Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (12 page)

“What, like an agent?”

“No, I think this is more like a broker,
someone who finds art from various sources—sometimes artists or
their estates, sometimes owners who want to sell a piece. The rep
contacts the big auction houses if the piece might bring a higher
price at a national or international sale. The two Cantone
paintings are some of his earlier work and are considered very
rare. They haven’t been seen publicly in years.”

“Rare, meaning how much in dollars?”

“Well over a million.”

Sam’s breath caught. How could a man who’d
created such valuable art live and die in near poverty? When the
sale of one painting would have set him up for life, why hadn’t he
been able to pay a mortgage on a tiny scrap of property?

“I wonder how and where this art rep got hold
of the paintings,” she mused.

“No idea. But we can check her out. It’s
Carolyn Hildebrandt and she’s got an office in Santa Fe. I’ll call,
see what I can learn.”

“Give it a try,” Sam said. “I’m on my way
home. Let me know what you find out.”

She stopped at the market for a roasted
chicken and a couple of deli salads for dinner, then headed home.
She found Kelly stretched out on the couch in sweats, with the TV
blaring some kind of reality-show contest between teams of
twenty-somethings who couldn’t stop jumping up and down and
screaming “ohmygod!!!”.

“Hey,” Sam called out. “I brought
dinner.”

Kelly shuffled into the kitchen, not
bothering to lower the television volume.

“Yumm . . . you remembered my favorite
chicken. Thanks, Mom.” She helped herself to a heaping plate and
started back to the living room.

“Let’s eat in here,” Sam said. “Get the
chance to catch up on things.”

She complied but didn’t look thrilled about
it.

First things first, Sam reminded Kelly that
she needed her debit card back and expected her to repay the money
she’d taken from the account.

“That wasn’t meant to be an open-ended cash
supply, you know. I gave you the card to help with Christmas
expenses only, you know.”

Kelly had the good grace to hang her head,
just a little. Then came the charm. “I know, Mom, and I’m really so
grateful for that. I didn’t mean to get so far behind on my credit
cards. It won’t happen again.”

“Get the card for me now,” Sam said with the
biggest smile she could muster. Two could play at this charm
game.

Kelly left her dinner plate long enough to
retrieve her purse from the bedroom and hand her mother the card.
Sam slipped it into her jeans pocket.

“So, what’s going to happen now?” Sam asked.
“Job, house in L.A., all that?”

Kelly took a deep breath and pushed her plate
away. “Well, it’s like this. I have no reason to go back to
California.”

Sam pushed her own plate aside now and gave
her daughter a hard stare.

“Real estate has tanked. My house is under
water.”

Sam envisioned some kind of flood, but she
went on.

“It’s worth less than I owe on it. I can’t
refinance because the lenders would never take the loss. I can’t
sell it because I’d have to come up with two hundred grand to make
up the difference. I know I bought too much house at too high a
price. Don’t even remind me of that.” She wouldn’t look straight at
Sam. “Even if I’d kept my job I was sinking farther behind every
month. It was just a matter of time. So I walked away. Everybody’s
doing it.”

Sam wanted to launch into the whole motherly
lecture about what if everybody were jumping off the cliff, but
that sounded way too much like what her own mother would have
said.

“Everybody? Kell, really?”

“Okay, not
every
body.” She carried the
dishes to the sink and dumped the remains of the uneaten food.
“Mom, I tried. I really did. I’ve been looking for a new job for
months. There’s nothing.” Unshed tears made her voice go
ragged.

Sam could have gone into the whole ‘then why
did you leave the job you had’ speech but that, too, was what her
mother would have said. She let the silence fill the room.

“I’ll find something. I know I will. But I
need to stay here awhile. It won’t be long.”

What choice did she have? Give up her privacy
and put her hot new boyfriend on hold. Okay, so that versus a
homeless daughter—Sam knew she’d let her stay.

“One month. I want you online every day,
looking and putting in applications.” What was she saying? That
she’d kick her out in thirty days if she hadn’t moved on? Yes.

Easy to say, but what would she really
do
?

She walked into the living room and switched
off the TV and pointed Kelly to her computer on the desk in the
corner. Job applications were no longer a nine-to-five
proposition.

While Kelly pecked away at the keys Sam
showered and changed into soft flannel pj’s. She got out her
calendar and marked check-back dates for each of her properties.
She would need to keep the yards maintained until winter set in,
plus go back to each and make sure they were tidy and mouse-free
until they sold. The cabin she’d visited today would require snow
removal by December, and she would have to contract that out to
someone else. Most places sold within a month or two, but even
their small rural counties weren’t immune to the real estate
problems that were hitting other parts of the country. Sam might
have more long-term jobs than she’d reckoned on.

Kelly was still happily tapping away at the
computer keys so Sam took a moment to call Beau and fill him in on
the situation, given that she’d left him pretty bewildered last
night. Once she’d covered her daughter’s circumstances, she
remembered the earlier call.

“Rupert told me today that two Cantone
paintings came up for auction in New York,” she told him. “Remember
those blank spots and the nails on the walls in his house? I have
the strangest feeling that millions of dollars in art might have
been hanging in that little place at one time.”

His question was the same as hers—why hadn’t
Cantone sold something and afforded himself a better lifestyle.

“Maybe he just wanted a simple life,” she
said. “Nothing wrong with that. But I still get a weird feeling
about that situation, the guy who was living with him. It would
have been so easy for some unscrupulous bum to take advantage of
the artist, maybe even kill him.”

“Murder by pneumonia?” he said. “It wouldn’t
be the most efficient way to off someone.”

“Still—I wonder where the other guy went. You
know, it’s entirely possible that someone else came along—someone
who knew the value of the art—and maybe the roommate was also a
victim of foul play.” She remembered Betty McDonald’s gossip about
neighbors who didn’t like Cantone. When she mentioned it to Beau he
said there hadn’t been time for him to get out there and question
anyone else. Other cases were beginning to take precedence.

“Sam, we don’t know that Cantone was a victim
of anything. Probably he was old and simply got sick and died.”

Still, she just couldn’t let go of the idea
that the roommate was out there somewhere, dead or alive. She
realized that Kelly’s attention seemed to have wandered toward her
conversation. She lowered her voice to say goodbye to Beau. As soon
as she clicked off the call she turned to her daughter

“Any luck?”

Kelly quickly turned back to the screen.
“Mom, it doesn’t quite work that way.”

Sam paced the kitchen for a minute but doing
nothing wasn’t her style. Remembering that the Chocoholics
Unanimous group would be meeting again tomorrow, she whipped up a
batch of brownies and called Ivan at the bookstore to confirm that
she could deliver them in the morning. Then, knowing that Rupert
was a night owl, she phoned him to see if he’d learned anything new
about the origin of those paintings.

“Well.”

Another of his long stories. She checked the
timer on the oven and sat down.

“I called the art rep at her office. Then I
got to thinking, what was I going to say? Just blurt it out that we
knew where Cantone had been living and demand to know where she got
the man’s art? No. I remembered how I handled something like that
when I wrote
The Jewel Heist
—you remember those few
mysteries I did?—how it’s always better to confront someone in
person rather than over the phone.”

Sam found herself twirling her hand in
mid-air, as if that would hurry him up.

“So I told the lady that I represent a
wealthy woman who is interested in Cantone’s work, and I set up an
appointment for tomorrow.”

“What wealthy woman?”

“You, my dear. You will be the wealthy
client, and that will get us into her office.”

Sam howled out loud. Kelly stared at her
through the doorway.

“Rupert, how on earth am I going to convince
this lady who works with wealthy clients all the time that I’m one
of them? There’s not a thing in my closet that came from better
than JC Penney.”

He hmmm’d for a second. “I’ll work on that. I
probably have something I can loan you. If all else fails, we’ll go
for the grunge look.”

Uh-huh. Me in grunge,
she thought.
About as likely as me in Versace.

He said he’d be over in the morning and
they’d take it from there.

Chapter 15

Sam had to admit that she didn’t sleep a lot
that night. She had one nightmare in which she was about ninety and
Kelly, in her seventies, was trying to convince her that she should
go into a nursing home. Kelly still occupied the spare bedroom in
Sam’s house and by the look of it hadn’t left in forty years. She
woke from that one in a sweat.

Then she began obsessing over how she’d ever
pull off Rupert’s little deception with the art dealer. An actress,
she was not. There was simply no way he could pack her chunky body
into anything designer. Her brain raced through the contents of her
closet, the supply of jeans, stretch pants and work shirts, with
the nicest thing she owned being a black crepe dress she’d bought
for a funeral three or four years ago. And shoes—forget that. She
owned three pair of sneakers, the black patent leather pumps to go
with the black dress, and some Birkenstock knock-offs from
Wal-Mart. Surely Rupert was fashion savvy enough to know that he’d
never seen her wearing anything that could remotely fit the
role.

By three a.m. she’d slid into delirium,
considering whether the costume shops would be open this far in
advance of Halloween. By five, she gave up on sleep and got up. A
lengthy reconnoiter of her closet revealed exactly what she already
knew. Nothing.

She brewed some coffee, then went into the
bathroom and studied the mirror. This idea was becoming laughable.
That face had too many bags and pouches, not to mention years of
sunshine without benefit of weekly facials. Any fool could see that
no spa had ever spent a day on this wreck. Sam had nearly sunk into
despair when Rupert appeared at her back door at eight.

“Rupe, I . . .”

“Not to fear, dear lady. I thought about this
all night.”

Please let him say he’s changed his mind, she
silently begged. We’re backing out of this idiotic scheme.

He held up a garment bag. “I have
the
perfect thing.”

He bustled into her bedroom, tossed the bag
on the bed and unzipped it. “Now, as I recall, you have a nice
little basic black dress.”

How would he remember that? Gay men and
fashion sense, she supposed. She pulled it from the closet,
checking the tag to be sure it wasn’t left over from two sizes
ago.

“Put it on,” he prompted.

He busied himself with the contents of the
garment bag while Sam shed her robe and stepped into the dress.

“Now, to top it off . . .” He held up a
jacket in vivid turquoise silk, sewn in concentric panels so that
the nap created a sunrise effect. She slipped her arms into it and
discovered that it fit perfectly.

“It was a little small on me,” he said. He
noticed her expression. “Hey, I had to describe it accurately when
I wrote Helena Deveau wearing it in
Passion’s Glory
. The
rogue, Max Everhard, cast it into the river right before he took
her, there in the forest.”

Sam hadn’t read that one, and suddenly was
glad of that omission. He cleared his throat and turned back to the
bag. From a small silk pouch he produced a white gold Patek
Philippe watch with diamonds lining the face (another research
expense?) and a tasteful string of pearls.

“Rupe, this must have cost thousands!”

“Twenty-five seven. Put it on.”

Yikes, what if something happened to the
thing. Sam double-checked the clasp.

“The shoes,” he announced. “I seem to
remember that you wear a nine.”

“How do you—?” Never mind. She rummaged in a
drawer and came up with hosiery in a new package. No way were her
legs in shape to go bare. She re-checked the expensive watch clasp
and put her plain-jane digital one into her new jewelry box.

“What time are we meeting this woman?” Sam
sat at her dresser, stroking the lumpy surface of the box. It
warmed her chilled fingers.

He stared at the back of his wrist. “In
fifteen minutes. Not to worry, my dear. The wealthy are always
fashionably late. If we’re there by ten she won’t worry. In fact,
let her worry. She thinks we’re going to spend a shitload of money
this morning.”

“So I have time to drop off a platter of
brownies at the bookstore?”

“Absolutely. Now let’s decide about your
makeup.” He walked over to stand behind Sam and looked at her face
in the mirror. “Girl, I don’t know what you’ve been doing but your
skin is absolutely radiant. Is that new deputy sheriff making your
eyes sparkle like that?”

“No. there is no
sparkle
between us.”
She blushed when he caught the fib in the mirror.