Painted Ladies

57

We gathered in Kate Quaggliosi’s office. Rosalind, me, Healy, and Belson as an interested observer. Rosalind immediately latched onto Kate, the other woman in a room with several men. My guess was that whatever her off-duty gender, in here she wasn’t a woman, she was a prosecutor.

“My home was burglarized,” she said.

“You report it to the Walford police?” Kate said.

“Yes.”

“They take anything?”

“No, but I feel dreadfully invaded.”

“Who would have done such a thing?” Healy said.

I looked at Healy. His face was expressionless.

“I’ve lost my husband,” she said to Kate. “I am still very fragile.”

Kate nodded and held up a copy of the painted-ladies poem.

“Walford cops are your best bet,” she said. “Could you explain to me what this poem means, with particular attention to the two painted ladies?”

“I do not explain my poetry,” Rosalind said. “A poem should not mean but simply be.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Kate said, “in English departments all across this great land. I’m sure it was true for Mr. McLeish, when he said it. Or something like it. But this is a homicide investigation, and in this arena it is not so.”

Rosalind stared at her as if she’d uttered blasphemy.

“Something like it?” Rosalind said.

“If I remember my modern poetry seminar at BC,” Kate said, “it was, ‘A poem should not mean/But be.’”

“Oh, no,” Rosalind said. “I’m sure Archie used the word ‘simply.’”

“Sure,” Kate said. “So what about these painted ladies?”

Rosalind looked as if she was disappointed in Kate. She glanced at me. I tried to look encouraging. She looked at Healy. He remained as expressionless as gray paint.

“I’m an artist,” Rosalind said. “I do not cast my language before swine.”

“And I’m an AD,” Kate said. “And I might put your ass in jail.”

“Jail?” Rosalind said.

“Jail,” Kate said.

“For writing a poem?”

“For obstructing justice by refusing to divulge information needed in the investigation of your husband’s death,” Kate said.

Healy stood.

“You want me to arrest her?” he said to Kate.

Kate looked at Rosalind.

“Your choice,” she said.

Had I been Rosalind, I’d have brought a lawyer with me. I suspected that Kate and Healy were on shaky legal ground, and a lawyer might have made that point. But Rosalind didn’t have a lawyer, and that was all to the good. She got scared.

“I didn’t . . .” she said. “I wasn’t . . . I’ll tell you anything you wish.”

Healy sat back down and crossed his legs.

“Excellent,” Kate said. “Did the reference to painted ladies have anything to do with the Hermenszoon painting that is missing?”

Two bright red smudges appeared on Rosalind’s cheek-bones. She was taking in a lot of air. She seemed to be gathering herself. Kate waited. Healy and I watched.

“He cheated on me compulsively,” Rosalind said. “He said he was addicted to sex.”

“Lot of that going around,” Kate said.

“I’m not sure he loved me at all,” Rosalind said. “Though he said he did, and I stayed with him, because all my other choices were worse.”

She breathed for a moment.

“But we used to talk, we’d known each other a long time, and it was, at worst, like a long habit, you know.”

It was interesting how, as she got to talking about matters of personal substance, all the phony-accent artistic gobbledygook with which she’d plastered herself over went away. She seemed, for the moment, almost real.

“He always said he’d make it up to me,” she said. “He always said he was going to make a lot of money, and we could live as we deserved to.”

“How was he going to do that?” Kate said.

“He said he was going to swap the paintings.”

“Which paintings.”

“He had a good copy of Lady with a Finch,” she said. “He was going to replace the real one with it. Then he’d have the original painting, and make some money, too.”

“And he was the identifying expert,” I said.

“So where is either of these paintings?” Kate said.

“The fraud,” Rosalind said, “as in the poem, is on view in my home. As am I.”

“You’re a fraud, too?” Kate said.

“I was faithful to my husband,” she said. “He was unfaithful to me. I was one half of a fraudulent relationship.”

“I’d say that made him a fraud,” Kate said.

Rosalind shrugged. She was slipping back into her poetic persona.

“It’s a metaphor,” she said.

“I have a question,” I said.

She nodded at me without much warmth.

“How do you know the one in your house is a fake?”

“Well, it certainly isn’t the original,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Why, we couldn’t . . .” She paused. “Ashton told me it was.”

“We could get somebody over there from the Hammond,” Healy said.

“Their expert was Prince,” I said.

“Someplace,” Healy said.

“Guy in New York,” I said.

“Gimme a name and address,” Kate said. “We’ll see if we can arrange it.”

Rosalind stood.

“I wish to go now,” she said.

“Sure,” Kate said. “Just so long as I can find you when I want you.”

“I’ll be at home,” she said.

“I can have someone drive you home,” Kate said.

Rosalind shook her head.

“No,” she said, and left.

“Show us,” Kate said. “She don’t need no stinking ride.”

“I think there’s more to get from her,” Healy said.

“I do, too,” Kate said. “But we pretty well used her up today. We’ll have a few more rounds with her.”

“Yeah,” Healy said. “Telling the truth exhausted her.”

“She’s not used to it,” I said. “She’s been pretending all her life.”

“You saw the painting,” Healy said. “What do you think?”

“Looks good to me,” I said. “But I don’t count.”

“How’d you get to see it?” Kate said.

“He B-and-E’d her house,” Healy said.

“I never heard that,” Kate said.