Death of an Artist (16 page)

“It's the beach Stef painted, isn't it?” Tony said, waving toward the tide pools, and Josh rushing from one to another, just like the memory child, the spectral child of the painting.

Van nodded, made her way past him, and chose a rock at the end of the cliff, next to the shore, and sat down. “Marnie used to bring me here, and before that she brought Stef. Now it's my turn with Josh. Our little secret beach, that's what we used to call it. We made up stories about it. Pirates landing at night to bury treasure, shipwrecks with survivors for us to rescue.”

“Spies sneaking ashore?”

“Oh my, yes. And sea monsters. Mermaids with magic lutes. I had no idea what a lute was, but the mermaids had them anyway.” She laughed softly. “Our secret beach, like a secret garden where imagination can take off.”

“Mom! Come on! Look!” Josh yelled, waving his hands.

“Speaking of monsters,” Van said, smiling. She got up and ran lightly on the packed sand to where Josh was by a newly exposed tide pool. They both knelt by it.

Tony watched them for several minutes, mother and child sunlit by the lowering sun, their black hair shining, both of them beautiful. Then he was watching only Van, her grace, her beautiful body, the way she gently held a crab, then put it back in the water. She laughed with Josh at something and rose from her kneeling position. With her head back slightly, her slender body a silhouette against the bright sky, she could have been posed as an idealized woman, strong, self-confident, utterly feminine, and beautiful.

Sitting in the car, listening to Van's voice as she talked about her childhood, about Stef and Marnie, about school, had stirred something in him, he realized. Now, seeing her at play with her child, hair shining in the lowering sunlight, made him realize how much he had been thinking of her, how much he had noticed and recalled over and over.

Abruptly he rose, and after one last look, he began to pick his way back up the trail to the road above. “Forget it,” he told himself sharply. He also told himself that the ache somewhere deep within him was hunger. He'd had no dinner and it was getting late.

*   *   *

M
ARNIE
HAD
WAITED
until after dinner to tell Van about her phone conversation with Freddi that afternoon. When Van and Josh came in from the little beach, he had to get in the tub immediately, Van had said, and finally with Josh in bed, Tipper there with him, Marnie and Van sat with their coffee.

“Freddi will send her two young men over tomorrow,” Marnie said. “I told her they might as well stay here in the front house. They might not find anything else on such short notice. And it will be convenient for all of us. She vouches for them absolutely, and they'll bring sleeping bags. They've both done work for her, and one of them at least is awestruck, according to her, by the prospect of handling Stef's work in any way.”

“Sounds good,” Van said. “I'll lead them over to the place I rented and let them go at it.”

“She said something else quite interesting. A man named Joe Werner, the dot-com millionaire, called her today and said he'd like a sneak preview of the retrospective going up next month. He'd like a chance to pick out the three that he'll want and ensure that no one else bids on them.”

Van was mystified. “What does that mean?”

“That's what I said. It appears that he told Dale that he wanted three,
Feathers and Ferns
definitely, and two to be decided when he has a chance to see the other recent paintings. One is for the corporate offices, one for a home he's building, and one for a downtown-Seattle condo. Freddi knew nothing about it until he called. Mr. Werner told Freddi that he was willing to go to thirty thousand for the three, two not yet chosen.”

“Good God! Stef wouldn't have agreed to such a deal! Her recent work? No way!”

“Of course she wouldn't,” Marnie said quietly. “She wasn't given the chance to turn it down.”

“What did Freddi tell him?”

“She stalled. Told him that we had to have an inventory done, arrange for insurance, just the truth I guess. Then she called me. You were out collecting Josh when she called here.”

Van did the numbers in her head. Seventy-five hundred was what Dale would have made as agent, plus whatever his share of the gallery proceeds would have been. But you don't kill someone for that kind of money, she told herself. Slowly she said, “It wasn't the immediate money, was it? He saw the door opening, other sales following.”

Marnie nodded.

His story, if questioned about it, would be that Stef had agreed. He had said as much to Freddi on the phone that day, Van remembered. He had said she was coming around, he had sounded pleased and happy. Who could disprove it? His word against what Van and Marnie knew to be the truth. It would appear to be just a family feud over control of the art, control of money, greed. Van bit her lip and did not make that argument to Marnie, who probably had come to the same conclusion already without any prompt.

Van jumped up and paced through the room, touching a chair, a lamp, whatever was in her path, thinking, seeing nothing she touched. For a moment Marnie was stunned by her action, so like Stef at that moment, she thought. So like Stef.

It might all come down to that damn contract,
Van was thinking. If some damn judge, one who had never met Stef, had no way of knowing what she had been like, and, uncaring, decided in his judicial wisdom that she had signed the contract, and if she had been playful about her name, it made no difference, it was nevertheless her signature, and the contract was in fact valid. Dale would win it all. Tony's persistent question rose: can you accept that?
God damn it! No!

She stopped moving and looked at Marnie, who was watching her. Slowly she crossed the room and went to her grandmother, where she knelt and took her hand. “Marnie,” she said softly, “if Tony can't find the proof, if there's no way to let the law take care of it, we will. You and I together, we'll see to it that he doesn't get away with it.”

Marnie closed her eyes. How warm Van's hand was holding hers. She began to stroke Van's hair. It was soft, resilient. Silently she said to herself,
No, my darling. You have a wonderful future before you. Those beautiful hands will touch so many people, heal just by their touch, and you have a beautiful child of your own. Whatever comes will not involve you.
She pressed her granddaughter's head to her breast and stroked her soft hair.

 

13

B
Y
F
RIDAY
THAT
week Tony knew a lot more about Dale Oliver than the superficial information his first searches had provided. He knew that periodically Dale faced the serious consequences of lapsing in credit card payments, the lease payments on the BMW he drove, and even his rent. He had been an adept credit card juggler apparently, signing up for new ones with lower interest rates as often as possible, but that was no longer a possibility for him. His credit rating had dropped too low. Twice it appeared that an influx of new cash had arrived just in time to avert what no doubt would have been catastrophic to anyone living on image.

Tony had tracked down Dale's sister, whose film career had consisted of several commercials. He found two of the commercials on the Internet and knew why a film career had never been in her future. Beautiful, with a good voice, but a wooden body. She couldn't act. Married young to a producer, divorced, married again to a history professor at UCLA, three children. Nothing, he decided, and gave up any further poking into her past.

But something about Dale had to be real beyond his debts. A lot of people lived on plastic, not a crime in modern society, rather it might even be considered the norm.

Where had he gotten cash on at least two occasions? Gambling? Lottery? Selling possessions? “Put on a mask and held up a bank,” Tony muttered, and it was as plausible as anything else he had come up with. With a real ongoing investigation, he brooded, all the possibilities would be checked out. Pawnshops, gambling tipsters … Had Dale bought pricey cuff links that he had since sold? Gifts to Stef? Sold. The Rolex sold, replaced by a fake? On impulse he called Freddi Wordling in her Portland gallery.

“Tony Mauricio,” he said when she answered his ring. “Are you free to talk a minute?”

“Why don't you give me your number and I'll call you back as soon as I can.”

He gave her the number, leaned back in the uncomfortable chair to wait. Leaning back didn't help, and he rose and walked to the sink, back, out to the balcony, back. When she called in five minutes, he took the call on the balcony, where he could see houses and trees.

“Just a couple of quick questions,” he said as if assuming his right to ask, and her duty to answer. “I don't want specifics, just a general idea. Have the gallery profits increased since Dale joined?”

She laughed. “That's an easy one. No. In fact they're down, but so is the rest of the economy.”

“Did your former partner have an audit when he put his share up for sale?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Have you had an audit since then?”

This time her response was delayed. At last she said, “No. Why do you ask?”

“Was auditing part of a routine in the past, annual audits, something of that sort?”

Again she was slow to respond. “Tony, I asked why you're asking about audits. What are you getting at?”

“Curious. Do you know if Dale Oliver is a gambler?”

“For heaven's sake,” she said, her tone suggesting impatience and irritation. “What are you getting at?”

“I'm fishing,” he said honestly. “Freddi, have you considered having an audit done, an outside audit? Would you consider it?”

Slowly she said, “I don't like the implications you're making. I haven't considered such an audit. The business manager is assumed to keep the books in order, as was always the case in the past. I don't know if I would consider bringing in an outsider, what the implication there is. I don't want to appear to be making an accusation based on nothing but a drop in business, which I can attribute to the economy. I think I'd like to talk this over with my husband.”

“Good enough. Mind you, I'm not making an accusation, but I am trying to close some gaps in what I know, no more than that. Thanks, Freddi.”

She would do it or not, he thought after disconnecting. If yes, it might shake Dale a bit even if nothing was out of order. If not, no harm done. Except Tony still wouldn't know how Dale had pulled himself from the edge a few times as he had done. Tony returned to the kitchen table and eyed the laptop, then reseated himself. Might as well complete the picture, he decided, find out something about Dale's father, and how he had accumulated enough of an estate as an engineer at a broadcast network to let his spendthrift son buy a partnership in a business with his inheritance, if that had in fact been the case.

He Googled Delmar Oliver and was surprised at the large number of entries he found. He started a new search for information.

He was concentrating again on his monitor half an hour later when his phone buzzed.

Van was on the line. “Tony, I want to see you. Right now if it's possible. I just picked up the autopsy from the attorney's office. We need to talk.”

“At your house?”

“No. I want to talk to you alone. Can I come over to your apartment?”

He glanced at his tiny kitchen, shrugged. “Sure. I'll be here.” He gave her his address and she said five minutes.

He put away his laptop and started a pot of coffee. She was prompt. She glanced over the apartment but made no comment, and he brought out coffee mugs and poured for them both.

“Out there,” he said, motioning toward his small balcony. He had put an end table between the two chairs. At least they didn't have to put mugs down on the floor.

“I already looked through it,” Van said, taking the autopsy report from her bag, handing it to him. She held her coffee in both hands as he read it.

It was thorough, a good autopsy, better than he had expected, he realized, and reminded himself that even in these small coastal communities, professionals were doing professional work. He didn't linger over the three pictures that were included. When he was finished, he put the report on the table and lifted his own mug.

“I was hoping it would prove that she was already dead when he pushed her down the stairs, or threw her down,” Van said in a distant voice, an impersonal voice, as if speaking of a stranger. “She wasn't. She was alive, the bruises and abrasions demonstrate that.” She was gazing straight ahead, where nothing but fir trees and houses were to be seen.

Tony had hoped the same thing and agreed. She was alive when she went down the stairs. Dead people don't bruise, suffer cuts and scrapes that bleed. There was no mention of a bruise on either foot, and there would have been, he felt certain, if there had been one. All that meant was that she had not stepped on a toy truck. It didn't change anything. No alcohol or drugs had been involved. All her injuries were consistent with a fall down stairs and hitting a concrete surface. A head trauma would likely have proved fatal, but a broken neck that snapped her brain stem was the immediate cause of death.

“We'll never be able to prove a thing, will we?” Van asked in that distant voice, gazing straight ahead at nothing.

“I don't know. But that report doesn't help.”

“We know, Marnie and I know, beyond doubt that he did it, and no one is going to believe us. I don't think you believe us. He'll get away with it.”

“I believe you, Van,” Tony said quietly. “I know he did it, too.”

She swung around in her chair to face him. “You know? What do you know?” Her composure, self-control, whatever had imposed distance, evaporated as she cried, “Tony, for God's sake, tell me how you know! What you know!” Impassioned, her eyes blazing, she set her coffee down on the table, spilling some, and she looked ready to spring upright.