A Little Learning (7 page)

“Do you know anyone at the Celosia hospital? Can you call in a favor?”

He stroked his little chin. “I might.”

“Her name was Amelia Lever.”

“Let me see what I can do. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks, Milton.”

“My pleasure, and again, congratulations.” He held my hand a little longer than I liked, but I felt sorry for him and didn’t pull away. “Jerry, you’re a lucky man.”

“Yes, I am, thanks.”

“You take care of her. Madeline, I’ll call as soon as I have any information.”

“Okay,” Jerry said as we walked back to our car. “I’m looking for a big gold watch with an ‘S’ on it.”

“Any idea where to find one?”

“Foster’s Pawnshop.”

I might have known Jerry would be familiar with the finer pawnshops of Parkland. Foster’s was not what I expected. Instead of a dingy hole in a back alley, the shop was a gleaming modern building with clean floors and an organized array of appliances, musical instruments, and computers. Jerry headed to the back to the glass shelves filled with jewelry. A small gnarled man looked up from the cash register.

“Afternoon, Jerry.”

“Bilby, this is my wife, Madeline. Mac, this is Bilby Foster.”

I shook hands with the little man, who grinned, showing several gold teeth. “Nice to meet you.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “Jerry, have you come to buy this lovely lady a nice trinket?”

“I’m looking for a gold pocket watch, specifically one with an ‘S’ on it.”

Foster frowned and pulled out a tray of watches. “Don’t think I’ve got one like that. Have a look. You might see something else you like.”

There were plain gold watches, plain silver watches, watches decorated with flowers and vines, watches with pictures of horses or locomotives, and one watch that played a tune when opened.

“I need one with an ‘S,’” Jerry said. “Keep an eye out for one, will you?”

“All right. Frankie was asking about you the other day. Wanted to know if you were still interested in what he talked to you about several months ago.”

“No, I’m out of that.”

Foster looked surprised. “Really? Thought with you wanting a special kind of watch you might be running a little fob off game.”

“The watch is for something else.”

“Oh.” He glanced at me and then winked and made a little zipping motion by his mouth. “Gotcha.”

We got back into the car. “Fob off game?” I asked.

“Do you really want to know?” Jerry said.

“Not if you’re finished with it.”

“I am, I promise.”

“You just want to fool Flossie Mae and Sylvie.”

“I just want to make them happy. There’s a difference. Anywhere else you need to go?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t we stop by the Weyland Gallery and see where they’re going to hang your pictures?”

I had to admit I was curious. “I suppose we could have a look.”

The Weyland Gallery was in the Parkland Museum of Art, about twenty minutes from the pawnshop. A young woman at the front desk directed us to the gallery. We walked along quiet halls until we reached the current exhibit, a collection of odd sculptures made of pipes and fuzzy blue circles mounted on twisted coat hangers.

“If this were a contest, I think you’d win,” Jerry said.

A severe-looking woman in black, her silver hair skinned back in a tight bun, overheard him and turned to scowl.

“This is a fine example of Late Twentieth Century mood pieces. The artist is one of our brightest young people working in three dimensions.”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s very dynamic.”

This seemed to appease her. “Good choice of words.” She held out a thin hand. “I’m Letticia Booth, curator of the Weyland Gallery.”

Oh, great. One woman I do not want to offend. “I’m Madeline Maclin Fairweather, and this is my husband, Jerry.”

“Fairweather, Fairweather, why do I know that name?”

“I’m entering your New Artists Show.”

Her smile made her look more approachable. “Oh, yes. Your ‘Blue Moon Garden’ is quite a nice piece of modern impressionism. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your work.”

“Thank you. We hadn’t been in the Weyland Gallery and thought we’d look around.”

She gestured toward a wall filled with paintings. “Allow me.”

We followed Letticia Booth as she went from room to room, giving us a brief overview of the collection.

“Now here we have some neo-classical non structured landscapes, and here are the works of Joachim Handlemeyer, a protégé of Van Dyke, who never got the recognition he deserved. And here are our French Impressionists. I believe you’ll be interested in those.”

As I looked at the beautiful paintings, I thought, yes, that’s the way to suggest the light on leaves. That’s the way to show movement in the grass. I’d almost forgotten how inspiring the classic works could be. I knew immediately how I could improve my landscapes. I wanted more than ever to be a part of this.

“And in the next room we have some lovely examples of trompe-l’oeil,” Letticia Booth said. “We’re especially proud of the Marquesa still life.” She chatted on until we were back to the pipes and circles.

“Thank you so much,” I said.

“My pleasure. Am I to understand that you work full-time as an artist?”

“Actually, I have my own agency in Celosia, Madeline Maclin Investigations.”

“I see. And what sort of things do you investigate?”

“Missing persons, lost objects, and I help with murder investigations.”

Letticia Booth looked taken aback. “Really? But you want a career in art, as well?”

Did I want a career in art as well as a career as a private investigator? Why not? Why couldn’t I have both? I gave Jerry a smile. “Yes,” I said, and for the first time, I meant it.

“Well, that’s quite interesting.” She wore a watch on a long silver chain. She glanced at it. “I have an opening in my schedule. Come to my office. I’d like to hear more about this.”

Letticia Booth’s office was a vast spacious room decorated in plum and gray with framed black and white photographs of flowers on the walls. Spaced in front of the window were three short Greek columns, each one with a sculpture or vase or piece of modern art placed on top. The view from the window showed a garden with Japanese maples just beginning to turn red.

“Please have a seat,” she said. “May I offer you some tea?”

“No, thank you,” I said. The plum-colored chairs in front of her desk were oddly shaped but very comfortable.

“I really enjoy getting to know our new artists. Tell me how you became involved with investigating crimes.”

“I used to work at an agency here in Parkland, but I decided to leave and start an agency of my own.” I explained that while Jerry and I were in Celosia to check on a house he’d inherited, I was hired to investigate sabotage at the Miss Celosia Pageant, and in the course of that investigation, found one of the contestants dead backstage.

“I was able to find out who killed her. And then a director wanted to use the house for his horror movie. Someone poisoned him, and I discovered his murderer, as well.”

“Very interesting. Do you feel your talents are put to their best use on murder investigations?”

“I don’t always have cases like that. I like finding lost articles, missing relatives, family heirlooms.” When I’m not being challenged by murder mysteries, I wanted to add.

“If your art work were to become popular, would you have the time to spend on it?”

“Fortunately, the murder cases are few.”

“Well, you’re a very attractive young woman. Some of the artists I’ve met, quite frankly, look as though they’ve been sleeping in Dumpsters. This could be a good story for the museum, a good way for the show to get more positive publicity. I’d like you to meet our liaison to the
Parkland Herald
.”

For a horrible moment, I thought she was going to say, “Chance Baseford,” the critic who’d shredded my first exhibit. But she said, “Valerie Banner. May I call her and set up an interview?”

A favorable showing at the gallery and a positive interview in the paper would go a long way toward improving my reputation as an artist. “Yes, thank you,” I said.

“I believe we have your contact information. I’ll have her call you.”

As we left the museum, Jerry took my arm in his. “I feel a Twenty-First Century mood coming on,” he said.

“A good mood?”

“Oh, yes. You accomplished quite a lot in that short visit. If Valerie Banner writes a decent story, you might even get more cases.”

“Just so she doesn’t write something like, ‘Murder is an Art,’ or ‘A Brush With Death.’”

“Or ‘Color Me Dead.’”

***

We entertained ourselves with more headlines as we drove back to Celosia and home.

Home. Yes, when I thought of the house, I thought of it as home, a home slowly emerging from years of neglect to become a beautiful, inviting place, set in a field of waving grass and wildflowers, and surrounded by ancient oak trees. Before moving here, I’d lived in a small apartment in Parkland, and before that, Bill and I had a large, ugly split-level house. The only other home I’d had was my mother’s house with its cold black and white décor and uncomfortable furniture. I never wanted to go back to any of those places.

I know Jerry loves the house, I thought, but this house means something to me, too. I love our blue living room. I love our kitchen at the back with the old fashioned table and chairs. I love my upstairs studio with its wonderful light and the front porch where Jerry and I watch the sunsets.

The white van parked under one of the trees meant Nell Brenner, our handywoman, was here. While Jerry went into the kitchen in search of a snack, I found Nell upstairs replacing the front of a new air conditioning unit.

“Heard there was a little commotion over at the school,” she said.

It no longer startles me that Nell knows everything that happens in town, sometimes before it happens. “Amelia Lever had a heart attack.”

Nell wiped her large hands on her paint splattered overalls. “Passed on, did she?”

“Yes, and I’m not so sure it was of natural causes.”

She reached into her toolbox for her screwdriver. She gave me a glance from her small shrewd blue eyes. “You on the case?”

“Not exactly.”

She tightened the screws that held on the front panel. “Well, I can tell you that Amelia Lever was a hateful woman, and I’m a little surprised someone hasn’t killed her before now.”

“Hateful in general, or did something make her hateful?”

“Can’t figure it. She married George Lever, had the two boys, taught school forever. Must have been something in her childhood. Why are you interested?”

Why was I interested? Well, for one thing, the idea of a murder happening at Austin and Denisha’s elementary school made me very uncomfortable. “She was wearing a nicotine patch and smoking at the same time.”

“Probably just forgot—or do you think somebody saw her light up and smacked a patch on her?” Nell chuckled. “I’d like to see the man or woman brave enough to smack Amelia Lever.”

“Well, then, what can you tell me about Victoria Satterfield?”

Nell straightened and turned on the unit. Cool air blew the wisps of blond hair sticking out from under her baseball cap. “Oh, yeah, Tori Dewey. Nice girl. Kinda shy.”

“She’s built herself a fort out of scrapbooks and old newspapers.”

“That husband of hers was no good. She probably needed some kind of protection. Took to you, did she?”

“We have art in common.”

“Poor girl didn’t have much of anything. Not a bad dancer as I hear it. She deserved a little bit of the spotlight. Too bad Aaron Satterfield didn’t feel the same way.”

“Then why did he marry her?”

She readjusted the fan level to turn back the arctic blast. “Basically to spite his family. They’d picked out some rich girl from up north. He wasn’t going to do what they said. A stubborn boy, real arrogant.”

“What can you tell me about Nathan Fenton?”

“Nathan Fenton’s all right. He and Fiona Kittering oughta make a good couple. Both of them dull as dirt.”

“What about this Camp Lakenwood?”

Nell’s eyes gleamed the same way Nathan’s had gleamed when he talked about the camp. “I have some real happy memories about that place. Went there every summer. Learned all kinds of crafts. Fixed everything I could get my hands on.”

I imagined a smaller version of Nell chopping down trees and building log cabins.

“So this camp idea is legitimate?”

“If he wants to fix it up, I say more power to him.”

“Does it need a lot of repair?”

“Well, it hasn’t been open for several years now. I’d say it would take some serious money to set it right.”

“Fiona tells me Fenton’s Uncle Elijah was not nice to know.”

“He was a right ornery old cuss.” She picked up her toolbox and pulled her hat firmly down. “So now you tell me how things are with you and junior. He miss that wild life of his?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Still holds them séances, doesn’t he?”

“Just for Mrs. Snyder and Sylvie.”

“Any more of his idiot friends come to visit?”

“You’d know it if they were here.”

Her little eyes twinkled. “Why, yes, I would. Cool enough for you?”

“Yes, it feels great.”

She reached over and turned the air conditioner down. “Oughta work fine now.”

Jerry was sitting on the front porch eating out of a large bag of Cheetos. Nell gave him a wave as she went down the porch steps to her van. In a few minutes, the van chugged down the driveway.

“Where are the kids?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They’re usually here by now. It wasn’t their teacher who died, was it?”

“No, they’re in Mrs. Forrest’s class.”

He tipped the bag my way. I shook my head. He took another handful. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’m going to talk to as many teachers as I can tonight. Maybe I can have a look in Amelia’s classroom.” I gazed across the fields that surrounded our house. Crickets were cheeping. The September sun was golden on the tall grass and yellow wildflowers. Some milkweed tuffs had caught in a spider web. I’d lived all my young life in hotel rooms and dance studios and practice rooms, in auditoriums, ball rooms, and in the dark back stages of who knows how many theaters, while all this time, nature was going on. I’d almost missed it.