Cold Hit

“I’ll tell you, Miss Cooper, I was sitting in the same room, looking at the same objects. I thought the sculpture was too kitschy to put in my own backyard. Turned out to be an original by Giambologna, the great Florentine artist. Worth close to ten million. Deni refused to sell it. Just shipped it home and installed it in Lowell’s bathroom. She wanted to remind him of the entire experience. Make it indelible.”

“I take it that was the begi

Basta. Finito. Terminato. Neither one of them was willing to forgive the other, and for Lowell it was a confirmation that they had been moving in separate directions for a couple of years. Deni had no idea if that was his first indiscretion- although I really doubt it. He’d finished the Pygmalion thing with Deni. He was ready to take on someone new.”

“Why didn’t she just walk away from him? Certainly she’d made enough money to go out on her own.”

“I suppose when you come from a background like Deni’s, there’s never quite enough to erase the fears that you’re going to find yourself back on the farm sowing soybeans in the dirt for the rest of your life.”

“With what she was sitting on? I can’t believe that.”

“It wasn’t a very attractive side of my friend, but she also wanted to take Lowell to the cleaners. Deni wanted some of the Caxton treasures as well, and she had no plans to walk away without them.”

“But she had no right to them, Ms. Seven. They’re clearly Lowell’s, aren’t they, except for some of the works acquired during the marriage?”

She looked at me as though I were an absolute idiot. “I’m not talking about the art in their home or in the gallery. Don’t you know anything about the Caxton operation? Because if not, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

“The Caxtons have been at this now for three generations. Lowell has such a tight grip on the collection that not even his employees know the extent of what he owns, or more importantly, where all the art is. Deni knew there were paintings stashed in Swiss vaults and even in an old Cold War bunker on a hillside in Pe

Deni’s friend was certainly devoted to her. I could see she was going to go on bashing Lowell as long as I’d listen.

“Are you aware that Three-you probably know it was his childhood name, and it made him crazy when Deni called him that-was never invited to join the Art Dealers Association of America?”

Again, I shook my head to tell her that I was not.

“In seventy-five, I think it was, and certainly before Deni, he was caught bugging the telephones of the most prestigious galleries in New York, long before hi-tech spying became a tool of the business world. He was checking on their inventory, as well as trying to get an idea of what their customers were searching for on the market. Lowell’s father had used a lot of his money to pay scholars to write catalogues raiso

“Sorry, you’ve lost me. I don’t know what they are.”

“They’re the key to individual artists and their works. Good ones are well researched and documented, and by controlling the catalogues of a particular artist, you control the price and value of his work. Many experts think there’s an aura of questionability about the Caxton catalogues, that histories and pedigrees have been altered for the family’s private gain. Several art historians have denounced the works publicly, which made Lowell furious. It threw into question his Vermeers, his Légers, his Davids.”

“But Deni thought she could get her hands on those paintings?”

“Well, yes-in part. She was also terribly frightened that she knew too much about them for Lowell to let her go. His first two wives had never really participated in his professional world. But once Deni learned it and loved it, he let her in. She knew things about Caxton and his father, and their ma

I wondered if Marilyn Seven knew anything about Deni’s partnership with the late Omar Sheffield. “Do you have any idea how desperate your friend was to get rid of her husband?”

“About as anxious as you or I would be, if your life had been threatened like hers had.”

“How and when was she threatened?”

“Well, that answers that. I didn’t suppose Lowell told you about the letters Deni got last year, which practically drove her insane.”

“No, so far he hasn’t mentioned any letters to us at all.”

“I’ve brought you a copy of one of them, if you’d like to see it.”

Marilyn Seven withdrew a xeroxed paper from her slim purse and passed it across to me. The copy was a page of lined white paper, covered with neatly printed handwriting and addressed to Denise Caxton. I sca

My name is Je

REMEMBER NO POLICE. If you don’t send my friend the money, I will take charge by getting you in the near future. Include your phone number so we can talk.

I looked up at Marilyn Seven. “What did she do about this?”

“Certainly not call the police.”

“Did she do what this guy wanted?”

“What would you have done?”

“Look,” I said, my impatience growing. “It’s not a contest about us trying to match wits. I didn’t get this letter.”

“These letters, Ms. Cooper. A shoe box full of them. It was obvious to her that this man could only have gotten the detail about her from Lowell, and that Lowell had hired him to kill her. She knew she was being scammed, but of course she did as he told her.”

“She sent money up to the state prison?”

“You bet she did. Early and often. The faster she sent it, the faster the ante was raised. By the time the guy finally called her, she must have already sent him twenty thousand dollars. She was terrified, and asked him point-blank whether her husband had hired him to kill her. He confirmed it for Deni. Told her that Lowell was trying to torture her first, mentally, and that’s why he’d given this guy Je

“But she kept the correspondence going, of course,” I said.

“To stay alive, and to turn the tables on her beloved husband. It was her idea to outbid Lowell on this deal, too-and to get the Je