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CHAPTER Twenty-five
“This is a nice place,” Carolyn said, “and they make a hell of a drink, even if they do charge twice as much as they should for it. Big Charlie’s, huh? I like it.”
“I thought you would.”
“I like the girl playing piano, too. I wonder if she’s gay.”
“Oh, God.”
“What’s wrong with wondering?” She took a sip, set down her glass. “You left some things out,” she said. “Explaining everything and making all the bits and pieces fit together, you left a few things out.”
“Well, it was confusing enough as it was. I didn’t want to make it impossible for people to follow.”
“Uh-huh. You’re a considerate guy. You left out the bit about the cat.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Two men had been murdered and a couple of paintings had been stolen. I couldn’t waste people’s time talking about a kidnapped cat. Anyway, he’d been ransomed and returned, so what was the point?”
“Uh-huh. Alison was Haig Petrosian’s other granddaughter, wasn’t she? The other one at the dining room table on Riverside Drive. She’s Elspeth’s cousin, and her father was Elspeth’s Uncle Billy.”
“Well, the resemblance was striking. Remember how you stared at Elspeth in my shop? The fu
“Andrea Barlow.”
“Right.”
“You left her out, too, didn’t you? You didn’t mention ru
“Well, certain things ought to stay private,” I said. “One thing she told me was true enough. She had been having an affair with Onderdonk, and as it happens her husband knew about it, which probably added to the zest with which he killed the man. Then he must have gloated over the man’s death, and Andrea had visions of a police search of the premises uncovering some pictures Onderdonk had taken of the two of them with a time-release Polaroid. She went back for them, found them or didn’t find them, who the hell knows, and then I walked in on her. No wonder she was terrified. She must have already found Onderdonk’s body in the closet, so she knew it wasn’t him, but who could it be? Either the police, in which case she had some fancy explaining to do, or her murderous husband coming to kill her and leave her there with her dead lover. Either way she was in deep trouble.”
“And she was so relieved it was you that she was overcome with passion.”
“Either that or she figured it made sense to screw her way to safety,” I said, “but I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. But why mention all of that to the police?”
“Especially since you’d like to verb her again.”
“Well-”
“And why not? She’s got a nifty pair of nouns. I think I need another one of these, and don’t you just love the little getups the waitresses wear? Let’s order another round, and then you can tell me what really happened with the paintings.”
“Oh, the paintings.”
“Yeah, the paintings. This one’s from here and that one’s from there and this one’s cut out of the frame and that one isn’t and who can keep it all straight? I know some of what you said was true and I know some of it wasn’t, and I want the whole story. But first I want another of these.”
Who could deny her anything? She got what she wanted, first the drink and then the explanation.
“The painting Ray gave back to Orville Widener, the insurance guy, was one that Denise and I painted,” I said. “Naturally Barlow destroyed the canvas he took from the Onderdonk apartment. All he had to do was slash it to ribbons and put it down the incinerator, and I’m sure he did just that. The canvas I gave to Ray, which he in turn gave to Widener, was the portion I cut out of the frame that I left at the Hewlett. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match the piece of frame that was left in the closet with Onderdonk’s corpse, because that frame will get conveniently lost. Ray’ll see to that.”
“What about the painting Reeves took back with him? Was that the one you took from the Hewlett? Did they have an acrylic fake on display all along?”
“Of course not. Turnquist was an artist and he wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t use acrylics. He used oil paints, same as Mondrian, and the painting in the Hewlett was one of his.”
“But what Reeves took back with him-”
“Was a second fake that Denise and I did, tacked to the stretcher from the Hewlett. Remember, it was the incused mark on the stretcher that convinced him. I’d already unstapled the canvas and taken the frame apart to get the painting out of the museum. When I put it back together, I just tacked the acrylic fake to the Hewlett frame.”
“And Reeves thinks that’s what he had all along.”
“So it would appear, and what’s the difference? A fake is a fake is a fake is a fake.”
“I didn’t know Denise painted more than one fake.”
“Actually she painted three of them. One got cut up, with the frame and some fragments left at the Hewlett and the rest of it returned to Orville Widener. The other went back to the Hewlett with Reeves.”
“And the third?”
“Is hanging on a wall in the Narrowback Gallery, and it’s a little different from the others in that the signature monogram is DR instead of PM. She’s pretty proud of it, although I had a hand in it myself, and so did Jared.”
“She painted three fakes and Turnquist painted two. You said Barlow destroyed one of the Turnquist fakes. What happened to the other one? The one you lifted out of the Hewlett.”
“Ah,” I said. “It’s been impounded.”
“Jesus, Bern. That was the real real one that was impounded, the one Mondrian himself painted, remember? Everybody’s claiming it and there’ll be court cases for years and-oh.”
I guess I must have smiled.
“ Bern, you didn’t.”
“Well, why not? You heard what Lloyd Lewes said. He looked at the canvas the two cops brought in and said it was an oil painting and it looked right. Why shouldn’t it look right? After all, it sat in the Hewlett for years and nobody suspected a thing. Now it can sit in a locked closet at Number One Police Plaza for a few more years and nobody’ll suspect a thing there, either. I took it along with me when I let myself into the Barlow apartment last night, stapled it to a stretcher and left it where the cops would find it.”
“And the real Mondrian?”
“It was in the Barlow apartment when I got there, of course. I took it off its stretcher and stapled Turnquist’s fake in its place. I had to have a stretcher for the Turnquist canvas, remember.”
“Because you used the stretcher it was on in the Hewlett for one of Denise’s fakes.”
“Right.”
“You know what the trouble is, Bern? There’s too many Mondrians. It sounds like a Nero Wolfe novel, doesn’t it? Too Many Cooks, Too Many Clients, Too Many Detectives, Too Many Women. And Too Many Mondrians.”
“Right.”
“Denise painted three acrylic fakes, Turnquist painted two oil fakes, and Mondrian painted one. Except his was a real one, and are you go
“It’s going to go to the rightful owner.”
“Elspeth Petrosian? Or Alison? She’s got as much real claim on it as her cousin.”
“Speaking of Alison-”
“Yeah,” she said heavily. “Speaking of Alison. When you figured they were cousins, that was how you knew Elspeth Peters was Armenian. And you looked through the phone book and-”
“Not quite. I looked through papers in Alison’s office and found out her maiden name. That’s a little simpler than reading the phone book.”
“Is that where you got the cat?” She put a hand on mine. “I couldn’t help figuring it out, Bernie. She took my cat, didn’t she? And that’s why she used the Nazi voice when she talked with me, because I would have recognized her real voice. She talked normally with you because she’d never met you. And she was nervous when we got to my place and you were there, because she thought you might recognize her voice from over the phone. Did you?”