Cold Hit

was funny about it was that most of the time, he wanted me there to watch this game she played with him. As if he wanted me to see that a magnificent young woman doted on him, that it wasn’t just happening in his imagination.”

“When did his feelings for Deni change?”

Cannon paused. “Is that what Mrs. Varelli said?”

“Yeah. Said she didn’t make him quite so happy anymore.”

“I can’t recall exactly when the change occurred, but she’s right. Mrs. Caxton’s visits were fewer and farther apart. She rarely came alone anymore, and the games were over.”

“Who’d she bring with her, if she wasn’t alone?”

“Friends, clients-I don’t know. Varelli would shoo me out of the studio. There was no longer any verbal foreplay, so he didn’t need me around.”

Chapman was annoyed. “You must know who some of them were, don’t you? Start somewhere-women? men? young or old?”

“Occasionally she came with people I knew, like Bryan Daughtry. Once or twice she might have been with a woman- maybe even that lady you described earlier, with the French braid. Seven or Sette, whatever you called her. But most of the time it was men, two or three different ones in the past few months, since she split up with her husband.”

“Can you describe any of them for us? Would you recognize them if you saw them today?”

Again Cannon shrugged, not attaching any importance to these visitors. “There wasn’t anything remarkable about any of them. Sure, maybe I’d know them if I ran into them again, maybe not. You have to understand, Detective, that if Marco Varelli wasn’t working on a canvas, I was just as happy to be out of there. It was as much an education for me to spend a free afternoon at a museum as to be a fly on the wall when he was chatting up rich collectors. I didn’t need the small talk.”

Chapman stood now, walking behind Cannon’s back. “In the last three years, is there anybody else who spent as much time with Marco Varelli as you did?”

Cannon thought and then told us, “No. Except for his wife.”

“Anybody who knew what he thought about everything and everybody?”

“No, probably not.”

“They have any kids?”

“No.”

“I bet you were sort of like a son to him, weren’t you?”

“Not exactly. But he was very good to me.”

“What was the most important thing in the world to him, Don? Leave his wife out of it for the moment. Tell us.”

“You know the answer. He lived for great art-for looking at it, touching it, smelling it, dreaming about it.”

”And he trusted you with his legacy.”

“Well, I’m not the only one who ever apprenticed with him. There are dozens of experts in museums around the world who-”

“But now, Mr. Cannon. You’ve spent these last three years joined to him at the hip. I find it really kinda hard to believe that he had many secrets from you.” Mike’s fist pounded down on the top of the lieutenant’s desk. “I’d like you to tell me why he and Denise Caxton had a falling-out.”

Cannon started at Chapman’s change in mood. “I wasn’t his confidant, Mr. Chapman. I was merely his student.”

“And you’re too damn smart, too good a student, not to have been aware of what was happening in that little garret every day, that’s what I think. If you’ve got a special talent, Mr. Cannon, it’s your powers of observation, isn’t it? Tell me what you saw up there, what you heard.”

Mike’s voice bellowed in the small room as Cannon looked at me to call off the angry detective. “She’s on my side in this, buddy. If I let Cooper cross-examine you for fifteen minutes, you’ll forget you ever walked into this room with a set of balls.” Chapman was shouting now, and red in the face. “Three people are dead and my partner’s lying in a hospital bed with a hole in his chest. Stop wasting my time!”

“Do I need a lawyer?” Cannon spoke quietly and again directed the question to me.

I began to answer but was interrupted by Chapman. “If you’re gonna tell me you killed someone, we’ll call you a lawyer. Somehow, I doubt that’s the problem. Just tell me what’s on your mind and worry about that later.”

“Well, what if I have information about a crime?”

Mike’s open palm slammed the desktop another time. “Whaddaya think I’ve been asking you to tell me about for the last hour?”

25

Cannon had stalled for about as long as Mike was going to let him, and he knew that. “I suppose there are two things that changed the relationship between Mrs. Caxton and Marco. The first problem began about a year ago.”

“When, exactly? ‘About’ doesn’t help me all that much.”

“I can’t give you a specific date. I’m pretty sure it was before she and her husband began to have problems in their marriage. I remember that because I thought it was strange she had come to see Marco about a matter so important but that it was something she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t tell Lowell.”

“That’s a start. Coop, make a list for me. First thing, try to put a date on that visit, okay? What happened that day?”

“Denise was exuberant. It must have been spring or summer, ’cause she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was dressed to the nines when she came in, and she looked spectacular. They began the usual flirtation, and Marco made sure that I took it all in. She handed me a bottle of wine-a very special one, she made sure to tell me-and asked me to open it. I did, and Marco invited me to pour for all three of us.”

“Had you known she was coming?”

“Yes, she’d called the day before and told Marco she’d found a surprise. A painting, that is. Asked if he would look at it for her. Of course he agreed.”

Cannon took a breath before going on. He rubbed his hands together and talked slowly, as though uncertain he should talk at all. “After half an hour of cajoling Marco, she got up from the chaise and picked up the bag she’d come in with- one of those large canvas sail bags. She removed something from it, and all I could see was a small mound of plastic bubble wrapping. She unwound several layers of it and lifted out a painting. Then she walked to one of the easels and rested it on the stand. ‘Come, Marcolino-come play with me.’ Mrs. Caxton took him by the hand and stood him before the canvas.”

“Did you know what it was?”

“I certainly didn’t. It was dark, really covered with dirt, and hard to make out.”

“Did Varelli say anything?”

“Then? No. It would have been unusual for him to speak until after he’d gotten to work and made up his mind that he knew what he was looking at.”

“What’d he do?”

“What he did best, Detective. He put the glass of wine down next to him, strapped his headset on-sort of like small binoculars-and steadied himself in place to look at every inch of the canvas with the aid of the light from the glasses. You want to know the details?”

“All of them.”

“It was obvious that not only was there soot on this one, and varnish, but something had been painted over the original work. That happens frequently with oils, you know, sometimes just because the artist changed his mind about what he wanted to portray. But in this case it looked like it had been put on top to disguise an earlier version of whatever was depicted.

“So Marco got out his acetone, soaked a cotton swab in it, and went about dabbing at a corner of the canvas, sort of the top right quadrant.”