That hope was dashed when I brought the carrier into the kitchen. Harry stood back as I opened its door and the cat launched himself onto my chest with a ferocious cry.
Harry backed farther away. “I guess he likes you best. When you’ve got him settled, come into the study.”
I managed to peel Marlowe off me and put him on the daybed in Mrs. Griffin’s sitting room, where he kneaded the bedspread with his sharp claws, then went to sleep.
“Is the cat taken care of?” Harry asked when I walked into his study.
I sneezed.
“Now back to work. We have to find Julianne Truitt.”
“What makes you think we’ll be able to? The only thing we have to go on is a stolen, worthless painting.”
Harry opened his laptop and began typing. “Here it is,” he said, after a minute.
I raised an eyebrow.
“The painting.” Harry turned the screen so I could see. “Amelia’s City.”
I studied the photo of a glossy brochure. The painting, a cityscape, was printed on its face. Despite the secondhand image, the richness of color and form mesmerized. “How do you know that’s the painting?” I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Harry tapped the keyboard. The image disappeared and the inventory of Paul’s mother’s property took its place. Harry highlighted an item, halfway down the list: “Amelia’s City, oil painting, date/artist unknown. Value: $25.” Harry switched back to the brochure. He highlighted the print below the image: “Amelia’s City, artist Terrance Z. Hochman, c. 1954, on loan, M. Van Pelt.”
My eyes felt like they were popping out of my head.
“The painting was part of an exhibition at Hollis University’s art museum. It’s over now, but they’ll still have the provenance record,” Harry assured me.
He called them. After some persuading, they faxed the record to us and we were able to follow Amelia’s City through its chain of ownership back to an art dealer in North Carolina. The record indicated that sixteen years ago the dealer sold the painting for the artist’s granddaughter, Julie Hochman. We were both sure Julie Hochman had actually been Julianne Truitt.
“Hungry, Jake?” Harry closed his laptop.
The thought of food lifted my somewhat deflated spirit and I jumped up. There was a lot to process. Food would help.
Harry was slower to stand, a smile on his face. “I believe Mrs. Griffin left us soup and a seafood salad. Let’s brave our feline friend.”
With trepidation, I followed Harry to the kitchen where Marlowe sat amidst a countertop of decimated muffins, not looking the least bit guilty.
Harry scooped the cat into his arms. “Why didn’t you put the muffins away?”
“We never put the muffins away,” I countered.
Harry glowered at me as he carried Marlowe into the sitting room. I heard several hisses and one loud “Ouch!” A second later Harry reemerged without the cat. “Marlowe is resting comfortably in his crate.” A thin line of blood oozed from my cousin’s hand.
I gave him a paper towel. “I hope we’ll be able to find cousin Julianne.”
Harry nodded. “Get the laptop.”
As we ate we searched online. After the sale of the painting, Julianne stayed in North Carolina for several years, married, and was eventually widowed when her husband accidently overdosed on prescription painkillers. She then left the state, remarried, and was widowed once more. Coincidentally, her second husband also died from an overdose. Questions were being asked and Julianne disappeared.
“There was a daughter.” I put our plates in the dishwasher. “If we find the daughter we may find her mother.”
Harry closed the laptop and stood. “I have an appointment downtown. Keep looking.” He walked out just as pitiful cries wafted across the kitchen.
I called after him. He didn’t answer. I weighed my options. I could have ignored those distressed emanations. But I was my mother’s son — and my father’s too — and reluctantly, very reluctantly, I brought the crate and its contents with me to my carriage house.
After I opened his door, Marlowe licked his paws then jumped onto my kitchen counter to find not a bit of food. Disappointed, he curled up and fell asleep.
Before I’d let him loose I’d taken an antihistamine left over from a bout of hay fever. The yellow pill seemed to be working. I sat on my sofa and opened my own laptop. An hour later I was right where I’d started. The only change was Marlowe, next to me, flat on his back, his faint snores punctuating my every keystroke.
Elizabeth Ann Simon, the daughter of unmarried Julianne Truitt and Matthew Simon, had disappeared. I searched for Matthew, only to learn he’d died of an oxycodone overdose shortly after leaving California with Julianne and their daughter. Julianne had left a trail of dead bodies behind her. I feared the daughter, Elizabeth Ann, might have been one of them.
As if sensing my fear, Marlowe rolled over and sat up. I rubbed behind his ear and was rewarded with a comforting purr. If only we humans could be as easily satisfied. In our quest for ever more wealth, we often leave destruction in our wake.
At my cell phone’s ring the cat arched his back, hissing as I pulled my hand quickly away and picked up.
Without preamble, Harry asked, “Have anything?”
I reported I’d found nothing.
“Meet me at the bookshop,” he said, disconnecting before I had a chance to ask him why.
I found the bookshop unlocked, a patrolman at the front desk, and Harry in the back room.
“How did you get them to let you in?”
Harry looked up from a worn accounts ledger. “Said I needed to find Paul’s copy of the will.”
“Why do you need Paul’s copy? Don’t you have one?”
“There’s a dispute.” He held up a photocopy.
I took a step closer. “Paul penciled in some changes? Is that legal?”
“Look at them.”
I took the will and flipped through the pages, trying to make out the scribbles along margins and atop text. “The HDC? He left the building and the shop to the HDC? Grogan didn’t say anything about this when I talked to him yesterday.” Perhaps he was a better actor than I’d thought.
Harry closed the ledger book and slipped it into his briefcase, keeping his eye on the door. “The HDC lawyer said a copy arrived at his office last night. That’s who I met with this morning.” Harry overturned some other files and sorted through the piles of papers. After a minute he looked up. “I couldn’t find the original, the one with the penciled in changes, in Paul’s apartment. It’s not here either. All we have are copies.” He held up the photocopy. “But that’s definitely Paul’s signature.”
“Anyone could get the original will, pencil in changes, scan it, and then reconstruct Paul’s signature.”
Harry nodded. “And the likely person is the one who had the most to gain.”
“Either Grogan or Hallewell.”
“It’s starting to look that way.”
We drove back to the mansion, where I joined Harry in his study. Not a minute later, a black ball of fur propelled itself across the room, upending one of Harry’s floor lamps before it veered right and landed in my lap.
Soon afterwards, Mrs. Griffin came in and scooped up her wayward charge. She smiled ruefully. “I love my sister, but I forgot,” she hugged Marlowe, “that she is better enjoyed in small doses. And I thought I should check in and make sure Marlowe was settled.”
Harry’s eyes started to water.
Marlowe wiggled in Mrs. Griffin’s arms and managed to break free, leaping back into my lap.
“I do think he’s fond of you, Jake,” Harry said to me. He looked at Mrs. Griffin. “I was going to call. Ash said the police want to question you again.”