The Fine Art of Murder by Jessica Fletcher Page A

said. “Wait a minute. Jessica Fletcher. Sure, I’ve just been reading about you. Here.”
    He unfolded the newspaper and laid it in front of me. A headline on the front page popped out at me: SIMSBURY SON POINTS FINGER AT WIFE. It was accompanied by a photograph of Jonathon and Marlise Simsbury that had obviously been taken a number of years ago. They stood on a beach with their arms around each other, their wide smiles as dazzling as the white sand. I started reading the article, but Jankowski pulled the paper in front of him.
    “Shoot!” he said.
    “You said you were reading about me,” I said to Peters.
    “The writer mentions in the piece that you’d arrived in Chicago with Wayne Simsbury.”
    I gave an abbreviated explanation of my trip to Chicago, which was cut short by the delivery of our breakfasts. Peters asked the waiter for coffee and a dry English muffin.
    “Have an omelet,” Jankowski said as he continued to read, his face set in a menacing scowl. “You could use some flesh on those bones.”
    Peters ignored Jankowski’s culinary suggestion and said, “We need to talk, Joe.”
    “I’m listening,” Jankowski said, tucking the newspaper under his arm.
    Peters glanced in my direction.
    “If you’d prefer to have a private conversation, I can move to another table.”
    “No, stay and eat your omelet before it gets cold,” Jankowski commanded. To Peters, he said, “Who leaked it?”
    “Who knows? Who cares?” was Peters’s response. “Look, Joe, what Wayne said aside, there’s the matter of the art collection to consider.”
    “Jonathon was quite a noted art collector, wasn’t he?” I said.
    Jankowski, who was in the process of raising his final piece of omelet to his mouth, stopped his fork in midair and said, “Jonathon Simsbury appreciated pretty things, Mrs. Fletcher. He liked his fancy sports cars and his yacht and all the pretty pictures he surrounded himself with. That’s why he hired Susan. Now that’s a piece of art.” He chuckled and finished eating.
    I don’t know why I felt compelled to defend Jonathon, but I said, “There’s nothing wrong with liking ‘pretty things.’”
    “Yeah, well, too bad he didn’t pay more attention to his business. He was so busy liking pretty things that he let his business go down the tubes.”
    Peters ignored him and said to me, “Are you an art collector, Mrs. Fletcher?”
    “Not at all, although I do enjoy good art.” That comment led me to tell the tale of when I’d visited Italy and was witness to art theft and murder.
    “Lucky you’re alive,” Peters said.
    “Yes, I am,” I agreed. “I’d like to read what this reporter said about me.”
    Jankowski handed over the newspaper. Whoever gave the story to the paper had given the reporter a lot of detail about Wayne’s statement to Willard Corman. Had Corman, or someone from his office, been behind the leak? Or had it come from the district attorney’s office or from someone in the Chicago PD? I suppose it didn’t matter at that juncture. I was pleased that the mention of me was fleeting, just a line indicating that Wayne had returned to Chicago with “noted mystery writer Jessica Fletcher, a longtime friend of the victim’s wife, Marlise Morrison Simsbury.”
    “How did you end up with Wayne?” Peters asked.
    This time I gave a more complete explanation of how Wayne had arrived unannounced at my door and the phone call I’d received from Marlise and her attorney.
    “Must have come as a shock when the kid came up with the story that he saw Marlise shoot Jonathon.”
    “It was certainly a surprise,” I said.
    “Enjoy your omelet?” Jankowski asked.
    I looked down at it. I’d barely started it. “It was fine,” I said.
    Jankowski reached with his fork and speared an untouched portion of it, popping it into his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said as he pushed himself out of his chair and disappeared inside Nookies.
    “Tony Curso would love your story about almost being