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Chapman checked off Caxton’s name on the list he had started and went down to the next line. “Bryan Daughtry. Ever run into him?”
“Yes, he was another visitor. Not so much anymore, with the contemporary work he was trying to sell. But Marco had done ventures with him before I arrived here, which was before Daughtry went to jail. On that tax fraud, not that other thing.” Ca
“What do you know about his background?”
“I don’t mean to make light of the story about Bryan Daughtry’s involvement in that old case, but it kind of fascinated Mr. Varelli. He never saw the cruel side of Bryan. Met him as a young man who had a rather good eye for art, albeit untrained. I was a bit shocked to meet him myself when Bryan first came to the studio. Marco told me all about him that first day.”
Ca
“Quite frankly, I used to think when Daughtry was here to visit and Mr. Varelli kicked me out, it was to ask him questions about his sexual proclivities. Marco was much more curious about that than he was about contemporary art.”
Ca
“How about Marina Sette?”
Ca
“Marilyn Seven?” I asked, adding a physical description as well as telling him where she lived.
“It’s quite possible she had been to see Marco, of course. It’s just not a name I recognize.”
“Frank Wrenley?”
Again, not familiar. Neither was Preston Mattox. Ca
Chapman put down his pen and clasped his hands on the desktop.
“Talk to me about Denise Caxton. Everything you know. When you met her, what she was like, what Marco thought about her. Things that don’t seem important to you may be exactly what we’re looking for, so give it all to me, okay?”
“This one’s a bit complicated, Detective. There was Denise Caxton the woman, and there was Denise Caxton the collector. Marco Varelli’s eye was unerring. He admired great beauty, on a canvas or in human form. Nothing inappropriate, nothing unusual. But he would look at a handsome woman’s face as though it had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Didn’t matter if she were a waitress in a diner or a client with millions. Mrs. Caxton had a real head start with Marco, from the old days. He had met her when she was a kid, just married to Lowell.
“If I’m not mistaken-you might have to check her apartment for this-I think Mr. Varelli once painted her portrait, a full-length nude. He was very proud of it. Told me it was hung in her room at home. I believe she had a collection of self-portraits, right?” He chuckled at the vanity of that idea, it seemed to me.
Ca
“Did you ever work on any of the paintings she brought into the gallery?”
“Yes. She had a knack for picking up sleepers, bidding on some incredibly lifeless old canvas that she’d either had a good tip on or had followed with her gut instincts. ‘Who is it, Marco? Tell me who’s hiding underneath there, mi amore.’ She’d tease him into playing with almost anything she brought in. And what was fu
“When did his feelings for Deni change?”
Ca
“Yeah. Said she didn’t make him quite so happy anymore.”
“I can’t recall exactly when the change occurred, but she’s right. Mrs. Caxton’s visits were fewer and farther apart. She rarely came alone anymore, and the games were over.”
“Who’d she bring with her, if she wasn’t alone?”
“Friends, clients-I don’t know. Varelli would shoo me out of the studio. There was no longer any verbal foreplay, so he didn’t need me around.”
Chapman was a
“Occasionally she came with people I knew, like Bryan Daughtry. Once or twice she might have been with a woman- maybe even that lady you described earlier, with the French braid. Seven or Sette, whatever you called her. But most of the time it was men, two or three different ones in the past few months, since she split up with her husband.”
“Can you describe any of them for us? Would you recognize them if you saw them today?”
Again Ca
Chapman stood now, walking behind Ca
Ca
“Anybody who knew what he thought about everything and everybody?”
“No, probably not.”
“They have any kids?”
“No.”
“I bet you were sort of like a son to him, weren’t you?”
“Not exactly. But he was very good to me.”
“What was the most important thing in the world to him, Don? Leave his wife out of it for the moment. Tell us.”
“You know the answer. He lived for great art-for looking at it, touching it, smelling it, dreaming about it.”
”And he trusted you with his legacy.”
“Well, I’m not the only one who ever apprenticed with him. There are dozens of experts in museums around the world who-”
“But now, Mr. Ca
Ca
“And you’re too damn smart, too good a student, not to have been aware of what was happening in that little garret every day, that’s what I think. If you’ve got a special talent, Mr. Ca
Mike’s voice bellowed in the small room as Ca