learned that it was she who had been killed. It’s always helpful to me if I can get as close to the victim as possible-to try and understand why she might be a target for someone. That is, if her loved ones allow me that kind of access.”
“Anything you’d like, Miss Cooper. Perhaps it would help if we took a walk into Deni’s quarters, to give you an idea of how she lived. Would you like that?”
Chapman was on his feet before I could answer. Caxton moved to the double doors as Mike leaned in behind me and whispered, “Very smoothly done, blondie. Keep batting those eyelashes and you could be the fourth late Mrs. Lowell Caxton. A very temporary position, from the looks of it.”
As the doors slid apart I could see the back of a man carrying a black leather suitcase as he walked out of the entryway that led from the living room to the elevator. Mercer nudged Chapman. “There goes Kardashian with Simpson’s bloody clothes.”
“Mr. Caxton,” Chapman said, “I’d appreciate it if you could hold that gentleman before he leaves here with any property that we might need to look at.”
“Is it safe for me to assume, Detective, that you don’t have a warrant to search my luggage?”
Mike and Mercer were silent. Caxton continued. “That was Maurizio. He simply unpacked the bag I returned with this morning and is taking it down to the storage area in the basement of the building. Sorry to disappoint you.” We heard the heavy door swing closed.
He led us past the Picasso and pointed at three doors across the room. “That far exit goes to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. Unless you think the butler did it, Mr. Chapman, that portion of the household needn’t take up your time. These other two are-rather, were-our separate apartments. Nothing new about that. Even when we were getting along very well, we always had distinct living spaces. Different lifestyles, different tastes in art.
“I didn’t approve of the drugs, and I didn’t much care for Deni’s current passion for modern painting-some of the very abstract, jarring works she’d developed an interest in recently.” We followed Caxton as he opened the door to Denise’s wing.
“You know, gentlemen, this may sound a bit peevish in light of the fact that I’m standing here with you while my wife is being fitted for a coffin, but if your department had taken
Mercer, Mike, and I couldn’t conceal our puzzlement as we exchanged looks.
“Are any of you with the Nineteenth Precinct? That’s the unit that’s handling the investigation,” Caxton explained.
“No, we’re not. Could you tell us what happened?”
Chapman was plainly annoyed that we had come here without such an important piece of information. “Just crossing Madison Avenue, six weeks ago, on my way home from the Whitney. Holding a Styrofoam coffee cup in my hand. A car driving past slowed down, and the man in the passenger seat pointed at me-it was happening so quickly that all I saw was his hand-then I heard the sound of a gunshot and felt a stinging ing on my scalp. I found myself sitting on the curb, people running over to help me. Never even dropped the coffee.”
Caxton bowed his head and parted his silver hair with his hands. “I’m sure you can still see the scar, like a seam across my scalp. At that moment I was quite sure I was dead. This must be what it’s like to die, I thought to myself. No pain at all. It took me a few seconds to realize, as the blood dripped onto my face, that I had been grazed by the bullet and not seriously injured at all. If someone had actually tried to kill me, they’d hired the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
“I trust you’ll be able to figure out whether Deni’s death had anything to do with that, won’t you?”
He pivoted away and walked on ahead of us to turn on the lights in the dim hallway. “The only thing I trust,” said Chapman, “is that some ass-kissing lieutenant in the Nineteenth was trying to make his numbers look better for the commissioner. When I call over for the case report on the assault on Lowell Caxton, I’ll probably find out that they’re carrying the investigation as disorderly conduct instead of attempted murder. Heaven forbid you alarm the good citizens of the Upper East Side by suggesting a violent crime could happen here- they might confuse the place with Harlem.”
“Here’s another Degas,” Caxton said to me, stopping in front of a painting. “Perhaps you remember from your college days that after the Napoleonic wars, it was presumed of firstborn sons of a certain class that they would become lawyers. Edgar dutifully followed his father’s wishes and enrolled at the Faculte de Droit. Fortunately for the rest of the world-if not his parents-he dropped out in favor of doing something more creative than litigation after only a month.”
He walked on. “Cezanne spent almost three years at law school in Aix, replete with boredom. And Matisse actually clerked for a lawyer for quite a while, drafting briefs and keeping files. It was only when he was forced to stay at home with appendicitis that he was given his first paint set by his mother. A decade later, he changed the history of the art world with the birth of Fauvism-exuberant colors and wildly distorted shapes. Imagine our loss if any of these giants had become mired in the law. You don’t paint by any chance, do you, Miss Cooper?”
Lowell Caxton managed to summarize a bit of art history while making clear his disdain for the legal profession. I got the point.
So far, the hallway lined with Impressionist paintings was as breathtaking as any gallery in the finest museums. Caxton opened the last door, which had been Denise’s bedroom. The contrast was stunning.
“A bit self-involved, would you say?” he asked rather facetiously.
The room was like a shrine to its former occupant, with almost every painting in it a portrait of Denise. “Gifts from the artists, of course. Thankful for her ability to turn their talents into gold, in some instances. Quite like alchemy. The Warhol is the great irony, in that he started this whole odyssey for her, without his ever knowing it.”
Displayed above the headboard of the king-size bed, covered in an exquisite set of antique linens with countless throw pillows layered on top, were the four-colored Warhol images of a younger Denise Caxton. The youthful bride with a swanlike neck and beauty queen smile was deserving of a few portraits, I conceded, but this accumulation was a bit frightening.
The three of us circled the space, looking at signatures and taking in the variety of styles. I recognized some of the names-Richard Sussman, Emilio Gomes, and Aneas McKiever among them-but Caxton pointed out the rest of those I had never encountered. There were Deni Caxtons fully clothed and bejeweled, and there were Deni Caxtons completely nude and erotically posed. There were torsos without heads and limbs, and there were heads without body parts.
“How’d she let this one slip in?” Chapman asked. He pointed at a yellow canvas, three feet square, with a small pink rectangle in the upper right corner.
Caxton laughed. “That
“This is all like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ if you ask me,” Chapman said.
“Precisely,” Caxton responded. “I couldn’t agree with you more. Denise mocked me for my traditional views- too representational, she used to argue, too old-fashioned. I wish P. T. Barnum had lived long enough to encounter this trend. Nowadays there are two or three suckers born every minute, if you ask me. He might have gone into partnership with Deni.”
Mercer was scouring the surfaces of the furniture-bedside tables, dresser top, lingerie chest-for any signs of notes or papers, names or phone numbers. But there was nothing loose and nothing casually laid about. Either Mrs. Caxton lived that neatly or Valerie had removed every jotting or message pad before we arrived.
“Would you-or the housekeeper-know whether any belongings are missing?” Mercer asked. “Jewelry, clothing, anything like-”
“I couldn’t begin to guess,” said Caxton. He stepped to the only other door in the room and pulled the handles back to reveal a walk-in closet, which was probably larger than half of the studio apartments in Manhattan. Clothes
