Cold Hit

established himself as the virtuoso, more than forty years ago, he was insistent on working alone. If you were fortunate enough to get his attention, and he agreed to work on your project, then he wanted the result to be only his handiwork.”

“What do you mean, ‘he agreed’? Didn’t people just pay him?” Chapman wanted to know.

The serious Mr. Cannon smiled wryly. “No, no, no. Mr. Varelli had more than enough to live on. He was paid handsomely for his craft. So, at a certain point in his life, it was easy for him to turn down whomever he pleased. If the painting or the artist was not one he deemed worthy of his effort, no matter what the price offered, he wouldn’t touch it.”

“How about if the ownership was cloudy?”

“Well then, Miss Cooper, there was simply no way to engage him. I can recall an instance when a collector showed up in the atelier with a Leger. The particular painting had been classified in the Pompidou Center as an R 2 P, which means that it had been seized by the Nazis during the war and later returned to France. To date, no one had been able to connect it to the original owner or his descendants. Signor Varelli refused to become involved until an effort was made to trace the lineage and try to find the owners. The more money that was offered to retain him, the more offended he became. I’m sure it’s a lot like that in the legal profession, don’t you think? I mean, with all the ethical dilemmas defense attorneys have?”

He looked over at me for an answer, which came instead from Chapman. “You’re watching too much Geraldo. I never met a defense attorney with an ethical dilemma-if the check clears, his client’s not guilty.”

“You said that no one worked for Varelli. Didn’t you?”

“I had the privilege of being apprenticed to him, Detective. An expensive privilege.”

“You had to pay to help him?”

“I had a grant, actually, from a private family foundation. That’s what made the experience possible for me. I certainly wouldn’t have had the means to do it otherwise. Consider it like going to the best school in the world. For close to three years I was tutored by a genius. The skills he has given me are qualities I could never have learned anywhere else.” Cannon bowed his head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. And worst of all, murdered.” He looked up at us. “He was such a quiet, benign man. There’s not a reason I can think of for someone to hurt him.”

“Let me run some names by you. Tell us if you know any of these people, okay?”

Cannon cleared his throat and said it would be fine.

“Start with Lowell Caxton. Ever meet him?”

“Many, many times. I’d guess Marco had known him for as long as I’ve been alive. I think he was one of the few collectors whose taste Mr. Varelli admired. I’ve never been to any of Caxton’s homes, but I understand there were several generations of a great genetic eye for art. Mr. Caxton used to come by for an opinion every now and then. Do you know about the Titian-the one he gave to Marco?”

“Yes. We spent a few minutes with Mrs. Varelli at the funeral home. We expect to see her in the apartment later this week.”

“Marco adored that gift, a real jewel of a little drawing. I think his acceptance of Lowell Caxton had a lot to do with that gesture. It would be hard to dislike someone who had done such a generous thing.”

“Any conflict between them, ever?”

Cannon shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I ever witnessed. Keep in mind, I wasn’t there all the time. Mostly I was with Marco when he was actually doing the work on his projects, not when he was talking with his clients or when they dropped in for a glass of grappa and some advice about what to bid on a particular piece.

“He was very good at dismissing me. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Cannon. And now, per piacere, I think we are finished for the moment.’ He’d kind of flutter his hand in my direction, and I’d know it was time to take off.”

“To…?”

“The grant covered the expenses of my study, but not an apartment in Manhattan. My girlfriend and I sublet a room in a loft in SoHo. She’s here in graduate school at NYU. When I was free to leave I’d head for the library, an art show, or a movie. But I’d get out of his hair, that much was clear.”

Chapman checked off Caxton’s name on the list he had started and went down to the next line. “Bryan Daughtry. Ever run into him?”

“Yes, he was another visitor. Not so much anymore, with the contemporary work he was trying to sell. But Marco had done ventures with him before I arrived here, which was before Daughtry went to jail. On that tax fraud, not that other thing.” Cannon looked at me to see whether I registered any reaction to his reference to the girl in the leather mask.

“What do you know about his background?”

“I don’t mean to make light of the story about Bryan Daughtry’s involvement in that old case, but it kind of fascinated Mr. Varelli. He never saw the cruel side of Bryan. Met him as a young man who had a rather good eye for art, albeit untrained. I was a bit shocked to meet him myself when Bryan first came to the studio. Marco told me all about him that first day.”

Cannon moved in his chair, put the fingertips of his right hand together, and shook them easily in front of his face, imitating the old man’s accent. “ ‘But can you tell me why, Mr. Cannon, why a young man wants to tie up a beautiful young girl and cause her pain? This I don’t understand at all. From a body like this you should get only pleasure, only sweetness, only- come si dice in inglese? - rapture. But maybe I am too old to understand.’

“Quite frankly, I used to think when Daughtry was here to visit and Mr. Varelli kicked me out, it was to ask him questions about his sexual proclivities. Marco was much more curious about that than he was about contemporary art.”

Cannon talked for a while about Bryan Daughtry’s more recent business focus, but again could think of no incident that unnerved him in regard to Varelli.

“How about Marina Sette?”

Cannon seemed to draw a blank.

“Marilyn Seven?” I asked, adding a physical description as well as telling him where she lived.

“It’s quite possible she had been to see Marco, of course. It’s just not a name I recognize.”

“Frank Wrenley?”

Again, not familiar. Neither was Preston Mattox. Cannon knew the names of some of the workmen, but Omar Sheffield and Anton Bailey were not among them.

Chapman put down his pen and clasped his hands on the desktop.

“Talk to me about Denise Caxton. Everything you know. When you met her, what she was like, what Marco thought about her. Things that don’t seem important to you may be exactly what we’re looking for, so give it all to me, okay?”

“This one’s a bit complicated, Detective. There was Denise Caxton the woman, and there was Denise Caxton the collector. Marco Varelli’s eye was unerring. He admired great beauty, on a canvas or in human form. Nothing inappropriate, nothing unusual. But he would look at a handsome woman’s face as though it had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Didn’t matter if she were a waitress in a diner or a client with millions. Mrs. Caxton had a real head start with Marco, from the old days. He had met her when she was a kid, just married to Lowell.

“If I’m not mistaken-you might have to check her apartment for this-I think Mr. Varelli once painted her portrait, a full-length nude. He was very proud of it. Told me it was hung in her room at home. I believe she had a collection of self-portraits, right?” He chuckled at the vanity of that idea, it seemed to me.

Cannon continued, “She was a real flirt-Mrs. Caxton, I mean. Knew exactly how to play the old guy, with words. When I first met her, almost three years ago, she could light him up like a flare when he knew she was coming. She would always bring his favorite chocolates, if she had been to Paris, or a chilled bottle of wine to sip with him in the afternoon. She loved to listen to his stories, wanted to know every painting he’d ever worked on- who owned them, what he did to them, what became of them. Marco used to complain that his wife didn’t want to hear the old tales over again. Denise Caxton hung on his every word, or at least she let him think that she did.”

“Did you ever work on any of the paintings she brought into the gallery?”

“Yes. She had a knack for picking up sleepers, bidding on some incredibly lifeless old canvas that she’d either had a good tip on or had followed with her gut instincts. ‘Who is it, Marco? Tell me who’s hiding underneath there, mi amore.’ She’d tease him into playing with almost anything she brought in. And what