The Renewable Virgin (5 page)

What a gruesome thought. ‘No, I don't.'

‘Then be sure to tell the people at the crematorium ahead of time. Otherwise they'll hand you this little box—'

‘Oh, good heavens!' I shuddered. ‘Thank you for warning me.' Just then Kelly Ingram surprised me for the second time in five minutes; she reached out and touched my arm in sympathy. ‘You're a history professor, aren't you?' Getting my mind off Rudy.

I nodded, and wondered what else she knew.

‘That's all Rudy told me,' she said. ‘That you were a history professor and you lived in Ohio.'

‘Is it Dr. Benedict then?' Marian Larch wanted to know.

I said it was, but did not tell them to call me Fiona. Both of these women were part of an alien, violent world that I did not care to be on a first-name basis with. I stared at the table and said nothing. There was one sandwich left on the platter, exuding a spicy odor impossible to ignore. It was an association I have resented ever since, remembering the smell of garlic every time I think of that period of my life when I was arranging for the disposal of my son's body.

Detective Larch said, ‘Is there somebody back in Ohio who can help you with all this—the arrangements, I mean?'

‘I can manage, thank you.'

‘But a little help would make it go easier. Isn't there someone—'

‘There is no Mr. Benedict, if that's what you're fishing for,' I said calmly. ‘He deserted Rudy and me when the boy was eight.'

The Ingram woman looked surprised at my mentioning so personal a matter but Marian Larch didn't bat an eye. ‘No, I meant a neighbor or friend. Or one of your colleagues. Can
I
help?'

I shook my head. ‘Thank you for your offer, though. I have to go through Rudy's apartment tomorrow and decide what to do about his belongings, the things I won't want to keep. I won't know what I'll need to do until I see what's there.'

Kelly Ingram said, ‘That'll be a big job. I was there once, and the place is crammed with files and papers and stuff. It'll take you a while.'

I'd expected the files and papers, but I hadn't expected that other thing she'd said. ‘You were there
once?
Only once?'

She raised one graceful eyebrow. ‘That's right.'

‘Captain Michaels said you were Rudy's girlfriend. I'd have thought …' I trailed off, not really knowing how to finish.

She sighed. ‘I was Rudy's
friend
, Dr. Benedict. Not “girlfriend”—did the Captain really use that word? Rudy and I weren't lovers.'

And still another surprise. ‘Oh,' I said, trying not to show I was flustered. ‘Captain Michaels led me to believe, ah …'

‘I can't help what Captain Michaels thinks,' she said, an edge to her voice. ‘Rudy and I hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, not until just a few weeks ago. We were only getting reacquainted. We weren't lovers.'

She didn't say
yet
, but she might as well have. But she'd made one other thing quite clear: whether they would eventually have become lovers or not, Kelly Ingram quite clearly had not been
in love
with Rudy. She was not crushed by his death. Upset, yes—even horrified, perhaps, but in that distanced way one reacts to the misfortune of someone who is an acquaintance rather than an intimate part of one's personal life. Kelly Ingram was an actress, but I didn't think she was that good an actress. She had not been in love with Rudy.

I accepted Marian Larch's offer of a ride to my hotel.

The next morning the medical examiner's report came through and Rudy's body was released. I notified the crematorium.

Rudy's apartment in Chelsea was what in my younger days would have been called bohemian—arty and cheap. It was the sort of place I could see Rudy living in fifteen or twenty years ago, when he was just starting out. It was a
sophomoric
apartment.

Rudy had five or six pieces of original artwork, but he'd hung none of them. Instead, what wallspace wasn't taken up with bookshelves was covered with posters, most of them advertising theatrical events. Rudy had said he didn't like the apartment and was looking for a better place to live; perhaps that was why he'd never bothered hanging the paintings. I found them in a small pantry off the kitchen that Rudy had used as an all-purpose storage room; they were still in the movers' crates from the time they'd made the trip from California, almost a year ago.

I'd already decided to box up all of Rudy's papers and ship them to Ohio; there I could go through them without rushing, taking as much time as I wanted. The clothes could go to Goodwill Industries or the Salvation Army. Rudy had quite a few pieces of good furniture; I'd ask the Ingram woman if she wanted any of them. I'd need to get the phone disconnected, notify the utility companies—I decided to make a list.

I was sitting at Rudy's desk trying to think of everything that needed to be done when the door buzzer sounded. As soon as I figured out how the intercom worked, I heard a voice saying, ‘It's Kelly. May we come up?'

My heart sank; it was hard enough going through Rudy's things, but having to be polite to that … yet I could think of no reason to refuse and buzzed her in. The other part of ‘we' turned out to be a successful-looking man whom she introduced as Howard somebody. Each of them was carrying a stack of flattened cardboard cartons.

‘The shippers can pack most of what you'll want to send back,' the Ingram woman said, ‘but there are always some things you have to take care of yourself. Now, we'll help or we'll get out of your way, whichever you say. Just tell us.'

It was a little thing, showing up with some boxes, but it made me realize that on the whole she'd been behaving better than I had. ‘I'd like you to stay,' I said as pleasantly as I could. ‘Right now I'm trying to make a list of all the things that need to be done.'

‘Did your son have a safe-deposit box, Dr. Benedict?' Howard the mystery man said.

‘I have no idea.'

‘Have you gone through the desk yet?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Then that's the place to start. Was there insurance, a will?'

‘Howard's a lawyer,' Kelly Ingram explained.

‘A will … I don't know,' I said. ‘I do know there was insurance.'

‘He probably had a safe-deposit box, then,' Howard said. ‘Look for a key and his bank statements. Then we'll get a court order to open the box.'

‘The key might be in the bedroom,' the Ingram woman said and went to look.

I looked at the man named Howard. ‘Are you Ms. Ingram's lawyer?'

‘Personal friend.'

One of her men, then.

‘Mind if I take a look?' he said.

I yielded the desk to him, and watched as he quickly and methodically went through the papers. Kelly Ingram came back in from the bedroom waving a key just as Howard held up a bank statement. ‘Barclays Bank,' he said. ‘This is Saturday, Dr. Benedict. I won't be able to get an order to open the box until Monday. If you want my help, that is.'

‘I would like your help very much, Mr.…?'

‘Call me Howard. Let's see what else we have here.' He took a ledger out of a middle drawer, opened it, and said, surprisingly, ‘Glorioski!'

The Ingram woman laughed. ‘Glorioski, Howard?'

‘The inner child speaks. Do you know what this is?' He meant the ledger. ‘It's an inventory of his belongings—location, cost, and so on. Thank the Lord—a careful record-keeper! This will simplify things enormously. And look here. Will, two insurance policies, some stock, title papers to various things like his car and some paintings—the papers are all in the Barclays box. Great. Kelly, do you know where he kept his car?'

‘In a garage on Eighth Avenue. I don't remember the name, but I know where it is. What paintings?'

‘What's that?'

‘Didn't you say paintings were listed there? I don't see any paintings.' She gestured at the postered walls.

‘I know where they are,' I said, and led them to the pantry.

‘Yup, there they are,' Howard said. ‘One, two, three, four, uh, five? That's all? There're supposed to be six. Where's the other one?'

‘Perhaps he sold it,' I suggested. ‘Although that doesn't seem likely. I don't think they were worth very much.'

‘Not a whole lot,' Howard agreed. ‘The most expensive was twenty-five hundred. All six together cost less than what he paid for his car. One of them he paid only five hundred bucks for. Who are these people? The artists, I mean.' He held the ledger out to me. ‘Do you know any of these names?'

I glanced at Rudy's carefully printed list and shook my head. ‘I'm not a good one to ask. I know very little about contemporary art.'

‘Don't look at me,' the Ingram woman said.

‘Well, let's see which one is missing,' Howard said. Rudy had taken a black felt-tip marker and printed the title of each painting on the crate it was in. The missing painting turned out to be one called
Man and Shadow
, and the artist was someone named Mary Rendell. I'd heard of neither painting nor painter.
Man and Shadow
had cost Rudy only eight hundred dollars.

Howard said, ‘If the safety deposit box has ownership papers for just the other five, then I think we can assume he sold the painting. Or maybe gave it away, birthday or Christmas present or the like.'

‘And what if the papers are there for all six paintings?' I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Cross that bridge when we come to it.'

It went on like that for a while, until we reached a point where only I could make decisions about the disposal of Rudy's personal belongings. I thanked Kelly Ingram as graciously as I could manage for bringing a lawyer to help out. After all, she was doing the best she could to atone for having caused Rudy's death.

The will in Rudy's safe-deposit box listed me as sole heir, and the two insurance policies both named me as beneficiary. One had originally been taken out to benefit Rudy's wife, but even when they divorced he hadn't changed the policy. Only when she remarried did Rudy substitute my name for hers on the second policy. I learned from Detective Larch that Rudy's ex-wife had been notified of his death soon after his body was discovered, almost twenty-four hours before Captain Michaels had contacted me. It was just like her not to call me. Impossible woman.

Howard the lawyer found a buyer for Rudy's car. The offer was low but I accepted just to be done with it. Marian Larch was intrigued by the fact that the deposit box had contained bills of sale for six paintings but only five were in the apartment. I think she had visions of
Man and Shadow
's turning out to be a priceless American primitive and that there was some sort of crime-within-a-crime just waiting to be discovered. I made it clear I was not sympathetic to her supersleuth ambitions; at a time like that I couldn't be bothered with what happened to an eight-hundred-dollar painting.

Nevertheless Marian Larch had taken Rudy's inventory list and contacted several galleries and museums, trying to ‘get a line on the artists,' she said. The experts she consulted hadn't even heard of most of them; none had heard of Mary Rendell, the artist who'd painted
Man and Shadow
. She'd tried to track down the California dealer whose name appeared on the bill of sale, but his gallery had gone out of business several years ago. So Marian Larch asked permission to make one final search of Rudy's apartment before the packers and shippers took over. I told her yes just to get her to stop bothering me.

She found nothing, of course. ‘It's odd,' she said, as we waited for the men from the shipping company. ‘The first thing you think of in the case of a missing painting that everybody says isn't worth anything is that it
is
worth something. If not for itself, then maybe somebody painted over an old painting that
is
valuable. A Corot or a Manet or something like that.'

‘It's the first thing
you
think of,' I pointed out to her. ‘The first thing I think of is that the movers lost the painting when Rudy came here from California. Or he did give it away but didn't bother passing on the bill of sale. Or he got tired of looking at it and threw it out. Rudy wasn't a collector. He'd just buy something now and then to hang on a bare wall.'

‘Did you ever see the painting?'

‘I've been trying to remember. The last time I visited Rudy—let's see, I spent most of last year in London, and … it must be close to five years, the last time I was in California. And I just don't know whether I saw
Man and Shadow
then or not. I didn't pay much attention to the paintings, I'm afraid. I know I didn't ask Rudy their titles.'

‘Do you remember seeing one of, well, a man and his shadow?'

I didn't. ‘To tell you the truth, Ms. Larch, I don't really remember any of them.'

Just then the shippers showed up, to finish the packing and clear the apartment. They were rough and noisy and couldn't seem to work without a transistor radio blaring away, but they were fast. I appreciated their being fast.

At last it was done. Marian Larch drove me back to my hotel. She told me that when I got back home if I thought of something I'd forgotten to do, just give her a call and she'd take care of it. Belatedly it occurred to me the police detective had shown a lot more consideration than her job required her to, so I tried to thank her but she wouldn't let me. Strange woman, Marian Larch. But nice.

In my hotel room I'd just finished locking my suitcase when there was a knock on the door. It was Captain Michaels—whom I'd thought I'd seen the last of.

‘Could we sit down, Dr. Benedict?' he said. ‘I have something to tell you.'

I didn't like the sound of that and said so.

He plunged right in. ‘We've just had the final report from the crime lab. They go over the scene of the crime pretty thoroughly, you know.'