Still, Jane, with her delicate elbow on the leather bolster below the Audi's window, her fingers along her cheek, couldn't help think, if it were all coming to an end, if there might not be some way she could shift all the blame to Leslie.
Perhaps even… She glanced at him, speculatively, at his temple, and thought, No.
That's way premature.
Then they met the cops. And talked about missing antiques, including a painting by Stanley Reckless.
On The way out of Oak Walk, Jane said, “That Davenport person is not dumber than a bowl of spaghetti.”
“No, he's not,” Leslie said. He held the car door for her, tucked her in, leaned forward and said, “We've got to talk about the Reckless.”
“We've got to get rid of it. Burn it,” Jane said.
“I'm not going to give up a half-million-dollar painting,” Leslie said. “But we have to do something.”
They talked it over on the way home. The solution, Jane argued, was to destroy it.
There was no statute of limitations on murder, and, sometime, in the future, if the call of the money was too strong, they might be tempted to sell it-and get caught.
“A new, fresh Reckless-that's going to attract some attention,” she said.
“Private sale,” Leslie said.
“I don't know,” Jane said.
“Half-million dollars,” Leslie said, and when he said it, Jane knew that she wanted the money.
They went home, and after dinner, Leslie stood on a stool and got the Reckless out of the double-secret storage area in the rafters of the attic.
“Gorgeous piece?” he said. He flipped it over, looked at the name slashed across the back of the canvas. Though Leslie ran to fat, he was still strong. Gripping the frame tightly, he torqued it, wiggled the sides, then the top and bottom, and the frame began to spread. When it was loose enough, he lifted the canvas, still on stretchers, out of the frame, and put it under a good light on the dining room table.
“Got a strong signature,” he said. Reckless had carefully signed the front of the painting at the lower right, with a nice red signature over a grassy green background.
“Don't need the one on the back.”
“Take it off?”
“If we took it off, then it couldn't be identified as the Bucher painting,” Leslie said.
“There'd always be some… remnants.”
“Not if you don't want to see it,” Leslie said. He looked at the painting for a moment, then said. “Here's what we do. We stash it at the farm for now. Wrap it up nice and tight. Burn the frame. When I get time, I'll take the 'Reckless' off the back-it'll take me a couple of weeks, at least. We get some old period paint-we should be able to get some from Dick Calendar-and paint over the area where the 'Reckless' was. Then we take it to Omaha, or Kansas City, or even Vegas, rent a safe-deposit box, and stick it away for five years. In five years, it's good as gold.”
Bad idea, Jane thought: but she yearned for the money.
Three hours later, the Widdlers were rolling again.
“There is,” Leslie said, his hands at ten o'clock and four on the wood-rimmed wheel of his Lexus, “a substantial element of insanity in this. No coveralls, no gloves, no hairnets. We are shedding DNA every step we take.”
“But it's eighty percent that we won't have to do anything,” Jane said. “Doing nothing would be best. We pooh-pooh the newspaper clipping, we scare her with the police, with the idea of a trial. Then, when we get past the lumpy parts, we might come back to her. We could do that in our own good time. Or maybe she'll just drop dead. She's old enough.”
They were on Lexington Avenue in St. Paul, headed toward Como Park, a half hour past sunset. The summer afternoon lingered, stretching toward ten o'clock. Though it was one of the major north-south streets, Lexington was quiet at night, a few people along the sidewalks, light traffic. Marilyn Coombs's house was off the park, on Iowa, a narrower, darker street. They'd park a block away, and walk; it was a neighborhood for walking.
“Remember about the DNA,” Leslie said. “Just in case. No sudden moves. They can find individual hairs. Think about gliding in there. Let's not walk all over the house. Try not to touch anything. Don't pick anything up.”
“I have as much riding on this as you do,” Jane said, cool air in her voice. “Focus on what we're doing. Watch the windows. Let me do most of the talking.”
“The DNA…”
“Forget about the DNA. Think about anything else.”
There was a bit of a snarl in her voice. Leslie glanced at her, in the little snaps of light coming in from the street, and thought about what a delicate neck she had…
They were coming up on the house. They'd been in it a half-dozen times with the quilt-study group. “What about the trigger?” Leslie asked.
“Same one. Touch your nose. If I agree, I'll touch my nose,” Jane said.
“I'll have to be behind her. Whatever I do, I'll have to be behind her.”
“If that finial is loose…” The finial was a six-inch oak ball on the bottom post of Coombs's stairway banister. The stairway came down in the hallway, to the right of the inner porch door. “If it's just plugged in there, the way most of them are…”
“Can't count on it,” Leslie said. “I'm not sure that a competent medical examiner would buy it anyway.”
“Old lady, dead at the bottom of the stairs, forehead fracture that fits the finial, hair on the finial… What's there to argue about?” Jane asked.
“I'll see when I go in,” he said. “We might get away with it. They sure as shit won't believe she fell on a kitchen knife.”
“Watch the language, darling. Remember, we're trying.” Trying for elegance. That was their watchword for the year, written at the top of every page of their Kliban Cat Calendar: Elegance! Better business through Elegance! Jane added, “Two things I don't like about the knife idea. First, it's not instantaneous. She could still scream…”
“Not if her throat was cut,” Leslie said. Leslie liked the knife idea; the idea made him hot.
“Second,” Jane continued, “She could be spraying blood all over the place. If we track it, or get some on our clothes… it could be a mess. With the finial, it's boom.
She goes down. We won't even have to move her, if we do it right.”
“On the way out.”
“On the way out. We're calm, cool, and collected while we're there,” Jane said. She could see it. “We talk. If it doesn't work, we make nice, and we get her to take us to the door.”
“I walk behind her, get the glove on.”
“Yes. If the finial comes loose, you either have to hit her on the back of her skull, low, or right on her forehead. Maybe… I'm thinking of how people fall. Maybe we'll have to break a finger or something. A couple of fingers. Like she caught them on the railing on the way down.”
Leslie nodded, touched the brakes for a cyclist in the street. “I could pick her up, and we could scratch her fingernails on the railing, maybe put some carpet fiber in the other hand. She's small, I could probably lift her close enough, all we need to do is get some varnish under a fingernail…”
“It's a plan,” Jane said. “If the finial comes loose.”
“Still, the knife has a certain appeal,” Leslie said, after a moment of silence.
“Two older women, their skulls crushed, three days apart. Somebody is going to think it's a pretty heavy coincidence. The knife is a different MO and it looks stupid. Another little junkie thing. And if nothing is taken…”
“Probably be better to take something, if we do it with the knife,” Jane said. “I mean, then there'll be no doubt that it's murder. Why kill her? To rob her. We don't want a mystery. We want a clear story. Kill her, take her purse. Get out. With the finial, if they figure out it was murder, there'll be a huge mystery.”
“And they'll see it as smart. They'll know it wasn't some little junkie.”
Jane balanced the two. “I think, the finial,” Jane said. “If the finial works, we walk away clear. Nobody even suspects. With the knife, they'll be looking for something, chasing down connections.”
Then, for about the fifteenth time since they left home, Leslie said, “If the finial comes out…”
