Death of an Artist (11 page)

Still at the window, he turned to ask, “Do you have an attorney you can confide in?”

Marnie let Van make the coffee and returned to stand near the chair she had vacated. “I already called him. I have an appointment in the morning.” She drew in a long breath. “Tony, you've already guessed why we asked you to come tonight. We want you to look into this, find whatever the sheriff overlooked, help us prove that Dale killed my daughter.”

Her gaze was steady as she waited for his response. He wanted to turn away, to leave now, to forget he had ever met her or Stef, forget that he'd had a mini-tour of Stef's work, that he had come to look on her as a likely genius, her work as brilliant. Reluctantly, he nodded.

Marnie bowed her head for a moment. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and returned to the kitchen to rinse the coffee cups.

“Did you receive an autopsy?” He kept his tone almost impersonal, a businesslike tone, dealing with a business matter.

“Just a summary,” she said, bringing the cups to the table. She sat in the chair she had left, folded her hands in her lap, and watched him.

“Ask your attorney to get one. He'll know how to do it. That contract might require a bit of research to determine its validity. It could get tricky, and I don't know enough about it to make a guess as to how it will come down. Is there still some of Stef's art at the gallery?”

Marnie nodded.

“You should pull it as soon as you can, tomorrow if possible. The attorney might advise getting a court to issue a restraining order, something of that sort, freezing all the art until the contract business is settled, but you should have it all together in any event.”

“I'll go tomorrow,” Van said from the kitchen. “I'll take off in the morning as soon as the locksmith finishes here.” She added to Tony, “We're changing the locks on both houses. He still has his key.”

“Good,” Tony said. “Will Freddi Wordling talk to me? One of you might have to put in a word with her first.” He rubbed his eyes. “Ms. Markov, Van, listen for a second. I'm not licensed as a private investigator. I don't have access to the databases to do any kind of real checking on anyone's background. What I will be able to dig up will be superficial, available to anyone with a computer. And no one has to talk to me who doesn't want to, and if they do talk to me, they don't have to answer any questions or even tell me the truth. Of course, Dale Oliver isn't going to cooperate with an investigation in any way, and he could file a complaint that there is harassment, invasion of privacy, or something else. I may be able to find out a little, but this wouldn't be like it was with a whole department and its resources backing me. Also, there may not be anything to find beyond what you've already told me. It could end exactly where it is right now with both of you convinced that he's a murderer, and no way on earth to prove it. People suffer from fatal falls daily, and absent an eyewitness, there's no way to disprove that it was accidental.”

“You don't believe it was murder, do you?” Van returned with the fresh coffee and filled the three cups that Marnie had emptied and rinsed.

“I don't know enough to believe or not believe that it was murder,” Tony said deliberately. “If that contract holds up, he'll get twenty-five percent of any sale. It's not a fortune. Not a multimillion-dollar windfall for anyone. Worth killing for? No prosecutor would accept it as sufficient motive for murder, I'm afraid. There's not enough to take to a grand jury.”

“Twenty-five percent for him, thirty-five for the gallery—part of that would be his as a partner, and if we're talking about big sales, it could start adding up.” Van glanced at Marnie, then continued, “That night when he came back, you heard him say that there was an exciting offer, something to that effect. When I came over here that night, he was going on about a sale of
Feathers and Ferns
. A dot-com millionaire from Seattle had seen it and wanted it and was willing to go high. Dale was calling it her breakout sale, one that would launch a lot of others. She would be the new hot item, a must-have artist, and so on. They were yelling back and forth and I left. But he had a significant sale in mind, a breakout sale, and she was saying no. I imagine he knew what he was talking about, that others would follow suit and want her work. Isn't that how it often works?”

It wasn't a real question and Van didn't wait for an answer as she said, “I know you saw the work in the studio, but she didn't show you what's in the other downstairs bedroom, did she? It's full of her work, too. Thirty years' worth of art waiting to be sold. He could be looking at an income stream for many years to come, with the prices increasing steadily.”

Tony sat down again and picked up his coffee. It was good, he realized. He had pretty much ignored it before and appreciated it this time. “I assume she didn't rely on selling her art for an income.”

“After Ed died and I sold the fishing business, I set up a trust for her,” Marnie said without hesitation. “Stef never did care about money or regard it as a goal. She really couldn't have been trusted to manage money. She would have been as likely to give it away as not, or buy an airplane, or who knows what? She had a monthly income, enough to live on without worry, but not enough to be considered wealthy.”

“In her name alone?”

“Yes.” Marnie looked at her hands then as she said, “You probably already have heard that she had been married several times before Dale, and then there was Frank, Van's father. When we set up her trust fund, Ted, my attorney, made sure that the money would always be in her name alone—‘irrevocable,' I believe he called it. It reverts to me, not part of her estate.”

“Insurance? Life insurance?”

“Yes. Ten thousand. I was the beneficiary,” Marnie said, looking at her hands. “She never changed that over the years.”

Tony nodded. “Okay. I'll see if there's anything I can find out. No guarantees about success. I worked in homicide for twenty years, and there were a lot of times when we believed we had a murder case but without proof. A lot of times when the proof we could produce was not enough, not convincing. A gunshot is easier to deal with, you can trace the gun to an owner usually and go on from there. Same with a purposeful hit-and-run with a motor vehicle. Paint damage, certain dents, other clues lead to the car and the owner. That's how it works when there's a real murder weapon of any sort. But a fall called accidental doesn't have tangible evidence. It could have been helpful to have been at the scene, but two weeks later just adds to the likelihood that nothing can be proved. The investigators most probably won't even talk to me about it. Can you accept that this might lead to a dead end?”

“Will Comley was here,” Marnie said faintly. “He'll most certainly talk to you, and I don't think he's quite the fool people seem to think he is.”

She had ignored the question, and Tony didn't repeat it, suspecting that she would ignore it again. Tony thought she was right about Will. Tony had seen how he looked over those who had entered the bar the night Will had given him a history lesson.

“There's only one drawback to talking to Will,” Tony said. “He'll know I'm looking into it and put two and two together. The news will spread. Do you care?”

“He talks,” Marnie said, then surprised him by adding, “but I don't think he discloses anything official. He has his own line in the sand.”

“I'm not official.”

“From something Dave said I believe Will respects and looks up to you. I suspect he'd treat you as an official.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Tony said, unconvinced both that Will wouldn't gab out of school, and that he would treat Tony like anything but an outsider.

“Can you come to Portland with me tomorrow?” Van asked. “I can introduce you to Freddi and collect the art while you two talk.”

“Is Dale likely to be around?”

“Maybe. I don't know. But I'd like to rattle his cage a little, let him know we're not buying anything he's selling.”

Had Van grasped the significance of the other meaningful parts of that contract? Had Marnie? Neither one had brought them up, asked about them, and he wouldn't either. At least not yet. If that contract was determined to be valid, Marnie could protest every sale that Dale might try to make, resulting in endless fights, possibly court fights. She might lose each fight, but there could be costly delays, and few customers were likely to want to get involved in such family disputes. That possibility would depend on how the phrase
unreasonably withheld
was interpreted, and what kind of arbitration would be decided upon. But the possibility would have to be explored.

The other clause was more important. In the event of Marnie's death or incapacitation, Dale Oliver would be named executor of the art estate and have total control over all of it. Tony hoped her attorney would go into both clauses on the following day.

The trust reverted to Marnie, and the insurance, which no doubt she had paid for, had gone to her. Selling art was problematic. If Dale had simply wanted out of a bad marriage, he could have walked out. Tony knew all about that. There could have been another motive, he knew, but at this point money didn't seem to have been a consideration. If Stef had learned something Dale Oliver had not wanted revealed, it was likely to remain buried forever. Meanwhile, Tony decided, he would go to Portland, meet Freddi, and see where it led.

He nodded to Van. “I'll go with you.” He finished his coffee, then stood. “Let's leave it for now. After you talk to your attorney and I talk to Freddi Wordling, we'll know a bit better where we stand. Now, I'll help you place those dowels where they belong, check out your windows and doors, and take off.”

Marnie stood and said, “Tony, I don't expect you to donate your services. But I'm at a loss as to what a fair compensation should be. I'll need your guidance.”

“If I start running up expenses, I'll let you know.” He didn't believe it was going to happen any more than he believed there was a chance to prove Stef had died by murder.

 

9

T
ONY
DROVE
THE
next day so Van could talk without being distracted by traffic. “Just talk,” he said when they started. “Your life with your mother and Marnie, whatever comes to mind. I'll interrupt if a question occurs to me. Okay?”

“Free association,” she said in a low voice. “That's what you want?”

“Something like that. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not. It's just a little awkward. I studied psychology for a while along with medicine, a double major, before I decided to concentrate on medicine. An assignment was to write three pages of free association, no editing allowed. What a mess of gibberish I ended up with.” She laughed lightly. “There was probably a point to it, but I don't remember what it was, or I left before finding out.”

“Why did you leave psychology?”

She hesitated, then said slowly, “I realized that what was really on my mind was an attempt to understand Stef. I think most people go into psychology for a similar reason, either concerning themselves or someone close to them.”

Traffic on the coast road was always heavy during the summer months. SUVs, campers, cyclists, family cars, formed long lines of slow-moving traffic for much of the distance before Tony would turn off and head inland. Now and then they had a spectacular view of the ocean, then woods closed in, while on the other side it appeared that the Coast Ranges mountains crowded the road, or bare cliffs gave way to more level land with a few houses or even fields now and again. Van saw little of it that morning as a long-forgotten memory surfaced, brought to mind by her words about psychology and her reason for abandoning it.

Free association, she reminded herself, and began to talk again in a low voice. “I rebelled, of course, as an adolescent. I had always adored Stef, someone exotic and exciting, unpredictable, who could be great fun or apparently forget me altogether for periods. Since there was always Marnie, more a mother than a grandmother, that was okay, too. Stef was this exotic woman who lived with us. Then I began to question everything about her—the men, her dyed hair, outlandish clothes, obsession about painting, everything. The studio door was kept closed, but sometimes she locked it, not often, but enough to make me believe she was painting pornographic pictures. I was convinced that she was making dirty pictures, and I watched like a spy for a chance to get inside and see for myself.”

Van turned to face the side window and her voice dropped even lower. “I had a chance one day. I thought she had gone out and the door wasn't closed all the way, not latched. I just pushed it open a little and she was in there, sitting on the floor, crying. I couldn't see what was on the easel, but I saw her in that big shirt she always wore, cross-legged on the floor, crying. I backed off fast. I was pretty scared by it.”

Van's pause was longer this time as she gazed blindly out the side window. “I heard her go out a few minutes later and I hadn't heard the studio door close. I went inside and looked. It was a nude study of a girl, me. Not idealized, not prettified, but me. I can't describe it, or how it made me feel, just in shock, I think. She saw things that I had not been aware of or had not let myself know or admit. I think it might have been a masterpiece.”

Now she looked at Tony, at his profile, his hands on the steering wheel. They were in the Coast Ranges and she had not been aware of leaving the coast highway. “She was a great artist,” she said quietly, “and her gift, her talent, a compulsion to paint the truth she saw, terrified her. That's what I realized when I was studying psychology, why I no longer felt a need to continue with it. I suddenly felt that I understood Stef. It had been at least five years since I saw that study, alternately feeling crushed or afraid, before my perspective switched. You know, like looking at the two vases that suddenly become two profiles, something like that. I think Marnie has understood for many years. That day when Stef rushed out, it was to buy a can of spray paint, black spray paint. The next time I was in the studio that portrait had been painted over completely. There was nothing but a black canvas.”