Copycat Killing

8

“What do you mean, who he really was?” I said.

“It’s too complicated to explain over the phone,” Ruby said. She exhaled slowly. “There’s something I need you to see—I need somebody to see.”

I looked back over my shoulder. Marcus must have gone inside the building.

I could turn around, find him and tell him Ruby had maybe found out something about Jaeger Merrill that might be useful.

Or might not.

Then he’d tell me to stay out of his case—even though it didn’t look as though there even was a case, I’d get annoyed and go meet Ruby.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said. I was going to end up over at the studio building anyway. It just seemed like a good idea to eliminate a couple of steps.

I decided it made more sense to get the truck and drive over to River Arts so I could just go home afterward. Ruby was watching for me at the back door.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said, as I followed her up to the top floor.

“Believe what?” I asked. Somehow the stairs had gotten steeper since the last time I’d climbed them a couple of hours ago.

She patted the top of her head with one hand. “You just have to see this. Trust me.”

There was a hardcover book open on one of Ruby’s worktables in her studio. She pointed to a black-and-white photograph of several men that took up half of the left page. “Recognize the guy in the middle?”

The hair was shorter and darker, the nose was a little longer, he was heavier, and he was several years younger, but it was Jaeger Merrill. I think I would have recognized him even if I hadn’t been expecting to see the man. “That’s Jaeger,” I said.

Ruby gave me a knowing smile. “Not exactly,” she said.

“You’re not going to tell me he has an identical evil twin, are you?”

“Nope.”

I looked at the caption underneath the picture. According to that, Christian Ellis was the man in the center of the photograph. “He changed his name,” I said slowly, turning the book over so I could see the cover: Divine Provenance: The Greatest Art Fraud in U.S. History.

“He did more than that,” Ruby said. “He changed the way he looked—different nose, different hair. I’m pretty sure different eye color. He lied about his age. He lied about his background. As far as I can tell, nothing about Jaeger Merrill was real.”

I flipped the book so I could look at the picture again. “So Jaeger—when he was still Christian Ellis—was involved in some kind of art fraud?”

She nodded. “Religious icons. Fakes. Good ones. I looked him up online. He created some elaborate forgeries that fooled some of the best art experts in the country. Heck, in the world. You could call him a con artist.” She gestured at the book. “Funny thing is, I got that at the library book sale last summer. I’d looked through it, but I never had a chance to actually read the whole thing.”

“I assume he got caught,” I said.

“He spent eighteen months in jail.”

“So he came here for a new start with a new name.” I set the book back on the table.

Ruby slid the twisted cord bracelets she was wearing up and down her arm. “The thing is, I’m not sure that’s what it was.”

“I’m not following you,” I said.

“I get that when someone has been in jail, they want a brand-new start,” she said. “But becoming someone else?” She held out both hands. “It’s so melodramatic.”

I glanced at the photograph again. “Maybe he was embarrassed. Or ashamed.”

She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Oh c’mon. Did Jaeger Merrill strike you as the kind of person who embarrassed easily? Or at all for that matter?”

“No,” I said.

“So why did he go to so much trouble to create a new identity for himself, then?”

“You think he was up to something—another scam maybe.”

Ruby stared out the tall windows for a moment, and then her gaze came back to me. “I think it’s possible.” She gave a small shrug. “Maybe I’ve gotten more suspicious after everything that’s happened over the past few months.”

Ruby had been arrested back in February for the hit-and-run death of her junior high principal and mentor, Agatha Shepherd. If she was a little less trusting now, it was understandable, given everything she’d gone through before Agatha’s real killer was found. That didn’t mean her instincts weren’t good.

My hair was coming loose from its ponytail. I pushed the strands back behind my ear. “But even if you’re right, even if he was working on another scam, does it matter? He’s dead.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right. There’s no scam without the scam artist.” She looked down at the photo again. “There’s one more thing, Kathleen, that I didn’t tell you.”

“What?”

“Jaeger,” she shook her head, “I’m sorry, I just can’t think of him as Christian Ellis—ended up being defended by a lawyer who was just starting out. You know the clichés. Just out of law school, fighting for truth and justice, la, la, la.”

“The lawyer is someone you know,” I said, slowly.

“Someone you know too. Peter Lundgren. Look at the picture on the next page.”

She was right. It was a younger version of Peter Lundgren in an ugly, ill-fitting suit. I made a face. Peter was settling Agatha Shepherd’s estate. He was helping Ruby with the money she’d been left in Agatha’s will. “I guess that explains how Jaeger ended up here.”

Ruby picked up the book and closed it, but I noticed she kept a finger between the pages to mark where the photos were. “I don’t get why Peter kept Jaeger’s secret.”

“Peter was his lawyer. And maybe there was no secret. Maybe Jaeger changed his name legally. Maybe he was a huge Rolling Stones fan. Maybe Mick Jagger was his idol. Maybe…maybe he had plastic surgery on his nose because he snored too loud and kept waking himself up at night. And he dyed his hair because he wanted to see if blonds really do have more fun.”

Ruby laughed.

I smiled back at her. “Or you could just ask Peter.”

She nodded, still clutching the book with her finger between the pages. “I think I will.”

She walked me down the stairs to the back door. Ray Nightingale, one of the other artists who had a studio in the building, was just coming in. He gave me a quick nod and turned to Ruby. “The police are at the co-op. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Ruby pulled a hand over her neck. “There was…there was an accident.” She exhaled slowly. “Jaeger fell…on the basement stairs.”

“What the heck was he doing in the basement?” Ray asked. He was about average height, with a smooth shaven head and a fairly laid-back attitude from what I’d seen.

She shrugged and twisted her bracelets around her arm. “I don’t know.”

He shook his head, blew out a breath. “But he’s okay, right?”

Ruby looked down at the floor. “No. He’s dead,” she said.

Ray stared at us, openmouthed. “What do you mean, he’s dead? You said he fell on the stairs.”

“He drowned,” I said, quietly. “I think he might have hit his head.”

Ray swore and looked away. “That’s awful. I didn’t really know him, but still.” He swiped a hand over his mouth. “Does Maggie know?” he asked after a moment.

“Yes,” I said. I wondered which side Ray had been on over the corporate sponsor issue. He did these large, intricate, acrylic ink drawings that to me seemed like a cross between an elaborate mosaic and Where’s Waldo. In each one, somewhere, there was a tiny rubber duck, no more than an inch or so long, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a fedora. Half the fun of the artwork was looking for the duck, whose name was Bo.

Like the rest of the artists who were part of the co-op, Ray did other things to help pay the bills. He’d designed a poster for the jazz festival in Minneapolis and a postcard for the James Hotel. And he collected and sold vintage ink bottles. He even used some of the old ink in his art. I’d seen him completely engrossed by the contents of an old rolltop desk at an estate sale I’d gone to a couple of weeks previously with Abigail.

Along with working at the library, Abigail also wrote children’s books and she’d wanted my opinion of several of the old picture books in the sale. She’d gotten interested in collecting books after she’d found a box of old, and it turned out valuable, books at the library the previous summer.

Ray slid a hand back and forth over his smooth scalp. “So that means the co-op is pretty much off limits, I’m guessing,” he said. Then he made a face. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive.”

I held up a hand. “It’s okay. And you’re right, the co-op is off limits for the moment.”

“What about Jaeger’s stuff?”

Ruby looked at me. “I don’t know. Kathleen?”

“I can’t see any reason why the police would need to go through his studio,” I said. “I don’t think this building is going to be off limits.”

“That’s good,” Ray said. “All this rain has put me behind.” He looked at Ruby. “If I can help with anything, let me know.” He moved past us and went up the stairs.

“Same here, Ruby,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do, call me.”

“I will,” she said.

I cut through the parking lot, got in the truck and started up the hill.

So Jaeger Merrill was really Christian Ellis, a convicted forger. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to create a new life for himself. Was Ruby right? Had he been working on another scam?