Quick & Dirty

19

Joan buzzed Stone. “Art Masi on one.”

Stone pressed the button. “Good morning, Art. Did you enjoy the opening?”

“I like Kusch’s sculptures,” he said. “Pio’s stuff was good, too. You left as I arrived.”

“Yes, we were going to dinner. How long did you stay?”

“Long enough to interview both Pio and Ann.”

“With what result?”

“They’ve both visited the Tillman apartment on a couple of occasions.” He told Stone of their claimed whereabouts on the day of Tillman’s death.

“Do their stories hold up?”

“There was a Georgia — Alabama game on that day, and Alabama won by three. That doesn’t mean he stayed home and watched it, though.”

“Where was Ann?”

“She says her mother invited her to Washington, Connecticut, to tell her that she had only a few months to live.”

“I know the town, I used to have a house there.”

“Do you know the Mayflower Inn?”

“Of course.”

“Ann says they had lunch there, but I spoke to the maître d’ this morning. He knew both mother and daughter, but he has no record of a lunch reservation for them on that date. It’s a busy place, reservations are usually necessary, especially on a weekend, and that was a Saturday. And her mother died four months ago, so she can’t help with her daughter’s alibi.

“Washington is about an hour-and-three-quarters drive from where Tillman lived. Even if she was telling the truth about the lunch, she still could have easily made it to the Upper East Side by late afternoon.”

“What brought Ann Kusch to your attention?” Stone asked.

“She’s five-ten, a hundred and forty pounds, and athletic. She admitted to having done both mountain and rock climbing. She also has rather small breasts, so dressed in something loose, with her hair and face covered, a woman her size could have passed as a man.”

“That’s an interesting theory, Art. What are you going to do with it?”

“I”m going to investigate them both until their pips squeak.”

“Then I’d better let you get on with it,” Stone said, and hung up.

Stone called Dino and related his conversation with Art Masi. “Looks like the burglar could have been a woman,” Stone said.

“What burglar?” Dino asked. “There was no burglar, just Tillman and his wife — who was, by the way, bigger and probably stronger than he was.”

“Then what is Morgan’s motive?”

“Money — she inherited a ton of it.”

“Then she also inherited the van Gogh, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what was her motive for stealing it from herself?”

“It was worth sixty million bucks,” Dino pointed out.

“But you’ve just told me she inherited a ton of money from her husband. How much?”

“A little over half a billion dollars.”

“I’m surprised it wasn’t more. Those hedge fund guys are mostly billionaires, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, until they aren’t,” Dino replied. “And Tillman had been through a rough patch. His fund lost a lot of money that year. If he had died the year before, he’d have left her something like three billion.”

“Dino, you still haven’t told me why Morgan would steal the painting from herself. You’ve told me she inherited half a billion dollars. If she had needed money she could have sold it at auction.”

“Maybe she needed money in a hurry?”

“Why? Was the estate slow to complete probate?”

“No, Tillman had arranged his estate planning so as to avoid probate. She was very rich from her first day as a widow.”

“So she had no motive for stealing a painting from herself. And it was a painting that some people think is a forgery.”

“Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to auction it,” Dino said. “An auction would have brought more scrutiny to bear, whereas the insurance company had already accepted that the painting was a real van Gogh, so if the painting disappeared, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, they’d have to pay the claim.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Stone said. “It’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense.”

“Gee, thanks,” Dino said.

“Of course, they had an eighteen-month delay in paying off on the policy.”

“I’ll bet money that neither of the Tillmans knew that. Who reads an insurance policy?”

“You have a point there, too. I still haven’t read my household policy.”

“And that eighteen months must be about to expire?”

“Very soon,” Stone said.

“That’s interesting,” Dino said. “It puts pressure on everybody, and when people are under pressure, they make mistakes.”

“I agree, but let me ask you another question,” Stone said.

“Do your worst.”

“With regard to motive, why would either Pio Farina or Ann Kusch want to steal the van Gogh? If it’s a fake by Angelo, they might very well have known it. Why risk a murder for a forged painting when they could just ask Angelo to paint another one?”

“I’m surprised that Art Masi hasn’t mentioned this,” Dino said, “but big-time art thieves usually have a buyer waiting. That picture could be hanging on some rich man’s wall in Hong Kong or someplace, and the guy wouldn’t be in a position to question the authenticity of the painting. He can’t call the Hong Kong cops and say, ‘Hey, I paid a guy to steal this painting and murder the owner, and the picture’s a fake!’”

“I guess the guy wouldn’t get a very sympathetic hearing.”

“I think,” Dino said, “that what’s going to happen is, the eighteen months will expire, the insurance company will pay the loss, and we’ll never hear from the painting again, unless the guy in Hong Kong dies and somebody notices that it’s a fake.”

“More likely,” Stone said, “his estate will auction it off, and then the picture is a free-floating objet d’art that will end up on some other rich guy’s wall, or in a museum, which is not going to question its authenticity. I’ve been reading Angelo Farina’s book, and that’s how his work ended up in so many museums — he sold his paintings to schmucks who got tired of them and sold them at auction or donated them and took the tax break.”

“You know what I think?” Dino asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think that neither you nor I will ever solve this one.”

“You could be right,” Stone replied.