A Butterfly in Flame (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

This building had been reconfigured so that the whole back side, the side facing the water, had been lifted, roof and all. A continual wall of glass, interspersed by structural members, had been set in between the roof’s new drip edge and the top of the original wall, so that the resulting string of studios had three feet of daylight (in the daytime) along the entire outside studio wall. The original windows, meantime, had been filled in so that there was solid wall up to seven feet. Anyone desiring to take advantage of the view would need a boost.

The remodeling of the building resulted in a string of small studios, each of which was seemingly shared by two individuals. The parade of studios ran in either direction from the central corridor that Fred had entered. The studios were separated by partitions that reached seven feet in height, but communicated only with a corridor along the front, like that in Stillton Hall. It was a sensible, no-frills arrangement that would allow the academy to make the claim that third- and fourth-year students had “private” studios. The place smelled like a fire marshal’s worst nightmare. And indeed, should a good fire get started, there wasn’t much to prevent its sweeping the entire building briskly.

Something for the report.

Except there would be no report. The report was fiction teetering on the top of a fiction that rested uneasily on yet another.

Another time, if he’d been in the mood, Fred might have paid more attention to what passed for advanced student work at Stillton Academy. But he was looking for something—although that something had not been defined. If what he was looking for was a painting, among all these student paintings, whatever it was, it should stand out.

Especially if it was an abstract. A Kline, Hoffman, or Rothko. Unlikely as Clay was to be looking for anything so recent.

As Meg Harrison had warned, the academy’s tuition and examples seemed to cleave obediently to the nineteenth century. Using his flashlight dimmed by enclosing fingers Fred did a quick check of the studios. One end of the building was dedicated to third-year students. Though studio contents varied considerably, as did the studies and finished sketches and paintings stacked against the wall, or hung there, each partitioned cubicle held two versions of the setup that had intruded on Fred’s classroom use: a nude young man, dark-skinned, half-seated on a stool, with all that hooraw around him—the blue crumpled cloth, the orange crumpled cloth, the gawd-help-us bowl of last year’s fruit.

Other efforts—Fred was moving fast—included seascapes, still lifes, many portraits of the buildings visible in Stillton, the lighthouse in varying states of weather, and many self-portraits.

“Hold on. That’s Peter Quarrier,” Fred said in one cubicle. If everything on that side of the cubicle was Peter’s, his version of the current classroom nude was as indifferent as all the rest. Unless you were really brave you’d never get past that clashing blue and orange without pulling both colors, raw, into the figure itself—presumably what Meg intended. But these students, so far, were too timid. Even though Matisse had shown them what to do a century ago.

“They’re not looking at anybody,” Fred complained. Something else for the report he wouldn’t write.

The series of Peter’s self-portraits, though, was sensitive, delicate, and strong. The one on the easel was wet, blocked out mainly in black and tan, with highlights of white that allowed for the appearance of either white or green. Maybe they could talk painting next time. Talk about Goya and Lucien Freud.

Fred kept moving, vaguely recognizing some of the students he had been with during the afternoon. Wasn’t that Emma? The last cubicle along had a window, and that was surely Emma on the floor against the wall. On the easel, her version of the standing figure was well-drawn, just shy of being contorted, with similar contortions present in the fruit and draperies. She couldn’t have seen Tamara de Lempicka, could she? And anyway, these contortions were not motivated by style, but by the way the head and the hand twist when the painter is struggling to concentrate.

The self-portrait that leaned against the wall showed a similar disciplined contortion. She’d put her hair back severely and against a greenish background, her green shirt, open at the neck, struggled to take precedence. As far as it was possible to judge in the pink glow Fred allowed to issue through his fingers, the colors in the head were red and green and yellow, like an autumn apple. The woman portrayed was ugly, as Emma was not. But in this self-portrait Emma was ugly, and it suited her.

In this cubicle, Fred searched more carefully among the trash, pinned notices, and scraps, in case some trace might lead to elucidation of an old connection between the student and Fred’s predecessor. But there was nothing of interest.

The other end of the building had to be fourth-year painters. In these cubicles each student, using almost the same materials and inspiration, was seeking to establish an identity of style or subject matter in time to claim a unique thesis that might lead him to qualify for whatever passed for graduation requirements at Stillton. It was pitiful.

No way can they do this honestly so far from a big city, with museums and real galleries showing and selling good pictures and bad ones,” Fred spluttered. “They have to jockey with collectors.” He’d moved more quickly through the fourth year spaces, because they were disappointing.

The building held no basement. Heating came from a furnace room in the center of the building, where male and female restrooms had also been provided.

“Nothing here,” Fred said, fighting to suppress the speech he was imagining, in which he raked his new colleagues over the coals for even pretending to teach painting so far from any examples of the thing itself.

“Morton” was three floors, with tiny rooms and garrets, clean, clean, clean. It was reserved for the studios, apparently, of students in the third and fourth years who believed they had gotten a good grip on reality and were devoting their talents to what the academy called two-dimensional design. So they had determined to sell their wares to commercial enterprises, and make their fortunes.

But they’d have nothing to sell. It might be that a painter can function with a nineteenth century mentality—though he won’t compete with Damien Hirst—but the student who attempts commercial art without computer literacy is doomed. It might prove an interesting education, but the 2-D program was a fraud. Illustrations, arrows, bold logos in black and white—it was all pointless. Cut-and-paste crap. Most of them couldn’t draw, either. Or if they could, they didn’t bother.

Less pointless maybe, the top floor studios had knee-walls where the crawl spaces had been preserved for storage under the roof. And access to the crawl space back behind the work table of a student whose name seemed to be Rick Murphy—according to notes and messages—was impeded by a no-nonsense padlock that took Fred at least twenty seconds to open.

Chapter Twenty-nine

A king’s ransom of dust and spiders. The space had been designed with an undernourished nineteenth-century servant girl in mind. The door hadn’t been opened since before the room was painted in pale yellow. Fred’s head and shoulders followed the flashlight in.

Odds and ends. Scraps. Shoes. A ski! Dismantled ancient cameras. Were those canteens? A riding helmet. The space might be four feet deep and ten wide. Above, the building’s roof was irregular, interrupted by dormers. It looked like the junk families leave in the attic from one generation to the next so that the next generation but one will have something to disregard.

Wooden box in a back corner about right for a milk carton. Fred, wriggling backwards on his belly, dragged it toward him, making slide marks in the dust. Papers. The box was full of them—old and dry. Letters and envelopes, a couple of bound volumes—journals apparently?—Fred’s survey was hasty. That musty smell was mice. Yes, mice had been at this. The smell was mice and old paper, with an undertow of dust and mold. This couldn’t be what Clayton Reed was looking for, but it was something. And it would take a while, as well as decent light. Fred pulled the box into the studio and closed and padlocked the door, arranging Rick Murphy’s work table and chair as they had been.

The box went into the trunk of his car. He’d driven the few blocks from Morgan Flower’s apartment, having learned by now that rain was never more than a few steps away.

Lights still burned in the administration and admissions building, and six cars were parked in the vicinity, cars of sufficient polish and lack of ancient dings to suggest trustees. Likely Liz Harmony, though clued in tardily to the fate of her immediate predecessor, had called an emergency meeting. “What do we say to the press? He’s nothing to do with us.”

This could be a dramatic moment for Fred to introduce himself. But, then again…

The lighted window of the boardroom showed heads in silhouette, only two of which he recognized—Liz Harmony; Abe Baum. Liz worked for free. Did Baum charge by the hour? Where was this money coming from?

Three students, passing, recognized Fred as a fixture that belonged, nodded, and told him, “‘Night.” He was on foot again, walking the two blocks to the classroom building “where we do dry work,” Peter Quarrier had said. “Classrooms. Like high school. The 2-D classes, small seminar kinds of things, reviews, and that class for fourth year students they ship a guy in for, called
The Business of Art,
which I can tell you is a half a joke. The first half. The half where you can’t tell where the joke is going.”

Eleven Sea Street
was the building’s only sign. True to his practice, Fred slid around to the back. However, there were lighted windows and moving shadows inside. Late night for someone. “Let’s not start an affray,” Fred advised himself. The 2-D offices were in that building also.

That left
Thirteen Sea Street,
next door, where painting and sculpture had their offices, and Milan’s shop, behind that: a small shingled cottage overlooking the ocean that, were it not dedicated to this purpose, might well be offered at well into seven figures. Cunning little place to take the evening breezes, along with the gin and tonic, come August and July.

“Might as well start small,” Fred said. “Holy smokes. He’s got his private beach and everything.”

“Figured you’d be around. The voice fell in behind him. “And don’t say you were looking for me.” The voice, a weary growl that sounded bored, was Milan’s.

Fred slipped the hardware back into his pocket. “Busy night.”

“If it isn’t raining, it’s going to rain,” Milan growled. “You carrying heat?”

“Nothing much to shoot,” Fred said. ‘If I understand you. Oh, maybe you mean the flashlight.” He took it out of his jacket pocket. “You never know.”

Milan said, “We’ll sit inside. Out here, if it isn’t raining now, it’s going to rain.”

Fred followed the man up three steps and onto the porch and watched him open the door with a pair of keys. “Otherwise the kids borrow tools and you never see them again.”

The light exposed tool benches, racks of hanging tools and equipment, pipes, wires, an electric heater, fans, horses needing repair, sawdust, a camp bed, a pair of narrow chairs at a cluttered table on which sat both hot plate and radio and the remains of a fried meal.

“The one I don’t get is Phil Oumaloff,” Fred said.

Milan said, “I’m having tea.” He found a sink under some newspapers and filled a kettle he dug out of it. “Nothing hard about Phil. He thinks he owns the place.” Milan put the kettle on the hotplate and switched it on. He’d pulled a single mug out of the sink also, into which he dropped two tea bags.

“Thing on TV. Did you see it? No. You’re snooping around. I watch at the Stillton Café, upstairs. Where they prove the people from outer space designed the pyramids.
Pharaohs from Beyond the Sun,
they called it. You believe it?”

“Not really,” Fred said. Milan hadn’t invited him to sit, but he sat in the sturdier of the two chairs. “You?”

“Do I what?”

“Believe in these guys from outer space?” Fred said.

“Hell, I don’t even believe in the Egyptians. Whole thing is a trick.”

The kettle began to groan.

“Never say die. That’s Phil Oumaloff.” Milan chuckled. It sounded like water being disturbed in a flooded grave. “Used to be Rodney Somerfest too. But looks like he did.”

“If he wasn’t dead, I never saw a better imitation,” Fred said.

“So. Who do you represent?” Milan demanded.

The kettle groaned faster, as if beginning to concentrate—to extend an inappropriate analogy that hardly suited the occasion—on matters below the waist.

“I’m independent,” Fred said.

“In that case, just as a matter of interest, what’s your offer?”

“My offer,” Fred deliberated.

“I like to take her off before she whistles,” Milan said, removing the kettle from the burner and pouring water over the tea bags.

“This whole place,” Fred said, “seems to me the whole place is about to whistle.”

Chapter Thirty

“Some names,” Fred said into the phone. “Rosa Ludlow. Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Also Albert. Could be a given name, could be a patronymic.”

Clay’s end of the line held a silence that was interrupted by the discreet chatter of the Sèvres service he affected at breakfast time. Green tea. Clay had convinced himself that green tea did not include stimulants, which he abhorred and professed to eschew.

Fred, in turn, awakened; indeed, insulted, by the weak excuse for coffee provided by the room’s electric drip pot, had worked through the contents of the box until, at seven, he’d found a passable, and portable, cup at Bee’s Beehive. Bee had dug up a ham and egg sandwich for him as well.

“This is a secure line?” Clay demanded.

“Nothing anywhere is secure. The Pentagon isn’t secure. I’ve told you that,” Fred said. “The best you can do is be faster and smarter than anyone who might be listening. Most of the time we probably are. Or talk in Navaho.”

“Levity,” Clay reproved him.

“The names?”

“The names confirm my anticipation. I presume that you are leading up to something? What have you found? Explain these names, and their context. Say as little as you can. Perhaps—no, better for you to come. I am quite free.”

“I am not free and not likely to be,” Fred said. “Though I have no scheduled classes, I am required to stay in the area. This body’s a monkey in the works.”

“Monkey
wrench
is the
mot juste,
surely.”

“An old box of papers. Letters, day books, jottings. Mice have been through it, and lived in it, and eaten a good bit, and my skimming has been pretty quick. I get those names, and some dates in the 1860s, and a general sense that one subject at issue is a trip west, maybe to as far from here as California.”

“The material may well prove to be useful, provided…in the meantime, hold on to it, Fred.”

“It is not mine,” Fred said.

“One can hold something without owning it. Many do. You mention a body, Fred. Elucidate.”

“Wild card. Rodney Somerfest. Director here very briefly. Fired last autumn. Killed, apparently. Recently. His body washed up last night. Very cinematic.”

“Indeed.” Clay hummed and tutted. A chink of Sèvres suggested a deliberative sip of the gruesome beverage. “Let us not be distracted by events,” Clay advised. “Should events threaten to impede your efforts, bypass them. Keep looking. Look everywhere. Let no one know what you are looking for.”

Fred let that one go. The obvious response would be too easy.

“One nice thing among the flotsam and jetsam,” Fred said, looking at the item he had placed on the table next to him. “The only thing in our line. A card addressed to Rosa Ludlow, whoever she is. It’s painted. A butterfly. Quite elaborate, even gorgeous in its way. The message, “Weather continues fine.” No signature. Initials. AB. I do note that the A could stand for Albert, unless Albert is a last name.”

A long pause on Clay’s end. Then, “Aah.”

“For me it rings a distant bell,” Fred said. “But I can’t find anything in my mind right now. My mind is like this mouse-eaten box of dreck. Too cluttered. A couple of hundred new people to sort through as well as two or three new people to pretend to be. Soon there’ll be cops to dodge, who want to know what brings me here and who I really am. Reporters are starting to turn up, and they’re all staying here, at the Stillton Inn. Nobody cares about Rodney Somerfest. But because the body was naked, they hope there’s sex to sell.

“Somehow there’s always a market.

“Plus, there’s going to be a manhunt now for Morgan Flower. I took my stuff out of his rooms. The cops don’t like a missing person in the vicinity of a death by violence. They leap to conclusions. Therefore my primary, purported role is about to be blown sky high. The headlines on AOL and Fox are going to jam Missy and Flower and naked Rodney together in a messy
ménage à trois
of leering speculation that lasts until the next governor gets caught with his or her pants around her or his ankles.

“In short, the proverbial shit is in mid-flight, and making a bee-line for the equally proverbial fan.”

The butterfly card had been nibbled around the edges. The painted image, though, was almost intact. Only the upper edge of the right wing was damaged.

“All of this bustle could work to our advantage,” Clay suggested. “It is certainly to our present advantage, at least, that none of the searchers have the same goals as do we.”

“Even I myself…” Fred started.

“Never mind. Keep looking. Look everywhere.”

“Is it bigger than this breadbox?” Fred asked.

The expostulation at Clayton’s end of the line, though faint, nonetheless registered as, “Tchah!”

Outside the single window of the room, the day promised to be clear and almost pleasant. However, the weather in Stillton, Massachusetts, did not keep its promises.

“How much has Parker Stillton told you about this place?” Fred demanded.

“Very little. Although we are distant cousins, by marriage, as you know, that fact does not intrude upon his native discretion. Nor on mine.”

Clay’s smirk could almost be heard from fifty miles away.

“Because it seems to me,” Fred pushed on, “and knowing nothing about the way these things are done, perhaps caring less, if you ran a gas station or convenience store as sensibly as these people are running their academy, you wouldn’t be able to see the place for the shadows of the vultures circling.”

“My fear exactly,” Clay agreed. “I may have put this off too long.”

“I know you too well to suggest that you replace your pronoun with a noun,” Fred said.

“Indeed. But I never saw an approach, a place of entry.”

“A vulture starts with the eyes, then goes in under the tail,” Fred helped.

Clay reproved him. “We may be wasting valuable time.”