“Do I need a lawyer?” Cannon spoke quietly and again directed the question to me.

I began to answer but was interrupted by Chapman. “If you’re gonna tell me you killed someone, we’ll call you a lawyer. Somehow, I doubt that’s the problem. Just tell me what’s on your mind and worry about that later.”

“Well, what if I have information about a crime?”

Mike’s open palm slammed the desktop another time. “Whaddaya think I’ve been asking you to tell me about for the last hour?”

25

Cannon had stalled for about as long as Mike was going to let him, and he knew that. “I suppose there are two things that changed the relationship between Mrs. Caxton and Marco. The first problem began about a year ago.”

“When, exactly? ‘About’ doesn’t help me all that much.”

“I can’t give you a specific date. I’m pretty sure it was before she and her husband began to have problems in their marriage. I remember that because I thought it was strange she had come to see Marco about a matter so important but that it was something she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t tell Lowell.”

“That’s a start. Coop, make a list for me. First thing, try to put a date on that visit, okay? What happened that day?”

“Denise was exuberant. It must have been spring or summer, ’cause she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was dressed to the nines when she came in, and she looked spectacular. They began the usual flirtation, and Marco made sure that I took it all in. She handed me a bottle of wine-a very special one, she made sure to tell me-and asked me to open it. I did, and Marco invited me to pour for all three of us.”

“Had you known she was coming?”

“Yes, she’d called the day before and told Marco she’d found a surprise. A painting, that is. Asked if he would look at it for her. Of course he agreed.”

Cannon took a breath before going on. He rubbed his hands together and talked slowly, as though uncertain he should talk at all. “After half an hour of cajoling Marco, she got up from the chaise and picked up the bag she’d come in with- one of those large canvas sail bags. She removed something from it, and all I could see was a small mound of plastic bubble wrapping. She unwound several layers of it and lifted out a painting. Then she walked to one of the easels and rested it on the stand. ‘Come, Marcolino-come play with me.’ Mrs. Caxton took him by the hand and stood him before the canvas.”

“Did you know what it was?”

“I certainly didn’t. It was dark, really covered with dirt, and hard to make out.”

“Did Varelli say anything?”

“Then? No. It would have been unusual for him to speak until after he’d gotten to work and made up his mind that he knew what he was looking at.”

“What’d he do?”

“What he did best, Detective. He put the glass of wine down next to him, strapped his headset on-sort of like small binoculars-and steadied himself in place to look at every inch of the canvas with the aid of the light from the glasses. You want to know the details?”

“All of them.”

“It was obvious that not only was there soot on this one, and varnish, but something had been painted over the original work. That happens frequently with oils, you know, sometimes just because the artist changed his mind about what he wanted to portray. But in this case it looked like it had been put on top to disguise an earlier version of whatever was depicted.

“So Marco got out his acetone, soaked a cotton swab in it, and went about dabbing at a corner of the canvas, sort of the top right quadrant.”

“And you, what were you doing?”

“I stood behind him to watch, to be there to assist him should he have needed me to.”

“And Deni?”

“Practically breathing down his neck. Not that he minded that, from her.”

“How long does this take, what he was doing?”

“Depends. On what’s there, how many layers, how easily- or not-it picks up. I would say Marco worked for close to an hour before he said very much. He stopped to tell us that he thought he had gotten through the primary layer. He stood up to stretch, and to have me take a look, which I did.”

“What did you see?”

Cannon smiled for the first time in ten minutes. “You sound just as anxious as Denise. ‘What do you see, Marco? What can you tell me?’ He poured himself another glass and asked me a few questions, ignoring Deni completely.

“ ‘What century, boy, do you see now? What school, what artist?’ He did that with me all the time, delighting in those rare occasions when I could pinpoint a good answer as rapidly as he was able to do.”

“Did you recognize anything?”

“Only that Marco had gone back several centuries, between removing the new paint and the grime that had so discolored the original canvas. Wherever this piece had come from, it had been terribly, terribly neglected.”

“What then?”

“He went back to work, this time adding some ammonia to the acetone and patiently dabbing away. It’s a very slow business. After a while, Marco’s touch exposed some bright blue paint trimmed with a very pearly sort of highlight. He almost gasped when he saw the contrast of the two colors next to each other.”

“Excuse my ignorance,” Mike said, “but why?”

“I didn’t know myself, but now I assume that was the point at which he thought he had recognized the artist, perhaps even the painting.”

“And Deni?”

“She had seen him do this enough times to know he was reacting to something serious.” Again, Cannon slipped into one of his imitations. “ ‘Go in deeper, Marco,’ she urged him. I remember that he hesitated for a bit, then picked up one of his pointed tools, almost like a scalpel, and began to dig at the thick varnish in another part of the painting. More of the picture came into view, near its center, revealing a clear yellow tint that had been almost brown in color in the layer above.

“That’s when I was banished.”

“By Denise Caxton?”

“By Marco Varelli. That familiar little gesture I told you about earlier, sweeping me away with his hand like you might do to a pet dog you wanted to get out from underfoot? That’s exactly what I got from him. ‘That’s all I’m going to do for today,’ he told me. ‘You may go home now.’ ”

“And did you?”

“I left the studio, certainly. But my curiosity had been aroused. I went straight to the library at NYU to do a bit of art research. At that point I was fairly confident that we had been looking at something from the seventeenth century, probably Dutch.”

“A Rembrandt?” Mike asked.

“Not bad, Detective. It was an interior scene by a great colorist. I was guessing Vermeer, who was known for his pearlcolored reflections and the fantastically luminous shades of blue and yellow. I pored over textbooks until I found what I was looking for. Have you ever heard of a painting called The Concert?”

Neither one of us had.

“You know about the break-in at the Gardner Museum?”

Mike was following the story intently. “Yeah, we do. Why?”

“Along with the great Rembrandt that was taken,” Cannon said, acknowledging Chapman as he went on, “which you clearly seem to be aware of, there was one Vermeer stolen that has never been found either. It’s called The Concert, and it depicts a young woman playing a pianoforte for two others. I believe I’m one of the very few people in the world who has seen that painting-at least, any portion of it-in the last ten years. The other two who saw it with me that day-Mrs. Caxton and Mr. Varelli-are dead. Maybe now you can understand why I’m reluctant to speak about it.”

Mike had no sympathy for Cannon’s fear. “What’s its value?”

“Not as great as the Rembrandt, but still in the multimillions. Vermeer is known to have painted only thirty-five works in his lifetime.”

“Was it still at Varelli’s studio when you got there the next day?”