Cold Hit

26

“Your to-do list is getting to be a mile long,” Chapman said after Don Cannon left the office and we were eating our sandwiches at the lieutenant’s desk.

“I’ll call down to my paralegal now and see whether she can get a number for the mayor of Florence. You double-check with the guys from Crime Scene to see whether they took any kind of book when they processed Varelli’s studio.”

“I’m telling you, Mercer and I were there with them. No such thing anywhere we looked. The only evidence they vouchered was the pair of sunglasses. Whatever this appointment journal or calendar is, it’s probably in his apartment, not the studio.”

“Well, if we can find the niece who took Gina Varelli home the other night, maybe we can convince her to let us do a consent search. If not, I’ll draft another warrant in the morning.” I looked at my watch. “It’s already almost four o’clock.”

The shifts had changed, and detectives working the day tour were signing out while those doing four-to-twelves were coming on. Even the teams that had finished their official tours were working overtime, without pay, because of Mercer.

Jimmy Halloran opened the door. “Your secretary’s on line two. Wanna pick up?”

“Sure. Laura? Everything okay?”

“Just a couple of things you need to know about. Pat McKinney is having a meeting at ten tomorrow with a few of the senior trial counsel. Catherine said to tell you that he hasn’t given them any specific agenda yet, but she assumes he’s planning to pick someone from the group to assign to prosecute Mercer’s case.”

“Thank her for letting me know. I’ll be there.”

“You’re not invited, Alex. That’s the point. That’s what Catherine wanted me to get across to you.”

Damn it. McKinney would do everything in his power, as deputy chief of the Trial Division, to make me uncomfortable as a witness to Mercer’s shooting. I wanted to have a say in who would prosecute the gunman when he was caught. “Can you find a number for Rod Squires? Scout around for me, will you?” The chief of the division, my friend and ally, was also on summer vacation. If I could enlist his aid before morning, I’d have some control over the selection process.

“Let me call Rose Malone. I’m sure she’ll know how to find him. And you also need to know that the man who tried to run you down last week, Wakim Wakefield? Well, he was back here at the building today, trying to get upstairs to file a complaint with Battaglia about you.”

“Did security let him through?” That’s a bit too close for comfort.

“No. His name was on their daily chart.” The security crew in the lobby at 1 Hogan Place kept a roster of names of people not welcome in our office-an ever-expanding list of psychos, malcontents, and cranks who were expert at creating disturbances once they got inside.

“Was he arrested?” I asked with some hesitancy.

“No. The guard called up to the squad to get some detectives to come talk to him, but there’s only one elevator working today, and by the time somebody got downstairs, Wakefield was already gone. Mr. Battaglia himself called about it. Made me promise to ask you if you were using your bodyguards.”

“Don’t mention to him that I groaned when I told you yes,” I answered. “I’m smack in the middle of a police station right now, and unless Chapman goes ballistic ’cause I tell him to wipe the mustard off the side of his mouth, I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll stay with him a few more hours, and then he’ll pass me back off to the D.A.’s Squad. Tell the boss I’m being a very good soldier, okay? And please see if you can get a number for any government officials in Florence. We need to find Marco Varelli’s widow.”

“Alex, it’s after ten at night over there. I’ll see what I can do, but I doubt I’ll have anything for you until tomorrow. And one last thing.”

“Some good news, right?”

“Not exactly. Pat McKinney dropped by. He told me to remind you that you are to stay away from the hospital. No visits to Mercer, no talking about the case. He doesn’t want you comparing notes and conforming your stories to fit each other’s recollections. Sorry, Alex.”

“Don’t worry, Laura. I know you’re just the messenger.”

I hung up and Chapman asked what the news was, so I told him about Wakefield.

“Jeez, blondie, if it wasn’t for me you’d have no friends at all. Let’s take off. Preston Mattox will see us at his office whenever we get there.”

“I thought you said everyone else would have to be interviewed here. ”

“What happened to your sense of humor, kid? D’you lose it yesterday? This guy’s got his architectural offices in a penthouse suite on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, with about fifty employees in the surrounding rooms. I’ll get you home in one piece tonight.”

Mike called the hospital and spoke with Mercer’s dad, who told him that Mercer had been sitting up for a few hours in the early afternoon and now was sleeping again. We gathered our things to leave the squad. Jimmy Halloran had been kept over to do back-to-back tours, to man the phone and hot line, since City Hall had announced a reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.

“Hey, K.D., give me a beep if anything comes in on Bailey before your shift is done. We’ve got an interview to do before we stop off at the hospital.”

With that we were on our way to the offices of Mattox Partners, and our first introduction to another one of Deni’s suitors, Preston Mattox. His secretary announced us and we were led into the stark glass-enclosed headquarters of the prominent architect, which looked south toward the spires of the great church below.

My first reaction was surprise. He appeared to be about fifty years old. He was in good shape and dressed in a navy suit, exuding a much more businesslike air than the art-world denizens we had encountered throughout the last week. But what struck me most about Mattox was that he looked truly distraught, and as though he had been crying for days on end. There was a hollow contour around his eyes and a lifelessness emanating from within, which hit a chord in the core of me that wanted someone to be mourning for Denise Caxton.

Once more Chapman and I made our introductions.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” he said, coming out from behind his desk and pulling three chairs around in a circle. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I really had to get away from here after Deni was killed. Lowell made it clear that I wasn’t welcome at the service, and I just needed to be somewhere else.”

Mattox was cordial, but he seemed distracted and unable even to muster a smile.

“Have you made any progress in solving Deni’s case?”

“Not as much as we’d like,” I answered.

“I’ve stopped reading newspaper accounts, so I don’t know what you’re up to. The stories about her all made her sound so vacuous and unpleasant. She was a most unusual creature- clever, funny, warm. She craved affection, and I loved giving it to her.”

Mike showed unusual restraint in not mentioning Deni’s other liaisons. He let Mattox do it for us. “You’ve probably talked with some of Deni’s other friends. Obviously, I wasn’t the only man in her life, but I was fighting hard for that slot.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking out and not speaking for several seconds. “I had asked Denise to marry me.”

“But she wasn’t even divorced yet,” Mike said.

Mattox rested against the ledge of the windowsill. “No, but I was urging her to speed up the process. Stop fighting with Lowell and walk away from him. Frankly, it made me sick just to think of them living under the same roof. I don’t quite have the art collection that her husband does, but short of that, there wasn’t anything she wanted that I would not have given her.”

“Do you know why she didn’t leave?”

“Really why? Probably I don’t know. None of the reasons she ever gave me made much sense. ‘Just wait,’ she used to say. ‘Don’t rush me.’ She was obstinate about it and I was madly in love, so I didn’t push her. It was the only thing we ever fought over. And she could fight,” Mattox said, almost amused at the memory of it.

“What do you mean?”

“Deni was a battler. She looked so soft, so fragile. But she had an iron will, and if something got under her skin, she’d go to the mats for it. It was one of her best traits as a friend-a tenacious loyalty that endeared her to anyone who got close enough.” He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and held it over his mouth as he cleared his throat, and then tamped the cloth against his eyes. “I keep thinking of how she must have died. I know it wouldn’t have been without a struggle.”

So many victims of sexual assault had described to me their reactions to the assailant. The greatest number submitted to life-threatening words or display of a weapon. Others chose to attempt to fight back. Some were successful and became survivors. For many, the resistance served only to aggravate the attacker and caused him to use more force, which resulted sometimes in serious injury to the woman, and often in her death. No one could second-guess the decisions each victim had to make in the seconds when she was confronted by a rapist.

Mike tried to direct the conversation back to the areas that interested him.

“Did you have any kind of relationship with Lowell Caxton?”

“A casual one. I’d known him for years-never did any work for him, but we traveled in the same social circles here in town. Always been a perfect gentleman to me.”

“How about to Deni?”

“I think I understood him a lot better than she did, to tell you the truth. I don’t think she had any business trying to make him let go of some of the artwork that had been in his family for decades. It wasn’t the prettiest side of Deni, as you probably know by now.”

“What about her concerns that he was trying to have her killed?”

Mattox frowned at that suggestion. “I ridiculed the idea at the time. Sort of makes me crazy to think about that now. It could just as easily be Lowell behind all this as it could be anyone, I guess.” He looked up at Mike. “I don’t envy your job, Detective. Saw an article in the paper not long ago. Said there are more murderers in the United States than there are medical doctors. More murderers than college professors. It’s mindboggling, really.” He talked on about the Caxtons’ marriage for more than fifteen minutes, until Mike changed the questions to ask about Bryan Daughtry.

“Never had any use for him, Mr. Chapman. It was a major point of contention between Deni and me. Whenever we talked seriously about the future, I made it clear that there was no room in it for Daughtry. He’s a despicable piece of-well, human garbage.” Mattox walked along the window on the far side of the room, dragging his finger along the sill. “Why you people never nailed him for the murder of that Scandinavian girl upstate escapes me completely. Whatever he does, he somehow lands on his feet each time. Makes me sick just to think about it.”

“Did you spend any time at Caxton Due, their new gallery?” I asked.

“Not when Bryan was around. I’d gone there on several occasions with Deni, when she went to check on shipments that were being unloaded. She found all that very exciting- loved to watch the men break down the packing boxes and lift some painting or sculpture out of them. She was like a little kid on Christmas morning, poring over every inch of the canvas, examining the artist’s signature, checking out the condition of the frame.

“I’d go just to see her reaction. Frankly, the art she and Daughtry were interested in did nothing for me. I’m rather a classicist, as you can see from my work.” He pointed at the office walls, which displayed the plans and finished results of some of his buildings. There was an elegance of line and style that didn’t mesh with the contemporary works we had seen in Chelsea.

“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?”

“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.”