Suspicion Hardens

Suspicion Hardens is two stories from the mind of Jack Heinz.

Missing in St. Louis

Man Ray was seventy-five years old when he was persuaded to leave Paris to be honored at the White House for his avant garde photography, sculpture, and paintings, most of which he had made in the 1920s and 1930s.

After the White House, he goes to St. Louis to present lectures and make an appearance at an art gallery. The owner of the gallery, however, is missing. Also missing are money, an emerald ring that might or might not have gone with the gallery owner, and a young Black man. St. Louis seems to specialize in disappearance.

A skilled, well-tailored detective, Alfonso Garavelli, investigates.He wonders why these disappearances coincide with Man Ray’s arrival. Has a crime been committed? Is Ray involved? Garavelli questions him. Though initially skeptical of one another, the two men develop something like mutual respect. But racial, political, and cultural imperatives of the time and place intervene and complicate matters. Ray looks for answers while dealing with the difficulty of maintaining a career in the arts, aging, and the role of fate.

The story ends in London four years later, in a small restaurant, and then in Paris, in another restaurant.

The Benevolence of Old Men

What do old spies do when they retire? There is, of course, no lack of things for them to poke their noses into, but then what do they do with the secrets they discover?

A retired CIA spymaster and a retired general who worked in Army intelligence get more than they bargained for. They investigate the death of the general’s son-in-law, a death the medical examiner attributed to an accidental fall down a short flight of stairs. The retired spies think he was murdered. The son-in-law is already dead when the story starts, but it turns out that he had been engaged in some espionage of his own.