Death of an Artist (19 page)

“Monday. Around noon, if that's good for you?”

“Make it two and you're on. I have some work to finish in the morning. What's your name?”

Tony was grinning when he hung up. Kent “Bud” Budowsky might be a kid, but he seemed to know what he was talking about, and he wasn't shy about talking. What did it mean to him when he said a fortune was involved? What constituted a fortune to a kid?

The next call would take a little more thought, he decided, standing and stretching. Outside, a fog had settled in, the way he had been told it often did in the summer. “We go to the valley to get warm, they come out here to cool down,” Bill the bartender had said. “Winter, it's the opposite, they come here to thaw out, and we stay home.”

Francine Oliver Capek, Tony was thinking, three kids, Dale's only sister, married to a university professor. A failed actress, beauty queen, coheir to Delmar Oliver's estate, which had included his original radio drama recordings from the forties on into the sixties.

He knew what he wanted to ask her, but it could get touchy. According to Bud Budowsky a fortune had become involved, and how touchy it could get might depend on the definition of fortune. He sat down again and placed the call to Francine Capek, and this time a real kid answered. He sounded to be about the same age as Josh.

“Yeah, she's here.” Then he yelled, “Mom, it's for you.”

Tony introduced himself when she came on the line. “I'm an investigator. I'm sorry to interrupt your weekend, but we're looking into what could be a case of fraudulent representation of certain artifacts, and we believe you could have information that might help in our investigation.”

“What fraud? What artifacts are you talking about?”

“Mr. Delmar Oliver's original recordings of radio plays dating back half a century ago. We need to track them down in order to determine if what's being offered for sale presently are in fact what the seller claims, that is, Mr. Oliver's personal recordings.”

He gazed out at the fog as he lied and waited for her reaction.

“I don't know anything about that. Dad's estate was settled five years ago, and as far as I know, those old tapes were sold along with almost everything else in an estate sale. I don't have any way of knowing who might have bought them or anything else about them.”

“Are there records of buyers from that time?”

“Not that I know about. Mr.…” She already had forgotten his name, he was pleased to note. She might mention this call to Dale, but no name would go with it. Let him wonder who was looking into it.

“All that happened while I was busy giving birth to my son,” she said. “You should get in touch with my brother, Dale. Dale Oliver. He handled it. He took care of the sale and everything. It was a difficult time for us, my father had just died, and I was due to deliver a child. Dale stepped in and took over.”

“Those tapes must have brought in a sizable amount of money. Was it reported to probate court? We could look up the records.”

She laughed. “There was very little, not enough to make a hassle about. A small house to sell, and it had fallen into disrepair, personal things, those old tapes, that's all. Dale said you can download all those old programs now, so they had little value. My lawyer said Dad's will was perfectly clear, and as I said, there was little to divide between my brother and me. But you really should talk to Dale about this. I can give you his number, if you like.”

Tony took down the number she provided and thanked her. She wished him good luck in his investigation. After he disconnected, he stood at the door to his balcony and regarded the fog. The son of a bitch stiffed his own sister. Charming Dale. Unless the fortune Budowsky had mentioned consisted of no more than a few hundred, or even a few thousand dollars, it appeared that Dale Oliver might have picked up a neat bundle, and with it and half the proceeds of even a small house sale, possibly enough to buy into a business.

Why buy into a business with such a small margin of profit, though? He considered it a long time, got no satisfactory answer, and let it go. Maybe he'd ask Dale someday and find out.

He didn't want to spend time staring into fog that was like a dancing wall, drifting slightly to reveal trees that appeared ghostly, then closing in, hiding them again. Nothing was going to happen until Monday, he decided, and he might as well get in some real work. He went to the shop.

Dave had started a set of four chairs. He had turned out the legs and roughed out the seats. Tony set to work sanding. He missed Dave's tuneless hum, he thought once, then forgot him again. The buzzing of his cell phone roused him from a near trancelike state that he usually fell into when he was working with wood, a meditative state that left him feeling relaxed, peaceful. The mood was shattered when he saw that it was Freddi calling, and also that it was ten minutes before six.

“Hi, Freddi,” he said into the phone.

“Tony, I'm glad I caught you. Jordan and I've been talking over things that you brought up, and he agrees that it would not be out of line to order an audit.” She paused. “I don't like talking about things like this on the phone. Will you be coming to town in the near future?”

“Monday,” Tony said promptly. “An appointment for two in the afternoon. Anytime at either end of that.”

“Let's make it lunch again, noonish. Same place as before.”

After the brief conversation, he looked at the work he had accomplished and had little memory of doing it. That also happened. “The elves came and did it,” his father used to say, and Tony could agree. That was how it often felt; someone, something, came in and took over his body, freed him to think. That wasn't the right word, since he could not recall a single thought that had crossed his mind, but he didn't know exactly what was right. Something took over.

He imagined that Dave would make one of his characteristic grunts, this time of satisfaction, when he saw that the elves had come in and done the work.

Tony cleaned up the bench, washed his hands, and thought about dinner. And shopping, he remembered. He had to shop for a few things.

Driving to Newport, he remembered a shop he had wandered into the previous night, a shop that sold items made in Oregon. Laurelwood bowls, vases, and toys. Nothing for Van, he had been ordered not to bring a gift, he reminded himself, but he would look into the shop again.

In the shop later he went straight to the display of toys that had caught his eye before, and there it was, a wood puzzle that when put together formed a train, an engine and three coaches, with wheels that worked. It might be too difficult for Josh alone, but he visualized Van and Josh at the tide pools, and he knew that she would help him make the train.

He had dinner in a bay-front restaurant, where visibility stopped just outside the windows. The bay had vanished under fog. He wondered, as he had before, how many hours Stef had spent gazing at the bay, if she had felt the peace that had pervaded her painting, and if she had felt the chaos of her harsh landscapes or the cruelty of
Ladies in Waiting.
What had she felt while painting? Had painting been a release? Or a magnification of whatever emotion drove her to paint it? Had someone or something taken over and freed her?

Recalling the brief conversation they'd had about process, and Van's account of seeing her on the floor in tears, he knew she had not been freed while painting. It had tormented her, and she had been compelled to do it in spite of that.

He cursed Dale Oliver under his breath, and he thought once more of his former partner's judgment call to take the guy out and beat the shit out of him because he was going to get away with it.

“No, he isn't, not this time,” Tony said under his breath. “Not this time.”

*   *   *

M
ARNIE
HAD
SAID
to come anytime in the afternoon, which he interpreted to mean that dinner would be fairly early. Probably little kids such as Josh didn't approve of late dinners by candlelight. At least he hadn't when he was a kid. He arrived at the house a little after five on Sunday.

“Tony, it's good to see you again,” Marnie said, admitting him. “It's cold, isn't it? That fog is always cold, and it's coming in thick. We'll get some wind in a day or two and it will be summer again.”

She eyed the plastic bag he was carrying and shook her head. “Van said no presents. You shouldn't have brought one. She meant it.”

“It's for Josh,” he said quickly. “I thought that might be all right.”

Marnie sighed. “You win. No one can object to a present for Josh.” She led the way to the living room, where a low fire was burning. The ocean was not visible that day, and what could be seen of the town was surreal, a fantasy town with soft outlines.

“I'll take your jacket,” Marnie said. “What can I get you to drink? Van and Josh are out crawfishing, but they'll be along soon.”

“Crawfishing? Here?” There had been crawfish in upper New York in the summer, and he and his buddies had spent many hours in pursuit of them.

Marnie laughed. “Crawfish thrive in Silver Creek, in most little creeks in the state, I guess. Josh decided they were a necessary part of a birthday dinner.”

Tony thought of the little creek falling from the mountain behind the town, spreading out to a shallow expanse of icy freshwater, emptying into the Pacific Ocean. It did not seem the right place to find crawfish.

Marnie glanced at his feet. “You can probably catch them down by the creek, if you'd like.” He was wearing sneakers, good enough for the trail, no good for real hiking. “If you go out through the back, there's a path you can take to the trail by the creek. They won't be far.”

“Another secret place. There seem to be a lot of them.”

“There are. And we know each and every one of them.”

She ordered Tipper to stay and went to the door with Tony. “That silly dog can't go down there. He won't stay out of the water, even after getting caught in the rapids for quite a spill. I thought we were going to lose him.”

Marnie watched Tony go out to the deck, through the gate, and find the path. The path had been cut by the Huddleston kids, their father had said. Later Marnie and Ed had kept it up, and she had taken Stef down to the creek to crawfish many times, and when it was Van's turn, she had taken her. Their secret place. Then Marnie was thinking of the time that Stef had taken Dale down, and how furious he had been when they returned. His expensive suede shoes were muddy, ruined, he claimed.

The trail was easy going down, but Tony suspected he would pay a price on the return trip. Not too steep, and someone had cut steps into stone for a part of it, but still, going back would be uphill, and his hip objected to uphill climbs. After making one last zigzag turn, he saw Van and Josh. They were down another hundred feet, Josh wet almost to his waist, Van slightly less wet.

Silver Creek rushed to the ocean in a series of rapids and shallow falls, followed by small, still pools, then another series of rapids and falls. Up here the growth of wind-stunted trees was scant, the shores rocky, with wide, smooth places, good for sunbathing when there was sunshine.

“Hi, down there,” he called.

Van looked back over her shoulder, smiled, and waved him on down. She was carrying a small pail. Josh hardly glanced at him. He was in one of the still pools concentrating on a rock that he was approaching in water up to his ankles. Why wasn't he freezing? Tony wondered.

This new stretch was steeper than anything above it, and Tony slowed as he made his way down to join them. Josh upturned the rock, pounced, and let out a jubilant cry. He was holding a bright-red crawfish. He waded out of the water and added his catch to the pail. Then they both moved several yards up the trail to the next pool, where he began to examine the rocks closely.

“Hi,” Van said as Tony drew near. “Appetizers or something.” She held up the pail for him to see. It looked like a lot of crawfish in it.

“I had no idea this was here,” Tony said, motioning toward the trail. “How far does it go?”

“All the way down, under the bridge and on to the public beach, or you can stay on it and go on to the motels. We hardly ever crossed the highway in the summer. This was our preferred way down.”

She had pulled her hair back in a ponytail, held by a rubber band, and her cheeks were flushed.

“Are you freezing? Is he?” Tony asked, pointing to Josh.

“He wouldn't admit it. When his lips get blue, I blow the whistle on him. I did the same thing when I was his age, and I never admitted to being cold either.”

“We played in the snow with ice in our socks, down our mittens, and swore we were warm,” Tony said. “Do you start downstream and work your way up? That's what we did as kids.”

She looked at him in surprise and nodded. “Marnie said that they spread the word and hide if you start searching upstream.”

“True. They do.”

Tony looked away first, and they became silent, both of them watching Josh sneak up on another rock.

“One more, Josh,” Van said. “We have plenty already.”

He didn't acknowledge her, continued to approach the rock stealthily, then flipped it and let out another cry of triumph.

His lips were turning blue, Tony saw, as the child left the water and came to toss his latest catch into the pail.

“Home,” Van said. “And don't run.”

“Tell the wind not to blow,” Tony said as Josh dashed off ahead of them, back up the trail.

“He's part mountain goat,” Van said with a laugh.

Going to the house, Van set the pace, mindful of his hip, how he had limped after driving to and from Portland. Where the trail got too narrow for them to keep a little distance from each other side by side, he dropped back to walk behind her.
Okay,
Van thought,
we can be pals or something. Crawfishing buddies.