Artist's Proof (25 page)

I would. If the County Crime Scene Unit had come up with some hard evidence against Sharanov I would take back every ugly thought I had entertained about Detective John Docherty. With Sharanov under arrest I would be able to cut off Tony Travis before the billable hours started ticking me toward insolvency.

But the rumor was vague and shaky; it sounded more wish than fact. I got little nourishment from it.

I was in a lousy mood. This was not a good time to make a critical judgment, but I took another hard look at those sketches I did at the bay and tore them up.

I was entitled to at least one positive act today. I could still put in a few hours on
Large
before I had to start getting social with Cooper. I climbed the scaffold and dove in.

I was reckless with the vermilion.

T
WENTY-THREE

T
HERE WERE RENEWED
signs of life in the refurbished Sharanov house. Driving slowly by early in the evening on my way to Southampton, I saw lights both upstairs and down, and bodies moving from one level to the other. The red Cadillac was once again parked out front, along with other cars; it had apparently been furloughed for the week in favor of the black Volvo that delivered me to the Gulliver. Had Sharanov also shown respect for the deceased by drinking vodka martinis with black olives?

I had no idea what to expect at the address Olivia Cooper gave me. The odds favored a trendy beach house, a bitterly contested prize in an ugly divorce settlement.

What I got was a traditional brick and stone two-story, a small gem set back on mature landscaping on a street of similarly traditional houses halfway between the beach and downtown Southampton, and a stroll to either. True, it was the smallest house on the block, but Cooper was a woman alone. If she got this place in a divorce she must have given up a lot elsewhere.

My next thought was that my previous assessment had been knee-jerk sexist. It was as likely that Cooper had earned the house through the sweat of her brow. In our previous meeting, what she did for a living had never come up.

My tired pickup looked as if it had been dumped on this solidly middle-class street by a hurricane. I drove it as deep into Cooper's driveway as I could; a high privet hedge and a two-door Mercedes would hide it from all but the most prying eyes. There was no need to stir up neighborhood gossip. Or had Cooper already given these solid burghers plenty to gossip about?

After her sledgehammer come-on when she invited me to dinner I half expected her to greet me in an at-home outfit out of a Victoria's Secret Valentine's Day ad. But she came to the door in the clothes she must have worn to work in the city that day—a suit the color of dark chocolate and totally unadorned. Its boxy jacket said, Don't you dare shut me out of the Big Meeting; its pencil skirt was cut high enough above the knees to add, But don't you ever forget that I'm a woman.

While she led me into the house she told me that every time her visit to Muccio's came to mind this week she had been unable to control her giggling. In meetings, elevators, wherever. And then we were in her living room, where the furnishings went perfectly with the house—tasteful and safe. I could see where Muccio's must have seemed on a planet in another solar system.

After more small talk while she fixed me a drink, she said, “I didn't leave the city as early as I expected, and then—would you believe it?—the Friday afternoon summer traffic is starting to build. We're not even seriously into May! Couple of more weeks and forget it. Anyway, I haven't had a chance to slip out of these damn work clothes, so would you excuse me? I promise, I'll be no more than five minutes.” And she retreated to her bedroom.

Had I gotten everything right but her timing? Was the sinuous at-home outfit lying fetchingly across her bed waiting to be wriggled into? Would she reappear in it soon enough, pausing in the doorway long enough to say, “This feels so much more comfortable?” Could she be that obvious? I pushed aside the image and studied the walls.

They weren't that bad. In front of me were a couple of splashy outdoor scenes by pseudo-Impressionists—school of Renoir, school of Monet. Logical choices for a weekend retreat, they said Let's get out of the house and enjoy nature. But they were so safe. Instead of springing for the Mercedes sitting out front she should have hung that money on her walls; she could have done a lot better for herself.

Directly behind me was a school of Dufy. No, that
was
a Dufy. She
had
done better. So she wasn't afraid to spend. And since she could spend she could do better still, move the room forward to the millennium. With, for instance, something like
Seated Girl.
The Cassie painting would make the room jump, take twenty years off it. When I was ready to sell.

And then my hostess reappeared in her at-home outfit—a baggy Irish cable knit sweater and a pair of jeans she didn't have to wriggle to get into. Either she was secure enough as a seductress to believe she didn't need tarting up to work her magic, or I had totally misread the tone of her invitation. Maybe the wish had been father to the thought.

She watched me watch her make herself a drink—ice cubes, scotch, water, all three too quickly juggled into the glass. Something had her nervous. She may not have even noticed that she had filled a brandy snifter. She said, “How hungry are you?”

“Anytime you're ready. Soon, if you'd like.” With luck, I could make this a short evening. Even putting aside what I had heard about her since last Friday, I had liked her better that evening, when she had been loose and easy.

She may have caught a hint of impatience in my voice. She said, “Don't worry, this won't be one of those dinners where you're on your fifth drink and chewing the carpet before the hostess remembers to start cooking. I made a casserole in the city last night. It'll take ten minutes to heat, so you just holler ten minutes before you want to eat. I think I can approach”—she smiled impishly if a bit nervously—“and possibly even match, the kitchen at Muccio's.” It was the second time she had made that weak joke.

“So you're able to go home and cook after a hard day at the office.” I cut to the chase. “Or aren't your days at the office that hard?”

“I'm not in the office that much. But yes, my days are sometimes intense.”

She wasn't giving me what I wanted. “I forget. Did you tell me what you do?”

“Did I? I don't remember.” She took a slug of her Scotch. Would I have to prod her with still another question? And then she said it. “I sell insurance.”

So was this what her heavy come-on had been about? A chance for a one-on-one to explain a sensible low-cost policy that would protect my loved ones in case “something” happened to me? Something, in this connection, meaning death, a word that insurance people find drains the fun from their pitch.

I said, “Uh-oh.”

She laughed nervously and said, “Don't worry, you're safe. I don't deal in personal policies.”

“Then…?”

“I do commercial work.”

I had a blinding flash of what could have been understanding. I made sure she was looking full at me and I said, “Do you insure Misha Sharanov's business?”

Her ears reddened. “What makes you ask that?”

I wasn't ready to tell her. Instead I said, “You're friends and neighbors, and from the way you live you're too good at what you do to let a juicy prospect like Sharanov go somewhere else for his peace of mind.”

She took a moment. “Yes, I insure the Tundra.” She let it all out. “Fire, theft, liability.”

“A healthy account.”

She looked deep into her snifter; she may have been double-checking that it had really been hand-blown in Czechoslovakia. Then she looked up at me. “Actually, it's because I insure Misha that I invited you here tonight. Can I freshen that drink?”

I held it up; I had barely touched it. “I don't see how.” I wasn't going to let her slide off the main topic that easily. Not while I was beginning to understand what was going on.

I said, “Tell me if I have this right. To make sure I accepted your invitation, you hinted that dinner might not be the only pleasure of the evening.”

She winced. “Did I really come on that strong? God, I'm really sorry.” She smiled a quick dutiful smile and went back to looking uncomfortable. “I didn't mean to … to…”

She couldn't decide what it was she hadn't meant. This definitely wasn't the easygoing Cooper I had admired at Muccio's. But she rallied. “I didn't expect to say what I have to say until I'd softened you up with my never-fail shrimp casserole. You're lousing up my program. Is this a sample of your grilling technique from your years as a cop?”

“As close as I can get to it without my nightstick. Why don't we talk first, eat later? Better for the digestion. What did you want to tell me?”

She got up and began a measured pacing. Neither the floppy sweater nor the easy-fitting jeans succeeded totally in hiding her trim figure. Hell of a good-looking woman.

She said, “This has been bothering me for a week. Do you remember my telling you that Cassie Brennan had come here to work for me?”

“Once, you said. She cleaned your house.” I thought I knew where she was going. “But you said you couldn't tell me anything helpful about her because you two hadn't really talked.”

“That part wasn't true. We did talk. Cassie poured herself out to me.”

“About Sharanov?”

She nodded.

I said, “Something ugly, right? And you were reluctant to tell me because if it got back to Sharanov he might figure you for the source and start looking for an insurance broker who knew how to demonstrate loyalty.”

“Very good, Sid. You should never have quit the police.” She stopped pacing. The worst appeared to be over; some of the tension went out of her body and she sat down.

“I've been wrestling with my conscience and I lost,” she said. “I'll feel better when I get this off my chest.” She sighed mournfully. “Cassie was an awfully nice kid.”

I waited.

She said, “She had just mopped the bathroom floor when she came to me. She had been waiting for me to take a break from some work I had brought out with me. I was putting away the files. She wanted to know, Could we talk?

“It came out in a torrent. She had seen me around Sharanov, I seemed to know him—how to handle him—and maybe I could help her. Because she didn't want to lose her job with the Sharanovs. They paid her generously—
very
—there were little gifts, Kitty had been good to her, and so on.

“But Misha had been coming on to her, and it was getting worse. He could be thoughtful in little ways, but he could be nasty, especially when he was drinking. And what had started out as flattery and teasing and then casual flirtation had built into crude pressure. He told her exactly what he expected of her, spelled it out in words of one syllable.”

I said, “Where could he do this around a house that was usually full of people?”

“Anywhere. The basement, the grounds, the house itself. He would corner her in a room when there were people in the next. He didn't seem to give a damn. One time, when she had left the house for the day, he forced her bike off the road with his Cadillac, so they could ‘talk.'”

“Were his threats all talk or did he put his hands on her?”

“He wasn't physical in a sexual way. But he would grab her by the wrists to hold her attention. Sometimes it hurt. When she threatened to tell Kitty he laughed and said it wouldn't be news to her. Once he drove out from the city by himself when she was alone in the house doing the week's cleaning. For the first time it was just the two of them and she was scared.”

“How did she handle that one?”

“She ran. Literally. She said she needed to buy some cleaning supplies and she jumped on her bike and beat it the hell out of there. And she made sure to keep off the road for the first mile. That's where things were between those two when she came to me.”

“This happened last season,” I said. “And Cassie was still working at the house when she died. So whatever advice you gave her, it must have worked.”

“I hope so.”

“You mean, either it worked, or Misha won the argument. Which do you think?”

“Next time I saw her she thanked me, but who knows? She wasn't likely to tell me she had gone to bed with her tormentor, was she?”

“So tell me. What was the advice you gave her that may or may not have worked?”

“I told her to do what I had done. Because it worked for me.”

Did it? My doubts may have shown, because she hesitated. I said, “Go on.”

“Misha started hitting on me as soon as the ink dried on the first policy I wrote on the Tundra. For a time I was able to keep him at arm's length with the standard tricks women learn in the business world. I acted dumb, as if I didn't know what he was getting at, then I pretended he wasn't serious, then I spoke of my heavy ‘commitment' somewhere else.

“Misha is not easily discouraged. One weekend when we were both out here he phoned me to come right over to his place, he had a serious problem involving his insurance. I canceled my tennis game and hurried over. It turned out the problem wasn't that serious, but Kitty was out of the house and we were alone.
That
was serious.

“And so was Misha. He'd been drinking, and for the first time he put his hands on me. We got into some serious wrestling. He's a strong son of a bitch.”

“Did that surprise you? Didn't you know he used to do strong for a living?”

“I'd heard the rumors,” she admitted. “But that had been business, this was personal. Very. Things weren't going well for me in that bedroom when Kitty showed up. She had come back to the house for something she'd forgotten and she walked in on us. She took one look, turned around, and walked out. It was ghastly. But she had succeeded in breaking Misha's concentration, and he backed off.