Cold Hit by Linda Fairstein Page B

introductory art course and close enough in detail to the famous
Foyer of the Dance
that it had to be the study for the great painting that hangs in Paris.
    Chapman was on his feet, wiping his hands with the heavy damask napkin. He was standing in front of a Picasso about four feet by six, his head cocked as he tried to make some sense of the Cubist representations. “I just don’t get it. Why would somebody pay millions of dollars for something like this, which isn’t supposed to look like anything anyway? I must have spent too much time in church. I haven’t liked any artists since Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Just give me a Madonna — I mean, the old Madonna — and I’m happy.”
    I had circled the room and was back in front of the lilies. “You’d like Monet. Impressionism got its name from one of his paintings —
Impression of a Sunrise
.” Chapman joined me to look at the vast canvas, one of the endless images of the same subject portrayed at different hours of the day in different variations of light.
    “That one you’re looking at was painted at Giverny, just before his death. He was nearly blind.” Caxton’s voice startled us as we turned to look toward the entryway of the long room.
    “Looks to me like most of the stuff painted in this century could have been done by a blind man. Mike Chapman, Homicide,” Mike said, advancing to shake Lowell Caxton’s hand and show his identification. “These are my colleagues — Detective Mercer Wallace, and Alexandra Cooper from the District Attorney’s Office.”
    Caxton extended a hand to each of us. “I hope Valerie has made you comfortable. Perhaps you’ll allow me to step inside and freshen up for a moment before we get on with what you need to do.”
    It was a reasonable request after a trans-Atlantic trip, and although Chapman would have liked to tail him into the private quarters of the apartment, we had no choice but to let Caxton disappear to his suite of rooms.
    Fifteen or twenty minutes later he returned to the living room, opened a set of sliding pocket doors, and gestured the three of us into the library. The walls were lacquered in a rich shade of Chinese red, strikingly showcasing another Picasso, this time from the artist’s Rose Period. Bookcases were lined with sets of leather-bound volumes, valuable and rare, and assuredly untouched and unread. Some decorator’s idea of a complement to the art.
    Lowell Caxton seated himself in the largest chair in the room as we took our places around him. “It’s a bit more intimate in here,” he said to no one in particular.
    As he looked each of us over to size us up, waiting for Valerie to bring him the tea he had requested, we examined him as well. The articles I had seen in Lexis-Nexis gave his age as seventy-four. But he was trim and vigorous, with a full head of thick gray hair, and I would have guessed him to be no older than sixty-five. He remained in the clothes in which he had traveled — gray slacks, loafers without socks, a tennis shirt, and a pink cashmere sweater looped around his shoulders. The solid gold Cartier Pasha on his wrist was the only jewelry he wore.
    Valerie delivered the tea on yet another small silver tray. “Close the doors after you, will you, Valerie?” Caxton asked. Her hands were still shaking as she backed out of the room, sliding the doors together by pulling the brass knob on each of the sections.
    “Am I supposed to open this session by telling you how distraught I am by Deni’s demise?” he went on. “Or have you already found ample fodder in the tabloids to know that it wouldn’t be a very sincere way for me to begin? The flight home — even with the abbreviated flying time of a supersonic transport — was more than enough for me to shed whatever tears I had left. I didn’t kill her, although there’ll be plenty of her friends to suggest as much to you. But I certainly didn’t love her any longer, so you might as well know that from the