Art and Arsenic (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

10

My phone rang about 16 hours later, on late Sunday morning. It had been another cold and drizzly day, which I had spent thus far on research.

I hadn't been able to sleep the night. It rained hard outside, and I felt like I could hear each drop of rain, falling directly into my brain and splashing there in a puddle. My thoughts kept returning to who might have killed Fred. After what felt like a stretched-out black eternity of that, I gave up and got out of bed. That woke up Bitty, who was curled up at my side, and prompted a questioning “Urr?” from her. She was wondering why her human was up in the middle of the night.

“No, little one, it’s not breakfast time yet.”

I turned on the light and headed to the kitchen. She followed me and got comfy in her box on the floor, yawing and looking at me.

I did a web search on Christopher’s uncle. Calvin Willembauer had worked in the wine business, and did some wine importing, mostly from France, back in the 1960s-1990s.  He liked wine and art, and had apparently amassed a nice collection of paintings.  I came across an article about his wine collection, from 2000, in the local newspaper of Walla Walla – tens of cases of old Bordeaux and Burgundies, some old and rare wines. In addition to the producer of the bottles that were opened at the party, Domain Leflaive, big names like Ponsot and Georges Roumier were mentioned. The article said that Mr.  Willembauer bought most of it in the 80s, before the prices, particularly for Burgundies, had gone sky-high. Those wines were not particularly popular with American collectors at the time, so he likely bought his picks at reasonable cost. He also worked in the wine industry, and I assumed tasted the stuff and could find the good vintages and producers, and excellent values. That must have been quite a wine collection! I day-dreamed for a moment about trying some of those celebrated wines.

Coming out of my reverie, I did a web search for that varietal and the vintage year, curious about how much the wine would sell for – it came to around $1700 a bottle! A brief item from a Vegas newspaper a couple of months years ago talked about a case of this wine going for auction, and being bought by a prominent Nevada wine collector, for a round sum of $25000 for a 12-bottle case. Not bad at all!  If Christopher was indeed selling his uncle’s wine collection, at these prices he would be getting a lot of money.

As I sat in front of my laptop with a steaming cup of tea, Bitty was busy napping in my lap after her breakfast, her soft black fur warming me up. This was the activity that the loud ring of my work phone interrupted. The number was local, and my phone told me that it belonged to Linda Raven, courtesy of caller-id software.

“Hello?”

“Hello, hello, is this Veronica Margreve?” The female voice on the other end was rising in pitch and sounded out of breath. Linda was obviously panicked.

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Linda, Linda Raven. We met the other day.”

“I remember. What can I do for you?”

“The police talked to me yesterday, and today again for hours! They just left. They suspect that I killed Fred!” Her words were tumbling out fast. “Asking all those questions. I didn’t have anything to do with his death, I swear!”

“Why do you think they suspect you?” I asked, even though I knew at least part of the answer to that.

“They showed me your report, that you wrote for Fred Nordqvist. The one about IP addresses. So they know about the website.” I heard her swallow. “And the security video picked me up exiting the Nordqvist Fine Art building at 9 on Friday night.”

Ah. That was new.

“They also probably got my fingerprints from his office. But I promise, I didn’t have anything to do with his death!”

“Why were you at Nordqvist Fine Art?”

“Fred called me, told me about your report. I went over there to talk to him. We argued, but I didn’t kill him. Please believe me!”

Before I could do that, I needed to understand her motivations better.

“Why did you try the DoS?”

She sighed. “I was very, deeply upset at Fred. His gallery was stealing my business by means I thought were... questionable. The art – you know, he had another exhibit of David Cox paintings from the same collection, a couple of years ago. It was what really helped raise his profile, and I started losing customers to him. And back then, at the first exhibit, I thought that some of the art looked a little suspicious. So when this second exhibit was being put together, I started thinking about what I can do to prevent it from taking more business away from me.”

Ok, business jealousy. To be expected, given that Ravenswood sold the same type of art as Nordqvist Fine Art – 19
th
and early 20
th
century European.

“What do you mean the art looked suspicious?”

“Some paintings seemed a little… off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it back then.”

Hmmm. Not much to go on so far. And all phrased vaguely enough that I couldn’t prove or disprove it – just some nebulous insinuations about Fred Nordqvist's shady business practices.

“Of course, I couldn’t really say anything too widely about it, as people would think it was just sour grapes! Especially since I couldn’t really pin-point what it was that seemed off to me. Gossip in this business can be so brutal! People would start saying that I was jealous, that I didn’t know what I was talking about!” She half-sobbed into the phone.

I looked out the window towards my back yard, where three big dusty-pink tulips were blooming despite the rain and the cold, listened to her breathe in and out to compose herself, then asked:

“Why do you think I can help you in this situation?”

“That report you wrote, that’s the key evidence against me. It’s the reason I was there in the first place! I thought… I thought that you looked like a… nice person, and logical too. And if I could explain this to you, you could tell the police I didn’t have anything to do with his death! Please!” Her voice was rising again in desperation.

I had been told previously that I looked ‘nice’ and ‘harmless’, and it had come in handy when I had to interview employees in cases of security breaches or data thefts that we suspected were internal – people were not as on their guard when talking to me, and I could get more evidence.

“Please! I’m begging you!” Linda was obviously upset, and, I thought, quite sincere in her desire for my help. But that didn’t mean that she was innocent in Fred’s death.

“Why did you use DoS as a tactic in the first place? I didn’t think it was a common competitive maneuver in the art sales world.”

“Oh, that’s simple. Fred wasn’t tech-savvy at all. He wouldn’t have expected it and wouldn’t have known how to fix it. I thought I could get him to panic, to screw up plans for this opening, throw things off-balance. Mess with his head a bit.” I heard her blow her nose.

“How did you know what to do, where to even go looking for the tools?”

“I have a lot of clients in the tech industry. I’ve picked up some general info on cyber-attacks in conversation with a VP at Microsoft when I sold him several pieces to decorate his new house. And then there was that big attack from North Korea in the news recently – I read up on the details on the internet.”

Well, Linda was certainly resourceful!

“I see. I suggest you get a good attorney, just in case.”

She gulped. “So you don’t believe me?”

“I think it would be better, for your own peace of mind, if you have legal advice, and from someone who is qualified to give it – which I’m not.”

“But will you help me? I’ll pay you if you prove I didn’t do it!” Her voice was shrill and trembling now.

“I will do what I can to find out what really happened.” That was the truth, and I could promise her that. I chose to ignore her offer of payment, for a whole bunch of reasons.

“Oh, thank you, thank you! I had nothing to do with the death!” Another gulp and possibly a sob on the line.

“Well, I have to go now.” I wanted to hang up, research some things, and think.

I did a web search for the previous exhibit of David Cox landscapes, that Linda mentioned, found a couple of articles in the local papers that talked about “this successful sale establishing Nordqvist Fine Art as a major light on the Kirkland art scene”. Seemed like that previous event really raised the gallery’s visibility, as Fred bragged and Linda complained to me.

Linda said that the art looked “off” to her at that time. I zoomed in on a couple of photos that accompanied the newspaper articles, and then also did an image search for similar subject matter by the painter. From comparing 10 photos – three from the sale and seven from other galleries’ and museums’ websites, I couldn’t really see anything “off”. But I wasn’t an expert. I did another web search, also looking on Amazon and in my library’s catalog, and put a hold on several books. I would pick them up tomorrow.

In its own way, what Linda told me made sense. Linda aimed to exploit what she saw as Fred’s weakness, to sow confusion. She definitely intended to harm his business. But did she also aim to harm him personally, hurt him, eliminate the competitor? And when he found a way to deal with the cyber-attack, by hiring my firm to fix things, did she do something to get rid of him, literally? I shivered at the thought that perhaps my work on defending Nordqvist Fine Art website somehow hastened Fred’s death.

Or maybe she didn’t have any premeditated plans, but their argument Friday night got quite heated?

Linda also said that she wanted to mess up the plans for the opening of the show. If
she
were innocent of the murder, did whoever killed Fred have a particular date or timeline in mind?

That got me thinking about Connie, the almost-ex-wife and now widow. She likely had a good motive to make sure that Fred didn’t proceed with the divorce. She might have been in such a hurry as not to care about ruining this particular exhibit, if she could get a share of the business outright. She might also be a beneficiary of some insurance that might pay out on Fred's death. And I did see her talking to Fred at the opening party for a little bit – it was possible she could have slipped something into his drink. Their interaction looked frosty, and she didn’t look at all thrilled to be at the party. Why was she there at all? To slip some poison to Fred, with a cold cutting remark and an appraising look of the shark eyes?

And I should have a word with Monica, I thought as I drank my now-cold tea. I didn’t have any reason to suspect her specifically, only that she spent much of the opening party by Fred’s side and could have ample opportunity to slip something into his drink, if she were so inclined.  And it seemed that she knew him well enough, and could provide some answers, at least from the client’s perspective, about Nordqvist Fine Art. I should ask Pauline for her last name and contact info. I brewed some more tea and fired off a quick e-mail with questions to Pauline.

11

I dialed Detective Johnson. Since I had promised Linda only that I would do what I could to find who killed Fred Nordqvist, I didn’t feel like I was betraying her confidence in any way by talking to the detective.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Detective. This is Veronica Margreve. Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Linda Raven called me, said that you suspected her of murdering Fred because she was at the gallery that night, and begged me to convince you that she didn’t do it.”

“I see. What did you tell her?”

“I suggested she get a good lawyer. If I may ask – do you really suspect her?”

At the other end of the phone, he sighed.

“She was the last person to see him alive.  The security camera recorded her at the gallery, and her fingerprints were in the office. We know from his phone logs that he called her. “

“How long was she at the office?”

“About 15 minutes. On the other hand, this is a poisoning, and the murderer didn’t have to be present when the victim died. So the fact that Linda was the last person to talk to him doesn’t mean anything. He was alive for another 30 minutes, according to the security footage.”

“What poison was it that caused Fred’s death, by the way?” I knew from the news on celebrity deaths that full toxicology screens could take up to a couple of weeks, but from my internet research on fatal poisons I found out that there were tests that gave you results for some poisons in hours, not days.

“Arsenic.”

Arsenic.
The stuff of detective novels, poisonings in rambling English county houses full of guests for a weekend, with priceless collections of art and rich inheritances… I wondered whether the murderer thought that fitting, in a way – or whether he or she chose that method because it happened to be convenient, comparatively non-violent, and allowed the guilty party to be removed from the premises at the time of death.

I mulled that over, then said:

“She told me that Fred’s gallery held another sale of David Cox landscapes from the Willembauer collection previously, and that some paintings looked a little ‘off’ to her. I looked it up – it was two and a half years ago. From what I could make out of the newspaper photos, there is nothing obviously wrong in the paintings compared to other images I got online. I’m not an expert in this though.”

Detective Johnson made a sound that might have been disapproval.

“In art, it’s all one expert’s opinion against another, isn’t it? Us regular people just looking at the picture can’t tell what’s what.”

“Yes, I suppose… Anyway, that’s what Linda called me about.” I said in what I hoped was a professional tone of voice.  I was about to ask about things that were none of my business, and I thought that if our conversation was businesslike in its tone, I might actually get answers. “And what about the special wine from Christopher’s uncle’s collection?”

“There was very little left in the bottles to check, but what we did get to analyze, we didn’t find much arsenic. And the wine was divided among many people, everyone drank a toast – for that little liquid to cause Fred’s death, the concentration of poison in the bottle must have been at least 10 times the lethal dose, maybe 20. We didn’t find that much in the sediment in the bottles.”

“But you did find some?” That was promising. I took a sip of my tea and felt the hot caffeinated liquid revive me a bit.

“Yes. You know, arsenic can naturally occur in soil, and water, and then from those two in wine, and other stuff, like rice.  So the fact that we found some in the bottle sediment doesn’t mean the bottles were poisoned.”

“But you can’t really say that they weren’t?”

“Most likely they weren’t, but no, we are not absolutely sure yet. And remember, Fred was a big guy – if that small pour killed him, it should have killed or made sick about twenty other people who were there.”

“Are there any other bottles of this wine remaining that you can test? Or any other bottles that Fred could have drunk?”

“Christopher says none here. There are still a couple of cases at his home in Walla Walla.”

“Did Christopher himself drink much of the wine? Before, I mean? I saw him drink a bit of it at the reception. Like, did the wine at the party taste OK to him?”

“He said it tasted fine.”

Something was nagging me about the wine situation, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I decided to switch topics.

“Did you talk to Alex? Did he explain what I overheard on Thursday?”

“We tried to. He insisted that it had nothing to do with Fred Nordqvist's death, that all he was doing was looking for another job. Wouldn’t give us more details. “

OK, Alex may have been mixed up in something unsavory – or just knew that the particulars of the conversation wouldn’t look good for him. But would they look worse than not answering, and making people suspect him of anything up to and including murder? And Alex worked as the “office manager” of the gallery – but from what I saw on Thursday and Friday, hanging up paintings, serving refreshments and cleaning up were among his duties. Maybe among the various chemicals and detergents and industrial pest control agents, there was arsenic?  I thought I read somewhere that old rat poison and some pesticides used to contain it.

“Did he take out the garbage from the gallery after the party?”

“Yes. He told us which Dumpster he took it to. We found it, went through everything. Not pleasant, let me tell you.” (“Yeah, I can imagine”, I agreed.) “No arsenic in any of that stuff.”

Something else occurred to me.

“How come no-one at Fred’s house noticed he was missing, that he didn’t come home Friday night?” I thought I knew the answer, but was wondering whether the detective paid attention to this circumstance.

He sighed again.

“Pauline is living separately, in Capital Hill. And Fred and Connie were apparently having some difficulties. He moved out a couple of months ago.”

“Right. He told me they were getting a divorce.” It seemed my guess was right.

“Yeah, we’ll be talking to the Nordqvists’ divorce lawyers, too.”