The Chase: A Novel by Brenda Joyce

peered around the door, her heart palpitating wildly. Marshall stood before her father’s huge antique desk; her father stood on the other side, facing him. And although both Marshall and Jean-Léon were speaking in quiet and conversational tones, their body language was that of two adversaries braced for blows.
    Jean-Léon walked around his desk. “My son-in-law seemed to be murdered the same way. But you’re not a police officer. You’re with the Bergman Holocaust Research Center. Why are
you
asking me these questions? I don’t have to speak with you.”
    “I thought perhaps you might have some answers for me.”
    “What kind of answers?” Jean-Léon was incredulous. “Unless I have had business with this Suttill, I do not know him. Of course, Beth can check our files if that would help. And as far as David goes, I have no idea what happened.”
    Marshall stared. “The same killer murdered Suttill and Hayden, Ducasse. That’s off the record, but it’s a fact, and the police have confirmed it.” Suddenly he glanced over his shoulder, toward the doorway where Claire was standing.
    Claire jerked back flat against the fabric-clad wall.
    “What does any of this have to do with me? Other than the fact that David was my son-in-law and I could not stand him?”
    Claire’s heart raced. Of course she had known that David and her father did not care for each other. But it hurt a little now to hear Jean-Léon speaking so bluntly and so fervently.
    “You gave David a painting for his birthday,” Marshall said. Claire had to muffle her own gasp of surprise. How had he known that? “How did you acquire the Courbet?”
    “Actually I gave Claire the painting. And how did I acquire it?” Jean-Léon sounded surprised. “I bought it. I bought it just after the war, I believe in ’forty-eight. I bought it in Paris.”
    “From whom?” Marshall asked.
    “I don’t recall,” Jean-Léon said, sounding amused. “Good God, Marshall, that was almost sixty years ago.”
    “Fifty-three, if you want to be exact,” Marshall said flatly.
    A silence fell.
    Claire tried to recover her composure; she tried to deepen her shallow breathing. What the hell was going on? Why was Marshall asking her father about George Suttill and David? And why the questions about the Courbet, which she had been about to pack up and return to her father? At least Marshall was acting like an investigator—and not a copycat psycho killer.
    Claire was not really relieved. She stole back to the opening between the door and the wall, to sneak a peek inside the room.
    The men stood a few feet from each other, in front of Jean-Léon’s massive desk. They were staring at each other. Marshall spoke.
    “I’d like to see the bill of sale.”
    “Really?” Two bushy white eyebrows raised.
    “Really.”
    “You know, Marshall, you have truly been wasting my time. And you are arrogant. What gives you the right to come in here and demand to see an ancient bill of sale?”
    “The pursuit of justice,” Ian Marshall said. “The pursuit of a killer.”
    Jean-Léon made an abrupt sound.
    “You do want to see your son-in-law’s killer brought to justice, do you not?” Marshall said, staring coldly.
    “Of course I do. Claire shouldn’t have to be going through this.”
    “Then humor me.”
    “Perhaps I will. It might take some time to find a record like that,” Jean-Léon responded. He returned to his chair behind the desk but did not sit down.
    Marshall walked right over to the edge of the desk and leaned on it with both hands. The desk was placed in the center of two corner windows, and it faced the doorway where Claire stood, and the expanse of the room to Claire’s right. When Jean-Léon sat at his desk with the office door open, he could see into a wide, angled portion of the gallery. Now Claire stared at both men from a side view. Ian Marshall said, “Maybe you don’t have a bill of sale.”
    The action of leaning on the desktop had pushed aside