“The necklace and figurine were genuine, Miss Cooper. Very old and very fine amber. The Baltic region is full of great pieces. It’s just that these things had absolutely nothing to do with the mysterious Russian palace and its amber. Deni may have tried to create that impression, but she knew damn well where the pieces came from.”
“And what was that?” Chapman asked.
“The necklace had been commissioned by King Wilhelm of Prussia for his queen. And the figurine as well. Sold at auction in Geneva several years ago. Can’t remember the price they brought, but it was quite high.”
“And Lowell bought them for Deni?”
“No, no.” Mattox seemed bothered that we hadn’t followed his point. “Deni only said she had gotten them from Lowell. Actually, they were a gift to her from a friend.”
“You know who he was?” “
She, Detective. From a woman called Marina Sette.”
“Pretty nice stocking stuffer,” Mike said.
It seemed even more curious that Deni would relinquish something that her closest friend had given to her. I still had every note card and silly souvenir that Nina or Joan had ever sent me, not to mention the more serious gifts. “But why would she get rid of something so precious, from someone she liked so much?”
Preston Mattox looked at me with a curious glance. “Liked so much? They hadn’t talked to each other in a long time.”
Chapman spoke before I did. “I thought they were best pals.”
“I don’t know what gave you that idea. They used to be quite close, but they had a terrible falling-out this spring. I don’t think Deni had returned Marina’s calls in months.”
“What was that about, do you know?”
“The only person who thought she had a greater entitlement to Lowell Caxton’s fortune than Denise did was Marina Sette. Deni came to believe that the primary reason Marina had befriended her in the first place was to work herself back into the inheritance-the fortune that would have been Marina’s had her mother not abandoned her when she married Lowell. There was nothing logical about Marina’s position. I doubt she has a leg to stand on in a court of law. But I think it was more of an emotional attempt to regain some connection to the mother she never knew, by claiming that she had a right to some of the masterpieces acquired during the period her mother was married to Lowell Caxton.”
“Seems to me there was more than enough money to go around,” Chapman murmured.
“But they’d never argued about that before?” I asked.
“It never was an issue with Deni before this spring. But then, once she suspected that Marina Sette had been sleeping with Frank Wrenley, it became more than an issue. It was the end of the friendship. The worm turned.”
27
Mercer Wallace lifted his head off the pile of pillows as we entered the room and gave us a weak but warm greeting. The nurse who helped feed him his dinner-still a liquid diet-was moving the tray off the bedside table as we settled in around the patient.
Chapman grabbed the television remote control panel dangling from a cord on Mercer’s bed railing and pointed it at the small set that was hanging from a support in the corner.
“Too early,” Mercer said, laughing. It was only six thirty-five, and he thought that Mike was looking for the Jeopardy! channel. “Let me hear what’s going on.”
Mike kept clicking until the screen was set on NBC and the national news report. “Don’t you want to see Cooper’s guy? Has he got a live shoot tonight, kid? Whoops, looks like Brian Williams has the anchor spot.” He muted the sound and asked Mercer how he felt.
“I don’t remember much about yesterday. Pain’s under control, and they even had me out of bed for an hour this afternoon. One lap around the hallway.”
“There he is!” Mike said, rising from his armchair and walking to stand directly under the television set. “Gimme volume, Mercer.”
Jake was standing on First Avenue, in front of the United Nations building, and he was midsentence when I heard his voice: “… after the secretary of state and the delegate from…”
Mike’s pen was in his right hand, held up against the screen and tapping at Jake’s chest. “Here’s the thing, Mercer. The reason you and I will never get to first base with Ms. Cooper is that we don’t have these ties that all her beaux wear, know what I mean? Every one of ’em has these itsy-bitsy, teenyweeny little friggin’ animals all over ’em. Grown men, and they got little squirrels runnin’ around with nuts in their cheeks, sheep jumping over fences, monkeys swingin’ on vines, giraffes standing on tippy-toe. I would be mortified to be here on national television, talkin’ about sending troops to the Middle East, decked out in some French necktie-what do you call them, Coop? Hermies or Hermans or Ermies-something like that. Anyway, the thing is, Mercer, that it works. ’Cause whatever it is about those ties, every one of the goofballs who shows up wearing one of ’em gets laid.
“Am I right, blondie? Ever do a simple guy with a striped tie? I doubt it. I’m telling you, if Alex Trebek walked in with one of these on, she’d go down on him like a pelican, wouldn’t you, kid? You wanna predict who Cooper’s gonna get up close and personal with, you check out the tie. That, my good friend, is my Dick Tracy crimestopper clue of the day.”
Mercer was holding his hand over his chest. “Don’t make me laugh, Mike. Somebody want to tell me what’s going on with the case?”
“First of all, forget that you ever saw Alex tonight. Pat McKinney’s riding her pretty hard. Doesn’t want her to visit with you, so you don’t talk about the facts of the case together.”
Mercer looked across at me to see if Mike was still kidding. “It’s true. He’s afraid we’re going to conspire and rearrange the events if we talk to each other. I spent three hours last night giving my statement. I’m sure they got one from you today, as soon as you opened your eyes. I don’t know what he’s so worried about.”
“They were here. Two guys from Major Case, first thing this morning. They said they’re taking you back over to the scene later in the week.”
“Yes,” I said, hoping that my involuntary shudder at the thought of revisiting the gallery hadn’t been visible to Mike or Mercer.
“That is one spooky exhibit,” Mike said. “I stopped there this morning on my way to the hospital the first time. Kind of reminds me of that great Orson Welles scene in Lady From Shanghai -the shoot-out in the fun house? Only thing missing was the mirrors. Listen to this.”
Mike pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pants pocket. “They’re already moving a new show into Caxton Due. Somebody probably needed all that friggin’ yarn to make a sweater. I’m reading right from the description Bryan Daughtry wrote. It’s in New York magazine . ‘The artist affixes hardened blobs of paint and scraps of paper, hair, and other scavenged materials to her monochromatic canvases.’ I’m looking forward to wrapping this case up so I can go back to working something real, like a pickpocket detail.”
Mercer winced as he tried to push himself up in bed. I moved to his side to adjust the pillows behind his back and beneath his head. I grabbed one of his enormous arms and pulled on it as gently as I could, but was unable to move him. Mike got on the other side, and together we raised Mercer so that his head rested in a more comfortable position.
“Watch out for the tubes,” I said to Mike, lifting the IV drip from where it was caught under a roll of bedsheet.
“Else you’ll get strangulated on all those concoctions, Mr. Wallace. That’s a word for the S section of my dictionary. I got to jot that one down. ‘Fixiated’-that goes with the F ’s, not the A ’s-and ‘strangulated’ are two very popular causes of death among perps.”