The Odd Job (3 page)

Fortunately, dessert was nothing more deadly than melon sherbet dribbled with Amaretto, served in squatty green glass goblets and garnished with the sort of expensive cookies that get sold through mail-order catalogs geared to the affluent suburbanite. Elwyn Turbot gobbled his sherbet in two spoonfuls, heaved himself to his feet, and made a quick switch from genial country squire to masterful man of destiny.

“First off, Mrs. Bittersohn, would you kindly tell me why your husband failed to show up for this meeting? I thought I’d made it sufficiently plain to your cousin that I wanted Bittersohn present.”

Sarah had sensed something like this in the wind, she was not a bit surprised. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Mr. Turbot, but my husband’s away on business. Percy, why on earth didn’t you explain that to Anne before you badgered her into phoning me?”

It was a rotten thing to say, but Sarah was not a bit sorry she’d said it. This was the first time in her life that she’d ever got the chance to watch Percy Kelling squirm.

Percy was one of the rock-ribbed, horse-faced Kellings. For approximately half a second, his craggy features were suffused with the exact same shade of russet as the Turbots’ Herefords; and his wife’s with the identical look of bland satisfaction that Sarah had noticed on those gentle, white-jowled ruminants’ faces. Still, the Kelling code was inflexible. Percy could not be left hanging. For once, it was Anne who got her oar in first.

“Oh, Percy doesn’t have to explain things to me. We both knew Max was off on one of his hunting trips, but we didn’t see that it mattered. Sarah and Max are equal partners, Elwyn. When one’s too busy, the other takes over. Percy knew that Sarah could cope and that you’re eager to get going on your new project, so there was no reason to keep you waiting. Isn’t that right, Percy dear? Shall I tell Elwyn and Lala how Sarah rescued our sweet little girl with the parrot?”

Percy’s aplomb was back in order. “Er—perhaps later, Anne. I believe Elwyn has some questions about the Wilkins Collection which I’m sure Sarah can answer to his complete satisfaction.”

Turbot loomed over his empty dessert dish with his head lowered, like a bull getting ready to charge. “Then suppose you answer me this, Mrs. Bittersohn. Give me one good reason why, as chairman of the board for the Wilkins Museum, I shouldn’t slap you and your equal partner with a lawsuit for breach of contract.”

The only sound in the room was the nonstop jangling of Lala Turbot’s bracelets. Her husband continued to loom and glower, Percy Kelling looked more than ever like a horse with a frog in its throat. Anne’s face was a careful blank. Sarah fought down an impulse to giggle.

“I assume you’re talking specifically about a contract with the Wilkins Museum, Mr. Turbot.”

“Of course.”

“Then the answer is simple. You have no grounds on which to sue because there is not now and never has been any contract between the Wilkins and the Bittersohn Detective Agency.”

Turbot wheeled on his accountant. “What the hell is she talking about? God damn it, Kelling, why can’t you follow instructions? I suppose, because you couldn’t get hold of Bittersohn, you thought I’d fall for this dumb little cutie-pants and let her waste my afternoon.”

Lala yawned without bothering to cover her mouth. Her husband glared at her. Percy Kelling might have wanted to glare at his cousin, but that would have been unsubtle. He took a deep breath and pasted a grim smile to his lips.

“Perhaps, Sarah, you may be able to clarify the situation?”

“I’ll be glad to, Percy, though I certainly don’t want to waste any more of Mr. Turbot’s valuable time. Could you tell me, please, Mr. Turbot, how long you’ve been chairing the board of trustees?”

This was pure devilment. There was no way that Sarah couldn’t have known, considering how long she and Max had been involved with the Wilkins. If she shut her eyes she could still picture what had happened on her first visit: the screaming peacock, the sprawling body, Max Bittersohn dashing down the grand staircase, Brooks Kelling standing staunch to his trust between a bogus Gainsborough and a broken-down sedan chair with a bad case of woodworm. At that time Sarah hadn’t seen Brooks for ages. After the tumult had died, she’d invited him back to the boardinghouse for supper. A staff member named Dolores Tawne had gone along with Brooks, and seen the handwriting on the wall when Theonia Sorpende helped him to a slice of something rich and delicious.

Thus had Madam Wilkins’s palazzo become once more a part of the Kelling family saga, though there was one chapter that Sarah had never told anybody. After the old security guard’s death, when Max Bittersohn was trying to sort out the pieces, he’d persuaded his then landlady to accompany him on a surveillance mission to the Madam’s, both of them disguised as Hindus. With the help of a sedan chair and a safety pin, Sarah had managed to cope when her sari came unwrapped. The real sticker had come when they stopped at Max’s office afterward to get rid of their disguises and Sarah got hopelessly stuck in her too-tight bodice.

There had been only one thing to do, and Max had risen to the occasion. That episode was one link in the long chain of circumstances that had brought her here now and forced Elwyn Fleesom Turbot to admit that he’d only held office since Thursday afternoon. She pressed her case.

“Is it correct to say that until now you’d never served on any art museum board?”

This question went down even worse than the first. Turbot was blustering like a north wind at the corner of Park and Boylston streets on a January day.

“It was high time for new blood! The place was going to hell in a handcart, they begged me to take the chair because I’m a man who gets things done. Half those old fogies are in their dotage and the rest not far behind. I’m going to straighten that bunch out in a hurry, and don’t you think I won’t.”

“I’m sure you will,” Sarah cooed with her fingers crossed. “My husband and I will be delighted to draw up a list of competent art experts if you’d like. Are you a serious collector yourself, Mr. Turbot?”

If he was, Sarah hadn’t noticed any sign of it. So far, she had seen only that disgusting travesty in the barn and a slick portrait of Lala over the drawing room fireplace. It reminded her of covers she’d seen on the kind of lurid paperback novels that Cousin Mabel bought for a pittance at garage sales and burned in her fireplace to show her contempt for such trash, though not before Mabel had read them. Here in the dining room there were only matted and framed color photographs of polled Herefords, each with a blue-ribbon rosette from one cattle show or another attached to its frame.

Lala hadn’t rated a blue ribbon, Sarah didn’t see any reason why she should. When the surly waiter served the sherbet, he’d left the Amaretto bottle close to Mrs. Turbot’s hand; she’d been adding extra dribbles of the liqueur to her sherbet as the spirit moved her. Now she splashed in a sizable dollop, raised the heavy goblet in a swift but all-inclusive toast, drained it dry, ran her tongue around her lips, and took it upon herself to answer Sarah’s question.

“You bet he’s a collector, cutie-pants. But don’t get any ideas. He only collects cows.”

While Turbot was trying to pretend that he found his wife’s vagaries amusing, Percy cleared his throat and took the floor. “We seem to be straying from the subject here. You were about to explain, Sarah, why no contract exists between the Wilkins Museum and the Bittersohn Agency.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Percy.”

Sarah was easily the youngest woman there and looked even younger than she was by contrast to her weather-beaten cousin the gardener and that well-preserved tribute to the cosmetologists and the haute couture. The sedate jacket dress and the Psyche knot into which she’d twisted her baby-fine light-brown hair suggested a sub-deb wearing her mother’s clothes, as in fact Sarah had done more often than not during her less affluent years. Her eyes were an interesting mixture of brown and gray, one set a whisker higher than the other in a pale squarish face that could blush like the rose or set like a statue of Queen Boadicea as occasion demanded. At the moment, Sarah’s demeanor was nobly bland enough to have made anybody who knew the signals tread warily. Turbot would learn soon enough.

“Since you’re so obviously new to the art world, Mr. Turbot, I should explain that it’s simply not possible for us to give our clients any guarantee as to when or whether a stolen work of art will ever be recovered. One problem with paintings is that they’re so easy to disguise.”

Turbot didn’t like being lectured, he scowled. “Disguise how?”

“Lots of ways. Some thieves lay a fresh ground over the surface and paint a different picture over it that can be wiped off without harming the original.”

“Huh. What kind of picture?”

“Anything, or nothing in particular. It’s amazing what trash can pass for art these days.” Sarah was still bitter about those vandalized barn boards. “Another way is to hide a valuable canvas under a not-so-good one and fasten them both to the same stretcher. That’s an amateur’s trick but it still gets tried and sometimes works.”

“I could make it work.” Now that she’d been refueled, Lala was showing real interest. “What else do they do? Suppose I walked into the museum and stole a painting in broad daylight.”

“You’d be caught and sent to jail. That’s why museums have security guards.”

“How about if I took along an accomplice? We could be dressed just alike. One could keep the guard interested while the other cut the painting out of the frame with a razor blade or something and stuffed it under her clothes.”

“That wouldn’t be so easy as it sounds. In the first place, two women dressed just alike would be noticed, and watched. If one did manage to cut the painting out of the frame, she’d have to be awfully quick and careful or the blade might slip and do serious damage. If she stuffed the canvas inside her clothes she’d most likely crack the paint surface and lower the value of the painting. But again, it does happen. My husband once caught a thief in the men’s room of a place I’d better not name. He’d cut a nice little Sargent beach scene out of its frame and was taping it to a plaster body cast that he was wearing.”

“What did your husband do?”

“Flashed his private detective’s license and yelled for a guard to call the police. Luckily the painting wasn’t badly damaged, though of course it had been somewhat reduced in size by the cutting.”

“But still salable?” Lala insisted.

“I suppose so, if the buyer was gullible enough.”

“How about that?” Lala’s bangles were making such a racket that she had to quit waving her arms to make herself heard. “There we go, Elwyn. After your next board meeting, you just stick a few masterpieces under your coat and wear them home. We then paste photos of the cows on top, take them to Palm Springs, peel off the cows, and peddle the Rembrandts to the movie stars. How about you, Percy? Care to join the mob?”

Mr. Kelling was not amused. “Thank you, Lala, but I hardly think grand larceny is my métier. Just out of curiosity, Sarah, what if the painting one wanted to steal was too big to carry?”

“Like that big—ah—Titian, is it?” Elwyn Turbot had been silent too long to suit him. “The one with the—”

Anne Kelling shifted a bit in her chair and coughed behind her napkin. Percy threw his wife a glance of approval and took up the torch.

“Quite so, Elwyn. By all accounts, the Titian—the original Titian, I should say—was the gem of the Wilkins Collection.”

“Which Bittersohn was supposedly going to get back,” Turbot snarled.

Percy made a neat job of not noticing that he’d been interrupted. “Think of the thousands upon thousands of art lovers who have admired that work of genius, but how many have recognized its historical aspect? Even you, Sarah, may not be aware, though you certainly ought to be, that the woman in the painting was a noble Roman matron named Lucretia, or Lucrece. A paragon of beauty and a model of domestic virtue, she was depicted by Titian as being—ah—mishandled by one Tarquinius Sextus, a son of Tarquinius Superbus. Lucrece’s husband was a first cousin of that brilliant statesman Lucius Junius Brutus, who wrested the reins of power away from Tarquinius the Elder, drove the Tarquins out of Rome, and established a republic.”

“He and his cousin?” teased Lala.

“So what are relations for?” Sarah seemed to be the only one who heard what the surly young waiter mumbled. He gathered up the dessert service, carried his laden tray to a swinging door that must lead to the kitchen, and kicked it open with quite unnecessary violence. Not batting an eyelid, Percy finished his history lesson.

“After having informed her husband and father of the outrage to which she had been subjected, and having exacted from them a solemn vow of vengeance upon the Tarquins, the noble lady, preferring death to dishonor, took her own life.”

“How times have changed.” Having resumed her lady-of-the-manor manner, Lala rose from the table. “What do you say, anybody? Would you care to go back to the pasture and pat the pretty moo-cows?”

T
HERE WERE NO TAKERS
. Percy glanced at Anne, Anne glanced at Sarah. Sarah nodded. Anne did what was proper, as always.

“This has been delightful, Lala, but we really ought to be getting along. Percy has things to do.” Which would consist of switching on the television to some sports program or other, settling into his armchair, and going to sleep in front of the tube. “And Sarah’s expecting a long-distance call from her husband.”

Turbot wasn’t letting that pass without a parting shot “Then will you kindly remind your husband for me, Mrs. Bittersohn, that even if he doesn’t have a written contract with the Wilkins, there’s still such a thing as a gentlemen’s agreement. I haven’t yet had time to go into the matter thoroughly, but so far it looks to me as if Bittersohn’s been dragging his feet over that Titian for the past six years, and it’s high time he showed some action. You might also mention that there are plenty of other operators in his line of work who’d be only too glad to take on the assignment without soaking us for another of those fat fees he’s been so punctual about collecting.”