like your lobster roll?” I tasted my crab cake, which was delicious.
“It’s not that I don’t like the food.” He gestured around with his sandwich. “But when did every second bar start looking like a boathouse from northern Michigan?”
I glanced around. Kayaks, rowboats and oars hung from the ceiling, accented by netting and fishing poles.
“Anyway,” Mayburn said, putting his lobster roll on his plate. “This is an assignment only you can do.”
“Put Christopher on it,” I said. My dad worked occasionally for Mayburn, as well. Somehow the part-time private detective work that I did with them had become a family affair.
“I did get Christopher on it. Sort of. Research. But I need you at the front of the house.”
“What house? Does this have to do with Lucy?”
The love of Mayburn’s life, Lucy DeSanto, was a lovely woman, someone I admired for her kindness and her devotion to her family.
“It’s not Lucy,” he said.
“Then who’s the client?”
Mayburn pushed aside a bottle of hot sauce. There were two more still on the table. He lifted one—Mojo Hojo Caliente—then another—Crazy Billy’s Brain Damage. He pushed them away.
He looked at me. “It’s the Saga.”
“Madeline Saga?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “From what you told me about her, I guess it’s good that you’re pushing away the hot sauce. Stay away from the heat.”
“Ha. Yeah.” According to Mayburn, he and Madeline had engaged in a very sexy and tumultuous relationship. Mayburn was the first to admit that the tumult was his own. He’d always feared she didn’t love him as much as he did her, that her true love was art and her gallery.
“Does she still have her own gallery?” I asked.
He nodded. “She moved it from Bucktown to Michigan Ave. But now she might lose it.”
“Why?”
He glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “She found out that some of the paintings she’s sold were forged. But they were not fakes when the gallery acquired them.”
I returned a bite of crab cake to my plate and sat back. “Whoa.” I didn’t know much about art, but that didn’t sound good. “What did the cops say?”
“She hasn’t contacted the cops.”
“Why? Something was stolen from her, right? The paintings would have to be stolen before they were replaced with fakes.”
“Right, but the CPD doesn’t have an art crime division. Almost no local police departments do. And it can take decades for a stolen piece to show up on the market again. Plus, Saga doesn’t want anyone to know this is happening. Reputation, for an art gallery owner, is everything.”
“What about security cameras? Did she have them?”
“Yes and no. She didn’t at the Bucktown gallery, but when she built out the new space, they were installed. I’ve analyzed the video for her. Nothing strange. Just Madeline in and out all the time, people she had working with her, customers.”
I continued eating my crab cake.
Mayburn looked deeply troubled. “The worst part,” he said, “is that whoever is stealing the paintings is trying to hurt her.”
“What do you mean? Was she attacked?”
“Not yet. But things have been weird—finding doors open at her house that she swore she’d closed and locked. Things that seem moved around in her office, although she can’t be sure. And then there’s the fact that anyone who knows Madeline knows that taking her paintings away would cause her great pain.”
I noticed he referred to the paintings as if they were her children. “Sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
I thought about it. “You know what’s interesting? A lot of jobs you’ve had me on have dealt with your love life.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of these cases have had to do, in one way or another, with Lucy or Madeline.”
“Look who’s talking!” He was clearly annoyed. “You came to me last year because of Sam, when he up and disappeared. And then last year? You had me on Theo’s case. Both involved were your boyfriends. One was your fiancé, if I remember correctly.”
Zing. That hurt. The relationship with the fiancé—Sam—was done, fault of no one. And the boyfriend—Theo—had taken off to Thailand.
Mayburn saw my look. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He picked up his sandwich and began eating again.
“It’s okay,” I said. I put my fork down. “So this thing with Madeline Saga, you really need me?”
“I do. I need you to work as her assistant in the gallery.”
“I know absolutely nothing about the art world. You sure you want to throw me into this?”
“I need someone on the inside. We need to figure out who would have access to the paintings and any pertinent info on those paintings, plus we need ideas of anyone who might want to hurt Madeline.”
I thought about Maggie. I could talk to her. “How long would you want me?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Two weeks. Max.” He looked across the restaurant, past the net curtain festooned with shells. “God, it would just kill me if something happened to Madeline or her business.”
“Kill you?”
He shot me an irritated glance. “Hey, I might not be in love with the Saga anymore, but…” He took another bite of his lobster roll. He chewed, shrugged. “I just want her to be happy, okay? It’s like…I don’t know. This is hard to explain. But Madeline draws energy from everyone around her. Really. Everyone. And even though I don’t see her much, she’ll sense if I’m gone. She’s like that. And I want her to be content, settled, before I can totally move on to Lucy.”
“It still sounds complicated.”
“It is.” A pause. “Which is why I need you. For two weeks at the gallery. Cool?”
Because he was a friend now, because he had helped me out of more than one bind, I nodded.
2
If I was going to take a temporary gig with Mayburn, I had to talk to Maggie.
The next day, in a cab after visiting a new client (a prominent doctor accused of writing prescriptions for cash), I called Q. “Where is she?”
“Trial,” he said. “The Cortadero case.”
Q
