Painted Ladies

66

They stopped crying and sat together on the floor behind the couch.

“We need to talk a little before the cops come,” I said.

“Do they have to come?” Winifred said.

“Yes.”

“I know,” she said.

Winifred stood and put the rifle carefully on the long coffee table. Then she turned and put her hand out to Missy, and pulled her to her feet. Neither one looked at the dead man lying on the floor.

“Where did I hit him?” Winifred said.

“Middle of the mass,” I said.

“I was the best shot in the Chicago office,” she said. “He was going to take her.”

“You shot him,” Missy said.

Winifred nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said.

“Is he dead?” Missy said.

“Yes.”

“Will they arrest you?” Missy said.

“I don’t think so,” Winifred said.

“No,” I said. “They won’t.”

“I don’t want to talk in here,” Winifred said.

“Kitchen?” I said.

“Yes.”

We sat at the kitchen table with the scotch bottle in front of us. Winifred got glasses and ice, and poured a drink for Missy and a drink for herself.

“Okay,” I said. “The rifle legal?”

“Yes,” Winifred said.

Missy sipped some scotch.

“He didn’t love me,” she said.

“He didn’t have much in the way of feelings,” Winifred said. “He might have cared more about you than anyone else.”

“I thought he was a hero,” Missy said. “Restoring not only things but honor to his people, helping to erase some of the stain of the Holocaust, all this time later.”

“You’re quoting him,” Winifred said. “He used to say the same thing to me.”

“What was he really doing?” I said.

“Stealing paintings and selling them.”

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

“Hell,” Winifred said. “I know everything.”

“He was stealing paintings?” Missy said.

“His father had been in the death camp. The offspring of Holocaust survivors often feel a need to atone for not having been part of it.”

“Not being in the Holocaust?” Missy said.

“I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject,” Winifred said. ”And I think, in the beginning, the Herzberg Foundation was authentic. He was really trying to even up for the Holocaust. Take some risk to liberate objets d’art and restore them to their rightful owners.”

“So if someone wouldn’t sell him the work of art, he’d steal it,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And money became an issue, given the cost of buying such pictures.”

“And he felt it was wrong that he should have to pay,” Winifred said.

She poured a little more scotch into her glass.

“So he began to steal all of them,” she said. “It was his right. And he began to sell a few of them to finance the foundation, which needed it.”

“And it was working good,” I said. “And after a while the foundation became an end, not a means.”

“The foundation,” Winifred said, “c’est moi.”

“And the Auschwitz tattoos?” I said. “And the Israeli commandos? And the rest?”

“Whatever it started out as,” Winifred said, “it became... It was set decoration.”

I nodded.

“How do you know all this?” Missy said.

“Honey, I was a first-rate investigator,” Winifred said. “I knew most of it in Chicago.”

“And you let him...”

Winifred took her daughter’s hand.

“Conceive you?” Winifred said. “Eagerly. You are not the only one who loved him foolishly.”

“How about Ashton Prince?” I said.

“They were partners,” Winifred said. “There was a family connection back to Auschwitz, I think. I’m not clear on the details. But Ashton would locate a painting, authenticate it, appraise it, and when they stole it and sold it, he would get a cut.”

“Why did they kill him?” I said.

“Ariel said that Ashton was trying to cheat them.”

“And he was afraid they’d catch him at it,” I said, “which is why he brought me along to protect him. Do you know how he was planning to cheat them?”

“No.”

I nodded.

“I think he was planning to switch paintings on them,” I said. “You have any idea where Lady with a Finch might be?”

Winifred, still holding Missy’s hand, tapped it gently against her own thigh. Her expression changed. If she had not been so recently traumatized, she might have smiled.

“In my bedroom closet,” she said. “There’s two of them.”