Sacrificial Ground (23 page)

He arrived at the mall quite early, and most of the shops were still closed. The mall was almost entirely deserted, but as he neared the brightly lit windows of the Nouveau Gallery, he could see Theodore at the back wall, struggling to hang an enormous picture. He tapped at the glass door, and Theodore turned immediately, lowered the picture carefully to the floor, and came to the door.

“Hello, Mr. Clemons,” he said coolly as he opened it.

“I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” Frank said.

“Of course,” Theodore said. He opened the door more widely. “Come in.”

“Thanks.”

Theodore locked the door once again, then turned to Frank. “I don't suppose you're here to buy a painting,” he said.

“No.”

“Angelica?”

Frank nodded.

“Yes, of course,” Theodore said. He glanced at his watch. “My assistant will be here in a few minutes, but we should have a little privacy before then.” He pointed to a door at the back of the shop. “We can talk in my office.”

Frank followed him into a small, cramped office whose walls were lined with stacks of paintings.

“Do you like paintings, Mr. Clemons?” Theodore asked as he sat down behind his desk.

“I don't know much about them,” Frank told him.

“You don't have to,” Theodore said. He nodded toward a large painting of a woman standing beside a lake. “Something like that is either beautiful or not.” He tapped the side of his head with a single index finger. “And whether one finds it beautiful or not depends upon how one sees it, what one thinks about it.” He smiled. “It requires no expertise.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Do you remember when we were at Karen's together?”

“Yes.”

“I made a note as I talked to you.” Frank flipped through the notebook until he found the right page. “We only talked for a few minutes, and then Karen came down the stairs. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I made the note just then.” He handed Theodore the notebook. “See?”

Theodore glanced at the page. “‘Wanted to say something,'” he repeated. He looked up at Frank. “You mean me?”

“Yes.”

Theodore handed the notebook back to Frank. “What gave you that idea?”

“I don't know,” Frank admitted. “It could have been anything.”

“It hardly matters in any event,” Theodore said.

“What do you mean?”

“It's true,” Theodore said, “I did want to say something.”

Frank flipped through his notebook until he found a blank page. “What?”

“Well,” Theodore began, “I didn't want to talk to you that afternoon. At least, I didn't want to talk to you in front of Karen.”

“Why not?”

“Because what I had to say would hardly have helped her situation.”

“Something about Angelica, you mean?”

“Yes,” Theodore said.

“Then why didn't you talk to me later?”

Theodore shook his head. “I don't know. I really don't. It's very easy to avoid unpleasantness.” He smiled thinly. “That's what most of the people around me spend most of their lives doing, after all.”

Frank said nothing.

“Well,” Theodore added, “as a few more days passed, I simply did nothing. I suppose I would have come to you eventually.”

“Well, now I've come to you,” Frank said pointedly.

“Yes,” Theodore said. He folded his hands together and placed them quietly on his desk. “You've already gathered that Angelica was basically friendless, isolated.”

“So far, that's the picture.”

“Well, it may not be a completely accurate one,” Theodore said.

“In what way?”

“Well, in what it suggests,” Theodore explained. “I mean, the image of Angelica it suggests. We have this somewhat shy, melancholy, perhaps tragic young girl who lives in a large house and has practically no life of her own at all.” He smiled. “Is that what you're turning up, that image, the one I've just described?”

“Yes, something like that,” Frank said. “At least at first.”

Theodore pulled back slightly. “You mean, you've found something else?”

Frank did not answer.

Theodore looked at him knowingly. “You have, haven't you? My congratulations, Mr. Clemons. I'm surprised, because Angelica must have been very careful. I mean, it was by sheer accident that I came to see her … as you might say … out of character.”

Frank lowered his pencil to the page. “What do you mean, ‘out of character'?”

“The shy, aloof, breathtakingly beautiful young girl who appears hardly even to know how beautiful she is.”

Frank wrote it down. “Go on,” he said.

“Well, I never quite bought that, if you want to know the truth,” Theodore said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don't believe that anyone that beautiful can be oblivious to her beauty.”

“So you had your own ideas about her?”

“Yes.”

“What were they?”

“That she was into something,” Theodore said bluntly. “I didn't know what. I thought it might be drugs. All I knew is that it had to be something. I just didn't buy the notion that someone like Angelica could have absolutely no social life. Instead, I assumed she had one that had certain characteristics which made secrecy necessary.” He smiled. “For a time, I thought she was probably gay.” He pulled a bottle of brandy from his desk and opened it. “Care for a drink, Mr. Clemons?”

“No, thanks.”

An odd sadness suddenly flooded Theodore's face. “Really? Why?”

“It's a little early.”

“For me, it's already a little late,” Theodore said quietly. “As you can see, Angelica is not the only human being who ever had her secrets.” He poured himself a drink. “It gives me strength,” he said. “Nothing else does.” He took it all down with one quick gulp. “I drink because if I don't, time stops for me. Completely stops.” He poured himself another round. “Even if I were happy, that would be unbearable.” He glanced at his watch. “Ah, see, time is moving again.” He laughed. “All quite simple, when you put it together, don't you think?”

“What about Angelica?” Frank asked insistently. He already knew that each man had his own individual reason for the bottle.

“Well, as I said,” Theodore replied, “I always assumed that something was going on in Angelica's life, although I never knew what it was. Still, during the last few months before her death, I could see something in her.”

“What?”

“She grew even more aloof,” Theodore said. “She would hardly speak to me when I came over to talk to Karen, and she never came into the gallery anymore. There was a time when I would sometimes see her in the mall. That all ended, too.” He shrugged. “Of course, one can always assume that it's some strange stage or something. But I never felt that was the case with Angelica.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was not a person for stages,” Theodore said. “Some people are somewhat eccentric from the beginning. Angelica was like that.”

“What was her eccentricity?” Frank asked.

Theodore poured himself another drink. “Her beauty,” he said. “That was the thing that distorted her.” He smiled. “For some people it's money; for some, it's power. Whatever it is, it takes you out of the world's common experience. And whatever does that, Mr. Clemons, cripples and perverts you.” He glanced at the bottle on his desk. “And so you have to find some other way to make contact with real life. With me, it's this.” He smiled knowingly. “With Angelica, it must have been something else.”

“A secret life,” Frank said suddenly.

“Yes.”

“What kind of life?”

“I'm not sure of that,” Theodore said. “But I am sure that she had some sort of life outside that pristine little existence she lived at home and at school.”

“How do you know?”

“I came across it,” Theodore said. “And it was all quite by accident.” He took another drink, and then carefully put the bottle away. “As you can see from the gallery,” Theodore began, “my taste in art is quite varied. Because of that, I keep in touch with all sorts of little art movements here and there. I visit small, out-of-the-way galleries in Atlanta and in a great many other places.” He drew in a long, slow breath. “And that's what I was doing around three months ago.”

“Going to galleries,” Frank said as he wrote it down in his notebook.

“One in particular,” Theodore said. “A place called the Knife Point Gallery. It's an awful place, actually, and it has a sort of sadomasochistic air about it. I mean, there were chains coiled on the floor, and a little collection of whips in a gold frame.” His lips curled downward. “It was all quite ridiculous, really. And it certainly had nothing to do with art.”

“Where is this place?” Frank asked.

“Over on Piedmont,” Theodore said. “Near where it runs into Peachtree.”

Frank noted it in his book.

“It's really a dreadful place,” Theodore repeated. “Quite unappetizing. It looks rather like a combination dungeon-whorehouse. Dark little rooms with all these little artifacts of … well … pain.” He poured himself another drink. “I knew this morning that it would be like this for me today. I hope you don't mind.” He emptied his glass in a quick gulp. “Anyway, among all these disgusting implements of torture, there was Angelica.” He smiled. “Shining Angelica. So beautiful.”

“What was she doing?” Frank asked.

“She appeared at first to be touring the gallery,” Theodore said. “I was amazed to see her there. I mean, she'd never had much interest in art. I certainly hadn't expected her to have an interest in the sort of trash that was hanging in the Knife Point.”

“Was she alone?”

“I think so,” Theodore said. “There were a few other people in the gallery. The sort you would expect. A rumpled painter in one corner, a drooling sadist in the other.”

“Did you speak to her?”

Theodore shook his head. “No, I didn't. I rather shrank away, actually. I had an odd feeling, like I'd come upon someone doing something that she didn't want me to know about.”

“So after you saw Angelica, you left the gallery?” Frank asked.

“Yes, I did,” Theodore said. He leaned forward slightly. “And I would appreciate it if you would keep all this to yourself. I mean, Angelica's dead. It hardly matters at this point how she lived.”

Frank said nothing.

“And besides, what could she do about it?” Theodore asked. “I've learned enough about the world to know that people do the things they do because they can't do anything else.” He glanced toward the drawer where he'd put the bottle. “That's the great lesson of life,” he said. “Helplessness.”

“Did you see Angelica leave the gallery?” Frank asked.

“No.”

“And you're sure she was alone?”

“I think she was.”

“Does the gallery have a parking lot?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Angelica's car in it?”

Something seemed to catch in Theodore's mind. “That was before she got the BMW, wasn't it? You know, I don't even know if she had a car before then.”

Frank wrote it down.

“Which means someone must have brought her to the gallery,” Theodore said, almost to himself.

“The other people in the gallery that day, did any of them look like kids from Northfield?”

Theodore laughed. “Hardly. Even Angelica didn't look like a kid from Northfield.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way she was dressed,” Theodore explained. “It wasn't exactly Northfield prep.”

“How was she dressed?”

“It's hard to explain,” Theodore said. “Except that she seemed dressed for a purpose. It was almost as if she were in costume.”

“Can you describe it?”

“Well, a black blouse, very low-cut,” Theodore said. “I mean, for maximum exposure. And she had on a black leather skirt, quite short.”

Frank wrote it down. “Anything else?”

“She'd changed her hair.”

“In what way?”

“It wasn't down. She'd piled it up on top of her head. And there were little curls everywhere. Sort of baby-doll curls, you know?”

“Baby-doll curls?”

“That's what really finished the effect.”

“What effect?”

“The, well, seductive effect,” Theodore said, as if it had all just come together for him. “That's what it looked like she was aiming for. Seduction.” He glanced about the room. “And there was something else. She wasn't really looking at the stuff on the walls. She didn't pay any attention to it at all.”

“Then what was she doing?” Frank asked.

“Well, she just wandered from room to room,” Theodore said. “She'd hang out in one for a while, then move onto another one. She was sort of slinking around.”

Frank looked up from his notebook. “So, you didn't leave the gallery immediately?”

Theodore's face gave the appearance of someone who had just discovered an odd but incontrovertible fact. “I guess I didn't,” he said slowly. He looked at Frank. “I guess I must have followed her.”

“Do you think she saw you?” Frank asked.

“No, I don't think so,” Theodore said. “But I'm not sure if that would have mattered to her.”

“To be followed, you mean?”

“Yes,” Theodore said. His eyes dulled; their light turned inward. Then they suddenly snapped back toward Frank. “Because I think that may have been exactly what she wanted, to be followed, to be admired.”

“By you?” Frank asked.

“Not me in particular, no,” Theodore said.

“By everyone?”

“She was the thing that was on display in that sordid little gallery, Mr. Clemons,” Theodore said with an odd certainty. “It was as if she had decided to be her own dark work of art.”