Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer

painted box. It had angels and flowers on it.”
    Fred shook his head.
    “Franklin Tilley won’t tell me anything,” she complained. “Par for the course in the art world. Everyone lies. If they tell you anything, which mostly they don’t, that’s when you know it’s a lie. If you’re in the art world, Fred, which to me seems like a safe guess, even though you look like you drive a truck, you may take that as a personal insult.” Again, her brilliant smile added new sparkle to the bubbles in her glass.
    Fred said, “That’s what your guy collects? Painted boxes? You said he wants names. Now I’m confused.”
    Suzette studied the conflicting themes and found no way to resolve them. Instead she stood and allowed the light from the hotel’s table lamp to make a mockery of her covering. She stretched and yawned. “Champagne does something to me,” she confessed. She crossed to stand next to Fred and put a hand on the hair he cropped short so he wouldn’t have to think about it. “My principal,” she said, “the man I work for, will pay good money for that chest. I know his taste.”
    “I guess I could look around.”
    She stroked the side of his face, bristling now at the day’s end.

Chapter Twenty-one
    She was more naked in this packaging than if one or the other of them peeled her out of it. Not that the garment presented any obstacle.
    “You must know the locals,” Suzette said. “Who’s a likely candidate.”
    “Problem is, in the art world, everybody lies,” Fred said. He put an arm around her hips. The hips were there, the arm was there. The hips swayed briefly toward him. He let them go again. “There’s more bubbly.” He reached for the bottle, which sat patiently in its bucket of ice; poured some into his glass. “Will you have some?” She shook her head. “Even when they’re lying with each other, they’re likely to lie,” he said.
    She laughed and went back to her chair.
    “Not for publication,” Fred said, “who’s your principal, and how much money are we talking? In case I get lucky.”
    “I assumed Franklin Tilley told you. I’m curator, personal assistant, whatever you want to call it, for the Agnelli Collection. No relation to the car people. We’re in Toledo. I’m the one you go through. Tony Agnelli.” She held out her glass again. Fred poured.
    “Yes?” he prompted. “On the ‘How much?’ issue.”
    “I have to see it again,” she hedged, “and show it to a couple of people. But I’d say, if you can find it for me, you can ask pretty much what you want.”
    The poise of her body was as suggestive as her words.
    “Some box,” Fred said. “Describe it.”
    Suzette gave an accurate description of the outside of the chest, so brilliantly pedestrian that it would have earned her an A in any graduate program worth its salt. “Then you open it,” she finished, “and on the inside is a weird holy picture, the Virgin and Child and some monkeys. The box looks Italian. My principal, Tony Agnelli, is Italian. Duh. Italian-American. You probably guessed that. The collection needs objects, not just pictures, I told him.”
    “You’ll be here,” Fred said. “In case I have information for you.”
    She nodded. “Tony makes all the money decisions. I can make promises but not commitments. That sounds wrong. You know what I’m saying. How do I reach you?”
    “I move around a lot,” Fred said. “You won’t want me unless I have something for you, and in that case I’ll get word to you here. Or should I leave a message with Franklin Tilley?”
    She said, “Let’s not get Franklin Tilley mixed up about who’s working with whom. And by the way, Fred. Don’t get ideas. Agnelli doesn’t buy anything except through me. That’s what he pays me for. Go after him yourself, either you spook him, or his people send him to me.”
    Fred said, “If I have anything to sell, I go through you.”
    Suzette shook her head. “About some people you have an instinct.”