Fatal Impressions (23 page)

As soon as it was over, Blair Winthrop called Jonathan to describe Lucas Parker’s collapse. The Firm’s partners, irate at Parker’s plundering of the Davidson estate and abuse of the Davidson girls, had sent three of their best, including Blair, to confront him.

When his pompous façade was punctured, Parker burst into tears. After he managed to control his sobbing, he whined about his bad luck: he’d done poorly at the obscure college he’d attended and worse at his even more obscure law school. He’d failed the bar exam three times before he passed. Unable to find a job, he’d set up a practice on his own, attracted few clients, and was forced to live on handouts from his exasperated father. He’d hated his father. Why should the old man have success, money, respect, and admiration, and Lucas nothing? It wasn’t fair.

His father’s fatal heart attack had rescued him. Parker inherited his father’s money, and more importantly, he’d grabbed the Davidson estate. He’d looted it ever since, sharing his plunder with the girls’ aunt, Davidson’s weak younger sister, and the ne’er-do-well she married. After the girls’ aunt and uncle—their only relatives—died in the plane crash, the Davidson estate became Lucas’s private playground.

He educated the twins as cheaply as possible and gave them meager allowances. They’d wanted to go to graduate school—Margaret planned to be a lawyer, and Elizabeth had counted on going to business school—but he wouldn’t allow it:
too expensive, and they’d learn too much. For the same reason, he wouldn’t permit the girls to work at DDD&W. He told them the estate couldn’t afford graduate school, and he’d blocked their employment at DDD&W.

How had he managed to prevent their being hired? He’d called Frances Johnson, DDD&W’s head of human resources, told her that the girls were unstable, spoiled, and lazy. If hired, they’d damage DDD&W’s reputation. Frances made Margaret’s application disappear and told the girl there was no job available. It wasn’t his fault the girl killed herself; she was always unstable. Later, Frances handled Elizabeth’s application the same way. When he gave Frances five thousand dollars for her help, she’d asked if she could do anything else for him. He was fairly certain she’d meant services of a personal kind, but he’d pretended not to understand and engaged her and her sister for the art projects.

Patti Sue had packed the Americana collection, working from two lists he’d drawn up after researching prices. She shipped the trash on List A to the museum, and the valuable items on List B to a storage facility in Boston. Everything was still there. He’d waited to see if anyone at the museum complained, but no one did, and he’d planned to start selling the Americana collection that summer. Did Patti Sue know what she was doing? No, she hadn’t a clue. She was stupid. Frances was smarter, but she was also more demanding.

How had he managed the removal of the Stubbs? Frances Johnson took them to be copied, telling people at DDD&W they were out for cleaning. When the copier had made the photographs to work from, Ms. Johnson shipped the original paintings to Parker. Parker had sent them to England to be sold.

Who made the copies? He had no idea. Frances Johnson had handled that. All he’d provided was the cash to pay for it. How had the copies come back to DDD&W? He had no idea. Where was Elizabeth Davidson? He hadn’t heard from her since Margaret’s funeral. He had no reason to be in touch with her. Who else did he deal with at DDD&W? Just the Victor sisters. How did he know them? He didn’t, not really. When he called Frances Johnson, she was impressed because he was a lawyer and the executor of the Davidson estate. She’d smelled money and made it clear she expected to be well paid. After she’d received the first package of cash, the art projects were easy to arrange. He’d never met either of the sisters. But they both had become greedy, and he’d stopped speaking to them. He insisted he hadn’t killed them—he claimed he thought their deaths were accidental.

“Do you believe he was in this by himself?” Jonathan asked Blair.

“No, none of us does. Someone at DDD&W must have been working with him, someone who oversaw, at least from a distance, what the Victor sisters were doing. But Parker insists he was alone—it’s his story, and he’s sticking to it,” Blair said.

“Why do you think he’s protecting his accomplice?” Jonathan asked.

“Because his accomplice is almost certainly a murderer. As long as Parker pretends he doesn’t exist, and he can’t be identified, Parker can’t be accused of being involved with the murders. Parker hasn’t left Boston since Christmas,” Blair said.

“What will happen now?” Jonathan wanted Parker behind bars. He pitied Elizabeth Davidson and her even more unfortunate sister.

“We’ve informed all the appropriate authorities, and everyone has agreed that the Firm will take over Parker’s assets—all of which were stolen from the Davidson heirs—and everything to do with the Davidson estate, including the stored Americana. Parker isn’t married, and he’s in practice by himself, so we don’t have anyone to contend with, except him, and he’s a wet rag. The Firm has asked me to form a committee to recover all we can for Elizabeth, to settle the Davidson estate, and to oversee management of her money. I hope you and Heyward Bain will serve on the committee. Will you?” Blair asked.

“Of course. I’m sure Heyward will, too. What happens to Parker?” Jonathan said.

“Jail and ruin. He’ll get all the law allows,” Blair said.

“Rob thinks maybe some of the deaths in that family are suspicious—too much bad luck. What do you think?” Jonathan asked.

“We’ve considered that. All the early deaths were investigated, but if there was a crime involved, no one could discover it. I don’t think anything new could be turned up at this point—everything happened too long ago. Anyway, Parker was too young to be involved. There’s little doubt he’s responsible for Margaret’s suicide, but unfortunately, I don’t think he can be charged with it. Too bad. I’d like to see him tarred and feathered.”

Jonathan wrote up a summary of what Blair had told him and e-mailed the information to Rob, Coleman, Heyward, and Sebastian Grant. Then he called Dinah.

Dinah was glad that the despicable Lucas Parker was going to jail. When Jonathan had completed his story, they discussed Loretta’s and her own discoveries. As she had thought, he was furious with Rob and planned to have a word or two with him about his failure to get the information Loretta and Dinah had turned up so easily. When he finished fuming, Dinah told him that she and Coleman were going downtown to see an artist. He assumed they were looking at prints and sounded pleased that she was taking an interest in her business again. She didn’t explain who they were seeing and why. She was sure he’d have forbidden her to go. He suggested that they take his car, and she accepted, although she was still furious with Tom.

A subdued Tom drove them downtown. Jonathan had warned him that another indiscretion would mean dismissal, and Dinah, normally softhearted, had agreed. She was almost as annoyed with Tom as she was with Rob.

She and Coleman settled at a table at BLT Fish, and after they’d ordered, Coleman took out her pocket calendar and the little notebook she always carried.

“I’ve been thinking about our theory that Frances Johnson caught on to what was going on with the Stubbs when she saw that newspaper article picturing Crawdaddy and learned he was a painter and not a conservator. Maybe a newspaper article tipped Patti Sue off, too. The missing Americana story appeared in the paper on a Monday, with a follow-up on Tuesday. Patti Sue died late Tuesday night. We now know from Parker that Patti Sue packed that collection from two lists he sent her—the good stuff to his warehouse, and the junk to the museum. Everyone said she didn’t understand about the tax dodge she helped with. What if she didn’t know she was doing anything illegal with the Americana either? Maybe she found out when she read the story in the paper about the works that should have gone to the museum, just like we think Frances Johnson learned about Crawdaddy not being a conservator when she read about him in the paper. Maybe she called Parker, asked for more money, maybe threatened to expose him—”

“I bet you’re right,” Dinah said. “Should we call Rob or Jonathan? Tell someone?”

“Let’s wait till after we see Crawdaddy. We might learn more. Right now, let’s eat. I’m starved, and we’re running out of time.”

Crawdaddy greeted them at the door. “I finally gotcha here,” he crowed. “I knew you’d see the light.” He tried to embrace Coleman, but she ducked and squeezed past him, holding Dolly’s carrier in front of her like a shield.

He looked and smelled as disgusting as he had at Coleman’s party. She didn’t think he’d washed his hair since then, and the shirt and jeans were the same—or identical to—those he was wearing in the newspaper photograph. To her surprise, the studio was clean and neat. She’d thought it would be a pigsty. She glanced around. A small tidy woman wearing glasses sat behind a desk in the corner. She must be the assistant who answered the phone. And cleaned the place?

Coleman turned to the painter. “Okay, we’re here. Show us your work.”

She followed him around the room, ignoring his patter, examining the paintings. They were realistic landscapes with bright blue skies and brighter blue water. Yellow sunlight on the green grass and trees.

“Okay. Got it. Anything with living creatures? Sheep? Cows? Horses?” she asked.

He stared at her, frowning, his eyebrows in a tangle. “This is my best work. Don’t you like it?”

Coleman shook her head. “This is not what I’m looking for. Not enough life, action—”

He interrupted. “But I’ve seen work like mine in
ArtSmart
.”

“That was then, this is now. I’m working on summer and early fall issues, and I want outdoor life—animals, children, the beach, swimming, tennis, golf—all styles—abstract, realist, whatever. And I’m looking for autumn themes: back to school, football, foxhunting—”

He scowled. “I don’t do that kind of work.”

“Right. And that’s why I haven’t written about you.
ArtSmart
is about trends—what’s new, what’s hot, what’s about to happen. We don’t show yesterday’s work.”

Dinah spoke up. “Sometimes you do. If you see art that looks like what you have in mind but was done much earlier, you run it and call it influential, or seminal.”

“That’s true, but I don’t see it here,” Coleman said.

Crawdaddy stared at the floor, his face sullen. “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like what you want.”

“Have you made any prints?” Dinah asked.

“Yeah, but with this same kind of image. If you don’t like the paintings, you won’t like my prints, or anything I do,” he said sadly.

Coleman, who felt she’d done her duty by looking at his art, was ready to come to the point. The man was such a liar, it might be a waste of time to question him, but she had to try. “Do you ever make copies of paintings?”

Crawdaddy looked up and grinned. “Sure. All the time. Copying is how I make a living.”

Coleman nearly gasped.
He was the one!
“Did you copy a pair of paintings of horses for a company?”

“Yeah, for DDD&W. Beautiful paintings—Stubbs. This guy called me, said they were too valuable to hang in the office. They were putting the originals in a bank vault and hanging the copies. Nobody would know the difference.”

“What guy? What was his name?”

“Uh—wait a minute—Betsy? What was the name of the man from DDD&W who called about the Stubbs?”

The woman looked up. “Parker. The woman who delivered the paintings was Johnson. Another woman, somebody Victor, picked up the paintings and the copies, and brought the money. Cash. I didn’t have any conversation with either of them.” She looked back down at the papers on her desk.

Coleman exchanged glances with Dinah. Dead end.

“Thanks, Crawdaddy. You’ve been very helpful.”

“But you’re not going to put me in the magazine?” he said.

“No, but I promise, if we’re ever doing an article on your kind of work, I’ll call you,” Coleman said. “Thanks for seeing us.”

When they were in the elevator, Dinah asked, “Why do you dislike him so much? You know other artists that are dirty and smelly and poor, and you don’t hate them.”

“Because he’s a liar and a cheat. His family is super rich. He just pretends to be poor to try to sell his art, thinking no one will buy if they know his father is a multi-millionaire. His dirt and his thrift-shop clothes are an act. Meanwhile there are genuinely poor artists out there who are clean and decent and don’t lie. Besides, Crawdaddy has no talent, and someone should tell him so. He should try another career. Maybe go to work for daddy in the waste management business.”

Dinah nodded her understanding. She and Coleman had been poor and knew what it was like to struggle. They had no sympathy for a person who faked it. “Do you think Parker made that call?”

“Maybe, but who knows? He’ll say he didn’t, that Johnson must have persuaded someone to call Crawdaddy. Or even if he confesses he made the call, we won’t have learned much. This is so frustrating. We keep filling in pieces of the puzzle, but we don’t get any closer to knowing who the killer is,” Coleman said.

“Nor to clearing my name,” Dinah said, her voice barely audible.

Coleman looked at her. “Maybe Ellie can help. Are you going to call her?”

“Yes, I’ll start trying to reach her as soon as it’s five p.m. in Los Angeles. But I don’t think she can help. Her aunt says she doesn’t know anything.”

Coleman could see Dinah was on the verge of tears and rushed to reassure her. “Look how much you’ve discovered in such a short time. Keep trying. Someone out there knows what happened.”

Heyward Bain looked around the infamous office. It didn’t look like a murder scene. The dark wood gleamed. The bookshelves were intact. The books had been replaced. Even the rug, which Dinah had described as soaked in blood, looked pristine. “I’ve heard a great deal about this office,” Heyward said.

“Yeah, it’s plenty ugly, and now it’s probably haunted. I’m sure you know a woman was killed in here—everyone does,” Hunt said. “Unfortunately, I’m stuck with the office. What can I do for you, Mr. Bain?”

“I understand you plan to clean up some—uh—misbehavior at DDD&W?”

Hunt stiffened. “Excuse me, Mr. Bain, I can’t see how our affairs concern you.”

Heyward smiled. “I’m already involved in your affairs. You are perhaps unaware that Coleman Greene is not only Dinah Greene’s cousin, she is my sister?”

Hunt sat up straight. “I did
not
know that. So you’re our client’s brother? I hope she’s pleased with our work?”

Heyward shook his head. “I didn’t come here to talk about Coleman. We ran into some problems at DDD&W, and were obliged to disclose them to the attorney general. I’m guessing the AG’s people will be all over DDD&W soon. Maybe the SEC, and the DA’s office, too.”

Hunt paled. “What are you talking about?”

Heyward handed him the copies of Coleman’s DDD&W reports and the corresponding information about Colossus’s activities. “Our lawyers think these are enough to warrant the agencies’ investigations. This is a clear-cut case of DDD&W’s providing inside information to the people at Colossus Publishing, who promptly acted on it.”

Hunt, skimming through the reports and letters, seemed to age as he read. “Do you think Amy Rothman is responsible for leaking the data?” he asked.

“No, Amy Rothman and her team are honest and reliable. We think Michael Shanahan is the mastermind. If I were you, I’d confront him as soon as you can. I wanted to warn you before you hear about all this officially,” Heyward said.

“Thank you. Please apologize to both Dinah and Coleman Greene for me. Tell Dinah I never thought she did anything wrong. My actions about the two of them coming to the office were based on the advice of our lawyers—we were trying to protect DDD&W. As for our internal problems, rest assured I’ll put a stop to them, and I’ll certainly cooperate with the authorities,” he said.

“It’s hard when friends are involved,” Bain said. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for Hunt. The man looked as if he’d been run over by a truck. The inside information story was obviously a total surprise.

“Yes. Yes, it is. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“I’m afraid so,” Heyward said, “but I can’t tell you everything yet. I will as soon as I can. Events are still unfolding. Will you be available here for my call? Or is there somewhere else I can reach you tomorrow and Saturday?”

“Oh, I’ll be in this office Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I haven’t had any life outside the office since I moved to New York. My office’s direct line and my cell phone number are both on my card,” Hunt said, handing one to Heyward.

Heyward nodded. “I’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, there are a few other unpleasant matters I should tell you about, if you really plan to clean house,” Heyward said. He looked at Hunt, a question in his eyes. Was Hunt serious about this? Did he want to know about the office affairs? About Oscar Danbury’s revolting behavior? Heyward felt conflicted about how much to tell the fellow. DDD&W’s dirty laundry was not Heyward’s business, but through a series of unusual circumstances, he was privy to information about DDD&W that its managing director didn’t have. Was it Heyward’s duty to tell Hunt Frederick everything? Hunt must decide.

Hunt sighed. “Fire away,” he said.

Dinah was cooking roast pork with one eye on the clock, waiting for the appropriate time to call Ellie, when an e-mail arrived from Eleanor Athos, as Dinah had to remember to call her.

Dinah stared at the picture. Ellie the mouse as Eleanor Athos was exceptionally pretty, a typical girl-next-door beauty. Ellie deserved an Academy Award. Not to mention a medal for bravery. She had been annoyed at Ellie for not coming forward, but as it turned out, Ellie had seen nothing, and she’d risked exposure, perhaps worse, by trying to help Dinah.

Dinah didn’t think she’d ever had a drink alone. But she wanted to toast Ellie. She poured a glass of white wine from an open bottle in the refrigerator, took a sip, and lifted her glass toward the West. “Go, girlfriend,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

Coleman was still at her desk at nearly eight Thursday evening when Heyward called.

“We’ve spoken several times today, but it’s always been to exchange information, and I keep meaning to have a longer chat with you. I’ve got to go to London Saturday night, and I thought we could have dinner at my place Friday night. Are you free?”

“Yes, that would be great,” Coleman said.

“I’m going to ask Dinah and Jonathan and a few other people. We’ve disposed of Parker, as you know, but have you heard that Jonathan and I are going to help Elizabeth Davidson? I called her in London and told her about Parker, and also about the mess at DDD&W. When I described Hunt, and how he’s trying to clean house, she said she wants to work with him—to help, if she can. She said her father would want her to. He always wanted her to work at DDD&W, and now the company needs her.”

“Good grief! Talk about turning the other cheek. She must be quite a girl,” Coleman said.

“I think she is. She’s going to let the Americana collection go to the Prince Charles Stuart Museum. She said again she thought that’s what her father would want. I’d say that dinner Friday night was a celebration, except that there’s still a murderer at large, and I can’t figure out how we’re going to identify him, or her.”

“I know,” Coleman said. “I looked at my list of questions about the case, and we’ve answered them all, and the answers don’t help. Poor Dinah is still worried sick.”