Artist's Proof (14 page)

Only once had I gone to a nonpolice wake. The deceased was a murder victim. I had a hunch that his killer might be on hand and in some way signal his guilt, the way an arsonist sometimes gives himself away at the scene of his fire. All I picked up on this occasion was a buzz from the alcohol I had to consume to blend in with the mourners.

I stayed aloft on the scaffold until six, then showered and dressed in clothes suitable for showing respect for the departed. They were roughly the same clothes I had worn the previous Friday to show respect for that pair of Texans who were interested in buying my painting of her.

That, I decided, was letting Cassie down. But I had nothing better to offer.

*   *   *

G
AYLE LIVED IN
a small apartment behind the workroom over Gayle's Provocativo on Covenant Street. She was waiting for me in front of the shop when I drove up, casually but calculatedly draped in a dark purple whatever the hell, somber but striking, that she may have whipped up just for this occasion. Gayle worked that way.

The news burst from her as she climbed into my pickup. “The prodigal has returned.”

“Who's that?”

“Cassie's old man. Mel, at the diner, saw him drive into town this afternoon. For the wake, I suppose. Cassie told me she hadn't seen the bastard in months. I guess he couldn't resist the chance to belly up to the free booze.”

I said, “Come on, Gayle, you're not being fair. If he hadn't shown, you'd have said he had a heart of stone. You'd damn well want your father at your wake.”

“Just long enough for me to stand up in the box to see who the son of a bitch was and kick him in the teeth.”

She fished the driving directions out of a fold of her garment and said, “Sid, be careful what you say to the mother. The way I heard it, she was not all that crazy about Cassie posing for you.” She perched her reading glasses on her perfect Lena Horne nose. “I mean, even before you got the girl to do the nude stuff. I guess you must regret that.”

No kidding. Thank you, Gayle.

“Another thing. Let me warn you: Cassie's body's at the house. It's the way they did it at Nora Brennan's grandmother's wake, and she insisted.”

This was not going to be my favorite wake.

*   *   *

T
HE BRENNAN HOUSE
, a cracker box, stood in a cluster of near relatives in a wooded area about equal distance from the ocean and the bay, with easy access to neither. Resale values here would never climb much above rock bottom. But the Brennan house was tidily landscaped, painted, and curtained, and had a well-maintained path to the front door.

I parked behind half a dozen vehicles. Four or five people were on the path, some leaving the house, one couple arriving with a tray of food. At Gayle's suggestion we had stopped at the Cake Box, and she carried our contribution to the evening, two pounds of assorted cookies. We edged the front door open against a sea of bodies and squeezed inside.

The front room was so crowded I couldn't even make my usual eyeball check for pictures on the walls. A plain pine casket took up a good chunk of floor space, and a long table set up with the bar and free lunch consumed much of what was left.

The shoulder-to-shoulder mourners spilled into the kitchen and a bedroom. These people were all locals; they appeared to be neighbors and co-workers of the mother. Cassie had told me that Nora Brennan worked for the tax assessor in the village office. Oddly, I saw no young people—no one Cassie's age. A priest was the youngest person in the room. Where was the boyfriend, Paulie Malatesta?

I let Gayle lead the way and we pushed through to the casket. A low stool had been placed at the open end, and she dropped to it in a practiced kneel and bowed her head for a moment of silent prayer. When she stood up and moved quickly off her eyes were glistening and her lip trembled. Gayle had grown up surrounded by death, but she had long ago shed her inner city veneer of detachment from it.

I moved forward to the casket but remained standing; I don't come from a tradition that includes kneeling. The mortician had done an okay job. That wasn't the Cassie I knew in the box, but at least the slashed neck was mostly buried under makeup and a weird-looking high collar that had nothing to do with the real world. The waxy face had been made up by a cosmetician who didn't know the girl. His work reminded me of a boardwalk caricaturist's—it delivered everything but the essential Cassie. But he had achieved a repose that may have given comfort to the bereaved.

I was not moved; I felt nothing. I was not reminded of Cassie; Cassie was somewhere else. But I stood for a long moment with my head bowed, so as not to be thought callous—the man who had looked on this girl naked but refused to kneel and look at her dead.

Gayle had told me she had met the mother with Cassie once or twice in the village, so again I let her take the lead. She threaded her way across the room to a high-backed chair against a window and waited for an opening in the cluster of women surrounding its occupant. At the first break she elbowed through and bent over. She grasped the seated woman's hand in both of hers, said a few words, and turned to make sure I was behind her—as though she was afraid I might have chickened out.

She said, “Mrs. Brennan, this is Mr. Shale, who drew so many lovely pictures of Cassie, caught her so beautifully with his pencil and brushes.”

Gayle was doing her damnedest to smooth the moment. She stepped aside and I said my piece.

“Mrs. Brennan, I knew Cassie only a short time, but I grew to respect her a great deal. I feel her loss deeply, so maybe I can begin to imagine your pain. I am terribly sorry.”

I had expected a woman of middle years; Nora Brennan was almost certainly younger than me. She was, in fact, an older version of Cassie—Cassie with the juices partially drained. Putting aside the current grief that had her eyes red-rimmed and her face drawn and sickly pale, she was a Cassie stamped with bitterness; her mouth had been set in unhappiness years before her daughter's murder. Only a Velázquez could have captured her mixture of pain and pride.

She looked at me steadily, without change of expression, and I looked back just as steadily. If she was going to dump on me, let's get on with it. Meanwhile the three women who had been chatting her up turned and moved on; they had sensed that something private might be in the works here.

Finally Mrs. Brennan's tight lips parted. Her voice had an edge, and it cut. “Was Cassie's body suitable for your purpose, Mr. Shale?”

Jesus, this was going to be even harder than I thought. “Cassie was a good model,” I said. “Maybe the best who ever sat for me. She was disciplined. I admired her spirit. It was a privilege for me to get to know her during our sessions together. I came to think of her as a friend.”

“Did you? Then why did you dismiss her?”

“I never did. I'd have used her as long as she was willing to sit. At the time there was a question of money. There still is. As soon as I had some I'd have called her.”

“To pose naked again? Was that your plan?”

“No. That happened once. There was … a miscommunication. But you must understand that Cassie was proud of her body.” I took a gentle shot, on the theory that the best defense is an offense. “Why wouldn't she have been? God gave her that beautiful body. She had no reason to be ashamed of it.”

The red-rimmed eyes were fixed on me, the mouth again set. Eventually she said, “Your behavior toward my daughter was entirely inappropriate.”

Inappropriate
didn't sound too bad. I said, “I assure you, Mrs. Brennan, nothing happened during those work sessions that would have troubled you.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Cassie would have told me if you had acted in a way you shouldn't have. She shared everything with me. Always. And she had so little to confess to in her brief life. So very little.”

She had kept a tight rein on her daughter, and for a fleeting moment I wondered if she regretted that Cassie had not had the opportunity to taste certain earthly pleasures. But then she said, “She was a religious girl, thank God, and I take comfort in that. She's with her little sister now. And the angels.”

*   *   *

T
HE ORDEAL WAS
over. Gayle and I were each holding a Scotch, and we were circulating. I had ended my audience with Mrs. Brennan by offering to bring her one of my sketches of her daughter—by implication, one in which she was clothed. She had turned me down, and I quickly assured her that in any case none of the sketches were for sale; they would all remain in my files. That got no response and I backed off with another expression of sympathy. It hadn't been good, but neither had it been as bad as I feared.

Gayle had hooked up with a couple of village merchants and I looked around for a familiar face. I found only one—Jack Beltrano, the fire chief. He was a small-time contractor, a young and fit fifty, weathered like barn siding by too many hours framing up summer homes in bad weather. He was deep in conversation with a man whose back was to me. Jack and I caught each other's eye at the same time and he said a few words to the other man and made his way to me.

After we exchanged greetings I said, “Did you know Cassie well?”

“My mother lives next door. She needs a lot of attention, so I'm around. Sid, did I ever thank you for the drawing you donated to the auction? We had some hot bidding on that one. A picture of the village where you can make out every shop? Who wouldn't want that?”

People who wanted it because it was a good drawing, that's who. But I said, “You sent me a note. You said it went to someone who asked not to be named. I was impressed.”

“I didn't mean to be mysterious. I have no idea who bought that picture. But can you guess who showed up to bid for the buyer?”

I wanted him to say it. “Who?”

“Cassie. It was poor Cassie Brennan. She came in that night with a bundle of cash. And I guess instructions to buy your drawing, whatever it took. She hung in until she'd worn out the couple of other bidders. She laid out a healthy chunk of dough on behalf of some fan of yours out there somewhere.”

He allowed himself a small chuckle. “Unless she was buying for herself. Beautiful kid, it's a damn shame. What about it, Sid?”

“What about what?”

“Was she a little bit hung up on you?” He was uncomfortably flip for this setting, and now I could tell he had already had a couple of drinks.

I said, “Cassie worked hard for her money, and she was too smart to be that reckless with it—even if she'd had a schoolgirl crush on me.” He looked as though he was about to say something wiseass, so I quickly added, “But she was too smart for that too.”

The man Beltrano had been talking to had idled up to the makeshift bar and fixed himself another drink. Now he was walking toward us—to retrieve Beltrano, I thought. But it was me he turned to.

“Jack tells me you're Sid Shale.”

“I am.”

He was in his forties, another construction worker, I figured, two hundred pounds, much of it flab. He had once been handsome, but his softening features, mottled skin, and eyes nearly lost behind cushions of flesh gave away a drinking problem. I knew who he was half a beat before he announced it.

“I'm Jim Brennan. Cassie's dad.” There was confrontation in his voice.

I said, “She was a beautiful young woman. I'm truly sorry for your loss, Mr. Brennan.”

“Are you? There's a laugh.” He tried to force a laugh and failed. “Mr. Painter.”

Beltrano cut in soothingly, “Okay now, Jim. Easy does it.”

Brennan shook off the steadying hand. His attention was fully on me. He said, “Showing up here.”

He was having trouble forming his thoughts and he repeated, “Showing up here.” He had a good head of steam by now. “I want to talk to you.”

“Fine. What about?”

“What about? What the hell do you think about? My daughter.” He was beginning to shift his weight like a boxer waiting for the starting bell.

“I don't know what I can tell you that you don't already know,” I said. I didn't like his air of menace and I added, “But Cassie did tell me you had been out of touch lately, so maybe there are things you missed. Your Cassie had grown up lately.”

“She had? Not to her father.” What there was of his eyes had narrowed to the vanishing point. “And I'm here when I'm here. When I'm needed. Understand? I go where the jobs are, that's the way it is in my line of work. I'm not some frigging artist who never has to move more than five steps from his own crapper.”

Jack Beltrano took his arm again. “Jim, keep your voice down. And I think you should save this for another time.”

Brennan said, “No. This is the time I'm here. Right now. When I'm needed.”

He took a step toward me; we were nose to nose, all but touching. He was claiming the territory. Angry husbands used to do that when I was a patrolman on “domestic dispute” calls. Their home was their castle and I seemed to be a threat.

Now Brennan said, “But yeah, Jack's right, this is not a good place to be talking.” The tiny eyes were riveted to me. “We won't bother anybody out back.”

Beltrano said, “Look, Jim—”

Brennan ignored him. “There won't be anybody in the yard.”

He waited for a reaction from me. When I gave him none he said, “Through the kitchen.” He nodded in that direction. “You get what I'm saying?” He turned to Beltrano. “We won't be needing you, Jack.”

Beltrano said, “Don't be a damn fool.” But he made no effort to stop Brennan, who was already on the move.

Jesus. Better out back, I supposed, than here with the coffin and the grieving mother. I followed the beefy guy as he lurched toward the kitchen and through it. People got out of his way. Two women making sandwiches at the kitchen counter didn't even look up as he swept past them.