The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,43

was never a wealthy man. He and my grandmother lived comfortably but he never piled up riches. I don’t suppose he had much idea of the value of Mondrian’s painting. He knew its artistic worth, but I doubt he would have guessed the price it would command. He never collected art, you see, and to him this painting was nothing more or less than the valued gift of a treasured friend. He said it would come to me when he died.”

“And it didn’t?”

“My grandmother was the first to die. She contracted some sort of viral infection which didn’t respond to antibiotics, and within a month’s time she was dead of kidney failure. My parents tried to get my grandfather to live with them after her death but he insisted on staying where he was. His one concession was to engage a live-in housekeeper. He never really recovered from my grandmother’s death, and within a year he too was dead.”

“And the painting—”

“Disappeared.”

“The housekeeper took it?”

“That was one theory. My father thought my uncle might have taken it, and I suppose Uncle Billy thought the same of my father. And everyone suspected the housekeeper, and there was some talk of an investigation, but I don’t think anything ever came of it. The family came to some sort of agreement that there’d been a burglary, because there were other things missing, some of the wedding silver, and it was easier to attribute it to some anonymous burglar than for us to make a thing of suspecting each other.”

“And I suppose the loss was covered by insurance.”

“Not the painting. My grandfather had never taken out a floater policy on it. I’m sure it never occurred to him. After all, it had cost him nothing, and I’m sure he never thought it might be stolen.”

“It was never recovered?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Time passed. My own father died. My mother remarried and moved across the country. Mondrian remained my favorite painter, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and whenever I looked at one of his works in the Modern or the Guggenheim I felt a strong primal response. And I felt a pang, too, for my painting, my Mondrian, the work that had been promised to me.” She straightened up, set her shoulders. “Two years ago,” she said, “there was a Mondrian retrospective at the Vermillion Galleries. Of course I went. I was walking from one painting to another, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and I was breathless as I always am in front of Mondrian’s work, and then I stepped up to one painting and my heart stopped. Because it was my painting.”

“Oh.”

“I was shocked. I was stunned. It was my painting and I would have known it anywhere.”

“Of course you hadn’t seen it in ten years,” I said thoughtfully, “and Mondrian’s paintings do have a certain sameness to them. Not to take away anything from the artist’s genius, but—”

“It was my painting.”

“If you say so.”

“I sat directly across from that painting every Sunday night for years. I stared at it while I stirred my green peas into my mashed potatoes. I—”

“Oh, did you do that, too? You know what else I used to do? I used to make a potato castle and then make a sort of moat of gravy around it, and then I’d have a piece of carrot for a cannon and I’d use the green peas for cannonballs. What I really wanted was some way to catapult them into the brisket, but that was where my mother drew the line. How did your painting get to the Vermillion Galleries?”

“It was on loan.”

“From a museum?”

“From a private collection. Mr. Rhodenbarr, I don’t care how the painting got into the private collection or how it got out of it. I just want the painting. It’s rightfully mine, and at this point I wouldn’t even care if it weren’t rightfully mine. It’s been an overwhelming obsession ever since I saw it at the retrospective. I have to have it.”

What was it about Mondrian, I wondered, that appealed so strongly to crazy people? The catnapper, the man on the phone, Onderdonk, Onderdonk’s killer, and now this ditsy little lady. And, come to think of it, who was she?

“Come to think of it,” I said, “who are you?”

“Haven’t you been listening? My grandfather—”

“You never told me your name.”

“Oh, my name,” she said, and hesitated for only a second. “It’s Elspeth. Elspeth Peters.”

“Lovely name.”

“Thank you. I—”

“I suppose you think I stole the painting from your grandfather’s house lo these many years ago. I can understand that, Ms.