Sinister Sudoku (17 page)

The big man—Jim McShane, Liza realized—shrugged. “Pretty much the usual sort of questions that get asked in this sort of situation.”

“So our . . . business continues,” Tarleton said. It didn’t take Derrick Robbins’s cryptology library to decode that. Carlowe might be dead, Tanino in custody. But the treasure hunt goes on.

Tarleton turned to Alvin. “Do you need that lift, Hunzinger?”

Alvin shook his head. “I have a friend here to get me to my car.” He stood with Liza until Tarleton and his security guy left together. “I’m sorry to impose on you, but I get tired of people waving wads of money at me and expecting me to sit up and bark.”

“Tarleton thought he could buy you?” Liza blinked in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of you letting down a client.”

Alvin gave her a wry look. “Even one like Cornelius Lezat. He may not be the most admirable character. God knows he hurt a lot of people when his company imploded. I’m glad I didn’t have any money locked into that debacle.” Alvin’s pudgy face grew very serious as he went on. “But I’m his attorney, and I’m supposed to do whatever I can to help him. If Lezat were able to broker the return of this painting, it might gain him some crucial goodwill and get his sentence shortened.”

He sighed. “It’s not saving an innocent person from an unjust murder charge, but we can’t all be Perry Mason.”

Liza gave Alvin his lift. He shook his head as he looked at the mess on his fender. “I’ll get that cleaned up before I return the car.”

“You’re going to stay in Portland tonight?”

He nodded. “Not, thankfully, in the same hotel as Mr. Tarleton.”

Liza drove home deep in thought.
Well, now I’ve seen all the competition. As far as I can see, none of them seem to be hot on the trail.

She sighed.
At least no hotter than I am.

The next morning, Liza came down to the kitchen ravenous—and realized there was absolutely nothing for breakfast. As she fed Rusty, she poked experimentally at his dry food and then turned away, muttering, “Yuck.”

She headed downtown to Ma’s Café. The breakfast crowd was just thinning out. Liza glanced around, spotting Ted Everard in one booth. As she walked over in response to his beckoning, she also saw Howard Frost rising from his seat in another booth. When he saw where she was heading, he sank back down, leaning over his empty plate and coffee.

“He looks as if he’s afraid someone will sneak over and spit in his cup,” Liza told Everard as she sat across from him.

“Please.” Everard ran a hand over his face and looked at her with tired, red-rimmed eyes. “He was just over here, going on and on about how he hoped that with the murder inquiry cleaned up, he could expect what he called ‘cooperation from the legal authorities’ for his recovery efforts.”

“You don’t sound very cooperative,” Liza said.

“I’m not feeling much like that, either,” Everard replied. “I keep thinking about that note you gave me, how Dalen wished he could help his sister. Then I have to listen to that insurance company guy passing gas over how much his company had to pay out.”

“Especially after they lowballed Mrs. H. on how much they had to pay out for her,” Liza stopped. “This is a side of you I haven’t seen before.”

He looked up from reaching for his coffee cup. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I thought records and statistics were your big thing. A sort of corporate outlook, I guess. But you’re showing an interesting subversive streak.”

He shrugged. “My dad wanted me to be an accountant; I wanted to be a cop. The last thing I expected to end up doing was cop accounting.”

“How’d that happen?” Liza asked.

“I got shot up pretty badly two months before I was supposed to get married.” Everard’s words came out in a gruff tone.

He caught Liza looking at his finger. “No ring. My fiancée hung with me through some pretty rough times at the hospital, but she was out of the scene before I was finished with rehab.” He sighed. “I can’t really blame her. She got to thinking what it would be like, worrying about the same thing every time I went to work.”

Everard looked her in the eyes with an ironic smile. “And what happens is that they give me a promotion and leave me driving a desk. This is the first time I’ve been out in the field in years. I don’t think Clements can keep me here much longer, though. The head office will want me back on spreadsheet patrol, now that the case is supposedly solved.”

Liza looked at him. “You don’t sound convinced.”

He frowned. “Tanino is not what you’d call a criminal genius, and Bert Clements is a good interrogator. But Vinnie Tanlines is still insisting he’s innocent. They took samples off his hands and clothes to test for GSR—gunshot residue. He’s acting as if he thinks this will clear him. I mean, the guy leaves a fingerprint at a murder scene, for God sakes. I don’t see him outwitting us.”

Liz Sanders came over to take Liza’s order. She went for a heavy breakfast—fried eggs over easy, bacon, rye toast, and coffee. Everard had a rather satirical look in his eyes as he said, “And you were the one who roasted the sheriff about clogging his arteries.”

“I didn’t have anything to eat last night,” she said indignantly. “Actually, I was offered some nice Italian food—with a red sauce.” Even as she spoke, Liza moved the catsup bottle to the rear of the condiments tray.

“I’d think you’d have learned by now that murder scenes aren’t pleasant places to be.” A trace of last night’s aggravation showed in Everard’s eyes.

“I only meant to drive past. But then I saw my friend Alvin there.”

“Right,” Everard mocked. “Poor, helpless Alvin. You had to run and save him.”

“Well, he was wearing a nice coat, and I didn’t want him puking on it,” she said, trying to defend herself.

That brought a twinkle of laughter to his eyes, which was replaced by a considering look. “You still looking for that painting?”

“I’m trying to help Mrs. H.” Liza looked warily at the state police detective. “Why?”

“When Dalen died, I ran a search for any prison associates he might have had. One record looked interesting—a guy doing five to seven for stealing some Native American artworks. Anyway, he got out of Coastal Correctional about five years ago. I did a quick telephone interview with him, and he had nothing useful for us—not exactly surprising when an ex-con talks with the cops.”

“But?” Liza said.

“But,” Everard repeated, “if a non-cop talked with him, maybe he might open up a bit.”

Liza’s food arrived, and she attacked it with abandon. “So where would I find this ex-con art thief?” she asked with her mouth half full.

“Oh, he’s not a thief anymore.” That amused glint was back in Everard’s eyes. “He’s a security consultant, showing museums and galleries how not to get ripped off. The guy’s name is Matt Augustine.”

Everard consulted his notebook, then ripped out a blank page and wrote an address down. “He’s got an office in downtown Portland.”

The address Ted Everard gave Liza was actually in a neighborhood just north of Portland’s downtown, a place called the Pearl. Back when Liza left Maiden’s Bay for college, this area had been called “the warehouse district,” a grimy industrial area.

Since then, however, artists had infiltrated, creating studios and galleries in the old manufacturing and storage buildings. Art had been the pearl hidden behind the grungy, oysterlike surroundings. That image had named the whole area.

Nowadays, high-rise condos were sprouting in what was now a hot part of town, and some of the original settlers found themselves being priced out of the neighborhood they’d created.

If Matt Augustine can afford to have an office here, he must be doing well at the security business,
Liza thought. She turned onto a side street north of Burnside. The address she was looking for turned out to be a squat redbrick structure that had probably begun life as some sort of manufacturing storehouse. Now it had been renovated into living space.

Liza found Augustine’s name on the downstairs buzzer board and hit the appropriate button. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when a voice answered. Although Portland was a fairly stiff drive from Maiden’s Bay, she hadn’t called ahead. She hadn’t wanted to give Matt Augustine a chance not to see her.

“I’m hoping you can help a friend of mine with a problem,” she called into the grille.

After a moment, Augustine buzzed her up.

Liza emerged from the elevator into a large, airy loft space that apparently took up an entire floor of the building.

Apparently, business must be
very
good,
she thought.

Matt Augustine was maybe five years older than Liza, but he had the face of a lively teenager, complete with close-cropped sandy hair, a small, upturned nose, and a cheerful grin that showed lots of white teeth.

His body wasn’t bad either—a compact, muscular frame in a charcoal gray cable-knit turtleneck and black jeans. As he walked forward to shake hands, Liza had a strange feeling of déjà vu. Then she realized what it was. Matt Augustine moved exactly the same way Chris Dalen had.

One of Augustine’s sandy eyebrows quirked. “You say you have a friend with a problem, Ms. . . . ?”

“Liza Kelly,” she introduced herself. “I’m the person who found Chris Dalen’s body.”

Augustine removed his hand, his face shutting down. “I don’t know how many ex-cons you’ve dealt with, Ms. Kelly. But I can give you one useful generalization. We don’t like to be played.”

He stepped back to rest his hip against a desk situated in front of a window that gave a wide urban landscape. “I’ve gotten several calls from people trying to pump my brains for clues about where Dalen hid his famous Mondrian. Hell, if I had a clue, don’t you think I’d be out trying to score the reward?”

Liza gestured around. “It doesn’t look as if you’re doing too badly.”

Augustine laughed. “As it happens, I bought into this property well before the neighborhood enjoyed its upturn.”

“You mean this was a hideout in your bad old days?” Liza teased.

The former art thief tilted his head. “Not exactly. It was more like . . . a storage area to let hot items cool off.”

Well, it looks as if he’s cooled down a little.
She reached into her bag to get out the copy of Chris Dalen’s note and held it out. “I am here to help a friend. My next-door neighbor is Chris Dalen’s sister.”

Matt Augustine read it over. “It’s the same old chicken-scratch Chris always wrote.” His eyes went from the note to Liza. “Either the suits at Western Assurance Group have gotten very smart—and started hiring better-looking investigators—or you’re for real.”

“I taught a course at the prison, and Chris was one of my students,” Liza began. She took the story through to the murder of Rod Carlowe.

Augustine shook his head. “Both Chris and I have been in worse hellholes than Coastal Correctional. But for him to waste all those years . . .”

He shrugged. “Then again, Chris could be a very stubborn guy. All he had to hear was that a job was impossible to make him bust his hump trying to pull it off. That’s what got him caught over the Mondrian, you know. He had a guy on the inside—a guard—who was hinky. Anybody else would have pulled the plug. But Chris bulled ahead, the guard sang like a canary at the first question from the cops, and Chris got nailed.”

“But not before he stashed the painting.” Liza looked at Augustine. “You must have gotten on with him very well for him to tell you so much. Except for kidding around, he was pretty close-mouthed around me.”

“I knew him before he wound up in the joint,” Augustine admitted. “Often in our business, you wind up serving a sort of apprenticeship to learn the trade. That’s what I did with Chris.”

He laughed. “And as a kid, Chris did the same thing with a guy named Otto. Half of the lessons he’d do just the way Otto told him, in this terrible accent. I guess Otto was great with locks, but English was definitely a second language for him. ‘Mitt der English, not zo goot,’ Chris would say.”

Liza joined in. “You sounded exactly like him. ‘Zumday, I call you on der telefunken.’ ”

Augustine threw his head back, cracking up. “Oh, yeah, ‘Telefunken!’ I guess poor old Otto never quite got the hang of ’telephone.’” He actually had to wipe his eyes at that memory. But when he looked at Liza again, Matt Augustine had an odd expression on his face.

“Everybody else who asked me, I told them I hadn’t been in touch with Chris since I left the joint. Being on parole, you’re not supposed to associate with known felons.” He glanced over at the collection of items on his desk. “That wasn’t exactly true. I had a visit from a guy who got out a few weeks ago—a guy with a message from Chris.”

Liza stared. “What did he want?”

“Believe it or not, a telephone. One of those cheapo, throwaway cell phones. I had to figure out how to get the number to him, and arrange for it to be waiting in one of our old pickups—”

“Like Patrician Books?” Liza asked.

Augustine looked a little surprised, but then he shook his head. “No, Patrick was just for messages. We had other places for leaving tools, or . . . merchandise.”

He gestured out the window at the cityscape. “Of course, with so many renovations going on all over the place, a lot of our old drop points have disappeared. But I found one, and I left der telefunken in it. Thought I’d get a call from Chris after he got out, maybe even see him again.” He raised his shoulders, then let them slump. “Instead—”

“Bad things happened,” Liza said. She picked up Chris Dalen’s note. “He said it was possible here. But when he asked for my help, he seemed to think I shouldn’t have any problem finding the Mondrian. Is there something here that I’m missing?”

Matt Augustine took another long, hard look at the photocopy. Then he shook his head. “Not that I can see.”

The afternoon shadows kept getting longer as Liza drove back home to Maiden’s Bay—not that she much noticed, though. All the way, she kept going over her conversation with Matt Augustine, squaring what he’d said about Chris Dalen with what she knew of the man. Some points matched up—the weird sense of humor, his fractured sauerkraut accent . . . his stubbornness.