“Ms. Leboeuf, that boat you were on was used in a kidnapping, maybe even a homicide,” Gretchen said. “A girl named Blue Melton was forced onto that boat. The next time anybody saw her, she was inside a block of ice.”
“Then please go back to town and report all this to the authorities.”
“That’s not why I came out here. I wanted to ask you to leave Clete Purcel alone. He has nothing you want, and even if he did, he wouldn’t use it to hurt you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No, I don’t know what you’re saying. Are you confirming he burglarized my apartment and my father’s house?”
“I’m saying he doesn’t have anything in his possession that can injure you.”
“I want you to take the wax out of your ears and listen carefully, you stupid little twat. If I didn’t have to go inside and care for my father right now, I’d make you cut your own switch. Actually, I feel sorry for you. You look like you were injected with steroids that went to the wrong places. Now get out of here before I kick those two watermelons you call an ass down the road.”
Alafair stepped forward and slapped Varina Leboeuf across the face. “Where do you get off talking to her like that, you lying whore?” she said. “You want another one? Give me an excuse. I would love to rip you apart.”
Varina Leboeuf’s eyes were watering, her cheek flaming. She started to speak, but her mouth was quivering, and her voice clotted in her throat.
“You’re not only a liar, you’re an accessory to murder after the fact,” Alafair said. “By the way, how’s it feel to be a porn star? I wonder if your video will make YouTube.”
Varina’s face looked like a balloon about to burst. The whites of her eyes had turned red as beets. “If you come here again, I’ll kill you.”
“I told you to give me an excuse,” Alafair said. And with that, she hit Varina across the mouth, so hard the other woman’s chin twisted against her shoulder.
“You did what?” I said.
“It was the way she treated Gretchen,” Alafair replied. “She said her ass looked like a pair of watermelons.”
We were sitting in the living room. Outside, the street was wet and glazed with pools of yellow light from the streetlamp. Lightning that made no sound flared and died in the clouds over the Gulf. “It was her fight, not yours. Why mix in it?” I said.
“Because I doubt she ever had a real friend or that anyone cared what happened to her.”
“Varina Leboeuf could have you charged with assault.”
“She won’t.”
“Why not?”
“The boat with the sawfish on the bow. She’s hooked up with the people who kidnapped and murdered Tee Jolie’s little sister.”
“We don’t have any proof of that.”
I thought she was going to argue with me, but she didn’t. “I did something dumb, Dave. Varina has confirmation that Clete took the memory cards out of her nanny-cams.”
“Clete destroyed them.”
“She can never be sure of that. What if there’s somebody on them she doesn’t want anybody to know about?”
“Don’t worry about that. You did the best you could. Don’t make a burden out of tomorrow,” I said.
“I think I set a bad example for Gretchen tonight. She kept telling me she wanted to handle Varina Leboeuf in the way I would. A few minutes later, I slapped Varina’s face into next week.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I’m always proud of you, Alf.”
“You said you wouldn’t call me that anymore.”
“Sorry.”
“Call me whatever you want,” she said.
I was serious when I said Alafair should have been in law enforcement. At the onset of her last semester at Stanford, her professors released her from class and gave her credit for clerking at the Ninth District Court in Seattle. The judge with whom she worked, an appointee of President Carter, was a distinguished jurist, but Alafair had an opportunity to clerk at the United States Supreme Court and would have done so, except her meddling father didn’t want her living in D.C. Regardless, her career in the Justice Department was almost assured. Instead, she chose to return to New Iberia and become a novelist.
Her first book was a crime novel set in Portland, where she attended undergraduate school. Perhaps because she had an undergraduate degree in forensic psychology, she had extraordinary insight into aberrant behavior. She also knew how to use the Internet in ways that were virtually miraculous.
When she turned on her computer Tuesday morning, her Google news alert had posted four entries in her mailbox. “Better come in here, Dave,” she called from her bedroom.
The news stories originated with a small wire service in the Midwest. A man who owned rows of grain silos along railroad tracks throughout Kansas and Nebraska had died unexpectedly and left behind an eclectic collection of art that ranged from Picasso sketches done during the Blue Period to pretentious junk that the grain-elevator magnate probably bought at avant-garde salons in Paris and Rome. The heirs donated the entire collection to a university. Included in it were three Modigliani paintings. Or at least that was what they seemed to be. The curator at the university art museum said they were not only fakes, they were probably part of a hoax that had been perpetrated on private collectors for several decades.
The operational principle of the scam was the same used in all con games. The scammers would seek out a victim who either wanted something for nothing or was basically dishonest himself. The private collector would be told the Modigliani paintings were stolen and could be purchased for perhaps half of their real worth. The collector would also be told that he was not committing a crime, because the museum or private collection from which the paintings had been stolen had indirectly victimized either Modigliani or his inner circle, all of whom were poor and probably sold the paintings for next to nothing.
The scam worked because Modigliani’s paintings were in wide circulation, many of them having been used by the artist or his mistress to pay hotel and food bills, and were comparably easy to forge and difficult to authenticate.
“I think this is the connection between Bix Golightly and Pierre Dupree,” Alafair said. “Golightly was probably fencing Pierre’s forgeries as stolen property. If you look at Pierre’s paintings, you can see Modigliani’s influence on him. Remember when you looked at the photo of Pierre’s nude on the sofa? You said the figure in it was Tee Jolie, and I said the painting was generic and was like Gauguin’s work. The painting of Tee Jolie was like a famous nude by Modigliani. Here, look.”
She clicked the image of the Modigliani painting onto the screen. “The swanlike neck and the elongated eyes and the coiffured hair and the prim mouth and the warmth in the skin are all characteristics you see in Pierre’s paintings. Pierre isn’t a bad imitator. But I’d bet he’s both greedy and jealous. Not long ago Modigliani’s painting was auctioned off at Sotheby’s for almost seventy million.”
“I think you’re probably right,” I said. “Clete broke in to Golightly’s apartment the night he was killed and said there was evidence he was fencing stolen or forged artwork. When you think about it, it’s the perfect scam. All you need is a buyer with sorghum for brains and too much money in the bank. Even if the buyer discovers he’s been suckered, he can’t call the cops without admitting he thought he was buying stolen paintings rather than forged paintings.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“I’ll call the FBI in Baton Rouge today, but I usually don’t get very far with them.”
“Why not?”
“Clete and I are not considered reliable sources.”
“Fuck them,” she said.
“How about it on the language, Alafair? At least in the house.”
