“Hey, Rupert, what’s up?”
“Girl, I can’t write a word today. I’m just in such a whirl over the big find.”
“You haven’t heard back from the appraiser in New York already, have you?”
“Oh, no. They’ve probably just received the piece. They’ll need a few days at least.”
“I’m just on my way out to the store. Can we chat a little later?” Sam explained about the big cookie order.
“Can I come with you?” He sounded so eager that she couldn’t say no. And he might actually be of help. Rupert was pretty efficient in the kitchen. Maybe she could get him to operate the cookie press while she decorated or something like that. His place was right on the way so she told him she’d pick him up in ten minutes.
They were standing in the checkout line at Smith’s when her cell rang. Beau.
“Would it be convenient for you to stop by my office on Civic Plaza at some point today?” he asked. “I’ve finished with Anderson’s personal papers and thought you might need to include them with the other contents of the home.”
Normally she didn’t keep papers from the homeowners, but in this case she could offer to hold onto or dispose of them, whatever was required.
“How about in five minutes? I’m nearly there now.”
Rupert decided to go inside with her. “If you’re dating this guy, I need to pay more attention.”
Sam bristled. “It was not a date, big brother.”
They found parking right next to the building, which was some kind of miracle, and were directed to Beau’s cubicle down a narrow corridor. His desk was fairly neat, considering the amount of paperwork even the most minor case required these days. A number of file folders stood upright between the dividers in an organizer caddy. In the center of the desk one folder lay spread open and he was tamping some pages and stapling the corner of them as they walked up.
Beau handed her a rubber-banded stack of envelopes that she recognized as the bank statements she’d collected from the house. Their fingers touched briefly as she took them, and she got the feeling that his request for her to get these items was an excuse to see her.
She glanced toward the open folder on the desk. Clipped to the front was a DMV photo of a gray-haired man.
“Is that Mr. Anderson?”
Beau nodded and pulled the picture from the paperclip, handing it to her.
“Ohmygod—it’s him!” Rupert snatched the photo from Sam. His breath was coming hard.
“Him?”
“It’s Cantone! He’s older here, but I’d know that face anywhere.”
Beau stepped forward. “You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”
Sam looked at it more closely. The photos of the artist that she’d seen online were mostly taken in the 1960s and ’70s at the height of his career. He’d been dark haired then, with a pencil mustache and smooth face. In the DMV photo he was gray, no facial hair, with severe bags under the eyes. Cruel, what time did to everyone.
However, the more she looked, the more resemblance she could see. He wore his hair in essentially the same style, combed straight back, longish, touching his collar. Although the official photo was straight-on, whereas the publicity photos were generally posed at a more flattering angle, the bone structure was the same.
“I’m telling you . . .” Rupert said.
“Yes, I can see it too,” she told Beau. “Check online. There’s a lot of information about the artist. I think it’s him.”
She handed the photo back and Beau clipped it to the file.
“Well, this adds a new wrinkle. Surely there must be someone related . . . I mean, it wouldn’t be right to put him in a pauper’s grave now, would it?”
Rupert inhaled sharply. “For Cantone? You have to be joking.”
“Well, we didn’t know—”
“I will personally pay for a grand funeral for this man before I’ll let you just stick him—” He actually began to tear up.
Sam laid her hand on his arm. “Rupert, it’s okay. Now that we know who he is . . . It’s going to be okay.”
Beau spoke up. “Rupert, that’s very kind of you. But now that we know his identity, we have to make an attempt at locating next of kin. Once we know if he has living relatives, decisions can be made.”
“I’m sure you can be part of the plans, Rupert, once his relatives are found.”
He visibly relaxed. Rupert loves to plan a party and Sam could already see the cogs turning.
Beau said, “You know a lot about this man’s life, Rupert. Do you know if he had children?”
Rupert told Beau the same story Sam had discovered online, that the artist’s wife and children were killed in a train crash years earlier. He’d never remarried and had become quite reclusive. Adopting a fake identity was about as anonymous as a person could get, Sam imagined.
She spoke up: “I’m wondering about the younger man who was living with him. According to Betty McDonald he showed up in March and was gone—well, both men were gone—in June. I wonder if he was related. Anderson, uh, Cantone, didn’t seem like the type of guy to have a stranger move in with him.”
“I seem to remember a brother . . . or maybe it was a sister,” Rupert said. “Let me check.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.
“Esteban. Hey, Rupert here. What do you know of any family history on Pierre Cantone?” He listened and hmm’d a couple of times. For a couple of minutes he simply waited, as the other man talked. “Okay. Thanks ever so.”
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Rupert loved to tell a story and he was just warming up.
Beau picked up on that and pulled a couple of chairs closer to his desk so they could sit down during the telling.
“Cantone had a sister. Sophie. She was ten years younger. She married an American, an older man—really a romantic whirlwind thing during a trip to New York.” He sighed. “Kind of like the scenario I created in Love’s Glory where—”
Sam tapped his foot with her toe.
“—oh, right. Sophie Cantone became Mrs. Robert Killington. He was wealthy, an industrialist or something. They had the most to-die-for apartment in New York, right on Central Park, and a villa in the south of France.”
She could see Beau’s eyes beginning to glaze over.
“Children?” she reminded.
“Ah yes. Esteban wasn’t sure. He thought he remembered there being a son, but if so the child was kept completely out of the limelight. Sophie and Robert traveled the world and attended all the right parties and there were never any children in sight.”
Beau stood, a clear signal. “That gives us a lot to go on. Thanks, Rupert.”
Sam nudged Rupert in the shoulder to remind him that they needed to get moving.
“I’ll do some checking to see if Sophie and Robert Killington are still living. As his sister, she—”
“Oh, they aren’t,” Rupert interrupted. “Living. That’s what else I meant to say. He died after only about ten years of marriage. He was quite a lot older, remember. She stayed around the art scene, attending many openings as Cantone’s hostess, for a few years more. But then she became ill—the rumor was cancer. She died only five or six years after her husband. It was so tragic. So young.”
“Then I guess I’ll start with the possibility that the son might still be living. Maybe even in Europe,” Beau said.
Rupert and Sam left him to the search. His phone was already ringing as they walked down the corridor.