Williams’s brows rose quizzically. “Is it a bad time?”
“No, of course not. I just wasn’t expecting you.”
“Well, don’t blame your doorman. I showed him my ID, and he let me up without a formal announcement. I hope that’s all right.”
“Yes…of course…it’s fine.” It occurred to Matthew that Special Agent Williams was still standing in the hallway. Hastily, he moved aside and gestured for him to enter. “Please, come in.”
“Thank you.” Williams stepped into the foyer. “I noticed your bodyguard hanging out outside the building. A very formidable-looking fellow. I’m sure he’ll scare off any additional, or returning, intruders.”
Matthew swallowed hard to keep down his coffee. How did Williams know about the bodyguards? And what did he mean by “returning intruders”?
“My wife hasn’t been herself since the burglary,” he tried, realizing that lying about the security guy could do nothing but hurt him. “Knowing we have some kind of protection puts her mind at ease.”
“Of course.” Williams seemed to buy the explanation. He glanced around. “Is your wife home now?”
“No. She’s at a client meeting.”
“I see. In any case, I had some business on the Upper East Side, so I took the liberty of dropping by here afterward.” He reached into the inside pocket of his sport jacket and extracted a note pad and pen. “I reviewed all the interviews I conducted regarding the provenance of Dead or Alive, and a few loose ends presented themselves. I’ll just need to ask you a couple of additional questions.”
“No problem.” Heart pounding, Matthew showed Williams into the den and gestured at the settee. “Make yourself comfortable.” Even as he extended the invitation, he could hear the unsteadiness in his own voice, feel sweat dripping down his spine. “Can I offer you anything—coffee, tea?”
“Nothing, thank you.” Williams lowered himself to the settee, perching at the very edge of the cushion. “I’ll take up only a few minutes of your time. Also, this will be much less stressful for you than coming down to the Field Office. A quick chat in your own den is a lot more pleasant than a conversation in an interviewing room. Then there’s the convenience factor. Your office and your files are just a few rooms away.”
Matthew started. “Why? Is there something in them you need to see?”
“You tell me.” Williams’s expression never changed. “According to your partners, you keep extensive files on the sale of all your paintings, including duplicate sales receipts. Yet I don
’t remember your producing any of those items at our last meeting. I assume it was an oversight. Would you mind if I took a look at that file now?”
“I gave you a stack of material on Dead or Alive when I came down to your Field Office.”
“True. But all that was related to the buy, not the sale.”
“I thought Phil showed you the financial records that…”
“He did. I’m not asking for financial records. I’m asking for the file. Or, at the very least, the duplicate receipt. You do have that, don’t you?”
Matthew was drowning, and he knew it. “I gave you all the material I had. It’s possible the receipt for that particular painting was misfiled. We’re talking about precomputer times.”
“Right.” Williams nodded, getting to his feet. “That’s why I thought the proximity to your office would help. You can show me your filing system. And maybe we can locate that missing receipt.”
Silence.
“You don’t have it, do you?” Williams asked with quiet assurance.
It was clear that Williams already knew the answer to that question. So all Matthew could do was to try the human error approach and hope it worked.
“Honestly? No. I forgot to get one from Cai Wen. I realized it right after we completed the transaction. I felt like an idiot. So I never mentioned it to my partners.”
Williams still didn’t avert his gaze. “I can understand your embarrassment. So rather than leave empty-handed, why didn’t you go back later and get the receipt? Or, if Cai Wen wasn’t available, why didn’t you ask him to mail you a duplicate, which you could have signed?”
“I guess I never thought of it.”
“I find that very hard to believe. From everything I heard from your partners, you’re a meticulous record-keeper. Unless, of course, that one time you were off your game? Maybe something happened that threw you enough to forget about the receipt and to get out of Dodge ASAP? Maybe that same something made you forget to mention any of this to me during our interview?”
That was it. The dam broke.
“I didn’t kill Cai Wen,” Matthew blurted out. “I just forgot to get the damned receipt. So if you came here to accuse me of something—”