Still As Death (11 page)

He looked embarrassed, then stood up and said, “Kinda. Hey, you want to go for a walk? It’s hot in here.”

“It’s hotter outside.” She looked up and found that he was nervous, so she stood up. “Okay. We might as well.”

He got Megan strapped into her stroller and they headed out into the humid evening. A couple of boys were playing soccer in one of the postage stamp front yards along the street. As they passed, the ball shot out at them and Sweeney stopped to toss it back. The air smelled of summer, of rotting fruit, of Popsicles, of grass. Quinn was wearing khakis and a navy polo shirt, but he’d changed into flip-flops and she could see the tan lines along his feet. Looking at him in profile, it struck her that he was tired.

“Okay,” Sweeney said. “So there’s something I want to ask you about. It may be nothing. I don’t know.” As they walked, she told him about her exhibit and the missing collar, and then about Karen Philips and the art heist.

When she was done, he just looked confused.

“So …?” He raised his eyebrows skeptically at her.

“So …” Now that she had to explain her suspicions to him, she realized she couldn’t put them into words. “So doesn’t it seem strange to you that, I don’t know, that all these things happened around the same time? That she worked on this collar, that she was there when the museum was robbed, that the collar has disappeared from the museum, and that she killed herself? Doesn’t that seem strange to you, when I say it like that?”

Quinn looked pained. “Sweeney, I was at the scene of a murder yesterday, then I came home and discovered one of my knives missing, then when I went out to my car today, someone had keyed the passenger side door. Does that seem strange to you, when I put it all together like that? What do you think? That she had something to
do with the robbery at the museum? That she took the necklace herself?”

Sweeney hadn’t thought that, but now she considered it. Quinn took a deep breath as though he was going to make a speech, and again she realized how tired he looked. But she had never known him not tired.

“Sweeney, there are still people working on the thefts at the Hapner. I’m sure they know everything about everyone who was working there at the time and I’m sure they’ve looked into this girl’s death.”

Woman
, Sweeney thought.
She was twenty years old
.

“But what if they didn’t?”

“It’s the FBI that’s handling this now,” he said. “They have manpower, they have resources, unlike me. I’m sure they did.” They had reached the end of the block, and he turned the stroller around, starting for home.

She felt as though she’d lost him, so she came right out with what she wanted. “I was thinking you could just kind of look at the case again, see if they really did look at all the angles.”

“Sweeney, I’m sorry, but I’ve got enough on my plate right now without opening up old suicides. I’m sure they looked at it pretty carefully at the time. I highly doubt she had anything to do with a multimillion-dollar art heist. She was a student, right?” He seemed annoyed, and all of a sudden she wondered if it was because she had never called him back.

“I didn’t say she had anything to do with it. Maybe she knew something about it.”

“Whatever.” He stopped to pick up a stuffed hippo Megan had thrown out of the stroller, and as he stood up again, Sweeney saw annoyance flash across his face. “Look, I’m breaking in a new partner and I’ve got a girl who was brutally sodomized and dumped in an alley and I can’t get anyone to talk about her because I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t have time to open up a case that’s been taken over by someone else anyway, okay?”

“Fine.” They were back at his house, and Sweeney fumbled in her pocket for her car keys. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“You’re not bothering me. I just … Megan, don’t keep throwing that out of there.” The hippo was on the ground again and Megan started screaming when she heard the hardness in his voice. He undid the stroller straps and picked her up, saying, “I really don’t have time for this, Sweeney. You can’t just drop by after all this time and not calling and expect me to be your personal cold case squad.” They looked at each other for a moment, both surprised at his words. His mouth was set in anger, but his eyes weren’t cold, only sad.

You know it’s not like that
, she wanted to say.

Instead, she turned and headed for her car, feeling as though she might burst into tears. What was wrong with her? If he was going to be a jerk, then fine, let him be a jerk.

As she got in, she heard him curse and then heard Megan scream again. When she looked back as she pulled out of the driveway, she saw him holding his flailing daughter and she hung on to her anger, not making any excuses for him, and she watched as Megan’s legs knocked the stroller over, spilling toys out onto the sidewalk. She screamed even louder.

Served him right.

Sweeney stopped at the supermarket on her way home and got pre-made gazpacho and some hot Italian sausages to do on the grill. By the time Ian got home at eight, she had dinner almost ready and was setting the table.

“Smells good,” he said, coming up behind her and kissing the side of her neck. She turned around and kissed him on the lips, leaning into it and pressing her body against his. He responded, pulling her closer and cupping her face in his hands. “Tastes good too.”

“I’m happy to see you,” she said, meaning it more than she’d meant anything she’d said all day. She’d had a few glasses of wine
while she got dinner ready, and now she found herself pleasingly buzzed, the memory of Quinn’s words dulled by the wine. “I’m really happy to see you.”

“How nice.” He leaned back and looked at her, pushing her hair away from her shoulders. “Shall we eat and then you can show me how very happy you are?” She nodded and smiled, bringing the bowls of gazpacho and plate of sausages into the dining room and opening another bottle of red Spanish wine.

“What do you remember about the art heist at the Hapner back in 1979?” she asked once they were sitting down with their food. “Was there ever any buzz about the stolen works in the art world?”

“The Hapner? Oh, yes, it was all that Egyptian stuff, is that right?” She nodded. “I don’t think so, though I remember something about an underworld figure coming forward to claim that he knew where the works were. Is that right? Or was that the Gardner?”

“That was the Gardner, but apparently some people thought it was the same people. The Irish mob, links to the IRA and all that.”

He watched her face for a minute. It was because she’d mentioned the IRA, she realized, and she went on lightly, to show him she wasn’t thinking of Colm. “I was talking to someone at the museum about it today. I just wondered if you’d ever heard anything.”

“I can’t say I have, but we’re a pretty reputable house. There are others that aren’t quite so, how do I say it, persnickety. Lovely gazpacho.”

“You mean there are other auction houses that would sell stolen paintings or artifacts, knowing they were stolen?”

“They wouldn’t advertise it, but there are places that have acted as a go-between, places that might privately broker a deal.”

“I’ve never understood that. What’s the benefit in having, say, a stolen Vermeer? You can’t really display it, you can never sell it. Why go to all that trouble?”

“There are collectors who just like knowing they own the piece. Possession is enough.” He speared a sausage and split it in half on his plate, spreading Dijon mustard on the inside. “I did hear something
interesting about your museum,” he said. “Willem Keane just got a gift of a canopic chest from a graduate of the university. It’s supposed to be a very nice little piece.”

“I know. He’s been so excited about it. They’re building a new exhibit for it and everything. I think he’s going to have it on display during the opening of my exhibition.” She looked up. They still hadn’t talked about whether Ian would be there.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said, picking up on her thought. “What if I don’t go to Paris in September so I can go to your opening, and then we go over together in early November and stay for a few weeks? Maybe through Thanksgiving. I really want you to meet Eloise, and we could get out of the city for a few days, do some traveling. How does that sound to you?”

“Early November? I was thinking of going to Mexico, actually. For the Day of the Dead. I’ve never been, and I want to write something about it. It’s supposed to be …” She trailed off as she saw the look on his face. “What?”

“Nothing.” He stood abruptly and went into the kitchen. She heard him fiddling with the hibachi out on the fire escape and felt like a disobedient child waiting to hear about her punishment.

“Were you going to invite me to come?” he asked when he came back into the room.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, it’s for work.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course. She had thought about it. She just hadn’t decided whether she wanted him to come along and now she knew she’d bungled it. “Why, do you want to come?”

He did something strange with his mouth and got up again and took his plate into the kitchen. She heard him banging around in there, unloading the dishwasher and clanging pots together in the sink. She waited a minute and then followed him in, taking her wineglass and the half-empty bottle with her.

“Are you mad? Do you want to come to Mexico?”

He watched her for a moment and she kept talking, in order to fill up the silence. “Of course you can come. I just wasn’t sure you
wanted to. I mean, I thought I’d stay in hostels and stuff and do some hiking and maybe visit some archaeological sites. I know you would rather stay in hotels is all, and I was kind of thinking it might be easier to do on my own, but of course …”

He turned to look at her. “Is this about your father?”

“My father?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Is this about your father? Your going to Mexico?”

She leaned back against the counter and reached for her wine, stumbling a little as she did so, and she was very conscious of him watching her, of him staring at her hand as she lifted the glass to her lips.

“How many glasses of wine have you had tonight?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he said again, but gently, not in anger. “Was that five or six?”

“I’ve had as many as you’ve had,” she said, going back into the dining room for the rest of the dishes.

“No, you haven’t,” he said when she came back to the kitchen, again very quietly and gently, as though he were talking to a child. “You’ve had six. And what scares me a little is that you’re not even really drunk.”

“Ian, can we please not talk about this? I’m fine.” Showing him how little she needed the wine, she took her glass over to the sink and dumped the slippery liquid down the drain.

“You’ve been drinking a lot lately,” he said very quietly. “I’d started to notice, but I’ve only just realized how much it’s been.”

“Ian, I’m fine.” She steadied her gaze on him, showing him how sober she was, though in fact the light above his head was a little blurry and she had the feeling of floating just a few inches off the ground. She gripped the side of the counter, then let go when she saw Ian glance down at her hand.

His face was hard to read. She saw anger there, then sympathy, and finally something soft and sad that sent panic clanging through her body.

“What did you mean about my father?” she said, trying to change the subject and realizing what he’d meant as she said the words. “Oh, you mean because of Mexico?”

He nodded, his head tilted just a bit, still gazing intently at her in that way that made her want to run.

“Well, yeah, I mean … I guess I always wanted to go because that’s where he lived at the end of his life. But I’ve also never been there for Day of the Dead. And for someone in my profession, that’s pretty unacceptable.”

“Are you still in touch with any of his friends?”

She wasn’t sure how the conversation had turned pleasant again, but she was grateful that it had. “God, no. There was a woman he lived with. She was the one who called my mother and told her he’d killed himself. She barely spoke English. My mother had to go get this Argentinian neighbor we had to translate. That’s how she found out.”

“What was the woman’s name?”

“Maria. I think she was just kind of a housekeeper or something, and then he probably started sleeping with her and had her move in. He was always doing that with women. He liked housekeepers, maids, young women, anyone who didn’t ask too much of him.”

“Maybe he loved her,” Ian said, and his words seemed to fill up the room.
We’ve never said those words to each other
, Sweeney thought to herself.
We’ve never ever said those words
.

“Maybe,” she said quickly. “Stranger things have happened.”

“The thing is,” Ian said, closing the dishwasher and looking at her as though she had disappointed him, “sometimes there isn’t any reason for what people do. Sometimes it’s just love.”

They had left about a thousand things unsaid, but she was tired and—he was right—a good bit drunk, and for now, for tonight, she didn’t want to think about any of it. So she kissed him, hard and very seriously. “I just want you to take me to bed,” she said. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“We have to talk,” he said.

“Later,” she whispered. “Just take me to bed.”

And he did, though later, in the light from the hallway, she saw that he was still sad, as though he’d been promised something and never gotten it, as though he was still waiting to see if he would.

THE OPENING OF “STILL AS DEATH: The Art of the End of Life” was held the second week of September. The heat wave had hung on kicking and screaming, and at four o’clock it was still ninety-five degrees, the humid air hanging oppressively over the entire eastern seaboard and most specifically over the Hapner Museum.

Sweeney had been at the museum all day and had run home at three to shower and change. She’d barely had time to down a quick iced coffee before heading back to meet Ian and Toby outside the museum. By the time they arrived, Ian from work in his perfectly pressed suit and tie and Toby wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt that looked as though it had been dried out the window of his Jeep, she had worked herself into a frenzy of self-consciousness.