“Kidnaped? My god. That’s gotten to be altogether too popular a crime.”
“Andy begins screaming. I drive even faster. We stop for cognac. I go like hell again. She stops to phone ahead. It was quite a ride.”
“You got there.”
“Usual kidnap story. Except that the ransom was for something over four million dollars.”
“Good heavens.”
“And the de Grassis are broke. After the paintings were gone, they had nothing. They had not been insured. The de Grassi
“You said she had an apartment in Rome. How did they live?”
“The three of them, the Count, the Countess and Andy, had been living off an annuity which comes to about fifty thousand dollars a year.”
“Not precisely broke.” ,
“Not up to paying a four million dollar ransom.”
“And you couldn’t pay it yourself? I mean, from what your uncle left you.”
“No way.”
“I mean, this being your prospective father-in-law and all.”
“Absolutely not. I couldn’t do it. The de Grassi family has been inactive for decades now. They had no credit.”
“So?”
“So we published statements, saying such a ransom was impossible. We received more messages, saying, essentially, pay up in full or we murder him. I talked the ladies into publishing an audited accounting of the family’s worth. The annuity, incidentally, is absolutely frozen. There was no way even that capital could be turned to cash. In Italian law, you see, the family is still more important than any individual in the family, including the head of the family.”
“The Italians are famous for sticking together,” said Flynn, “even at the sacrifice of one of them.”
“Just more messages. Pay up or we murder. In five days. A week went by. Silence. Two weeks. Three weeks. We heard nothing more.”
“So he was murdered?”
“So the Italian police believe.”
“How long ago was this?”
“More than a month now. The authorities advised the de Grassis to put the matter out of their minds. To accept the fact the Count was dead. ‘He could be buried anywhere in Italy, or off its shores,’ was their exact phrase. We had a memorial service for him last Monday.”
“The ‘sort of funeral.’”
“The sort of funeral. It seemed real enough.”
“So you, an ex-investigative reporter of some repute, decide to take matters into your own hands and come here to Boston to see what you can find out.”
“That’s about it.”
“Have you talked with this man Horan?”
“Yes. Wednesday.”
“That’s where you were Wednesday.”
“Yes”
“Then, of course, you went in one door of the Ritz-Carlton and out the Newbury Street door. The gallery is on Newbury Street!”
“Yes.”
“By god, the man is relentlessly innocent. And does the man Horan have the rest of the paintings?”
“A dealer doesn’t have paintings, Frank. He deals in them. The trick was to find out the source of the two de Grassi paintings he had already sold. His reputation checks out as clean as a whistle.”
“I suppose you went about it in your usual direct manner.”
“Difficult being direct with an art dealer, Frank. I asked him to find another painting for me. Another painting on the de Grassi list. A Picasso named ‘Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle.’”
“Did he turn it up?”
“After a few days, yesterday, he told me it belongs to a man in Dallas, Texas. He also says he has bought a couple of other paintings from this same man, within the last year or two. I mean, he has sold them for him, through his gallery.”
“You have the Texan’s name?”
“I have.”
“And tell me, Fletch, to whom do these paintings belong, if you do find them?”
“That’s the question. Menti’s estate can’t be settled or years.”
“‘Menti’?”
“The Count’s. The will can’t be read until the body is found. Or enough years to pass for him to be declared dead.”
“So, after you find the paintings, you have to find the body.”
“No way I can do that. If the Italian police can’t.”
“No one knows whether the paintings belong to the daughter, or the widow?”,
“No. What makes it worse is that until Menti’s body is found, they don’t even have an income.”
“I daresay both ladies have eyes only for you at the moment.”
“One would think so.”
“Ach! And I thought your biggest problem at the moment was being a murder suspect.”
“I suppose that’s why I reacted so slowly at first to the idea I was a murder suspect.”
“I knew you had a more-than-natural view of the murder, what with your calling the Police Business phone and all. If you had told me you once had been a reporter, I would have understood your professional reaction to a body in the living room a little better.” Flynn shook‘ the pot and poured himself a third cup of tea. “It’s not every man who bounces blissfully from a kidnapping to a murder to another murder.”
“Inured I think is the word.”
“A good one, that.”
“Do I understand, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn that you think there might be some connection between what went on in Italy—I mean, Menti’s kidnapping and murder—and the murder of Ruth Fryer here?”
“I might.”
“You had me check the airline’s passenger list.”
“There might be a connection, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, but at the moment I don’t know what it is.”
“There is a connection,” said Fletch. “Someone did come from Rome with me.”
“And who might that be?”
“The Countess. She flew through New York. She arrived in Boston Tuesday about an hour after I did.”
“And did she know you were coming to this apartment?”
“She had my address and telephone number.”
“She’s hot after the paintings, is she?”
“Boiling after them.”
“And how did she know you were looking for them?”
“I guess she read some notes I left Andy—my itinerary, that sort of thing. She knew I had a list of the paintings with me.”
“But why would she kill Ruth Fryer?”
“Ruth may have been here in the apartment, naked, waiting to surprise Bart, not knowing he was in Italy. She opened the door to the Countess.”
“The irate step-mother-in-law?”
“Well, damned angry and suspicious.”
“Naturally, she thinks you’re grabbing the paintings for Andy.”
“Naturally.”
