CHAPTER FOUR
They brought the young woman inside and found her a stool near the worktable.
She had gotten herself mostly under control by the time she sat down, though her eyes were red and her voice, when she spoke, suggested that she had been doing this exact same kind of crying for most of the day.
Vic had asked the woman’s name, but the woman was too busy catching her breath to answer properly.
Pruitt looked to both of them with a small frown. "This is Stasi Weaver,” she said. “She's one of Nadia's studio assistants. We spoke during the initial canvass." She looked back at Stasi and gave a smile that was meant to be comforting. "These are Special Agents Sterling and Stone, with the FBI."
Stasi nodded, pressing the back of her wrist briefly to one eye. "I knew the tape was there and I shouldn’t be here, but…but…” She stopped, making sure she wasn’t going to start weeping again. “But I just needed to be somewhere she had been, and this was the only place I could think of."
"It's all right," Vic said. She had pulled a stool over and was sitting at an angle to Stasi, not directly across from her. "How long did you work with Nadia?"
"For about two years. I came in twice a week, sometimes three times if she had a show coming up." Stasi looked around the studio, at the canvases on the walls, at the organized shelves. "I stretched canvases, cleaned up, helped her with framing and delivery logistics. Whatever she needed."
"And the relationship was good?” Miles said.
"It was the best job I've ever had." She said it simply, without embellishment.
"Nadia was incredibly generous. Not just with pay, but with her time.
She'd talk to me about the work, about why she made the choices she made, what she was trying to do with a piece.
I'm a painter too, not at her level, but she never made me feel like I wasn't." She stopped and looked at her hands for a moment.
Mies noticed a small smear of royal blue paint on the side of her index finger.
"I don't know how else to describe her."
Miles let that settle before moving on. "Did she ever mention anyone she was having trouble with? Professionally or personally?"
Stasi thought about it and ended up shrugging. "The divorce was a while ago, and she didn't talk about her ex much. Not negatively." She paused. "There were a couple of things on the professional side of her life that I know bothered her, though."
"Tell us about those," Vic said.
"Garrett Finch was the bigger thing." Stasi's expression shifted, becoming less careful.
"He's another local painter who has been around a while.
Last spring, Nadia had a series that did really well.
She sold out both showings and got some regional press.
Garrett started telling people she had stolen his color palette. "
“That’s an actual thing in the art world?” Miles asked.
“Yes, it is.”
"Stolen it how?"
"He said she had studied his work closely enough to reverse-engineer how he mixed his colors, and that her series was essentially a copy of his approach.
He made a pretty big deal out of it. He posted a lot about it on social media and talked about it at openings.
" Stasi looked at the back wall for a moment, a brief look of anger coming to her face.
"Nadia told me it was completely baseless, and I believed her.
If you put the two bodies of work next to each other, they're not that similar at all.
And anyone who really has an eye for art and details could see that. But Garrett would not let it go."
"Did it go anywhere formally?" Vic asked. "Was there any legal action?"
"No. He threatened it but nothing came of it. I think his actual claim was too thin to support a lawsuit. But I think the thing that made it more unpleasant than it might have been otherwise is that Garrett has this thing about chemistry. I think it’s the only reason anyone took the allegations seriously.
He studied chemistry at some point before he became a painter full-time, and he would talk about it constantly.
His whole argument was that he could prove she had copied him because he understood pigment chemistry at a technical level and could analyze both palettes. He made it sound very scientific."
Miles glanced at Vic without turning his head fully toward her. She had caught it, too. The chemistry background was very interesting indeed.
"How much contact did he have with this studio?" Miles asked.
"He had been here a few times, back before the plagiarism thing,” Stasi said.
“They used to be friendly, believe it or not.
He hasn't been here since all of that blew up, as far as I know.
" She pulled at the strap of her messenger bag, as if needing something to do to keep her hands busy.
"But he knows this place. He knows how she worked. "
"You said there were a few things on the professional side," Vic said. "What was the other one?"
"Sylvia Drummond. She owns the Drummond Gallery over on Bull Street, and she’s a pretty big deal.
Nadia had been showing there for about three years, and she was supposed to be in a major group show this fall—a show that had already attracted international interest from galleries in Barcelona and Paris.
But there was a contract dispute a few months back.
Nadia felt Sylvia had changed the commission terms after they'd already agreed on them verbally, and she wasn't willing to accept the new terms. Sylvia pulled her from the show. "
"How did Nadia take that?" Miles asked.
"She was angry about it, but she was also matter of fact.
She said Sylvia had done something dishonest and she wasn't going to reward it.
" Stasi looked down at the floor, at the space where Nadia had died, and then looked away from it.
"Sylvia, on the other hand, was furious.
She'd already announced the show with Nadia's name attached and removing her was embarrassing.
She said some things publicly that were not kind. "
"What kind of things?" Vic said.
"That Nadia had become difficult to work with.
That she was overvaluing her own reputation and had become a drama queen.
It was the kind of character attack you do when you can't make a legitimate argument.
" Stasi said it flatly. "Most people in the local art community sided with Nadia, which probably made it worse for Sylvia. "
"Did Drummond have access to the studio?" Miles asked.
"She had a key, for logistics purposes. Shows, pickups, that kind of thing. I don't know if Nadia ever got it back from her after the dispute."
Miles made a mental note of that and moved on.
They spent another ten minutes with Stasi, covering ground that Pruitt had already mapped in her initial interview, and nothing new surfaced.
When they had what they needed, Vic thanked her and walked her to the door.
Stasi paused at the threshold, looked back at the studio for a moment, and then went out into the afternoon.
Pruitt came back inside and the three of them sat around the same worktable where they’d spoken to Stasi.
"Finch is the more interesting name, if you want my opinion," Pruitt said. "I spoke with him briefly during the initial investigation, before we had the ME's confirmation. He was cooperative but said he barely knew Nadia anymore. Not once did he mention the plagiarism dispute."
"What did you make of him?" Miles asked.
"Smart. Controlled. He chose his words carefully, which is not unusual when someone knows they're talking to a detective. But there was a quality to it that registered. I also found it a little odd that he didn't ask how she died."
Miles looked at her. "He asked nothing at all about it?"
"Not once. He expressed condolences in a general way and answered my questions directly. But he never asked what happened to her."
"And Drummond?" Vic said.
"I haven't spoken with her yet. She wasn't on my initial list because the dispute was flagged as a professional matter and I was still working an accidental death angle at that point." Pruitt folded her arms across her chest. "Now that it's homicide, she moves up."
"The key situation is worth following up on," Miles said. "If Drummond still has a key to this studio and access to Nadia's professional schedule, that's not nothing."
"Agreed," Pruitt said. "I can run down both of them tomorrow. Or today, if you want to move on it."
Miles looked at the shelves, at the bagged solvent container that Pruitt had logged into evidence.
He thought about the chemistry involved, the specificity of it, the knowledge required to identify the right compound and the right concentration and the right delivery mechanism.
You could have a grievance against a painter.
You could have access to her studio. But to do what had been done to Nadia Ostroff, you needed to know what hexavalent chromium did to the body and how to introduce it into an environment without being obvious about it.
"Finch first," he said. "The chemistry background puts him ahead of Drummond."
"I'll set it up," Pruitt said.
Vic looked at Miles, scrutinizing him. "You don't seem convinced of something. What is it?"
"I'm not sure, really. Finch has the grievance, the access history, and apparently a chemistry background he was using to threaten Nadia professionally." He looked at the bagged container again and said, "It fits together. That's exactly what's bothering me. It almost feels too easy.”
Vic didn't argue with that. She knew the pattern of these killers and these cases as well as he did. "Well, maybe this will be the case where we get a break…where the first clear sign is the only sign we need.”
"Yeah, maybe," Miles said, though he already didn’t buy it. In fact, this first step felt so easy to him that he couldn’t help but wonder if they were purposefully being led astray.