Cutwork (32 page)

He looked down at her, surprised. “I didn’t know you were the jealous type,” he murmured. “It’s kind of sweet, if you are.”

“Of course I’m not,” she said into his shirt. But the frown didn’t go away.

“A headache, maybe?” He stroked her forehead with a forefinger.

“A little one, I guess,” she said, and pushed away from him. “Let’s go.”

“Of course.” He turned to open the door for them.

Sol’s Deli was a few steps away and they went in silence. Again he held the door and they went in ahead. It was nearly two, so there were no customers lined up at the slant-fronted counter.

Inside, there were two small, marble-topped tables with wire-backed chairs. The one nearer the door was occupied by a man in a suit and a police officer in uniform.

“Hi, Mike,” said Betsy, nodding as she went past. Shelly didn’t say anything; Ian nodded briefly.

Malloy acknowledged them with a little wave and went back to his sandwich, a thick mix of cheeses and processed meats. The uniformed cop had a meatball sandwich.

Betsy ordered a salad, as it was easier to talk around that. Shelly ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup.

“I’ll have your turkey sandwich, extra meat, and extra mayo,” said Ian. He glanced at Shelly and added, “No onion,” making it sound as if that were because he planned to be making mad, passionate love to her within the hour. Shelly’s smile was a bit pained, and again he frowned. “You
are
upset about something,” he said.

“No, no,” she insisted, and caressed his hand. Her look was tender, and he leaned forward to kiss her at her hairline. Her eyes closed.

Betsy wished with all her heart this was just a simple lunch. But it wasn’t, and what she knew must be shared, despite the pain. But not just yet. She determinedly stuck to trivialities until their food came.

When it did, the tension rose in her breast again, and blocked any appetite. She moved her salad around in its bowl and said, “Ian, tell me how you came to do those amazing metal sculptures that are so different from the big beams you used to do,” she said.

“Have you seen them?” he asked, surprised.

“I went to your website. That one of the angry child is very touching.”

He swelled just a little. “Thank you.” He took a bite of his sandwich and thought while he chewed, then swallowed and said, “It’s not easy to explain. I had some hunks and strips of metal in my studio, something I rescued from Sylvester Osman’s studio.”

“He’s the artist you helped with a mortgage,” said Betsy, with a little nod. “I thought you said all you rescued from his studio was an oxyacetylene welder.”

“That’s all that was in its original state,” he said. “A little smoky, but a good scrubbing cleaned it off, and there was no other damage. This metal had been in the heart of the fire, and it changed the surface somehow.”

“Put a patina on it,” said Betsy. She smiled. “See how quickly I pick up the terminology?”

He smiled back. “Yes. He’d apparently been planning to make something using the metal, from the way he’d cut it up. But any plans or models he’d made were destroyed in the fire.”

“You’re a liar, Mr. Masterson,” said Betsy quietly.

“I am?” His mouth stayed open, his bushy eyebrows rose, but his eyelids dropped to half mast.

She nodded and said, “I think they weren’t just random strips of metal.”

The eyebrows came down and met in a hairy frown. He said, “Yes, they were. I took them home, because the patina on them interested me. And they were mine now. Whatever I could find in the ashes was mine, because of the mortgage. The welder didn’t pay half what Osman owed me—but as it turned out, the plates did. Because I got to fooling around with them and came up with the idea of those figures. It was as if—as if . . .” He stopped, looking from her to Shelly and back again. “Is that’s what’s wrong here?”

“Yes. You’re not only a liar, Mr. Masterson, you’re a thief. And something worse than that.”

Shelly began to cry. “Oh, Ian, tell her it isn’t true!”

“What isn’t true? I don’t understand, sweetheart!” But he betrayed himself by looking over at the other table. Mike and the police officer had put down their food and were paying close attention. Ian twisted around and saw that the counterman had vanished into the back. Alarmed now, he looked at Betsy. “What is this?”

“I am sorry, Ian. I wanted for Shelly’s sake for this not to happen, but you’re going to be arrested for the murder of Rob McFey.”

He produced a patently false grin. “I thought we agreed that the viatical I bought from him wasn’t any kind of a motive. Anyhow I wasn’t in the park on Sunday, I told you that.”

“You said you were there on Saturday,” said Betsy, reaching into her purse. “And perhaps you were. But you were there Sunday, too. Look at this.” She pulled out a photocopy of a sketch, a reduced version of the caricaturist’s sketch given to Mike Malloy. Mike had brought it to her on his way to Sol’s Deli. She unfolded it now and handed it to Ian. He looked it over and shrugged. “What?”

“It was done on Sunday—see the raindrops? It didn’t rain on Saturday.” They were indicated on the sketch by broken diagonal lines. “And in the bandshell, back row, second from the left.”

Shelly leaned sideways for a look. She took a quick breath, but didn’t say anything. The figure in back, second from the left, was a hippie, a tall, stocky man whose long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Mostly hidden by the woman in front of him was a hand with a bandage on it. Ian put his bandaged hand into his lap.

“That’s why there were no fingerprints on the knife,” said Betsy, noting the movement.

Ian bit his bottom lip. “I didn’t do it,” he said in a low voice. He looked at Shelly. “I really didn’t do it,” he repeated.

Shelly said, “I don’t think I believe you.”

“Why not? This is ridiculous! Why would I kill Robbie? She doesn’t know what she’s saying! How can she? She’s not even a private eye, much less a cop!”

Betsy said, “But I do know what I’m saying. I don’t think you went there with any intention of killing him, Ian. But you did—and I’m sure it wasn’t necessary; I can’t believe he really would have sent the little caricature of you.”

Ian widened his eyes. “What caricature, the one of me setting my peacock tail on fire?” He snorted.

“No, this one.” Betsy went into her purse again and this time came out with one of Rob McFey’s little basswood animals. It was of the robber raccoon with the sack hanging down his back.

Ian stared at it. “Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“Skye had it, and showed it to Shelly. This is the raccoon you were so worried that Shelly had seen the first time you came into my shop, isn’t it? I woke up this morning with a curious notion, and I phoned Deb Hart to ask about the slides Rob sent of his work. She still has them, and one of them includes this one. I’d seen it during the jury process, and Deb showed it to me again a couple of days ago. You see, it’s not a burglar’s cudgel sticking out of the raccoon’s sack, it’s a little arm with a fist at the end of it. We thought it was just a raccoon. They’re a nuisance around here, they get into garbage cans and bird feeders and steal things off decks and patios. But all the other figures are people Rob knows. The lazy plumber possum, the weasel lawyer. So who was the raccoon thief? And why was there a fist sticking out of his sack of boodle?”

Ian did not answer. He was still staring at it, his interest fading into depression.

Betsy touched the tiny fist gently. “It’s the arm of an angry child, from your metal sculpture. And here, look at the way he cut into the tail for the black bands, kind of emphasizing them. Like the way you do your hair, with three scrunchies.”

“Well, so what? Yes, he made that, and yes, he said it was me, but it was a joke, because I got the metal I made it from out of the Osman fire. I didn’t murder Robbie. That kid did it, they’ve got his fingerprints and everything.”

“They found his fingerprints on the cash box, but not on the knife. There are no fingerprints at all on the knife.”

“Yes, so see? You can’t prove it was me.”

“Someone told me he thinks maybe the murderer wore gloves. But I don’t think he needed gloves, not when his hand was already bandaged.”

Ian sighed and shook his head. “You’re so wrong about this.”

Shelly said, “Did you steal the little girl?”

He looked up at her, frowning. “I told you, I took the steel from the burned-down house. Robbie called it stealing, but it wasn’t. They were mine, I had a mortgage.”

“Yes,” said Betsy. “But the steel plates were already assembled into that little girl. What about the crying woman and shouting man? Did you assemble
any
of those first pieces you sent to your gallery in Tucson? Or were they all stolen?”

“I tell you, I didn’t steal them! I found the metal in the ashes of his place. Everything I found was mine.”

Betsy nodded. “That’s true. You could have kept the sculptures, or you could have sold them as the work of Sylvester Osman. But you said they were your work, that you were the artist who made them. And while the art world will forgive an artist anything else, they won’t forgive that. You knew that. Rob McFey knew that.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, but without strength. He looked at the raccoon, then at Shelly. “How come Skye had this piece?” he asked, trying for normalcy.

“You let her keep Coyne’s caricature but you took the peacock from her. And you told her you were going to sell everything. She loved you, Ian, and she thought the raccoon was funny. She wanted it for herself—see how the face on this one sort of looks like you? Her father didn’t explain the significance of it to her, that it was pointing to you as a thief of another artist’s work.”

Ian sat silent for a long while. Shelly took a breath to say something more, but Betsy put a hand on her knee under the table, and she kept still. Finally, Ian said in a low voice, “He told me he was going to send it to the Marvin. They had a big photograph of my angry child on the wall, they would have seen that raccoon and asked me about it. I can’t duplicate Osman’s work, though I tried. I even burned my studio down to get that patina. That worked, all right, but Osman’s stuff isn’t just the patina. He brought a passion to those pieces I can’t duplicate. But you see, I have the name now, I have the fame, I could go back to doing my own work and they’d see I was just as good an artist as Osman. There was no harm done. See?” He turned to Shelly and repeated in a confident voice, “There was no harm done.”

“Oh, Ian,” murmured Shelly, and he immediately looked as bleak and hollow as his claim.

“How did Rob find out?” asked Betsy.

Ian grinned painfully. “I told him. We went out drinking to celebrate that damn lion and got really drunk. I wasn’t sure the next day what I’d said, and I sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t remember any of it. But then he produced that thieving raccoon. I laughed at it and said what’s that about, and he said it was in memory of Osman, the poor bastard. I wouldn’t have minded him keeping it around or even showing it to people who could never guess, but he said he was going to send it to Santa Fe with the other samples of his work. It was me that got him a chance at Marvin Gardens, and he was going to pay me back by ruining me. I came to the fair on Saturday and asked him not to send it, and he shrugged me off, saying he’d think about it. He’d been drinking and I thought it was the liquor talking. But he wasn’t like the rest of us, he could drink all day and still be sharp. So I came back early Sunday morning and I told him, dammit, I couldn’t have him sending it and I reached for it, but he grabbed it before I could. I was mad and scared and swung at him. He swung at me—he had that knife in his hand, and I got it away from him and—and I don’t know exactly what happened. Next thing I knew he was on the ground and blood was pouring out of him. I ran out the back of the booth. I was wearing a dark brown shirt and pants and already wet from the rain so no one could see the blood on me. But this woman started looking at me funny, so I ducked into the band shell until she went away. I was halfway to my car when I realized I had the piece in my hand, which was a good thing, because I sure as hell wasn’t going back for it. I burned it in my fireplace at home. Then damn it all, Skye told me he makes practice pieces even of those little things, and I was sick thinking there were other raccoons. We went to his apartment and I searched and searched and managed to get hold of a broken practice piece of it without Skye seeing me, and I thought I had everything.”

He looked at Shelly, but couldn’t bear her regard, so he looked at Betsy. “Now what? I assume those cops are over there for a reason.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Betsy. “You—you aren’t going to make a fuss, are you?”

“In front of the one woman whose opinion I value above everything? No.” He looked again at Shelly. “I am more ashamed of myself right now than I was the night after I killed Robbie, and that was a night in hell, I assure you.”

“I suppose it must have been.”

“Please don’t turn your back on me.”

“I . . . I don’t know what I feel right now.”

Mike Malloy’s hand fell on Ian’s shoulder, startling him. “I’m going to ask you to come with me now, Mr. Masterson,” Malloy said. “You are under arrest for the murder of Robert McFey. You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say will be written down and may be produced against you in a court of law. You have a right to consult with an attorney before any questioning. If you want an attorney but can’t afford one . . .” Ian shifted a bit at that and almost smiled. Malloy continued, “One will be provided for you at no cost. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

“Yes, I do.”

Mike lifted him to his feet by one arm, and the uniformed officer produced the handcuffs Mike used to fasten Ian’s hands behind his back.

“Please . . .” Ian said to Shelly, but she turned her face away, and he, head down, went out the door with Mike and the uniform.