Cold Hit

“I assume there was a prenup-”

“Certainly there was. But most of its contingencies were useless after the marriage survived ten years. You must realize how much older I was than Deni. I thought a decade with her would be bliss. It’s like the salesmen who try to sell a man my age a watch with a lifetime guarantee,” the septuagenarian went on. “I always tell them that I’d be interested in a similar piece, but for a lower price and with simply a ten-year guarantee.”

“So what was she fighting about?”

“It wasn’t money, Detective Chapman. I’ve offered plenty of that, and she made quite a lot of it on her own projects. But she wanted more of the art, some of my pieces. Claiming an entitlement for many of the things I’d bought since we’d been together. As though I needed her judgment to lead me to a Titian or Tintoretto. Perhaps next time you’re here,” Caxton said, making it obvious that we were coming to the end of his hospitality, “you might like to see what it is I want to hold on to.

“Unlike that mishmash of styles my wife favored, I’ve hung my favorites each in its own salon. My bedroom is devoted to van Gogh-Deni thought they were minor, but they’re quite wonderful, really. My office is the Poussin room, and my-”

Chapman had just about had it with the self-importance of Caxton and the arrogant cataloguing of his wealth. “How about your inamorata’s bedroom, sir? How’d you decorate that one?”

“Not a stupid guess at all, Detective. Yes, I’ve been seeing someone. She’s in Paris, and quite content to be there. And if you think it bothered Denise at all, you’d be wrong. We’ve been leading separate lives for a long time.”

“Do you know who she’s been seeing?” I asked.

“Perhaps the help would know that, Miss Cooper. They change the linens here-I don’t.”

That last exchange brought him to his feet, as he ushered us out of his wife’s office and back to the living room.

Chapman wasn’t quite done. “When was it, exactly, that you left for Paris?”

“Maurizio will give you all that infor-”

“I’m sure Maurizio would give me oral sex if you told him to, Mr. Caxton. I’m not talking ancient history, here. This is Sunday-what day did you leave New York to go to Paris on your last trip? I’d like to hear it from you. ”

Caxton’s veneer had worn thin, and Mike’s patience even finer. “It was Tuesday, Tuesday evening at seven o’clock.”

“Any other homes that you and Denise owned? Any place that she might have gone if she left this apartment for a few days and you were holed up in Paris?”

“Well, we’ve got a house in Saint Bart’s, but it’s not the season there, of course. I doubt it’s even opened up this time of year.”

Chapman couldn’t resist the cheap shot. “Yeah, I know you two wouldn’t be caught you-know-what there off- season, would you?”

Caxton ignored him.

I knew the small Caribbean paradise well. My parents had bought a home and begun spending winters there after my father retired from the practice of medicine. The Cooper-Hoffman valve, which he and his partner had invented as young physicians, had revolutionized the then-new field of open heart surgery and made possible a lifestyle that allowed him to live in that French-owned resort while continuing to travel for his lectures and conferences all over the world. It would be easy for me to get information about the Caxtons from my connections on the island.

“I’d suggest that when you speak with Bryan Daughtry you ask him about the truckload of paintings-mostly Della Spigas, I think, and quite ghastly-that was hijacked at the end of June. I don’t know if the art was ever recovered, but the hijacking had Deni completely crazed when it happened.”

Mercer added the truck incident to his list.

“May we spend a few minutes with Valerie?” I asked, hoping to get a closer handle on personal life in Denise’s wing of the house.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t think of it before I excused her for the day. I told Maurizio to let her go after she prepared my tea. She’ll grieve enough for all of us, Miss Cooper. I’ll let her know you’ll be contacting her, of course.

“Now I’ve got to ask you to leave so I can get ready for tomorrow. I must arrange for the services at Frank Campbell. Find a minister. Suggest an appropriate psalm. That sort of thing. I’m afraid the closest Deni ever got to a church was her frantic scrambling to buy that incredible Velazquez of Innocent the Tenth.”

Caxton opened the door to the landing that put us at the elevator. “You know, Miss Cooper, there’s a poignant fact about values in the world in which Deni and I lived that very few people realize. More than ninety percent of the art sold in America will never again fetch anywhere near the same price when the buyers attempt to resell it.” He paused, not quite ready to turn his back on us. “It was like that with Deni, too, and I think that fact was even beginning to dawn on her. She had invented herself once-brilliantly-and sold the stunning result at the very top of the market. I’m not sure she could have done as well-repeated her success, if you will-the second time around. Very sad, that, don’t you think?”

This time he closed the door behind him without waiting for us to be gone.

8

It wasn’t even noon when we emerged from the lobby of Caxton’s building onto the pavement in front of the Fifth Avenue co-op. The temperature was already over ninety degrees and the humidity was best measured by the tiny ringlets that formed instantly at the nape of my neck.

“Hate to say it,” Mike remarked, “but even this feels like fresh air after an hour with that pompous jerk. Where to?”

“I’ve got to spend the day at my office. I’m supposed to finish-up the hearing tomorrow, and I need to put the finishing touches on the brief I’m submitting after the argument.”

“Is P. J. Bernstein’s air-conditioned?”

“Yeah.” The delicatessen near my apartment was my morning hangout on weekends.

“Let’s grab some breakfast while we break up my to-do list. Then one of us can shoot you down to your office, okay?”

I rode the short distance to Third Avenue with Mercer, who parked at a meter in front of the deli, a feat that could be accomplished only in August. Midtown Manhattan was a ghost town on summer weekends, between vacationing New Yorkers, others who commuted to beach houses and shared rentals in the Hamptons or on the Jersey shore, and daytrippers who made their way to Jones Beach or the suburban pool of a friend or relative.

The three of us sat at a table in the rear, near the kitchen, each of us taking out a pad to make lists and notes for the next week’s work.

“Any point in my gracing the funeral?” Mike asked, after we ordered.

“The best reason to go,” Mercer offered, “is to try and get a look at-maybe even a copy of-the list of attendees. See if you can scope the sign-in book. They’ve always got one of those at Campbell’s. Might give us a jump start on some of the people in her business, beside what we hope we’ll get from her friend Bryan Daughtry.”

“Already thought of that. There’s always some sweet old mick used to drink at my father’s bar who runs the show at that funeral home. If I spread a little cash around, I’m sure they’ll make a copy of the guest list.”

The beeper attached to my waistband went off just as the waitress returned with my iced coffee. Mercer saw me slip it off the belt of my slacks and lift it to check the callback number. “Trouble for us?” he asked.

I laughed when I read the dial. “It’s Joan Stafford, and she even added a nine-one-one after Jim’s number.” Joan, one of my closest friends, was vacationing with her fiance on the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. “Either of you want to guess what she thinks is so urgent she’s got to talk to me immediately?”

Mike grabbed the cell phone from my hand after I dialed and heard it ringing. “Get your skinny ass out of bed