Murder 101 (20 page)

There were kisses and hugs all around. Everyone admired the ring. The girls were in their element while the boys talked food. Rina said, “You have to call up your parents, Lani.”

“They already know,” Jacob said. “They helped me pick out the ring. They’re coming for dinner. I’m assuming you wouldn’t mind.”

“When did you do all this?” Ilana finally said.

“I’m a sneaky guy.”

“Gawd, with all these people, you should have rented a hall!” Nina turned to Ilana. “Would you like a bridal shower, dear?”

“Nina, I’m sure her friends will do that for her,” Tyler said.

“I’m sure they will. But with my friends, she’ll have a completely different present pool: deeper pockets. Don’t deny me this, dear. We’re always looking for an occasion to dress up and show off.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. He leaned over to Decker and handed him a piece of paper. “New York art galleries. A lot of them closed at five, but some were open until eight. I called up a few to find out if any of them employed Angeline Moreau.”

“Any luck?”

“No. And I didn’t say I was a cop. I told them I was from the bursar’s office at Littleton College and was trying to reconcile some numbers for her W2 form.”

“Good work.” Decker’s eyes scanned the list of galleries. “I got a call back from Jason Merritt. I set up an appointment at ten. Let’s meet at Gabe’s apartment at nine and figure out a strategy.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“For once can you
not
talk about work?” Rina scolded. “Especially in light of what just happened?”

“I brought it up,” McAdams said. “I apologize.”

“Don’t you dare let him off the hook,” Rina said.

Decker said, “I won’t talk about work. But then you can’t talk about wedding stuff. I have nothing to add on the seemingly endless topic. And even if I did, no one would listen to me.”

Hannah said, “You haven’t said anything to me.”

“Whatever I said never got past your mother’s veto.”

“That’s not fair,” Rina said. “Well, maybe it is a little fair.”

Decker laughed, leaned over, and kissed her forehead.

“I’d like to have your input, Peter,” Ilana said.

“Ilana, that would be a first. But honestly, weddings are outside my bailiwick.”

“How can I not talk about weddings?” Rina protested. “Especially now.”

“Two weddings in . . .” Sammy looked at his brother. “Are you planning in months or years for the actual date?”

Ilana’s eyes were on the ring. “There’s no hurry.”

“Oh, don’t say that to him,” Rina said.

“I’d at least like to finish my internship.”

“How long is that going to take?” Rina said.

“Like maybe two years.”

“Two years sounds about right.” Jacob stood up and motioned over a couple who was walking toward the table, both of them with grins on their faces. “Dad, could you just be nice?” he asked. “And if you can’t be nice, can you at least not be grumpy?”

“Don’t ask for the moon, son, and you’ll never be disappointed,” Decker said.

“He’s just grumpy because he’s hungry,” Sammy said.

Rachel said, “Like father, like son . . .”

“I fully admit it.”

“This event should have been catered,” Nina said.

“Stop it,” Tyler said.

Ilana’s parents sat down and again kisses and hugs and oohs and aahs were exchanged. The server finally came over with several bottles of champagne and a bucket of ice.

Nina said, “Keep it flowing, darling. It looks like everyone could use a little mellowing.”

When all the glasses were poured, Jacob held the glass up and said, “L’chayim.”

“L’chayim,” the chorus responded.

“That means to life,” McAdams told Nina.

“I know what it means, Tyler, I wasn’t born in an eggshell.” Nina pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “Besides, who in America hasn’t seen
Fiddler on the Roof
?”

CHAPTER 20

T
HE MERRITT GALLERY’S
address was in the Fifties between Park and Lexington, one of the many smaller studios that occupied a glass and chrome skyscraper. Inside, it was small and spare with religious articles in cases as well as Byzantine art painted on canvas, board, or wood planks. There were several Madonna and child, the Christ babies looking very elongated and with adult features, as if the artist was astigmatic. The babies were very different from the plump Renaissance Jesus that Decker was used to seeing in museums.

A man dressed head to toe in black looked up from the desk. He was in his thirties, balding and lean, but with big arms that strained his long-sleeved T-shirt. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Jason Merritt.” Decker gave the man his card. “He’s expecting us.”

“Police?” The assistant frowned. “Is something the matter?”

“Just gathering information about icons,” Decker said. “It has to do with a thirty-year-old case that we’re reopening.”

The assistant pushed the intercom on his phone. “The Greenbury Police are here . . . Certainly, Mr. Merritt.” He looked at Decker and then at McAdams. “His office is in the back.” The assistant got up and started walking. “Are you working on the Petroshkovich icons? We’re all wondering if the case would ever be reopened.”

“It was never closed.”

“Well, I for one am glad to hear that someone’s breathing new life into it.”

“And you are?”

“Victor Gerrard.” He knocked on the door.

“It’s open.”

Gerrard opened the door.

The trio was welcomed into a small but tidy office. The art dealer was in his fifties with thinning dark hair and dark eyes. He was slight and had manicured nails. He was immaculately dressed in a pinstriped gray suit, white shirt, and a red tie. Black, polished lizard skin shoes on his feet. He listened intently while Decker explained why they had come.

Afterward Merritt said, “I’m still a little confused, Detective. I don’t have anything to do with art nouveau or art deco. You should try Max Stewart.”

“I’ve already been there. Now I’m interested in learning about the Petroshkovich icons that were stolen from Marylebone, Rhode Island.”

“And what’s the connection between a thirty-year-old case of stolen Russian icons and stolen Tiffany?”

“Not much except that both of the thefts appeared opportunistic. Meaning that the thief would need someone to market the stolen items. And he’d need high-end clients. I’m wondering if you could point us in the direction of dealers who . . . may be less meticulous with the object’s ownership.”

Merritt looked at Gerrard. “You should be getting back to the gallery.”

“Of course.” Gerrard smiled and nodded. “Good luck.”

Merritt turned his attention back to the detectives. “Why exactly have you come to me?”

“Your name came up as a dealer who specializes in Russian icons.”

Merritt made a tent with his fingers and brought them to his chin. “I still don’t understand why you’re so interested in the Petroshkovich icons when you’re investigating stolen Tiffany.” The man’s expression grew cold. “Is this interview really subterfuge?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If this is about my grandfather, I have nothing to say to you.”

Decker was expressionless. “Your grandfather?”

Merritt considered the baffled look on his face. He blushed. “Never mind.”

“No, no, no. You can’t throw something out like that and say never mind.”

The art dealer sighed. “It’s not relevant.”

“Sir, I don’t have a lot to go on. Everything is important.”

Merritt said, “If you speak to enough people, you might hear things about my grandfather stealing Russian art. That kind of drivel is not only completely false, it’s pernicious.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Could you fill us in a little?”

“Why bother? It’s all a pack of lies.”

“I could either hear the truth from you or the lies from your enemies.”

Merritt considered his words. “Some reprehensible people have had the nerve to say that my grandfather looted from Russian churches.”

Decker took out a notepad. “Who’s your grandfather?”

“August Merritt. His father—my great-grandfather—was Wilson Merritt. He was one of the few businessmen who dealt with Russia postrevolution. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. It involved many layers of bureaucracy from both countries.”

McAdams said, “What business was he in?”

“He owned textile mills down south. He imported cloth to third world countries. That included the Soviet Union when it was heavily ostracized. After the revolution and WWI, the Russian people ended up in a bad state—as was most of eastern Europe. Food was scarce, fuel was scarce, supplies were scarce. Bolts of woolen cloth may not seem like a lot, but it saved many people from freezing to death. My great-grandfather and my grandfather were rewarded for their humanitarian acts with visiting privileges at a time when the Soviet Union was off limits to most Western countries.”

“So how did these rumors get started?” Decker asked.

“Jealousy.” The art dealer made a point of sighing. “Wilson Merritt had always been interested in Byzantine art. As a matter of fact, he started the Merritt Gallery just to display his massive collection and later on, my grandfather went into the retail aspect. Wilson’s detractors claim that he had acquired the pieces by using his favored status in the Soviet Union. And that part is true. It’s the theft part that’s a lie. The art world can be very vicious.”

“Finance is pretty vicious as well,” McAdams said. “When you mix the two, there is a high probability of corruption.”

“Well said.”

“How do you think the rumors got started?” Decker asked.

“As I told you, Russia was in terrible straits. The country needed fuel. Thousands of religious items were burned for heat. What wasn’t incinerated was thrown away as obsolete relics of an undesirable past. Wilson and my grandfather August made it their mission to save as many of those works as they could from total destruction. Of course that included items from churches left to rot. August wasn’t a thief, he was a hero.”

Decker looked up from his notepad. “Anyone specific who’s spreading the gossip? Some names would go a long way.”

“I have no proof. So I take the high road. Having been a victim of the rumor mill, I loathe hurting anyone even if that person or persons deserve it.”

“How about if I name a name.”

“I can’t stop you, can I?”

“Chase Goddard. What do you know about him?”

“No comment.”

“Do you know if he’s ever purchased stolen items?”

“I know of one case where he bought a very expensive pair of French silver candlesticks from the seventeenth century. They had been stolen from a Catholic church in the Chicago area. But as soon as it came to light, he refunded the money to his seller and gave the items back to the church.”

“Was it an honest mistake?”

“It could have been. It could have also been prevented had he done proper homework.”

“How was he caught?”

“The whole thing came to light when someone saw the items on an old website.” Merritt looked at him. “And you didn’t hear that from me.”

McAdams said, “Was this when he was in New York?”

“Yes,” Merritt said. “It happened about six or seven years ago before he went under.”

“His New York gallery went under, but the website of his current gallery in Boston has a lot of inventory.”

“So you’ve noticed.”

“Care to speculate?” Decker asked.

“I’ll leave the hearsay to others.”

“Have you ever done business with him?”

“Good heavens, no.”

“Has he ever approached you for business?”

“Several times . . . minor icons. I wasn’t interested for a variety of reasons.”

“What constitutes a minor icon?” Decker asked.

“Too recent of an age, poorly done images, and the piece as a whole is in bad shape.”

He stopped talking. Decker waited for him to continue. Merritt finally said, “There was a onetime exception to the trash he usually showed me. It was when he was still in New York and his reputation hadn’t yet been so sullied. But he was still someone we all watched.”

“What happened?” McAdams asked.

“Goddard claimed that he had just gotten back from a European buying spree. He presented me with a truly magnificent icon. I won’t go into the specifics but it was spectacular. The detail, the color, and the artist.” A deep sigh. “I still bristle when I think of the lost opportunity.”

“Why didn’t you buy it?”

“I came that close to purchasing it.” He pinched off a distance between his forefinger and his thumb. “But then he told me it came from Germany. He claimed to have checked out the provenance and that it went back a hundred years. I went on the Art Loss Register. I went through as many books on religious items as I could find. I couldn’t place the object anywhere. Perhaps the provenance was legitimate. But it was an expensive item and I couldn’t take the chance.”

“Okay.” Decker thought a moment. “Why did you have a problem with an object that came from Germany? Did you think that the icon was looted by the Nazis?”

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

Decker digested the information. “I’m not a history buff but I seem to recall that Hitler’s invasion into Russia was a big disaster, that it was the turning point of the war. They bombed the cities, but the Germans never got into Moscow with boots on the ground. My dad used to tell me that the Russian winters did more to decimate Hitler’s armies than all the bombs of Europe.”

McAdams was already on his iPhone looking up a condensed piece of history. “Operation Barbarossa was the code name of the Soviet invasion by Hitler. Huge invasion . . . successful at first. And . . . eventually it was an utter failure.”

“As far as a war tactic, yes, it was a failure,” Merritt said. “And it was the turning point of the war. But the big picture doesn’t tell the whole story. St. Petersburg—Leningrad back then—was under siege for two and a half years. The Germans didn’t occupy the city because they didn’t want to feed the residents in times of shortage. So with the Finns, the Germans closed all the access roads in and out of the city, hoping to starve the population before they’d take over the land. But the city wasn’t impenetrable. German soldiers went in and looted. And some lucky individuals got out mostly through Lake Ladoga, which was how the Red Cross got its meager supplies into a starving population.”

“Okay,” Decker said. “So you’re telling me that Nazis crossed enemy lines to loot Russian art while the city was under siege?”

“To that statement I say to you that someone dismantled the original Amber Room before Catherine’s Palace was bombed to smithereens.”

Decker turned to McAdams. “Want to look up the Amber Room for me?”

“Already on it.”

Merritt said, “You don’t know about the Amber Room?”

“It rings a very faint bell,” Decker said. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was a room with a lot of amber in it.”

“The original room was covered in amber with twenty-four-carat gold mirrors and precious and semiprecious stone inserts,” McAdams said. “The repro is still in the Catherine Palace. I saw it. I remember it in detail because I’ve never seen anything like it before. There was an intimacy about it even though it was over the top. The history of how it came to exist eludes me at the moment. . . . Hold on, let’s see what I have. Okay, originally constructed in Prussia, but Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia gave it to Peter the Great in order to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.”

Merritt sniffed. “Even the repro is magnificent in its craftsmanship. One can only imagine what the original was like. It must have been unworldly remarkable.”

McAdams said, “What’s unworldly remarkable is that two major countries had to form a pact against Sweden.”

The art dealer managed to crack a smile. He said, “Everyone knows the room was dismantled by the Nazis. Twenty-seven crates were moved to East Berlin and then the crates went underground in Konigsberg, supposedly destroyed in a fire.”

“You have doubts?” Decker asked.

“I do. If for no other reason, it’s a romantic notion.”

McAdams was still pulling up information. “This article says that the original cartons may now be located in the bunker in Auerswalde near Chemnitz, Germany.”

“Perhaps the boxes will magically surface. You should go to St. Petersburg, Detective. See it for yourself.”

“You’re the second person who’s told me that within twenty-four hours.”

“It’s a fascinating city, specifically in its scope of grandeur.”

McAdams said, “The whole city is like Park Avenue on steroids.”

Decker said, “I was told that most of the great artworks of the Hermitage were stored in the basement of St. Isaac’s and remained there until the end of the war.”

“That’s true,” Merritt said. “Most of the great pieces survived, specifically the two Da Vinci masterpieces, but there was looting. The Hermitage did get its ounce of revenge, however.” He smiled. “Inside the museum, there are several out-of-the-way rooms entitled the Hidden Treasures. You have to look for the rooms to find them. They display marvelous works of impressionism and postimpressionism. So why aren’t the works with the Hermitage’s spectacular permanent collection?”

Decker thought a moment. “Stolen art?”

“The Russians would call it disputed art.”

“Depends whose ox is being gored.”

“You’re correct about that. It is clear that the paintings were looted from Germany. For fifty years, they sat in the basement of the Hermitage until the museum decided to do the audacious and display the pieces. Whenever the German government starts making waves about the ownership, the Russians come back with the Amber Room.

“There are quite a few people out there whose full-time occupation is recovering looted art. Most of the time, the art is hiding in plain sight. Look at the Gurlitt collection in Munich. Everyone around knew about Hildebrand Gurlitt for years, including the German government. But no one said a word. What is really needed is for violating countries to start fessing up.”