Art and Arsenic (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

4

On Friday morning, I looked closely at my hair in the mirror, as if examining forensic evidence. I didn’t seem to sprout a full bouquet of gray overnight, so I took that as a small victory. I checked the Nordqvist Fine Art website – still up, no problems. Then I sat down to write my report for the work I did the day before. I specified the attack tool, the IP the traffic was coming from, and gave the ‘whois’ data for it; and pronounced myself done with the entire thing. Then I checked with my boss about what the office was working on, and told him that I’d back on the Bitcoin thing by Monday.

I was done with all of that by mid-morning. The day was sunny, spring was most definitely in the air, and I thought that an outing would do me good. So before I mailed my report to Fred Nordqvist, I decided to check that everything was OK on location as well. And, to be honest, to spend the day at the Kirkland waterfront. I normally like to finish everything on my plate, work-wise, before going home for the weekend, no matter how late I have to stay at work to do it – because things can move very fast in our field, not keeping up with work can leave you buried and make it hard to catch up; and because I don’t like having all these “leftover” to-do items staring at me first thing Monday morning. But the blue skies and rays of sunshine made it all too tempting to spend the day relaxing instead. I decided I’d make up the work over the weekend, which was forecasted to be cold and gray. So I grabbed my clothing and shoes for the evening’s party, not planning to come back home in the afternoon. I drove to Kirkland in the sunshine with a window down, and left my car on top of the hill, next to a grassy park with tall pine trees framing the Seattle skyline and the deep-blue of Lake Washington, and then walked to the gallery in a breeze smelling of fruit trees in bloom.

Through the big windows, I could see that all the paintings were already on the walls. Whatever yesterday’s argument between Alex and Fred was about, the entire show had been installed. Fred was in the middle, dressed in a blue shirt and well-ironed khakis, appraising the room with a critical eye. Two guys in overalls stood next to Fred, listening. A thin brunette, in an asymmetrical one-shouldered black top, black skinny jeans and black flats, was kneeling by a crate near the back wall and digging through its contents.

I knocked. Fred saw me through the glass door and motioned for one of the workers to open it – not Alex, but the other guy I had seen the day before.  I thanked him and came in.

“Hi, I came by to check the server logs and take sure everything is still good with the site. I’ll be done in about fifteen minutes, if that’s OK?”

“Yeah, sure. Nice of you to stop by”. Fred winked at me, and then went back to giving directions about the preparations for the evening’s opening party.

I headed towards the office in the back. The brunette looked up at me as I came closer and said:

“I’m Pauline. I’m the gallery assistant.”

And Fred’s daughter, I thought to myself. Up close, she looked around twenty. Her eyes were black, with black liquid eyeliner and mascara on her long lashes, and slightly puffy – the crate in front of her looked dusty, probably containing packing materials, and I felt some dust tickle my nose. I could see a resemblance between her and Fred, several decades and about seventy pounds ago in his case.

“I’m Veronica, I’m dealing with your website issue.” I shook her hand.

“Yes, I heard. Great to meet you. He was going crazy about it yesterday, before you arrived.” She rolled her eyes towards Fred and smiled.

“Nice to meet you. I’ll go finish up my stuff and send Fred my report.” I indicated the back of the gallery. “Can I go into the office?”

“Oh, by all means.”

“And can I ask you for a small favor?” I leaned towards her. “Can I come back before the party tonight and change my clothes in the back, do you mind?”

“Not a problem.”

In the office, I sat down in the enormous chair.  On the corner of the large desk sat what I assumed to be Fred’s lunch, as it was around 11:30 – a grocery-store ham sandwich, wrapped in plastic.

I logged in and checked the traffic on the server logs – everything was OK. The malicious traffic from Linda Raven’s IP was still coming in, and was still being dropped without doing any damage. Having verified all that, I clicked “Send” on the e-mail containing my report – to Fred, cc’d to my boss.

Done with my paperwork, I gathered up my bag on my way out the door. It was time for me to get a bite to eat as well.

“I’m all done, I’ve sent you the report. I’ll see you at the party.” I said to Fred. He was kneeling next to Pauline and looking into the crate, his fingers drumming on the edge of it.

“OK, thanks,” he said, without lifting his eyes to me, absorbed in thinking about the contents of the crate.

I walked along the street, looking in the windows of shops and galleries, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the sunshine. I made a detour to the lake front and stood there for a little bit, looking at the buildings of Seattle in the distance. The sky was bright blue with only a few clouds, and I saw the tops of the Olympic mountains further on, still snow-covered. I thought again that it would be a shame to spend such a beautiful day working, especially since I was done with what was supposed to be my primary task for the next three business days, and vowed to myself to catch up on the office work over the weekend, when the weather was expected to be rainy and miserable again. So, with that decision, and basking in the satisfaction of a job well done, the rest of Friday work-day was now mine to spend how I pleased.

The breeze at the waterfront finally chilled me, and I headed for my favorite tea shop in downtown Kirkland – Savrika Tea. They had a great selection of teas, and I enjoyed sitting there by the window with a pot of tea, a pastry and a book on my Kindle.

Having finished my pot of tea and read three chapters of my mystery book, I got up and prepared to leave. I considered heading to the nearest hair salon, but then decided that the day was too nice, and I was in too good a mood, to spend time on hair-related matters just at the moment.

A small electric car was driving by as I exited the tea shop, and I inhaled the smell of blossoms in the air and looked around while I waited for it to pass before crossing the street. I noticed the distinctive red-white-and-black logo of the Ravenswood gallery at the end of the block and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to drop in for a visit.

The gallery was open. I walked in.

“Hello, how are you today?” The woman behind the counter in the back of the room greeted me.

“Hello”, I replied. I recognized her as Linda Raven, from the photo on the website – a couple of years older and, in real life, not enhanced by the soft halo of a camera filter.

“Let me know if I can help you with anything!” She had a full voice that went well with her slightly-plump frame.

I thanked her and looked at the art on offer.

And there was stuff to look at. Canvases in elaborate gilded frames hung on the walls. A couple of chairs upholstered in dark-green, and a small demi-lune table of period furniture were against the walls. (I wasn’t sure which period exactly, but decided it was some time before the 20
th
century). Ravenswood was certainly setting the mood for the collector of antiques.

I walked around counter-clockwise, looking at the paintings. They were mainly colorful landscapes similar to those at Nordqvist Fine Art, showing fields, barns and open vistas. I leaned closer to check the name of the artist on the first one: George Price Boyce. Not anyone I had ever heard of before, but I liked his work.

I gradually made my way to the very back of the gallery, so that I was behind and to the right of Linda’s desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what Linda had on her computer monitor: a web browser with several open tabs, a tab visible for her e-mail account. To the side of the browser window, some text was rapidly scrolling by in a command-line window; the familiar repeating shape of the printed text, and some of the lines I managed to read, told me that it was the output from the DoS attack tool running on Linda’s computer.

I was curious why she’d try to DoS her competitor’s site – that’s unusual for art dealer, I thought. At least, I hadn’t previously encountered any such cases from her line of work.

“Finding anything that interests you?” She turned to me and smiled.

I stuck out my hand.

“Yes, I do actually. My name is Veronica Margreve.”

“Linda Raven. I own the gallery.” She shook my hand.

“Ravenswood, it is named after you, very nice! You have a lot of charming stuff here. I particularly liked the Boyce landscapes – the glowing colors on them.” I pointed to the paintings on the left wall.

“Oh yes. Aren’t they great? He was a famous 19
th
-century English landscape painter, noted for the translucent luminosity of his works.”

“I definitely like them. That period had so many interesting landscape artists. In fact, Nordqvist Fine Art is having a new show – I am planning to attend the David Cox opening. I heard they will have several of his landscapes.”

“Ah, yes, yes.” Her eyes shifted. Evidently, the competitor’s business was not her favorite topic. “Of course, they will only have about seven works. Nordqvist Fine Art certainly has some interesting art. The new show seems to be well-regarded.” There was a slight emphasis on ‘seems’.

“What is your opinion of David Cox?”

“Well, he certainly did a lot of stuff. But he was a minor artist, compared with Boyce. I personally like Boyce and his school better. As you said, the colors.” She smiled at me and nodded towards the walls. “Here at Ravenswood, we aim to be the leader in 19
th
century European and American art in the Seattle area, offering you the best works of the period, backed by the most solid expertise and provenance. That’s our mission!” Her smile beamed at me as she recited it.

So Linda Raven was competitive and wanted to win.

“Is that why you are running a DoS tool on your laptop?” I asked as I returned her smile. “That’s D3stroyZ, isn’t it?”

Her eyes went back to her monitor.

“What?... No… How?..” She gasped.

“Is that one of your tactics to cripple a competitor’s business?” Linda’s hands went to her mouth, and her eyes darted between me and the computer screen.

“Nordqvist Fine Art hired me to find out who was attempting to bring down their website. You might have noticed that their site is up, your attack is not working.”

Linda looked as if she were lost among unfamiliar surroundings. Her hair seemed to frizz at the ends suddenly. Yes, she was definitely an amateur in cyber-attacks – she didn’t even check whether the site was up or down today, whether the malicious traffic that she was sending to the server was still having the intended effect.

“I would stop running it, if I were you. And in general, I would stop downloading anything from the site that you got it from – you don’t know what viruses or spyware may be in it. For all you know, it’s been capturing the passwords to all the sites you visit on that computer.”

She jumped back to her keyboard in a panic, with shaking hands brought up with command window where the tool was running. It took her two tries, due to typos, to successfully terminate it.

I walked to the door, calling out “Have a good afternoon” behind me.

She was still busy with the computer and didn’t respond.

I went back to my car and got out my finery, suitable for a gallery opening, and headed down the hill to Nordqvist Fine Art.

I buzzed in the back of the gallery, and Pauline let me in. I went into the bathroom to change, and put on some mascara (that was pretty much the only make-up I wore, even for special occasions). I wore a dress I got at TJMaxx, some heirloom jewelry (a ruby pendant set in gold, that picked up the red pattern on my dress), and Maison Martin Margiela snake-embossed ankle boots (courtesy of a 70% off Saks Fifth Avenue online sale).  I left my coat and bag with the laptop in it in the office, on the floor in the corner, next to a wastebasket that contained a coffee cup, and what looked like a wrapper from the sandwich I saw on Fred Nordqvist's desk earlier in the day. 

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and thought that I looked sufficiently dressy for an art show opening. I shook my hair loose, decided not to fret about any gray in it for tonight, and walked out to the main area.

5

It was around 5 pm, and the big gallery space was starting to fill up with people. There were couples in their thirties to sixties, sipping champagne and looking at the art of the walls, a group or two of women in their forties, enjoying their girls’ night out. I saw a man in his late fifties, in round glasses, an expensive cashmere sweater of a color that was probably called “dove”, and beige slacks, standing by the door, frowning, with a small flute of champagne in his hand. A thin balding slight man was next to him on his left, with his back to me, dressed in a dark-blue sports coat and slacks, holding a coffee cup with a green logo. It looked like the small man was talking to the first one, and he was answering reluctantly, with his eyes flying over the group of people in the big space, without looking at the slight man. Pauline and Alex were making rounds through the crowd, pouring people drinks, then setting up another hors d’oeuvres station in a corner.

Fred came up to me and took my arm, guiding me into the room.

“You look lovely, my dear.”

“Thank you. This is a lovely event. Did you get my report?” I wanted to keep the conversation professional.

“Oh yes, I did. Didn’t have a chance to read it yet, with all the preparations”. He moved his fat left hand with the glass in a wide arc to indicate our surroundings.

“Everything looks great, everyone at the gallery did a wonderful job in setting it up”, I said pointedly. He gave me a sideways look, not too pleased at me for complimenting his staff.

Another party-goer came up to us then – a short red-headed woman in her early sixties, in a dark-green wrap over an emerald-green dress that set off her hair color nicely. I looked at it for a moment, thinking about whether it would suit me.

“Fred, darling, these are exquisite”. Her voice was husky, and she smelled of an expensive floral perfume. She waved her manicured left hand at the walls, the huge diamond rings on her fingers giving off a firework of sparkles.

“Monica, so nice to see you!” He leaned forward to air-kiss the lady. “How have you been?”

“Oh, fabulous, my dear! Just fabulous!”

I stepped back to give them space to hug and talk, and my eyes wondered around the room. They caught the eyes of another woman who looked to be in her early fifties, thin and medium height. She was looking at Fred. I recognized her as the woman I saw last night at the Sounders game with Alex. Here in the room, I could see her better, at closer range and in brighter light than at the game. She was standing in the far corner, holding just a glass of water, her arms crossed across her chest. I wondered what her relationship to Alex and role in the gallery were. There was a faint curve to her mouth – I watched her, fascinated, until I realized (by trying to mimic the same expression on my own lips) that the expression on her face was disdain. She looked like a shark, I suddenly realized, coldly appraising and judging the room and everyone in it.

My eyes went around the gallery again in search of warmer-blooded and cheerier subjects. I saw Pauline in the center of a group of young women about her age, laughing and talking animatedly – probably her art-college friends, I decided. The small thin man that I saw by the door was heading to the back offices of the gallery, coffee cup still in hand.

Monica looked over the crowd, then she waved her hand in the air, making the diamond sparkles dance, and she called to someone:

“Andrew, darling, come join us!”

The man in the cashmere sweater made his way towards us.

“This is Andrew, he is the resident art expert for the gallery.”

We did the social pleasantries, and the talk went to art. Andrew told us a bit about the artist, and walked us over to the wall to show the finer points of the paintings. After another 30 minutes or so of this – the time spent by me in looking closely at the paintings, and then attempting awkward small talk with some guests, I noticed that the crowd had gotten denser. The young women Pauline talked to were admiring a large-format landscape. The shark-like blonde was nowhere to be seen, to my relief. I saw the slight man moving in our general direction. From the front, I saw that he looked to be in his mid-forties and was wearing a bow-tie. He didn’t have a coffee cup any longer, but a champagne flute that he held in front of him as he weaved through the crowd.

As the man came close, I heard Andrew say:

“Mrs. Bencham, you remember Christopher, don’t you? These lovely works on the walls are his, from his uncle’s personal collection. We have an exclusive agreement for the sale of all the art works from that extensive collection.”

Christopher bent over Monica’s sparkling hand.

“Charmed.”

“Oh, you are the lucky young man who found these art works in your uncle’s attic!” Monica gushed.

“Yes, that’s me. My uncle, Calvin Willembauer, traveled to Europe frequently for his work. I think he bought these decades ago in England and Belgium.” Christopher spoke in soft tones.  A small group of art-lovers assembled around us to hear the story of the paintings. “No-one was aware of his collection while he was alive. Since he was a bachelor, it so happened that I was his closest living relative. The collection came to me as part of his estate. I thought that these works looked gorgeous, and that they might be significant in some way, might represent some milestone in the history of 19
th
century art, so to speak.”

“How fascinating! Such a serendipitous find!” Monica gushed.

“It was quite a coup for us to land the exclusive deal for the entire collection”, Fred winked at no-one in particular.

“And are you an artist yourself?” a young woman in a short blue dress asked.

“Oh no! I know a little about art, mostly things that I learned after inheriting the collection. I was thrust into this, you could say.” He moved his arm with the drink around, to indicate the gallery and the glitzy opening.  “I took a couple of art classes after I got the inheritance – I was so amazed by these, I wanted to understand how something like that was created. Without much success, I must say.” He laughed and took a sip from his glass. “I am trying to learn more about art all the time – in fact, I am planning to go to the First Thursday Art Walk next week. The show of John Crome’s works opens then, and it is also 19
th
century landscape paintings, so it would be interesting to compare and learn.”

“What do you do?”

“I am a high-school chemistry teacher, in Walla Walla.” That would be a town of about 32 000 people in the south-east of the state, in the middle of Washington wine country. “I came up for the opening and will be staying about a week. It is convenient since next week is Spring Break.”

And so it went, surrounded by small talk, giggling and champagne bubbles. Fred had excused himself from our circle. I stood smiling, clutching my drink and getting a bit bored. By then my eyes were glazing over.  I am not at my best at big parties where I am not the hostess – I normally don’t know what to do or how to behave. I stopped listening to the conversation around me and scanned the room for anything interesting.

My eyes caught Fred moving across the floor. The blonde woman I noticed earlier had re-appeared and said something to him as he walked by – something that seemed to cause him to freeze in his tracks for a second.  Then he turned to her and responded with a couple of phrases. He continued on his way, moving to another group of guests in the corner.

A group of young women in their early twenties that I saw talking to Pauline before were sipping champagne and laughing. Fred came over and talked to one of them; she giggled into her drink. Pauline, carrying drinks across the room, looked annoyed and came over to the group. Fred bowed slightly and stepped away. The cashmere-sweater man was deep in a conversation with two well-dressed men and a woman, who all were listening to what he was saying.

Fred emerged from the back room and called for everyone’s attention. When the murmur of conversation in the gallery calmed down and faces turned towards him, he said:

“We are so extremely lucky, not only to be able to see – and buy! – these art works, but also to have a chance to taste a great wine tonight! The wine that shares its provenance with the paintings on show. That’s right – we have not only these paintings from Christopher’s uncle’s personal collection, but also a couple of bottles of”, – Fred looked at the bottle in his right hand and read off its label, struggling with the French pronunciations  – “Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet wine that his uncle bought in France.” Here Fred paused for effect. People were looking at him expectantly.  “I know all about where this wine came from – and it is quite remarkable journey! Today I have the pleasure of pouring this old, prestigious and outstanding wine, to celebrate the second show and sale of works from the Willembauer collection! It is a Grand Cru from Burgundy, 1985 vintage, not too many of these around still. Hard to find, and expensive!” He chuckled loudly, and others joined. Fred concluded: “A true honor to be serving it tonight!” He lifted two bottles above his head.

The audience applauded.

Alex helped Fred open the bottles, and they walked around the room, pouring about an inch of the wine into each glass, as people hurried to finish their drinks and offer their glasses.   After everyone had a little of the rare liquid in their glasses, Fred raised his in a toast:

“To Christopher’s uncle’s collection, and his unerring good taste! And to our collaborations,  future shows and successes!”

Christopher, who stood behind them, looked at Fred intently. To my surprise, I saw that he turned red with embarrassment, and his hand not holding the wine glass was curled into a fist by his side.

We drank. The wine looked pale-yellow in color, smelled faintly of citrus and mint, and had a mineral-y taste. Overall, I thought it was pleasant enough – I am not a big fan of Chardonnay (which I knew this wine had to be, as a white Burgundy), but would drink this wine if offered more, I decided.

At this point, after an hour and a half or so of party attendance, I felt that I satisfied any professional obligation I might have to Fred Nordqvist and his gallery. I said good-bye to the host, getting an air kiss from him in the process, waved to Pauline, grabbed my bag and coat from the office and headed home.

I felt spring in the air on my walk to the car, with a sense of a job well done and socializing accomplished. Even my hair didn’t look too bad tonight, I decided. I’d figure out what to do about coloring it later.