Confess, Fletch

Thirty-nine

Ten-thirty Tuesday morning the buzzer to the downstairs door sounded.

Fletch gave his button a prolonged answering push to give his guest ample time to enter.

He opened the front door to his apartment and went into the kitchen.

Coming back across the hall with the coffee tray he heard the elevator creaking slowly to the sixth floor.

He put the tray on the coffee table between the two divans.

When he returned to the foyer, his guest, nearly seventy, in a dark overcoat, brown suit a little too big for him, gray bags under his eyes making him no less distinguished, was standing hesitantly in the hall.

Fletch said, “Hi, Menti.”

As he shook hands, the man’s smile was dazzling, despite the lines of concern in his face.

“I never knew you wear false teeth,” Fletch said.

Taking his guest’s coat and putting it in a closet, Fletch said, “They found your body a few days ago in a pasture outside Turin.”

Clasping his hands together the guest entered the living room and allowed himself to be escorted to a divan. Count Clementi Arbogastes de Grassi was not accustomed to a cold climate.

He sipped a cup of coffee and crossed his legs. “My friend,” he said.

Fletch was comfortable with his coffee in the other divan.

“Now I ask you the saddest question I have ever had to ask any man in my life.” The Count paused. “Who stole my paintings? My wife? Or my daughter?”

Fletch sipped from his cup.

“Your daughter. Andy. Angela.”

Menti sat, cup and saucer in one hand in his lap, staring at the floor for several moments.

“I’m sorry, Menti.”

Fletch finished his coffee and put the cup and saucer on the table.

“I knew it had to be one of them who arranged it,” Menti said. “For the paintings to have been stolen on our honeymoon. The theft at that time was too significant. The paintings had been there for decades. The house was usually empty, except for Ria and Pep. Few knew the paintings were there. But Sylvia was with me in Austria and Angela was here in school.”

“I know.”

Menti sat up and put his unfinished coffee on the table.

“Thank you for being my friend, Fletch. Thank you for helping me to find out.”

“Were you comfortable enough in captivity?”

“You arranged everything splendidly. I rather enjoyed being a retired Italo-American on the Canary Islands. I made friends.”

“Of course.”

“Where are the ladies now? Sylvia and Angela?”

“They flew the coop this morning. No note. No anything.”

“What does ‘flew the coop’ mean?”

“They left. Quickly.”

“They were here?”

“Yes.”

“Both of them?”

“Under the very same roof.”

“Why did they leave, ‘flew the coop’?”

“Either they both left together, or Andy left when she heard Horan was arrested, and Sylvia took off after her. It must have been quite a scene. Sorry I missed it.”

The Count said, “Are they both well?”

“Grieving, of course, but otherwise fine.” He poured warm coffee into the Count’s half-empty cup. “I have fifteen of the paintings. Two have been sold, you know. The police are keeping one, the big Picasso, ‘Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle,’ as evidence. You’ll probably never get it back without spending three times the painting’s financial worth in legal fees, taxes, international wrangling, and what have you. And we have the Degas horse.”

Menti absently turned the cup in its saucer.

“Everything is in a truck, downstairs,” Fletch said, “You and I can leave for New York as soon as you get warmed up.”

Menti sat back, sad and tired.

“Why did she do it?”

“Love. Love for you. I don’t think Andy cared that much about the paintings. She doesn’t care about the money.

“When her mother died,” Fletch continued, “Andy, as a little girl, thought she would take her mother’s place in your affection. You remarried. She has told me how heartbroken she was, and furious. She was fourteen. When your second wife left you, she was pleased. She thought you had learned your lesson. Because you had been married in France, you could divorce. Then, while Andy was in school here, you married Sylvia. Andy was no loner a little girl. She was old enough to express her rage. In her eyes, you had kept something from her all these years. She took something from you. The de Grassi Collection.”

“She wasn’t afraid Sylvia might have inherited them?”

“I’m not sure, but I have the impression Andy knew that under Italian law children of the deceased have to inherit at least a third of the estate. Have I got that right? I’m sure Sylvia had no idea of that. Knowledge of the law could have motivated either one of them to steal the paintings—from the other.”

“Angela wanted the whole collection.”

“I guess so. She doesn’t expect much sense of family from Sylvia. People like Ria and Pep are very important to Andy.”

“But how did she do it? A little girl, like that?”

“It took me a while to make the connection. I knew Andy had been to school in this country. I hadn’t realized her school was here in Boston, or Cambridge, which is just across the river. I knew her school was Radcliffe. I didn’t realize that Radcliffe is joined with Harvard. Radcliffe women now receive Harvard degrees. Horan, the Boston art dealer, was Andy’s professor at Harvard.”

“I see. But I think it would be difficult to get your professor to commit a grand, international robbery for you because you didn’t like your father marrying again, no?”

“One would think so. However, Horan, who had gotten used to a very expensive way of life, was going broke.”

“You know he was broke?”

“Yes. Five years ago he sold his wife’s famous jewel, the Star of Hunan jade, to an Iranian. I knew that before I came here.”

“Still&helllip;such a distinguished man.”

“He’s also a handsome, sophisticated man, Menti. An older man. For years, Andy had been wanting a certain kind of attention from you…”

Menti’s eyes were dull as they gazed at Fletch. “You believe their relationship was more intimate than is usual between a student and teacher?”

“I suspect so. For one purpose or another.”

“I see.” Menti sipped his coffee. “It happens. So, Fletcher, it was Horan who actually arranged for the paintings to be stolen.”

“Yes. You showed me the catalogues from the Horan Gallery. Two of the de Grassi paintings were being sold, or, in fact, had been sold. We made our plan. We left copies of the catalogues for each of the ladies to find.

“Andy was enraged,” Fletch said. “She knew Horan had the paintings, of course. She was enraged that he was selling them without her. Did Sylvia react at all?”

Menti said, “She never looked in the catalogues. I couldn’t get her to.” Menti chuckled lightly and shook his head. “When you called from Cagna, saying you were driving down with an upset Angela, it was too late. I could wait no longer for Sylvia to notice, I had to go forward with our plan and get kidnapped.”

“I don’t know what Andy was really thinking on that drive to Livorno. She was certainly going to you, maybe to confess. More likely, she didn’t know what she was doing.”

“My disappearance helped clarify things,” Menti said.

“Yes. Essentially, Andy sent me here to find the paintings so she could steal them back from Horan. She probably wouldn’t have played her own hand out, unless she thought you were dead.” Fletch swallowed coffee. “This morning Horan was arrested. Exit Andy. Exit Sylvia.”

“Enter Menti.”

The buzzer to the downstairs door sounded.

“We’re taking the paintings to a dealer in New York. A man I trust implicitly.” Fletch stood up to answer the door. “His name is Kasnar. On East 66th Street.”

In the foyer, he shouted into the mouthpiece “Who is it?”

The answering voice was so soft it took Fletch a moment to assimilate what it said.

“Francis Flynn, Mister Fletcher.”

“Oh! Inspector?”

“The same.”

Fletch pressed the button that would release the lock on the door downstairs.

Quickly, he grabbed Menti’s coat from the closet.

Then be went into the den and took the truck keys from a drawer of the desk.

In the living room, he handed the coat and keys to Menti.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Put on your coat. The man who is coming up is a policeman.”

Moving gracefully, with speed, Menti stood up and put on the coat Fletch held for him.

“I won’t be able to drive to New York with you, Menti. Can you make the trip alone?”

“Of course.”

“Here are the keys. It’s a black caravan truck, a Chevrolet, parked at the curb outside the apartment house, I think, to the right as you leave the building. The license plate on it is R99420. Have you got it?”

“In general, yes.”

“Kasner’s address is 20 East 66th Street, New York.”

“I can remember.”

“He’s expecting you this afternoon. Come into the foyer with me, as if you were leaving anyway.”

The doorbell rang.