Shooting Gallery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Annie’s Guide to Gilding the Lily

  About the Author

  Teaser chapter

  Criminals I have known . . . but not as well as I’d like to.

  According to my source at the museum, someone had disabled the Brock’s security system and taken the Chagall in the confusion surrounding the Stendhal faintings. To stroll out of a museum in broad daylight with a painting tucked inside one’s bomber jacket took a cool head and an abundance of self-confidence.

  The very qualities possessed by a certain art thief I knew only too well. An art thief who once told me that a criminal’s cardinal rule was to keep things simple. An art thief who habitually wore a brown leather bomber jacket.

  Along with half the men in San Francisco, I chided myself. Besides, the missing Chagall was small potatoes. Michael X. Johnson hunted bigger game.

  Not that he needed the money after the Caravaggio heist last spring. Most likely Michael was lounging by the sea in Saint-Tropez, tanning himself in an indecent swimsuit. Or gambling his ill-gotten gains at the craps table in Monte Carlo. Or ensconced in a Prague penthouse, rolling around naked on satin sheets with a Czech chorus girl.

  Not that I cared.

  Praise for the Art Lover’s Mysteries

  “Delightfully different.”—New Mystery Reader Magazine

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 2006

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04362-2

  Copyright © Julie Goodson-Lawes and Carolyn Lawes, 2006

  All rights reserved.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  For Sergio

  and

  Malcolm

  What’s life without laughter?

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks are due, as always, to the wonderful agent Kristin Lindstrom and our editors, Martha Bushko and Kerry Donovan.

  Muchísimas gracias a Irma Herrera y Mark Levine for throwing such a fabulous release party! Merci beaucoup à Marie et François—pour le français, l’amitié, et la camaraderie. Thanks also to Bee Enos, whose voice and music inspire; and to Pamela, Jan, Charlotte, and all Cuba-loving, wine-drinking, salsa-dancing fools. Thanks to Beth Bruggeman and Kim Sullivan for the running commentary and fan mail; to Mrs. Chan for the insights of a native San Franciscan and for keeping tabs on the aliens; and to the other Mrs. Chan for her insights, pep talks, and steadfastness. To Steve Lofgren, Scott Casper, Anita Fellman, and Karen Smyers for going above and beyond the call of friendship. Thank you as well to our aunts Mem and Suzy, wonderful examples of perseverance and love. Finally, to Susan, Bob, and Jane Lawes, for their completely unbiased support and encouragement . . . and as always, a deep-felt thanks to Jace. How would any of it get done without her?

  Prologue

  May 10

  Georges LeFleur

  Hôtel Royal du Prague

  Prague, Czechoslovakia

  Très cher grand-père,

  Why haven’t you returned my calls? I’ve tried Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Jakarta. . . . Please call me, if only to say you’re all right. Has the Spanish Minister of the Interior dropped the felony charges yet?

  I imagine you’ve heard that Interpol obtained the first three chapters of your book and the proverbial merde has hit the fan. I don’t suppose you had anything to do with sending them an advance copy, did you? I hope you don’t think this is a joke, old man. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up dead on the streets of Barcelona, or suspended by your fingers from the Arc de Triomphe like your old fence, Herzog. Remember him? Keep that image in mind the next time you’re tempted, will you, please?

  I know you are enjoying your new project, Grandfather, but surely you can see that writing a book about your career in art forgery is one thing—the worst that can happen is that you’ll spend your declining years in a prison cell—but publishing trade secrets for how to commit fraud, offering advice on how to sell art forgeries, and listing all of the fakes in the world’s top art museums . . . was that really such a great idea? You’re making some dangerous enemies. Even my father—your son-in-law, remember?—is concerned, and we both know how he feels about you.

  And this book hasn’t exactly made my life easier. San Francisco isn’t that far from Europe, you know. I have a legitimate faux-finishing business now, and even though you think I’m wasting my life, believe me when I say that I like what I do and I don’t appreciate the incessant questions about my past. Remember, you promised not to write about me! If you break that promise, Grandpapa, I’ll come after you myself. I swear I will.

  Anyway, I love you and—so help me—I miss you like crazy. Please keep yourself out of legal trouble long enough to visit me soon, will you? You promised.
/>   Je t’embrasse,

  Annie

  June 15

  Mademoiselle Annie Kincaid

  True/Faux Studios

  The DeBenton Building

  San Francisco, California, USA

  Ma très chère Annie,

  So wonderful to receive from you this letter! There are few who appreciate your rare humor so much as I.

  Rest assured, ma petite, the tome is coming along famously and shall be released October 1st to rave reviews, I have no doubt. Just the other day I was writing a few words on the economic ramifications of the traffic in truquage and forgeries. I adore the economists. So pragmatic.

  Those old fellows at Interpol are so droll. Thank you for reminding me. I shall send them a fruit basket.

  I was touched, my darling girl, by your invitation to visit sunny San Francisco. I shall see what I can do, but alas! My arthritis troubles me much in my dotage. Often do I wish for the companionship of my beloved granddaughter to ease my pains. But do not worry. I understand that your work takes priority in your heart.

  Remember, chérie, stay strong against the naysayers!

  Je t’aime beaucoup,

  Grandpapa Georges

  Chapter 1

  With some regularity, the janitorial staff of major museums mistakes a work of modern art for trash and disposes of it in the Dumpster. Perhaps the average custodian is a keener judge of art than the average curator!

  —Georges LeFleur, in an interview with Mother Jones magazine

  “Anthony, that body is not part of the exhibit,” I said for the third time, my voice rising in desperation. “Look at it: there’s a dead man hanging from your oak tree!”

  At just that moment, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s string quartet reached the end of a lilting Mozart air, and my words rang out across Anthony Brazil’s bucolic walled sculpture garden. Lighthearted conversation skidded to a halt and the well-coiffed crowd of art lovers, snooty socialites, and local celebrities gaped at me for a second before shifting their gazes to the majestic oak tree in the northeast corner. There, nestled amongst the angel-hair ferns and silvery blue hydrangeas, as though it were one of artist Seamus McGraw’s more macabre sculptural installations, dangled the body of a man.

  For one long, surreal moment quiet blanketed the posh scene.

  Then a scream split the silence.

  “Call the police!” someone yelled. “Call 411!”

  “It’s 911, you fool!” another shouted in reply. “It’s 911!”

  Shrieks and cries and the sound of shattering wine-glasses filled the air as the overflow crowd of Anthony Brazil’s A-list clients forgot their finishing-school manners and surged toward the garden’s narrow gated exit, where they formed a noisy, upper-crust traffic jam.

  Anthony Brazil gave me a withering glance. The vertically challenged proprietor of San Francisco’s premier art gallery was an old friend of my father’s, but he and I were not on the best of terms. Anthony had invited me to the grand opening of his swanky new gallery only in grudging recognition of my having held my tongue about his role in an art forgery scandal last spring, while I was attending the event only in the hope of landing a wealthy client or ten for my faux-finishing business. As my grandfather had taught me, a little blackmail, judiciously applied, just made good business sense.

  My spotting a corpse in Brazil’s oak tree was more than either of us had bargained for.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said, downing the last swallow of a rich Russian River Pinot Noir, smoothing my unruly dark curls and brushing imaginary crumbs from my one and only little black dress. “I didn’t put a body in your tree.”

  “My dear child, such a thought never crossed my mind,” Brazil hissed in his high tenor. Although outwardly calm, his signature red bow tie trembled. “But you do seem to attract the more, shall we say, unseemly element of the art world, do you not?”

  “You give me entirely too much credit, Anthony,” I sniffed.

  It was true that I had become embroiled in a scandal involving forged sketches and the theft of a priceless Caravaggio masterpiece last spring. It was also true that I had spent my seventeenth birthday in a Parisian jail cell accused—quite rightly, I must confess—of flooding the European art market with forgeries of Old Master drawings. But those charges had been dropped when no French art expert had been willing to testify that une jeune fille américaine was capable of such high-quality work.

  After graduating from college, I reveled in an art restoration internship at San Francisco’s Brock Museum until a spiteful ‘expert’ spilled the beans about my prior close working relationship with my grandfather Georges LeFleur, who happened to be one of the world’s foremost art forgers. Banished from the fine-art world, I had spent the last several years slowly building up a legitimate faux-finishing business, True/Faux Studios. I worked long hours painting decorative finishes in homes and businesses, paid exorbitant self-employment taxes, and belonged to the Better Business Bureau. It wasn’t as exciting as being a Parisian artist, but neither was it as scary as being a Parisian prisoner.

  Still, although these days my life was lived on the up-and-up—mostly, anyway—a residual distrust of the police lingered. The sound of approaching sirens put my nerves on edge and seemed to rev up the crowd as well. I watched the distinguished guest director of the San Francisco Opera throw an elbow into the gut of a local radio-talk-show host as they jockeyed for position at the packed garden exit. Newly elected Mayor Joseph Green showed considerably more class by stopping to help Gloria Cabrera to her feet. Gloria was the manager of Marble World, a major stone importer in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I had seen her stare down not one but three angry contractors, their clients, and their work crews. If Gloria was vulnerable to this pack of tuxedoed hyenas I figured I didn’t stand a chance and decided to try my luck exiting through the gallery.

  “Don’t even think about leaving before speaking to the police,” Anthony snapped, as if reading my mind.

  “What must you think of me?” I said, feigning shock.

  Ol’ Tony gave me the fish eye, and I reluctantly trailed him inside, where about a dozen less-panicky guests grazed on hors d’oeuvres and chattered excitedly about the gruesome discovery. As Brazil started working the room, reassuring anyone who would listen that this was all a dreadful misunderstanding, I grabbed a tumbler of single-malt scotch from the bar. Taking a fortifying gulp, I glanced out at the garden through the plate-glass window at the rear of the gallery. The limp body was clearly visible, thanks to the exhibit lighting. Covered in layers of fine beige dust, the corpse had a monochromatic, stonelike appearance, the face partially obscured by a drape of lank, powdery hair, and one hand wrapped mummylike in a dirty cloth.

  Forcing my eyes from the ghoulish sight, I spied a Biedermier side table stacked with glossy show catalogues. Entitled “The New Anthony Brazil Gallery Presents ‘Tortured Bodies, Tortured Souls: 30 Years of the Sculptural Work of Seamus McGraw,’” the introductory essay explained in impenetrable postmodern prose that McGraw’s metal and leather sculptures depicting murder, torture, and mutilation offered a uniquely scathing commentary on the alienation inherent in contemporary America’s death-dealing society.

  Or a uniquely repulsive insight into the mind of a self-indulgent artist, I thought as I flipped through the catalogue. I paused at the black-and-white photographs of the show’s largest installation, The Postman Should Never Ring Twice, which depicted bound and twisted figures in their death agonies, cowering at the feet of a demented letter carrier armed with hemp rope, steel thumbscrews, and something that looked suspiciously like a bronze dildo. I studied the grotesque images dispassionately. McGraw’s ugly sculptures struck me as less alienated than sad—and lonely. Call me a boring traditionalist, but when it came to art my tastes were stuck in the Renaissance, an era when artists expressed humanity’s noblest hopes, ambitions, and dreams. If I wanted a scathing commentary on social alienation I could read the newspaper.

&nb
sp; I was about to toss the catalogue aside when the color photograph on the back cover, autographed in a loopy, flamboyant hand, caught my eye. Seamus McGraw posed in his studio, barefoot and dressed in baggy khaki drawstring pants and a white cotton shirt, smiling warmly at the camera. He was handsome in an aging hippy kind of way, the sharp planes of his tanned face softened by middle age, and I felt a frisson of recognition. Looking out the rear window again, I realized the corpse in the tree bore a striking resemblance to the one person who had been conspicuously absent from tonight’s opening: the guest of honor, sculptor Seamus McGraw.

  I had heard of artists denouncing the philanthropic hands that fed them. I had heard of artists staging days-long performance art wherein nothing ever seemed to happen. But I had never heard of an artist building a show around his own death. Give the man points for originality, I thought. Perhaps McGraw had decided to become a grisly contribution to his sculptural menagerie in an attempt to achieve the ultimate synergy with his work. It seemed a little extreme to me, but extremism in modern art was not uncommon.

  Turning away from the morbid view, I nearly collided with a fortyish brunette wearing a chic black dress that was in imminent danger of falling off her undernourished shoulders.

  “Are stuffed mushrooms low-carb?” the woman demanded, waving the hors d’oeuvres in question under my nose.

  “You bet,” I replied, though I had no idea. She looked as though she could use the calories. Her large, horsy teeth bit into a greasy, sausage-stuffed mushroom cap and chewed vigorously. My stomach lurched. “I’m Annie Kincaid.”

  “Janice, Janice Hewett,” she mumbled around a mouthful of mushroom. “My husband, Norman, and I buy from Anthony Brazil all the time. We’ve never seen anything like this before. Can you imagine? What a gloriously devastating way to kill oneself! Not that it’s not tragic.” Janice nabbed a hot crab puff from a tray offered by a slightly green-faced waiter and shoved it, whole, into her mouth. A bit of the creamy filling escaped, oozing over her bottom lip. “What is it with sculptors these days?”