A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (7 page)

“I kid you not,” Alix said happily. She sipped again from her glass of Chablis, thinking how strange it was that the woman sitting opposite her, whom she hadn’t known existed six months ago, was now her closest friend.

It wasn’t only the brief time they’d known each other that made it unlikely. It was just about everything. Alix, at a moderately tall five-nine, was quietly pretty, low-keyed, reserved, and traditional in her dress. More than once she’d been told she was conventional, or square, or out of sync with the times, with all of which she was happy to agree. Chris was the opposite: laid-back and flamboyant, given to jangling bracelets, cape-like shawls, and eye-catching colors that highlighted her strapping six-two frame. And Chris was a native Westerner, born in Tacoma into a blue-collar family. Her father had been a plasterer, and an alcoholic one at that, her mother a finisher at a second-hand furniture store. Alix, on the other hand, had been an advantaged New Englander, born into comfort and wealth. Chris had gone from poor to rich on her own merits as a systems analyst and software developer, along with a keen sense (“luck,” according
to Chris) of when to cash in on the stock options she’d earned from the high-tech company she’d worked for. Alix’s fortunes had gone the opposite way (thank you, Geoff!), and only now was she beginning to turn them around.

They were similar in that they were both single, but Chris had recently gotten engaged to an old beau, while the way things were going for Alix, she was likely to stay single for some time, which didn’t particularly please her, but didn’t distress her either. And then, Chris was at home in the new world of high tech but only gingerly feeling her way into the less scientific but more impenetrable world of art and art collecting; Alix didn’t know the difference between a megapixel and a gigabyte (
gigabit
?), but there was no questioning her knowledge of art, especially painting. Just about everything Chris knew about it—and she was learning fast—she’d learned from Alix.

And yet, with all that, here they were, one good friend unselfishly taking pleasure in the other’s opportunity, the other taking pleasure in the first one’s pleasure.

“So!” Chris said. “What are you going to do for clothes? Not that there’s anything wrong with what you’re wearing, of course.” She paused, one eyebrow lifted, to take in Alix’s workaday cold-weather outfit of comfortable, well-worn velour chinos and a roomy, cable-knit, cowl-necked sweater with its sleeves pushed casually up on her forearms. “But for this you might want something a little more, well, shall we say…”

“Flashy?” Alix suggested with an eyebrow lift of her own, at which she wasn’t as good as Chris, and raked an eye over Chris’s capacious red-yellow-and-purple starburst-patterned serape.

“I was going to say ‘classy.’ Chic. Au courant.”

Alix sighed. “You’re probably right. I guess I’d better see if it’s not too late to get an appointment with my couturier.”

That brought smiles to both their faces, knowing as they did that she was referring to her go-to source whenever upscale outfitting was needed: Blanche’s Le Frock Vintage Clothing, an alarmingly cluttered consignment
shop tucked under a highway overpass on Capitol Hill’s down-market commercial fringe.

Chris lifted her coffee (she was a knowledgeable and appreciative wine drinker, but not when “on duty” at the wine bar) and let her attention wander to the
Sala del Caminetto
—the Fireplace Salon—a fireside nook that had been outfitted with low tables and arm chairs, and could hold a grouping of a dozen or so.

“Your father is in good form tonight,” she said.

“He’s always in good form here.” Alix turned to look in that direction too. “Ah, Chris, you don’t know how good it is to see him like this. I was afraid he’d be a broken man, all walled up inside his shell, when he got out of the clink, but just look at the guy.”

“He’s not in his shell, that’s for sure,” Chris said, laughing.

As usual, Geoff was holding his audience, mostly young, in thrall. “What do I think is the role of art criticism in today’s world?” he said in answer to a question that had been put to him. He looked mischievously from face to rapt face, his eyes twinkling. “I believe it was Martin Mull who put it best: ‘Writing about art is like dancing about architecture.’ ”

It took a second for them to process it, and then the burst of laughter practically rattled the glasses behind the bar. Geoff’s pink cheeks glowed in the firelight.

“He’s in his element, all right,” Alix said, turning back to Chris. Then she turned for another longer look, a harder one. “Chris, that older woman sitting right next to him, the one with the pearls, hanging on every word, with that ‘look’ in her eyes? I’ve seen her here the last few Thursdays. Do you know who she is?”

“Oh, sure, that’s Mrs. Prentiss. Widowed, well-connected in Seattle society, on the opera board, owns an upscale boutique hotel downtown here and another one in Bellevue. Other business interests too, I believe.”

“Is she, uh, interested in him?”

“Romantically, you mean? Who knows? She’s been through two or three husbands already, so she could be looking for another, but as far as I
know it’s strictly business. She was in here a couple of nights ago trying to pick my brains as to why she was having trouble talking him into moving up from his tacky old warehouse business—excuse me, those are her words—”

Alix shrugged. “Mine too.”

“—and handling an interior remodel, very artistic and la-di-da, of the Bellevue hotel, with the Seattle one maybe to follow. I had nothing to tell her, though. I’d have thought he’d have jumped at it.”

“Me too,” Alix said pensively. Why
wouldn’t
he jump at it? A chance to work among the genuine objets d’art he loved instead of the Aztec soap dishes and faux Carrara marble ashtrays in which he was knee deep now. “Maybe he’s trying to get better terms out of her.”

She glanced at her watch and then once again at the
Sala del Caminetto
, where Geoff was still holding forth, sprightlier than ever. “I think maybe it’s time to get Mr. Wonderful out of there before his head swells up even more than it already has.”

T
he return trip to the warehouse was easier than the drive to Sangiovese had been. The rain had let up, fading away to an on-again, off-again drifting mist, and the rush-hour traffic had slowed to what passed for normal. Geoff chattered away the whole time and was still bubbly when they pulled into Venezia’s parking lot at seven forty.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said—suddenly a little too casual, it seemed to Alix—when the car rolled to a stop. “After quite a bit of soul searching and exploration, I’ve decided to go in a new professional direction.”

Ah, so Mrs. Prentiss had gotten to him after all
. “Going into the hotel remodel business, are we?”

He seemed for an instant confused, then almost offended. “Certainly not, whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, Chris told me about Mrs. Prentiss wanting you to—”

He waved the suggestion off. “No, no, no, no, I have no time for that, not with the exciting new venture I’ve embarked on.”

“
New venture?
You’re giving up Venezia?”

“Oh, no, not at all, certainly not. For one thing, it’s doing very well. For another, I like being able to provide the boys with a rewarding source of honest employment. Oh, the boys are working with me on the, ah, new enterprise, and being very helpful there as well. I’m very pleased with how it’s developing.”

The “boys” were the two convicted felons who constituted Venezia’s workforce. Like Geoff himself, each had served a lengthy sentence for one
variation or another of art fraud and both were old acquaintances of his. In what he referred to as his Old Cons Rehabilitation Foundation, he’d hired them when Venezia had gotten big enough to use a couple of employees. So far, it seemed to be working out for all concerned. The two of them—three, if you included Geoff—gave every indication of having left their problematic pasts behind them, at least on the surface. Alix fervently hoped that it was true, especially for her father. Indeed, she believed that it
was
true, but the men, otherwise not very similar in their personalities, shared a puckish rascality that sometimes made her wonder. And God knew, between them all they were a gold mine of skills, expertise, and experience in just about every form of art fakery ever devised. This “new venture” thing was making her nervous.

“Really. What is it, Geoff?” She was doing her best not to sound apprehensive.

“Well, I’d rather not go into the details yet, my dear. I simply wanted to forewarn you. Let’s just say that it is a great deal better suited to my abilities and interests than running a hotel supply company.”

Oh, great
, she thought. “Well, what kind of business is it, can you tell me that?” What she really wanted to scream at him was:
Is it legal?

“All in due time,” he said calmly and then changed the subject. “Oh, look.” He was pointing at two lit windows on the ground floor, which Alix knew to be the windows of the rudimentary break room that he had outfitted for his employees and himself. “The boys are still there, waiting up for you, I suppose you might say. Will you stop in and say hello? A cup of coffee, perhaps?”

Alix smiled back at him and opened the car door. “Sure, lead on.”

Geoff unlocked the much-dinged, yellow-painted steel door that was the street entrance and they entered a short, depressing corridor with raw concrete walls and floor. He flicked a switch to turn on a couple of naked bulbs that hung from the ceiling and emitted a sickly light. As always, the cold that oozed from the naked concrete, whatever the season, sent a shiver down her back. She had told Geoff that a more inviting entry might be
good for Venezia’s business, but he’d laughed her off. Business was just fine, thank you, and anyway, “They like to see that we operate with low overhead. It makes them think that we must be charging less.” Apparently, he was right, too; business was booming.

The corridor led to two wooden doors with frosted-glass panels and press-on signs. Once upon a time they’d said
Showroom
and
Offices,
but in the last month the lettering had begun falling off. Last week they’d said
Sho oom
and
Offi es
. This week it was
ho om
and
Of es
. Geoff, however, showed no inclination to repair things. Further proof of low overhead, she supposed.

The break room was at the back of the so-called offices, which were a collection of stark cubicles surrounding two pushed-together worktables in the center, where the packing was done. As they approached, she could hear conversation and laughter.

One of the two “boys” was someone she’d known a very long time, someone who went back so far she couldn’t remember
not
knowing him: a gentle, slow-talking mountain of a man—over six-three and a good three hundred pounds—who now generally went by Tiny, but whom she still remembered as
Zio
Beniamino, Uncle Beniamino, from the days when he’d bounced her on his lap and sung sweet old Italian lullabies to her. He wasn’t really a relative, but she hadn’t understood that at the time, and even now she thought of him as her favorite of all her uncles.

Tiny had started out as a commercial artist, but in his thirties he had discovered that he was gifted at creating Monets, Picassos, Chagalls, and just about any other painter you could name. That faculty had made him a nice living for over a decade but eventually landed him in the clink, from which he’d emerged in his early sixties, chastened but not down-hearted. Now his work entailed taking orders, maintaining their kitschy inventory, and packing up Aztec-style synthetic onyx soap dishes for delivery to Biloxi, Mississippi, or Winnemucca, Nevada. Being Tiny, he accepted it all with good humor and even gratitude.

The other man she’d met only a few months ago, after he’d come to work for her father. An ex-professor of art history, Frisby Macdowell
had been, according to Geoff’s admiring description, “the most skilled, dedicated forger of Neoplastic and Constructivist painting of the twentieth century.” Unfortunately, Neoplastic and Constructivist art had gone out of favor in about 1965, so Frisby had switched to faking Dadaist art instead—Marcel Duchamp, in particular—for which, sadly for him, he didn’t have the same knack. Hence, the journey through courtroom, jail, and redemption that eventually wound up with him working alongside Tiny and Geoff at the Venezia Trading Company. A small, quiet, bespectacled man, he too appeared to be resigned to his lot, if not quite as content with it as were his colleagues. Despite Frisby’s pedantic, somewhat cranky exterior, Alix had taken to him from the first, charmed by the wry humor that often peeped through the cracks.

The two men were sitting on mismatched steel-and-plastic kitchen chairs at one of the two Formica-topped dinette tables (also mismatched) in the break room, sipping from their mugs and kibitzing when Alix and Geoff showed up.

As always, Tiny lit up at the sight of her. “Hey, look who’s here—
la mia cucciolina
!”