Cold Hit

expect me to believe he summoned you to his bedside just before he had the big one. I doubt you ever spoke to him. Not much of a talker, that man. Try me again, harder this time.”

“Lowell Caxton told us about the hijacking of the Della Spiga paintings last June. Said to ask you why it made Deni so crazy.”

“Well, I assume the disappearance of a truckload of any artist’s work would make his dealer berserk. Caxton Due represented Della Spiga. The whole thing was rather odd. Nobody ever saw who stole the truck, so we don’t even know whether or not the thieves were armed. Deni had actually rented an eighteen-wheeler from a soda delivery company so the truck would be inconspicuous on the highway. After the drivers made a stop for coffee on the thruway, they came out of McDonald’s and the truck had disappeared.”

“Never found it?”

“To the contrary. It was found the next day, abandoned behind an old factory upstate. Not a thing missing. Either the thieves didn’t like Della Spiga or they were looking for cola and not art.”

“What did Deni think?”

“That first night? She was wild. Figured it had to be an inside job, someone who knew she was shipping fine art but disguising the delivery truck. When every painting was found intact, she calmed down and assumed the hijacking was just a coincidence. Amateur soda swipers foiled again.”

“So maybe somebody did think she had the Rembrandt and was slipping the stolen painting in with the transport of the Della Spigas?”

“One might have thought that to see how upset she got. But of course, Detective Chapman, the police who found the truck went through it and listed every item on it. No Rembrandt recovered. And Deni was far, far too relieved the next day to have been missing one great masterpiece.”

Mike jumped back a year in his next question.

“That trip to England that Lowell made alone the June before-the one that broke the marriage apart. What were you and Deni up to that kept her away, that kept her so busy here?”

“Try as you might, Chapman, you won’t mix me in this soup. Whatever it was, Deni never let me in on it. But you’re right, it was serious. Whoever called her, whoever contacted her-someone made an offer she couldn’t refuse. She withdrew from me completely and was very secretive. It bothered me at the time, but after a few days she changed her mind and went off to join Lowell. You obviously know the rest. I didn’t think any more of it. Figured she’d been onto a deal and that it must have fallen through. Happens all the time in this business.”

The receptionist buzzed on Daughtry’s intercom to tell him that more detectives had arrived.

Chapman stood up. “Why don’t you show my guys around?” Then he bent over the desk, the top of his fists pressed against the leather blotter. “Remember, it ain’t just me you gotta worry about, Mr. Daughtry. Mess with the cops and you’ve still got the boys on Eleventh Avenue to deal with- Knuckles Knox, Stumpy Malarkey, One-Lung Curran. They got ways I couldn’t get past the Supreme Court in six lifetimes.”

When Daughtry left the room, I turned to Mike. I was steaming. “Who the hell are you talking about? Bad enough I don’t know what you do when I’m not standing next to you. You can’t threaten people like that, and I can’t stand by and let you do it.”

“Not even once? I’ve waited a lifetime to say that to somebody. ‘Battle Row,’ this block used to be called. Those guys, Knuckles and Stumpy? Real hoodlums-used to scare my old man to death when he was a schoolboy. Relax, blondie. That gang broke up around nineteen thirty-two. Six feet under, all of ’em. Did I sound like Cagney? Did I scare you?”

Mike stepped to the doorway and motioned to Wrenley to come into the office and sit down. I introduced myself.

He was dressed in black from head to foot-collared polo shirt, linen slacks, tasseled loafers-and his jet-colored hair was slicked back, every strand in perfect placement. I guessed it was his style, not an expression of mourning.

“Hope you don’t mind some questions about Denise Caxton,” Mike began. “We understand you and she were quite close.” The edge in his voice with which he had addressed Daughtry was gone. It was clear to me that he was hoping to get Wrenley’s help with more personal information about the past year.

“Not a secret, Detective. I’d met Deni two or three years ago. After she and Lowell had their blowup last year, our relationship became more intimate.”

“You didn’t mind the competition?”

“Her husband, or do you mean Preston Mattox? I understood what it was about. Deni was just a kid when she hooked up with Lowell Caxton. She’d been faithful to him throughout the marriage, and don’t think there weren’t lots of opportunities for her to have a fling. After he embarrassed her with that episode in Bath, she was more than ready to spread her wings.

“And besides, she was still married to Lowell. She wasn’t very anxious to tie herself down permanently so quickly. We both seemed to get all the pleasure we needed out of each other’s company, professionally and personally.”

“I take it you’re single?”

“Always have been,” Wrenley answered.

“How’d you and Mrs. Caxton meet?”

“When I moved most of my business interests to New York-”

“What’s the business?”

“Antiques. High end. Furniture, silver, nineteenth-century for the most part.”

“Where’d you move here from?”

“Palm Beach, Detective. Grew up in Florida, in the Keys. Set up shop there, but I was always on the road. Auctions in England, France, Italy, and of course, New York. I still keep a place on the water down there, but I live here now.

“I saw Deni long before I met her. She was hard to miss- not just her looks but her spirit and energy. Always in the chase for a great find, and in those days, something to show Lowell how much she had learned from him.”

Mike tried the man-to-man thing. “Never came on to her before she split with him? Never asked her out, called her, till after the Bath scandal?”

“I never called her then, Mike. It was Deni who called me. We’d been to auctions together and gotten to know each other a bit. I’d asked her for advice about paintings when I was making acquisitions for particular clients. Nothing social. After she flew home from England that time, she was determined to make a statement to her friends back here. Called me and invited me to go to a couple of dinner parties with her. It almost began as a game, for both of us. I never imagined I’d fall in love with her, nor she with me.”

“What was the story with the other guys?”

“There were lots of men pursuing Deni. I’d have been an idiot not to think that would happen. I suppose my most serious rival was Preston Mattox. Had an airtight way of getting under my skin.”

“Why Mattox more than anyone else?”

“Ever hear of something called the Amber Room?”

“Yeah,” Mike answered. “Know all about it.”

“Mattox was convinced that Lowell Caxton had smuggled some of the panels out of Europe and had them hidden somewhere. He’s an architect, world-class. Deni said he had this dream-you ought to talk to him about it-of creating his chef d’oeuvre with remnants of the room. I don’t know whether he was interested in her or in what she could lead him to. But that possibility made her furious whenever I suggested it.

“Look, I’m on the road a lot of the time. I never expected her to sit home doing her needlepoint, waiting for me to come back to town. She knows-sorry, she knew-that I dated other women when I was in Europe, and that was fine with her. She’d been tied down too long to care about that kind of thing right now.”

“So, what brings you here?” I asked. There was nothing in Daughtry’s world that seemed remotely connected to the nineteenth century.

“I wasn’t invited to Deni’s funeral, as you probably already know. Bryan and I are old friends, and he knows how devastated I was by her death. I just wanted to talk, reminisce, try to make some sense of it. May I call you Alex? When you catch the bastard who did this, Alex-” Wrenley paused, then dropped his head and shook his hand back and forth, as though asking us to wait a few moments before he spoke. “No point in my going on. There’s nothing you can do to him in a court of law that would resemble any kind of justice.