The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,76
the world to know it was gone. If he just took it, well, who would realize it was missing? Onderdonk lived alone. I suppose he must have had a will, and his worldly goods must go to somebody, but—”
“His heir’s a second cousin in Calgary, Alberta,” Orville Widener cut in. “And now we’re coming to my part of the field. My company underwrote Onderdonk’s insurance and we’re on the hook for $350,000. I gather the painting was stolen so that we’d have to pay, but what we ask in a situation like that is Qui bono? I’m sure you know what that means.”
“Cooey Bono,” Carolyn said. “That was Sonny’s first wife, before he was married to Cher. Right?”
Widener ignored her, which I thought showed character. “To whose good?” he said, translating the Latin himself. “In other words, who benefits? The policy’s payable to Onderdonk, and in the event of his death it becomes part of his estate, and his estate goes to somebody in western Canada.” His eyes narrowed, then turned toward Richard Jacobi. “Or is that Canadian relative actually among those present?”
“He’s in Canada,” Wally Hemphill said, “because I spoke to him at an hour that was equally uncivilized in either time zone. He’s empowered me to look out for his interests in this matter.”
“Indeed,” said Widener.
It was my turn. “The cousin never left Calgary,” I said. “The painting was stolen not for the insurance, considerable though it may be. The painting was stolen for the same reason its owner was murdered. Both acts were committed to conceal a crime.”
“And what crime was that?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” I said, “and I think we should make ourselves comfortable and have a cup of coffee. Now how many of you want cream and sugar? And how many just cream? And how many just sugar? And the rest of you want it all the way black? Fine.”
I don’t think they really wanted coffee, but what I wanted was a breathing spell. When Carolyn and Alison had served the nasty stuff all around the room, I sipped some of mine, made a face, and started in.
“Once upon a time,” I said, “a man named Haig Petrosian had a painting in his dining room. It would later be called Composition with Color, but Petrosian probably didn’t call it anything but ‘My friend Piet’s picture,’ or words to that effect. Whatever he called it, it disappeared around the time of his death. Maybe a family member spirited it away. Maybe a servant made off with it, perhaps acting on the belief that the old man wanted her to have it.”
“Perhaps Haig Petrosian’s son William stole it,” Elspeth Petrosian said, with a sharp glance to her right and another sharp glance at me.
“Perhaps,” I said agreeably. “Whoever took it, it wound up in the possession of a man who found a wonderful way to make money. He bought paintings and gave them away.”
Carolyn said, “That’s a way to make money?”
“It is the way this fellow did it. He would buy a painting by an important artist, a genuine painting, and he would lend it to a show or two in order to establish its provenance and his history as its owner. Then a talented if eccentric artist would be engaged to produce a copy of the painting. The owner would let himself be persuaded to donate the painting to a museum, but in the course of things it would be the copy that wound up getting donated. Farther on down the line, he’d donate the painting to another institution in another part of the country, and once again it would be a copy that changed hands. Occasionally he might vary the pitch by selling the painting to a collector, picking someone who wouldn’t be likely to show it. In the course of a decade, he could sell or donate the same painting five or six times, and if he stuck to abstract artists like Mondrian and had his wacky painter vary the precise design a bit from one canvas to the next, he could get away with it forever.
“And the richer you are to start with, the more profitable it is. Donate a painting appraised at a quarter of a million dollars and you can save yourself over a hundred thousand dollars in taxes. Do that a couple of times and you’ve more than paid for the painting, and you’ve still got the original painting yourself. There’s only one problem.”