Chameleon's Death Dance Page 7

  I nudged Cruikshank and pointed. Liquid was dripping off the seat of Willis’s chair. From his angle, Fenton wouldn’t be able to see it.

  “You’re damned good, boy,” I said.

  Willis broke. She told Fenton about the room in the museum where he kept art he was appraising for clients. She told him about the boat. She told him about a cabin on Vancouver Island. She told him about a small black book where he kept his client list and a list of the illegal art he had brokered for them. She mentioned names, specifically Robertson, Clark, Aquilini, Audain, Harrison, and Reagan. The last was the only one I didn’t recognize, but I paid attention to it because it was Irish. Someone had brought O’Bannon into Vancouver, and according to Dad, he normally didn’t work in North America.

  After a constable led her away to book her, I asked Fenton, “So, what are you going to do now? I told you that Boyle’s clients were too high up to touch. If she agrees to testify, she’ll be a dead woman before she sets foot in a courtroom. As a matter of fact, if you don’t secure the recording of that interview, she may be dead by morning.”

  “Are you insinuating that members of the Vancouver Police Department are unreliable?” His bristling stance would have been funny in other circumstances.

  “Are you telling me that no one in this building can be bought?” I countered. “And you called me young and naïve.”

  “I’ll get the recording and its backup,” Cruikshank said and took off at a trot down the hall.

  Fenton shrugged. “I’m going to talk with Miss Murphy. Maybe her information will be of more use.”

  Kieran Murphy stood a foot shorter than I did, a slender, petite, pretty strawberry blonde, with freckles and an Irish accent. Other than being cute as hell, her six-fingered hands drew my attention. She had worked for four years as an assistant curator at the Gallery. While they brought her into the interview room, I checked her bio on the Gallery’s infonet site. She took her bachelor’s degree in studio art from a university in Ireland, and her master’s degree in art history from Cambridge. One of her paintings of the Vancouver harbor in an impressionist style hung in the Gallery. Judging from the picture of it on the infonet, she was pretty good.

  “Miss Murphy,” Fenton began, “we have information that Director Boyle may have been involved in the transportation and sale of stolen artworks. Would you know anything about that?”

  She stared at him for some time, then with a deep sigh said, “I suspected something was going on, I just wasn’t sure what. Sometimes a painting or a sculpture would come in, and instead of coming to the curators to evaluate, he would take it as a personal project. A Monet listed on the Art Loss Database came in about a month ago. When I asked him about it last week, he said he knew it was stolen and that he’d returned it to the insurance company.”

  Another deep sigh and a glance up at the ceiling. “Another painting, about six months ago, he declared a forgery and said he’d turned it over to the police. He’s the expert—was the expert, I guess—so it wasn’t up to me to challenge him, but I’d seen the painting before, in Europe, and it looked good to me. I asked him what tipped him off, and he gave me a vague story about the canvas not dating to the proper time.”

  “Did you tell anyone of your suspicions?” Fenton asked.

  “Are you kidding? He’s Langston Boyle, internationally acknowledged expert. I’m just a peon. Accusing him of something would be a good way to lose my job and never find another one.”

  “Were you sleeping with him?”

  I could tell she hadn’t expected that question. She paled, her eyes turned a little glassy, and fear registered on her face for the first time. Then she blushed and looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap.

  “Yes. A couple of times.” Her voice was barely audible.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Fenton said, his voice taking on a hard edge. “I think you knew exactly what he was doing, and you helped him. You wanted the money and you were in love with him. You liked the excitement, the feeling that you and he were smarter than everyone else. Isn’t that the truth, Miss Murphy?”

  “Noooo!” She burst into tears.

  I glanced at Jon, who was sitting beside me in the monitoring room, and saw him shaking his head.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Fenton’s off base,” he said. “What he said doesn’t resonate at all with her. But she’s elated that he’s wrong.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. She should be terrified of what he’s accusing her of doing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are the tears real?”

  “She’s been on the verge of tears since she sat down. She’s afraid of something, but Fenton’s accusation didn’t increase her fear. It actually scaled down a little bit.”

  “Interesting. Something scares her more than the police.”

  He turned to face me. “So it would seem. Are you psychic as well, Miss Nelson?”

  “Just really good at reading people,” I said. “Out of curiosity, do you find that mutants tend to have a little bit of fear going on all the time? You know, fear of being found out?”

  Jon gave a half-shrug. “Most people do. I think being neurotic is a standard human condition. I’ve found that almost everyone suffers from imposter syndrome. We’re all afraid people will find out that we’re not as wonderful, smart, competent, or whatever as we purport to be.”

  Fenton continued to pound on Murphy for another twenty minutes, but didn’t make any additional progress. After he returned her to a holding cell, he sat down with Jon and me. Jon told him the same things that he’d told me earlier.

  “Willis didn’t implicate Murphy, did she?” I asked.

  Fenton shook his head.

  “Let her go,” I said. “But let me escort her out of the building.”

  Both men scrutinized me.

  “I’m going to coopt her. Befriend her. Provide a sympathetic shoulder. Offer to let her help me investigate the true conspiracy, and in doing so, clear her name.”

  “And if she truly knows nothing?” Fenton asked.

  “No harm,” I said. “I’ll be the one wasting time on a dead end instead of you.”

  “It’s not a dead end,” Jon said. “She knows something, but we’re asking the wrong questions.”

  With a shrug, Fenton said, “Have at it.”

  “After you talk with Wang,” I said.

  Assistant Director Giorgio Wang was a balding, heavy-set man with jowls that reminded me of a picture I’d seen of a hippopotamus. He was sweating when a constable led him into the interview room, and it only got worse when he sat down.

  “Mr. Wang, as I indicated earlier, Langston Boyle has been murdered. We’ve also found evidence that he was trafficking in stolen art. What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing. I’m an honest man, Inspector.” Wang’s voice trembled, but carried an angry edge. “I basically run the museum. Langston was the outside face, schmoozing with donors and arranging acquisitions. If he was doing something shady, he was doing it away from the Gallery.”

  Fenton produced pictures of Boyle’s private appraisal room. The forensics team confirmed that none of the art in the room had been microchipped. Two of the seven paintings and one small sculpture in the room had turned up on the Art Loss Database.

  “Are you familiar with this room, Mr. Wang? I believe that you have the access codes to it.”

  Wang mopped his face with a soggy handkerchief. “I have the master codes to the entire building, but I never went in there. That was Langston’s private domain.”

  “And you weren’t curious? We’re in the process of checking your bank accounts, and some of my officers are searching your home as we speak. It would go much easier for you if you tell us the truth.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wang said, showing increasing agitation. “What right do you have to search my house?”

  We heard a knock on the monitoring room door, and when Jon answer
ed it, a constable handed him a folder. Sitting back down, Jon opened it, then let out a low whistle. He showed me the folder and keyed the microphone to the interview room.

  “Inspector, our search team found eighteen paintings in Assistant Director Wang’s house. Twelve of them are stolen merchandise, and another five are listed as part of the Gallery collection.”

  Fenton smiled. “As you were saying, Mr. Wang?”

  Wang wasn’t talking. He grasped at his chest with his right hand, panting as his face screwed up in pain and turned pale. His lips turned blue. Then he fell out of his chair onto the floor and lay there with spasms racking his body.

  “Holy shit!” Fenton yelled, jumping from his chair. “Call a doctor!”

  Jon began to do that. I leaped from my chair and raced down the hall to the interview room. By the time I got there, Fenton was giving Wang CPR. It didn’t appear to be doing any good. A couple of minutes later a couple of medical techs burst in. They took one look at Wang and shook their heads. One of them grabbed Fenton by the shoulder and pulled him away.

  “He’s dead, Inspector,” the tech said.

  “Are you sure? Can’t you…” Fenton stopped as the man shook his head.

  I agreed with the med tech. Wang stared at infinity, and his bowels vacated, stinking up the room.

  “I think you should corral the Gallery’s board of directors,” I said. “I’m not sure who’s in charge over there now, but the place is a mess. You’re going to have a herd of insurance investigators to deal with once this gets out.”

  I pulled out my phone and called Myron Chung. NAI paid me to track down stolen merchandise, not to deal with a major crisis at a world-famous museum.

  Chapter 9

  Fenton gave me a head start, so I was leaning against a column in front of police headquarters when Kieran Murphy emerged from the building. I fell in step with her.

  “Miss Murphy, I’m Elizabeth Nelson.”

  “Yes, I remember. I already gave my statement inside.”

  “A pretty traumatic day. I’m not with the police, Miss Murphy.”

  She hesitated and turned to look at me, almost stumbling. I reached out and grabbed her upper arm, steadying her, then let her go.

  “I’m an insurance investigator. I’m following up some rumors of stolen art passing through Vancouver. I’m in a position to reward anyone who might provide some help with that.”

  Shaking her head, she started walking again. “I don’t know anything about it. I can’t help you.” She seemed irritated when she thought I was a cop, but I could see her self-assurance slip a bit when I told her my real job.

  “Did they tell you that Giorgio Wang died?”

  That stopped her completely, and she turned to look up at me. “What? How? When?”

  “Heart attack, about an hour ago. The cops searched his house. It was decorated top to bottom with stolen paintings. I also have information that at least two members of the Gallery’s board are involved in trafficking stolen art. Everyone with any connection to the museum is going to come under scrutiny. I guarantee it. Good day, Miss Murphy, and good luck.”

  I pulled out my phone and called for a taxi.

  “Wait,” Kieran said. “Are you serious?”

  Trying to keep a straight face, I said, “Absolutely. As soon as this scandal breaks, I doubt that anyone associated with the Vancouver Art Gallery will ever work in the business again. Of course, that shouldn’t affect you as an artist. You should still be able to sell your paintings. It’s lucky you have that to fall back on.”

  The taxi pulled up, and I started toward it.

  “Wait!” She came running after me, her straight, waist-length hair flying out behind her. “Suppose I help you. Do you think that would make a difference?”

  “It could. Blowups this large have a way of screwing a lot of innocent people. Better to be on the side of the angels from the beginning. I’m on my way to retrieve my car. Can I give you a lift?”

  We rode in silence out to the marina. When the taxi dropped us off, Kieran asked, “What were you doing out here?”

  I pointed. “Boyle docked his boat over there. That’s where he was killed.”

  She paled slightly. “The police said he was dead, but they didn’t say how he died.”

  “An assassin blew his head off.”

  Kieran swayed and put her hand on my van to steady herself. I watched her closely, but couldn’t figure out whether her reaction was real or acting. It bothered me that I felt I could almost predict her reaction to anything I said. Even so, I was doing no better than Jon Cruikshank at reading her.

  “That’s why the police are all over this,” I continued. “With the discovery of all those paintings at Wang’s, this has the makings of a media field day.”

  “How could I help you?”

  “You know the art scene here, the players. You have the password into the Gallery’s computers.”

  “I couldn’t do that. That’s illegal.”

  “I’m not asking for anything illegal, but the donor list would be nice. A list of the art the museum has received, where it’s stored, and the current inventory. I guarantee those are things the police will have in the next couple of days, but they aren’t really going to know what to do with them.”

  Not that I needed her password to break into the computer system. I had that on my to-do list for that evening, along with eating dinner, watching a vid, and taking a bath.

  “Kieran, Wang had five paintings that belong to the Gallery. He had a dozen more listed on Art Loss. God only knows what those people out on Stanley Island are hiding. I’m willing to bet a large portion of what’s in the Gallery’s inventory database turns up missing.”

  I opened the van doors and crawled in, asking, “Where do you live?”

  “Out by the university. Do you know where that is?”

  “Vaguely. You can give me directions. You wouldn’t know a good place to get a drink and something to eat on the way, would you? I can’t remember when I ate last.”

  We ended up in a nice little bistro a couple of miles from the University of British Columbia. As we walked in, a painting caught my eye. When I looked closer, I saw it was signed ‘K. Murphy’, and had a thousand credit price tag on it. Several other paintings on the wall showed the same style. She definitely had been influenced by the impressionist masters.

  “Your work?”

  “Yes. An ex-boyfriend of mine owns the place.”

  We sat and ordered from the automenu. The ale was cold and tasty, the food hot and tasty, and the prices weren’t too bad for those things without real meat.

  “You strike me as someone who’s too smart to fall for Boyle’s seduction spiel,” I said as we ate.

  With a wry expression, she asked, “Did you ever meet Langston?”

  “A couple of times.”

  She gave me a look, wide-eyed and incredulous. “He didn’t hit on you?”

  “Of course he did. I think he’d probably hit on a robot. It was almost automatic.”

  Kieran shook her head. “It took me a bit of time to figure it out. I think he was a mutant. Pheromones or something. I don’t know. But I wasn’t interested in him, and when I was away from him, I didn’t want any part of him.” She hunched her shoulders, as though drawing into herself. “Usually, you know, at work, it wasn’t difficult to be professional. But when he wanted me, all he had to do was make a move. It seemed as though my brain fogged, and I dropped my knickers. Even at work.” She blushed scarlet. “When it was over, I hated myself.”

  “Nope,” I said, “never got the urge. Maybe because I was investigating him, and I was sure he was dirty, but I kept making excuses and slipping away. It seemed to irritate him.”

  With a laugh, she said, “I’ll bet it did.”

  After I polished off my soy burger and salad, I ordered another ale and leaned back to study her. “When you first talked with Inspector Fenton, you said that you had suspicions about the Gallery. What originally made yo
u suspicious?”

  She seemed to think for a minute, then said, “I served internships at a museum in France and one in Ireland. New art came in and went straight to the head curator. The curatorial staff had a procedure we went through. You know, to evaluate it and authenticate it. If we bought a piece, the head curator and maybe one of his assistants gave it a thorough appraisal before the money was paid.”

  Kieran drained her wine and ordered another glass. “That happened here sometimes. Usually, though, especially with really high value or famous works, they came in and no one knew about them ahead of time except Langston. Often, he would spirit them away to his secret room, and then they might or might not reappear. I just thought it was all very odd.”

  I had thoroughly studied the procedures at the Art Institute of Chicago when I installed a new security system there, and I had to agree with her.

  “What surprises me is that no one else seemed to notice,” I said.

  “Oh, other people noticed, but everyone just minded their own business. I mentioned it once to Daniel, the head curator, and that’s what he told me. ‘Worry about yourself, Kieran,’ is what he said.”

  “How well do you know Barbara Willis?”

  “Langston’s bitch? I know her as well as anyone who works there, which is more than I would wish.”

  I gave her a grin. “Not a fan?”

  Kieran shook her head. “Barbara and Giorgio ran the museum on a day-to-day basis, and Barbara was Langston’s enforcer. She did all the unpleasant stuff, such as firing people.” Kieran ran her hand through her hair, gathering it and pulling it back off her shoulders. “Barbara doesn’t have any friends, at least not at work. All she cared about was Langston.”

  “Do you think she was in love with him?”

  “Oh, yes. Obsessed with him. If he told her to walk off a pier, she would have done it.” She turned and stared out the window next to us. The sunlight made her hair light up like gold as she played with it. “So, how can I help you? You said you wanted lists from the computer system?”