Death of an Artist (22 page)

This time when Bud paused, Tony said, “I think we've taken up enough of your time, Bud. Thanks a lot. It's been illuminating.”

Bud said, “I want to show you my soundproof room, where I make the final disc, and show you some of the other kinds of broadcasts, things like
Vic and Sade
, and creep shows like
The Inner Sanctum
.
Arch Oboler, Lights Out
.
The Lone Ranger
.” This was directed at Van.

She shook her head, smiling. “We have to go. You sell broadcasts on CDs, don't you? I would like to buy a couple for my mother. She used to listen to them.”

He wanted to give her two or three, but she insisted on paying and let him pick the shows. Soon afterward, she and Tony left.

“Your conquest,” Tony said on the way to the car. “He adores you.”

“What a beautiful hunk he is! I bet he runs marathons, rides eighty-mile jaunts and back, swims back and forth across the Columbia. He's gorgeous!”

The heat was as intense as it had been, possibly even more intense. At the car they opened all the doors, turned the fan to high, and set the air conditioner at its maximum, then stood back to let the superheated air escape. After a few seconds, Tony said, “It can't be worse inside, out of the sun.”

Back behind the wheel, Van said, “What a windfall that was for Dale and his sister.”

“She never saw a penny of it,” Tony said. “He told her the tapes were worthless because those old programs can be downloaded now.”

Appalled, Van said, “His sister? That shithead! That scumbag! God, he's slime!”

“All the above. You know where his apartment is?”

“Yes, why?”

“Let's go around there, close by at least.”

With regret she thought of the escape route she had planned and she headed for downtown Portland.

 

17

A
FTER
DRIVING
SILENTLY
for several minutes, Van said, “All this today, whatever we've learned has just verified what we already knew, hasn't it? He's slime and sociopathic, not a touch of empathy, evil all the way through. But we haven't gotten any closer to proof. Isn't that true?”

“It's true.” Tony studied her profile as she drove. Both hands on the wheel, watchful of surrounding traffic, keeping her eyes on the traffic all around her, she exuded confidence. She was an exemplary, alert driver, but he suspected her real attention was focused on the problem of proving Dale Oliver guilty of murder.

“And you intend to get into Dale's apartment to try to find something that will help with proving he's a killer. Isn't that also true?”

“Van, the less you know about my intentions the better. I just want you to point out his apartment, drop me within a block, and take off. We'll meet again at that same spot. I'll call you when it's time.”

“No. Don't freeze me out, Tony. I deserve better than that. Don't try to protect me. I'm not a child. Are you going to try to get into that apartment?” Her words were spoken quietly, but they had an underlying unyielding quality, a hardness. She continued to look straight ahead.

“Van, it's called breaking and entering and it's a felony. I don't want you to get involved.”

“I'm involved all the way.” She glanced at him. “He killed my mother. I think that contract will be ruled legal eventually, and for now we're buying time. The audit, appraisal, just buying time. But at the end of that time, he'll have won exactly what he set out to get, complete control of my mother's artwork. Tony, I told you that neither Marnie nor I will let that happen. Believe it. If he can't be stopped legally, we'll stop him. I'll kill him myself if that's what it takes.”

“Van, listen to me. Killing for revenge never resolves anything. It's a lose-lose game from start to finish. You don't bring back the dead, and you don't relieve the grief. You just spread it further in a broader circle.” His voice was low, intense, and more bitter than she had ever heard it.

For a time neither spoke, then she said quietly, “If you can find proof to let the legal system work, great, and I want to help in every way I can. Just don't freeze me out of the process. If you have a key and use it, would it still be a felony?”

“Still illegal, invasion of privacy, illegal search, but not as serious as breaking and entering.”

“I have keys. It takes two, one for the outer door, one for the apartment door. Stef gave them to me years ago. Sometimes she asked me to stop by and pick up something for her. I still have the keys.”

“I'll be damned. You're the best associate I ever had. Okay, no more holding out.”

She glanced at him again, nodded, and smiled faintly. “Deal,” she said. Then, turning again to the increasing traffic, she warned him that it was going to take nearly an hour to get to the apartment, and that was cutting time short. “It will be after four, and Dale might show up early on such a hot day. There's not a thing I can do about it. Stop-and-go traffic until we cross the bridge into downtown Portland.”

“I'll be as fast as I can,” Tony said. “I won't waste time trying on any of his Armani suits.”

She looked at him quickly to see if he was grinning, laughing at her. So much for telling him how to run his business, she chided herself.

It was five past four when she drove by the apartment complex, which took up half a block. “That's it,” she said. “Second floor, this corner of the building. There's a big parking area in the rear with entrances on both streets.”

“Let's take a drive through, see if his car is already there.”

Covered parking spaces in the rear were about half-filled, but Dale's convertible was not there.

“You'll be my lookout,” Tony said. “If and when he shows, call me. I won't answer and my phone tone will be muted, but it will vibrate, and I'll know. See if we can find a place where you can see both the entrances to parking.”

She drove down both streets, but there was no such place. Then Tony said, “That café has an upper level, and I think it would work for you.” It was not quite opposite one of the parking lot entrances, not ideal, and if Dale entered and parked at the other entrance, probably she would not see him. Tony didn't think he would do that, but would park closer to his own apartment. She parked nearly a block away, gave him a small key ring that had two keys, and they walked back. She entered the café and he strolled into the parking area.

He let himself into the building, took the elevator to the second floor, located the exit with the stairs icon, then opened the door to Dale's apartment.

Upscale, spacious, decorator perfect. He gave it a swift scrutiny and looked instead for a home office, or at least a desk. A small bedroom proved to be an office, equipped with a table with a scanner, fax machine, paper cutter, one extra chair, and a desk. Quickly, using a paper clip, he unlocked the desk. A deep side drawer served as a file case. There were eleven of the contracts Freddi had described, and swiftly he looked over several of them. They appeared to be identical boilerplate contracts, not really negotiated, without changes, just accepted and signed as written. He skipped the contract signed by Stef, but stopped at a contract Dale had with a greeting-card corporation. Using his digital camera, he took pictures of them all. He closed the drawer and turned his attention to the center drawer. Passport, trip to France and Italy nearly five years before, an unlabeled envelope that held two driver's licenses, with matching credit cards.

“Jackpot,” he muttered, and turned on a desk light. He positioned the licenses and credit cards under it and took several pictures. He replaced them in the envelope and picked up an address book.

“Mega-jackpot!” he said softly. There were two pages of passwords, some identified, most not. He took a lot of pictures of them, then started snapping shots of the addresses that followed. He stopped when it occurred to him that the computer operating system might have a general computer password. He turned it on and, while waiting for it to boot up, resumed snapping pictures of names and addresses.

Windows finished loading and he went into the properties screen, and there it was, the system password. He took pictures and also wrote it down in his notebook. He was closing his notebook when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Moving fast, he turned off the computer, put the address book back, and closed the drawer most of the way. He left it open just a little, then opened the file drawer enough to suggest it had been an oversight. Let Dale worry about it, he thought, turning off the desk light. Let Dale wonder if he had been careless, or if there had been an intruder.

He slipped out of the apartment and was at the door to the stairs when the elevator stopped and the door was opening. The stairs door was closing after him by the time the elevator door opened all the way.

On the sidewalk once more, he spotted his Acura coming toward him and waited for it. Van stopped, he got in, and she drove out of the neighborhood.

“Good timing,” he said. “Thanks.”

“I didn't get to finish my iced coffee. What did you find?”

“Iced coffee! That's a great idea. One more stop to get iced coffee to go. I'm parched.”

“For heaven's sake, what did you find?” she demanded.

He told her all of it except for the passwords. He never told his associate every single little thing, he thought, and waited for her response.

“What does that mean, fake driver's licenses and credit cards? What for?”

“Don't know yet. I'll be doing a lot of snooping and might find out something, or not. I didn't read his contract with the corporation but I have pictures, and I'll download them and have printouts to look at.”

She scowled at him. “More of the same, just more of the same.”

“Van, this is how it works. You plod along for weeks, months, gather crumbs along the way, and there's always a possibility that one of the crumbs might be the important key. No predicting it, though. You just plod along.”

“Right,” she snapped. A second later, she said, “Tony, I'm sorry. It's just so, so fucking frustrating.”

“I know, Van. Believe me, I know.”

She stopped at a coffee kiosk, and while he ordered two iced double espressos, she called Marnie to say they were still in Portland and would be pretty late. It was a quarter to five and she was not looking forward to the highway with its stop-and-go traffic, or gridlock.

They were both silent as she eased into the traffic heading toward Highway 26 and the coast. It had not been a wasted day, Van realized. She had learned a valuable lesson, to keep things as simple as possible. She had been devising one incredible scenario after another: lure Dale into a trap, pretend to go along with whatever he wanted, drinks with poison in his, tinker with his car, and they had become so complex that she had abandoned them all and started over time after time. But watching Tony stroll casually into that parking lot as if he belonged there had made her realize how simple it would be for her, after all.

Years ago, Ralph Coleman, her mentor/lover, had told her she needed a handgun for self-protection. She was keeping terrible hours, driving alone late at night, and it would only get worse in medical school. He had taken her to a gun shop and advised her to buy a .22, easy to use, small enough to keep in her handbag, and it would be enough, he had said. He had helped her with a permit and had taken her to a firing range, where she received instructions and practiced using her new weapon.

He was history, she thought grimly, but the gun was now in a locked box on her closet shelf. She felt as if those thirteen months with her lover had been a dream, someone else's dream. She had come awake pregnant and had looked at him in wonder. How had she been so malleable, so moldable, his to shape and direct, his to command? Love? She had thought so, but had come to know it had not been love, but rather an intoxicating infatuation, one that let her give up her self, her body, her thoughts, everything. Then she woke up from the dream.

And now she was wide-awake and planning on how to kill her onetime stepfather. It would be so simple, she thought. Park a block away, stroll into the parking lot, let herself in as if she belonged, and go straight to the apartment. If he was there already, she would shoot him on sight, make certain he was dead, and walk out. Simplicity itself. If he was not there, she would wait and shoot him the minute he entered. No talk, no arguments, no pleading. Shoot him dead and leave.

She didn't consider it murder. Every year she joined one of the volunteer groups that cleaned the entire coast of tons of trash accumulated over winter. What she planned was of a piece with that. Clear a piece of trash from a beautiful world.

Tony's bitter words came to mind, that killing for revenge never resolved anything. The memory of seeing her mother sitting on the floor in tears rose in her mind. Not revenge, she thought. Dale had to be killed or he would possess her mother's soul. She shook her head slightly. She didn't believe in souls, but something of Stef's being, her essence, had been the cost of her art. Over and over she had paid the high price demanded of her, and a piece of filth like Dale could not possess that part of her that lived in everything she painted.

The creed that she accepted and believed in, that would guide her throughout her life as a physician, came to mind. Do no harm. She would do no harm. She would prevent a malevolent, conscienceless killer from doing additional harm.

Traffic came to a stop and she sipped her coffee, then she said, “Those two pictures Freddi talked about, the little girl at the tide pools and the other one, they weren't a pair at first. Stef painted the little girl at least five years ago. I think it was an expression of herself as a child searching for answers. She was always different, according to Marnie, never part of any group, never really accepted at school, or in town. I think she saw things no one else saw from the day she opened her eyes. I think she was trying to still that questioning voice in her head and just pretended she had found what she was looking for. Or maybe she was trying to keep anyone else from ever questioning what the child was looking for.”