“Do you know Varelli? Marco Varelli?”

“Certainly. I’d actually met Marco many times.”

“With Deni?”

“I’d met him through clients long before I started to date Deni. But I’d never been to his atelier until she took me there. He was a genius-a lovely man.”

“When were you there-at his studio, I mean?”

“A couple of times this spring. I don’t remember exactly, but once or twice, probably in June or July.”

“Why did Deni take you there?”

“She usually went when she had a painting that she wanted Varelli to look at.”

“Like a Vermeer?” Mike asked.

I wanted to slow him down. I could see Preston Mattox stiffen when Mike mentioned the artist’s name. If he jumped into the territory of stolen artworks too quickly, I was afraid he’d lose his cooperative subject.

“So, you two have bought into all the gossip on the circuit. Denise Caxton and the masterpieces from the Gardner heist. When you find the goods, be sure and let me know,” he said, scowling at Chapman as though he had made a terrible mistake.

“Deni ever talk to you about the Vermeer? Or the Rembrandt?”

Mattox was angry now. “She wasn’t a thief, Detective. Deni made more than her share of enemies, but she was an awfully decent woman when you gave her a chance to be. There was no way she was involved with the scum who’ve been peddling stolen property. She didn’t need that kind of trouble. Between the life that Lowell had built for her and what I was willing to provide when she married me, there wasn’t any reason to debase herself with something that would land her in jail.”

While Mattox was hot, Mike decided it was a good moment to offer him up the name of his rival. “And Frank Wrenley? Where did he fit in Deni’s life?”

“As far out of the picture as I could move him, Detective.”

“Why? What did you know about him?”

“Not enough, clearly. But that’s because whatever I saw I didn’t like.”

“More than just jealousy?”

“Yes, Mr. Chapman. Far more than that. Frank moved in on Deni like a vulture right after she and Lowell split. I mean, they had known each other before around the auction houses, but he pounced on her like a panther when her wounds were still quite raw.”

“But she loved him, too, didn’t she?”

“She certainly liked what he offered her as an immediate alternative when Lowell Caxton brought their marriage to a crashing halt. Wrenley was a vehicle to get back at her husband. First of all, he was young, and youth was something Lowell couldn’t buy for himself with all his millions. Wrenley was slick-too slick for my taste.”

“Was he a real player in the antiques business?”

Mattox was slow to answer. “He’s been making quite a name for himself. Not necessarily someone I’d bring in on a project, but he seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Would you say that you were closer to Deni in recent months than Wrenley was?” I asked.

Preston Mattox crossed his arms and leaned against the sill. Something he thought of brought a smile to his face. “I almost gave up on Deni before I got started. For a while it wasn’t Lowell’s shadow that got in the way, it was Wrenley’s. Everywhere we went, he’d been there with Deni first. Just your mention of Marco Varelli reminded me how unreasonable I’d been about it. I’d been introduced to the man any number of times, but that last afternoon we were up in his studio, Deni and I walked in with a bottle of wine and some biscotti and he embraced me in a bear hug, calling me ‘Franco.’ Instead of correcting him, I took it out on Deni as soon as we left, asking her what the hell she’d been doing there with Frank.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“I’m not sure she ever gave me an answer, Mr. Chapman. As with most of our arguments, she got me over them by taking me home to make love. I knew she and Wrenley had been doing the auction scene together, so it made sense that they had taken some work to Varelli to be cleaned up or restored. I just didn’t like following in his footsteps wherever we went. But I didn’t answer the question you asked, did I, Miss Cooper?

“Yes,” he went on, “I was confident that I’d be spending the rest of my life with Deni. I can’t tell you how extraordinarily happy that made me.”

“Why had you gone to see Varelli that day?”

“Because Deni asked me to. Simple as that. He’d been mad at her about something, she wouldn’t tell me what. So she wanted to take him a gift for his wife, smoke the peace pipe together-that sort of thing. I suppose I was an intermediary. She knew he liked to talk to me about my work-and that I could hold my own, whether it was about the architectural principles of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Jefferson or about drawings and art.”

Chapman didn’t care about the dome on the Rotunda. “What was the gift that Deni took for Mrs. Varelli?”

Again Mattox hesitated before lifting his head to meet Chapman’s stare. “It was a necklace, Detective. An amber necklace. But I suppose you knew that already. I imagine you found the small figurine that Deni left behind, and that Mrs. Varelli told you the story.”

Neither of us responded to his statement.

“I take it the peace offering didn’t go very well, did it?”

“Varelli was furious.” Mattox seemed to be open with us, having convinced himself that Varelli had told the story of the encounter to his wife. I guessed that he did not even recall that the soft-spoken young apprentice, Don Cannon, had been in the room when the beads were presented. “He assumed that the amber was part of Lowell’s secret cache of looted Nazi riches. The old guy didn’t even want to hold the necklace in his hands.”

“Isn’t that the truth, though? Isn’t that the source of the amber?”

“Hardly, Mr. Chapman. All of us who’ve been looking for the Amber Room have combed the Baltic coast for years. In Lowell’s case, for half a century, if you can imagine that. We’ve each come back with bits and pieces-the area is rich with amber. There are places along the coast where you can pick up chunks of it right on the beach. But no one really knows whether the great room was destroyed in some wartime bombing or is buried in one of the quarries that treasure seekers are constantly drilling.”

“How about the rumors that Lowell Caxton has smuggled half the remains out of Europe and re-created the palace room in some hideaway in the Pennsylvania countryside?”

“And that’s why I had latched on to Mrs. Caxton, Mr. Chapman? I’ve heard that one, too. If you could have seen Deni throw back her head and roar at those stories-and the nonsense that she and Lowell had used this mini Amber Room for their trysts-well, then you would have seen the woman I adored. She liked to fuel those absurd tales when she heard they were circulating. The more bold and bizarre, the more it pleased her. She loved outrage, Detective, and if she was at the center of it she loved it even more.”

“Were those the only jewels from Lowell that Deni wanted to give away?” I asked, referring to the amber beads.

“Lowell?” Mattox said with some surprise. “I don’t think she was parting with anything he gave her. His gifts to her were pretty substantial.”

“Then why the amber?”

“Those pieces weren’t from Lowell.”

I was sure Don Cannon had repeated that as part of Deni’s explanation when she tried to hand Varelli the necklace.

Mattox thought for a moment. “You know, you’re right, though. She told Marco they had been given to her by Lowell.” Now he looked up at me. “But you see, that was part of the game she liked to play. By implication she’d let people assume they were part of Lowell’s collection. Knowing Deni, she thought it would titillate old Marco to think there really was an Amber Room and that she and Lowell had cavorted in it. She and Varelli may have talked about it on other occasions-I simply don’t know that.”

“But she wouldn’t take anything fake to give Varelli,” I said. “I realize that his specialty was paint and artworks, but he had such a great eye. People tell us he had a unique sense of touch, and could identify the age of artworks so precisely. She wouldn’t pass off something to him as an antique or a valuable if she was trying to appease him, would she?”