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Chapter 25 • Chapter 26 • Chapter 27 • Chapter 28 • Chapter 29
Chapter 25
THE CHEESY TUDOR-STYLE living room—like something out of Disneyland—fills up quickly with lots of local law enforcement.
The New York State police arrive: seven burly men and two substantial-looking women. The local Monticello police arrive: two detectives, two coroners, four police officers. This may be the entire town police department. The local press arrives, as eager and noisy as anything in Manhattan or Paris. The coroners do a quick on-site examination of Rudy Brunetti. Then they begin to transfer the body to an ambulance.
I stand at an open window and watch them speedily move the body to the ambulance. The coroner sees me and explains what I already know: “We need to minimize dermal contamination.”
Why do American officials enjoy using big words? Couldn’t he just have said “skin decay”?
Detective Burke and I are at different corners of the room. We see each other, and I immediately join my colleague, the person who just saved my life.
“So, K. Burke,” I say. “You did accompany me after all.” I squeeze her shoulders, as close to a loving gesture as we have ever shared.
“You probably predicted that I’d be following you,” she says.
I tell her the truth.
“Not this time, I must say. This time I thought our disagreement was too great for it to mend quickly.”
There is a pause. Then she looks at me with intense eyes. Softly she says, “I could never let you down, Moncrief.”
My head turns to the ground. My throat aches with anxiety. I know that I should be lying dead on the icy ground. I shake. My neck hurts. I speak.
“Merci, merci beaucoup. You have saved my life. I am beyond grateful.”
Burke smiles. Her eyes sparkle.
“As you should be.”
I smile. This will not grow any further into a sentimental moment. That is simply not the way Burke and I behave.
And anyway, we must not allow the local police to take over. No. Now we must take control, as all the little puzzle pieces of the investigation begin to fall into place.
The results turn out to be fairly much as we expected. The elegant Sophia and Andre Krane are the masterminds in this grand fraud scheme. They maintain a large basement studio at this home. It looks like a classroom at a university’s fine arts painting course. Easels with half-finished canvases dot the room—a large Picasso here, a tiny Rubens there, a Schnabel that looks like every other Schnabel, a Warhol “Liz Taylor” that looks like a thousand others.
Handcuffs are locked onto the Kranes. Sophia Krane is calm, stoic, almost bored, as she stands with three police officers guarding her.
“Rudy was a fool. I told him all he had to do was steal some goddamn paintings, from her bedroom. He didn’t have to kill the old lady,” she says.
“But he did,” K. Burke says.
Now the Kranes are led out of their gloomy house to join Angel, who is already in a police car.
Burke and I question and Andre quickly admits that they sold the Hockney and Lichtenstein forgeries to Baby D. Only too eager to sell out their pal Rudy, he described how they had planted him—already an accomplice in art forgery sales—as her driver, when other clients of the gallery had started to raise alarm about the legitimacy of their pieces.
Rudy was supposed to gain access and steal the paintings back, but she’d sniffed him out and fired him before he had the opportunity. Desperate, after their last drive Rudy had killed her—but was too cowardly to take the paintings then, sniffed Sophia.
So they’d enlisted Angel Corrido to “retrieve” them from the apartment after her death. Their fear at that point, of course, had become that Mrs. Dunlop’s estate would identify the pieces as forgeries. “You might as well look in Baby D’s second maid’s room,” Sophia tells us. “She has a box spring with a secret compartment. Right now you’ll probably find a Giotto wood panel and a group of architectural drawings from Horace Walpole’s country home that Angel couldn’t manage to get out. And...oh, yes ...ten animation cels from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“No one can say we don’t offer a variety,” says Andre.
The local chief of police, the Monticello district attorney, and the sergeant of the county police approach us like a pumped-up sports team. I know what they want: a quarrel. Will these three criminals be tried in Sullivan County where they were arrested? Or will they be tried in Manhattan where their crimes were committed? I’m way too weary to deal with this.
“K. Burke, you have given me the greatest gift that one person can possibly give another. Thanks to you, I am still alive.”
“All in a day’s work,” she says, with only a trace of irony in her voice.
“Now I must ask for one more favor, a small favor,” I say.
She simply rolls her eyes.
“What is it, Moncrief? Do you want me to give you a kidney?”
“Actually, worse than that. Would you please deal with these three local police people? I have an errand to run.”
“An errand? It’s five thirty in the morning. We’re at a crime scene in the middle of the woods a hundred miles from home base... and you’ve got an errand to run?”
“Merci, K. Burke. Merci, merci, and for good luck, one more merci.”
Chapter 26
IT IS DARK as midnight when I walk outside. The late-November morning is misty and cold. It is snowing lightly, just enough to make the air wet and icy. It is a perfect environment for sadness. The frozen lake, the dark night, the icy air...it should be ideal for depression. Yet I am strangely buoyant. I am calmer than I have been in months. I know it is the result of a successful end to the art forgery case. The usual sense of smugness that runs through me is stronger than ever. I look forward to discussing the details with Elliott. I know that some of my New York colleagues will have a touch of envy that this French interloper cracked the case. But most of all I am deeply warmed by Katherine Burke’s extraordinary role in saving my life. Beyond friendship, and even, in a certain way, beyond romantic love.
I look down toward the lake. I stand still. I imagine the scene of a few hours ago, a scene of terror as a man with a gun pursued me through the dark. Now the entire area is one of peace and beauty.
A wooden shed sits not far from the main house. I have seen sheds like this outside some of the very old châteaux of France; they are remnants from hundreds of years earlier—outdoor bathrooms, basically toilets for the servants.
I look through the one small glass window in the shed’s wooden door. The tiny household’s gardening equipment—old-fashioned hand mowers, clippers, axes, shovels. I open the door and see a rusty bow saw hanging on a hook. I take it down and walk toward the lake.
In this forest of dead winter branches and hundreds of evergreens, I find a pine tree that is precisely the same height as myself—six feet, no taller, no shorter. It is not a tree from a storybook—not a scrawny lonely tree, yet not a great thick beauty. A tree. Simple. Lovely. A good representation of the work of God...if you are happy enough with life to still believe in God.
The trunk is soft. I cut through easily. As I do, I notice how completely ruined my shoes and trousers are—stained with water and ice and snow and the feces of deer and dogs.
I give the severed trunk an easy shove, and the tree falls forward. Just as I slip the bow saw over my shoulder and lift the bottom end of the trunk to drag the tree back toward the house, I hear a man’s voice calling.
He shouts my name. He calls, “Detective Moncrief. Over here.”
I wave at him, and he continues toward me. I recognize him as one of the Monticello police officers on the crime scene. He is no boy. He may be as old as thirty. As he comes closer I see that he is tall and blond and handsome, no doubt a local girl’s dream.
But as is always the way with me, I am hesitant, suspicious. Perhaps the Kranes and Rudy Brunetti had a cabal of helpers up here. It would not be incredible—a few facilitators in the police force, in city hall, in the highway department.
I drop the tree and slip the bow saw from my shoulder to my hand. I grip the saw handle tightly.
The police officer stands next to me.
“I can give you a hand with that,” he says. “I saw you from way up there.”
“Ah, you caught me in the act of thievery,” I say.
“I think you can help yourself to anything you want around here. You and Detective Burke are heroes. This is pretty amazing, the way you solved this case.”
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