Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) (10 page)

Grace could tell from his tone that he hoped she had. “No,” she said. His face fell.

“I swear to God, if that woman killed Donnie—”

“Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to have come true.” Grace stopped him and motioned to the living room, where Cat had set up a sort of temporary office. “I see you got the files from the Miami PD.”

“Yes,” said Cat. “It took a bit of bargaining, however. I said we’d share our own research with Alvarez and her team.”

“Good work, Cat. It’s always better when people work together, isn’t it?”

Her granddaughter gave her a begrudging nod.
 

Grace was glad Cat was losing some of her territoriality. If she had let more people help her on that Missouri case, they might have caught Anita Briggs sooner… Ah, well. That was Grace’s own judgment creeping in. She’d have to let that one go.

“And you?” Grace prompted her little brother. “Have you found your way to the canvas again?”

“No, I haven’t. But seeing Candy Port’s masterpiece here made me realize something.”

“What’s that?” Grace asked, pleased that the painting was having whatever effect it was meant to have.

“Well, that and my heart-to-heart with Cat here. If all I see when I stare at the canvas is Donnie, then that’s what I should paint.”

With a newly determined flourish, he turned and disappeared into the lanai, shutting the double glass doors for privacy. He pulled the curtain shut.

“Let me make you some tea and a snack,” Cat said to Grace, leading her to the kitchen counter delicately by her arm. “You must be exhausted from your trip. And I’ll catch you up on things here.”

“I am.” Grace sat on a bar stool. Her back was kinked up from the drive, which a bit of yoga outside on the sundeck would cure, but first she needed that tea and snack. She listened intently as Cat filled her in on her visit with Chester Canon and their conversations with Alvarez. When she got to the part about investigating whether Donnie was the intended victim, Grace perked up.
 

“Wonderful,” she said. “Let them spare us that legwork, since it most likely won’t turn anything up.”

Cat filled a teapot with hot, boiling water from the kettle and then let it steep as she cut fruit and cheese for a snack. Grace was famished and snuck a piece of plum and bit of goat cheese off the tray.

“I agree with Alvarez on the possible scenarios,” Grace said. “But my hunch is that someone either wanted to kill Mick or at least hurt him, by torching the place where he makes his art.”

“And you think this Candace could have done that?”

“What did the evidence report say, Cat? Was it the work of an amateur?”

“It seems so. I’ll let you have a look yourself.” Cat went over to the couch and picked up the file. She carried it over to the counter for Grace, who opened it.

“What is this? Six-point type? Fetch me my reading glasses, would you, doll?”

Cat handed Grace the red Art Deco frames she’d brought with her from Seattle.

“There, that’s better.” Grace read down the page, turned to the second page, and then announced, “Here it is.
‘Ease of identification of accelerant despite obvious opportunity to hide it suggests the work of an amateur arsonist.’
Oh, for goodness sake.”
 

“You just read the part about the Coleman fuel, didn’t you? That’s how I finally decided Uncle Mick is innocent. In his dream, he used a can of gasoline to set the fire.” She set two teacups down and poured them both a spot from the pot.
 

“The arsonist brought in his own accelerant. Camping fuel. Something Mick didn’t have on hand. He ignored the flammable liquids Mick already had there in his studio.”

“The mark of someone who’s never done this before,” Cat said.

“Exactly,” said Grace.
 

Cat laughed. “It sounds like our arsonist did an online search for ‘How to Commit Arson.’ Maybe Mick’s wrong. Maybe Jenny did do it.”

“Or Candace,” Grace said. She couldn’t get the woman out of her mind.
 

>>>

While the police tried to find more solid evidence against Jenny Baines, Grace decided it would be best to follow up on some of the other people on Mick’s “hate list,” as they’d taken to calling it. So the two sleuths planned a quick trip up to New York, where the next three lived.

 
Cat had never been, but Grace had been there many times. She’d lived in the Big Apple for a few years in her thirties. It was the Sixties then, and she had experimented on numerous fronts, using her dreamslipping ability to become a sort of mystic within a band of hippies centered around Washington Square Park. She told this to Cat on the train, which Grace insisted on instead of the plane for a change of pace, and ease of the journey, as they could get up and stretch their legs—even practice some yoga—more readily on the train. Grace wasn’t sure she could keep up this pace and wondered if she should have waited a few more days before embarking on another trip.

But it was too late for second guesses, and she’d never been one to dwell on the past, even the recent past.

“I once met Jack Kerouac at a party,” Grace announced. “But honestly, I didn’t find him very interesting. His girlfriend, on the other hand… Now there was a gal.”

Cat laughed. “Only you, Gran. Half the time, I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

“Oh, my dear, everything I tell you is the unvarnished truth.”

“Now let me see… His girlfriend was blonde and from the country, as I had been. We compared our strict religious upbringings. She was Protestant, but unlike regular people, whom we called ‘squares’ back then, she didn’t hold me at a distance for my Catholic upbringing. Though it probably helped that I was busily trying to shed it.”

“So how did you use your dreamslipping with them?”

“Oh, I was a bit of a charlatan, I’m sorry to admit.” Grace smiled, enjoying the opportunity to tell Cat a story she’d never heard. “Several of us girls would share an apartment, you see, so I had occasion to slip into their dreams. I gleaned details about their lives from those dreams, and I would use them in my work with tarot cards. People were amazed. They thought I was psychic.”

“Well, aren’t we?” Cat asked. “In a manner of speaking.”

Grace shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as ‘spiritually in tune.’”

“Too bad you never slipped into one of Kerouac’s dreams.”

“Oh, heaven forbid. Have you read that man’s writing? I agree with Truman Capote’s assessment. ‘That’s not writing,’ he once said. ‘That’s typing.’”

Cat couldn’t stop laughing. “Granny Grace!”

“Enough of this chatter,” said Grace. “Let’s see what the view’s like from the dome car.”

Once they arrived in New York, Grace wished for a moment that they weren’t on a case but rather there for a weekend on the town. How the two of them could cut a rug if they had the chance. She’d love to show Madison Avenue to her granddaughter, take her to a Broadway show, tour the Met… The city still sparkled, still held for her the allure of so many possibilities, so many people to meet. It pulsed with excitement, even now, despite the digital billboards and the yawning absence of the World Trade Center towers.

But they had work to do, and that meant talking with the rest of the top five on Mick’s hate list, starting with a graphic artist named Norris Grayson. Norris had been a student in the same program as Mick, and like Mick, he’d dreamed of making it as a painter. But he had not enjoyed the same success as Mick, so he did what a lot of creative types do, and that was figure out how to find work that paid but approximated art. Grace was eager to speak with Norris, as he seemed to be the most likely person to have written the Letter to the Editor printed in
Art in Our Time
that was supposedly penned by “Mick in Miami.”

Norris worked for a PR firm in Midtown Manhattan that was tucked down a narrow hallway, ironically, thought Grace, past several small art galleries.
 

A secretary—they still employed them? questioned Grace—led them down another narrow hallway within the offices of Sturdiman Fullman Grayson, or “two man son,” as the firm had been nicknamed. Norris greeted them with a wide, bleach-whitened smile and a brisk, vigorously pumped handshake.

“Sit, sit,” he commanded. “So? You’re here about some artist I went to school with?”

“Not just some artist,” led Grace. “Mick Travers. The most successful one of your class.”

“Travers! Of course.” There wasn’t a trace of bitterness in his tone. “That old hack. Is he still making art?”

“He’s not only making it,” Grace said, letting her eyebrow arch for emphasis, “he’s showing it regularly here in New York. You might have caught one of his shows, maybe even right here in this building.”

“You don’t say,” Norris replied, his gaze distracted by Cat, whom Grace had to admit, did look rather fetching in a green skirt suit and heels. The suit emphasized her narrow waist and swelling hips, but the ruffles on the blouse gave the illusion that her bust line dimension echoed that of her hips, which it did not.

“Have you?” Cat prompted him. “Caught one of Mick Travers’s recent shows, that is.”

“Nope,” he snapped. “Can’t say that I have.” He was bald, and he’d smartly chosen to shave most of his hair once the pattern baldness had carved a crescent onto his dome. Grace could see the beginning of a five o’clock head shadow over the tips of his ears.

Not particularly forthcoming, Norris would need a bit more nudging if this thirty-minute window of his precious time weren’t to be wasted.
 

“Tell us what you remember about Travers as a student,” Grace prodded.

Norris blew out his breath and ran a hand over his nonexistent hair. “Not much, honestly. That’s ancient history now. Boy. I guess… I guess you could say he was overrated. He got a lot of attention, and some of us—many of us—including some of the professors—didn’t think it was deserved.”

“Are you sure that wasn’t sour grapes?” Grace asked, trying not to sound defensive. “His talent was validated by independent judges back then. And it’s been validated many times by the entire art world since.”

Norris chuckled. “Hey, sure, lady. I’m telling you what I remember. I’ve got no stake in it either way. I’m happy with my success. I’ve got a gorgeous wife—look, she used to model.” He turned around one of the photos perched on his desktop to reveal a woman twenty years Norris’s junior with the photogenic smile of a pro. “I’ve got a couple of bright kids, both on the honor roll. I’m a partner with the firm. I’ll be retiring soon. I bet that’s more than you can say for Mick Travers.”

Grace laughed softly. “Well, an artist never really retires. But what of that? You’re not a real artist. I’m betting you don’t even have much of a hand in the actual art for any of these ads anymore.” She gestured to the framed advertisements for hair care products for men, which seemed screamingly ironic, considering Norris’s shining dome.

“Oh, I steer the artists in the right direction,” Norris said with a smile. “And that’s okay by me. You see, years ago, I realized that I’m the idea man. I’m full of them. I let the grunts carry out my vision. But I’m the one with the vision. They couldn’t see past their own color choices.”

Norris stood up and wandered to the window to take in his commanding view, which Grace realized they were supposed to admire—not for the view itself, but for the fact that he had one. “Yeah, that’s what most artists are these days anyway, this Travers fellow included. Grunts. They’re just copying each other.”

Cat picked up on his tangent. “I thought you said you weren’t much interested in art, that you hadn’t seen any of Mick Travers’s shows.”

He spun around on his heel. “Oh, I’m speaking in generalities. I do see a show every now and again, as part of this fundraiser or that. Hard to avoid when you’re someone like me.”

“And what do you think of Travers’s work?” Cat asked.

“His work?” Norris smiled. “I think it’s rather large, don’t you?”

>>>

The next two people on the list were still making art at least part of the time, but neither had the success that Grace’s brother enjoyed. Grace and Cat decided to tackle them together again.

Norris had been an interesting pickle. Toward the end of the interview, he swore he had not written the letter that appeared in
Art in Our Time
, though he did cop to reading it and enjoying the problems it must have caused for Mick.

Next up were two artists, both in their sixties and eking out moderate livings.

The first was a woman named Annie Lin who painted haunting white horses in an abstract style that reminded Grace of Louise Bourgeois’s spiders. Lin’s work was quite possibly as good as the celebrated artist’s. Success in the marketplace had only marginally to do with talent. Grace had seen this to be true: So many forces out of the artist’s control could determine what society called “success,” which was, for an artist, recognition and sales.

Annie Lin greeted them at the door of her studio with a wide, genuine smile, her chin smudged with white paint. Her hair must have been jet-black at one time but had gone white. She wore it in a tight bun at the back of her head.
 

“Please come in,” she beckoned them, motioning toward a couch Grace recognized from an IKEA showroom. The loft had otherwise been taken over by houseplants, which had clearly been given free range to stretch and grow under the wide warehouse windows, past which Grace could see a billboard advertising Depends undergarments beside the railway for the El.