A Brush With Death (9 page)

Mrs. Searle's party would probably begin around eight. As December was drawing to a close, the sun set before five o'clock. There would have been plenty of time to get into Bergma's place under cover of darkness, search it, and still have time to change and enjoy a glamorous night on the town. Why had John said he'd call at seven, and we'd eat before going to Bergma's? If he tried to sneak away early, I'd follow him and see if he called on Hot Buns. Even if it was business, and really I believed him on that score, but even if it was business, I didn't want him lying to me about it.

You obviously can't go breaking into somebody's house in a fancy dress and especially not in a borrowed coat that might get ripped or stained. I decided to go casual but chic and wore all black—black slacks, black turtleneck. As I examined myself in the mirror, I appreciated the color's slimming quality. I looked quite quite soigné and modelish when I pulled my stomach in.

When John came at seven, he had changed out of his suit into jeans and a sweater. He did not look particularly soigné, but very sexy. John has a big chest and mannish muscles in his arms. His comment was, “Has somebody died?” but his expression was not disapproving as his eyes wandered over my anatomy.

“No, but somebody is on the verge of expiring from starvation."

“Oh.” I read a question into it. “I figured we'd just grab a quick bite here. This is where Gino'll be calling to let us know when Bergma leaves."

I had grabbed about the last bite in the house for lunch, viz a grilled cheese. “I didn't buy any groceries. I thought I'd be going home right after my exams. Would you like some— uh—olives? And maybe crackers. Oh and I think there's a can of smoked oysters..."

His face screwed up in distaste. “Who delivers the best pizza?"

Pizza features large in my life. I had the number by heart and ordered a large, all dressed. To soothe the beast of hunger till it came, we had a beer and fought about Denise.

“Just tell me if you're seeing her later, John. I'm not a child, you know. I understand your work's important, and you have to follow any leads you hate. As long as you don't lie to me about it."

“Like you didn't lie to me about dating other guys."

''I didn't lie!''

“You lied by omission. You never mentioned going out on dates. Studying—you were always studying or just going to the library when I phoned you."

“I often studied, and went to the library. That's what I was doing when you happened—occasionally—to call."

“Well to be fair,” he said with a look of heavy irony, “I could hardly expect you to dart home from a dance just to answer your phone."

Before the discussion required the setting of bones and placement of stitches, I tried to calm him down. “It's nothing to freak out about. I saw a few men. You're going out with Denise."

“I'm not freaking out. I'm just a little upset."

“Charles Manson was a little upset, John. You are freaking out. And you're not only seeing Denise, you're sticking me with Gino.

“I'm not seeing her,” he insisted, sincerely and often enough that I believed him. An impish grin quirked his mustache and he added, “If that's what you're worried about, I'll stay here with you all night."

I considered this but didn't commit myself to an answer.

Gino's call arrived just as I was serving the pizza. I listened in at John's elbow. “Bergma's gone,” Gino said. “That Searle dame only lives a block away. He went to her place all right. His house is all dark. It should be clear for a few hours."

“Right. Thanks, Gino,” John said, and hung up.

“I'll put the pizza in the fridge and heat it up later,” I said.

“We have time now."

I couldn't enjoy a bite, knowing what lay ahead of us. John stolidly ate his way through four slices. He was made of different stuff than I. You'd think he had nothing more exciting on his mind than going to a movie or something.

“We'll take a cab and walk the last block, so we don't have a car to contend with,” he said, when we were finished.

“Good thinking.” I carefully stored up all his techniques for future cases. “I'm surprised Gino didn't insist on tagging along."

“He didn't want to alert Bergma by getting a search warrant. It looks bad for cops to break in without one, so I'm doing it. I'll tell him what we find, of course."

'Tm glad to see the police have such high morals."

“We're not dealing with Sunday school teachers here, Cass."

We got out at the corner of Sherbrooke and Westmount and walked the two blocks north. A howling wind screamed down from the north, blowing us to pieces. The real estate grew fancier as we progressed up the hill. The railroad and sugar barons and financial whizzes of old Montreal had done themselves proud. Vast sprawling mansions of brick and stone were relieved from cold grandeur by Christmas lights, which illuminated without adding much of frivolity. There was an air of competition in the soaring trees, which must have had about a thousand bulbs each.

Bergma's place would have been easy to miss. It was a little bungalow, tucked in between two estates, probably originally a guest house or servants’ house or something. It was set quite far back from the street with high hedges all around, and it was in darkness, which suited us fine.

I pointed out to John that we were leaving a path in the snow by tracking around to the back door, but he didn't seem to care. “He'll know we were here anyway. I don't plan to leave the pictures behind."

“He won't have them. He's not the one who killed Latour."

“He might by now. Whoever threw the knife won't want to keep the evidence. He'll have passed them on to Bergma."

John sounded so confident that I took the idea he and Gino knew something I didn't. The back door proved capable of penetration by John's magic piece of hardware. “Beats me why people put a deadbolt and a dozen chains on the front door and leave the back one practically open."

“The front door has a glass panel anyway. All a burglar would have to do is break it."

I hadn't thought to supply myself with a flashlight. Another item was added to my techniques and tool-kit list for the future. John had one, and he shone it around the kitchen. Jan Bergma had arty taste and quite a bit of money. His kitchen was red and black and white, very dramatic, very clean, and very small. There were no pictures hiding in the cupboards, which were the only possible places to hide things in that little room. The dining room was about as big as a clothes closet. It had a glass table and ornate padded iron chairs, painted white. I think maybe they were originally garden furniture. A huge poinsettia sat on the table. Again there was nothing big enough to hide the pictures.

The living room was larger, and was a suitable candidate for
Architectural Digest.
The walls were either black or something that looked black by flashlight, and everything else except the two ficuses by the windows was white. White squashy settee, glass coffee table, white drapes. Oh yes, and a red carpet with a black design. John flashed the light around, stopping if a painting over the sofa. It was one of Yves Latour's abstracts. John's smile, lit from beneath, looked diabolic. “Lookee here,” is all he said, but his laugh matched his expression. We wasted a few minutes searching the built-in cupboards, looking behind and under the sofa and chairs, before going into the last room.

It was an office cum bedroom, also done in Bergma's three favorite colors. “This room's at the back of the house. We'll risk turning on the desk lamp,” John said. I remembered his theory that people kept their valuables in their bedrooms. He headed straight to the clothes closet. I began searching the rest of the room—under the bed, behind and under the desk, as well as in the drawers. It was soon clear the pictures weren't here either.

John was taking a heck of a long time in the closet. When he came out and dragged the desk chair in, I was curious enough to have a look. He had found a door to a crawl space in the closet ceiling, and had hoisted it out of his way. His feet were dangling down from the hole, and I could see by the erratic motion of the light above that he was searching the crawl space. A minute later his head and shoulders appeared. He was wearing a grin and carrying a tin box.

“Look what I found amidst the bits of wood and plaster,” he said. “The gray box from Latour's fiat."

He pried it open. It held a box of slides and some papers. John held the slides up, one by one, to the light. They were transparencies of the pictures Yves Latour had copied, and a few drawings as well. “Nine of the ten are here,” John said. “And the other one he left in the slide projector. It seems Bergma supplied these for Latour's paintings,” he said grimly.

Meanwhile, I was taking a look at the papers, and found them even more interesting. “Look at this, John. It gives the exact dimensions of the ten pictures. It tells the dates when they were painted, the kind of canvases used. It says on the back of the
Farmer with Bowl of Soup
there's a sketch of a sewing basket.

“There was a painting of that!” John exclaimed.

“Painted at Auvers, April
15,
while under Dr. Gachet's care. Canvas fifteen inches by twelve. It gives pigment colors."

A feverish light burned in John's eyes. “It's instructions for the forgery. Details like that sketch on the back would help authenticate that it was an original. What else does that paper say?"

I began reading. “Slide 6, Gachet's daughter watering flowers. Twenty inches by sixteen. Note bottom of skirt has green streaks. V.G. ‘s diaries show he ran out of yellow pigment. Mention felicitous effect of blending green."

“I didn't notice the bottom of the skirt, but Latour had the painting of Mademoiselle and the flowers,” John said. “These are definitely crib notes for Latour. When did Bergma recover them? Whoever killed Latour and took the paintings must have taken these too. We'll take the box, and let's have a look in the basement."

“Maybe the murderer left the box behind. We already know Bergma was there, at Latour's apartment. He told the mysterious caller Latour was dead before it was announced."

John frowned. “What the hell, the pictures
might
be here, and we don't want to have to come back, so let's get looking for them."

I took the box, turned out the light, and John beamed us to the cellar. We risked turning on the lights there too. That the basement was neat as a pin made searching it easy. Bergma had no suspicious cartons to be searched, just a set of matched luggage, containing his summer clothes. He was into white ducks and Cardin shirts. There was no coal bin. He had an enviable pair of skis and boots standing up against one wall, and a windsurf board. It seemed Jan was a bit of a jock. John scoured that place a dozen times. He even beamed his light over the ceiling and walls, looking for a secret panel. When he started searching in the washer and dryer, I called him back to sanity.

“They're not here, John. Let's move out and discuss this."

We went back upstairs and turned out the light. We were just about to leave when the phone rang. My heart jumped into my throat, and I felt an awful urge to run. I looked at John— he was cool as a cucumber. He looked at me, hesitated a minute, and went to the phone, red, of course, hanging on the wall in the kitchen. He didn't say anything, just listened. A woman's voice said, “Jan? Is that you? Are you there? I hoped I'd reach you before you left. Jan?” John hung up the phone and smiled.

“It seems Jan has a lady friend,” I said.

“She's a cute little demoiselle with red hair."

“You mean Hot Buns?"

“Sure sounded like her to me. Of course it could have been just a business call, but she called him Mr. Bergma at work."

“He called her Denise. She keeps popping up in all the right places to be a prime suspect."

“Gino'll be interested to hear this. Let's go. We may have another-apartment to search.” Before he left, he unscrewed the mouthpiece of the phone and inserted the bug.

When we came out the back door, a black form that closely resembled a bear leapt out at us from behind a tree, scaring us half to death. It was Gino.

“No pictures, eh?” he said. “I have a car waiting. Let's hit the road."

Well, the car was welcome anyway. “I thought your sister was having a party,” I reminded him.

“I helped her make the punch. I gotta go back later."

The car was parked illegally in the driveway of a dark house. “It's my dad's,” he said apologetically when it wouldn't start. “I flew in from Toronto. Maybe if you guys could push me out. to the road, I could get it going. It's straight downhill once we're out of this driveway.

“Let's let Cassie steer, and we'll push,” John suggested.

“Sure. Women are equal till it comes to moving their buns,” he griped, but I beat him behind the wheel. It was very hard to steer without power, but as Gino said, the motor engaged once it got moving downhill. I moved over and let Gino take the wheel, as I didn't want to have an accident in his dad's car. If it had been his own, I wouldn't have minded a bit.

“Ben's Deli?” he asked over his shoulder.

“What about Angelina's party? Won't you be eating there?” John enquired.

“Not till midnight. And her antipastos, forget it. She can't make pâté for beans. My mother now,
there
is a cook."

“I could go for another of those smoked meats,” John agreed.

Where he'd put it after four slices of pizza was a mystery. We locked the box in the car and went into Ben's Deli Restaurant. The carnivores ordered their plates of meat. I settled for coffee, and felt very virtuous.

“So what did you find?” Gino asked. “I noticed Ms. Newman was carrying a box. Is it money?"

“No, it's slides,” John said, and explained what we had.

“We got our collusion tied up,” Gino nodded. “Latour's prints'll be on the box, along with Bergma's. And probably yours, Weiss. I hope you handled it with care. But till someone peddles the pix, it's legal. You can paint yourself up a Picasso and sign it Pablo, but until you sell it as an original, you're innocent as a lamb. Where do you figure the forgeries are, Weiss?"