Art and Arsenic (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 2) (14 page)

23

The place I found myself was wet, in spite of being underground  – the rain came in through the hole that I apparently fell through. I was in the dark, enclosed in what seemed like a small narrow corridor, smelling the musty odor of subterranean things (and trying not to think too much about what those things might be). My leather-gloved hands were touching the walls around me, trying to ascertain the parameters of the space around me. I sneezed from the dust and something like mildew that I felt tickling my nose. My eyes were trying to adjust to the darkness. I sensed, more than saw, the thick wet walls surrounding me.

As my eyes and ears got used to being in a small, low, tight space, my heart beat slowed a little. My thoughts were still racing, up and around like a whirlwind, and then down a rabbit hole like the one I had just fallen into. Standing around in dark wet muck was not the plan. Did I make a huge mis-calculation? Was I pushed? Was I in danger here?

If it was on purpose, then was the goal to harm me? Possibly. But I didn’t appear to be in any immediate peril at the moment, and no other significant harm was happening to me yet. Of course, who knew, here in the dark, what could be awaiting me around the next corner! Was this to get me out of the way temporarily, and then return me unharmed? Or because whoever confined me here had other things to do meanwhile?

Was I here because I knew something about the art fakes? My heart sunk. Or because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Because Andrew didn't want to deal with me at the moment? Or because I hinted that his coat might have been contaminated with arsenic?

One person had already been killed. I could be next. I doubted that Fred's poisoner would refrain from more murders due to any pangs of conscience.

At that realization, I resumed my frantic search for a way out. My hands, shaking, were probing walls and encountering solid stone around me. I was taking cautious steps forward on the slippery stone.

I need to do something. I got out my phone, the display lit up – it barely had one bar. I dialed Detective Johnson.

The call rang and went to voice mail.

“I’m in Pioneer Square. I need your help! I was here with Andrew, and I got pushed into an underground hole!” I tried to speak clearly and loudly into the phone. “Andrew went after someone. I’m about a block north of art galleries near Yesler Way, down an alley way to the right.” I repeated that again and hung up.

Slowly, in the dark, I made my way to the place I originally fell in. I found the tunnel where I came down.  There was an iron grate in place now. The spaces between the bars in the grate looked too narrow to allow much more than a small animal through.  I shuddered, imagining just what animals could be in the underground passage with me – I wasn’t afraid of snakes or spiders, but rats sent me into a panic. (Hard to say whether childhood viewings of “The Nutcracker” contributed to that fear, or whether I enjoyed the ballet
because
I felt empathy with its rat-fighting characters!) My mind started imagining scenes straight out of “The Pendulum and the Pit”, my stomach was churning, and I had to take several deep breaths and count to thirty slowly to calm myself down.

As things stood, I couldn’t climb out. But the grate must unlatch somehow, I thought – the hole was open when I fell in. I stood as tall as I could – the heels actually came in handy. I tried to shake the grate, then took off my gloves and ran my hands around its edges, feeling the bumpy and rusty metal with my fingertips, to try to find and unhook the latch. No luck. I tried once again, slower. This time, I felt what might have been the latch. I tried pulling on it, working it through with my fingers. Nope, it wouldn’t open. I didn’t have enough leverage, standing under the grate, to work it loose.

There was street noise coming through the opening. There must be some pedestrians around, right? I should do something to attract attention. This block was a bit off the beaten path, not really near any galleries. But hey, it was worth a try.

I tried yelling. I let out a couple of rather pitiful yelps (“Hey! Can anyone hear me?”), but soon I was coughing and feeling the strain on my vocal chords. My voice wasn’t that strong, so yelling for help from underground, and struggling to be heard, wasn’t for me.

I needed to do something different. I recalled my work-outs from Knotty Yoga, the aerial yoga studio. I put my gloves back on and wrapped the straps of my bag around my wrist several times, so as not to lose it. Then I grabbed the metal bars overhead, jumped up and turned my body upside down, hooked my legs on the metal bars and stuck one leg out straight up through the grate. I hoped someone would see this human leg – wearing a high-heeled boot for less! – sticking out of the ground and come to my aid.

Nothing, for what felt like an eternity (and was probably about ten seconds in reality). I braced with my other knee against the metal bar, remembered my Knotty Yoga trapeze classes on how to hang by your knees for dear life, and started waving my outstretched leg to be more noticeable.

Finally, when the dark spots in front of my eyes seemed to be doing the tango to the accompaniment of the ringing in my ears, I heard a male voice out of the darkness.

“Hey, hey, what is this? You a person? You alive in there?”

The voice sounded familiar.

“I’m down here. Please help me! Unhook this grate please!”

“What, what are you saying?”

“This grate – it latches. Unhook it please and help me climb out!”

I felt some motion overhead, then my waving leg struck something. I realized that someone was bending over me.

“Here it is, here it is.” Someone’s hands shook the grate.

“Wait, I’ll let go.”

I dropped my body down, fought light-headedness for what felt like the time to fall to the center of the earth, and then released my grip on the metal bars.

“Try now, un-latch the grate please!”

Motion and noise above.

“I think I got it.”

With a jarring metal noise, the grate slid out. A hand reached down into the hole.

“Thank you!”

I grabbed it, and jumped up and braced my legs on one of the sides.

“Ready? I’m going to try to walk up the side with my legs. Can you lift me slowly please?”

“OK, OK”.

After about five small steps from me and two good tugs from him, I was above ground from the waist up. I let go, put both hands on the pavement, and my rescuer pulled on my jacket and then my belt to get the rest of me out.

Then I was completely out, half-laying on the wet pavement, breathing hard. I turned around to thank my benefactor. It was the same homeless guy to whom I gave my half a sandwich earlier. I saw his little dog sitting in the entrance way of the brick building a couple of feet away.

“Thank you, thank you so much!”

“He found you”. He indicated the dog. “Oh, I know you! You’re the lady who gave me the sandwich! How’d you get in there?”

“Yes, that’s me. Not sure how I ended up in there. Thank you for getting me out.”

I got up and brushed myself off.

“Did you see the guy I was with this evening? In his fifties, wearing glasses, a black coat, a light cashmere sweater and black pants? He had a black umbrella. He might be somewhere around here.”

“I think I saw him going that way. Wait, lady, you’re not going to go after him yourself? That’s dangerous!” I started running in the direction indicated, as much as my high heels allowed. My new friend, limping, went after me with his dog.

I ran in the rain towards the dancing glow of a flashlight ahead.  The beam of light was emanating from Johnson and Martin, moving into the maze of the cobble streets and narrow alleys around Pioneer Square. Turning a corner, I heard shouting and saw two figures in a narrow alley next to several overflowing trash containers. As I got closer, I saw that it was Andrew and Christopher. They were both breathing heavily. They were surrounded by the police, with lights directed on their faces and guns at the ready.

“What’s going on?” asked Johnson.

“He attacked me, tried to hit me on the head with something, tried to knock me out! I fought back!” said Christopher.

Everyone’s eyes went to Andrew. In the bright light of police flashlights I could see that there was mud across his coat, which was open, and his cashmere sweater, visible underneath, looked dirty in the front.

He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I want my lawyer.”

Christopher threw out an accusing hand towards Andrew, and policemen’s guns followed the sudden moment.

“I… I think he tried to kill me! And I think he killed Fred Nordqvist!”

“Slow down. What happened?” asked Detective Johnson.

“I... I was coming out of that building there, and I felt someone attack me from behind and throw me on the ground. I dropped my bag and fell, and somehow managed to kick him back or something… He kept trying to hit my head on the pavement. I think he stabbed me with his umbrella!” Christopher wiped his dirtied face with a dirty sleeve.

“I did not attack you.  I was talking to you, and you attacked me. I want my lawyer,” repeated Andrew, breathing heavily.

“OK, let’s go back to the station. I’ll get the statements from both of you”, Johnson said. The police herded Andrew and Christopher away, one of the officers making sure to pick up Andrew's black umbrella laying by the Dumpster, and the big paper shopping bag Christopher said he dropped in the fight.

24

I finished taking stock of my physical state. My jeans were torn at one knee, and the knee underneath was skinned, bruised and swelling. My hands, protected by the leather gloves, did not get cut – but my palms hurt from hanging off the rusty metal grate. After trying to run in my high heels, my feet were sore – and tomorrow, I was sure, my arms and abs were going to hurt like hell. But I was alive and in one piece. And the murderer was apprehended without doing much more damage.

After climbing out of the hole and chasing after Andrew and Christopher, I had spent the last couple of hours giving a statement to Detective Johnson, while my rescuer was interviewed by Martins.

“What was that about?” My new friend, Pete, asked, after watching me assess the damage. “All that running around and chasing?”

We were sitting at a small Mediterranean cafe a block from the place of my mis-adventure, in the early hours of Friday morning. I bought Pete a lamb wrap, and myself was eating a baba ganouji — it had been a while since the muffuletta, our night-time adventure had been exhausting, the adrenaline had worn off, and we needed to replenish the calories. The little dog was sitting under the chair and getting morsels that Pete was tearing off and passing down to him. On closer inspection, he looked like some sort of a Chihuahua mix.  The dog’s name was Mikey, I had learned, and he had been with Pete for about three years now.

I chewed in silence, looking at the old sign on the side of the building across the road, illuminated by the street light, advertising “Rooms 25c”, as I tried to figure out what had actually occurred and why, and how to explain everything that transpired.

“So this is what happened.” I took a drink out of my water glass. “This guy, Christopher, inherited a house, some paintings and some wine from his uncle, out in Walla Walla.  The paintings were stuff that his uncle painted himself, in the style of a famous 19
th
-century British landscapist.” I learned that Calvin Willembauer was the author of the works, from Detective Johnson – apparently one of the landscapes contained a tiny signature, covered up by the frame.

“Talented dude, that uncle.”

I nodded. “Christopher wanted to sell them as 19
th
-century originals.”

“So they’d be worth more, like antiques?” Pete said, between bites. His black eyes were shining.

“Exactly. So he decided to sell them through a young gallery because he thought that a newer gallery might not discover that they were fake – or might be more likely to take a chance on some dicey-looking art. Andrew, a specialist in 19
th
-century art, saw them.  He knew that they were fake, of course. But he thought that they were decent enough to pass for the originals. So the gallery owner, Fred, decided to take them on consignment, and have a big show at the gallery for them. They had made up a contract saying that the entire collection of Christopher’s uncle had to be sold through Fred’s gallery.”

I sipped my water.

“So they sold a bunch of these fake painting, two years ago. Everyone made money on that first sale. A rival art dealer, Linda, suspected something, but she couldn’t prove it.”

I took a bite and chewed my food. In explaining things to Pete, I felt pieces of the puzzle falling into place for me.

“Separately, Christopher was selling his uncle’s wine collection, which included some rare wines.”

“Lucky guy to get all that stuff, huh?” Pete passed another morsel down to his dog.

“Yeah – except he wasn’t content with his luck. To make that gravy train last longer, he was also faking some of the wine he was selling, like buying cheap wine and putting it in old bottles, putting fake labels on it and stuff. Fred found out the truth and was blackmailing him over it, threatening to expose the counterfeit wines. That would have gotten FBI involved, and Christopher would have gone to jail for it. So he had to continue selling his uncles’ paintings through Fred's gallery. And this past week was supposed to be the opening of the sale for the second batch of fake pictures that Christopher inherited from his uncle, still pretending that they were that British artist's works. There was a reception Friday, lots of people, some nice wine and stuff.”

I took another bite and chewed. Pete fed a piece of lamb to Mikey, who swallowed it and ran his tongue over his lips.

“So Christopher poisoned Fred with arsenic.”

“No way!” Pete’s eyes got huge.

“Yeah, he did. Put a bit into his drink.”

“Crazy stuff! Did he die?” I nodded. “Damn! And where d’you get mixed up in this? You a detective or something?”

“Not really. I do computer investigations. Remember I said there was a rival gallery owner, Linda, the one who was suspicious? Well, she wanted to stop the sale – and she decided to do it by attacking their website. That brought me in, to fix it. And when Fred died – it made her the main suspect in his death with the police.”

We all took another bite; Mikey, licking his chops, looked suitably impressed with my exploits.

“Christopher lives in Walla Walla, and he was in town this week for the opening of the sale.  He wanted to get rid of Andrew, but couldn’t really set the police on him without the whole thing about the fakes coming out. So Christopher was avoiding Andrew. Andrew kept calling him, spooked by Fred's death, but Christopher was ignoring his calls.”  Johnson told me about the phone calls, and I remembered how I saw Christopher give Andrew the cold shoulder in the parking lot after Fred’s funeral. “But Andrew knew that Christopher planned to go to the First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square.” I waved my hand in a circle to indicate that Pioneer Square was around us, and sipped my water.

“I wanted to find out what happened, and started to suspect something. But I needed more evidence. Without much proof, the police were skeptical when I told them who I thought the killer was.” In fairness, that probably had something to do with me suggesting to them at various times that Dr. Bencham, or Monica Bencham, or Linda Raven, or Connie Nordqvist was the murderer. “I thought that if Andrew got a chance to talk to Christopher, something might happen. So I told Christopher I suspected Andrew, and asked him to help me prove that Andrew killed Fred. He went along with it.”

“Nice guys, these art people!” Pete said.

“He wanted to frame Andrew for the murder. That’s why he provoked the fight here. The idea was that after this attack, the police would think that Andrew was trying to kill Christopher, and that he also murdered Fred, and would stop searching for the real killer.”

I finished my eggplant dish.

“So Christopher came out of that building on the corner, and attacked Andrew. Tried to bash his head in, apparently, and made it look like one of…” I was about to say “homeless” people, but caught myself and looked for a different term “… the guys wanting to rob him, or being crazy, or something”. There had been tragic incidents in Pioneer Square, of people shot or stabbed to death by a mentally-unstable drifter, or a would-be robber.

Pete turned back to look towards the spot where we came across Andrew and Christopher fighting. “That’s a good building”, he said appreciatively of the over-100 years old construction in the darkness. “It’s well-built, and it’s warm inside, if you have to sleep there.”

He was obviously talking from experience.

I realized that Pete probably spent a lot of time sleeping outside – and the weather was still cold and wet, and it got you all the way through to your skin.

He looked back at me. “So what happened to you, how’d you end up underground?”

“I slipped, I think. Running too fast in heels on a steep street. And I think Christopher saw me fall, and locked me in, so that I'd think that Andrew did it. Thank you again for getting me out. If it weren’t for you, I’d have missed all the main action tonight.”

After a bit, he finished his food and got up to go. I yawned, and Mikey the dog yawned too.

“Thank you again for helping me out today! Getting me out of that damn hole in the ground!”

“No problem, lady, it’s OK”.

“Do you… have a place to stay tonight?”

“Yeah, lady, don’t worry, I’m OK.”

Pete gathered his stuff and took his dog’s leash. Mikey looked at him adoringly. The dog really loved Pete. I thought of my little Bitty, previously a little homeless street cat, who was now living the life of a feline princess, with a soft sunny spot to sleep in and fancy meals (even if I did say so myself). She did love me, too.