Death of an Artist (9 page)

Marnie ran from the shop without a word to Molly's niece and drove home as fast as she could. Will hurried to meet her in the driveway, where the fire truck and other cars blocked her way. Will put his arm around her shoulders. “Don't go back there, Marnie. There's been an accident. It looks like Stef fell down those stairs. Let's go in your place, Marnie. There's nothing you can do.”

Marnie jerked away from him, and he caught her arm and held her back.

“She's dead, Marnie.”

 

7

M
ARNIE
IS
DREAMING
. Frozen in sleep paralysis, she is watching Stef race from tide pool to tide pool, oblivious of incoming waves that are growing higher, encroaching farther and farther upon the scant beach. Stef's hair is wild, wind-tangled, the way it always is. Seconds after being brushed, her hair, pale and baby-fine, is in a tangle. She is wet from wading in the shallow pools. She is laughing. Marnie knows the outcome, knows how the dream ends, knows the beach will be swept clean and there is nothing she can do. Voiceless, immobilized, her despair mounting, she can only watch in horror. Her screams are stilled in her throat as she watches a new wave crest and break, and then the beach is empty, the tide pools underwater, and water, foaming and hissing, withdraws before another thrust.

“Stef!” she cries. “Stef!”

“Hush, Marnie,” Ed says. “Shh.”

“Ed?”

“I'm here, Marnie.”

She feels his presence behind her on the bed and sighs deeply. “I couldn't help her,” she whispers. “She's gone. Our daughter is dead.”

“I know, Marnie. You did all you could.”

“I knew what was happening. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything. Now she's dead.”

“You couldn't save her, Marnie. No one could.”

“He killed her. It wasn't an accident. He did it.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don't know.” In her sleep she is weeping. “I don't know.”

“Decide, Marnie. Decide.” His voice is growing fainter, receding into a distance.

“I want to kill him,” Marnie said, and with the words spoken aloud, she came wide-awake, bolted upright in bed, shaking.

“I want to kill him,” she repeated. She waited for her heart to stop pounding, then threw back the blanket and got up. Pale predawn light seeped through the blinds on her windows, but she knew she was done with sleep for now.

*   *   *

A
CROSS THE HALL
Van slipped into the room she was sharing with Josh. She closed the door silently and stood leaning against it. She had heard Marnie mumbling incoherently in her sleep, but the spoken words had been clear and distinct. Marnie thought so, too, then, Van realized with a shudder. For two weeks Van had been struggling with the belief that her mother, that Stef, had not simply fallen down the stairs, that somehow Dale had managed to kill her without raising a suspicion. But Marnie thought so, too. Did that make a difference? Van didn't know.

She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, barely discernible, like an insubstantial fog, but growing more and more solid as the minutes passed. When she smelled coffee, she got up, put on her robe, and went to the kitchen, where Marnie was already sipping coffee.

“I'm sorry,” Marnie said. “I must have made more noise than I thought. Or was it the smell of coffee? It's awfully early.”

“The kind of hours I'm pretty much used to. Nothing you did.” Van poured coffee and sat opposite Marnie at the table. “If I get you some sleeping pills, will you take them?”

“No, of course not. I don't need anything.”

“You do, though. You're not sleeping worth a damn. You need to get some rest.”

“This has been a hard time to get through,” Marnie said, gazing at her coffee cup. “It will pass. Things do, after all.”

“I want to get Eva Granger over to help gather Stef's clothes to give to Beverly. She said she'd take them to her church whenever we're ready. Is that all right with you?”

Marnie nodded. “It's time, I guess.” She felt strangely distant from Van, from her own kitchen, from everything. In her mind the question kept repeating,
What are you going to do about it?
Nothing else seemed to mean a great deal as she pondered the question and her answer to it. It was true, she thought. She wanted to kill Dale Oliver.

Van sipped her coffee, unable to broach the bigger problem. If they both believed Dale had been responsible for Stef's fall, her death, what could be done about it? There had been an investigation of sorts, she knew, but Dale said he had been at the front window, on the phone with Freddi, when they both heard Stef scream, and then Freddi had heard Dale's hoarse voice crying out Stef's name, heard the phone bang when he dropped it, and hadn't been able to get a response from Dale again. She had called 911 in Portland, and the dispatcher had transferred her to the Newport sheriff's office. Dale had not been able to find his cell phone and used the landline phone to put in his own frantic call to 911 from the house. The sheriff had found the cell phone later outside the door to the house. The battery had run down by then.

Van had not believed his story then and didn't believe it two weeks later. She had asked Will Comley about opening a real investigation, and he had in effect said, “There, there. Nothing to it.” He had added a twist of the knife by saying one of Josh's toy trucks had been under Stef's body, that apparently she had stepped on it on the stairs, and it was just enough to throw her off-balance.

Sipping coffee that morning, Van decided this was not the time to talk about it. Josh would be up any minute and be underfoot until eleven, when she took him to the day-care play school for the afternoon.

It would keep until that evening, after Josh was in bed, and a whole night stretched before them without interruption. But she was worried about Marnie. Her eyes were deeply shadowed and she looked haggard and tired. Van had thought it was simply grief that was wearing her down, but if Marnie believed Dale was responsible, that made it different. And if she really meant it when she said she wanted to kill him, that made it significantly different.

*   *   *

B
Y
TWO
-
THIRTY
E
VA
Granger had come and gone again with boxes of Stef's clothes in her van. She and Van had played together as children, had gone through high school together, and stayed close since. She had married a fisherman, ran a bed-and-breakfast, and was efficient and businesslike in dismantling an entire life in a few hours. Van was grateful for her friend's matter-of-fact attitude about getting rid of things that would have posed a dilemma for her alone. They had stripped the bed, and the bedding was in the clothes dryer. Eva had taken Stef's special tiger-print comforter with her, to go into a large washer at a Laundromat, on to Beverly. Now the room looked bleak and barren. A few of Dale's things remained. He never actually lived in the house, but used it as a weekend retreat from time to time and rarely stayed more than a few days. Van resisted the temptation to toss everything of his into the trash.

She made coffee, and while waiting for it, she wandered through the house, which felt emptier than she had thought possible. Although the furniture had been left there by Marnie and Ed when they moved into the front house, this one still felt like Stef's house. Van couldn't account for that, except that Stef had seemed to fill any space she occupied if for no reason other than her constant motion. She was always all over it, here, there, back, always moving.

Van heard the door opening and closing and, expecting Marnie, was startled when she met Dale near the stairs. He was carrying a manila envelope.

He nodded. “I came to get a few things,” he said coolly. “And to give you and Marnie a copy of a contract signed by Stef.”

“What contract?”

“An agent's contract with me. Is Marnie around?”

“I'll call her,” Van said, but there was no need. Marnie had entered.

Dale's nod to her was as cool as his toward Van. Marnie barely acknowledged it.

“I'll get my things,” he said. “And leave you a copy of my contract. Next week I'll bring someone to help with picking up some of the paintings. I'll pick up
Feathers and Ferns
at the same time at the shop. We'll do a retrospective memorial showing of Stef's work early next month.”

“You will not,” Marnie said.

“I have legal authority to show her things, to sell them if I can. She signed a contract to that effect. The paintings can stay in your possession, and officially you'll still be the executor of her art estate, but I have the right to make all decisions concerning shows and sales. I advise you to read the contract, show it to your attorney if you're so inclined, and to accept that it is a valid contract.”

He withdrew two paper-clipped sets of papers, thrust one at Van and the other at Marnie. “Now I'll get my things.”

He strode past them, on the way to the bedroom. Marnie pulled the paper clip off and skimmed the contract without comprehending much of it. Then she looked at Van, who had not yet moved.

“Look at it,” Marnie said in a low voice. “Skip the first two pages. Look at the last one.”

Van turned to the last page, and after a moment she gasped. “Her signature!” she whispered.

“Or someone's.” Marnie went to the counter and put the contract down on it, then poured herself a cup of coffee. A few minutes later Dale returned with a suitcase.

“Next Monday,” Dale said. “I plan to get here by eleven.”

“Don't bother,” Marnie said. “That contract is a joke. And the joke's on you. She was laughing at you.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. “No point in trying to bluff about this, Marnie. Eleven, next Monday.”

“Look at that signature, you fool.” She opened the contract to the final page. “Just look at it.
Stephanie Markoff.
Then look at her signature on her driver's license, her marriage license, any other official document. She spelled her name
S-t-e-f-a-n-y
and her last name
M-a-r-k-o-v.
That paper doesn't mean a thing. Just her little joke.” Marnie drew herself up straighter. “Now get out of my house and don't come back. If you ever enter this house again uninvited, I'll charge you with trespassing.”

“We'll see about that,” he said in a grating, mean voice. “My attorney will be in touch with you.”

Van went to the door with him and slammed it shut as soon as he had left, before he had reached his car. When she returned, she went to the phone book on a small table in the kitchen. “I'm calling a locksmith. I want every lock changed on both houses, today if possible.”

Marnie picked up the contract, sank into a chair at the dining table, and drew in a deep breath. “I need to see Ted Gladstone in the morning,” she said faintly. He was her attorney in Newport. “I hope I'm right in that signature making the contract invalid.” She began to read it as Van made her call to the locksmith. She had missed another clause, she realized. Her permission was needed, after all. It was followed by another clause: such permission shall not be unreasonably withheld. What did that mean legally? Ted Gladstone would know. What would be considered unreasonable if the rest of the contract was determined to be valid? Her head was beginning to ache and she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes.

“Nine in the morning,” Van said after talking to a locksmith. She sat down and picked up the contract and began to read it, her fury and frustration mounting with every paragraph. Done, she flung it onto the table and jumped up. “If it holds, he controls everything,” she said angrily. “You'll be no more than a custodian.”

“It won't hold,” Marnie said faintly, her voice carrying no conviction.

Van leaned on the table, bracing herself with both hands. “He killed her, Marnie. It may sound irrational, and Freddi will confirm that he was on the phone with her when … I don't care about that. I don't know how he managed it, but I know he did. And this is the reason. His motive.”

After a moment Marnie nodded, as if reluctant to admit to anyone that she believed her daughter had been murdered. Or, she thought then, reluctant to admit that was her belief and she had done nothing about it.

Van jerked away from the table and crossed the room to the wide windows overlooking the spectacular vista of a deep-blue sea at rest that afternoon. Facing Marnie again, she said, “I'm moving back over here. Josh and I will move back into our rooms upstairs. I'll get some rods to secure the sliding doors and put chairs under the outside doors. We'll install a security system.…” She was thinking out loud, she realized, and became silent again.

“We'll all come back,” Marnie said. “But he won't do anything until he talks to a lawyer. I'll call Ted and get an appointment for first thing in the morning.”

“Will's hopeless,” Van said. “He doesn't want any trouble and wouldn't know how to handle it if it bit him in the ass. Do you know that sheriff who looked into it?”

“No.”

“Why would either of us?” Van said with a shrug. She paced the living room a moment, thinking. There was something else, not just immediate control of the art, she decided, something she had not read thoroughly, something about heirs and assigns. She returned to the table to read the whole contract more carefully. This time when she finished, she avoided Marnie's gaze. Did she know? Had that brief paragraph registered with her? They both had been so fixated on the immediate threat to the artwork, Marnie might have passed over that bit exactly as Van had done on her first reading.

If she had read it properly this time, she thought clearly, what it meant was that in the event of Marnie's death or incapacitation, Dale would automatically become the executor of all the work without having to consult anyone about its dispensation. He would in effect own it.