Death of an Artist (13 page)

“Back up a second,” Tony said after a moment. “You heard her scream. Can you describe that scream?”

Freddi looked puzzled, shook her head. “A scream. Loud, piercing, high-pitched. Just a scream.”

“Like a scream in a horror movie? Something like that?”

“Yes. Exactly like that.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “Maybe we should wrap this up and go get those paintings. Is there a place to park at the gallery?”

“In the rear there's a loading area. The van is there, and if Dale's around, his car will be there. I'll go with you, if I may. I walked over, but I can guide you through our maze of one-way streets.”

Van paid the bill, and after they collected Tony's car, Freddi directed him to an alley behind the gallery and to the loading area, where a silver BMW convertible was parked.

“He's here,” Freddi said, her voice tinged with apprehension.

“Good,” Tony said. “Let's get started.”

They entered through the back door, to a hall with two closed doors and one open. Dale called out, “Freddi, there's something I want to…” He appeared in the open doorway and came to a stop.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at Van and Tony alternately.

“I've come to get Stef's paintings,” Van said.

“No way. I talked to my attorney this morning, and he said that contract's good as gold. She signed it and that's that.”

“Mr. Oliver,” Tony said pleasantly, “Van is going to collect those paintings, and you have two options. You can take a swing at me and I'll floor you. Or you can call the police and lodge a complaint, and while you're doing that, I'll ask Van to call the local newspaper and TV stations and get some media over here to witness a circus. Which game do you prefer? Go ahead, Van, start loading the car while Mr. Oliver and I decide what to do next. Ms. Wordling, you don't have to be part of this. Perhaps you'd like to go to your office and make yourself busy with whatever you have to do.”

“I'll help Van with the paintings,” Freddi said, and they left together for the front of the gallery.

“I'll charge all of you with larceny,” Dale yelled, but he did not move from his office door.

“Okay,” Tony said politely. “Meanwhile you should know that Ms. Markov has also consulted an attorney, and this matter is headed for the courts for a decision about the signature on that contract, which looks suspiciously like a crude forgery.”

Dale flushed and said furiously, “She signed it! I watched her sign it.”

Tony shrugged and went to the back door to open it as Van and Freddi came through carrying several paintings each. “There are a couple more,” Van said.

“We'll wait,” Tony said, keeping an eye on Dale, who had not moved. The flush had left his face, and his cheek was drawn so tight there was a visible tic.

It took only a few more minutes to be done. “Did you put the sheets over the artwork?” Tony asked Van, who nodded. She had brought them to cover the paintings on the way home. “Then we'll be on our way. It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Wordling,” he said, glanced one last time at Dale, and walked out with Van.

In the car he said, “Help me find my way out of the downtown maze, and then I'd like to stop for a quick cup of coffee, if you're up to it.”

“Am I ever!” Van directed him for the next several minutes, then asked, “Would you really have floored him?”

“Sure.”

“I wonder, why didn't he call the police?”

“I imagine his attorney told him exactly what I expect Marnie's told her, that the contract is going to take a little time to research, and it's a toss-up about the outcome.”

A few minutes later she guided him to a coffee shop she was familiar with, and seated with steaming coffee in place, Tony said, “Van, I asked a question last night that got no answer. Maybe you can give me one now. At least for yourself.”

She nodded and waited.

“I asked if you know beyond doubt that Dale killed Stef, if there's no way to prove it, can you accept that?”

“Oh.” She looked past him. “He would get away with it, wouldn't he? Handle her art, go on as if … as if he's innocent.” She lifted her coffee, took a sip. “Too hot,” she murmured. Finally she turned her gaze back to Tony. “I don't know. The thought makes me feel filthy inside. I just don't know. But, Tony, I do know this much. Marnie will never accept it. Never. She devoted her life to Stef, knowing and accepting everything about her, and she has a terrible guilt burden, feeling that she failed her in the end. She will never accept it. She would want to kill him herself. And, Tony, she's capable of it, killing him, if that's the only way to make him pay for it.”

“Is that a little harsh?” he asked gently.

She shook her head. “I heard her talking in her sleep. Indistinguishable words, the way they are so often in sleep talking, but then she said quite clearly that she wanted to kill him. It shocked her awake. I heard her say it twice, and she meant it.”

For a long time neither spoke again. Then Tony said, gazing past her at the street, “I've seen a lot of people so hurt, so angry and bitter at what they knew was an injustice, that they wanted to kill. Some of them did kill, but nothing was resolved. The hurt didn't go away, and they paid a horrific price, either through the law, or more often by what it did to them mentally, psychologically. Taking the life of another person is the ultimate expression of hopelessness and futility, and Marnie has too much to live for to admit to either. A lovely granddaughter she's immensely proud of and a delightful great-grandson she adores and will nurture to adulthood exactly the way she did you. She's not a killer, Van.”

Van felt immobilized by his words, the gentleness of his voice, which, while somehow remote, suggested pain and a deep hurt of his own.

A silence persisted until the waitress asked if they would like refills. They both shook their heads and soon afterward left the coffee shop to start the drive home.

 

10

A
LL
T
ONY
WANTED
to do that late afternoon when he let himself into his apartment was nurse a long drink and stretch out his legs in the sun on his own tiny balcony. His hip had started to throb painfully, the way it did now and then, and his knee ached as if in sympathy. He had no more than taken out a bottle of bourbon when there was a knock on his door, and opening it, he found Chief Will Comley on the doorstep.

“Evening, Chief.”

“Got a couple of minutes?” Will was wearing his mufti outfit that he called his uniform although it was not an official uniform. Mufti shirt and trousers, it was close enough.

“Sure. Come on in. Care for a beer? I'm having one.” The real drink could wait, Tony decided. Beer would do for now.

“Don't mind if I do. Off duty until later, dinner pretty soon, guess a beer wouldn't hurt anything.”

Tony nodded toward the small kitchen. “In here, and then out to the balcony and some sunshine for me.”

“Portland's a bum deal in the summer, and winter, too, far as I'm concerned,” Will said. “Too big, too noisy, too much traffic, too much bad air, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. Get spoiled, living away from it, out here where it's peaceful and quiet. Least most of the time.”

Tony didn't comment as he brought two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and opened them. Will's way of telling him he knew where Tony had been that day? “You want a glass?”

“No thanks. This is good just like it is.”

They went out to the balcony and Tony did stretch out his legs. It felt good. He made no attempt to fill the silence that lasted another minute.

“I talked to Dave a while ago,” Will said. “He tells me you're taking a little time off to look into something for Marnie. She's a fine woman, Marnie. Friend to pretty near everyone along this coast. You know, people say I tell everything I know, but that's 'cause they're not paying much attention to what I say. Won't anyone mention that I ever talk about my business, my official business, I mean. Just town gossip that's already spread around a little, or something that folks really ought to know. Surprising how much people begin to tell you if you're known to like to gab, or you tell them what they already know.”

Tony made a noncommittal grunt and waited. Will had just told him why he'd spread it around about Tony's background. Tony thought he might enjoy this elliptical way of divulging information.

“Some time ago, ten days maybe,” Will said, “Van came in to the office and asked me to open a real investigation of her mother's fall. I told her there wasn't any need. Thought she was feeling a little guilty about her boy's truck being the cause of Stef's tumble. People feel guilty like that. You must have seen it plenty of times yourself in the line of work.”

Tony nodded. “It happens.”

“Well, today I had a little talk with Marnie, too. They both think the husband killed her. That Portland fancy dude. The medics, the rescue team, they've seen plenty of falls. Every year we get two, three tumbles off cliffs, off trails, you name it, people go where they have no business being and fall off. They said it was just like the others, accidental fall. Steep stairs, that little truck, her carrying a big painting so she couldn't really see where she was stepping. No mystery about it.” Will took a long drink and set the bottle down on the floor. “But now Marnie's asked you to look into it, and it makes me wonder if there was more to it. You know? Just have to wonder.”

Will glanced briefly at Tony as if waiting for a comment, and when none came, he said, “Anyway, seeing how both Marnie and Van think it bears looking into, seems like the least I can do is offer some help, if there's anything I can do to help you. Way I figure it, the only criminal experience I've had is to happen to catch a couple of kids breaking and entering once and hand them over to the sheriff. But you've had the experience. You know what they say, once a priest always a priest. Way I figure it, once a homicide detective always a homicide detective.”

Knowing it was a long shot, against the rules, Tony said, “You could help by letting me have access to some databases.”

“Marnie mentioned that. I've been thinking it over, and if you were authorized, no problem. You know how that goes. But if I deputized you, that would make you official. I don't have any budget for more than one deputy, and the job's already filled, though. Nothing in the rules against having a deputy who isn't on the payroll, far as I can tell, anyway.”

“Deal,” Tony said. “You were on the scene the day she took the fall, weren't you? Will you tell me about it?”

Will nodded, then told about it succinctly. He had been back by the motels when he heard the sirens. He got to his car, tuned in to the police calls, and learned that the sheriff was being called, that the rescue team was on the way, and he followed the medics to the house.

“They're trained to start an intravenous drip, administer CPR, you know the emergency things they do, but there wasn't any point this time. She was dead. Twisted in a way that suggested a broken neck, she'd bled from the mouth, open eyes, no pulse. She was dead, all right, but they can't pronounce anyone dead and had to wait for Doc Cranshaw to get there to do that. One of the medics hustled the husband inside and kept him there to wait for the sheriff. The dude was on his knees by her, calling her name, like that. Broken up. He'd been afraid to try to move her he said. Marnie came and I hustled her inside her house and stayed with her until Harriet McAdams got there a minute or two later. Then I went to her back door and watched that passage between the houses. No one was going up the stairs for quite a while, and I stayed up there until they did, then I went out to go to the studio when the others did. Closed door to the house, nothing upset or out of order, and I went back down. The doctor got there about then, and the medics got her body loaded on the gurney, and that's when they found the toy truck under her. She was barefoot. I figured that stepping on the little truck must of hurt and made her jerk and fall. The sheriff found the cell phone near that planter box on the side of the door. Dead battery by then.”

“Another beer?” Tony asked.

Will nodded. “Guess I can be off duty a little longer than usual.”

Tony went inside and brought back two more beers. “Was she fully dressed, except for bare feet?”

“Yes. Red pants, some kind of pink top. Just no shoes.”

“What about the painting you said she was carrying? Where was it?”

“Looked like it went over the railing at the side of the stairs. The frame was broken and scuffed up.”

“Was anyone taking pictures?”

“One of the deputies had a digital camera, and the other one had a big camera, probably a department camera. I didn't get a copy of the pictures, didn't think to ask for any, and would have had no use for them anyway. Marnie said her lawyer plans to get a copy of the autopsy. I guess pictures will be part of it.”

“I hope so,” Tony said without a lot of hope. If they had already decided it was an accident, no one would have done a lot to preserve anything from the scene that might serve as evidence.

He had a few more questions, but there was little more for Will to tell. He had not been inside when the sheriff asked Dale anything, had not been invited to sit in, he said with a shrug. He gave Tony the names of the medics, all of whom he knew pretty well, and the sheriff and his deputies' names. “If you want to ask them questions, I'd start with one of the medics, Johnny Ashford. I don't know about the sheriff and his crew, how likely they are to tell you anything.”

From his tone and manner Tony thought it was probably not at all likely. Will finished his beer and heaved himself to his feet. “I'd better get myself off to dinner or Susan will send a search team. In the morning come by the office and I'll swear you in and we'll tackle that computer. If I knew how to do it, I'd just transfer information to your computer, but I don't. You have a laptop?”