A Masquerade of Muertos (Wisteria Tearoom Mysteries Book 5) (8 page)

That tickled my memory and I looked at the central figure of the painting, a man dressed as a Renaissance nobleman, illuminated by the red light from the windows. He stood in an attitude of despair, mouth agape beneath an elaborate, silver-trimmed mask, one hand drooping with a dagger about to slip from its grasp. Almost invisible against the dark background, a shadowy form robed in black stood opposing him. A tall, standing clock stood in the figure’s shadow, its hands just discernible, pointing to twelve.

It was the climax of Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”

So Gabriel’s fascination with the story was not just about the Halloween party. The painting was surely Prince Prospero realizing he was about to die in the moment before the Red Death took him.

I moved on, looking for comfort in some other picture. I didn’t really find it. Gabriel’s work was not about comfort.

On the last panel was a single painting of a nude—Gwyneth again, I was pretty sure, but her face was obscured by her hair—crouched amid the shattered remains of something that had been made of red glass. There was no blood, but the implication that blood would flow the moment she tried to move out of the disaster zone was strong. Her bare feet would surely be cut by some tiny unseen shard, or her hands if she used them to sweep an escape path. If she tried to jump clear of the glass, she might land on a piece with painful results. The painting was titled “Calculation.”

“Interesting work,” said Loren beside me. “Is the artist a friend of yours?”

“A friend of a friend. I just met him a couple of days ago.”

“Ah.”

Shelly joined us, gazing at “Calculation” with troubled eyes. “Kind of disturbing,” she said.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“It’s meant to be,” said a smooth voice behind us.

I turned and saw Gabriel smiling with satisfaction, dressed in cream silk and linen, his ankh just peeking out of his neckline. Kris was beside him, in a clinging black chenille sweater over spiderweb tights, more overtly Goth than anything she wore to work.

“Glad you could make it,” Gabriel said to me.

“Me, too, but I just got here, so I haven’t seen much yet. I came looking for you first.”

“Merci du compliment.”

“Your work is striking. I see why you were accepted into the White Iris. Allow me to congratulate you again.”

He gave me a small, gracious bow. “Thank you.”

I introduced the Jacksons, and Gabriel made Shelly giggle by bowing gallantly over her hand. As we stood chatting, Dale Whittier and a familiar-looking woman approached. For a second my mind dressed her as Lolita.

Right! One of Kris’s friends. Martha, or Margaret? She’d been at the Halloween planning party.

“Hi, Dale,” I said, then smiled at the woman. “Hello, again.”

“Hi,” she returned absently, looking at Gabriel.

He turned at the sound of her voice. “Margo! Thank you for coming.”

Her face transformed with pleasure. “I wanted to see your latest stuff.”

Gabriel welcomed her into the booth with a sweep of his arm. Margo stepped up to “Calculation.”

“I haven’t seen this one,” she said.

“It’s new.”

Margo nodded, slowly smiling. Dale joined her.

“Have you any favorite artists in the show to recommend?” I asked Gabriel.

“Well, you must see Roberto’s work, of course. He’s two rows down.” he gestured, and as far as I could tell his smile was sincere.

“Thanks. Are there others?”

“Let me mark them on your map.”

“Perfect! Thank you.”

I took off my lanyard and handed it to him. He slipped the map out, produced a pen, and began circling numbers. Loren had turned to watch, and I gestured to him.

“Kris, you remember Loren,” I said.

“Yes, of course. And Shelly. We were all chatting at the wedding yesterday.”

Shelly was staring at Gabriel, eyes wide. I wondered, uncharitably I admit, whether she was one of those women who specialized in falling for other women’s partners. In my private thoughts I figured she’d be better off mooning after Tony than after Gabriel. Not that I wished her to do either.

Gabriel seemed to become aware of her regard, and an interesting shift occurred. He turned to face her, and his smile expanded. A new radiance rose around him.

“Are you fond of art, Shelly?” he asked.

“Kind of,” she said lamely, taking a step back.

“Let me guess. Peaceful landscapes are more to your liking,” he said, with a soft laugh.

Magnetism. That’s what it was. No wonder he’d slept with whole roomfuls of women.

“These aren’t easy to look at,” she said, gesturing to his paintings.

“That’s true,” he said. “I didn’t intend them to be easy.”

“Peaceful landscapes sound nice,” I said. “Think I’ll see if there are any here.”

“Oh, there are,” Gabriel said, his eyes narrowing in amusement. “Here are my suggestions, but you probably won’t find peaceful landscapes at any of them.”

“Thank you.” I nodded as he handed back my lanyard. “Best of luck with the show.”

“Mark them for me, too!” Margo said, holding out her own lanyard to Gabriel.

“Good idea,” Dale said, taking his off his neck.

I turned toward the next booth, and found myself facing Cherie. In a black velour dress with a plunging, lace-bordered neckline over net stockings and knee-high laced boots, eyes heavily lined with kohl, she looked more ready for a nightclub than an art show. Her sly smile acknowledged my reaction. She gave me a nod, then glided past me.

“Gabriel,” she called. “I made it! Be proud of me.”

Gabriel handed Margo’s badge back to her and glanced at Cherie as he slid Dale’s map from his badge. “Astonished, but proud.”

“Tsk. What are you doing? Signing autographs?”

“Giving advice about what to see in the show.”

“Ah!” She produced her own badge and held it out to him. “Por favor.”

Their fingers met on the badge holder, and a tiny tug-of-war ensued. Cherie released it with a grin, and Gabriel grinned back.

I shot a swift glance at Kris. She was watching, standing back. Eyes cold, not smiling.

I stepped toward her, instinct prompting me to shield her, though there was no practical way that I could. She looked at me, then turned toward “Calculation.” I stepped up beside her.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “I don’t own him.”

I pressed my lips together, swallowing my sympathy. Kris calmly fielded a question from an older gentleman in a tweed coat, providing him with one of Gabriel’s business cards from a tiny ebony table.

My interest in antique furniture made me look closer at the exquisite little piece, no more than two feet by eight inches. It bore a filigreed rack holding Gabriel’s cards, and a scattering of other business cards, presumably left by visitors. One of them drew my attention.

The card was plain white stock. It bore no type, only a hand-drawn image of a skull and crossbones.

I picked it up, looking at the back side. Nothing. The edge felt rough, as though it had been hand-cut. When the older gentleman left, I caught Kris’s attention.

“Who left this?”

She took the card, looked at the blank back, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Some baby bat, maybe.”

She dropped it back on the pile, dismissing it.

“What’s a baby bat?”

“A baby Goth. They do silly things at first, until they learn the culture.”

I touched the card with a fingernail, drawing it away from the others. “Are pirates part of Goth culture?”

“Not really.”

The skull and crossbones had other meanings. One that leapt to mind was a warning against poison.

“Kris—”

Her attention was back on Gabriel. His head was bowed over Cherie’s map, and Cherie leaned in to see what he was writing. Just for a moment, I saw a crease on Kris’s brow.

“Think I’ll check out the next aisle,” I said. “Want to come with?”

Kris shook her head and turned to straighten the cards in the rack, which were already straight. There was nothing more I could do.

Shelly and Loren followed me to the neighboring booth. We admired some photographs of wildflowers—lovely and quite safe—and a display of beautiful pottery with sumptuous glazes that shaded from sand to green. Farther down the aisle I spotted Gwyneth, talking to two men in what had to be Roberto’s booth. She wore a floor-length beaded dress of creamy gauze, rather formal for the setting, but it set off her slender figure charmingly.

As I approached, Roberto slid from a tall stool and gave me a nod. “Nice to see you, Ellen. Thank you for coming.”

He wore a dark green vest over a black shirt and jeans, with a stunning bolo tie: a single pale green turquoise stone, wedge-shaped and over two inches long, in a classic, silver shadowbox setting. His hair was caught tightly back from his face in a clubbed braid adorned with a sandcast silver lizard.

“I’m glad to have a chance to see your work,” I said.

Where Gabriel’s paintings were stark, Roberto’s came close to being florid. Gwyneth was a frequent model here, too, but in Roberto’s work she was never threatened; she was revered. The settings were lush and tended to woodland themes. Gwyneth was Titania, Galadriel, and Morgan le Fay. Against the dark greens and browns of the backgrounds, she glowed.

“These are splendid,” I told Roberto, and meant it. His skill was excellent, and if his work was intellectually less demanding than Gabriel’s, well, that was something of a relief.

Shelly seemed to think so. She stared raptly at Titania, and her brother watched with an amused expression. I sidled over to Loren.

He nodded, glancing at Roberto. “I gather the artists know each other?”

“Yes.” I stopped myself from saying they were friends. Upon reflection, I wasn’t sure it was true.

Some of the smaller paintings in Roberto’s booth were darker. None of these featured Gwyneth. Instead they depicted soldiers with swords—either medievalish or Romanesque—and bits of hacked-up bodies. Nothing too gruesome, but more what I would have expected from an artist who identified himself as a Goth.

But even these pieces were less challenging than Gabriel’s. Roberto was talented, and his work was beautifully executed, but none of it was breathtaking.

The two men Gwyneth had been talking to departed, and she came over to me, smiling, holding out both hands as if I was an old friend. “You made it!”

“Yes. Gwyneth, I’d like you to meet Loren Jackson. Loren, this is Gwyneth Bancroft.”

“And the fair Titania, yes?” said Loren gallantly.

Gwyneth giggled, plainly pleased. Roberto joined us, and I performed more introductions. Shelly gushed a bit at both Roberto and Gwyneth. They launched into a discussion of Gwyneth’s costumes in the paintings. After a few minutes my interest waned, but the subject was by no means exhausted, so I drifted away toward the next booth, which was filled with beautiful woven shawls and scarves in a luscious rainbow of colors.

I ran my hand along a rack of shawls, reveling in the caress of chenille. From the dozens I found two that sang to me more than the rest: a shawl in shades of blue and green that reminded me of the sea, and a violet-lavender-fuchsia scarf. With one in each hand, I stood rapt, fantasizing just for a moment that I could actually afford to buy one.

“The purple one is more your colors, right?”

Loren stood on the other side of the rack, grinning at me. I lifted my chin.

“I love the colors on both. If the shawl were the colors of the scarf, I’d be in serious trouble.”

Loren began to look through the rack. “Maybe we can find one like that.”

“Oh, I hope not.”

Reluctantly, I hung the two pieces where I’d found them and moved on to the next booth. Whimsical statues of animals, very colorful. Fun, but nothing I’d want in my home.

Loren tagged along, and with a glance back toward Roberto’s booth, said, “So who was she with first?”

I considered pretending I had no idea what he meant. It would have been the polite thing to do, but since I was puzzled about Gwyneth and the two artists, I answered. “Gabriel, I think. I don’t know why she switched.”

“Roberto is safer,” Loren said.

“Safer?”

“He’s got her on a pedestal. He’d never hurt her.”

“Gabriel wouldn’t either. That is...” I picked up a
millefiori
giraffe and rubbed a thumb along its lacquered surface. “I don’t
think
he’d hurt her.”

Truth was, I didn’t know. They were Goths, and I’d heard some scary things about Goths. They liked darkness, were obsessed with death. While I’d never seen or heard of Kris doing anything destructive, it was possible that some of her friends were into dangerous pursuits.

Not wanting to think about that, I decided to put more physical distance between myself and Kris’s friends. My map was my guide as I left Loren patiently waiting for his sister. The booths that Gabriel had recommended all contained artwork at least as disturbing as his—more so, in a couple of cases. Giving up on his recommendations, I began going up and down the rows, glancing into each booth and stopping at the ones that caught my interest.

I soon found myself back in the land of Titania. Roberto was talking to a woman with ash blond hair and big, round sunglasses, bundled in sheepskin and alpaca as though it was the middle of winter. For a second she reminded me of Willow Lane, except that I didn’t think Willow would ever wear shaggy boots.

Gwyneth hovered near them, vibrating like a moth, her attention glued to the furry woman. Roberto glanced at me, but didn’t acknowledge me. Something was up.

To give them space, I stepped away toward the paintings that featured Titania. Now that I had leisure to examine them closely, I saw more details. Titania stood in the middle of a glade surrounded by her fairy court, a handful of white blossoms in her hands. She was bending to smell them, her eyelids gracefully drooping. Both she and the flowers glimmered, the brightest things in the scene.

Four smaller, separate paintings surrounded Titania, all thematically related. The next largest, about a quarter of the size of the main painting, was titled “Oberon.” It was a self-portrait: very shadowed, very dark, but unmistakably Roberto, crowned in leaves, gazing directly at Titania across the gap in canvas.