“You said you were going to tell us why Lowell Caxton wasn’t welcome at the legitimate houses any longer,” I reminded Joan.

“The Gardner Museum heist, almost ten years ago. Has that come up in any of your interviews yet?”

“You should stick to your fiction, Joan,” Mike said. “Wanna pour me another glass of that red wine?”

I knew that around the turn of the century Boston socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner had built a Venetian-style palazzo to house one of the country’s most spectacular art collections, which she had put together with the aid of her close friend Bernard Berenson. I had been to the museum many times when I was in college, and even once last year on my way through the Fenway section of the city.

“I remember the break-in, but it was years ago. Hasn’t that ever been solved?” I asked.

“Never. Listen, guys,” said Joan, telling the story of what remains to this day the costliest art theft in United States history, “this is where Lowell may have gotten his hands even deeper in the dirt.

“In March of nineteen ninety, two men disguised as Boston cops presented themselves to the museum’s security officers at the side door of the building, and were let in. The robbers locked up the guards, disabled the unsophisticated alarm system, and made off with about ten paintings. Estimated value? Almost three hundred million dollars. ”

“Are you serious? What was in the place?” Mercer asked.

“A few Impressionists-I think a Manet and a Degas-an ancient Chinese bronze work, a finial from a Napoleonic flagstaff, a Vermeer, and most importantly, the masterpiece that all the fuss has been about. It’s a three-hundred-andsixtyyear-old Rembrandt that hung in the Gardner’s famous Dutch Room. The title of it is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and it was the only seascape that he ever painted.

“Nothing from the heist has ever been found. Not a trace. The Gardner had so little insurance at the time of the theft that the reward they offered was only a million dollars. Just a year or two ago, the FBI upped it to five million. There have been rumors in the art world for years, but not a clue to follow up on. Except the chips.”

“What chips?”

“I’m just being dramatic, Alex. Paint chips, of course. Most of the works were small enough to be taken frame and all. But-maybe because of the way the Rembrandt was fastened to its mountings-the robbers actually cut it out of the frame. Isn’t that awful? Anyway, the varnish on it-and its great age-must have made it so stiff that literally dozens of paint chips fell onto the floor, and that’s all that was left behind.”

“Get me from there to Caxton,” Mike said, licking the chocolate sauce from the profiteroles off the side of his mouth.

“Everyone knows the painting is too hot to handle. Over the years, several mobsters who’ve turned up dead in the Boston area have been linked to the robbery. And each time there’s been a buzz in the galleries and auction houses that the Rembrandt’s at the heart of it. If anyone could hide this kind of booty, or better still, transport it anywhere in the world, it could only be an individual with the means of a Lowell Caxton, or someone who flirted with danger as freely as Deni.

“There was an opening at Lowell’s gallery in the Fuller Building a few months ago. Deni had left before I arrived. Everyone said she was high and kind of mouthing off about this astounding coup she was about to make that would turn the art world on its ear. Be sure and ask Lowell about it when you see him again.”

This time it was Mercer’s beeper that went off before the end of the meal. He rejected my offer of a cell phone and stepped away to return the call from a booth at the top of the staircase.

When he came back down the flight of stairs, he approached the table and tapped on it with his knuckles. “Off to Chelsea, m’man.”

Mike threw back his head and chugged down the La T ‚che ’ 86 as though it were a Budweiser. “More string sculptures at this hour of the night?”

“Nope. Denise Caxton’s car.”

“Where?”

“Right under our noses the whole time. In a chop shop one block away from her gallery. About to be dissected and shipped overseas, from Chelsea Road Repairs, Ltd.”

“Anything in it?”

“Crime Scene’s going over it now for fingerprints. And it looks like there’s blood. Could be she was abducted from her car and then finished off in Omar’s wagon.”

Mike stood up from the table and thanked Joan for the meal. “How about we pick you up in the morning and drop in on Lowell at the Fuller Building?” he asked me. “Be downstairs at nine.”

“Don’t rush off before I finish with the news from the Medical Examiner’s Office,” Mercer said, putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “DNA isn’t in yet, but they did a basic ABO typing from the sperm sample found on the canvas where the body had been. We got a new ball game, ladies and gentleman. Omar Sheffield did not rape Denise Caxton.”

14

“‘Lovers,’ Mr. Chapman? It’s not the term of art I would have chosen,” Lowell Caxton said, standing behind the desk in his office in the Fuller Building and seemingly looking out at the view northward on Madison Avenue. “Personally, I referred to them as Deni’s ‘shareholders.’ Each had a piece of her at some point in time. But it was a very volatile market.”

“You’re not suggesting they were interested in Deni because of her money, are you?” Mike reeled off the names of the men Joan had told us about-Mattox, the architect, and Wrenley, the antiques dealer.

“Come, come, Mr. Chapman. You’re brighter than that. Not her money, certainly. My money. The Caxton fortune has attracted all kinds of maggots to Deni as well as to me.” He turned back to face us. “Something I’ve had to deal with all my life. And no, as I’ve told you, I was spared a proper introduction to either of those gentlemen you’ve mentioned.”

Morning sunlight was beaming in and hitting Caxton directly in the eye, so he came out from behind his desk and gestured for us to sit in the overstuffed leather chairs grouped beneath a pair of Boudin beach scenes.

“How come you didn’t tell us anything about the letters Deni had gotten? The threatening ones, the blackmail?” Mike asked.

“Ah, do I sense the presence of a little guttersnipe?” Caxton groaned.

“What?” “

La povera Signorina Sette, am I right? Poor little Miss Sette, still peddling the same nonsense at the drop of a hat. Let me guess, gentlemen-when you sell the movie rights to your ridiculous fantasy here, you’ll be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Caxton said, grinning at Mike. “You’ll be Denzel Washington, Marina Sette will be some two-bit Shirley Temple look-alike, and as for me-if only they could bring Bela Lugosi or Vincent Price back to life. I’m always to be cast as the villain, am I not? At least, it’s usually such a richly textured role.”

There was a knock on the door and an assistant entered with a tray holding a Baroque silver coffee service and a mound of croissants and Danish. Caxton was silent as she put the heavy load on the table in front of us and walked out of the room.

“Why don’t you help yourselves, Detectives?”

“Nah, I’ll just let Sharon Stone over here pour for me. That’s why I bring her along. Not very useful, but sometimes decorative.” Mike jerked his thumb in my direction as I was leaning forward to pour the coffee.

“What made you connect Marina Sette to the letters Deni received?” I asked.

“This isn’t the first time she’s tried to bring me down, Ms. Cooper. Did she take the trouble to come all the way here just to stir the same old pot again? You know why she hates me, don’t you?”

There wasn’t much of a way to protect Sette in all this. “I know what she told me.”

“Her story is nonsense, of course. There’s no way for her to prove it, but sadly, there’s no way for me to dis prove it, either.” I remembered that the woman Marina claimed was her mother, Lowell’s second wife, was killed in a boating accident. “Buried at sea, as it were.”