Rogues Gallery (3 page)

So maybe an irate Andy Warhol fan ...
No, I just couldn't see it.

“It's been a couple of years since that book and he hasn't had an academic post since,” Kate continued. “He's been busy, though.” She picked up the third book,
The Sincerest Form of Fraud: America's Strangest Art Forger.
“This just came out earlier this year. It's fascinating. You crime writers should read it. Calder was a bit of a sleuth himself. He was working a side job as a consultant to a small museum in Wheeling, West Virginia, a few years ago when he began to suspect that one of the paintings was a fake. It turned out that he was right, but there was a much, much bigger story there. Calder eventually found that a man named Carl Banks had donated more than a hundred watercolors and sketches, supposedly by minor but collectable artists, to at least fifty museums over twenty years. They were all forgeries and all by him.”

“But he
donated
them?” Lynda said.

Kate nodded. “He didn't even claim a tax write-off on his income tax.”

“Then what was the point?” I asked.

“When Calder interviewed him for the book, Banks said he wanted to show that he was as good an artist as any of them, good enough to fool the museums. It also might be worth mentioning that Carl Banks has been hospitalized in mental institutions several times.”

“Mentally ill or not,” Mac said, “he managed to successfully perpetrate art fraud on a massive scale until Calder uncovered it. So Calder's evident self-esteem was not without foundation. That is most revealing, Kate.”

The doorbell rang. It was Oscar, dressed in Sunday clothes and a panama hat. After he joined us in the study and Kate shoved a cup of caffeinated coffee into his hand, I expressed surprise that he wasn't having lunch with his mother at the Bob Evans restaurant.

The chief scowled. “She's on a date with some old geezer she met at Kroger's. They went pumpkin picking, which will be followed by dinner. I told him he'd better keep his hands on the pumpkins. Anyway, I've been on the Calder case, working the domestic angle. The first thing I wondered was whether the victim had a wife, or girlfriend, or both. Or maybe even a husband and/or boyfriend, whatever. I didn't find any current romantic attachments, but there is an ex-wife.”

“That is promising,” Mac said.

Oscar shook his head. “I'm afraid not. Her name is Cherise Steele and she has an iron-clad alibi - she was taping a show for WSTV, that wine and spirits cable network, in front of a live audience in Pittsburgh.”

“Oh, I love that channel!” Lynda said.

“Surely her alibi is irrelevant,” Mac observed. “I presume we already know she was not among the crowd in the gallery last night. That is of no consequence. The media have been replete lately with stories of people attempting to hire hit men to deal with their spouses. Apparently that is cheaper than divorce.”

“That's true enough,” Oscar said. “But these two were already divorced, and according to Steele she was getting a decent monthly alimony check from Calder that just got cut off. If that checks out, she doesn't seem to have much of a motive.”

“Then who does?” I said. “That's what we were talking about a few minutes ago, Oscar. Who benefits?” Then I had a brainstorm. “Why don't we look at it this way: What's changed by Thurston Calder being dead?”

I thought that was clever, if I do say so myself, until Lynda responded, “For one thing, he for sure won't get to be head of the art department at St. Benignus.”

She had uttered two words I didn't want to hear in connection with the murder - “Saint” and “Benignus.”

“Maybe I'm being selfish,” I said, “but I'd really rather this has nothing to do with the college.”

“Good luck with that, Jeff.” Lynda's gold-flecked brown eyes looked bright over her coffee cup. “St. Benignus was Calder's only connection to Erin.”

“Not exactly,” Oscar said, beating me to it. “Rosalie Hawthorne invited him to the party where he was killed. She knew him from some national arts committee they were on together.”

“Rosalie wouldn't harm a fly even if it were in her Marvini,” Kate said. “Maybe there was something else Calder was going to do here that got prevented by his death - give a lecture, or meet with somebody, something like that.”

“If so,” Oscar said, “we'll find out eventually. Somebody will know. Or it will be recorded on his calendar.”

“I presume the next step is another round of interviews with those among last night's guests most likely to know or to have seen something that did not surface in the first round,” Mac said.

“Bingo. I also want to make sure we didn't miss anybody the first time.” The chief reached into the side pocket of his coat and pulled out a spiral-bound book, about six inches by five, with ruled pages. “You might recognize this as the guest book you signed when you came in. I borrowed it from Mrs. Hawthorne. It took us half the night, but we talked to everybody in this book. I want you to look at the names and see if you can remember anybody being there last night whose name doesn't show up.”

He handed it to Lynda and me, the closest to him.

With Lynda looking over my shoulder, I quickly ran down a list of familiar names, people whose faces I had seen last night - Fr. Pirelli, Lafcadio Figg, Adam Mendenhall, Josiah Gamble, Amy Quong, Trixie LaBelle, Tony Lampwicke, Sister Mary Margaret Malone ...

“Who the heck is Reginald J. Smith?” Lynda asked, putting her finger on the name.

“Better known as ‘Scrappy,'” Oscar said.

“Oh, sure,” Lynda said. “I never knew his first name. Well, he seems more like a Scrappy than a Reginald.”

“He's earned the nickname, all right. Scrappy's the most entertaining of all my frequent guests at the lockup, but for his sake I wish he'd stop getting into fights. One of these days he's going to lay into the wrong person.”

“Well, that did not happen last night,” Mac said. “Justin was obviously quite shaken by their contretemps. Surely Scrappy cannot be a serious suspect, either - a killer would hardly call attention to himself or to the missing corkscrew that turned out to be the murder weapon.”

“Isn't that just what a clever killer would want us to think?” I suggested.

Oscar snorted. “Only in one of Mac's books.” The look on his face showed what he thought of my cleverness - and Mac's.

“Wait a minute,” Lynda said. “We don't know exactly when the murder took place, but it could have been during that little set-to with Justin. That's a very convenient distraction.”

Oscar regarded Lynda. They had not always gotten along during his first year in town, when she had been news editor of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, but that hatchet had been long since buried. “So, Teal, you think maybe the killer somehow caused Scrappy to yell at the bartender?”

My beloved shrugged. “I'm just throwing it out there.”

Oscar sipped his coffee. “Well, I'm not sure that Scrappy ever needed an excuse to start a fight, but it's worth asking him about. We'll start looking for him. He moves around a lot.” Translation: Scrappy had no permanent address, i.e., was homeless, apparently by choice.

Looking through the guest list, we noticed that several names of attendees were missing, but they were all folks that Oscar's people had talked to. Frank Woodford hadn't bothered to sign in, for example.

“I've already debriefed him,” Lynda said, “but he didn't hold anything back from the readers. It's all in his story, everything he saw.”

That led to a discussion about which of the eighty-seven attendees should be contacted again.

“Justin was rather shaken up last night,” Mac observed. “Perhaps in a day or two he will remember more. In light of our history, I would like to be the one to talk to him.”

Their “history” included Mac's efforts to save Justin from a murder rap, and then hypnotizing him to get some key information after Justin had almost been killed himself. As a side project, Mac - a champion cigar smoker - had also helped the young man kick the cigarette habit.

“I'll talk to O'Neill,” I volunteered. “He might know some gossip that would be helpful.”
Like whether he'd killed Calder, for one thing.
“Hey, I should talk to Popcorn, too. Maybe she saw something while she was watching the doors but it didn't register with her last night.”

Oscar studied the guest book, not looking up. “I'll ask her.”

“I'll see her at work in the morning. You don't have to make a special trip - ”

“I won't. We're having dinner together tonight. Like I said, Mom won't be home.”

Mac raised an eyebrow, and rightly so. I'd often thought I detected sparks between my diminutive administrative assistant, a widow with a penchant for steamy romance novels, and Oscar Hummel, a life-long bachelor. They were about the same age.
Go for it, Oscar!
Kate and Lynda exchanged sisterly woman-looks.

My brother-in-law cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Lillian Peacock not only found the body, she may have been one of the last persons to talk to Thurston Calder before the murder. Jeff and I overheard him lecturing her on her own painting style not long before the murder. Certainly she is worth a second interview.”

Oscar slammed the guest book shut. “Okay, then, let's have at it.”

IV

Lillian and Beryl Peacock lived in a brick Cape Cod home on Lindner Street about two miles from downtown. Beryl had grown up in the Chicago area, moved in with her grandmother while she attended St. Benignus, and stayed on after graduation while casting a wide net elsewhere for a job in the art field.

Lynda and Kate had elected to stay behind at the house on Half Moon Street. I regretted their decision when Beryl opened the door and I saw the look on her face as she beheld the all-male trio of the police chief, Mac, and me on her doorstep.

“What's wrong?” she said. “Has something else happened?”

Beryl looked like a frightened bunny rabbit, although I've never seen a rabbit in a tie-dyed T-shirt that looked like it was old in 1970. Her blue eyes were wide behind her rimless spectacles. With her strawberry blond hair pulled off her high forehead and braided, she looked too young to be out of college. She wasn't wearing makeup.

“No, no, nothing new,” Oscar assured her hastily. “We'd just like to talk to Mrs. Peacock.”

“Grandma's upstairs lying down. She's still very upset by what happened last night. But come on in.”

The door opened into a cozy living room, with a quilt above the mantle and a watercolor of a sunflower field moving in the breeze on the opposite wall. The sunflowers looked very professional, but I'd have bet it was one of her grandmother's paintings. We sat down in matching wicker chairs.

“She's been so upset by what happened,” Beryl said, “and I feel awful. She didn't want to show her paintings, but I pushed for it. Ever since I was little I've loved Grandma's art. It inspired me. So when Ms. Hawthorne was talking about starting her gallery and a show of women's art, I thought of Grandma.” She shook her head. “If I hadn't talked her into it, she wouldn't have found - ”

“It's not your fault, child.” Lillian Peacock stood on the staircase, her thin frame almost lost in a fluffy bathrobe. “You didn't kill that man. I insist that you not feel guilty about it.”

She finished descending the stairs. Oscar, Mac, and I stood up and each said something soothing and meaningless. Mrs. Peacock joined her granddaughter on the sofa. Again I was struck by the similarity of their features. Their eyes, for example, were the same shade of cornflower blue. But Mrs. Peacock must have been in her seventies, with cottony white hair. She reminded me of Miss Marple.
Maybe she can solve this case!

“So why have you gentlemen come to visit an old lady?” she asked, although she must have known.

“We just want to ask a few follow-up questions about last night,” Oscar said.

“I don't know what else I can tell you. I haven't thought of anything that might help. You said to call you if I thought of anything I forgot to mention, but I haven't. Not that I've been thinking about last night. In fact, I've been trying hard not to.”

“That is quite understandable,” Mac said. “Our intrusion is unforgiveable. However, it is also unavoidable. Jefferson and I observed you in conversation with Thurston Calder not long before you found his body. You may have been the last person to talk with him, other than the murderer.” Lillian shivered slightly and drew her fluffy robe around her more tightly. Her granddaughter hugged her.

“May I ask what you talked about?” Mac said.

“Talked about? Why, art, I suppose. What else would we talk about? It was an art show. I didn't know the man, you understand.”

“You were in front of one of your paintings,” I prodded. “He must have said something about it.”
Actually, I know that he did because I heard him, but I don't want to admit that I was eavesdropping.

“Oh, yes, I remember now. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that he didn't think much of my work. I wasn't surprised. I'm sure my perspective was flawed and my composition hopeless. Heavens, I'm no artist. I have no training whatsoever. I've never taken a class or even watched one on PBS. I just picked up a brush.” Beryl started to say something, but her grandmother glared at her. “It was very kind of Beryl to suggest that I exhibit my work, but I was foolish to let her talk me into it.”

That wrapped up Mac's questions, but Oscar wasn't finished. “Let's go through the finding of the body again,” he said, “just so I'm clear.”

A day after the murder, Lillian Peacock could still barely get the words out as she described her utter shock at the grisly horror that lay in the alcove in front of the restrooms. Just watching her relive the moment was hard. By the end, tears were streaming down her wrinkled face. She buried her head in Beryl's shoulder.