“And you were young and beautiful and long-necked, is that it?”
She stared at me without responding, her fingers tapping impatiently on the little round table in the hotel’s café. But then a half smile turned her thin, tense lips, and I saw it all, the young art academic, the old millionaire art collector, the shared passion, the mutual admiration, lust among the Monets and the Matisses, the Modiglianis, his old bony hands on her long lovely neck.
“It’s not something I’m comfortable talking about,” she said.
“Do you have any children?”
“Three. Two boys and a girl. And they are waiting for me at home.”
“I’m looking into the Randolph Trust robbery because something happened about the same time. A little girl disappeared. The detective involved in the disappearance thirty years ago believed that the robbery and the missing girl were somehow connected. On behalf of the family, I’m trying to find out if that’s so. Anything I can learn about the robbery would be a big help.”
“I told you, I had nothing to do with it.”
“I believe you, but you might be able to point me in the right direction.”
“I doubt it.”
“She was six when she went missing. Do you want to see a picture?”
“No,” she said. She sat back, crossed her arms, thought for a moment. “Mr. Randolph and I were together until I was forced to leave after the robbery,” she said finally. “There were suspicions that there was some insider help. An insider had to go. I was chosen to take the fall.”
“By Mr. Randolph?”
“No, by others.”
“And Mr. Randolph didn’t try to keep you?”
“There were two people who held sway over Wilfred, at least while I was there. One was his wife, a quite formidable woman. Their marriage had become something of a museum piece itself, more mummified than alive. But she had been with him when he was still poor and had helped him amass the collection. Whatever secrets he had, she knew them.”
“Even you?”
“I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but from what I later learned, they discussed everything. They lived their lives in the spirit of their times, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson. It was in many ways a time of greater personal freedom than we have now. But Wilfred was always a little terrified of his wife. And also of Agnes LeComte.”
“Mrs. LeComte? How did she get such power?”
“She had became a close friend of Mrs. Randolph’s, for one. And before Wilfred and I began our… personal relationship, he was very much with her. They had been having an affair for a decade.”
“Until he dumped her for you.”
“That’s right. The two women convinced him that, for the protection of the trust, I had to be let go.”
“It seems LeComte had a pretty good motive for framing you.”
“Obviously, yes. We were never close, and at first her resentment was palpable, but when she came back, things were very different.”
“Came back? From where?”
“From her sabbatical. After Wilfred made it clear to her that he had found someone new, and after Mrs. Randolph refused to come to her defense, she left the trust. She was gone for more than six months.”
“What did she do?”
“Traveled, from what I heard, though she didn’t talk much about it. But when she returned, things were very different. There was something changed about her, she had found a certain peace, which I didn’t understand then, but now I think I do. I think she met someone during her travels, I think she fell in love. She would never admit to anything, but when she returned, she poured herself into the working of the trust, remained close with Mrs. Randolph, and began to take an active interest in my career. Maybe too active. Of course there was always an edge to our relationship, but she tried to become something of a mentor.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Not well. I already had a mentor in Wilfred. He was a brilliant man. He had so much to teach about so many things, and he was never boring. That is a rare quality in men, I’ve found, rarer even in lawyers.”
“Tell me about the robbery itself.”
“There’s not much to tell. That day we were closed, no visitors or classes. Wilfred was working with Mrs. LeComte in the gardens. The trust keeps a fascinating garden, full of rare specimens collected from all over the world. That whole day I was reviewing some records with Mrs. Randolph. After the night guards showed up, we all went home. No one knew anything had happened until we opened up the next morning and found the guards bound and gagged.”
“How did the crooks get in?”
“Apparently someone was inside. No one knows how he got there.”
“Any ideas?”
“None. It has remained a mystery.”
“Anything unusual about the guards that night?”
“The crew had been working together for ages. The supervisor was an old friend of the Randolphs’. The police naturally focused on them, but they all came up clean. Everyone came up clean except for me.”
“The fingerprints and files.”
“It wouldn’t have been so hard to fabricate the evidence, which was why no charges were ever filed. The file jacket could have come from anywhere. I handled many. And my signature on the sign-out sheet must have been forged. Really, if I was stealing the blueprints, would I have signed them out?”
“Not likely.”
“I had enough freedom to take home what files I needed without a signature. But it was quite convenient for me to be blamed. Wilfred had been making noise about marrying me. I didn’t want that, but still, I heard later that Mrs. Randolph was horrified that he might divorce her. And Mrs. LeComte was growing concerned about my influence over the trust. Wilfred was giving me more and more responsibility.”
“And with you gone, Mrs. Randolph’s marriage and Mrs. LeComte’s place at the trust were both secure.”
“Yes. But even after I was forced to leave, Wilfred took care of me. Gave me money when I needed it and then got me a position at the gallery here. He was really very sweet. Is there anything else?”
“Where did she go?”
“Who?”
“Mrs. LeComte. On her sabbatical. Where did she go?”
“Europe, Asia, Australia. She came back through the West Coast.”
“California.”
“That’s right.”
“Hollywood.”
“I suppose.”
“Stayed there awhile.”
“I think so, yes.”
“Took a lover.”
“That’s what I believed, yes.”
“I bet I know who it was.”
“Really?” She leaned forward, captured for a moment by a piece of gossip from decades in her past. “Who?”
“Sammy Glick.”
47
The brown building of the Randolph Trust, with its great red door, stood once again before me.
I couldn’t look at it now without thinking of its sordid history. The philandering Wilfred Randolph, his long-suffering wife, the catfights between the two mistresses in Randolph’s life. And then the robbery of jewels and golden figurines and two priceless paintings that was carried off by a quintet of neighborhood mooks, aided by someone inside. The investigation, the accusations, the missing girl, the lovely young curator who shared Randolph’s bed and was framed for the crime. All of that past was as much a part of the building as the stones and mortar.
But now Randolph was dead and his wife was dead, Serena Chicos was raising a family in Rochester, and Agnes LeComte was shriveling by the day as she searched for a young man to sexually mentor. Chantal Adair was still missing, and Charlie Kalakos was in exile, and Ralph Ciulla was murdered, and Joey Pride was on the run. To top it all off, the forces of power and money were trying their mightiest to wrest the fabulous art collection from this very site, and it looked very much like they were about to succeed.
It was sad in its way that the collection was bound for another location, it was part and parcel of this very building and its history – sad, but not tragic. The Randolph Trust was a monument to a man and his money, but what does a great Cézanne canvas or a Matisse portrait care about such a monument? Put the works in a museum, put them in a brothel, it wouldn’t make a difference, they still would shine. In the end the paintings Randolph collected were too luminous, too perfect to be controlled; mediocrity could be contained, but the greatness of the art Randolph bought had now transcended the cage he built around it.