Um, around midnight,” I said, realizing that sounding dim-witted was one thing, but sounding guilty was another.

  “Isn’t that a little late for a business meeting?” Inspector Crawford asked.

  “Yes. But Ernst Pettigrew said he didn’t want anyone to know.” That sounded worse. “You see, it’s . . . well, it’s complicated. Ernst was worried that an important painting acquired by the Brock was not, um, genuine.”

  “Not genuine? You mean a forgery?” Inspector Crawford cut to the chase.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Don’t museums check these things out before buying artwork?” she asked.

  “Of course.” I decided to be up-front and share my professional expertise. “At least, they try. The painting underwent the usual tests and was authenticated by the Brock Museum’s appraiser, Dr. Sebastian Pitts. Ernst was still not convinced, but he didn’t want to cause an uproar without first getting a second opinion.”

  “Why would it have caused an uproar? Because of the money involved?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. The Brock got burned a few years ago when a British art historian proved that a Roman statue the museum had paid nine million dollars for was a modern fake. And a rather poorly done fake at that. It made the Brock’s staff look like a bunch of amateurs, and in the art world reputation is everything. The Brock family has spent the past several years trying to put the incident behind them. The last thing they’d want is another well-publicized forgery.”

  The two inspectors seemed to be taking it all in. There was no more scribbling in their notebooks, which I hoped was a good sign. All they had wanted was a little cooperation.

  “And did you see the painting?” Inspector Crawford inquired.

  “Yes. Ernst showed it to me.”

  “Where?”

  “In the vault.”

  “So you were in the vault?”

  I hesitated. Was that bad? Probably. Had I left fingerprints? Assuredly. Might as well ’fess up. “Yes.”

  “By yourself?”

  “No, with Ernst.”

  “And your assessment?”

  Despite Inspector Crawford’s formidable air, her steady brown eyes were reassuring, so I took a deep breath and went for it. “It was a fake.”