The Case of the Purloined Painting Read online

  I was probably overreacting. Both Catherine and I had been feeling that way off and on for several days. Observed. Of course she’s a spectacular looking woman. I was trying to determine the source of her unease. I was not successful.

  It seemed to me the logical conclusion was that somebody I was so far unsuccessful at detecting had been tailing Catherine at the same time I was being watched. A very odd circumstance. Coincidence? Not likely. Since there was absolutely nothing in Catherine’s life that would merit such attention, whoever was watching her, it had to be because of our association. Association, such a neutral word to describe our relationship. We’d been a couple now for almost four years. We met first when I did security for an upscale charity thing in Minneapolis. Catherine was a guest. I noticed her because she was tall, the tallest woman in the crowd of five or six hundred. Not only was she tall, she was wearing five-inch heels and an amused expression most of the evening. Elegant. Refined. Attractive.

  I learned she owned a successful massage and therapy school in Minneapolis. The following week I made a reservation for a massage. I’m a devotee. When she saw me in the lobby and recognized me, she took the appointment for herself. We hit it off and things have progressed.

  I made it a habit to avoid entangling Catherine in my cases. Once in a great while she entangles me in her business life. Our emotional lives are most definitely entangled.

  I didn’t want her soiled by some of the low-lifes I occasionally dealt with. There wasn’t much of that but I also didn’t want the occasional psychopath I encounter to endanger her. Most people knew I had a companion, but not who it was or where we hung out.

  “Hey, tiger, I almost didn’t recognize you. What’s with the crutch? Oh.” Catherine grinned down at me. Sometimes she found my little subterfuges amusing. Sometimes she helped me with computer searches and was a wonderful sounding board when I needed to talk about my life.

  “I came down town to maybe take you to lunch,” I said.

  She pouted prettily. “Wish I could accept. It seems I have to meet with some lawyer. We’re working on a contract for that new accounting operation and they seem not to like something about my standard contract.” She put her hand on my shoulder and we moved to one side to avoid the growing crowd passing from the Crystal Court over the busy street below.

  “Has your feeling gone away?” “The one about being observed?”

  “That’s the one. Right now I’m getting some vibes.”

  Catherine smiled and scanned the crowd surging around us. It was mostly made up of men in dark suits and women in smart-looking but brighter business wear. “Not me. Your shields must be deflecting the rays. I better get along to my meeting.”

  A wheelchair broke through the crowd. It was pushed by a dark-complexioned woman in a red blouse with long sleeves. Her skirt was dark blue and long, brushing her ankles. Her hair was done up in a long dark braid that swung back and forth over the head of the man in the chair whenever she leaned forward. The man I recognized.

  He was large, somberly dressed as usual in an expensive dark suit and white shirt. He had a dark blue robe across his lap to conceal the fact that his legs were missing below the knees.

  I knew attorney Derrol Madison had been injured in a car accident many years ago. It was unusual to encounter him out in crowds of people during the day. Intensely private, he spent most of his time in his office suite in the IDS Tower or his home in an upscale western suburb of Minneapolis.

  I was not surprised when he reached over and extended one hand to me. Madison’s call the night before was the real reason I was in the skyway. We shook. “Sean,” he said with no hesitation and no smile. “We must have a drink some time. I think I’m going to require your services.”

  His grip was strong and sure. Legless he might be, but he didn’t seem to be losing any upper body strength and he appeared healthy. I knew the investigation service he normally used. They were a multi-person office. He and I had occasionally been on opposite sides, but I’d never worked for him.

  “You must have my office number,” I said. Catherine touched my arm in goodbye and went off on the skyway.

  “I’d rather not be on your recorder with this,” he muttered and wheeled on by. “Or in either of our appointment books.” I glanced up to see Catherine lift one hand, catch my eye and disappear off into the building corridor.

  “Here, hang on,” I said. I fished out a business card and scribbled a location. “Three today suit you?” he took the card from my fingers and wheeled away with his ever present attendant. Either he’d be there or he wouldn’t. It mattered little to me—the bar I’d suggested was on my way home.

  Which is all about why I was walking through late afternoon sun on that crisp February afternoon into the Marriott Fairfield Hotel lounge on I-35W just north of the Twin Cities.

  The lowering sun was noticeably warmer in color than it had been earlier in the day. Madison was ahead of me sitting with his back to the western-facing windows. The blinds were open and the place was bright. Tables had been shoved aside to accommodate Madison’s wheelchair.

  I ordered a shot of twelve-year-old Macallan from the waitress who couldn’t have been even twice the age of the scotch.

  “Not exactly off the beaten path,” Madison said.

  I shrugged. “It’s quiet. Almost no one comes in here this time of day and it’s outside your usual haunts. What’s the big secret?”

  “I’m doing a favor for a friend. That’s all. He wants some help, the services of an investigator. I said I thought I could find someone acceptable. That was two weeks ago. I made several suggestions. He talked to some of them. Then we began to have inquiries, inquiries that went nowhere. After a while, I went through the lists and discovered somebody or several somebodies had been finding out about my firm. I didn’t like it.”

  I was beginning not to like it either. We speculated for an hour about who and why his firm was being watched. I didn’t tell him about my similar unease.

  Madison was on his third whiskey sour since I’d arrived. Clearly, the thing had bothered this experienced attorney in a way he hadn’t experienced before.

  He glanced around at the dozen or so patrons in the big room. There was no one close, and I didn’t see anybody I knew, although that was possible, since we were in my neighborhood, something I was pretty sure Derrol Madison didn’t know. Most of his contacts with me, few in number, had been in Minneapolis or by phone.

  Madison continued to insist that the name of the friend he was fronting for was of no consequence, had no bearing whatsoever on the situation. What he wanted me to do was meet a man from Chicago. Naturally I wanted to know who he wanted me to meet and why. He still demurred.

  “Mr. Madison, with all due respect, I’m a little surprised you want me to handle this task.”

  He stared at me. “Are you refusing?” Trust a lawyer to look for “Inner- deeper- hidden secret” meanings.

  “No, sir. I’m happy to accommodate you. I have nothing pressing on my plate at the moment,” I lied. “I just wonder why you chose to use my services since we’ve never done business together before.”

  “That’s it precisely.” He took a sip of his drink. Actually it was a rather large sip. Something was bugging the man.

  “Ah. You’ve decided you want a distant relationship, not something for a regular contact.”

  “You are as perceptive as I was informed.”

  “All right. I accept your commission, but you’ll have to give me a name.”

  “Excellent. I’ll send you the particulars, including the name of the man from Chicago you are to meet.” Madison finished his drink and set the glass down with a clack that traveled through the quiet room.

  “Well.” I stretched my arms overhead and dropped a napkin on the floor in the process. The maneuver not only provided some relief from a
little stress in my shoulders, but it gave me a brief opportunity to scan the room behind me. It was almost empty, which made it easier for me to notice and wonder about the solo woman sitting at a table on the far side of the room. “Was there anything else?”

  “I have to get going,” Madison said, glancing at an expensive-looking wristwatch.

  “All right. Do you need any help?”

  “Just move the table so I can get out, please.”

  I did and he rolled his chair away from the window. We didn’t shake hands. I stood, drink in hand and watched him roll efficiently to the doors to the lobby which opened as if by magic, but I detected the fingers of a hand pulling the door open. I sat down again to finish my drink and after two trips to the glass I glanced around to note that the single woman customer was no longer in her place.

  Chapter 6

  Do you know this woman?” I asked. Ricardo Simon, Minneapolis police investigator, leaned back in his chair and swallowed the last spoonful of the French onion soup he’d had for lunch. “Thanks for lunch, by the way,” Ricardo said, looking down at the picture I’d placed in front of him while mopping a bit of soup from his mustache. The mustache was new. His love of French onion soup, especially made at Le Bistro, was not. Le Bistro was only a block from the cop shop in downtown Minneapolis. Made it handy for him, particularly on a cold and brittle winter day like this one. It was cold, temperatures hovering around zero. I hadn’t wanted to come downtown. I hadn’t wanted to go to my office, but I did both. Persistent to the cause, that’s me. As long as I was out, meeting my friend detective Ricardo Simon for lunch, seemed like a good idea.

  The pale February sun was too weak to dispose of much of the winter’s grimy snow that lay about the curbs in untidy lumps. We needed either a fresh snowfall or, preferably, a bright hot day to bring melt to the streets. Weather reports were not hopeful.

  Simon was a friend of several years. We’d first met when he was a patrolman waiting for the results of the sergeant’s exam. He passed with a high score and then waited for a vacancy and the promotion. Not long thereafter he moved to the homicide section where he happily chased killers and citizens who fell into bad circumstances or bad company or both. In the past ten years we had done each other the occasional favor, helping to clean up after some nasties.

  “Is this a client?”

  “Nosir. This is a picture of the woman the client wishes me to find.”

  I related the story Mr. Gehrz had told me.

  “So far, I have come up empties. Some of the people I interviewed at Target where she worked recognized her but said she left after several months, maybe a year at most. Her name, I was informed, is Tiffany, Tiffany market. She has no driver’s license, no known local address, no friends or family, at least none I can find in the public records.”

  Ricardo peered at the picture. “I think this was taken on Nicollet Avenue, probably last summer,” I said.

  “Very good. You’re right. It’s obviously summer or late spring and that construction in the background looked pretty much like that in may and June. They finished the building and repaved the street there in late august.”

  “That sounds about right.” “I checked,” I said, “With the street department. They verified my recollection.”

  “This picture was supplied by your client?” “Yep. One Mr. Robert Gehrz.”

  Detective Simon raised his eyebrows.

  I nodded. “Passingly creative, I agree.”

  “Did Mr. Gehrz give you any reason for concern?”

  “Not a whit. He told me she hadn’t shown up for a planned rendezvous about two weeks before we met. He stated further that in the past she’d always called him if she didn’t make their appointment and he was concerned. He gave me the usual information about her and the usual runaround about himself. I’m not allowed to contact him in any way.”

  “Cash deal?” “Of course. A couple of other things. Look more closely at the picture of this woman.”

  He did, leaning over and peering closely for several seconds. Then he looked up at me. “Odd. There is something odd about this. But I don’t know what it is, exactly.”

  “You’re right. Catherine noticed it last night when I showed it to her. I think the facial features have been slightly altered. The other thing that’s odd is her general similarity to someone else I met recently.”

  “Photoshopped, possibly?” said Simon.

  “Exactly. Not a whole lot, and maybe not by an expert. I think Mr. Gehrz is not all he seems, nor is his quest quite on the up and up. I admit while enjoining me to absolute discretion, his language, when he described the difficulty he would be in if this search became public, was more circumspect than that, even.”

  “Circumspect?”

  “Yeah, he wouldn’t be killed or anything if it all came out, only in some difficulty.”

  “Strange. Do you think there’s a connection between this woman and your new client?”

  “No. So on to another topic. Can you tell me anything about the investigation into the demise of Mr. Gottlieb?”

  “Not much, but why are you interested?”

  “Since I first brought up my other client, the woman who paid me to be an intermediary, you remember, Anne or Ann?”

  Simon nodded again. “Oh, right. A mysterious woman who may or may not know something about Gottlieb’s death.”

  “There’s been a development. Your friend, Attorney Derrol Madison, has been in touch. In a very hush-hush sequence. So I must tell you that this is all on the Q.T.”

  Simon, who is used to our occasionally convoluted dances in the garden of information sharing, just looked at me and waited.

  “Mr. Madison called me late one evening this week to request a meeting. We met briefly in sort of a moving encounter in the Macy’s skyway. That in itself was odd, since I’m sure you know he rarely goes out in public. Later that day I met him in an out-of-the-way bar. Never mind where. It was of my choosing and I’m sure it doesn’t figure into this.

  “Anyway, he told me that he was acting for a friend, or maybe the friend of a friend, who wanted a reliable investigator to help an acquaintance, or a client, or a close friend or…”

  Simon raised one hand. “I get the picture.”

  “Tomorrow I will meet this man who is coming here from Chicago. We will go to his relative’s home for a look-see.” I paused for a sip of water.

  “And?”

  “According to Madison, the man’s name is Aaron Gottlieb. He’s the great nephew of Manfred Gottlieb, the man of who we just spoke? The man found dead in the ice of the river.”

  Chapter 7

  I met Aaron Gottlieb the next morning at a big old home on the south side of Minneapolis, per our arrangement. It was one of those shabby stucco two-story single family homes built sometime in the early to mid twenties. In the previous century. It was his grand uncle’s home when he died. In fact, Aaron Gottlieb informed me, the place had been owned by Gottliebs since it was built. He wasn’t sure whether a Gottlieb had actually built it or not.

  His grand uncle was the late Manfred Gottlieb. Aaron Gottlieb wanted my help in finding out how his grand uncle had ended up in the river, confirming what attorney Madison had told me.

  The cops hadn’t told him much, Gottlieb reported. Was this a suicide or was his grand uncle, elderly but in vigorous good health for someone approaching a century of living, a man who had endured most of World War Two in a Nazi concentration or work camp, helped over a parapet or forcibly tossed in the river? According to the cops, which was according to Aaron Gottlieb, there was precious little evidence of anything, one way or another.

  I knew that to be true, more certainly than Gottlieb did. I also knew the answer, if my mysterious client Ann or Anne was to be believed about that snowy confrontation on the Stone Arch Bridge. That’s the bridge
James J. Hill, the local transportation magnate, had constructed so he could run his railroad, the Great northern, to the west coast.

  I chose, for now, not to share those revelations and speculations with this young Mr. Gottlieb, since neither had the cops. But I wondered why the cops had been so reticent. I also wondered what an eighty-plus-year-old guy was doing in a February snowstorm, wandering so far from home.

  Manfred Gottlieb’s body had contusions, a couple of broken ribs, a cracked hip and other injuries that could have come from falling off a bridge upstream from where his body was recovered. That had been reported from the medical examiner.

  Some of those injuries could have been the result of a beating. One scenario suggested Gottlieb was beaten, died and then was tossed into the river. Another scenario, supported by the evidence, suggested he fell off a bridge, having jumped or been pushed. For Aaron, suicide was simply not possible, ergo, he was leading me to this room where we hoped to find… Something.

  Aaron was afraid that if something concrete didn’t turn up, the authorities would slide the case into the unsolved or label it death by mischance, and that would be the end of it.

  So now I’m standing in this dim attic, circa 1920 something. It’s a perfectly good attic, as those things go. No recent leaks, no paneling, bare wood floor and a real staircase, not a pull-down ladder, to get up here.